My African friend tells me stories of how his mother runs a successful rose exporting business in Ethiopia and regularly pays off bank employees so none of her (personal) money gets stolen.<p>In western countries it's almost unimaginable to not be able to rely on banks to store your money safely. They are typically the most conservative and reliable institutions among the chain of various business services you'd have to deal with as an entrepreneur. Without this critical underlying consumer-level infrastructure in place I'm in no hurry to be a pioneer there.<p>Despite my friends making similar claims about the endless low-hanging fruit opportunities there to make money.
I lived in Uganda a few years ago, and pirating movies, burning them to disc, and selling them from a brick and mortar storefront was considered a good job for young people, in the north at least. There are way more than 1.2B opportunities there. People setup power-strips in their neighborhood and charge people small fees to leave their phone for a charge. People walk around the streets hawking everything imaginable, you can buy toilet paper, fresh produce, posters and toys, all while sitting in a traffic jam. I had a guy who sold me eggs, and he was my egg guy, and every week I'd stop by and he'd sell me a carton of eggs wrapped in twine. It's just an overall interesting place with tons of opportunities and existing ingenuity.
Not much has been said about the IT industry. Until recently transaction processing was a huge impediment as Paypal and the likes were blocking transactions coming from most of Africa. Then there is an inherent problem of physical addressing, which also impedes delivery and a host of GPS dependent services from having a good traction. Much of what has been done recently is to improvise or innovate to suit existing systems eg Mpesa
No recognition for developers or apps<p>There is still a lot of untapped opportunities existing at the bottom, You just have to look closely once the cost of access and speed of the internet, intermittent supply or electricity and load-shedding issues have been dealt with.
If you run a large business in Africa there is a very real chance you will need to bride people, including government officials. Also, many African countries have captial controls, so getting our money back out requires breaking the spirit of the law (such as importing good and services at heavily inflated prices from a company you own in the West).<p>So need to be willing to break local laws and also break your home country laws if your country has laws against bribing government officials.<p>Many people have a moral objection to bribery or a self interest in not ever risking going to to prison (for me it's both).<p>In my industry every few years the Feds make a couple arrests for bribing government officials in Africa.
What in the world.. I would expect better..<p>Africa is not a country, you can't speak about it as such. The North, West, East and South are as different as any two random countries in the world and within each there is even more diversity.<p>South Africa is a first world country, Nigeria is a crazy mix of poverty and development, Kenya is bursting with technology innovators taking their first steps, Burundi is barely hanging in there.<p>You can't use the term Africa and make any general statement about it, it is just too damn big and varied. Most people just have no concept of the scale there, but I always love pointing people to this map to help:
<a href="http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2010/10/true-size-of-africa.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2010/10/tru...</a><p>Yes there is tremendous opportunity in various countries there, and yes, they come with caveats, but please, let's stop treating an entire continent as if it was a country.
Why did stable governmental structures evolve in the west that allow citizens in those countries to enjoy greater prosperity?<p>Why is it that citizens with relatively stable but more authoritarian governments, in the far and middle east for example, seem to enjoy less relative prosperity than the west? (save singapore)<p>What makes singapore special?<p>Is the greater prosperity enjoyed in the west simply a function of the characteristics of the people living in the west?<p>Are the types of governments found in various regions simply a reflection of the people living in those regions?<p>(I don't mean a one to one reflection, I don't think everyone living under a ruthless dictatorship have themselves the characteristics of a ruthless dictator, but are they simply more tolerant or accepting of this societal arrangement?)
4 billion by the end of the century, if current trends continue. It is however likely that Malthus will intervene before then. Depending on exactly what you're selling, you may or may not want to be anywhere nearby (including Europe, it looks like) when that happens.<p><a href="http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/09/africas-population-will-quadruple-by-2100-what-does-that-mean-for-its-cities/380507/" rel="nofollow">http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/09/africas-population-wil...</a>
It's a shame the West abandoned Africa to the warlords and tribal supremacists.<p>Think of what Africans could've accomplished with consistent, basic decent governance from the top, over the last ~50 years. Hong Kong, anyone?<p>The road to hell is paved with good intentions. White guilt is a staggeringly destructive impulse. It makes me sad.