MIT Legatum Center/Clayton Christensen Institute Market Creating Innovation Bootcamp 2021 for early-stage African Entrepreneurs opportunitiesforafricans.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from opportunitiesforafricans.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
By Efosa Ojomo and Lincoln WilcoxBOSTON Africa is often regarded as a risky place to do business. There are success stories, like Safaricom, Flutterwave, and Kobo360. But investors tend to view them as anomalies: the fact that they are thriving, despite pervasive poverty, political instability and widespread corruption, is a matter of luck, not proof that Africa is a “safe”
March 26, 2021 last updated 15:12 ET Workers produce clothing items on the assembly line at an apparel factory in Accra, Ghana, Nov. 13, 2007 (AP photo by Olivier Asselin).
Innovation, Not Development Aid, Is the Key to Tackling Poverty The Editors Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021
The modern development aid industry is fundamentally flawed, writer and researcher Efosa Ojomo argues, because it is based on “the idea of seeing a need, seeing that a community lacks a resource, and then leaning in with the best of intentions to provide that resource
without the fundamental mechanism that will sustain it.” That mechanism is what Ojomo and his co-authors call a “market-creating innovation” an advance that spurs the creation of new businesses, customers and tax revenues that allow for improved public services.
Kick-starting FDI in Africa
By Carl Manlan and Efosa Ojomo
LOMÉ/BOSTON In the United Nations’ 2020 World Investment Report, Secretary General António Guterres noted that global foreign direct investment (FDI) this year is “expected to fall sharply from 2019 levels of $1.5 trillion” to below the trough it hit during the global financial crisis. This decline will have a devastating effect on emerging economies, many of which are already in crisis as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Few regions will struggle more than Africa. Not only does the continent account for just 3 epr cent of global GDP, but it currently attracts less than 3 per cent of global FDI, which has been a critical factor in propelling other regions to prosperity.