Africa Rising : How 900 Million African Consumers Offer More Than You Think

by Mahajan, Vijay

• ISBN13: 9780132339421
• ISBN10: 0132339420
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-08-29
• Publisher: Pearson Prentice Hall

Summary

"With more than 900 million consumers, the continent of Africa is one of the world's fastest growing markets. In Africa Rising, renowned global business consultant Vijay Mahajan reveals this remarkable marketplace as a continent with massive needs and surprising buying power." "Crossing thousands of miles across the continent, he shares the lessons that Africa's businesses have learned about succeeding on the continent ... shows how global companies are succeeding despite Africa's unique political, economic, and resource challenges ... introduces local entrepreneurs and foreign investors who are building a remarkable spectrum of profitable and sustainable business opportunities even in the most challenging locations ... reveals how India and China are staking out huge positions throughout Africa ... and shows the power of the diaspora in driving investment and development."--BOOK JACKET.

Author Biography

Vijay Mahajan, former dean of the Indian School of Business, holds the John P. Harbin Centennial Chair in Business at McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies and received several lifetime achievement awards including the American Marketing Association (AMA) Charles Coolidge Parlin Award for visionary leadership in scientific marketing and the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur). The AMA has also instituted the Vijay Mahajan Award for career contributions to marketing strategy. Mahajan’s ten books include The 86 Percent Solution (Wharton School Publishing), which received the 2007 Book of the Year Award from the American Marketing Association.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. x
The African Opportunity
Baking Bread in Zimbabwe	p. 3
African Wealth: The Tenth Largest Economy in the World	p. 7
A Different Type of Oil and Diamonds	p. 8
An Irish Beer Finds Its Future in Africa	p. 10
An Inflection Point	p. 11
Looking East: The New Gold Rush	p. 15
Entrepreneurship Is Alive and Well in Africa	p. 17
Trade Not Aid	p. 19
The Need for Leadership	p. 21
Africa's Rise: Hidden in Plain Sight	p. 23
Inexplicable Optimism	p. 25
Rising Opportunities	p. 28
Africa Is Richer Than You Think	p. 29
Meeting the Objections	p. 31
The Magnifiers	p. 37
Accelerants: Cell Phones and Banking	p. 45
Does Africa Exist?	p. 49
Diversity and Tolerance	p. 52
Beyond the Numbers	p. 55
Rising Opportunities	p. 56
The Power of Africa Two	p. 57
Meet Africa Two	p. 58
The Sweet Spot of the African Market	p. 60
Opportunities in Africa Two	p. 62
Opportunities at Every Level	p. 66
A Continent of Aspirations: Keep Walking	p. 71
Conclusion: An Open Door	p. 73
Rising Opportunities	p. 74
Realizing the Opportunity
Harnessing the Hanouti: Opportunities in Organizing the Market	p. 77
Organizing the Market	p. 78
Organizing Retail: Shopping in Alexandra	p. 79
Opportunities from Making the Informal Formal	p. 83
Tokunbo: Organizing Secondhand	p. 85
Organizing Distribution	p. 88
Organizing Medicine	p. 95
Organizing Transportation	p. 97
Organizing Brands and Marketing	p. 98
Creating Brands from Commodities	p. 100
Organizing Education and Training	p. 101
The Power of Organizing Markets	p. 102
Rising Opportunities	p. 103
Building Mama Habiba an Ice Factory: Opportunities in Infrastructure	p. 105
Providing Power and Ice	p. 105
Water Pumps	p. 109
Sanitation, Water, and Air	p. 110
Airlines	p. 112
Opportunities for Leapfrogging	p. 114
Leading in Infrastructure	p. 122
Transforming Infrastructure: The Muthaiga Golf Club	p. 124
Rising Opportunities	p. 126
Running with the Cheetah Generation: Opportunities in Africa's Youth Market	p. 127
A Youth Market	p. 128
Cheetahs and Hippos	p. 130
Speaking Sheng: Connecting with Youth	p. 130
Music: The Universal Language	p. 131
Speaking the Language of Sports	p. 133
Understanding Youth	p. 134
Opportunities in the Cradle of Civilization	p. 134
Opportunities in Education	p. 139
Fountain of Youth	p. 142
Rising Opportunities	p. 145
Hello to Nollywood: Opportunities in Media and Entertainment	p. 147
The Accidental Nigerian Film Industry	p. 148
Theaters That Don't Look Like Theaters	p. 151
Television and Radio: Beyond Two Channels	p. 153
The Small Screen	p. 155
Print and Online	p. 157
The Walls Can Talk	p. 159
Third Eye	p. 159
Chopped Dollars and Other Surprises of African Technology and Media	p. 160
Pirates of Jo'burg	p. 162
From Michael Power to Media Power	p. 163
Our Stories Are Your Stories	p. 164
Rising Opportunities	p. 165
Coming Home: Opportunities in the African Diaspora	p. 167
The Growing African Diaspora	p. 169
From Nigeria, With Love: An Engine for Investment	p. 171
ATMs, Letters, Groceries, and Cell Phone Minutes	p. 173
Investments and Charity	p. 175
Coming Home: Tourism	p. 177
Serving the Diaspora Abroad	p. 180
Door of Return: The Complex Diaspora	p. 182
Strengthening Connections	p. 184
Rising Opportunities	p. 186
Conclusion: Ubuntu Market	p. 187
The Power of Ubuntu	p. 189
Building Community through Corporate Social Responsibility	p. 190
Trade Not Aid: Beyond a Continent of Victims	p. 201
Rebranding Africa	p. 206
A Call to Action	p. 208
Bridging the Divide	p. 216
Reinventing Africa	p. 218
Rising Opportunities	p. 220
Endnotes	p. 221
Acknowledgments	p. 239
Index	p. 247
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Preface Preface: Consumer SafariI have to admit that until a few years ago, I was guilty of overlooking Africa. My book on emerging markets, The 86% Solution, included only a few African examples. As a professor of marketing at the University of Texas, I have extensive experience working with companies in Latin America. I have traveled and lectured extensively in Asia and the Middle East. Like most scholars in the developed world, however, I saw Africa more as a charity case than a market opportunity. I was wrong, and this book is here to set the record straight.It is particularly surprising to me that I failed to recognize the story in Africa because I remember when India was discussed in the same way. As Ramachandra Guha recently wrote in a book review in the Financial Times, "Western writers of the 1960s warned their readers that India was a losing proposition, the laboratory, as it were, of failed experiments in democracy and nation-building." 1 He could be writing about Africa today. In fact, one of the reasons I started writing about opportunities in emerging markets was because of a conversation I had with a colleague for a panel considering how we could stop the developing world from "begging." As the son of an entrepreneur, I found this shocking and insulting. I knew that entrepreneurship is alive and well in India. But when I told colleagues a decade or two ago that India would be an important global market, they were incredulous. They are incredulous no longer.I have experienced the transformations in India firsthand. I was born in Jammu City in the state of Jammu and Kashmir a few months after Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated and India became a republic. I became part of a generation that Salman Rushdie called "Midnight's Children," referring to those who lived through the transformational time after the independence of India at midnight on August 15, 1947. In 2002, I had the opportunity to return to India as dean of the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. I saw how a country that had been written off as a charity case was now seen as a powerful emerging market.Now I see the same view of Africa. Despite all the attention it has received for its social, medical, humanitarian, and political challenges, it is still undervalued as a consumer market. I set out to rectify my own lack of knowledge about the continent and to understand the market opportunity it presentsin all its rich complexity and wealth. I traveled thousands of miles across Africa and met with or interviewed leaders of major African companies, smaller entrepreneurs, and Asian and Western firms with long experience on the continent. I have had the opportunity to meet some truly extraordinary and creative business leaders. I feel blessed for the opportunity to do this in the autumn of my life. I learned important lessons from these many teachers, which I share in this book.As I was finishing this book, President George Bush announced in February 2008 the launch of five funds through the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, totaling $875 million, for investment in Africa. On the eve of his trip to Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, and Liberia, he stated a conclusion that I had reached in my own journeys through Africa in the preceding years. "This new era is rooted in a powerful truth: Africa's most valuable resource is not its oil, it's not its diamonds, it is the