Via Next Billion, interesting commentary on why one firm held back from the Africa investment ‘frenzy’: In [northern hemisphere] spring 2019, the investment committee at Blue Haven Initiative’s Ventures team raised a painful question: Did we miss the boat? Running an in-house venture fund, my team had made only one new investment in 2018 (Shortlist). We’d held back […]
Read more »Courtesy of The Visual Capitalist, an interesting look at the world’s cities in 2035, many of which will be in developing countries: Cities are the engines of the modern economy. Over half of the world now lives in urban areas, and urbanization continues to shape the trajectory of global growth in unprecedented ways. However, […]
Read more »Via The Diplomat, a look at Laos’ aspirations to gain centrality in the Greater Mekong Subregion via new infrastructure: The Lao government is strongly pushing ahead with different projects to better connect the country to the main transport networks of the region and integrate it into global value chains. Laos’ landlocked position and natural topography has […]
Read more »Via Quartz, a report on China’s growing influence in Africa: These days, everybody wants a piece of Africa. In 2018 alone, France’s Emmanuel Macron made a historic visit to East Africa, becoming the first French leader to visit Kenya. Former British prime minister Theresa May busted out some awkward dance moves in South Africa, while […]
Read more »Via Harvard Business Review, an article on entering frontier markets where success lies in creating new markets that serve the billions of nonconsumers unable to find a product or service to help them solve an important problem: When a movie is released straight to video, it’s usually a bad sign: Early reviews were negative, the quality […]
Read more »Via the DevPolicy Blog, a look at Papua New Guinea’s economic challenges: According to World Bank data, Papua New Guinea is the tenth most resource intensive economy in the world. Using its measure of underground resource rents (profits from oil, gas, coal and minerals) as a percentage of GDP, out of 205 countries PNG comes […]
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