Africa, Business Destination

By Alex Perry Thursday, Mar. 12, 2009


Togo is like much of West Africa — small, poor and an occasional producer of sensational soccer players — but for the bank. Lomé, Togo's capital, is home to Ecobank, a 21-year-old pan-African retail and corporate bank that, according to CEO Arnold Ekpe, employs 11,000 people in 620 branches in 26 countries, with a balance sheet of $8 billion.
Unlike a lot of other banks, Ecobank is expanding. It has opened 200 branches since 2006 and aims to set up in three more countries by June. What's more, it actually makes money: annual profits were up 47%, to $191 million, in 2007 and up 32%, to $104 million, for the third quarter of 2008 alone, the latest period for which figures are available. Even more extraordinary, it is managing to raise money in the "crunched" capital markets — $700 million since August. Granted, the world's banks are in a historic crisis. That does not make any less arresting the thought that some of the best-performing bankers on the planet right now come from a place called Togo. "Warren Buffett is based in Nebraska," says Ekpe. "It's not where you are. It's what you do."
Up to a point. In Africa's case, the perception has long been that where you are renders all but irrelevant what you do. Africa is hopeless, a place of war and famine seemingly populated almost entirely by tyrants and children with flies in their eyes. According to this view, if Africa generates any kind of growth, it is in suffering — and in the overseas aid sent to address that, now a $40-billion-a-year industry. Naturally, with a new appeal every year and a new disaster every other, some people have begun to wonder if all that money is doing any good. They argue that aid creates dependence, fuels corruption, undermines democracy and stifles development. They have written books with titles like The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn't Working (by an ex-spokesman for the World Bank in Africa) and Dead Aid (by a Zambia-born former Goldman Sachs investment banker).
And that debate is important, no doubt. But it is drowning out a more significant development. Ecobank's success is not an isolated blip, and aid is no longer Africa's main source of foreign income. Africa is becoming a business destination.
In 2006, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, foreign investment in Africa reached $48 billion, overtaking foreign aid for the first time. That gap has only widened, reflecting a quadrupling of foreign investment since 2000. As the senior adviser in Africa for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), David Nellor, noted in a report last September, sub-Saharan Africa today resembles Asia in the 1980s. "The private sector is the key driver," wrote Nellor, "and financial markets are opening up." War is down. Democracy is up. Inflation and interest rates are in single digits. Terms of trade have improved. Crucially, said Nellor, "growth is taking off." The IMF puts Africa's average annual growth for 2004 to '08 at more than 6% — better than any developed economy — and predicts the continent will buck the global recessionary trend to grow nearly 3.3% this year.
Yes, Africa is still a continent of commodities — with its forests, oil fields and mines — and demand for commodities has plummeted. Yes, Africa still has its Darfurs, Somalias, Congos and Zimbabwes. But commodity prices are higher than they were in the 1990s. Most Africans are not middle class, but most also no longer live in extreme poverty. The World Bank says the percentage of Africans living on $1.25 a day or less dropped from 59% to 51% from 1996 to 2005 and has decreased further since.
In an article for the online journal allAfrica in February, Oxford University economist Paul Collier and Witney Schneidman, who advised President Obama on Africa during his campaign, noted that Africa now offers the world's highest rate of return on investment. "Africa, usually the poorest performing region in the world economy, is now likely to be among the best-performing," they wrote. "Moreover, the region has been largely immune from the current banking crisis...The continent's financial institutions did not venture into derivatives or sub-prime mortgages." Shanta Devarajan, the World Bank's chief economist for Africa, says the current downturn might be unfair to the continent, since it is "not remotely Africa's fault," but it should not alter the underlying trend: "There has definitely been a transition in the last few years. The continent now has huge potential." Or as Stephen Hayes, president and CEO of the Corporate Council on Africa, puts it, "Africa offers more opportunity than any place in the world."
Perhaps the most compelling evidence that Africa is now a business destination is China's new love for it. While the old superpowers still agonize over Africa's poverty, the new one is captivated by its riches. Trade between Africa and China has grown an average of 30% in the past decade, topping $106 billion last year. Chinese engineers are at work across the continent, mining copper in Zambia and cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo and tapping oil in Angola. Nor is this merely exploitative. China bought its access by agreeing to create a new infrastructure for Africa, building roads, railways, hospitals and schools across the continent. The current crisis is not expected to affect China's march in Africa: on the contrary, with the West's plans in Africa on hold at best, Beijing views it as an opportunity to extend China's lead. "We will continue to have a vigorous aid program here, and Chinese companies will continue to invest as much as possible," Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said in South Africa in January. "It is a win-win solution." Dambisa Moyo, who wrote Dead Aid, says those who need convincing about Africa should ask themselves if they are convinced about China, "because if you back China, you're backing Africa." Ecobank CEO Ekpe says part of the explanation for China's zeal for Africa is a new way of looking at Africans. "[The Chinese] are not setting out to do good," he says. "They are setting out to do business. It's actually much less demeaning."
And that gets to what, for Africans, is the emotional heart of the matter — and why joining the business world means so much. Though it rarely occurs to Westerners who've been instructed that Africa needs their help, charity is humiliating. Not emergency charity, of course: when disaster strikes, emergency aid is always welcome, whether in New Orleans or Papua New Guinea. But long-term charity, living life as a beggar, is degrading. Andrew Rugasira, 40, runs Good African Coffee, a Ugandan company he set up in 2004 to supply British supermarkets under the motto "Trade, not aid." He is emblematic of a new generation of African antiaid, antistate entrepreneurs. For Rugasira, aid not only "undermines the creativity to lift yourself out of poverty" but also "undermines the integrity and dignity of the people. It says, These are people who cannot figure out how to develop." Aid even manages to silence those it is meant to help. "African governments become accountable to Western donors," says Rugasira, "and Africa finds itself represented not by Africans but by Bono and Bob Geldof. I mean, how would America react if Amy Winehouse dropped in to advise them on the credit crisis?"
And if that's a striking inversion, consider another one. Look back at the African growth figures once more. Compare them with this year's forecasts for the developed world. Who's the basket case now?

El secreto del éxito de Steve Jobs

Escrito el 10.11.10 en Ideas de negocio, Innovación, Reflexión por Marcus Hurst
El secreto del éxito de Steve Jobs

“Apple es una empresa que mueve más de 30.000 millones de dólares y tenemos menos de 30 productos principales. Creo que es la primera vez que sa ha hecho algo así”. Steve Jobs 2008.
Fast Company ha publicado un pequeño extracto del nuevo libro de Carmine Gallo sobre los secretos de innovación de Steve Jobs. Una de las principales conclusiones es la importancia de la concisión y la edición para quedarte solo con lo mejor. Esta filosofía ha seguido a Jobs desde el comienzo. Los resultados hablan por sí solos. Reproducimos el extracto aquí:
Deshazte de la mierda, céntrate solo en lo mejor
El 21 de abril de 2010, el presidente y CEO de Nike, Mark Parker, dio una conferencia en Innovation Uncensored, organizada por Fast Company. Parker contó una anécdota sobre una llamada que recibió de Steve Jobs, poco tiempo después de convertirse en CEO de la compañía.
“¿Tienes algún consejo?”, Parker preguntó a Jobs.
“Bueno una cosa solo”, le respondió Jobs. “Nike hace algunos de los mejores productos del mundo. Productos deseables. Productos bellos e increíbles. Pero también hacéis mucha mierda. Deshazte de la mierda y céntrate en lo bueno”.
Parker dijo a su audiencia: “Me esperaba una pequeña pausa y unas risas. Hubo una pausa pero nada de risas. Tenía toda la razón. Teniamos que editar”.
Parker utilizó la palabra editar no desde el punto de vista del diseño sino en el contexto de tomar decisiones de negocio (…) Tim Cook comentó una vez que la ortodoxia del management que se imparte en escuelas de negocio dice que tienes que diversificar tu oferta de productos. Apple, dijo, representa una filosofía completamente anti-escuela de negocios. Su enfoque se centra en poner todos sus recursos en pocos productos y hacer que esos productos funcionen excepcionalmente bien.
(…)

Un negocio milmillonario con pocos productos
“Apple es una empresa que mueve más de 30.000 milloenes de dólares y tenemos menos de 30 productos principales. No creo que algo así se haya hecho antes,” dijo Steve Jobs a Fortune en 2008. Añadió además:
Es cierto que hemos tenido muy buenas empresas de bienes de consumo electrónicos con miles de productos. Nosotros tenemos tendencia a concentrar mucho más nuestros esfuerzos. (…) Para conseguirlo significa decir que no a cientos de buenas ideas que existen allí fuera. Tienes que escoger cuidadosamente. Yo estoy igual de orgulloso de muchas cosas que no hemos hecho que cosas que hemos hecho. El mejor ejemplo es cuando nos presionaron durante años para hacer una PDA. Me di cuenta un día que el 90% de las personas que utilizan una PDA solo sacan información de ella cuando están de viaje. No introducen información en ella. Próximamente los móviles van a hacer lo mismo y entonces el mercado de la PDA se va a reducir a una fracción de su tamaño actual. Eso no será sostenible. Por eso decidimos no hacer una. Si lo hubiermos hecho seguramente nos habríamos quedado sin recursos para hacer el iPod. Quizá no hubiera salido a la luz”.
Una estrategia de marketing basada en la especialización
En diseño de productos y estrategia empresarial, quitar cosas suele añadir valor. “Nuestra adicción a sumar cosas y funcionalidades produce incoherencia, sobrecarga o desperdicio y a veces las tres cosas a la vez”, escribe Matthey May. El aviador Antoine de Saint-Exupéry podría haber estado hablando de la filosofía de Apple cuando dijó en los años 30: “Un diseñador sabe que ha logrado perfección no cuando no hay nada para añadir sino cuando no queda nada más para quitar”.
¿Se puede aplicar la filosofía de Apple a cualquier empresa?
Volvamos a una pregunta que lancé al principio de este libro. ¿Puede cualquier empresa innovar de la forma que lo hace Apple? La respuesta es no. Cualquiera puede aprender los principios que empujan a Apple a innovar, pero se necesita agallas para innovar y pocos las tienen. Se necesita coraje para reducir el número de productos que ofrece una empresa de 350 a 10, como hizo Jobs en 1998. Se necesita valentía para quitar el teclado de la cara de un smartphone y reemplazar esos botones con una pantalla gigante como hizo Jobs con el iPhone.
Se necesita agallas para eliminar código de un sistema operativo para que sea más estable y fiable, como hizo Apple con Snow Leopard. Se necesita valentía para eliminar todas las palabras en una presentación PowerPoint con la expcepción de una, como hace Steve Jobs en sus presentaciones. Se necesita coraje para mostrar solo un producto en la home de tu página web.
Se necesita valentía para lanzar menos productos en un año que tus competidores en un mes. Se necesita valentía para tomar posiciones impopulares, como plantarle cara a Adobe. Y se necesita valentía para hacer un producto tan sencillo que lo puede utilizar un niño.
¿Tienes la valentía para hacer las cosas fáciles? Steve Jobs sí y ha sido la clave de su éxito.

"We are what we choose"

"We are What We Choose"Remarks by Jeff Bezos, as delivered to the Class of 2010BaccalaureateMay 30, 2010
As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially "Days of our Lives." My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. And every few summers, we'd join the caravan. We'd hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather's car, and off we'd go, in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.
At that age, I'd take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I'd calculate our gas mileage -- figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I'd been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can't remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I'd come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, "At two minutes per puff, you've taken nine years off your life!"
I have a vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. "Jeff, you're so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division." That's not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, "Jeff, one day you'll understand that it's harder to be kind than clever."
What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy -- they're given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you're not careful, and if you do, it'll probably be to the detriment of your choices.
This is a group with many gifts. I'm sure one of your gifts is the gift of a smart and capable brain. I'm confident that's the case because admission is competitive and if there weren't some signs that you're clever, the dean of admission wouldn't have let you in.
Your smarts will come in handy because you will travel in a land of marvels. We humans -- plodding as we are -- will astonish ourselves. We'll invent ways to generate clean energy and a lot of it. Atom by atom, we'll assemble tiny machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs. This month comes the extraordinary but also inevitable news that we've synthesized life. In the coming years, we'll not only synthesize it, but we'll engineer it to specifications. I believe you'll even see us understand the human brain. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton -- all the curious from the ages would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals have so many individual gifts as you sit before me.
How will you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices?
I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I'd never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles -- something that simply couldn't exist in the physical world -- was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old, and I'd been married for a year. I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go do this crazy thing that probably wouldn't work since most startups don't, and I wasn't sure what would happen after that. MacKenzie (also a Princeton grad and sitting here in the second row) told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I'd been a garage inventor. I'd invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn't work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I'd always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.
I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people, and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me, and finally said, "That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn't already have a good job." That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn't think I'd regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my passion, and I'm proud of that choice.
Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life -- the life you author from scratch on your own -- begins.
How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?
Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?
Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?
Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?
Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?
Will you bluff it out when you're wrong, or will you apologize?
Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?
Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?
When it's tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?
Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?
Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?
I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. Thank you and good luck!

Do not make a note about what they say, study what they do!

There's a great lesson behind what Allen Rosenshine says "Do not make a note about what they say, study what they do!".
Pepsi Co. started in 1975 a consumer research designed by Bob Stanford approaching consumers in the field, giving them a choice between two unmarked bottles of cola, and asking them to choose which was better. People chose Pepsi and they decided to film these tests with a hidden camera launching a new campaign called the "Pepsi Challenge" which showed a clear preference of Pepsi over Coke. The local campaign led to a rapid increase in Pepsi market share.
In March 1981, Robert Goizueta was appointed Coca Cola Chairman driving a critical movement that shocked the USA and worldwide Coca Cola addicts. Bad news seemed to be hitting Coke from all sides and Pepsi loyalty relentless rose. Goizueta called a five-day worldwide manager's conference where he had an important message to deliver: We need to debunk the long cherished theory that Coca-Cola's success comes from its marketing expertise. If you want to be the leading brand, you can't have a taste disadvantage that is proclaimable.
In 1984 they created a new Coke that was sweeter, smoother, less fizzy, and with a soft, sticky taste due to a higher sugar content versus the exclusive use of corn syrup in the original. Tested in blind taste tests the new formula beat Pepsi by a relevant margin. The team had found a new Coke. On Friday April 19, Coca-Cola's public relations dpt delivered an invitation to the press for an upcoming conference to announce that Coke had a new formula, stunning Coca-Cola's world.
Goizueta's father spoke out against the switch, jokingly threatening to disown his son. This day was named as "Black Tuesday".

Rosenshine's words:
"People do not drink a liquid, they drink a brand, and the one who drinks Coke only wants Coke, even though it is not that sweet. If they do the "blind tasting", they choose the sweetest one but, when buying, they just prefer to see their favorit brand".

Coca-Cola company escaped collapse coming back and re-launching the classic Coke...perhaps just Coke can make this kind of mistakes and strengthen acceptance.

How to Influence with humor

Coca-Cola light has had a sort of a "girlie" positioning. A brand aimed at persons (women) that care too much about their diet. A position that was pretty much "consolidated" after the launch of a more trendy, delicious and provocative brand as CC Zero. Success of CCZ was instantaneous, giving a boost to the CC trademark. Nevertheless, CC Light had to face lots of problems not just because of an unplanned repositioning in the consumer mind which immediately related CC Light with "old fashioned" and "girlie" concepts (maybe because masculine related positioning of CC Zero). So, the challenge was to redefine CC Light, its positioning and to focus consumers attention to its benefits.

With the campaign "raise your hands" CCL wants to re-gain a place in consumer's minds, positioning itself as the beverage that encourages you not to be ashamed of your past "embarassing" situations. Taking advantage precisely of CC Light's disadvantages (old fashioned, girlie, not trendy, etc) and promote them as an example of the opposite. I mean, giving the consumer a reason to feel proud. Inviting consumers and non-consumers to follow the CC Light example, encouraging everyone to act differently, not to follow the pre-defined social rules, living your life in your own way and being proud of that, "raising your hand" because you don't need to feel ashamed of anything you did in the past... and inciting you to continue doing this kind of stuff... by drinking CC Light, because is a tasteful and personal "non-judgable by others"experience.

Watch the ad, I think it is really clear from the influence point of view, using "people like us" as leaders or examples to follow. Simple, nice and, more importantly, plenty of real-life situations that we all have experienced...

Enjoy it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc4Wpv2R85k

Ángel Sanz-Briz, Recuerdo de un Héroe- 65 años de una gran verguenza

Hoy se cumplen 65 años desde que el ejército rojo liberó de Auschwitz a 8.000 seres humanos. En este campo de concentración se mataron a más de 70.000 intelectuales polacos, soldados rusos, homosexuales y todo aquel que se opusiera al régimen nazi. Dentro de la barbarie, surgieron grandes héroes que a riesgo de perder la vida salvaron a miles de personas y entre ellos hay un zaragozano, Ángel Sanz-Briz, olvidado por los libros de texto españoles y con muy pocas referencias incluso en su Zaragoza natal. Ángel Sanz-Briz, embajador español del gobierno franquista, contribuyó de forma directa y actuando a espaldas de las decisiones políticas de Franco, a salvar la vida de más de 5000 judíos húngaros, 5000 seres humanos que gracias a él lograron pasaportes españoles, en principio aquellos que alegaban origen sefardí y posteriormente cualquier perseguido (del total sólo 200 eran sefardíes). Acercándose el fin de la contienda, el Gobierno le ordenó regresar a su país de origen y él permaneció 3 semanas más en Hungría tratando de evitar que ningún judío más subiera a los trenes con destino directo a la muerte. Por este hecho, fue reconocido Justo entre las Naciones.

El periodista Diego Carcedo escribió un libro rescatando del olvido el nombre de Ángel "Un español frente al holocausto". En nuestro país no tenemos poder para encumbrar a los Sanz-Briz cómo sí lo hizo merecidamente Spielberg con Oskar Schindler (salvó a 1200 judíos), por lo que no se debe perder la ocasión de brindar un diminuto recuerdo.

"Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" Steve Jobs.

Ser ambiciosos, Ser inquietos.

Es la frase que corona el discurso de Steve Jobs en la universidad de Standford. Steve Jobs es cofundador de Apple y Pixar y el mayor accionista de Walt Disney co. Ha sido elegido el mejor líder empresarial de la última década y ante todo es sin duda, alguien a quién merece la pena escuchar. En este breve discurso nos cuenta cómo él no obtuvo nunca una graduación universitaria, cómo se detuvo a pensar y decidió seguir lo que le dictaba el corazón y su intuición y no descansó hasta encontrar aquello que le apasionaba. Steve Jobs nos dice, "sigue buscando si no lo has encontrado, no te rindas. No vivas la vida de otros y permanece lleno de ambición". Dentro de las tres breves historias que nos relata, finaliza con la de su propio cáncer. Le diagnosticaron un cáncer de páncreas incurable y le dijeron que le quedaban no más de 6 meses de vida. Finalmente, encontraron que se trataba de un extraño tumor, que podía ser extirpado quirúrgicamente y sorprendentemente, se curó.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish!