Today, there is broad recognition that access to capital is only one of the inputs required for economic development and poverty alleviation. Furthermore, the marginalised — like anyone — require and use a variety of financial services for a variety of purposes. And some of these services work better than others, for reasons we are […]
Business
Posted inBusiness, Equality
The truth about extreme global inequality
The crisis of capital, the rise of the Occupy movement and the crash of Southern Europe have brought the problem of income inequality into mainstream consciousness in the West for the first time in many decades. Now everyone is talking about how the richest 1% have captured such a disproportionate share of wealth in their […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics, Tech
Africa’s mobile revolution in education
For a continent that has historically been largely unconnected via land-based telecommunications, mobile telephony uptake over the last few years has been nothing short of a revolution on the African continent. In 1995 there were an estimated 600 000 mobile phone subscriptions in Africa. A decade later this number rose to 87 million and in 2012 it […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics, Tech
The importance of financial inclusion in the developing world
Financial inclusion poses policy challenges on a scale and with an urgency that is unique for developing countries, which house nearly 90% of the world’s unbanked population. Developing country policymakers have recognised that complex and multi-dimensional factors contribute to financial exclusion and therefore require a comprehensive variety of providers, products and technologies that work within […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle
An alternative to the typical shopping mall
Not all places where shopping is or may be done, necessarily have to be of the reductive, spatially homogeneous, dehumanising type, exemplified by the standard shopping mall. An example of a shopping space design that is heterogeneously structured, into which ”other” spaces ”flow”, or with which it intersects, is furnished by Erik Grobler, a final-year […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Lifestyle, Media
The shopping mall as consumer architecture
Referring to the moment, in Plato’s Symposium, where the lover supposedly beholds a completely disembodied, atemporal “beauty”, in the process conforming to the character of this abstraction, Kaja Silverman says (World Spectators, 2000: 10): “This deindividuation of the look represents a crucial feature of the process through which Socrates negates phenomenal forms. This is because […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
SA a key player in regional trade and development
South Africa has succeeded to reinsert its economy back into world trade following a long period of internal political difficulties and international reactions to the apartheid regime. The ratio of trade in goods and services to GDP rose from 41% in 1994 to 53% in 2011, indicating that the international exchange of goods and services […]
Posted inBusiness, General, News/Politics
New Age harkens back to a previous age
Thanks to City Press, we now have an idea of how the New Age, a newspaper without audited circulation figures and little advertising, survives in the competitive daily newspaper market. The Gupta family, who are said to be close to President Jacob Zuma, created the New Age as a deliberate counter to the mainstream commercial […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
The role of China on the African continent
The exponential rate of Chinese investment in Africa over the past few years has been noted with both optimism and scepticism by mainstream media, political commentators and influential role players in the developed and developing world. Opinions triggered by this new development are deeply polarised. A positive view of increased and concentrated Chinese investment on […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Regional trade can boost Africa’s growth, jobs
There is strong consensus that regional integration is indispensable in promoting intra-African trade especially with a large African market of one billion consumers, which can be a powerful engine for growth and employment. Despite the underlying market potential for both cross-border and export trade, the volumes and values of the goods traded in the regional […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
The old plight of workers in the new South Africa
Pictures of labourers with raised fists, chanting liberation slogans are now commonplace in South Africa. We’re notorious for industrial protests, dubbed “the protest capital of the world”. For many, the only serious cause for concern is the unsightly violence of industrial protests. The world watched in awe as the police showered (allegedly) armed Marikana miners […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
So how did FNB manage to tickle the ANC’s studio?
When I heard about the troublesome First National Bank advert causing a stir with the political bigwigs I was on the Lyon TCL tramway, on my way home from a rather unpleasant encounter with French bureaucracy. I became so excited I was literally pacing up and down, hoping to use my superpowers to command the […]