It’s 5.24am on Saturday morning in the northern suburbs of Africa’s financial capital. I’ve just finished two hours re-editing a DVD for the big-screen display at the hottest party in town tonight. (Club Y at Carfax, Newtown, if you must know.) Now, there’s the obligatory wait for the video to render. (That’s geek speak for […]
Business
Posted inBusiness, Media, Tech
Beware the business blog: Seven ground rules
These guidelines for business blogs were written in early 2006, but still apply: 1. Blogs are forever — or at least their content can be captured and stored elsewhere, even after you change or update it, so don’t write anything you may wish you’d never said. South Africa has already had a few blog lawsuits […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, Sport
No sporting chance
South Africa’s newly licensed pay-TV operators are going to find themselves playing catch-up in the sporting arena, because MultiChoice has all but taken them out of the game. Sport equals big money and with three pay-TV broadcasters set to enter the market, the stakes are going to get much higher. Most pay-TV players or analysts […]
Posted inBusiness
WC + people = SA prosperity: Bruggemans
By 2020 real national income will have doubled, extended unemployment fallen from to about 27%. South Africa will see a shift from a minority middle class condition to a majority one. This view came from Dr Cees Bruggemans, Chief economist, First National Bank, at the Rhodes Politics teach-in, on Friday 28 September, and tackling the […]
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Beyond Washington, we need stakeholder capitalism — Peter Bruce
Peter Bruce, editor of Business Day, sees nothing wrong with the Washington Consensus — “a perfectly sensibly statement of the obvious”. And for him, while there are many ideas about running economies in the 21st century, most of them pay obeisance to WC principles such as keeping inflation down and not borrowing too much money. […]
Posted inBusiness
Developing the developmental state
Get more specific than the broad macro-economics of the Washington Consensus, and look at how the state-market combo affects poverty and inequality. This was the view of Professor Murray Leibbrandt at the Rhodes politics teach-in on Thursday. Implementing his advice, he painted a picture of a South African imbalance: the market had generated an even […]
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Whither the Washington Consensus?
Continuing the theme of the Rhodes Politics teach-in, on the heels of Tito Mboweni, academic Charles Simkins on Wednesday weighed in by putting things in historical perspective. (Interesting aside: Simkins’s own personal history includes an illegal wedding — having a reception on the big day when he was supposed to be banned by Pretoria and […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, Tech
How much is a blog worth?
There is a blog up for sale, at auction, and I wonder if you can predict how much it will sell for. (I am not going to give out the URL, because I don’t want you to see what the current bid is, but if you think you might want to buy it, give me […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
The problem with e-commerce and online payments in Africa
A lack of true online payment options is crippling African e-commerce, and South Africa is no exception. The inability to accept payments for products and services on equal footing with the rest of the world means that many viable business options are not available for merchants in Africa. The few options there are for African […]
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Mboweni’s dictum
Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni poured scorn on the labour “left” in a speech at Rhodes University today. He was speaking to the issue of whether the “Washington Consensus” was dead. Though he didn’t say in so many words: from where he sits, it’s not only alive, it ought to be kicking. The concept refers […]
Posted inBusiness, Sport
Sepp Blatter is wearing no clothes
I hate to be the one to say that the emperor is not wearing any clothes … but, the emperor is not wearing any clothes. The 2010 World Cup in South Africa has become overhyped to the point where ordinary South Africans are being duped and are headed for financial disaster. Let me say, though, […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, Tech
Show me the money!
I’ve had quite an eventful trip to the United States (still here), attending both the Commission Junction University Conference and TechCrunch40 — two seriously great conferences. I met hundreds of people, saw dozens of companies and handed out and received countless business cards. It was great fun — there is coverage on my personal blog […]