Being here in Nairobi I have found an interesting quote. Eric Hersman, one of the founding figures of the Kenyan Internet business scene, on foreign aid and NGOs: “In a well-functioning state, most NGOs would not exist. There is only a…
First Innovation, then Regulation – What we can learn from Africa “You can not innovate under regulation. You have to take risks”, says Bitange Ndemo, former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communication in Kenya. He knows. During his time in government, from 2005…
Software is eating the world – about African innovation “Why software is eating the world” has been the title of a famous essay by Marc Andreessen in the Wall Street Journal in 2011. Being in Nairobi, I have been heavily reminded…
Why we need agile Europeans in Africa “Many Europeans still treat Africans like children”, said James Shikwati, a Kenyan born intellectual, at a panel discussion in Hamburg, showing how European behavior is perceived in Africa. In the same discussion I argued that Africa and Europe…
Africa and Europe at a crossroad? – “Yes, they are”, I argued in a panel discussion in Hamburg on December 2, 2015. “And Europe should better watch out not to drift apart. In its own interests.” Five forces are describing…
Dambisa Moyo, bestselling author and a big voice when it comes to abandon development aid for Africa, comes to the Global Peter Drucker Forum to Vienna on November 5 and 6, 2015. In her blogpost at the Drucker Blog, Dambisa rises concern that digitalization…
“Enough! Enough of the imbalances that is destroying our democracies, our planet, and ourselves,” that is the first sentence the Canadian management thinker Henry Mintzberg wrote in his new book “Rebalancing Society”. He refers to our “unbalanced society”, where the…
“Yes, that’s like it is!” has always been the answer when putting forward to an aid practitioner the principle of permanent acceleration: When a certain type of project or program has become mainstream, right before results are visible, the aid community…
… and make it increasingly irrelevant ” … we must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas. More than half the people of…
William Easterly argues in his new book “The Tyranny of Experts” that for the last decades authoritarian development has been the default consensus on global poverty reduction. Authoritarian development relies on technocratic solutions, tries to implement pre-fabricated ideas and plans in whatever local…
