Category: frontier markets

A Focus on Ageing in Emerging Markets

Ana Paula Picasso

The developed nations in the West are often described as ageing and trying to focus on solutions for the challenges that come with it, while emerging nations are characterized as young, energetic and full of opportunity for the youthful population. Rapid advances in wealth, healthcare, nutrition and less physically intensive labour also impacts longevity. More people are living longer in developing countries and this is definitely a reason to celebrate, however this new reality also brings challenges that will need to be addressed. According to Helpage and The World Bank,…

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The Impact of “Big Tobacco” on Emerging Markets

Ana Paula Picasso

Smoking has always been a divisive subject. While in developed countries, health awareness, high taxes and advertisement restriction might have been the factors contributing for the decrease in number of cigarette sales, in emerging economies, tobacco companies seem to be cashing in more and more. Economic development means more disposable income and more wiggle room in regulations, and tobacco companies are well aware of that. Smoking in Numbers In 2015, global cigarette sales closed the year with $685.5bn, which amounts to 5.6 trillion cigarettes consumed, and 20.4% of the world’s…

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Rwanda: The Challenges of Social Innovation Delivery in Emerging Markets

Ana Paula Picasso

Recently, I attended a startup accelerator pitch competition in Kigali where 10 teams pitched business solutions to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) challenges faced by Rwandan youth. The top four teams received funding to further develop their ideas. In a country with a young population – 77% of the population is under 25 – and one of the highest fertility rates in Africa – 4.6 children born to every woman – youth SRH interventions are needed, and a pitch competition that encourages local youth to design these solutions is welcome.…

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How Big Data can make people healthier in Emerging Markets

Ana Paula Picasso

Guest post by Will Greene In many emerging markets, reliable data on healthcare systems is limited or nonexistent. This makes it difficult to address urgent healthcare challenges in many countries. But a growing number of tech entrepreneurs and public health activists are finding ways to fill the data gaps. There are many gaps to address. Such healthcare systems and supply chains are not typically powered by modern IT systems. Large quantities of health data end up in paper records that are lost or forgotten. Undocumented cash transactions at hospitals and…

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Snapchat loses in emerging markets while Facebook wins

Ana Paula Picasso

Every single day there are hundreds (if not thousands) of articles about how Snapchat will take over the social media world. Or, how Snapchat has revolutionized social media. When Snapchat launched Spectacles – glasses that record you Snapchat videos and stream them via Bluetooth into your phone – caused so much buzz I couldn’t even believe. News the new colourful Spectacles flooded my newsfeed – from tech savvy couples using it in the bedroom to a surgeon performing a live surgery using it. It seems that everyone in “the world”…

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ASEAN eCommerce sets to replace China saturated market

Ana Paula Picasso

Guest post by  Kim Jae-kyoung SINGAPORE ― The ASEAN region (The Association of Southeast Asian Nations) is emerging as one of the most promising e-commerce markets in the world to replace the saturated Chinese market. Following the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) at the end of 2015, e-commerce is providing huge opportunities for Korean retailers seeking new customers abroad. Most member states of ASEAN, including Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam, are experiencing an e-commerce boom. The Internet-based retail market has been relatively underdeveloped in Southeast Asia…

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Innovation: Meet “Text Engine”, the Google with text messages.

Ana Paula Picasso

I’ve had a smartphone since 2010. In developed countries, a feature phone is a memory of the past – a nostalgic thought about flip phones. However in developing and frontier markets, feature phones are still alive and well. Even in more developed places like Brazil, smartphone penetration among mobile users is still only between 30-40%. Even for those with smartphone in hand, data is very expensive and internet signals are unreliable. The lack of infrastructure is an everyday problem. But how do we bring information for those still using feature phones…

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The 5 Most Visited Social Media Sites in Uganda

Ana Paula Picasso

Poor citizens, right?, yes; youth unemployment is over seventy percent and half of the population is below the age of 18 but, more Ugandans ‘afford’ to stream videos on YouTube every single day than read news or gossip as the US based social site floors all local sites in traffic! In fact, overall it is only Google andFacebook that receive more visitors than YouTube in Uganda. The most recent search rankings by Alexa, a global internet traffic monitoring company owned by Amazon shows a glaring difference between what many people…

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Is Social Media the new threat to the political stability in East Africa?

Ana Paula Picasso

Guest post by Stephen Obeli Someday Unlike the Arab world that is still nursing wounds of revolutions powered by social media in 2011, East Africa so far does not have a case against the fast-growing internet service in the region. All combined, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Burundi have just under 60 million internet users with Kenya and Uganda taking more than 69% of that total. Ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit to Kenya in July 2015, American broadcaster CNN aired a story under the tagline ‘Obama heads to terror…

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Uganda: How social media is re-shaping everyday life

Ana Paula Picasso

Gmail is indisputably the greatest mailing service that happened to Uganda since the Post Office. Its sister service Google+ thus comes out as more widely known than any other social media name only to emerge as the one with the highest number of dormant accounts too: A bunch of Gmail users actually see ‘Plus’ whenever they login to their email but have no idea it’s a social network, comparable in behavior and nature to Facebook. Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter are the most commonly used social media platforms, with LinkedIn, YouTube,…

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