africa

20 May 2018

Posted on May 20, 2018 Leave a Comment

Late Hans Rosling’s “Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think” should be mandatory reading for anybody working in development. It is a fun and educating book. It uses anecdotes from Rosling’s eventful life to illustrate the absurdity of widespread development beliefs shaped by the media and activists. Because it is good storytelling, it sticks with you. It also infects the reader with Rosling’s passion for exploring data and taking the long view. So even if you think you have seen his bubble graphs or heard his monkey survey story one too many times, go and get yourself a copy.

McKinsey Global Institute’s “Notes from the AI frontiers” analyzes 400 applications of AI in 19 industries. It has useful maps of analytical techniques and AI potential per industry and functional areas. It shows that AI is mostly used in combination with traditional analytics: AI augments more often than it replaces. And it estimates the potential annual value creation of AI around $3.5-5.8 trillion with greatest promises in marketing, sales, supply chains and logistics.

I liked Iman Ghosh’s “A world of languages” and wished I had the time to merge its data with demographics to see what it would look like in 2030 and 2050. With Africa doubling its population by mid-century, the size of French will grow significantly, “making it the most-spoken language by 2050”. Wait. What? I need to share this with my kids as they start packing to come join me in France soon.

My quote this week is from Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya: “We are entering a new era, when the center of gravity for social change has moved to the private sector. It’s business, not government, that is in the best position to lead today. It’s not government hiring refugees, it’s business. It’s not government cutting emissions, it’s business. It’s not government standing up to gun violence, it’s business. It’s not government that’s going to end inequality, or create opportunity. It’s business.”

6 May 2018

Posted on May 6, 2018 Leave a Comment

The big buzz in my new professional world this week came from Martin Parker’s “Why we should bulldoze the business school”. Parker taught in business schools for 20 years and thinks they are fake, ideological, and even harmful: they do not question capitalism and profit-seeking; they assume that people are rational egoists; and they publish weak research. So, for Parker, the growing interest of business schools for responsible leadership, business ethics, or sustainability is mere window dressing. I don’t know Parker and am putting his upcoming book on my reading list. But while his article is thought-provoking, I found it mainly disappointing. For someone who spent 2 decades inside the system and has such strong views, I would have expected a retrospective of what he did to challenge the status quo from within or at least some ideas about how to design this “entirely new way of thinking about management, business and markets” he is calling for. Criticizing is the easy part of the job.

Mounk and Foa argue that we have reached “The end of the democratic century”. What they call “democracy”, here, refers to Western liberal democracies. They say that less and less people in democratic countries think democracy is essential. They argue that more and more autocratic strongmen challenge democratic advances. And they show that the share of global income produced by democracies will soon be less than that of “non-democratic” countries. This will shake-up the global distribution of power, including soft power as non-democracies host a growing number of universities and increasingly shape media narratives. The authors then discuss whether these non-democracies can sustain growth and peace, and reduce inequalities. I thought it was an interesting perspective even if the tone of the article is somehow nostalgic and if their analysis does not sufficiently discuss the possible transformative role of large democracies outside the US-EU axis.

My graph this week is from the European Commission Joint Research Center’s “Many more to come: migration from and within Africa”. It looks at migration projections in Africa based on demographic and socio-economic trends. It shows that emigration will rise, in particular in sub-Saharan Africa, even if socio-economic development accelerates.

My quote this week is from pregnant New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern: “The only reason I can do what I’m doing is because my partner has the ability to be a pretty much full-time carer. So I don’t want to appear to be superwoman because we should not expect women to be superwomen.”

13 January 2017

Posted on January 13, 2017 Leave a Comment

Iris Bohnet’s What works: Gender equality by design is the book I was waiting for on the topic. Using a behavioral economics lens, Bohnet systematically compiles evidence from businesses, universities, and governments about what works and does not, and offers super practical steps to boost gender equality. The book first unpacks the unconscious biases we all suffer from. It then shows that changing mindsets is not the solution. $8 billion are spent yearly in diversity training in the US alone with no evidence of success. It also argues that going it alone is hard and risky. Bohnet’s central thesis is that de-biasing our environments by design is what yields the most impact. And she offers 36 research-grounded design suggestions to increase inclusivity in the workplace. They include: adopting a Gawande-inspired interview checklist, getting rid of self-evaluation in performance assessment, using people analytics to screen job applicants, having quota to appoint counter-typical leaders, using a point system to measure workload, using public rankings to motivate and compete on gender equality. A fundamental pre-requisite to these recommendations is the collection of staff data to understand where inequalities are and how they evolve. Despite its title, the book’s thesis and solutions apply to inequalities beyond gender. If you are committed to increasing diversity in the workplace, read this book and experiment with some proposals, or pass it on to someone in your office who is in a position to move the needle. I am doing just that.

Peter Fabricius’ “Peering into a murky crystal ball; where will Africa be in 2030?” shares the main findings of a recent Institute for Security Studies (ISS) seminar on Africa’s future. Under each of the three ISS-designed scenario (baseline, optimistic, pessimistic) Africa misses most SDGs by 2030. The main factors responsible for this outcome are poor governance and service delivery. Prospects drawn from the UK Ministry of Defense’s analysis of regional strategic trends to 2045 for Africa are more upbeat. Here extreme poverty is defeated by 2045 when Africa’s numbers catch up with the rest of the world. In this scenario, positive drivers of change are external to the region with a global economy increasingly reliant on African youth’s cheap labor. This illustrates how a foresight exercise can bring different perspectives. What matters is not to get it right but to unearth different possible futures so as to be ready no matter what.

Uber’s Movement is on my list of visual tool this week. It is new and shiny. It is launched in the midst of long-lasting (data sharing) disputes between Uber and regulators. And it could transform urban planning. But I also need to flag this graph from the WEF Global Risk Report plotting the 2017 global risk landscape because the top risks, once impact and likelihood are aggregated, are environmental. This report has been published for 12 years and this is a first.

My quote this week is from Facebook’s Fidji Simo in her “Introducing: the Facebook Journalism Project”: “We will work with third-party organizations on how to better understand and to promote news literacy both on and off our platform to help people in our community have the information they need to make decisions about which sources to trust.”