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payment space is characterised by ‘industry collision’: everybody wants to do everything. Retailers and banks run phone services as Mobile Virtual Network Operators. Social media platforms (Facebook, Google, WeChat) want to be payment platforms. A mobile operator like Orange wants banking functions. In the sometimes uneven struggle between the social media companies and the mobile operators in sub-Saharan Africa (see Chapter 3 ), the latter have more customers: 469 million registered mobile money accounts in 2019 against 212 million Facebook users
advertising agency in DRC, with a string of local and international brands (including Brasimba, Ecobank and Shoprite) whose social media accounts they managed. Voila Nights also started producing a terrestrial TV show. Other African countries, including Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, already had growing online content and services markets. But it was more surprising that DRC – a country that had experienced several decades of civil war – was now moving into the digital age. In 2017, the country's most-used apps were Facebook (2.7 million users
rural infrastructure (see Chapter 2 ). The example of pre-paid calling ( Chapter 1 ) shows that innovations were key to shaping how Africans used mobile calling and internet services. Unusually, these innovations came from a number of different directions: users themselves, the mobile companies, African start-ups and the global social media companies. Innovations made by African users themselves, for example, included beeping (see Introduction), using airtime for cash transfer ( Chapter 4 ) and early dual SIM phones. These practices were taken up
The well-being of Europe’s citizens depends less on individual consumption and more on their social consumption of essential goods and services – from water and retail banking to schools and care homes – in what we call the foundational economy. Individual consumption depends on market income, while foundational consumption depends on social infrastructure and delivery systems of networks and branches, which are neither created nor renewed automatically, even as incomes increase. This historically created foundational economy has been wrecked in the last generation by privatisation, outsourcing, franchising and the widespread penetration of opportunistic and predatory business models. The distinctive, primary role of public policy should therefore be to secure the supply of basic services for all citizens (not a quantum of economic growth and jobs). Reconstructing the foundational has to start with a vision of citizenship that identifies foundational entitlements as the conditions for dignified human development, and likewise has to depend on treating the business enterprises central to the foundational economy as juridical persons with claims to entitlements but also with responsibilities and duties. If the aim is citizen well-being and flourishing for the many not the few, then European politics at regional, national and EU level needs to be refocused on foundational consumption and securing universal minimum access and quality. If/when government is unresponsive, the impetus for change has to come from engaging citizens locally and regionally in actions which break with the top down politics of ‘vote for us and we will do this for you’.
. ‘I became an influencer … It was new and I was able to meet people and share opinions. I had a small media in my pocket … Social media was very exciting. You could learn and broadcast to the world and fight boredom.’ 4 Alex Kamara was luckier on the job front: a Bolivian friend and fellow student at London Business School contacted him and asked whether he'd be interested in coming back to Africa for a job at Millicom. 5 The
, another role for them is to resource the infrastructure necessary for societies to have an inclusive dialogue about how to organise economies. Here national, local, and social media have significant influence setting the terms of public conversation about economies as well as determining who has a voice. Media coverage globally is dominated by academic and professional economists
and in the UK, national newspapers are losing sales at a rate of 10% year on year. 2 The same grim outlook applies to television and online news, 3 which now has to compete with social media and entertainment providers like Netflix. The impact of this difficult business context has resulted in major cutbacks to news-gathering budgets, and a decline in the quality and quantity of serious journalism. Economic coverage has been one of the casualties
Without warning, our train jolts back to life. Ruth clasps the wood-effect table in front of her to reclaim her balance. ‘We’re moving’, she exclaims, glowing with, perhaps, misplaced optimism. ‘We’ve got to do something about it. Everyone likes a good moan on social media, but how many of us actually do something constructive to change things? In fact, no offence, but academics are the worst – you like to analyse what’s wrong, but how can we make it right? I don’t want to spend the
and search engines Books Subsidised public transport Smart devices The arts Affordable air travel Social media platforms Note: The data is based on a poll of 2,004 UK members of the public carried out by Populus in August 2017 using a Max-Diff technique, where respondents were asked to choose the most and least important services from a changing subset of the 20 services listed in the table. Source: Elliott and Kanagasooriam (2017, p. 56). 133 134 Foundational economy utilities, the foundational priorities of UK citizens might be described as classical. Sub
link on social media. That’s the downside of going to these quite elite schools. It was a non-fee-paying school, but it was very White, very middle-class and quite selective … because you’re a minority, they don’t look for opportunities that are open to you