Wednesday, November 20African Digital Business Magazine

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Land registration, credit and agricultural investment in Africa

Author(s): Daniel Domeher, (School of the Built Environment, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK), Raymond Abdulai, (School of the Built Environment, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK) Citation: Daniel Domeher, Raymond Abdulai, (2012) "Land registration, credit and agricultural investment in Africa", Agricultural Finance Review, Vol. 72 Iss: 1, pp.87 - 103 Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the argument linking land registration to agricultural investment and to provide theoretical reasons as to why this linkage may not materialise in Africa within the short to medium term. Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes the form of a critical review of the relevant literature on land r...
African News

IBM Supports Accelerated Adoption of Technology in Tanzania

  DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, July, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today (July 4) signed a collaboration agreement with the Tanzanian Ministry of Communication, Science and Technology to help accelerate the adoption of technology as part of Tanzania's ongoing development and strategy to increase its competitiveness in East Africa. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO ) IBM will work with the Tanzanian Government to help achieve its vision of becoming a hub for trade in the wider East Africa region and to enhance sustainable economic development as outlined in the Tanzania National ICT Policy. "This agreement supports the goals of the National ICT Commission to use innovative technologies and approaches to transform our infrastructures, build national data...
African News, Angola News

Video: Footage shows African ‘ghost town’

A giant new Chinese-built city has sprung up on the outskirts of Angola's capital Luanda. Nova Cidade de Kilamba is a brand-new mixed residential development of 750 eight-storey apartment buildings, a dozen schools and more than 100 retail units. Designed to house up to half a million people when complete, Kilamba has been built by the state-owned China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) in under three years at a reported cost of $3.5bn (£2.2bn). But on a recent trip back to Luanda, the BBC's former Angola correspondent Louise Redvers discovered that most of the buildings currently lie empty, as this footage she recorded shows. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18680217
African News, Ghana News, Kenya News, South Africa News, Zimbabwe News

Africa provides vast potential for micro-insurance

Micro-insurance coverage has expanded dramatically globally from the 78 million low-income people identified in 2007 to the current estimates suggesting the sector is approaching 500 million lives covered today. This growth has been largely driven by both the active involvement of governments to better help citizens protect themselves against risks and the availability of payment systems, which has made it easier to collect premiums from low-income households and enabled a host of new players to get involved in micro-insurance. However, despite global growth in micro-insurance and its increasing prominence on the international agenda, micro-insurance on the African continent continues to lag behind, with only 25 million low-income people covered. Africa nevertheless provides vast potenti...
African News

Can Africa Industrialise?

  by John Page Abstract Africa needs structural change to sustain growth. Industry with and without smoke stacks is key, but Africa has deindustrialised since the 1970s. Can Africa industrialise? Rising costs and domestic demand in Asia offer an opportunity. However, trade in tasks, firm capabilities and agglomeration will drive industrial location choices. Strategies to deal with these drivers of change are needed. Investment climate reforms should focus less on regulation and more on the gaps in infrastructure and skills. Policies to push exports, build firm capabilities and support agglomerations are also needed. Success will depend crucially on new donor attitudes and how policy is implemented. Please read here: http://jae.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/suppl_2/ii86.short
African News

Evaluating enterprise policy interventions in Africa: a critical review of Ghanaian small business support services

Obeng, Bernard and Blundel, Richard (2012). Evaluating enterprise policy interventions in Africa: a critical review of Ghanaian small business support services. Journal of Small Business Management (in press). Abstract Enterprise policies play a central role in economic development across Africa, but more effective, evidence-based policy evaluation is required to inform future interventions. The paper aims to: (i) contribute to filling this gap; (ii) develop more rigorous and appropriate evaluation methodologies. It examines the issues through an empirical study into non-use of small business support services in Ghana. Survey evidence from 253 owner-managers was complemented by interviews with owner-managers and service providers. It concludes that policy evaluation in Sub-Saharan Africa...
African News, South Africa News

SA’s Top Restaurant Brands

Spur has been identified as SA’s leading restaurant brand, according to the results of a survey conducted by Acentric Marketing Research. The survey was conducted in the first quarter of 2012 and included 21 restaurant-chain brands. The survey was conducted amongst a scientifically selected sample of 364 online panelists, and has a margin of error of 5.2% (see technical note). In total, 21 restaurant brands were ranked according to the ABM (Acentric Brand Model) Index. The top five most powerful brands were identified as: Spur with the largest ABM index score of 15%, closely followed by KFC (14%), Mug & Bean (12%), McDonalds (9%) and Woolworths (8%). “The ABM Index is a proven index of brand equity, which strongly correlates with market share (0.9 correlation). The ABM Index in essence...
African News

Only 0.27% of the world’s top 1 million sites are hosted in Africa

Africa, with its over 1 billion people, has reached a 13.5% Internet penetration rate, and there are plenty of big websites about the continent. But where are those sites hosted? It would be safe to assume that there are big sites about Africa hosted outside the continent, but what would be the top 100 sites actually hosted in Africa? That’s the question we set out to answer in our latest study. Read on to find out what we discovered. 34 countries in Africa host sites in top 1 M When it comes to webhosting, arguably the US is the go-to place. The different reasons for selecting a particular hosting provider are many, including price, functionality, reliability, and, of course, geographic location. For example, it might be awkward for a local city council somewhere to host its website outs...
African News

New trends in insurance and opportunities in Africa

  The Africa Insurance & Reinsurance Conference Presentations New trends in insurance and opportunities in Africa by David K Ronoh Managing Director CIC Life Assurance Ltd Please download presentation: Presentation David K Ronoh (.pdf Acrobat Reader)