Imagination Africas Secret Weapon.
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ever since i can remember i’ve been
building bridges not the kind that
connects highways or traverses rivers
the kind that creates an understanding
between increasingly divergent thoughts
between
everyday people on the street and on the
ground
and the decision makers who are in
boardrooms
you know my old boss used to say
decisions born in boardrooms die on the
streets
this has never been more true than it is
today
except today those decisions are
reincarnated turned into memes and
immortalized on the internet
increasingly there are a dwindling
number of participants in the game
who wants to be an african business
decision maker
and it’s not surprising there’s a number
of reasons why if you look around what’s
happening on our continent we have
pandemics dwindling economics we’ve got
wars that are happening in different
countries
corruption systematic challenges that
are hindering basic service delivery
we also have
just a plethora of social crises
creating an overwhelming sense of
fluidity in the attitudes needs and
behaviors of people on the continent
so in essence what we’re really seeing
is we’re under pressure as a society to
do way more than merely adapt in this
environment
we’re being forced to shape it
one of my favorite computer scientists
allen k actually said it best he said
the best way to predict the future
is to create it
so this pressure
to imagine and then construct a future
has emerged not just out the blue
it’s something we’ve been seeing
developing over the last couple of
decades with some remarkable examples of
why we need to pay attention
think of apple’s insistence on research
during y2k
911 you know they lost 33 percent of
their total revenue as a result of the
depression
and even then
they still spent an emphasis on research
and making sure that they could
understand what people’s
ideas and needs and values were the same
is happening locally think of pep’s
incessant need to continuously invest in
research on its core lower income
customers despite being the hardest hit
on the continent over the last two years
the results of which
we have amazing examples of new and
innovative new product extensions think
think pep home think
new pep stores think pep cellular
that’s what gaining and keeping an
advantage is all about today
keeping abreast of something we like to
refer as cultural intelligence
an outsider’s seemingly natural ability
to interpret someone’s unfamiliar and
ambiguous gestures
the way that person’s friends or family
or like a peer group would be able to
through research
cultural intelligence actually allows us
to dream by taking advantage of
three amazing disciplines
one of them which i refer to a lot is
anthropology essentially looking into
the past to study you know what makes
humans tick
consumer research which all of us here
should be able to understand which looks
at the present takes a snapshot of human
behavior and tries to explain it
and then trend forecasting which we’re
hearing more and more about using
foresight tools to look into the future
all of these three disciplines are very
important
especially now
and people are keep asking the same
question they say why is it that it’s
become so important
despite the tools we have access to
today and think
social media think twitter tick tock
think big data the johannesburg stock
exchange google analytics
think our hr departments with
psychometric tests and and the plethora
of data and information that’s out there
despite
all of these resources our ability to
empathize with other people
doesn’t seem to be expanding and
research seems to back that up
the more research you uncover the more
evidence you’re finding that it’s
actually the opposite direction where
we’re struggling and we’re more
polarized than we’ve ever been before
nowhere is this more relevant than in
the myths that continue to cloud
perceptions
of the african continent and its
customers
indeed much of the research that
attempts to understand our customers
is either based on quantitative big data
research
or it’s
developed with
an arm’s length away from our customers
indeed one of my favorite quotes of all
time is from saichi and sachi’s kevin
roberts who once said if you want to
understand how a lion hunts
don’t go to the zoo go to the jungle
and that is essentially the key problem
we’re looking through the microscope
the wrong way around
and you can really see this in the way
that you hear marketing departments
speak about customers and describe
interactions
often i’ll hear terms like guerrilla
tactics
targets and segments ambush marketing
positioning barriers to entry
and i always laugh because it always
struck me that this feels more like the
description of an invasion
than it does the foundations of a mutual
interaction between two people with
mutual respect
the need for a sense of discovery
an adventure that remedies this
perspective
is what has informed my research
and the co-founding of our business over
the last 21 years
it’s what’s led to us debunking african
myths like
african youth tend to be less religious
than their parents
in algeria for example parents have
actually been french they smoked
cigarettes and have lesser fair
attitudes
young people will say we don’t we’re
much more conservative
other myths like being a rebel is about
standing out for example if you
get someone who’s a gen z from south
africa they’ll say i want to be an
individual
just like all my friends
trends move from the haves to the
have-nots
in places like nigeria for example
the most important button when we do
research into applications
is not the download button it’s the
upload button
consumers are creating and not just
consuming
as africans
it’s becoming abundantly clear that
we’re on our way to killing our
inferiority complex
the path to competing globally or
having the edge
lies not with the collection of data
points in research on customers
but actually on the ability for us to
empathize with them on a human level
if we encourage those around us to see
this they’ll realize that besides the
broken narrative that often surrounds
the continent
there is an africa that offers the world
a multitude of opportunities born from a
vivid understanding of customers and
that’s what’s going to help us imagine a
different world and therefore better
products and better services
the irony is
we’ve embraced all these negative myths
about our continent
while simultaneously keeping the best
about us a secret
well today i’m actually here to snitch
as abraham lincoln once said famously
it’s not me who can’t keep a secret it’s
the people i tell the secrets to
to win today we need to harness the
imaginations of the people on the
continent
through empathetic research
that doesn’t merely try to just measure
and describe opinions but rather capture
the essence
and cultural impact
of what that means
if we do this
we will learn that there are many things
that are existing about our continent
today that we can build this imagination
off of
and the first thing
is
our youth
we have one of the most resilient custom
bases in the world
think about our young people
many youth 15 to 24 express the burdens
of unemployment
in south africa more than 55 percent at
the time
and exposing significant gaps in
education that we see all over the
continent
especially when it comes to those
entrants who
are eventually able to even go into
tertiary education
despite this
i have found that when i investigate
african markets and i have conversations
one-on-one with youth and i ask how many
young people feel confident about their
futures overwhelmingly
the majority reply optimistically
expecting their standard of living to
improve
so whilst we shouldn’t romanticize
survival tactics
this type of resilience is a hallmark
of us as africans
people who wouldn’t want this as a
characteristic of their customer base
just don’t make sense
two
we are insanely innovative
the chaos and randomness of everyday
life on the continent
isn’t a barrier towards innovation
increasingly it’s actually proving to be
the catalyst
most of the most innovative cultural
trends coming from our underprivileged
communities
are the ones that are having the big
global impact think i’m a piano
think streaming services
think about the ways people are using
what’s up
to start
businesses if you don’t believe
that this is creativity and innovation
just visit yebercon
that’s lagos’s version of silicon valley
if that doesn’t work for you
go ahead and visit some of the 600 plus
tech hubs that are all scattered across
the continent
innovation is very important
we have also a third secret weapon which
we’ve been hearing a lot about in recent
times
and that is that one of the most
exciting developments that we’ve
observed especially in recent years has
been a shift
in this conversation about the
importance of women contributing to
africa’s future successes
gender equality isn’t just a social or
labor market issue
it takes a rare and uniquely uninformed
mind to believe that
50 percent of our continent potential
working population shouldn’t be
contributing to the economy
that’s a bad idea
it’s no secret that we’ve had quite a
few things that have curtailed the
progress of women
on the continent everything from social
political economic and cultural
constraints
especially in those lowest of low-income
countries and as a result of
colonialism’s emphasis on things like
cash crops perceptions around religion
gender discrimination in the work place
that type of thing
however this generation has seen an
abundance of african firsts
the first female president the first
nobel peace prize winner
the first forbes wealthiest woman and a
host of other globally renowned leading
female first african scientists artists
and entrepreneurs
this should give us hope that we’re
going in the right direction
and to conclude
and just to leave you with a message to
take home
not all progress is the result of
advanced technologies or discoveries
all action is preceded by some type of
thought
many of today’s innovations
are the result of progress in the
imagination
these have sparked the kind of thinking
that’s made the impossible possible
for this to happen however
our imagination muscles as decision
makers need to be exercised who better
to take these muscles to the gym than
the young people you’re building
products and services for
it’s really important therefore that our
edge as africans on the global platform
will only be realized when we can
exploit our natural abilities
and imagine
our own futures
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