1 December 2018

What is your normal?

A friend has just quit his job and started travelling. This week he told me a story of an Italian guy he met living on the Kenyan coast who is currently building a boat.

6 April 2018

The Edges of Society in Kenya (in a weekend)

Over the Easter weekend a good friend (Ben) and I spent a couple of nights an hour out of Nairobi. Despite the primary goal of “getting a way from it all”, the short excursion ended up showing several aspects of Kenyan culture not always visible from the day to day: The Chinese influence, a hangover […]

31 August 2017

Silicon Savannah Talk (listen to it here)

As you might have seen, I have a bit of thing about business in East Africa. Since deciding to relocate to the region last year in order to set up a business I’ve found myself learning as much about the region as possible, and taken enjoyment in distilling the many complex moving parts into a […]

27 July 2017

Moving to Africa: one year on

Today I’m flying back to the UK for a month to catch up with friends, family and some clients I’ve been working with. The date on the plane ticket is a year to the day from when I took a flight in the opposite direction and touched down in East Africa for the first time […]

29 June 2017

What Technology Wants (…in Rural Kenya)

I’ve spent the last few days living in a village in Western Kenya. It’s been an excellent experience that’s not only opened up what’s happening in another part of the country, but also reminded me of some concepts I’ve been reading about recently.

1 June 2017

The benefits of sharing too much online

This week I’ve been doing work for a client and have somewhat reversed my scepticism on companies putting effort into their “online presence”. This post then circles round to how I’m seeing people in East Africa use social media, and how it’s being used here.

18 May 2017

Long lunches

This is just a quick post updating on how I’ve recently been justifying why it’s perfectly acceptable taking two hours over lunch, with a bit of insight into the Kenyan culture of “doing business with who you know”.

20 April 2017

Lessons from interviewing East African entrepreneurs: Financing

This is the fourth in the series of posts detailing the trends and common threads that I’ve learnt through interviewing a wide range of businesses operating in East Africa. The East Africa Business Podcast is the weekly podcast that I’ve been running for the last six months. Right now we’re on episode 35 with more […]

6 April 2017

Lessons from interviewing East African entrepreneurs: Physical goods

This is the third in the series of posts detailing the trends and common threads that I’ve learnt through interviewing a wide range of businesses operating in East Africa. The East Africa Business Podcast is the weekly podcast that has been running for the past six months. Right now we’re on episode 33 with more […]

23 March 2017

Lessons from interviewing East African entrepreneurs: Digital platforms

This is the second in the series of posts detailing the trends and common threads that I’ve learnt through interviewing a wide range of businesses operating in East Africa. The East Africa Business Podcast is the weekly podcast that I’ve been running for the last six months. Right now we’re on episode 31 with more […]