8 December 2018
There’s a concept in economics of substitute goods. Basically if the demand one for one product goes, demand for another goes down. If pasta becomes super popular then you might see sales in couscous go down (substitute good). Other products though, such as tomato sauce, may instead go up in demand (complementary goods). Anyway, two […]
17 November 2018
For the most part, I dress incredibly boring. I’d say 280/365 days a year I wear the same (type of) blue chino trousers, and will rotate a few basic T-shirts/ jumpers depending on the season. Which in Kenya, ranges from bit chilly – quite hot – pretty hot. When it comes to shoes, I was […]
10 November 2018
A series of events led to me being able to take a day off work yesterday. I decided to spend it going to a mango farm about an hour out of Nairobi to scope out its commercial potential.
18 September 2018
On Saturday I went for lunch with the lady who cleans my apartment and her sister at their home in Kibera: one of the big informal settlements in Nairobi. The conversations and anecdotes that came from our afternoon were rich with the colour of the lives they’ve both lived, and the families they’re raising. On […]
6 April 2018
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 […]
10 November 2017
Since touching down back in Kenya in late August there have been some developments on the work front. After a year or so of doing freelance consulting, and nurturing different business ideas it got to the stage where I fancied shaking things up and actually cracking on with some of the opportunities I’d been telling […]
27 July 2017
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
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
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
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”.