Hi, Quartz Africa readers!
Press on
Halfway through 2020, it’s evident that systemic problems—a pandemic, a global economic crisis, nationalism, climate change, inequity, racial injustice—are connected by both cause and effect. Journalists have an urgent role to play: We can expose those connections, explain risks, and make sense of complex events. But business journalism in particular has not risen to the occasion.
Business publications have the access, context, and duty to tease out the financial forces underpinning all of these problems. But we are part of the system we report on, along with the companies we cover, our sources at and around those companies, our advertisers, and the business leaders and investors who consume business news. Our perspectives have been constrained by the expectations and incentives that limit every other part of the system, as well as our perceptions of those limitations.
If we want a better, more inclusive economy, we need a new, more demanding form of business and economic journalism, one that questions the assumptions our organizations, industries, and economies are built on; investigates not only how the systems that govern them are working now, but how they might be improved; and prepares readers to take action to improve them.
Being progressive and inclusive requires us to ask more fundamental questions about the companies we cover. What makes some companies more successful than others? What makes some people more successful than others? What are the racial and social inequities that have left many people out? And what is the purpose of each company we write about—the real one, which is often not clear in its mission statement. What useful thing has it set out to achieve? Who does it benefit, and who does it harm?
We need to ask these questions of the economy, as well. Who does capitalism benefit and who does it harm? What can it accomplish? And what are the alternatives? If an economy is a means to an end, we have to keep asking: What is the end?
In recent years, management theory and corporate messaging have swung away from the orthodoxy of Milton Friedman’s shareholder capitalism, back to a more balanced view of the purpose and beneficiaries of the firm: a company exists to serve not only its owners, including those who have contributed even small amounts of capital, but also its workers, customers, suppliers, and the community and environment surrounding it. Like business itself, business journalism can also be more oriented toward solving big problems. These were founding principles of Quartz when we started in the wake of the last financial crisis, and we are committing to them even more firmly now.
— Katherine Bell, Quartz editor-in-chief
Five stories from this week
What the corporate world can learn from South Africa’s post-apartheid struggles. Ongoing global discussions about racism and discrimination are inevitably taking hold in global corporate circles. As Lerato Tsebe writes, companies looking for success in building anti-racist organizations can look to the failures of corporate South Africa in the aftermath of apartheid.
The gruesome murder of the American CEO of a Nigerian startup. The chilling discovery of the dismembered body of Fahim Saleh, 33-year old founder of Nigerian bike-hailing startup Gokada, in his New York apartment sent shockwaves through US, Nigerian and Asian tech ecosystems. As industry insiders continue to pay tributes to the young founder and investor, the police have arrested and charged Saleh’s former assistant, the prime suspect, with second-degree murder.
Africa’s population will triple by the end of the century even as the rest of the world shrinks. At least 23 countries will see their populations halve by the end of the century due to dropping fertility rates. Yet, Africa will see a sharp contrast as a population boom, led by Nigeria, will result in the number of African countries with populations higher than 100 million jump from two, at present, to nine by 2100.
A teacher and a data scientist teamed up to power machine translation in Namibia. The pair are translating songs, recipes, and stories from Khoekhoegowab to English to create a database of parallel sentences rooted in Damara culture, writes Nicolás Rivero. Eventually, researchers hope to use the data to train AI algorithms that can translate between Namibia’s languages, bolstering communication and commerce within the country.
Nigeria’s Nollywood is remaking classic movies to maximize box office revenue in the Netflix era.
The shift from quantity to quality in Nigeria’s film industry has steadily borne rewards at the local box office and licensing deals with Netflix. As
, producers are now looking to remakes and sequels of popular classic to tap into the new found revenue streams.
Dealmaker
An Africa-focused “micro-forestry” startup has raised $28 million to plant a billion trees. Komaza‘s $28 million Series B round was co-led by AXA Investment Managers, through its AXA Impact Fund, and Dutch development bank FMO. The round also saw participation from Mirova’s Land Degradation Neutrality Fund as well as Novastar Ventures. Komaza’s “micro-forestry” model sees it work with smallholder farmers to grow and harvest trees as a commercial and sustainable method to combat deforestation
•Nigerian B2B e-commerce retail supply platform TradeDepot raised $10 million in a pre-Series B equity round co-led by Partech, International Finance Corporation, Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) and MSA Capital.
•Maroc Numeric Fund II, a public-private investment fund for Moroccan tech startups backed Casablanca-based edtech KoolSkools with $416,000 in a round which also saw participation from an angel investor. The fund also invested $400,000 in Moroccan fintech OnePay, a digital payments service founded earlier this year.
Map of the Week
Google’s balloons took a circuitous route to bring internet to western Kenya. It seemed an unlikely feat seven years ago at Google X, but Loon, a project to bring internet access to the world’s remote regions using air balloons took off this month. Yinka Adegoke learned the balloons, which launched from Puerto Rico, took a circuitous route to get to western Kenya for a number of technical, safety and security reasons.
Other things we liked
Inside South Africa’s failing struggle with Covid-19. South Africa has become the regional epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak with the most cases and deaths on the continent. In an investigative report for BBC Africa, Andrew Harding explains how corruption and a scarcity of resources is undermining local healthcare workers’ chances of containing the outbreak.
The newly invented writing system for one of Nigeria’s major languages. With Nigerian languages no longer compulsorily taught in local schools, knowledge of how to write in local languages has come under even more threat of fading away. But as Kola Tubosun writes in Popula, the creation of Ndebe script, a new writing system for Igbo, is offering a contemporary solution to an age-old problem.
How a young chef is spreading the gospel of Senegalese cuisine in America’s Deep South. There is a cultural link between Senegalese cooking and some of the American Deep South’s favorite dishes such as gumbo and jambalaya. Chef Serigne Mbaye, 26, has been introducing everything from black-eyed peas fritters, Senegalese egg rolls and, of course, jollof rice in local pop-up venues in New Orleans. But his ambitions go even further, he wants to one day put his home city Dakar on the map for global cuisine, finds Todd A. Price for the Tennessean.
ICYMI
World Bank Group Africa Fellowship Program. The fellowship is aimed at young Africans who are completing or have recently completed doctorate programs in areas relevant to the bank’s work. (Aug. 23)
Science by Women Program. The Women for Africa Foundation is offering a six-month scholarships to African women researchers and scientists. (Sept. 30)
*This brief was produced while listening to Sagacité by Douk Saga (Côte d’Ivoire).
Our best wishes for a productive and ideas-filled week ahead. Please send any news, comments, suggestions, ideas, Google internet balloons and thieboudienne recipes to africa@qz.com. You can follow us on Twitter at @qzafrica for updates throughout the day.
If you received this email from a friend or colleague, you can sign up here to receive the Quartz Africa Weekly Brief in your inbox every week. You can also follow Quartz Africa on Facebook.