Will Africa industrialise ?

I often wonder when I look at the lists of where multinationals have their offices whether Africa will ever industrialise.

So often you see, London, NY, Tokyo, but never Lagos, Nairobi or Accra. In the search for low cost manufacturing we have seen firms rush headlong to China and India, Brazil and Eastern Europe. Wages and prices there are starting to rise, its ever so slightly but it is noticeable. The move to these countries staved off large scale automation of manufacturing in the West by a couple of decades but it can't last forever. Will we now finally see firms move production to Africa to take advantage of the low wages or will they consider the political risk too high and instead decide to automate ?

I hope that the low wage economies of Asia stop being so in a decade or so and that firms have the will to move to Africa.

I wish funds like the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation would channel some of their money to aiding companies to invest in Africa by removing the political risk premium. The world would be if all continents got to participate in its economic activity.

Sony Vaio, marketing over innovation ?

I bought one of these beautiful looking, light machines 3 months ago. Now it sits in a draw unused.

Why ? First the sound stopped working, then the touch pad stopped working, then the screen stopped working. Since I made the mistake of buying it in the US and not taking a global warranty I was in a corner. So I "invested" £300 to get the screen fixed by a local repairer. One week later I found my entire online life had been password compromised and the machine also now refused to boot up, so that was a bad idea. £50 of premium calls to Sony later it became clear my best bet for to put the machine in a draw and forget about it.

I recently bought a Samsung Q45 which has solved all my problems.

The point of this post is to complain about the direction of innovation in some products. Why are people so focused on chip innovation and not focused on robustness, reliability and ease of use. The some goes with flat screen TVs. Huge amounts of innovation in resolution but factors like, contrast and refresh speed are not getting a fair mention. I think we need unified marketing measures, like an overall score that factors in all the relevant technical factors so that firms can't focus on one factor like processor speed over memory to the detriment of all. Intel led this charge and need to move on quickly.

Boston VC medtech event

Just presented at a Boston VC medtech event. It's impressive to see people committing over $40m to start-ups accessing $1 billion markets. As the CEO of a UK based start-up I can only watch in envy. I hope the appetite for trans-atlantic deals grows so we can access some of this formidable cash. Another interesting thing was the number of companies put together by VCs around outstanding individuals rather than great ideas. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues.