Friday, April 23, 2010

someone in Nairobi gets it

A great blog post courtesy of Ratio Magazine, shows how informal businesses lose out to supposed innovations in city planning.

Money quotes:
1. In this city, in my neighbourhood, a man associated with one of Kenya’s largest scams, is free to run for MP whilst small kiosks are being torn down in the name of ‘beautification’ and ‘security’.

2. in a fantastic example of customer service matched by few formal businesses in this town, one of the local newspaper men [displaced by the government demolition drive] not only delivers the papers to my house, but has also granted me account facilities for both newspapers and airtime, and all I have to do is text him for a top up.

3. we can probably save a lot of cash spent on programmes, workshops and related four-wheel drives for ‘small enterprise promotion’ and actually let small enterprises grow if the city infrastructure were made more functional.

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