My blog posts and external op-eds/articles on business-related topics
As the world reopens, and leisure tourism gradually resumes, African countries have a competitive advantage in the scramble for tourist arrivals. As the world continues to battle Covid-19, most African countries seem to have weathered the global public health crisis quite benignly. This has left newsrooms across the planet puzzled. For decades if not centuries, the…
Remote work has changed the tourism equation. Digital nomads stay longer, spend locally, and can turn destinations into part-time homes rather than short holiday stops. For Kenya, the opportunity is obvious: strong internet, coastal lifestyle, good regional access, and a tourism sector that needs higher-value, longer-stay visitors. The question is whether the country moves fast enough to claim the advantage.
Kenya was already ahead of much of the world on mobile money before Covid-19. The pandemic simply pushed the shift further. This article looks at how M-Pesa, digital payments, health concerns, and changing consumer habits helped move Kenya closer to a cashless economy.
Kenya is bustling with roadworks at the moment. Nairobi is leading from the front. With the promise of great highways soon, however, comes utter chaos now. Every other major road seems to be under construction in 2020. As an inevitable result, brace for slow, bumpy rides through choking traffic jams on temporary mud roads. Nairobi…
The first-ever African Innovation Week took place in Addis Ababa at the African Union Headquarters, Oct. 28 – Nov. 2. AIW is an international conference, showcasing entrepreneurship in Africa. I was honoured to be among the keynote speakers. Our experience of scaling HotelOnline across Africa is one of my favorite topics! Africa is experiencing an…
Why terms like “impact business” or “social entrepreneurship” are outdated Henry T. Ford once said “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business”. The attitude behind his statement remains emblematic for some of the most successful businesses in history. Businesses that change the world, have invariably been driven by visions greater than…
The CEO of Africa Innovation Network, Flemming Sørensen, reached out recently, asking if I could do a video appearance at a seminar, telling the story of HotelOnline. Sure, I love telling about how Endre and I built our now pretty successful traveltech company. So how to make a video? I neither had the time, nor…
On January 17th, 2019, we kicked off the inaugural event for Kaleidoscope Africa, at Nailab in Nairobi with a catchy topic: Launch to Scale: How Successful Startups Scale into Global Enterprises. Only two days after the horrendous terror attack on Dusit D2 here in Nairobi, we had to make some tough decisions: People were still…
In October 2017, we were looking to raise money to accelerate HotelOnline’s expansion. With the HotelOnline/Savanna Sunrise merger completed earlier in the year, we had become a dominant traveltech player in Africa, and we had successfully built a string foothold in Nigeria. We realised that completing a Series A round would be a complex and…
JKIA in an advantageous position When Kenya (or the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority, to be precise) finally gained the coveted Category One status in February, it was a game-changer. With Kenya Airways recently obtaining air traffic rights in the US, things seem on track for KQ to launch direct US flights by March 2018. Kenya…
