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Africa
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- March 2024 (Revised June 2024)
- Case
Kashat: Navigating the Uncertainties of the Egyptian Fintech Market
By: Paul A. Gompers and Ahmed Dahawy
Karim Nour, the founder of Kashat, an Egyptian nano-lending fintech company, is contemplating how to manage the growth of his startup. Over the summer of 2022, Kashat's loan disbursements had grown by nearly 40%, fueled by macroeconomic instability in Egypt. However,... View Details
- March 2024
- Article
Human Capital Affects Religious Identity: Causal Evidence from Kenya
By: Livia Alfonsi, Michal Bauer, Julie Chytilová and Edward Miguel
We study how human capital and economic conditions causally affect the choice of religious denomination. We utilize a longitudinal dataset monitoring the religious history of more than 5,000 Kenyans over 20 years, in tandem with a randomized experiment (deworming) that... View Details
- February 2024 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Finberg: Corporate Venture Capital in Türkiye
By: Paul A. Gompers and Namrata Arora
In December 2021, Murat Özyeğin, Chairman of Fiba Holding, along with Ömer Mert and İhsan Elgin, engaged in discussions about the future of United Payment, a fintech company in which Finberg, a subsidiary of Fibabanka, held a 20% stake. Finberg, established in 2018 as... View Details
Keywords: Corporate Venture Capital; Technology; Return On Investment; Venture Capital; Investment; Strategy; Technological Innovation; Competition; Valuation; Acquisition; Business Startups; Information Technology Industry; Banking Industry; Middle East; North Africa; Turkey; Ukraine; Romania; Poland
- February 2024
- Case
Tony Elumelu Foundation: Democratizing Luck Across Africa
By: Paul A. Gompers and Samir Saxena
Founded in 2010, The Tony Elumelu Foundation is Africa’s leading philanthropy working to support entrepreneurs in Africa with access to seed capital, business management training, mentorship, and access to networks. Through a $100 million commitment by its founder,... View Details
- January 2024 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Target Malaria: Editing Mosquitoes through Gene Drives
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
Target Malaria, a non-profit research consortium, is exploring the application of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology to combat malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa. Its approach uses gene drives, a revolutionary tool, to suppress the population of malaria-carrying... View Details
- January 2024
- Case
Mariam Braimah: Designing a Career in Tech
By: Lakshmi Ramarajan, Hannah Riley Bowles and Michael Norris
In 2022, Mariam Braimah, a digital designer working at Netflix, is considering the next move in her career. She has spent several years at Netflix, and in her spare time, using her savings, has founded a design-focused fellowship program and a consumer insights company... View Details
- January 2024
- Teaching Note
Nigeria: Africa's Giant
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 723-056. View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Uneven Impact of Generative AI on Entrepreneurial Performance
By: Nicholas G. Otis, Rowan Clarke, Solène Delecourt, David Holtz and Rembrand Koning
Scalable and low-cost AI assistance has the potential to improve firm decision-making and economic performance. However, running a business involves a myriad of open-ended problems, making it difficult to know whether recent AI advances can help business owners make... View Details
- November 2023
- Case
Gabon Special Economic Zone
By: John Macomber and Wale Lawal
Tropical rain forest covers about 80% of the West African nation of Gabon, part of the Congo Basin and the "lungs of the world." Gabon is one of the first nations to earn revenue from carbon sequestration...as long as the rain forest remains intact. There are... View Details
- November 27, 2023
- Article
How James Mwangi Worked to Democratize Banking Across Africa
By: Ranjay Gulati
- October 2023 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
KOKO Networks: Bridging Energy Transition and Affordability with Carbon Financing
By: George Serafeim, Siko Sikochi and Namrata Arora
The problem was massive: two million hectares of African forests were lost annually to charcoal production for cooking, an area equivalent to 13 times Greater London, resulting in one billion tons of carbon emissions yearly. At the same time, an estimated 700,000... View Details
Keywords: Clean Tech; Digital; Carbon Credits; Carbon Offsetting; Climate Change; Entrepreneurship; Energy Sources; Environmental Sustainability; Health; Market Design; Business Startups; Transition; Environmental Regulation; Policy; Energy Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Africa; Kenya; Rwanda
- October 2023 (Revised July 2024)
- Case
Nelson Mandela: Changing the World
By: Robert Simons and Shirley Sun
This case traces the rise of Nelson Mandela from his tribal home in South Africa to president of the country. Rejecting expectations that he would be a tribal leader, Mandela instead dedicates his life to fighting Apartheid. After peaceful approaches fail, he joins... View Details
- September 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Helmy Abouleish: Making a Desert Bloom
By: Geoffrey G. Jones and Maxim Pike Harrell
This case examines the history of prominent Egyptian-based social enterprise SEKEM from its foundation in 1977 until the COP27 conference held in Sharm El-Sheikh in 2022. Led by father and son team Ibrahim and Helmy Abouleish, SEKEM turned desert into farmland using... View Details
- August 2023 (Revised December 2023)
- Case
Automating Morality: Ethics for Intelligent Machines
By: Joseph L. Badaracco Jr. and Tom Quinn
As autonomy became a more significant part of modern life – most notably in autonomous vehicles (AVs), such as Teslas – ethical debates about whether and how to impart ethics to machines heated up. Utilitarians pointed out that autonomous vehicles crashed much less... View Details
Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Judgments; Fairness; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Disruptive Innovation; Technology Adoption; Risk and Uncertainty; Cognition and Thinking; Technological Innovation; Auto Industry; Technology Industry; Africa; Asia; Europe; North and Central America; Oceania; South America
- 2023
- Working Paper
LALIGA—From a Soccer Competition Organizer to a Global Player in the Sports and Entertainment Industry
By: Stephen A. Greyser, Kenneth Cortsen and Juan Fuentes Fernández
LALIGA, the first- and second-tier professional soccer league (known as “football” outside of the U.S. and Canada) in Spain, enters its 100th soccer season later this decade. The most popular game in the world (Giulianotti, 2012) has gone through many changes since... View Details
- August 2023
- Case
Floward
By: Krishna Palepu and Namrata Arora
In 2022, Abdulaziz B. Al Loughani, CEO and co-founder of Floward, an online flower and gifting company established in Kuwait in 2017, contemplated the firm's growth trajectory. Floward, an e-commerce enterprise that offered fresh-cut flowers sourced directly from... View Details
- August 2023
- Teaching Note
Aphro Beverages
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 823-044. View Details
- August 2023 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
eBee: Affordable Mobility for Africa
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Gamze Yucaoglu
The case opens in March 2023, as Sten van der Ham and Jaap Maljers, CEO and co-founder of eBee, an electric bike (e-bike) company in Africa, are contemplating the different avenues for growth and path to profitability for the young and ambitious company. In 2023, the... View Details
- August 2023
- Article
What About the Race Between Technology and Education in the Global South? Comparing Skill-premiums in Colonial Africa and Asia
By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
Historical research on the race between education and technology has focused on the West but barely touched upon ‘the rest’. A new occupational wage database for 50 African and Asian economies allows us to compare long-run patterns in skill premiums across the colonial... View Details