New Labour Died Penniless

Well the news was characteristically left in a drawer for someone else to find, but it's official: New Labour died penniless.

I'm amazed any of them had the temerity to turn up in the Commons today. It's little wonder they won't find a leader until September.

The Cheetah Generation: Will Facilitators Grow Faster In Africa?

Recent problems in the Eurozone, coupled with the shock announcement of the UK's worsening trade deficit have heightened the need to find new markets. So perhaps it's a great time to recognise the step-change in technology adoption amongst sub-Saharan Africa's "cheetah generation".

Africa represents a vast array of people and socio-economics, as Hans Rosling brilliantly illustrated at TED, including a communications divide. As at 2006, "Egypt had 11 times the fixed line penetration of Nigeria. While sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa), had an average teledensity of one percent, North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia) had a comparable average of eleven percent. Almost three quarters of the continent’s fixed lines were found in just 6 of the continent’s 55 countries."

Enter: the mobile phone:

As TMS Ruge explains in his "stirring article on Africa's booming tech space":

"By the end of 2011, the entire continent of Africa will be connected to no fewer than nine undersea broadband cable initiatives. Africa will have access to over 17 terabytes of designed broadband capacity. If mainframes and punchcards served as the innovation catapult for Silicon Valley’s cheetah generation, then connectivity is poised to be Africa’s innovation catalyst. Since mobiles first went mainstream in Africa at the turn of the century, mobile penetration has exploded to approximately 450 million subscribers...

Africa’s growing list of technology hubs are the cheetah generation’s digital proving grounds Appfrica Labs opened its doors in Uganda in 2008. Since then, three additional tech hubs have opened around the continent. Limbe Labs Ventures Cameroon and Banta Labs in Senegal launched in 2009. Nairobi now has its very own centre of excellence in the iHub innovation center...

Keep a very close eye on Africa’s young population, that 450 million number growing up with a mobile phone in their back pocket."

Vodafone has clearly been doing just that, backing M-Pesa, the successful person-to-person payment system. The explosive growth of that business also suggests that Africans may be more willing to rapidly embrace disruptive finance models than Westerners. No doubt this is partly because they've been more poorly served by banking and telecommunications to date (though 'mobile banking' has also grown rapidly in South Africa). But is it also because African communities share a greater sense of personal trust than in the West?

At any rate, it seems the trend toward the growth of facilitators at the expense of institutions is set to grow fast in sub-Sahara Africa, at least on mobile networks.

Image from Run For Africa

In Praise Of The Greasy Spoon

When I need to escape the 'always on' culture to focus on a piece of drafting, I print the document, leave my laptop and mobile and head for somewhere with seating that serves good coffee.

The start-up world, in particular, would struggle without using Starbucks and other coffee chains as offices and meeting rooms. Apart from the fact that coffee fuels innovation, those chains benefit from offering plenty of space and enabling meeting participants to easily pinpoint the most mutually convenient outlet via a single website.

Which is why their coffee ain't cheap - for little more than a price of a 'grande cappuccino', my local Greasy Spoon will add two fried eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tomato, two slices of toast and friendship - at least by social media standards.

So while the coffee chains do offer a valuable service, we also owe it to ourselves to ensure the survival of Greasy Spoons by pinpointing them for others, and escaping to them instead of the coffee chains, whenever we can.

For the record, while based at Axiom I frequent Bon Appetit. I also thoroughly recommend Harris's (pictured), a long-time haunt while at Zopa. A discussion of this kind 3 years ago sparked about a dozen recommendations. A good list for London can also be found at Classic Cafes, and Caffs is attempting a national database of greasy spoons.

Hit Girl Kicks Agent Romanoff's Ass

I've recently been to see Kick-Ass and Iron Man 2. I enjoyed both, but Kick-Ass is the better movie. And it's the violent frolics of these two characters which makes the difference.

Ironically, these frolics seem 'wrong' in each movie (indeed, Hit Girl blows the lid off so many cans of worms you could write a book about it) yet might have fit better if they'd been swapped between characters. After all, an 11 year old girl should not have the combat skills to dispose of a highly trained secret agent.

Both movies are about super heroes. The 'lead' in both is a male role with some superhuman physical quality, 'supported' by a strong and aggressive female with no such aid. So far, so predictable - the 'wow' factor better be in the action and weird science. But in Kick-Ass the 'wow' comes when lead role is subverted - because he's an incompetent dreamer, regardless of his super-human ability - by the real (deeply flawed, psychotically aggressive and extremely violent but thankfully well-meaning) super hero: Hit Girl.

Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughan says Hollywood wouldn't fund Kick-Ass. So he got it funded in the UK, which gave him greater creative freedom.

The result may be that Iron Man 2 is 'everything a super hero movie should be'. But Kick-Ass gives us Hit Girl. And gives the super hero genre an almighty kick in the arse.

Cue the ongoing resurgence of the British film industry?

And Now, Back to the Digital Economy Act

Now that we actually have a government again, and a Coalition Agreement that plans some sensible constraints on the Nanny State, it's time to clean up the mess that is the Digital Economy Act. Here's an extract from what my MP, Andrew Slaughter, wrote to me on 26 April:

"... critics of the bill are to hold a meeting at the House of Commons in the first week of the new parliament to discuss how we can all help to make changes to the Digital Economy Act which takes intelligent account of what many people out there, have been saying about the flaws inherent in a well-intentioned bill. I intend to be at that meeting, arguing the case for the many dozens of people who have contacted me about the bill, and respectfully ask that you cast your vote to enable me to be there, speaking up for you."

I'm not sure which case the 'many dozens of people' were asking him to argue, but I look forward to news of that meeting.