Business Book Club | GG Alcock

Kim Hunter
Aug 2, 2017
2 min read

Approximate Reading Time: 4 minutes

Photographs from the event on Facebook

The first Tuesday of every month, like-minded people come together to meet a South African author who has written something of value to business people in South Africa.

This month we were honoured to meet GG Alcock who spoke a little about his life and why he wrote KasiNomics. It was fascinating to hear of how he grew up and his respect for African culture. His book will help you better understand this culture and perhaps guide you in finding new markets. I cannot say more because you will receive more value from watching the video. Have your thinking brain engaged when you do so because this one will blow your mind!

From the publishers website:

Did you know …

That the muti market is worth R3 billion a year, with 27 million consumers?

That the average hawker earns R3 000 a month and there are nearly 500 000 of them!?

That the trade in goats is worth millions of rand?

That the dagga trade can set the standard for market and distribution to the informal market?

That Parmalat Cheese Slices have created a multi-million rand business in kotas, and why the Perfect

Jacques Velleman talking with author GG Alcock

Sishebo Show is the biggest food show in the country?

‘Kasinomics is a book as eclectic, mysterious and colourful as the places and people it explores.’

eKasi, the lokasie, the South African township, once an apartheid ghetto, is today an amazingly transformed place. This township today is an eclectic mix of mansions, shacks, spaza shops, rocking taverns, hawkers, taxis and hot wheels. In this kasi there are vibrant businesses, energetic people, a tightly networked social community and abundant hope.

That is not to say there isn’t extreme poverty, suffering and dissatisfaction, particularly on the peripheries in the huge shack settlements, but to paint the place as a slum is a massive mistake.

Kasinomics attempts to cast a light on the invisible matrix at the heart of South Africa’s informal

economies and the people who live in them. Living and doing business in African marketplaces requires an ethos uniquely suited to the informal, to the invisible, to the intangible. Kasinomics will take you down those rural pathways, weave between claustrophobic mazes of shacks, browse a muti market, visit a spirit returning ceremony and save money with gogo in a stokvel, among many more people and places.

After almost twenty years of focusing on marketing to the informal sector, GG Alcock, CEO of specialist marketing company Minanawe, showcases a number of groundbreaking and very successful case studies in this invisible informal world. His vivid anecdotes and life experiences and how they link to understanding and inspiration for business ideas will make you gasp, laugh and shake your head in wonder.

Watch the event: