2009/8/25 saidimu apale <saidimu@gmail.com>

nyarotho: nice one ;)

My bad, my opinions were informed by this Business Daily article
(http://bit.ly/2cvu6), in additional to the Economist.com article and
from personal experience.

Yes, Nairobi is a ridiculously expensive city and the quality of
goods/services sucks! The ongoing discussions on ISPs, SLAs, Seacom,
prices etc are a case in point. I'm paying less than $40 USD for a
6M/1M connection at home. Clothes/shoes are much cheaper here and the
quality a lot more guaranteed. Of course, not everything is cheaper
here, but for some reason it feels like a dollar goes much farther
here than it did in Nairobi. I always felt broke in Nairobi, not to
mention scammed by shops/vendors/ISPs/government... you get the drift.

One reason, put forward by the Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz, for
this state of affairs: imperfect information flows:

"But the consequences of imperfect information are even more
fundamental. Firms recognize that consumers and workers face costly
searches. In some special cases this may lead each firm, less
concerned about losing customers or workers to rivals, to raise its
price or lower its wage" (http://bit.ly/10MiQ4)

If it was fairly easy to search for lower prices, and access the
products, prices would fall faster since clients could easily switch
vendors. Given the imperfect information flows (commerce-wise) in
Nairobi, vendors can afford to keep prices high. Someone on this list
was looking for a "recession-friendly" laptop: it is telling that such
information, in a tech-savvy list of all places, is hard to come by.

One of the biggest ways to put price-pressure on vendors: improve
information flows. Briefly commenting on the KDN-SLA thread: how many
consumers know they're entitled to an SLA, or what it is to begin
with? I suspect improving information flows is what someone was
driving at when s/he suggested setting up a hall of fame/shame for
ISPs.

I am not an economist, so take the comments above with 2 grains of kensalt.

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 1:51 PM, nyarotho kennedy <kenyarotho@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> @sai, kenya up there with Geneva?? The only thing that costs less than
> 50 bucks is the air you breathe and other God given things like
> prayer..:). On an even lighter note, is the UN in Geneva or is Geneva
> in the UN??
>
> On 8/25/09, Steve <sikileng@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I Just had to google the most expensive cities and found
> > this<http://bit.ly/LLNCn>and
> > this <http://bit.ly/13D7hG>
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 5:47 PM, Watson Kambo <wkwats@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Guys are you sure about this coz compared to Kigali Rwanda, Kinshasa Congo
> >> and some other cities in Africa Nairobi is like way cheaper to live in....
> >>
> >> 2009/8/25 saidimu apale <saidimu@gmail.com>
> >>
> >> In addition to your observation, almost everything in Nairobi is more
> >>> expensive than in comparative cities. Wasn't there a study last year that
> >>> ranked Nairobi as one of the most expensive cities to live in the world?
> >>> Right up there with Geneva etc?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 2:48 AM, Ashok Hariharan
> >>> <ashok@parliaments.info>wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 6:14 PM, saidimu apale<saidimu@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> > ... from the Economist: http://bit.ly/kV9p6
> >>>> > _
> >>>>
> >>>> I suspect the figure may be a bit skewed because of the inflated
> >>>> positioning of junk food in kenya.
> >>>>
> >>>> In the US junk food is cheap -- and as such is positioned as junk. in
> >>>> kenya its a lifestyle thing -- people take their families out on
> >>>> friday to eat a burger at steers.
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> >>
> >> --
> >> Watson wanjohi kambo
> >>
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