Intelligence from the Ground Up

Only one in five pairs of African cities has a direct flight, and fares are the highest in the world. The network still reflects who it was built for, and the cost shows up in trade that never happens. I built an index to measure what flying costs as a

If you are online shopping or travelling, chances are high you own either a Visa or a Mastercard. Visa and Mastercard are the two largest card networks in the world. Outside China they process about 90% of card payments, a duopoly with almost no competition. That position is extremely profitable.

In 1972, a young Swedish medical student named Hans Rosling (author of Factfulness and famous for his TED-talks) arrived at a medical school in Bangalore, India. Sitting in on his first class, he watched fourth-year students spend thirty minutes dissecting a kidney cancer case in front of him.

Wiza Jalakasi has spent fifteen years building the infrastructure layer that makes African digital economies run. What he has learned about capital, fragmentation, and the continent's future is not what most investors expect to hear. When I spoke to Wiza Jalakasi he was in Johannesburg, about to leave

In Ireland, it takes 2.9 percent. In Sudan, it takes 2,453 percent. That is the gap the Runway Index measures. The third quarter edition covers 183 countries. How it works The index asks one question: what does a flight out of your country cost compared with what people

Key Takeaway • The gap between the richest and poorest countries sharing the “emerging markets” label has grown from roughly 10x in 1988 to 25x today: Qatar at $77,000 GDP per capita, India at $3,050. • Emerging markets now account for approximately 35% of global GDP at nominal value. Adjusted