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by grecy
3203 days ago
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I saw McDonalds being built in dirt-street towns in Guatemala, I saw lines three blocks long at KFC in South America, and I've seen many Porsches and Ferrarris in the parking lots of American fast food joints in third world countries. I am utterly shocked they have not moved into Africa yet. I've just driven tens of thousands of miles through 17 countries without a single Mcdonalds. Between Morocco and South Africa, there were none [1]. I am shocked they are not in at least Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana, etc. I wonder if that's the longest distance in the world that can be driven without one. Or at least the most consecutive countries. (checkout the map)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_McDonal... |
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Africa's (generalizing) median income has just begun to climb high enough in the last 10-15 years, to be financially interesting to the US fast-food companies.
Nigeria's GDP in 1999 was... $35 billion, for a population of 119 million people, or roughly $300 per capita. That leaves very little money in the bottom 2/3 for buying fast-food. Today Nigeria's GDP is closer to ~$400 billion for 186 million people (call it $2,000 per capita), a tremendous leap in economic capability.
Many other nations in Africa have seen similar results.
Consider that Kenya's GDP at a low point in 1993, was just $5 or $6 billion.... It's $70 billion today.
Or Ethiopia, from $7.x billion in 2002, to $72 billion today and still climbing rapidly.
Most likely these nations become appealing business opportunities for all sorts of foreign companies (whether US or European or Chinese etc), with the rapidly rising disposable incomes.