GG Alcock was born in Msinga, then one of the most poverty-stricken and violent parts of KwaZulu-Natal. GG’s activist parents, Neil and Creina Alcock, raised their two sons in a mud hut with no running water, electricity or modern conveniences and they grew up like young Zulu boys. Zulu reared and bred, the boys learnt the essence of how to survive in a harsh world – valuable skills that have undoubtedly contributed to GG’s success as an entrepreneur.

GG Alcock

GG has been at times a shebeen owner, political activist, community worker, African adventurer and successful businessman. He is fluent in Zulu and conversant in most South African ethnic languages. In 1999, GG founded Minanawe Marketing, an activations business which pioneered marketing to township and informal mass markets in South Africa.

After selling Minanawe, GG founded Kasinomics, an advisory service providing insights, strategies, route-to-market and consumer marketing to the informal kasi consumer and business sectors. Kasinomics is also invested in several township and informal sector focused startups.

GG Alcock considers himself an Economic Activist, excavating the silence and opening eyes to the invisible economies of our cities, kasi’s and rural homelands. He advocates for government and formal business sector recognition, support, empowerment and consideration of the informal economy and the kasipreneurs who represent the future for our economic growth.

GG’s book ‘KasiNomics: African Informal Economies and the People Who Inhabit Them’ casts a light on the invisible matrix at the heart of South Africa’s informal economies and the people who live in them. KasiNomics takes you down rural pathways, weaves between claustrophobic mazes of shacks and joins gogo in a stokvel, among many more people and places.

GG’s next book, ‘KasiNomic Revolution: African Informal Economies’, explores the revolution taking place in the great marketplaces of the informal sector. The informal business sector is the next great frontier of Africa and it is undergoing an economic revolution – a new world of small people doing big things and transforming the continent. The future of African economic activity.

You may have read GG Alcock’s books about the kasi economy, his book; ‘Born White Zulu Bred’ tells his story and that of many of his people – a literary journey of a third world tribal society following his journey from the mud hut he was raised in and the tribal forces that shaped him, to the dynamic world of KasiNomics.

GG Alcock is a thought leader and commentator on the trends and dynamics of the informal economies and societies which make up the majority of South Africa. He is a regular speaker on a range of topics, from from business to motivational to trend talks on subjects including entrepreneurship, the informal market, diversity and culture, marketing communications to the mass market, and the route-to-market strategies for the informal sector.

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