Chronicles from a Caribbean Cubicle writes:
My concern is that our leaders of government (and labour) who have never run companies do not understand the nature of business, and when they start to support the individual’s “right to a job” they do not understand what they are saying. It seems to me that a job is a privilege, not a right, and that a person has as much right to job as they do to a spouse.
The Economist reports on a thriving resourceful expatriate Senegalese community- The Mourides:
At his home in Touba, a pious but cosmopolitan place where local businesses boast of branches in every corner of the earth, one of Bamba's (founder of the Mourides) grandsons, Cheikh Ka, explains the doctrine of self-reliance. “If you depend on others,” he says, “you are not free—it is our philosophy of life.” Before he died Bamba expressed several wishes: in particular he hoped Touba, which he founded, would be a holy city. His extended family, the Mbacke, includes many marabouts, or religious teachers. What they teach includes hard work, self-reliance and solidarity. These ideas have propelled his followers out of their country in search of work, to send money back to their families, to support their marabouts (many of whom tour the world to visit disciples) and to develop Touba.The formalization of informal networks and institutions such as these must be pursued. Too often what really works is is ignored because it doesn't wear the cloak of 'legitimacy'.
All these factors have helped make the Mourides one of the more successful African communities, at home and abroad. Wherever they are, they club together to acquire a mosque and community centre. Their networks help migrants leave Senegal, find work and procure documents. Far from being helpless victims of fate, many Mourides are shrewd operators in a complex, cross-border network. Take Alioune Ka, the owner of a wholesale shop close to Rome's Termini station: he is a brother of Cheikh Ka in Touba, who takes care of the Senegal-based members of the family. Alioune sells “ethnic” items to Senegalese (and others) who hawk them on streets or beaches. Some stock is from Senegal; a lot from Indonesia, Thailand or India.
Babajide Komolafe reports that in Nigeria:
Community Banks have commenced moves to raise funds through private placement and initial public offerings (IPOs)...a Chairman of the National Association of Community Banks (NACOBs) David Adenekan, confirmed to the Vanguard that the association in a bid to ensure that its member banks meet the new capital base, has entered into discussions with Fidelity Bank to help community banks in the state raise funds through private placement. He said the arrangement is to package community banks for private placement on individual basis. He disclosed that five banks have already been packaged while five more banks are currently being packaged for private placement.via Vanguard
Peter G. Klein writes about Intellectuals and Socialism(the clarion cry of many African Intellectuals):
Academics don't know much about how markets work, since they have so little experience with them, living as they do in their subsidized ivory towers and protected by academic tenure. As Joseph Schumpeter explained in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, it is "the absence of direct responsibility for practical affairs" that distinguishes the academic intellectual from others "who wield the power of the spoken and the written word." This absence of direct responsibility leads to a corresponding absence of first-hand knowledge of practical affairs
The FT reports on efforts to turn around one of the continents moribund institutions-The ADB:
The African Development Bank, with 53 African and 24 non-African countries as members, has had a reputation for being sluggish and unresponsive, complex in its processes, slow in disbursing funds, and discreet in its public profile...Since Donald Kaberuka, former Rwandan finance minister, took over as president last September, backed by donors, he has set about overhauling the bank for a much bigger and more central role in development financing on the continent.
This has involved radical changes, replacing four out of five vice-presidents and the secretary-general, reorganising departments, moving more staff into operational posts, opening field offices and powering up the bank’s economics department. In its bid for new credibility, the bank aims to brand itself as “the first port of call for knowledge on the African continent”.
Africa ready for business writes:
"... remittances are expected to continue growing over time. Of course this movement is not without challenges. There are several challenges to Diasporian Investment that I have heard on several occasions. The two that seem to be more major are the small numbers of "one-stop-shop" business start-up/investment centers in Africa and also the ease of obtaining information (or lack thereof) relative to making investment decisions.
However, over time I believe that these are obstacles that can and will be overcome. The sheer growth in numbers of Africa's Diasporian ( plus Foreign Investors) investing in Africa almost neccessitates this. Furthermore, these challenges and risks could be part of the reason that Africa's stock markets have outperformed some of the world's most bullish markets.
PSD Blog reports on the reasons for tepid portfolio investment interest in Africa:
Despite their recently good performance, Sub-Saharan African stock exchanges lose out because of their small size and very low liquidity. As he put it, "the New York Stock Exchange trades more before tea than all of Africa trades in a year." The glaring exception is the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), which is as large and popular as any emerging market stock exchange.
The bottom line - a stock exchange must have $50 billion in market capitalization and $10 billion in value traded to attract any interest from global emerging market funds. Of the 15 African exchanges, only South Africa hits either metric.
Chronicles from a Caribbean Cubicle writes:
The problem is that we mistake that importance of technical ability, and vastly underestimate the importance of entrepreneurial ability. Our schools are organized to produce technicians in all fields, and from age 16 a student must narrow down their course of formal study (for life in most cases) to four subject areas and General Paper.via GlobalVoices
The truth is that educating another lawyer, doctor or accountant is unlikely to contribute much to our GDP. Narrow technical abilities are admirable, but nowhere near as vital to countries in which the large mass of people cannot afford to use them.
What most developing countries need are not more professionals with masters degrees in contract law, but more entrepreneurs who are willing to hire ever increasing numbers of ordinary people.
In the Caribbean, we have developed First World values that have no basis. In other words, we cannot afford to produce more and more sophisticated cardiologists, when the people who need them are selling icy-mints and steering-wheel covers on the corner.
Mamphela Ramphele comments (listen):
"Average annual GNP growth in African countries has climbed to over five percent," she said, "and in countries like Mozambique, Benin, Ghana, Algeria, Nigeria and South Africa, the economies [are getting stronger and stronger]. Last year's acquisition of the South African Bank ABSA by Barclay's PLC was one of the largest acquisitions in the world. Major private equity companies like Blackstone and KKR [are looking] for deals on the continent, and the recently completed RFP process for the development of the Cape Town waterfront saw major [investors] from all over the world bidding to participate. Overall, the rewards remain high and the balance of risks has improved in Africa."via Knowledge@Wharton
Writing in the FT Chuka Mordi of Nex Rubica stated:
Outside South Africa, Sub-Saharan African capital markets represent the last frontier for the unhindered flow of global capital. The problem has always been the absence of the combination of scale and local expertise required to attract global fund managers...There is currently not enough depth in the Nigerian market - its market capitalisation is $31bn, total issue of government bonds about $4bn - to support such a large inflow of cash without overly inflating the market. But the Nex-Rubica forecast is for this size to double between now and the final quarter of 2007, surpassing Egypt by 2008...In the last year, the outperforming stocks on the Nex-Rubica Africa Top 40 Index, have been Nigerian financials. One key attraction is that the risk/return profile in the Nigerian market is generally uncorrelated to western markets. Starting from a relatively low base, Nigeria alone has the momentum in terms of its population, resources and growth potential to catapult it to the first rank of emerging market economies.
Patricia Daniel writes about multipath approaches to ICT sustainability:
The real question is perhaps not "what type of technology is best for empowerment?", but also "what type of empowerment is best for technology?"...In the final analysis, mobiles and community radio are the technology of choice for a majority of people in Africa at the moment.
However, I wish the One Laptop One Child project well, because where there's democratisation of technology it has to have implications for a more open democracy. But I don't think it's going to succeed without drawing on lessons that have already been learned in relation to the social development issues of governance, ownership, inclusion and sustainability. There has been no discussion about who is going to provide the funding for wide-scale community consultation, integration of gender equality or capacity building and ongoing support for education departments to ensure effective use.
Emira Woods and Lisa VeneKlasen of FPIF write:
The African political landscape is being reshaped by women, generating hope for the future of the continent and raising the bar for democracy worldwide...Governments have set concrete targets for women's participation in political bodies. The newly formed Pan African Parliament has also implemented affirmative-action measures to ensure a minimum of 30 percent representation by women, all of whom have been elected to office in their countries.But African women's rising power is measured not just in numbers. In Liberia, the same women who bore the brunt of the country's more than two decades of war are the ones leading the struggle for peace and carving out a new economic and political path.
UMass press reviewing Thomas W. Dichter's "Despite Good Intentions" states that:
He believes that efforts to reduce world poverty have been well-intentioned but largely ineffective. On the whole, the development industry has failed to serve the needs of the people it has sought to help..."He"...calls for a more light-handed and artful approach to development assistance, with fewer agencies and experts involved. His stance is pragmatic, rather than ideological or political. What matters, he says, is what works, and the current practices of the development industry are simply not effective.
The [African] blog wars writes about the 'Resource Curse':
It is widely suspected that the ‘curse’ is largely caused by the effects of over-dependence on resources. Governments, perhaps believing resources will never run dry (in their time), fail to wean economies off these commodities. One of the consequences of this is that in times of high prices, the real exchange rate rises making local industries less competitive, while encouraging borrowing as it becomes relatively cheaper to do so.
The danger though is when prices fall, exchange rates fall and debt repayments soar, and this is after industries have contracted, which dramatically decreases tax revenues. Sure, taxes could be pushed up to compensate, but this wouldn't do much for competitiveness.
Over-dependence is the big issue though. Botswana still gets 70 percent of its export revenues from diamonds, while Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda all earn more than 50 of their export earnings from coffee. Looking west to cotton producing nations, the picture isn’t really any better. And, then, of course, there’s oil, which earns Nigeria 95 percent of its export income. Perhaps part of Chad’s defection to China was because the Asian giant is more likely to be able to buy all of Chad’s oil than Taiwan is.
"...Project Baobab achieves its mission by educating and empowering women with skills they will need to start a small business. This includes not only business training but also skills to build their self esteem and confidence. All students, regardless of whether they receive a grant, will be impacted through esteem-building exercises..."
China’s increasing involvement in Africa should be viewed against this backdrop. Despite the euphonious verbiage about “cooperation”, “equal terms,” and “altruism,” the real intentions of China are threefold. The first is to gain access to Africa’s resources by signing with a bow sweetheart deals with African despots. The second is to canvass for African votes at the United Nations in its quest for global hegemony. In this sense, the Chinese are no different from the French. The third is to seek African land to dump its surplus population. Chinese communes are springing up in Namibia, Zambia, Nigeria and other African countries. The Chinese have succeeded in getting African states to accept large numbers of Chinese experts and workers as part of their investment packages: 28 "Baoding villages" have been established, each housing up to 2,000 Chinese workers, in various parts of Africa. But the Chinese are not the problem.
The real problem was the retinue of clueless African clods, who attended Chopsticks Conference at Beijing in October. “Clueless” because that was no Berlin Conference for sure. No European powers were present; only one Asian power, China. And no Maxim gun was needed. But lying prostrate at China’s feet were 40 African heads of state, offering themselves for voluntary economic enslavement. Disgusting.
Elementary principles of demand and supply suggest that that was a buyer’s market. When 40 desperate suppliers are competing for one buyer’s attention, the buyer calls the shots. With chopsticks dexterity, China can pick platinum from Zimbabwe; oil from Angola, Nigeria and Sudan; cocoa from Ghana; diamonds from Sierra Leone; etc. – all on itsown terms because of its strong bargaining position. Few radical intellectuals and African heads of state see nothing wrong with this
huge imbalance because China is perceived to be a “friend of Africa” since it is “anti-West.”
An FT report on African infrastructure finance states:
Passions run high over all forms of privatisation and private-sector involvement in public utilities. But many experts and officials at international institutions say there is no option between public and private sectors. Infrastructure needs, they argue, will never be met without the resources of both...It has become clear that areas such as transport will continue to depend heavily on injections of public investment and donor support, but public money will have to used in different ways to combine with commercial interests. Mobilisation of capital, including private-sector capital, is one of the “pillars” of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), the economic revival initiative launched five years ago...Africa can also bring to bear its own private savings. South Africa’s Public Investment Corporation, which manages pension funds, is backing a Pan-African Infrastructure Development Fund, aiming initially to raise $1bn for long-term equity investments with participation from other pension funds and the AfDB.
The NYTimes reports on the “Africa Comics” show at the Studio Museum in Harlem which:
"...offers an inside view of Africa of a kind we too seldom get from museums, which, when they consider contemporary African material at all, tend to be all-purpose globalist in their thinking, drawing on a snall stock of market-approved figures. The show demands time and effort. The work is physically small and psychologically concentrated; it is as much about reading as looking; the words are often in languages other than English."
AfricaBeat launches the "South-South Investment in Africa" guide
This is an annotated guide to South-South investment in Africa and its social, economic, and political consequences. Its primary focus is on China in Africa, but it will also take a look at the role of other emerging powers like Brazil and India.
"...African Voices is a permanent exhibition that examines the diversity, dynamism, and global influence of Africa’s peoples and cultures over time in the realms of family, work, community, and the natural environment..."
via Sociolingo
photo courtesy of the Smithsonian
Eric Osiakwan's AfricaCan lauds the alternative financing mechanism proposed for Kenya's National Fiber Network,commenting on a Balancing Act report that states:
The Kenya Government will have a 40 per cent holding in the project, Etisalat 20% and the remaining 40% will go to investors in the East African region. The Government has said it will organise an IPO on the Kenyan Stock Exchange. Several Kenyan companies have expressed interest and one said that the Government had told them it would “guarantee their loan”.
Thank God the Kenyans are experimenting with this approach where government owns part, private sector owns part, educational institutions should also own part, CSO owns part through IPO on the stock market.
The Kenyan government can actually raise the 40% from government bonds . I am not an expert on the stock market discipline of shares or bonds but this is where the financial experts need to come out with innovative solutions that can help raise much of this money locally - it is possible.
Continuing our focus on Diaspora foundations we feature the GEANCO Foundation founded by Godwin Onyema,their mission is to:
Design, develop, and manage medical, educational and athletic facilities in Nigeria. The Foundation’s projects will improve health conditions and learning opportunities for Nigerians and will provide opportunities for research, collaboration and cooperation between individuals and groups in the United States and individuals and groups based in Africa for the benefit of all
CherryFlava proposes a 'Make Africa Wealthy Campaign' they ask
"How long has the world been feeling sorry for Africa?"
This continent's primary aim must be wealth. Its amazing how all the other problems would disappear if we created enough of our own.
Forget poverty, AIDS, TB, malaria and corruption and lets focus on making Africa stinking rich.
Keep you charity money, we don't need a handout. But we do need your time and creative business ideas.
You want to help Africa - get personally involved.
Advise on our business plans, open your markets, make it easier for us to contribute. Don't give us money because you feel sorry for us. Help us find things that we can sell to you and so make loads of our own money.
Handouts and charity are keeping the problems alive. Why would we stop begging if you keep on giving?
Lets keep our eye on the prize which is really going to make a lasting difference. Make Africa Wealthy - promote education, investment, cheap access to telecommunications and turn your charity money into African venture capital.
If you really do care - you'll stop thinking of Africa as a poor continent and rather as a rising competitor.
The journalist John Dvorak is one of the shrewdest observers of the computer scene. In an article for Marketwatch, he manages to both highlight the folly of the so-called $100 laptop and reinforce my view that electricity is the most neglected technology in Africa. Efforts to promote the Web and wider computer usage are well and good, so long as even more energetic efforts are being made to promote access to electricity...“The fact that these people need electricity more than they need a laptop is only part of the problem,” Dvorak quotes me as saying. “The real problem is lost mind share. The [African] people are harmed because these sorts of schemes are sopping up mind-share time of the people who might be doing something actually useful.” The challenge of spreading electricity beyond African elites in cities is a challenge that is both expensive and management-intensive.
Reuters reports on efforts to preserve the manuscripts of Timbuktu covered earlier:
Researchers in Timbuktu are fighting to preserve tens of thousands of ancient texts which they say prove Africa had a written history at least as old as the European Renaissance...Written in ornate calligraphy, some were used to teach astrology or mathematics, while others tell tales of social and business life in Timbuktu during its "Golden Age", when it was a seat of learning in the 16th century.
"These manuscripts are about all the fields of human knowledge: law, the sciences, medicine," said Galla Dicko, director of the Ahmed Baba Institute, a library housing 25,000 of the texts.
"...The mission of the Sierra Leone Network is to integrate, complement, foster collaboration, and facilitate coordination among Sierra Leonean charity, and welfare organizations and businesses with the clear aim of promoting economic empowerment and development in Sierra Leone..."
Open Access News reports that:
This project will take the work of AJOL [African Journals Online] to the next level, by assisting those journals that wish to move to online management and publishing of their contents, using subscription and/or open access models in print and/or online editions. Online publication will lead to a far greater circulation and contribution of this scholarship (than the 3,000 documents delivered by photocopy by INASP). This project will also build on INASP’s tradition of delivering publishing workshops in Africa each year, which includes an introduction to Open Journal Systems. This project will form the basis of a new initiative, located in Africa and directed by an African researcher, aimed at helping African research libraries support scholarly publishing, with an eye to supplying AJOL with complete journal contents.
It is the secular that unites, not divides, it is the secular that includes, not excludes, the secular is basically egalitarian, not selective, it is the secular that guarantees equality of space and opportunity between one individual and the next, irrespective of sex, ethnicity or religion even as it guarantees space and protection for the rival faiths that inhabit the nation space. The theocratic urge is, on the contrary, intolerant and stifling. Religion has been responsible for some of the worst civil atrocities that have been perpetrated in my own country, Nigeria, in peace time.
Lady Mechanic Initiative "...is committed to entrepreneurial skill building as panacea for Nigeria and indeed, African development. To this end, we mobilize broad spectrum of the poor and vulnerable people, groups and association, especially people in hard to reach communities to initiate, design and implement programmes that results in sustainable improvement in their well-being as well as facilitates their reintegration into the mainstream society..."
Founded by Derrick N Ashong SweetMother.org "...recognizes that no society can develop without an understanding of its own worth. We believe that cultural empowerment is a crucial ingredient to the successful political and economic development of any society - for too long the media has portrayed Africa and African people in a light that belies the true beauty and power of our cultures, and has propagated self-destructive and disempowering ideas to Africa's future leaders..."
Another foundation of note is the The Life's Second Chance foundation founded by Wossene Tiruneh Bowler it "... was born with a vision of creating a world where people suffering from cancer get the best medical help and attention. By establishing hospitals and research centers, patients can be treated with dignity, comfort and hope..."
via Ethioblog
John Matshikiza wrote about the Songhai Center covered earlier on Timbuktu Chronicles:
Godfrey Nzamujo’s guiding principle was: “The only way to fight poverty is to transform the poor person into an active producer.” His way of doing this was to create a living and teaching environment where ordinary Africans could learn the skills of self-advancement. There, thoroughly applying all he had learned over the years about mechanical and electronic engineering, farming, economics, business, and husbandry in general (spiritual and temporal) he set about turning his vast, abstract knowledge into something practical.
Clientelism is central to neo-patrimonialism, with widespread networks of clients receiving services and resources in return for support. This relationship may be likened at the highest (presidential) level to that of a father and his children whereby political legitimacy rests on the idea that government stands in the same relationship to its citizens as a father does to his children. Essentially, the father serves as the nurturer, teacher, and most importantly, provider to the nation and in return he receives love and support from his children. It is when he can no longer perform this function that the system starts to fall apart.
Crucially, resources extracted from the state are deployed as the means to maintain support and legitimacy in this system, with the effect that the control of the state is equivalent to the control of resources, which in turn is crucial for remaining a Big Man. That is what lies at the heart of the profound reluctance by African presidents to hand over power voluntarily and why almost all African regimes end in controversial circumstances. In most cases the democratic option is either absent or is not respected by the loser; the stakes simply are too high, as once one is out of the loop regarding access to state resources, the continuation of one's status as a Big Man becomes virtually impossible. Politics in Africa thus tends to be a zero-sum game.
Alex Steffen reports on Market-Based Strategies that Benefit Low-Income Communities. It lays out"...various challenges ("poor understanding of the human and social capitals of low income communities") and various approaches ("design products and services that tap into the wealth of poor"), it showcases nine solutions that seem to be working (such as, in this case, the solution of "acquiring technology through micro-leasing (pdf)..."
For Africa to succeed economically, Birdsall(director of the Center for Development Economics) suggests, nations need to trade with each other more, creating larger, more attractive markets and reaping economies of scale. It makes very little sense for each state in Africa to build their own garment industry… and even less sense for each country to protect their industry against their neighbors with tariff barriers - if trade between countries was easier and cheaper, nations could specialize in sectors of the economy, begin trading to neighboring states, then grow and trade with the wider world. But at present, Sub-Saharan African nations levy tariffs on average of 17% on trade with each other; OECD nations have dropped these tariffs to an average of under 4%.
I think a lack of dignity in adversity does not help our case. It causes us to lose credibility.I am not saying that noble abnegation and a quite acceptance of suffering are the right attitude. I do not aspire to sainthood, especially on behalf of other people. But we need to get out of this whining routine.
Things were done to us, true. We should remember them so that
1)We can recognise and fight them if any attempt is made to repeat them,
2)We will know why we are the world’s unwashed armpit, and
3)We can assess honestly where we went wrong.
Yes, we did do wrong. Though we did not invite the evils, and our own faults do not necessarily justify the evils being committed, our inability to counter these evils is also based on failures on our part. Did our chiefs not sell rivals and prisoners of war into slavery? Did we ourselves not own slaves? Do we not treat our women in much the same way as more powerful nations treat us?
Increasingly we must realise that aid is not the answer -- or at least not all of the answer. There is no argument for immediate self-sufficiency. Not for the hungry people of Zimbabwe. Not for the displaced people of Darfur. Aid for humanitarian purposes is and will be necessary in Africa for the foreseeable future. But securing stability and sustainable wellbeing must come through other means.
What might those be? Fair trade and debt relief offer a far more sustainable path towards security and development...This will require much better terms of trade...If the barriers to entry into wealthy markets are lowered, investment could increase and employment could grow...In addition, our continent needs to harness its diaspora as India has done...Remittances should be leveraged: every year a whopping $100-billion is transferred by migrants to their home countries. In some areas, these remittances are paying a development dividend.
Dennis Matanda at the Sub-Saharan African roundtable comments on the Mo Ibrahim prize:
In a classic case of “African solutions for African problems,” Mohammed “Mo” Ibrahim, a successful London-based Sudanese entrepreneur and multimillionaire with more than $ 500 million to his name - he owned Celtel in Uganda until last year - is offering present and future African leaders the richest annual prize in the world. Announced on October 25, 2006 in London, the prize challenges African heads of state to govern and lead their people properly, which is where the Professor Rotberg index will come in...I agree that there is need to reward honesty, but to reward an African leader to do his job is like pouring milk on a fire when you can use water!
Calestous Juma makes a case for strenghthening engineering education he
"...argues for more engineering academies to engage young engineers and practitioners and generate innovative solutions to sustainable development. Africa has 12 national science academies, as well as a continental one, but only one engineering academy,Nationmedia.
via Scidev and TheGuardian
photo courtesy of the Guardian
NaijaBlog writes about the response to the latest Airplane Crash in Nigeria:
"...Never has the opiatic, under-developing effect of religion in Nigeria been so clear to me as it was last night, watching NTA. There will be no major change in the way aviation is run here, so long as the crash is classified as an Act of God, and our response to it conditioned to be one of prayer. Religion Nigerian-style numbs every sinew of the body, freezes the brain, and erodes any possibility of rational response, and above all, transformative action. It is, at present, a malign force – a force which does not transform, which does not heal. It is, as Soul says, the most vicious colonial effect.
It could, of course, be altogether different. Religion (whatever the hue) can be a force for change, for good. Prayers can probably be answered, in a sense (one crystallises intent through quiet moments of contemplation). But not where there is no accountability, not where religion is used as a political tool for repression (explicit or otherwise), not where material wealth is taken to be a necessary precursor to spiritual wealth..."
The colonial legacy of bureaucratic authoritarianism, pervasive patron-client relations, and a complex ethnic dialectic of assimilation, fragmentation and competition has persisted in post-colonial societies. Patron-client networks remain the fundamental state-society linkage in circumstances of social crisis and uncertainty and have extended to the very centre of the state. This accounts for the personalistic, materialistic and opportunistic character of African politics. Such networks also penetrate institutions of civil society and liberal democracy, undermining programmes of socio-economic and political reform.
Underappreciated "...Street-vended and informally vended food can contribute significantly to the food security of those involved in its production, particularly suppliers of raw produce, food processors and vendors. Women are often owners or employees of street food businesses. In certain countries (Benin, Ghana, Lesotho, Togo and Democratic Republic of Congo), they represent 70 to 90% of vendors. In Ghana and most developing countries, most women sell food in the street primarily to improve the food security of their household and also to have some degree of financial independence.Despite its growing presence, it is a sector that has rarely been the focus of strategic research initiatives that determine the importance and potential hazards of street-vended food, and what contribution it makes to the livelihoods of the urban and peri-urban poor (both producers and consumers)..."
via Natural Resources Institute
Michael Wilkerson writes:
In Uganda and other developing countries, governments who claim to be democratic tend to discard either by intention or by ignorance the social contract theory on which modern democracy is based. The idea, first propounded by philosophers Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, is that government enters into a contract with its constituents where by taking power it agrees to protect their rights. If it fails then it has breached the contract and the people have the right to overthrow the government and find a new one.
Sharda Naidoo reports on remittances:
Remittance flows into Africa have grown exponentially over the past two years, more than $11-billion in 2005 via formal and informal channels.World Bank researchers further believe that remittances have helped reduce poverty and that they offer a lifeline to struggling economies. They have also helped to stabilise irregular incomes and build human and social capital. In Uganda, remittances have cut the share of poor people by 11% and in Ghana by 5%. In Lesotho, remittances now account for more than one-third of gross domestic product (GDP), and more than 50% in Ghana.
Continuing our coverage of foundations we now take a look at the Mo Ibrahim Foundation which has announced a $5million prize that:
Recognises former executive Heads of State or Government in sub-Saharan Africa who have dedicated their constitutional tenure of office to surmounting the development challenges of their country, improving the welfare of their people and consolidating the foundations for sustainable development.
"Saving" Africans is all the rage among celebrities. Hollywood is releasing a string of African morality tales, from "The Last King of Scotland," about Idi Amin's capricious rule, to "Blood Diamonds," the story of a white smuggler in West Africa who has pangs of regret over his misdeeds....By reducing Africans to the status of props in an American morality play, Africans are themselves robbed of some measure of their dignity, which is why a number of Malawians are upset by Madonna's fast-track adoption.
StockMarketNigeria writes about the benefits of Railway Transportation:
The first phase of the Lagos-Kano railway line project is to cost $8.3 billion, of which $2 billion of the amount has already been obtained as a soft loan from the Chinese government. The numerous benefits of the project as announced by the president includes:
· Utilization of local raw materials as much as possible,
·Increase in traffic of goods and passengers around Nigeria,
· Retaining the top rating of important commercial cities like Lagos, Aba and Kano as key commodity-trading points in West Africa,
· And, reduction of road accidents in Nigeria
Allan Brian Ssenyonga writes
The African immigration phenomenon has had different outcomes but one of the most significant yet overlooked is the aspect of remittances. This refers to the money sent back home by the immigrants. For sometime now, remittances have become an important aspect as far as the development of Africa and other poorer nations is concerned. Many Africans living and working in Europe and USA are working hard to maintain their families back home. On receiving their pay cheque, many send almost 60 % of their earnings back home to help foot medical bills of aging parents, pay school dues for school going siblings and relatives as well as establishing income generating projects...although Africa is losing so much in terms of skilled labour, it is also gaining a lot from the huge sums of money sent back home that are directly pumped into the local economy and therefore lead to economic development.
Ashraf Ghani on TEDTalks presents a case for Mobilising Capital to enable State Building:
Full disclosure, Emeka Okafor publisher of Timbuktu Chronicles and Africa Unchained is the co-producer for the TED Global Arusha event.
PSD Blog reports on the WSJ's coverage of Africa's Bull markets:
If you haven't heard this story, it's because the numbers are still small. The London Stock Exchange is five times as big as all African stock markets combined. And South Africa's exchange is 2/3 of the African total.The continent's so-called frontier markets, such as Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Mauritius and Botswana, are up an average of 26% so far this year in dollar terms, according to Liquid Africa. By comparison, the MSCI Emerging Market Index, which includes just three African countries -- South Africa, Egypt and Morocco -- has risen 9.5% during the same period.
Reviews of Roel van der Veen's incisive "What Went Wrong with Africa" state that :
"This work is commendable on several counts. First, it is arguably one of the most ambitious syntheses of contemporary African history and politics to date, combining the study of internal and external factors, usually treated separately in the literature under the rubrics of African politics and African international relations. Furthermore, van der Veen adops a unique multi-disciplinary perspective, as well as a long-term historical perspective, rightly arguing that 'in order to understand Africa's present-day situation, we must look not only at outside influences but also at long-term, indigenous African elements'"--African Studies Review
"[a]ny personal, professional, or academic library reference collection strong in African social issues and history won't want to miss Roeel Van Der Veen's powerful What Went Wrong with Africa, charting the unprecedented changes in people's standards of living in Africa over the years. Africa is the only large contiguous region left out of the worldwide rise in prosperity: What Went Wrong with Africa seeks to explain why."--Library Bookwatch
