My Beauty Best Teacher

Co-Founder of Thamel.com Bal K. Joshi writes:

"Productized" remittances deliver greater economic impact than traditional cash remittances for several reasons. The cost to the sender for the money-transfer element of the transaction is lower, thus increasing the buying power of the remittance. The remittance sender maintains more control over the use of the remittance, thus lowering waste and misuse of the money. The productized remittance platform offers the sender more options for investment, including financial services like bank-based savings accounts, loan-based purchases, and access to capital.

via NextBillion

Ayele Bekerie states that "...There were many different writing systems in Africa. The writing systems were and still are, a reflection of various philosophies [thought processes] found in African cultures and civilizations. Language, to an African mind is part of your spirituality. The word spirituality is a way of life based on a society's belief systems and moral values as they relate to a higher being. A spirituality is all of what you define yourself to be and is intertwined with your everyday actions. Your spirituality cannot be separated from your being...."

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem writes about the recently concluded WSF in Kenya.

This dependence on foreigners, both financially and ideologically, is so pervasive that it cannot be ignored anymore. There are signs that an increasing number of Africans are not only outraged by it but becoming ashamed by it, and are looking for ways and means of freeing our activism from the clutches of donor funding and donor-driven agendas. These issues were frankly and honestly discussed at many forums before and during the summit

and asks:

How many of our busy-body, noise-making NGOs qualify in this sense? It is similar to our governments being dependent on the aid of outsiders, and we demanding that they should be accountable to us. We do not pay taxes but demand representation and wonder why the leaders are more responsive to any noise that comes from outsiders?

Wangui wa Goro writes in Pambazuka:

Most worryingly, is the fixing of tradition as something staid that will never change and which condemns the majority into servitude or slavery. For me, culture should answer the question whether it can promote and deliver democracy, equality and social justice for the majority. A pro-people culture would bode well for peace, justice and democracy in Africa; a culture that would enable a re-engagement with the self that has been lacking - a re-engagement with our neighbours and the world in ways that are powerful and which would yield tremendous wealth, enjoyment, creativity, learning and exchange.

Via NaijaBlog

NextBillion covers a recent SME report:

A new report by Citigroup and the Economist Intelligence Unit highlights the growing importance of small and medium enterprises, showing that small businesses are honing their business acumen, getting more competitive and are becoming increasingly crucial for economic growth.

BusinessDay reports on the reasoning behind the proposed 3rd tier market at the NSE

The purpose of third tier market is to help create a platform where small scale indigenous companies would be nurtured and get a maximum support that would enable them move to second tier or first tier market.

also covered at StockmarketNigeria

Omodudu writes:

We ought to take a cue from the Chinese and Indians, they do not graduate and go back home, they take over corporations, and then use such leverage to influence outsourcing decisions, (please read; The World is Flat). The outsourcing trend and IT growth in these countries were initiated by dudes in Silicon valley.

via GlobalVoices

The goal of TerraKulture "...is mainly educational and recreational. The concept of the Centre was borne out of the fact that there is no venue with the intended ambience in Nigeria, for Nigerians and foreigners alike to learn about our cultures and languages..."
via Laspapi

Ali Mufuruki writing in BusinessinAfrica states that:

Africa has come up with a story to explain why, in the past 30 years, while people in Europe, America, Asia and Australia have become incredibly rich and more peaceful, Africa has actually managed to shrink the size of its economy, drive its best educated elite into political and economic exile, reduce the life expectancy of its people, and create more wars and social unrest than the rest of the world combined...Africa’s problems are many, and very complex. Fixing them will not be easy. But it is certainly doable. And, as always, we are going to need a special form of outside help this time round — not millions of dollars, but some honest truths. Our development partners could be helpful if they could look us straight in the eye and say: “In the entire history of mankind, no country has ever developed by outsourcing its own development work. Just because the Indians are very good at mathematics and computer science and they can do loads of work for a few cents an hour, does not make it right that you outsource your child’s computer science homework to India.
“By the same token, Africa must not expect to improve the living conditions of its people by asking foreign taxpayers for charity.”

The philosophy of Global Leadership Adventures founded by Fred Swaniker is "...that leaders are made and not born. We also believe that individuals develop the foundation of their value-systems and their penchant for leadership during their formative adolescent years. This is why we created an organization that nurtures and develops young people, knowing that these influential experiences will prepare them for a lifetime of principled, ethical leadership..."

Tom Kenyon reporting on a Enterprise Formalization conference states that:

The most basic requirement is to understand exactly what informal entrepreneurs might gain from formalizing. Their reasons for doing so are quite context-specific. In mining communities, for example, small scale operators don't usually require loans but they do require a reliable means of holding and transporting cash. Linking formalization to credit would make little sense but providing physical security might...Once policy-makers have understood what it might take to persuade entrepreneurs to formalize, they need - as Chanakya(a contributor) says - to think creatively about how to how to link costs and benefits...Another lesson is to identify and work through 'amphibians' - people who have one foot in the informal sector and the other in the world of formal institutions. The advantage of using intermediaries is that they have closer knowledge of conditions on the ground and may be better placed to enforce bargains.

via PSD Blog

"...Nike’s centers aren’t classrooms. They are workshops where Nigerian artists and craftsmen ply their trades. There is no syllabus, no course of study. You decide what you would like to study or try, and then apprentice yourself to someone, or find a teacher. The textile artists, painters, sculptors, dancers and drummers are proud of their achievements and happy to share their knowledge with you..."

Mwananyanda Mbikusita Lewanika argues that:

The danger is that an over-emphasis on centres of excellence will, rather than improve African science, simply widen the existing technological gap both between African countries and between the continent and the rest of the world...To overcome the scourge of poverty and move towards prosperity, African countries must invest in their own capacities for generating domestic science and technology. This means embracing science and technology as a critical ingredient for national development.
Scientists have a crucial role in engaging policymakers and the general public in science and technology. The onus is on researchers and engineers to devise ways of demystifying science and technology so that African society can appreciate how these fields affect their day-to-day life, and how it is critical to development.

via SciDev

Mwalimu George Ngwane writes:

If Nzo lived to see an Africa whose poignant liberation theology broke the walls of apartheid in the Southern African sub-region, he will never see an emerging Africa, which even with the birth of the African Union, is still tottering on the borders of national self-destruction and a pathological Afrocentric allergy. He will never see an Africa whose political fortunes gained during Independence through a liberation revolution have been reversed with a false wind of democracy through a velvet revolution. With all the emancipatory movements of multipartism and labour unionism across half of the continent, conflicts from the bullet and the ballot are still rife..."

InvestingInAfrica reports on the proposed Ethiopian Commodities Exchange, a project headed by Eleni Gabre-Medhin, a TED Global speaker:

The market is an attempt to bring order and transparency to the agricultural sector, thus making it more efficient. Studies estimate that only a third of the grain produced by Ethiopian farmers makes it to market...The ECEX will electronically connect 10 different warehouses throughout the country, establish 20 remote trading sites, and 200 electronic information boards in various rural areas. It is hoped that these initiatives will level the playing field between producer and purchaser. Smallholders will know what their produce is actually worth on the market, thus preventing them from being taken advantage of. It should also allow them to make more efficient cropping decisions.

Commenting on the directed emergence of Japan's Zaibatsu, Emmanuel Chukwura Achife argues for the creation of Transcorp rivals:

The present Transcorp demands competitors to help them gather the best brains lying around the country. Imagine where we have six “Transcorp”” or by whatever name, we would have six companies competing to build the best refineries, competing to build the best rail lines, competing to build the best housing estates, competing to build the best cars, competing to build the best power plant competing to build the best ships, trains, planes, petrochemical, and so forth. And when they venture outside the country, they will be collaborating and communicating to be the best Nigeria can be.

Non-directed evolution of corporate entities via angel investment, venture capital,IPO's and private equity would be a more sustainable organic approach. Governments have generally not achieved much success in creating nimble winners.

Tomas Brandberg and Nima Sanandaji write:

Africa's real problem is the lack of private investment. According to the OECD, private capital flows to developing countries between 1990-97 exceeded $600 billion. However, only $10 billion of this amount went to sub-Saharan Africa of which $9 billion went to South Africa.
Africa is poor because most countries in the region lack the fundamental elements of a capitalist system: property rights, free markets, free trade and the rule of law. Africans are like everybody else, and ideas that did not work in China, North Korea and the Soviet Union will not work in Africa either. The blame for the present situation in Africa does not lie with capitalists. It lies with corrupt politicians, who have implemented bad economic policies, together with leftist intellectuals who convinced African politicians to implement anti-capitalist economic policies. The west is also responsible, by enforcing trade barriers. It is ironic that anti-globalization movements are frequently opposed to abolishing tariffs and import quotas.

via TCS

Time reports on the bridge-building role of Peter Okaalet:

Peter Okaalet, 52, a physician who decided in the late 1980s to go to seminary in an attempt to bridge the gap. From his base in Nairobi, where he serves as Africa director for a Christian medical-assistance group called MAP International, Okaalet has spent the past 12 years working with ministers--and by extension their congregations--to refine and in some cases redefine their response to AIDS. To that end he has run countless seminars in Kenya and elsewhere and helped establish master's degree programs in pastoral care and HIV/AIDS at 14 seminaries and Bible colleges in eastern and southern Africa.

Okey Ndibe writes:

“Many people think that Nigeria’s central problem has to do with the treachery of the political class,” he said. “And there’s no question that the politicians lack in vision and character. Still, it’s the Nigerian elite that has been most disappointing. It’s them, the educated class, whose betrayal stands out the most. The average educated Nigerian has been a net contributor to the travails of the nation. Whenever I think of them, I’m reminded of Frantz Fanon’s dismissal of the contemptible bourgeoisie with which the neo-colonial state is burdened.”

via NVS

William Dalrymple writes in the Times Literary Supplement:

The great historian of the Crusades, Sir Steven Runciman, knew better. As he wrote at the end of his three-volume history: “Our civilisation has grown . . . out of the long sequence of interaction and fusion between Orient and Occident.” He is right. The best in both eastern and western civilisation come not from asserting your own superiority, but instead from having the humility to learn from what is good in others, as well as to recognise your own past mistakes. Ramming your ideas down the throats of others is rarely a productive tactic.
There are lessons here from our own past. European history is full of monarchies, dictatorships and tyrannies, some of which – such as those of Salazar, Tito and Franco – survived into the 1970s and 1980s. The relatively recent triumph of democracy across Europe has less to do with some biologically inherent western love of freedom, than with an ability to learn humbly from the mistakes of the past – notably the millions of deaths that took place due to western ideologies such as Marxism, fas-cism and Nazism.

via 3quarksdaily

The importance of SME's in building viable economies is often overlooked,Alan Patricof of Apax partners stated, "You could find tons of people who’d give you loans for $1,000 at 3 or 4 percent a month, but you can’t build businesses on that,"At a Brookings Blum roundtable it was noted that, "...With scalable models for microfinance increasingly well established, attention is shifting to the SME sector, where enterprise needs are more complex and there are fewer successful models. Although SMEs have correspondingly higher needs for capital than microfinance, the problem is not so much the amount as the type of capital needed. The class of SMEs with the greatest potential for high-yielding investment and innovation is too small and unproven to depend on commercial loans or internal cash flow, and simultaneously too large and risky to rely on modest short-term microcredit loans..."

The Economist reports:

The developing countries also have a far greater influence on the performance of the rich economies than is generally realised. Emerging economies are driving global growth and having a big impact on developed countries' inflation, interest rates, wages and profits. As these newcomers become more integrated into the global economy and their incomes catch up with the rich countries, they will provide the biggest boost to the world economy since the industrial revolution...Rising exports give developing countries more money to spend on imports from richer ones. And although their average incomes are still low, their middle classes are expanding fast, creating a vast new market. Over the next decade, almost a billion new consumers will enter the global marketplace as household incomes rise above the threshold at which people generally begin to spend on non-essential goods. Emerging economies have already become important markets for rich-world firms: over half of the combined exports of America, the euro area and Japan go to these poorer economies. The rich economies' trade with developing countries is growing twice as fast as their trade with one another.

via Emergic

John Ghazvinian focuses on the Nigerian version of the resource curse:

The problem, in a nutshell, is that for fifty years, foreign oil companies have conducted some of the world’s most sophisticated exploration and production operations, using millions of dollars’ worth of imported ultramodern equipment, against a backdrop of Stone Age squalor. They have extracted hundreds of millions of barrels of oil, which have sold on the international market for hundreds of billions of dollars, but the people of the Niger Delta have seen virtually none of the benefits. While successive military regimes have used oil proceeds to buy mansions in Mayfair or build castles in the sand in the faraway capital of Abuja, many in the Delta live as their ancestors would have done hundreds, even thousands of years ago—in hand-built huts of mud and straw. And though the Delta produces 100 percent of the nation’s oil and gas, its people survive with no electricity or clean running water. Seeing a doctor can mean traveling for hours by boat through the creeks.

via 3quarksdaily

Foreign Affairs writes:

The contrasting experiences of eastern Asia, China, and India suggest that the secret of poverty-reducing growth lies in creating business opportunities for domestic investors, including the poor, through institutional innovations that are tailored to local political and institutional realities. Ignoring these realities carries the risk that pro-poor policies, even when they are part of apparently sound and well-intentioned IMF and World Bank programs, will be captured by local elites...The deepest challenge for countries in the poorest parts of the world, especially Africa, is governance. The African continent has been ravaged both by civil war and conflict and by rapacious leaders who have plundered the natural wealth of their nations. Corrupt rulers and their weak regimes have arguably been the single most important drag on African development. But with increasing democratization, the situation may be starting to improve. And rich countries can play a large role in the reform process, for the simple reason that corruption has two sides -- demand and supply. For every leader who demands a bribe, there is usually a multinational company or a Western official offering to pay it. For every pile of illicit wealth, there is usually a European or American financial institution providing a safe haven for the spoils. The governments of wealthy countries need to take steps to block these activities.