My Beauty Best Teacher

Chuks Oluigbo writes:

In order to participate as equal partners in the globalization process and reap fully the fruits of globalization, Nigeria and the rest of the Third World must, as a matter of urgency, aspire towards self-sustenance and –sufficiency by developing indigenous technology, diversifying their economies, reducing importation and conversely encouraging the emergence of local industries, limiting the activities of the multinationals through strict regulations, searching for alternative roads to development where the capitalist mode of production has failed to produce results

Rob Katz reviews Tom Friedman's recent article about patient capital otherwise known as meso finance:

Friedman writes about mesofinance, the missing middle of investment that comprises the gap between microfinance and formal finance. He notes that there's a huge opportunity to support bottom-up development in Africa by providing patient capital: longer-term, lower-interest loans and investments (versus venture capital).

Mukoma Ngugi writes:

In addition to providing raw materials, labor, and markets for finished products, Africa also cleanses the conscience of Africanist scholars, evangelists and missionaries, the rock and roll musicians who want to save Africa through orphan adoption, and philanthropists with Mother-Theresa complexes...We have reached a dangerous psychological state and internalized beggar mentality to a point where we see US and Western Aid as part and parcel of our national budget.

"...Madame Dembélé Mariam Sidibé is the founder and Director of “Muso Danbe” a life skills center for orphaned and handicapped young girls in Kayes, Mali...Since family and community traditions are passed down from mother to daughter, orphaned girls often lack critical domestic skills such as cooking, child rearing and family etiquette due to being separated from their mothers too soon...The center produces beautiful, high quality cloth ranging from rich bazin, to colorful batik to traditional mud cloth and indigo..."

"...The African Diaspora Archeology Network (ADAN) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary effort which provides a focal point for dialogues concerning archaeological and historical studies of African diasporas..."

Award-winner Aminata Dramane Traoré is the founder of Forum pour l'autre Mali
she has "...established a cultural training centre in Mali, stimulated activities in the field of textiles and design, and was Mali’s Minister of Tourism and Culture. Preferring to work more directly in poor urban areas, she emphasizes self- sufficiency, use of local skills and materials, and mobilizes communities to build infrastructure, networks and enterprises..."
via Sociolingo

The FT reports on the work of Dora Akunyili,Nigeria's Drug Czar:

By the turn of the millennium, Nigerians had become among the world’s most frequent victims of fake drugs. The country’s reputation was so bad that its west African neighbors were refusing to import the medicines that came across its borders. An analysis in 2001 of 2,060 drug samples taken from the large wholesale markets where most medicines are easily bought showed that 62 per cent were not registered with the country’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (Nafdac).

clamping down on hawkers and wholesale drug markets, and pursuing dodgy manufacturers and importers alike. Nor did she flinch from angering powerful people, reprimanding Nestle for importing out-of-date baby milk, closing the bakery of the wife of the former president Ibrahim Babangida for using a carcinogenic bread-enhancing chemical, and even fining one of the current president’s farms for importing chemicals without a permit. But the worst abusers were far more difficult to target. ”The drug people were like gods here,” she says. ”Since 1960, with independence, they became progressively entrenched and terrorised everyone unchallenged. Outside oil, there’s no business as lucrative as drugs.”

Slate reviews Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil. by John Ghazvinian and asks four questions:

Does oil-producing Africa live up to the hype? Why is it impossible to buy bananas in Gabon, when they grow in profusion in the nation's virgin rainforest? Can an underdeveloped country like São Tomé and Príncipe learn from other nations' mistakes and avoid the "curse of oil"? What effect does the establishment of an oil-company compound in the middle of Chad have on the neighboring land and people?

The Economist reports on the acquisitive appetites of Emerging market multinationals :

While globalization has opened new markets to rich-world companies, it has also given birth to a pack of fast-moving, sharp-toothed new multinationals that is emerging from the poor world.Indian and Chinese firms are now starting to give their rich-world rivals a run for their money. So far this year, Indian firms, led by Hindalco and Tata Steel, have bought some 34 foreign companies for a combined $10.7 billion.
Indian IT-services companies such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro are putting the fear of God into the old guard, including Accenture and even mighty IBM (see article). Big Blue sold its personal-computer business to a Chinese multinational, Lenovo, which is now starting to get its act together. PetroChina has become a force in Africa, including, controversially, Sudan. Brazilian and Russian multinationals are also starting to make their mark. The Russians have outdone the Indians this year, splashing $11.4 billion abroad, and are now in the running to buy Alitalia, Italy's state airline

John Nellis rebuts a paper that contends that the privatisation of basic utilities has been a failure in Africa(pdf) .His reasons are that the writers:

-overestimate the ease of improving performance in state-owned firms.
-underestimate the amount of investment capital required in run-down African water and electricity sectors.
-the Policy Research Brief does not mention the promising ‘hybrid’ experiments (Athi Water) that combine local African private management with public ownership.

the solution is not to eschew private investment,but rather find mechanisms to make it more politically acceptable,more socially responsible and more mutually beneficial.

Akwe Amosu writes about the Africa-China relationship:

For non-governmental Africa in these new times, the choice is not between China and the West. The important choice must be made closer to home. On one side are the rulers who are too lazy, incompetent, or venal to take the necessary steps to share the benefits of investment and give Africa’s populations the chance to build a viable economic future. On the other side is the real leadership of presidents, business leaders, and legislatures who have the self-discipline, honesty, and commitment to set a new course and use the unprecedented benefits of Chinese investment to achieve some real development.

Nancy Birdsall writes about inequality in developing countries:

where the institutions of government are weak to start with, inequality makes strengthening them harder, and in general of maintaining accountable government. That in turn makes it less likely that the government will provide adequate public services, thus reducing the economy’s growth potential. If the rich fail to support public education, for example, favoring public policy that preserves privileges even at the cost of growth, inequality not only inhibits growth given government failure (as outlined above), but itself contributes to government failure. The problem is worse in countries with substantial poverty at the bottom and without a strong middle class to demand accountability from government.

Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee writes

We economists and development experts are still thinking in machine mode—we are looking for the right button to push. Education is one such button. Within education, there are more buttons: Economists talk of decentralization, incentives, vouchers, competition. Education experts talk about pedagogy. Government officials seem to swear by teacher training. If only we could do it right, whatever the favored “it” might be, we would be home free.
The reason we like these buttons so much, it seems to me, is that they save us the trouble of stepping into the machine. By assuming that the machine either runs on its own or does not run at all, we avoid having to go looking for where the wheels are getting caught and figuring out what small adjustments it would take to get the machine to run properly.