My Beauty Best Teacher

A 110 page report(pdf) by Kroll covered in the Guardian:

Alleges that relatives and associates of Mr Arap Moi siphoned off more than £1bn of government money. If true, it would put the Mois on a par with Africa's other great kleptocrats, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and Nigeria's Sani Abacha...The report was obtained by the website Wikileak, which aims to help expose corruption. The document is believed to have been leaked by a senior government official upset about Mr Kibaki's failure to tackle corruption and by his alliance with Mr Moi before the presidential election in December.

The FT reports(subscr. reqd):

The development of capital markets in Africa’s strongest economies has accelerated this year. In Nigeria, there is now a bond yield curve out to 10 years, and equity capital markets transactions so far this year have totalled $3.3bn, according to Dealogic. This is tiny by international standards, but a huge jump that brings it close to volumes in the more developed South African market. Most of the Nigerian equity offerings, though, are the result of capital-raising by its consolidating banking sector, and more activity in areas such as oil and telecoms is needed to maintain the impetus.

Jonathan Greenblatt reports on the recently concluded International Development Design Summit (IDDS) at MIT:

Teams devised their own projects based on their market knowledge and insights. Many expressed the intent to return to their local communities after IDDS to spread their innovations among their neighbors and peers. These individuals were empowered to drive the front-end of the process as well as to earn the downstream reward. It's a rare thing to see a Western institution that directly engages its intended beneficiaries from the Global South, not as passive recipients, but as active partners. Other organizations would be well-advised to emulate this model...IDDS put forth incredibly basic design criteria. Teams were required to create innovations to serve a clear development need, to use locally available materials and to do so at a low cost. Students were not asked to create business models for their inventions, but simply to use the four-week period to create working prototypes and demonstrate proof of concept.

Adam Wolfe writes:

In the end, global financial markets cannot save Africa alone. It will need to save itself. The World Bank and donor countries can help to finance the necessary infrastructure investments Africa needs to get on its feet, but African government’s will have to stop diverting the revenues from oil and other commodities to their cronies and invest back in their own nations. China has not been helpful in this regard -- by neglecting to put conditions on the money it loans, Beijing only enables corrupt officials to steal from Africa’s future.
Still, the recent interest from Western financial firms has not come out of nowhere. The investment climate is improving in significant ways across most of the continent. But the road from “frontier market” to “emerging market” will be an arduous journey for Africa’s governments. Despite the current opportunities, many may still turn back before reaching their destination.

via Ipienso

The FT reports:

When Jendayi Frazer, the US assistant secretary of state for Africa, visited earlier this year she predicted that in 10 to 15 years Angola would be one of the three hubs in sub-Saharan Africa, along with the traditional powerhouses of South Africa and Nigeria.
It is a view widely shared by bankers. Outside South Africa “you’ve got to be in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Angola”, says Craig Bond, CEO of Standard Bank Africa, the African arm of Standard Bank, the continent’s largest bank. Angola has registered five new banks in the past year and is expected to register five more by the end of 2007, according to Paul de Sousa, the representative for KPMG. The “big three” banks in South Africa, Standard Bank, First National Bank and ABSA, and several international banks have been scouting in recent months for potential acquisitions.

Ronald Bailey writes:

World Bank environmental economist Kirk Hamilton and his team in the bank's environment department have found that most of humanity's wealth isn't made of physical stuff. It is intangible. In their extraordinary but vastly underappreciated report, Where Is The Wealth Of Nations?: Measuring Capital for the 21st Century, Hamilton's team found that "human capital and the value of institutions (as measured by rule of law) constitute the largest share of wealth in virtually all countries."

Positively Zambia writes about "pretend NGO's":

There are over 10,000 NGOs registered with the Zambian government. Almost all have a mission, vision, moto, logo, constitution and strategic plan. My experience is that only about 1 in 10 are implementing activities at any one time. In a country with over 50% unemployment, people seek the easiest route to employment. This is often starting a non-governmental organisation as Zambia is one of the countries which has received the most aid since independence.In Chipata, the fourth largest town, the UN are represented by the World Food Programme and UNAIDS volunteers. There are several large international development NGOs, World Vision, Care International, Plan and Africare. There are perhaps 50 medium-sized organisations with staff, premises and activities, and several hundred smaller organisations. Most upwardly mobile young people I speak to are trying to set up NGOs not businesses because of the easy money that comes with it.
There is a great deal of learnt dependency. People are used to getting money from willing donors so have tired of coming up with ways in which they can work themselves out of poverty. Of course I am working in an urban setting, and many rural Zambians would never have even seen a white person, never mind accepted donations. And its wrong to suggest that Zambians are lazy. They work incredibly hard tilling fields and cycling the produce to market.

via Global Voices

The Economist reports on a plan by Sam Jonah for private equity funding of road infrastructure:

Mr Jonah is trying to raise $250m to build long-distance roads across Africa—the lack which is one of the most obvious failures in the continent’s infrastructure. His goal is to find 50 successful African business people, each willing to invest $5m in the fund, and then to use multilateral funds to leverage the money into the billions. “People in Africa, if they come together, can make a big difference,” says Mr Jonah. “What I want to do is put my money where my mouth is.”

via iPienso

Arvind Subramanian writes in WSJ:

In research with Raghuram Rajan, we find that in countries that received more aid, exportable industries systematically underperformed. And exporting manufactured goods has been the mode of escape from underdevelopment in many of the East Asian successes. Is it a coincidence that, with rare exceptions (Mauritius), there are no booming clothing industries -- the launching pad for some of the East Asian miracles -- in aid-addled Africa? This despite the fact that clothing is only minimally demanding of infrastructure and entrepreneurship, and despite the very favorable access that Africa has always had in Western markets for exports of clothing products.

Continuing on the damage of Aid advocacy.

Aid advocacy leads to perhaps an even more serious problem. There is a limited stock of good will and good intentions in the rich world and the question becomes whether this stock is best harnessed by mobilizing more aid, or by pursuing alternative actions that could have a bigger impact.
Consider a few: mobilizing more money to provide incentives for greater research and development devoted to addressing poor country health and agriculture problems (the green revolution in Asia was made possible by research on high-yielding varieties of wheat, and Africa hasn't had a similar revolution of its own); making regulatory changes in industrial countries that can reduce corruption (for example, more rigorous enforcement of bribery and corruption by rich country officials and corporations) in poor countries, which could have a huge impact on economic performance; or allowing more immigration from the poorest countries, which would directly benefit the poor.
These solutions are seldom pursued with the zeal that they deserve, in part because they are more difficult to support politically, and in part because that zeal which is essential to overcome the difficulties gets diverted toward, well, to calling for more aid.

Bruno Giussani reports on a change(pdf) in Food Aid policy by CARE, one of the worlds largest charities:

One of the world's biggest charities has now acted upon this idea. CARE, writes the New York Times, is turning down some $45 million a year in US federal financing, saying American food aid is not only plagued with inefficiencies, but also may hurt some of the very poor people it aims to help.
CARE says it will phase out by 2009 the practice of selling state-subsidized American farm products in African countries that in some cases compete with the crops of struggling local farmers (watch Jacqueline's speech for a parallel take on how donated clothes compete with local textile production). The move is controversial -- other charities are defending the current system -- but CARE has already started investing in local companies.

Monique Maddy writes:

More than anything else, what Africa and the African people need to escape the abyss of poverty and the vicissitudes of Mother Nature is jobs. This need is fundamental because it is the passport to personal independence and to the freedom to pursue life, liberty, and prosperity, and all that it entails, including such basic essentials as clean water, food, health, and education. A job provides an opportunity to live a meaningful life and to contribute to society.
Africa needs the kinds of jobs that are created primarily by foreign and local investors and entrepreneurs -- jobs that will provide its people with incomes that allow them to produce, to consume, and to educate and care for their children.

"Learning to Love Africa" - Monique Maddy speaks at Google

Nubuke Foundation aims to "...to capture, record and promote our history and culture for future generations. This foundation will collect, collate and display our heritage, promote and help develop contemporary art and, lastly, leverage our history to encourage interest, especially for the benefit of future generations...and be synonymous with innovative thinking and cultural enlightenment..."

CityWire reports on the challenges faced by funds in deploying capital:

A surge of investors moving into Africa has hit liquidity in the market so hard that Investec Asset Management is considering soft closing some of its funds investing in the continent...David Aird, managing director of Investec, said: ‘The liquidity in these areas (ex-South Africa) is a little bit of a challenge for us given the level of interest from retail investors. It is improving as new companies come to the market and more stock exchanges open up, but at the moment it’s a bit tight.
‘If the total funds’ size comes to the point where we cannot manage them efficiently, we will close the products – we have no hesitation in doing that. It’s a bit of a moving target, and everything depends on how much these markets can take, but we’re hoping that in six to 12 months the liquidity may have improved.’

Victor Konde founder of the ATDF writes:

Governments have to provide some learning and experimentation space for creative ideas. Mr William Easterly argues that there are two types of approaches to development: “planners” and “searchers.”
Planners, mainly from the developed countries, have ambitious schemes, experienced development economists, serve as experts and financiers and greatly influence government policies of recipient countries — where possible backed by conditions.
Searchers, on the other hand, are often talented locals or returnees with good unproven ideas, often outside official government channels, with limited support.
The planners get most of the attention as they champion one “new big idea” after another. No one knows what searchers exist or champion until the projects, if they managed to get support, become successful.
Promoting entrepreneurship may require provision of support for individuals willing to test innovative concepts.

Ethan Zuckerman builds on his Incremental Infrastructure concept:

[T]he idea is to build essential facilities -- telephone networks, power grids, roads -- in small pieces using private investment, instead of relying on large, centrally planned, government-run projects.The rise of mobile phone networks linking more than 100 million Africans across the continent and the blossoming of cybercafes from Cape Town to Dakar are evidence that incremental infrastructure is already transforming the continent. But Africa needs go beyond telephones and computers. Many nations lack roads, electric power, schools, hospitals, clean water. If the lessons learned from building telephone and Internet systems can be applied to other types of African infrastructure, African entrepreneurs could find themselves wiring villages, paving roads, and perhaps even building airports -- building the new Africa while turning a profit in the process.

Entering the debate Ory Okolloh says:

I’m wondering whether he’s too quick to extrapolate the mobile phone phenomenon to other areas. I’m especially thinking about big ticket items like roads and power generation/transmission that don’t have the same option of being subsidized by the consumer. Also the incremental and even moreso the “pico” approach does not address needs on a macro-level that most countries in Africa need to address, having power in the village is great but if factories / business can’t operate at an optimal level because of power shortages or costs there’s still a big conundrum that needs be address (and unfortunately the role of government can’t be wished away).

For added coverage see Worldchanging

Ross Clark writes about the protectionism built into the climate change business:

Increasingly the politics appear to be shifting the burden of cutting carbon emissions on to the world’s poor: they must be kept in a state of noble peasanthood so that we can carry on living pretty much as before. The attitude of the West can be summed up by Tony Blair’s remark when ‘offsetting’ the carbon emissions from his holiday last January to Florida: ‘It’s just not practical’ to ask people to give up their foreign holidays. Indeed not: far more practical that we assuage our environmental guilt by making the developing world give up their chance to aspire to our standard of living.

via My Heart's in Accra

The FT continues its focus on the fund landscape within the continent:

Signs of a more favourable investment climate are emerging as economies strengthen and diversify, fuelled by the commodity price boom and lower debt levels, currency stability improves and fiscal governance begins to tighten...Many challenges still face the investment community and each country needs to be assessed separately in terms of risk, political instability and economic drivers. Many African countries do not have stock exchanges yet and those that do are largely typical of frontier markets, lacking in liquidity and ease of trading. But their number has grown dramatically in the past few years, as has the number of companies listed.
As yet there is no internationally recognized pan-African index, although this may change as the local stock exchanges grow.

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy writes:

Science can prosper among Muslims once again, but only with a willingness to accept certain basic philosophical and attitudinal changes—a Weltanschauung that shrugs off the dead hand of tradition, rejects fatalism and absolute belief in authority, accepts the legitimacy of temporal laws, values intellectual rigor and scientific honesty, and respects cultural and personal freedoms. The struggle to usher in science will have to go side-by-side with a much wider campaign to elbow out rigid orthodoxy and bring in modern thought, arts, philosophy, democracy, and pluralism.

via 3quarksdaily

At TED Global Chris Abani talks about the importance of story telling:

"...Aluka seeks to attract high-quality scholarly content about Africa from institutions and individuals across the globe. By contributing their collections to the Aluka platform, content owners will have a means of offering access to their collections to an international audience—without having to develop and support their own technology platforms. Aluka’s web-based platform provides powerful tools for research, teaching, collaboration, and knowledge exchange..."

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong writes:

In a world that is increasingly becoming rational - with its technological feats and advancing sciences and booming intelligences and transnationalities and increasing hybridization of all kinds of human endeavours – excessive use of the word “God” not only blurs reasoning, paradoxically, God’s ultimate gift to humankind, but also complicate the situation of majority of Ghanaians who are praying daily, as the highly filled churches and mosques show, to escape painful poverty, some caused by the very politicians who appear not to understand their situations. In this sense, the excessive use of the word “God,” in the face of poverty (most Ghanaians live on $2.00 a day) and diseases and ignorance and backwardness, is seen as a “primitive, frightening and atavistic.”

Alex O. Awiti a fellow at the Earth Institute writes:

Entrepreneurs can catalyse sustainable economic growth by identifying market opportunities and business models that meet the needs of underserved communities in emerging economies. In essence, entrepreneurs can be true allies in poverty alleviation through market solutions, employment and wealth creation as opposed to aid and subsidies. Proponents of foreign aid often think of poverty as a technical problem they can solve using a universal blueprint or Big Plan and huge dollars in financing. If it were that simple poverty would be history. Efforts to alleviate poverty must recognise that poverty is a complex labyrinth of social, institutional, political, historical, geographical and technological factors.

Imnakoya writes about the "right mindset":

People always look up to the government as if it holds a magical wand which can be used to willy-nilly reverse the rots in the society. People talk of, and look up to “leaders” to fix problems -as if they are extra-terrestrial beings that dropped from the sky. The last time I checked, these “leaders” share one major characteristic with an average Nigerian: The same mindset."

Challenging fellow Nigerians( read Africans)

Until Nigerians start taking baby-steps to effect changes, changes that can only be brought about by a change in mentality and orientation, Nigeria will remain broken. These steps will commence when we learn to ask questions…simple but meaningful questions. The simple “What”, “Why” and “How”. Identify the problem, figure out why they exist, or remain protracted after several failed remedies, then imagine how it can be fixed.

Rob Griffin of The Independent reports.

An economic revolution driven by the booming global demand for commodities over the past few years means the corporate world can no longer afford to ignore fast developing nations such as Nigeria, Botswana and Ghana...

Quoting Bryan Collings of Hexam Capital Partners.

A lot of politically stable countries endowed with resources such as oil and commodities have succeeded in strengthening their reserves, stabilising interest rates and providing a much better environment in which to operate," he says. "They have also benefited from the development of capital markets in the region.

continuing...

Sub-Saharan Africa - excluding South Africa - rose by an impressive 38.2 per cent and were not affected by either the March correction, which hit a number of rival emerging markets, or the Nigerian presidential elections a month later. This compares with a relatively modest 10.2 per cent rise for the MSCI Far East index and a fall of 5.5 per cent in the MSCI Eastern Europe.

The power supply challenge is being reframed as an opportunity

Another serious concern is the continent's power supply problems. It is estimated that more than half of sub-Saharan nations are now facing crippling electricity shortages with blackouts becoming increasingly common."In many ways Africa is a victim of its own success as the higher-than-expected GDP growth has put a huge strain on the electricity supply, which is causing problems as there hasn't been any major investment in the industry for 15-20 years," Mr Thomson adds. "On the positive side, however, you can make money by investing in companies that are building power-producing capacity in the region."

Katharine Vincent asserts that treating Africa as the victim in the Climate Change debate is wrongheaded:

It is true that at the continental scale Africa may suffer because of it is geographic and economic vulnerability. But branding Africa as a victim does a disservice to the many examples of small-scale resilience and adaptive capacity in evidence throughout the continent.
Furthermore, perpetuating the 'Africa as victim' myth runs the risk of deflecting attention away from a systematic investigation into how such resistive measures could be expanded to reduce vulnerability.

Taiye Tuakli-Wosornu writes about 'Afropolitans':

What distinguishes this lot and its like (in the West and at home) is a willingness to complicate Africa – namely, to engage with, critique, and celebrate the parts of Africa that mean most to them. Perhaps what most typifies the Afropolitan consciousness is the refusal to oversimplify; the effort to understand what is ailing in Africa alongside the desire to honor what is wonderful, unique. Rather than essentialising the geographical entity, we seek to comprehend the cultural complexity; to honor the intellectual and spiritual legacy; and to sustain our parents’ cultures...Ultimately, the Afropolitan must form an identity along at least three dimensions: national, racial, cultural – with subtle tensions in between. While our parents can claim one country as home, we must define our relationship to the places we live; how British or American we are (or act) is in part a matter of affect. Often unconsciously, and over time, we choose which bits of a national identity (from passport to pronunciation) we internalize as central to our personalities. So, too, the way we see our race – whether black or biracial or none of the above – is a question of politics, rather than pigment; not all of us claim to be black. Often this relates to the way we were raised, whether proximate to other brown people (e.g. black Americans) or removed. Finally, how we conceive of race will accord with where we locate ourselves in the history that produced ‘blackness’ and the political processes that continue to shape it.

also covered at The Afrobeat
Thanks Amini

Patrick Awuah co-founder of Ashesi University talks about Educating a New Generation of African Leaders at TED Global:

Enterprise Africa held a panel discussion on "Fighting Poverty through Entrepreneurship in Africa". Speakers included William Easterly,Peter Boettke and Temba Nolutshungu Watch videos part1 part2 part3 and part4 (right-click and save)

The NYTimes reports on the renewed interest in the manuscripts of Timbuktu covered earlier:

A surge of interest in ancient books, hidden for centuries in houses along Timbuktu’s dusty streets and in leather trunks in nomad camps, is raising hopes that Timbuktu — a city whose name has become a staccato synonym for nowhere — may once again claim a place at the intellectual heart of Africa.
...This ancient city, a prisoner of the relentless sands of the Sahara and a changing world that prized access to the sea over the grooves worn by camel hooves across the dunes, is on the verge of a renaissance.

photo courtesy of Afrol News

The Made in Africa Exhibition stated that:

In Mali and Senegal, those who have work in what we call the formal sector of the economy are almost wholly limited to the urban elite...The informal economy includes much of the trade that takes place in the markets and that offers possibilities for those who are inventive and possess sufficient "go-ahead" spirit

Bunker Roy founder of the Barefoot College argues forcefully for a bottom up approach to development.He questions the value of MDG's:

These goals were set by international donors, governments and academics, who are speaking and acting on behalf of poor communities instead of being answerable to those communities. The people on the ground have no sense of ownership and must rely on knowledge and skills from outside...Tackling poverty requires a fundamentally different approach: one that starts with people themselves and encourages the initiative, creativity and drive from below that must be at the core of any transformation of their lives if it is to be lasting...The “bottom up” approach is about living and working with the poor, listening to them with humility to gain their confidence and trust... It is about respecting and implementing the ideas of the poor, encouraging them to use their skills and knowledge for their own development. It is about taking a back seat and providing the space for them to develop themselves.

via iPienso

Businessweek reports on an initiative to engage Senegal's cotton industry by the HEC School of Management.Bertrand Moingeon a professor at the school outlines some of their goals:

Students would be enrolled—especially those concentrating on sustainable business—in what happens at the local level in the different villages. We can see having students who go into villages and organize meetings with the local cotton producers and could contribute to knowledge-sharing forums. We think that some students, just as they did in Bangladesh, will write their research project or dissertation on these experiences in Africa...At the end of the day, what we expect is that we have an impact on the economy of this sector. If we increase the managerial skills at all levels of this industry, we will foster the competitiveness of this sector. This same knowledge can then be applied to other industries in Africa.

via Annansi Chronicles

Gregg Zachary writing about African agriculture states that (PDF):

Rather than a big bang, advances are occurring on the margins...the key breakthrough in African agriculture is not a new seed or a vast increase in the use of fertilizers or new machines. Indeed, fertilizer use remains shockingly low in Africa, and in many countries, tractors are as rare as rhinos. What has generated fresh optimism is the aforementioned elimination of state marketing monopolies and a new emphasis on efficiently linking farmers to markets

via MilkenInstitute

What An African Woman Thinks, writes:

Those who campaign for poverty alleviation tend to believe that the solution lies with the Other. Those who support wealth creation on the other hand insist for the most part that the solution is to be found in Africa although they do acknowledge, to varying degrees, that the Other has a important supporting role to play.

continuing:

I’m gratified to see that Africa has more hope for herself than others have for her. And that Africans are contributing to the language of the debate. Whoever defines the language dictates the story, this much I know.

and quoting a Dada, J.O:

"African poverty is a poverty of the wealth creation intellect - a deficit of growth-generating instincts, knowledge and skills."

Dibussi Tande writes in African Path about the impact of educational systems that do not foster ingenuity,resourcefulness and invention amongst other things.Quoting the World Bank:

The ability of a society to produce, select, adapt, commercialize, and use knowledge is critical for sustained economic growth and improved living standards. Knowledge has become the most important factor in economic development.

And comparing Cameroon to India

Today Cameroon is where India was some two decades ago – and it has the potential to become what India (or even Mauritius) is today. However, unlike India, Cameroon is crippled by the “civil service mentality”, and it lacks a crop of creative economic and political visionaries similar to those who transformed Bangalore from a sleepy backwater Indian town into an IT outsourcing and software Mecca.
Nowhere has that absence of vision been most manifested than in the country’s higher education system which was established primarily to train administrators for the post colonial government. Time has not changed the focus of Cameroon’s higher education system even as the world has moved on.

He alludes to a point made in the The Entrepreneur

The deficit of knowledge and learning is killing Cameroon and Africa softly. Despite a proliferation of schools and colleges, the lack of true learning and creativity has held the African captive to underdevelopment. In Cameroon we have graduates who are just producing what they were taught in school, instead of producing new things…This has left Cameroon with millions of qualified illiterates and graduates who are failures as far as life and service is concerned. A Master's degree holder moves with little or no creativity. Thousands of poorly educated Cameroonians only wait for opportunities to work where others have worked. Few are involved in the creation of new things. The outdated education they received then gives birth to confusion.

And brings to our attention a critical piece of analysis by Jeremy Weate on his observations about Nigeria.

The longer I live here, the more I realize that technological interventions or money pumped in by donors will do little to transform, unless there is a primary focus on business processes (whether in the commercial or the public sector)… Nigerians enjoy the benefits of cars, laptops, mobile phones and other modern technology, but live in a society which does not understand the discipline and rigour it takes to produce such technology. This creates an alienated culture where technology and modern industrial processes are seen as a mystery. No one seems to be able to solve the aviation crisis. No one seems to be able to create value-added manufacturing processes; no one seems to stem the tide of an import-economy, turning into an export-economy. So few technological interventions (in any sector) meet with any kind of success.

Truly intellectually curious,technologically innovative and self sustaining societies cannot be built off a bedrock of reactive thinking coupled with disinterest and indolence .The challenge is to disrupt these ossified ways of thought and catalyze the forces of creativity.

George Ayittey discusses 'Cheetahs and Hippos' at the TED Global "Africa the Next Chapter" conference that took place in Arusha Tanzania.

Apoorva Shah asks?

The question is not whether there should be more innovators and entrepreneurs in Africa, but how? What concrete steps must be taken in order to develop the business sector?

He believes that part of the answer lies in building managerial expertise:

The importance of governance, financial institutions, and the overall "enabling environment" has already been proven by the widely referenced World Bank Doing Business Reports. By measuring the difficulty of starting and sustaining business, the report allows for governments to know where to direct and manage reforms. However, an assessment of business know-how and expertise is less frequently discussed, and some over-enthused optimists, especially those on the microfinance bandwagon, insinuate that skills like balancing a checkbook or managing organizational structure are inherent in all entrepreneurs, even budding ones in Africa and South Asia.
Yet studies show that many times it is not the availability of funding or even government reforms that hold back business development, but simply business expertise. Management skills are especially important when entrepreneurs look to scale their businesses and employ more workers

via more business schools

The Association of African Business Schools (AABS), organized by the International Finance Corporation's Global Business School Network, is a quiet but crucial voice in a sector where passions thrive on shirtsleeves and megaphones. The AABS member schools collaborate to improve the standards and increase accreditation of business schools in Africa. Right now, only one school, the University of Cape Town in South Africa, ranks within the Top 100 Business Schools on the 2007 Financial Times Global MBA Index.
But more entrepreneurial Africans in the middle and lower-middle classes should also have the opportunity to attend decent business schools close to home, preventing brain drain and catalyzing larger-scale local business development. As the AABS addresses the quality of business schools, private donors can look to increase the quantity of these schools