My Beauty Best Teacher

At TED Global "...Eleni Gabre-Madhin outlines her ambitious vision to found the first commodities market in Ethiopia. Her plan would create wealth, minimize risk for farmers and turn the world's largest recipient of food aid into a regional food basket..."

The WSJ writes:

The global credit crunch has shaken the kaleidoscope of the world economy. As sub-prime lending problems ricochet around the world, capital is seeking new places to grow. And it is looking farther afield than ever before -- not just to the well-established emerging economies of China or India, but to "emerging emerging" markets in Africa...Their success has been driven by getting the fundamentals right. Nigeria has benefited from banking and pension reform, a crackdown on corruption, debt relief based on sound fiscal policy and the high oil price. Perhaps more remarkably, Ghana has achieved its success without oil windfalls. A strong technocratic team in the top ministries has pushed through a homegrown reform program which has rationalized the electricity sector, led the development of a domestic debt market, and freed up capital controls. There is nothing to stop the rest of Africa following this lead. And the signs are encouraging: The IMF expects sub-Saharan Africa to grow 6.1% in 2007 and 6.8% in 2008.

The Banker recently hosted a roundtable on African Infrastructure Financing:

Click here to view (subscr. reqd) and here to listen

Comments from a knowledge@Wharton event

Chris Odindo (of International Development and Policy) suggested that African nations take steps to encourage those of African descent who now live elsewhere to return -- even if just for a week or two at a time -- and assist in the redevelopment of the continent.
The panelists all seemed to agree that Western-backed aid partnerships have the same goal -- to solve problems up to a level where Africans can ultimately implement and run things by themselves, whether that involves training more African-born health care workers and software entrepreneurs or handing over control of the schooling for children of AIDS-ravaged families. "Most of all, we work from the ground up," said Anderson of MaAfrika Tikkun. "We are focused on establishing partnerships and embracing community leadership and developing community leadership -- so that ultimately, we can leave the community."

Aaron Stewart ponders bottom-up development:

It constantly amazed me that for a country that was so lacking in basic infrastructure the South Sudan government had quickly mastered the art of bloated bureaucracy. Within this there is corruption and lots of it, greasing the palms of officials might get you what you want but your credibility will not win out in the end if word gets around to other agencies and donors that you operate this way...These things have only strengthened my resolve that whenever possible, obviously if possible, grass roots aid and development directly with the people that will benefit will help keep money out of the hands that see it as a chance to profit. There are no easy answers to this and I'm not proposing any, just processing.

While President Museveni laments about the ineptitude prevalent amongst his fellow African 'leaders' (he's ruled for 20 years mind you):

Museveni has said Africa is lagging behind in development because the leaders lack wisdom....Mr Museveni said he has been "struggling" with his counterparts and other leaders to appreciate that Africans need to export processed materials in order to benefit from international trade.
"Exporting raw materials is the greatest curse of Africa. How can it be that the leaders in Africa do not know what to do? Everything is upside down," Mr Museveni lamented.

I do not have any personal differences with President Museveni. On the contrary, I like the person of Museveni and I used to have good relations with him. Remember that I am a product of a lot of President Museveni’s teachings.
In his early speeches, he castigated African rulers for flying in executive jets when their populations walked on bare feet. Now he flies his daughters to Germany in executive jets to deliver babies when 98 percent of Ugandans depend on firewood for energy. My job as a journalist is to remind him of his first address to the nation, and hold him to account for his actions.
I disagree with Museveni’s politics, with the way he runs the country. I believe that he has increasingly come to treat the nation’s Treasury as his personal bank account and its physical assets as his family estate. The evidence is overwhelming: he personally has been giving preferred businessmen public funds and other assets without going through the formal institutions of state.

Afrika-Aphukira takes issue with the misrepresentation of Kyalo Manthi's breakthrough discoveries in palaeontology by the western media:

When the news broke out in August of this year that new archaeological research in Kenya urged huge reversals in the conventional wisdom about the theory of evolution, the chasm in the reporting between the African media and the Euro-American one was astoundingly wide. Almost all of the media in the United States and in Britain who wrote about the news attributed the finding to Maeve Leakey and other Euro-American scientists. The African newspapers, on the other hand, attributed the discovery to Kenyan palaeontologist Dr Fredrick Kyalo Manthi. One writer, writing in the Daily Nation of Kenya, pointed out the discrepancy, while everyone else just reported on the finding and its hard facts.

The Independent reports :

"The policies here in the CAR are part of a much bigger approach by France towards Africa," she says. "We call this system 'Franceafrique', and it was set up by Charles de Gaulle to replace the former colonial system. There is clear continuity from the imperial system to the present day."
The motives for this war are, Roland-Gosselin says, drenched in dollars and euros and uranium. "The overarching goal is to take African resources and funnel them towards French corporations," she says. "The CAR itself is a base from which the French can access resources all over Africa. That is why it is so important. They use it to keep the oil flowing to French companies in Chad, the resources flowing from Congo, and so on. And of course, the country itself has valuable resources. CAR has a lot of uranium, which the French badly need because they are so dependent on nuclear power. At the moment they get their uranium from Niger, but the CAR is their back-up plan." So this is, in part, a war for nuclear power? " Yes, but also a lot of this money has been funnelled, through corruption, straight back into the French political process. Say somebody needs a road built here in the CAR. The French government will insist on a French company – and the French company back home donates a lot to the 'right' French political party."