My Beauty Best Teacher

We don't know why so many intelligent, smart young ladies steer away from technology and science-related fields.

We don't know why one of the highest growth industries in the world that allows the excellent to telecommute from home and gives some of the greatest flexibility in work hours doesn't attract more young women.

But, lets start with something we do know. We do know that teacher,  Pat Yongpradit, winner of Microsoft Innovative Educators Forum last October in Cape Town, South Africa, is attracting young girls into his Computer Science program through an after school video game programming club.

Meet Pat, a young teacher introducing young girls into the exciting field of Computer Science.

I spent some time interviewing Pat last October in Cape Town and want to share his interview here.

If you've got a story like Pat's, please take the time to apply for Microsoft's Innovative Educator Forum. The applications are due on May 15th. It is an excellent program (and John Medina is keynoting this year's conference.)

I apologize that I misspelled Pat's last name. I couldn't post this video this morning because of Blogger's extended outage and just got back to my home computer now. I will fix his name and reupload, but want his message to get out while there is still time for you to apply to this incredible conference!

Other videos from this Conference:

• • Moleihi Sekese: Integrating Technology with No Electricity? #msief

  • Shout Learning: Listening to the Organizers #msief

  • Handheld Video Games: Excellence in Prantica Das' Classroom in India #msief

    My Study Mate: Students in Ireland Hand Coding and Maintaining a Video Sharing Site #msief

    Got a Great Project? Share!! #msief

    Microsoft VP Anthony Salcito: Getting Technology to the Next Classroom #msief

    South African Teacher, Naomi Julius: Meet the Rose that Blooms Among 500 Students and 14 Teachers

    Six and Seven Year Old Boys Collect 8 tons of waste in "Trash to Treasure" #msief

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?

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

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

Businessweek reports:

Africa is top-of-mind on B-school campuses, too. Schools such as Columbia, Yale, and Dartmouth's Tuck are sending their students to places like Tanzania and South Africa. Meanwhile, B-schools are tweaking their curricula to include Africa-centric case studies. As far as many MBAs are concerned, there's no better emerging economy to explore"There's a huge area of land with a lot to offer in terms of human resources," says Shamik Narotam, a second-year finance student at the London Business School who studied in Cape Town this fall. "You can't ignore it anymore."

Abigail Tucker at the Smithsonian reviews George Steinmetz's aerial photography:

...his Africa pictures convey a kind of intimacy that comes only with a certain distance. His perspective is lofty but not detached, and it's informed by his love of geophysics, which he studied as an undergraduate at Stanford University. His aerial pictures trace human patterns, too, in the slums radiating from Cape Town, South Africa, for example, or the crowds at a Soweto cemetery assembled for Saturday morning funerals...[continue reading]

Binyavanga Wainaina writes:

"Would you like an Oxfam biscuit? Can we fly 103 of you to France to be loved? We can breastfeed you. We can save you from yourself. We can save ourselves from our terrible selves. Help us to Oxfam the whole black world, to make it a better place. We will shut all your industries and build our organic Jeffery Sachs-designed school inside your national parks, where you can commune with nature, grow ecologically friendly crops, trade fairly with eco-tourists and receive visitors from the United Nations every month who will clap when you dance. Instead of sweatshops, we will have Ubuntu shops where you can arrive in biodegradable loincloths to make bone jewellery for caring people who earn $1million a year, live in San Francisco or Cape Town and feel bad about this. In our future world you will have three balanced meals a day. Trust us. You can’t do it yourselves. We have dedicated our lives to you. Come kitties, come to mummy".

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.

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).

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."

Over the past several weeks, the international community has been speaking out loud and clear against Africa’s poverty in the wake of the G8 summit at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland this week. Previously, the Africa Commission set up by the British Prime Mister Tony Blair produced a report on Africa’s poverty, the causes and what to do about it. Many reasons have been advanced for Africa’s poverty, among which are poor governance and corruption by our African governments. Africa’s governments seem to be less worried about the poverty of their people than the G8 governments. The people of the world are holding concerts and demonstrations in their streets to make Africa’s poverty history. What are we ordinary Africans, the victims of bad governance, of government corruption, of poverty, doing in response to this global awakening about our plight? I challenge you to rise up and speak out loud and clear against bad governance, against corruption, against poverty. For it is bad governance and corruption that are the sins that those who are hesitating to write off Africa’s debts, to increase aid, and to practice fair trade, are citing to deny us of the much needed reprieve, to keep us under the bondage of poverty. I challenge the African people, from Nairobi to Darker, and from Cairo to Cape Town, to hold peaceful demonstrations across the continent for good governance, against corruption and against poverty. For, if the people of the North are now demonstrating in their streets to influence the decisions of their G8 governments to seriously address our plight, why then, may I ask, cant we ordinary Africans respond, and demonstrate to influence the decisions of our governments: for good governance, against corruption and against poverty? As we keep mum, we keep dying from poverty! Come on, Africans, stand up to be counted, stand up for your lives! Our African governments are meeting in Libya, and are asking the G8 for fair trade. But they are mum about bad governance, and about corruption, the twin evils they practice with impunity to our graves! Can we ordinary Africans afford to be mum about these? Only at the risk of our lives!

By Adrian Mukhebi