African Economics and Leadership Discussions

will you share a map with us?

maps dont have to be geographical but they let us see connections/flows between several projects you are interested in share common skils, resources, networks of supporters

this one was posted to me by the first african I sent microfunds to while running a competition at onet

samuel is a teacher; this is the rural area of kenya he lives in; you can start to see some of the projects he's linking together including land he's bought to develop his dream of founding an orphanage that is linked to the world of orphanages with telecenters

unfortunately this potentially idyllic place is also a very high risk spot for malariahttp://www.ned.com/group/econo-politics/news/6/?searchterm=malaria

the way global funds have been spent on malaria is one of the most dismal stories in NGO world; florida worked out integeated ways to end the infecyted mosquito 50 years ago; malaria ought to hav been ended by now with all the funds that have been spent on it but then funders never shared maps openly; they each spent in their own separate aid boxes; and didnt transfer knowhow or responsibity to peoples in the community; this scandal drives me madder every conversation I have with samuel

Last comment added: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 14:24:32 PDT

Africa's entrepreneur summits - and after-projects

Which "people-as-entrepreneur" summits are coming up or past by nation and how do their after-networks and project actions flow?

Morocco	Algeria	Libya	Egypt	Mid East
Gambia	Malawi	Niger	Chad	Sudan	Ethiopia
Liberia	Ghana	Nigeria	Uganda	Kenya	Rwanda
Angola	Namibia	South Africa	Malawi	Tanzania	Mozambique

Last comment added: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:44:50 PDT

let's report microcredit and microfinance by nation

Increasingly microcredit as a solution to sustaining african communities is not about thinking of microcredit asin a separate specialist box, but linking MC & to a critical community challenge

MC & Health Insurance Jamii Bora, Kenya

MC & Fair Trade, Togo

MC & Intrapreneurial social action projects with youth, virgin-cida, S.Africa

Case queue to mention to yunus team at first opportunity: Nigeria, Caroline Ifeka; Andrew Mugenyi Uganda (near Congo border)

Calendar for Africa From London

*2005 - African Commission Report Published; 7/7 tube bomb attack day G8 leaders ntended to discuss commission report; Blair conceded the year had no direct impact

*2006 - Blair supports formation of Africa Progress Panel http://www.africaprogresspanel.o rg/english/index.php to transparently challenge the G8 to keep on doing stuff for Africa

*2007 - Blair's reign ends; Brown makes his people power speech at the UN http://peoplepower.jp

*2008- April Dr Yunus takes over Downing Street for 2 minutes to Youtube to the world http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k lUu03EMeRs . Brown applauds . Microcredit now establised community-up aid as a different way from global down aid. Help us journalise this magic shift in resoirces as it rolls out community building african country by country

BangladeshInfo.com reports: Yunus proposes coordinated global initiative to contain food price hike...Nobel Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus requested British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to take leadership role within the European community and the G-8 for addressing the extreme difficulties created to the poor by the global rise in prices of essential food items...

Prof. Yunus proposed a coordinated global initiative to redress the immediate pressure, according to a message received from Yunus Secretariat....The pioneer of a an alternative banking system for lending to the poor met the Prime Minister of the UK at 10 Downing Street on Monday-at a time when there has been a brouhaha over food problem in Bangladesh as well as across the globe...The Nobel Peace Prize winner pointed out that a powerful breakthrough is needed in agri-technology to raise the production level in the shortest possible time...Gordon Brown announced that the UK Government would work with the Grameen Group and other partners to give access to and unlock the power of financial services for Africa's poor...The Prime Minister and the Nobel Laureate discussed the public and private sectors’ work to help unlock the power of micro-credit to improve the lives of millions, particularly in Africa, where the world's development emergency hits hardest and nearly 300m people still live on less than $1 a day...With foreign investment into micro- credit across the globe tripling to $4 billion between 2004 and 2006, and through the work of organizations like the Grameen Trust, which reaches over 4.7 million families through 141 partner organizations in 38 countries, the impact of micro-credit is being felt all over the world...Yunus said that there is an urgent need to improve business and management skills in the micro-finance industry in Africa to make sure this money is used to help people from the world's poorest communities...As a first step, the UK Government will provide £500,000, towards bridging the skill gap in the micro-credit industry in Africa, which will be more than matched by the private sector... The initiative will bring together civil-society organizations and the private sector to contribute the funding, knowledge and skills required to bring micro-finance to those who need it most. </font>

I'll put an entry for each country so that comments that follow can be summarised by relevant country

Algeria 114.73 Angola 44.03 Benin 4.78 Botswana 10.33 Burkina Faso 6.21 Burundi 0.81 Cameroon 18.32 Cape Verde 1.14 Central African Republic 1.49 Chad 6.54 Comoros 0.40 Democratic Republic of the Congo 8.54 Congo 7.39 Côte d'Ivoire 17.48 Djibouti 0.76 Egypt 107.48 Equatorial Guinea 8.56 Eritrea 1.09 Ethiopia 13.32 Gabon 9.55 Gambia 0.51 Ghana 12.91 Guinea 3.32 Guinea-Bissau 0.30 Kenya 21.19 Lesotho 1.48 Liberia 0.63 Libya 50.32 Madagascar 5.50 Malawi 2.23 Mali 5.93 Mauritania 2.66 Mauritius 6.45 Morocco 57.31 Mozambique 7.61 Namibia 6.37 Niger 3.54 Nigeria 114.69 Réunion (France) 15.98[43] Rwanda 2.49 São Tomé and Príncipe 0.12 Senegal 8.94 Seychelles 0.75 Sierra Leone 1.44 Somalia 0.06[41] South Africa 254.99 Sudan 37.57 Swaziland 2.65 Tanzania 12.78 Togo 2.21 Tunisia 30.30 Uganda 9.32 Zambia 10.91 Zimbabwe 5.01

a good list of mfi discussion groups and blogs is http://microfinancegateway.org/s ection/discussion_groups

Last comment added: Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:45:06 PST

007 twin-world reports by African Countries

This is Kenya to world and back again report for collaboration entrepreneur clubs 007 -can you help with a report from and to the world out of another country

It aims to report warts and all. Doubtkess I am mainly to blam for warts! Snce I have most peers linked in around facebook, this annual report iterating format was also designed for them

MAINLY KENYA 007 -our main local guide Samuel Kongere. His most local community is Rusinga Island http://www.ned.com/group/econo-p olitics/news/18/ - as a teacher smaule reports this rural community is challenged by malaria, huge waves of orphans but also an interest in connecting the digital divide

SKs reports from Africa's first World Social Forum in Nairobe Kenya brought tears to the eyes of anyone who cares about sustainability of children and family loving communities everywhere. As did his stories from Kibera http://kibera.tv slum which represent people empowering children in exactly the opposite way that Bono and America Idol and BBC fundriase global aid of http://africanidol.tv . However SK is primarily an educator in a rural part of Kenya 7 hours bus ride from nairobi and Kibera.

If I understand correctly the 3 main grassroots interests of SK and his peer to peers are: a) peer to peer education (that may or may not include how online, $100 laptop wiki, flash editors changes everything)

malaria (also a gateway to all community up health care and early detection, early response prevention)
orphans (both owning their stories by grassroots up communities-the opposite of what bono global aid funding does; redevloping architectures if Rick could ever get his 10 times cleaner energy than plant a tree foundation going; as well as youth entrepreneur and vocational future needs)

regarding B) I am wholly dependent on p's advice http://tr-ac-net.org http://immconsortium.org

regarding a) and c) I am primarily dependent on s's advice as well as flows with other networks in london which she daily renews and de-conflicts as much as possible- for example just today s has been attending as our communal delegate to how do you get funds from rich http://www.actionplanning.co.uk/ pdfs/fundsfromrich.pdf

I am aware that if job and other issues came into a good pattern, G would want to map these and other kenya and africa challenges with a lot more attention than he can currently afford to do

If people feel this is a wrong summary, please say. Please file this in an important mail box or wherever you keep mails you refer back to

It is also true that south africa and kenya are the 2 countries where I feel confident hi-trust survey maps show top 100 people making a better local to global world

In south africa we have : anyone hubbing round Blecher - a personal contact of s's : taddy is so far the number 1 open source contributor to world guides on learning crises (though we have a ted prize nomination review outstanding on our deeply connecetd Gandhian networks in India) http://www.valuetrue.com/home/ga llery.cfm

mandela cluster which we don't yet have a direct link into though Blecher has a relationship with him and clearly Londoners (if they ever get to colabprate around Branson) would then be linked

In Kenya: world inspiring examples are: maathai - clean energy and womens networks -as yet no contacts though why our green network experts dont have is beyond my patience levels

martin gardner and nick moon - the world's number 1 agricultural tools revolutionaries (our freind clare in Dublin knows martin?)

jacqueline novogratz - one of acumen fund's main investments is now in malaria pills manufactured out of nairobi as well as the microemntrepreneur supply chain that is microfinaced by kiva and others to grow the natural ingredients input to these pills - I am desperately trying to build a relationship with jacqueline's sistes amy who is the prize coordinator of www.ted.com

It could be that SB, PB or G either have additional nominations or contacts with those already stated above.

Above all else S, other friends and I are trying to become a world citizen conference organsiing host friend of muhammad yunus; if we could earn that permission we could pretty qucikly have much more accurate maps on who wnats to colaborate with who than london or any city has ever dreamed of sharing before

Whilst I take full responsibility for my own errors as a minifinacier, I am very annoyed with particular londoners in 2007 who have wasted 50000 pounds of 10 year old daughter's money this year. All they needed to do was build openly around themselves as real people and their deepest most urgent change project concerns. All they needed to do was participate in a commonly compiled guide of projects built round open educational enrtrepereneurs who like Gandhi have to be the most collaborative people in the world for their hi-trust to flow. Instead they threw money at networks and products that were neither ready nor communally chartered -they compounded personal conflicts of extremely low-trust maps. The extreme incompetence of these networks (ironically bulding their own digital apartheids and compunding rsks as they went) at their collaboration boundaries beggars belief (what do you think the number 1 flow difference is between a network of systems and separate systems) as does the utterly abismal practice of facebook and email and hub that these to be nameless people perpetrated. Worst of all wherever such incompetence treads onto a context whose deep charters need to space through huge comflict and lost transparency, these system blind londoners put lives at risks while complimenting themselves on how party smart their events and mobile distractions in the city are.

Fortunately something that cost nothing at all (other than a lot of time spent in cross-cultural listening) has turned into a world city flow of amazingly graceful yunus proportions. However to make this collaboration world safe from being polluted by change networks with a lot of momey, this is going to take 6 months of work that is the exact opposite of what most limage-rideden london change networkers pride themselves in doing. They should go back to 1907 http://peacecentury.tv (the start of Satyagraha's 100 year CV for truth mapmakers) and read gandhi all over starting with the meta-system chalenges of education, media and professions.

chris macrae us 301 881 1655 travelling wed and thurs to launch colaboration new york http://worldcitizen.tv/_wsn/page 4.html

Just as we have tried here to start surveyng who are the people the world could most trust collaborating and empowering for global good africa around, we invite nominations worldwide to this survey at http://worldcitizen.tv You may wish to know that most of my life has been spent doing social research around Asian countries so I expect you can quickly add more on Africa trust maps than I (or anyone I trust most as a peer) have had a chance to do in 007. I dont usually do 50K microfinancing in a year; I had assumed that if ever africa was going to be turnrounded with collaboration city help the initiaves of clinton www.ted.com, world social forum as well as remnants of make poverty history, http://www.wiki.espians.com , green in city http://southbank.tv american idol were a unique year - the best chance ever for http://peoplepower.jp flowing through Africa. To the extent that I have clearly not managed to flow much good, I will be absolutely delighted if you wish to openly report here successes in african empowerment your peers have had.

if you want more thread and re-editng space than face for this context , why not join in at http://www.ned.com/group/econo-p olitics/news/

Last comment added: Mon, 16 Jun 2008 04:35:34 PDT

Flooding in Africa

I was not sure where to best start this discussion, but I wanted to reach out to our friends and colleagues in Africa and see how many of you have been affected by the severe flooding, and ask how we can best help.

Here is the latest inter-agency update from the UN:

UN appeals to aid more than 1 million African flood victims fall on deaf ears

25 September 2007 – Despite urgent appeals United Nations agencies are facing a huge shortfall in funding to help well over a million flood victims across a wide swath of sub-Saharan Africa, from Ghana in the West to Ethiopia in the east, as they face food shortages, loss of crops and even the dangers of landmines from recent conflicts dislodged by the raging waters.

Of nearly $85 million sought recently for just Uganda and Sudan, only about $1 million has been forthcoming.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) voiced deep concern over the situation of some 300,000 people in northern Uganda, the vast majority of them women and children, hit by the worst floods the country has known in decades.

The impact has been exacerbated by the conflict with rebels in the north and the fact that most families are experiencing displacement for the second time, UNICEF spokesperson Veronique Taveau told a news briefing in Geneva.

Some 200,000 people are estimated to be in need of emergency shelter, and an emergency vaccination campaign as well as the distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets is already under way to try and head off a malaria outbreak. UNICEF is urgently appealing for $7.2 million to continue its aid programme for the most vulnerable, women and children.

UN World Food Programme (WFP) spokesperson Christiane Berthiaume told the briefing that despite transportation difficulties, the agency had already managed to distribute 1,051 tons of food to 64,328 people in Uganda, either by truck or helicopter. With more rains forecast for October, WFP sees no alternative to airlifting food to some locations.

Ms. Berthiaume repeated the appeal the agency made last week for $64.4 million to feed not only the 300,000 flood victims, but also the 1.4 million refugees and displaced persons in Uganda. So far, no funds had been received for this operation.

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) spokesperson Elizabeth Byrs said that in West Africa, as of today, some 609,000 persons had been affected by flooding in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.

In Niger, OCHA’s greatest concern is the fact that the heavy rains have displaced landmines, and the risk of hitting them at any time and in any place is very high, Ms. Byrs warned. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) is to make a rapid preliminary assessment of the landmine risk.

WFP, the Red Cross and the Government have provided over 1,000 metric tons of food for the nearly 50,000 flood victims in Niger, but while food aid has been assured for current and arising needs, there is a need for blankets and mosquito nets.

In Ethiopia, new flooding has been reported since the first week of September, Ms. Byrs said. Nationwide, 226,000 people are estimated to have been affected, some 5,630 hectares of crops have been destroyed and grazing lands have been inundated. The risk of additional flooding and displacement is high in the flood-prone areas as the water level is rising daily, she warned.

In Sudan, Ms. Berthiaume said WFP would be dropping food supplies to nearly 44,000 flood victims in three states in the south that were inaccessible by road. That was in addition to the food WFP has been distributing to 90,000 flood victims in other areas in the south and east.

Distribution of food to the Lakes, Jonglei and Upper Nile states is to begin in October and continue for one month. There are plans to airdrop 1,400 tons of food and ferry another 264 tons down the Nile.

The floods in Sudan, which have killed 113 people, have affected nearly half a million others, and 200,000 people are now without shelter. An inter-agency appeal for $20.2 million for flood victims in Sudan was launched in mid-August but has so far received only $1 million.

Last comment added: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:56:57 PDT

Getting the rich's funds for africa's grassroots empowerment

Fall's London experiment - tell us if you want to join in and I will link the initial to real members of ned and facebook

Hi to Courage of Africa SB PB LE TA PA EL CI GB AW MI (self-note: extend trust-map to other MC recipients CM SC RN)

I contributed to the fund suggested by eg PA/CI to send EL to the funds from the rich conference of tom hunter (scotland's richest man and most collaborative entrepreneur) http://www.actionplanning.co.uk/ pdfs/fundsfromrich.pdf in the hope that it will include any direct action/project ideas that eg LE or GB may connect through

Hope you connect on this as much as needs be... the brixton hub has the clinton-hunter book on how giving and funding works in USA for communal borrowing

chris macrae http://africanidol.tv http://grameen.tv us 301 881 1655

one of the hi-trust maps we never followed up is how brac.net (Fazle Abed) is activating the 250 million dollars collaborations initiatves around it promised last year to mainly target 5 african muslim countries with in seeding/empowering its health and primary school care -dont know if mostofa has any hi-trust contacts in brac as well as grameen; the confernce may be too soon but I assume that during fall you will collaboration cafe (face or link) round these flows and not forget about them. As always I must apologise to SB to putting most in the middle of all these relationships; we dindt quite make the african collab cafe we had tried to schedule my last visit . (I will also watch out for any brac clues at this weeks Clinton Global.)

Last comment added: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:23:09 PDT

Chicken Wars

From this interesting article: http://www.spiegel.de/internatio nal/world/0,1518,506742,00.html

"When it comes to chicken, Europeans seem to only like the breast. The rest of the chicken is almost impossible to sell and ends up being exported at dumping prices. But farmers in Cameroon are refusing to be the victims of globalization, they have fought the import of European chicken legs -- and won."

Stories like this, and like Dr. Ayittey's account of imports of non African fishing boats harming the possibilities of growing a local shipwright industry in http://www.ned.com/group/econo-p olitics/news/0/ make me wonder if it might make sense for Africa to impose some stiff continent external tariffs in order to create room for the development of local enterprises. This is what the US did in the 19th century.

What do you all think?

Last comment added: Sat, 31 May 2008 06:29:59 PDT

who are africa's leading female entrepreneurs

some updates from Clinton Global Initiative: Beatrice Nabwire Were, Uganda womens and hiv networker extraordinary

who are the African women most worth trusting collaboration around sustainability world 2007-2012?

this is part of a worldwide survey of both men and women but I would be interested in your views on African women who I imagine have a particularly hard time of flowing entrepreneurship

my guesses include the following - I would love both more info on them particulary if we have any contact leads as to hear other nominatins

Kenya: Wangari Maathai GreenBelt Movement

*Chief Bisi Ogunleye, Chair, Country Women's Association of Nigeria

Hafsat Abiola Nigeria www.kind.org

Marianne Knuth, Zimbabwe, Kufunda Village

Anne Cotton, Camfed, Zimbabwe

Veronica Khosa, S Africa, Tateni

Last comment added: Mon, 24 Sep 2007 11:30:39 PDT

A VILLAGE SAVING AND CREDIT SOCIETY IN GULU

I do think it a great idea to discuss it here because many people here have been successful in business.

I think that services are the hardest kinds of businesses to explain even when we're all very familiar with these kinds of business. Services include things like transporting and distributing. Services depend on knowledge sharing, collaboration, and creating productivity.

The sort of business I have decided to make is a financial services business. I think that is the most difficult kind of businesses there is. So this kind of business requires special care for planning it.

SAVING AND CREDIT COMPANY

Last comment added: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 07:46:04 PST

all sorts of maps

Mapping is probably my main future interest in life.

I use the word map to cover a wide spectrum from:

what anyone in the same debate needs to see as common connecting flows scribbled onto one piece of paper -eg this is the start of an end of malaria map http://www.ned.com/group/econo-p olitics/news/6/ its purpose is rather like a survey: if you could add one postit answer or question to the next version of this communal map what would it be? equally if you care about malaria truth but do not find this one pager of use, what one pager do you want to share with us so we can translate your peer networkers conversations with ours? (could not any long running con versational thread at ned do with some sort of updating one page visual map edited in at the top? as well as links to neighbouring thread - do you start to see a meta-map rising to help guide all our communal flows?

another simple noughts and crosses map surveys who links around vital people - in my future work the life of mandela http://changeafrica.blogspot.com / is as crucial to weave as many application networks around as anyone I can imagine- this is only one plot which enable me to at least recall who is already known to weave empowerment contexts around Nelson- equally the first missing name that come to mind when you see it is exactly the survey information I wish you'd share with me if we are both mappers of all the collaboration goodwill that mandela alumni and peer to peer vocational training courses could compound

another type of mapa ask: are we goverining everything we work round (-wish to live for), as well as our childrens' own human learning curves around sustainability investment expoentials (aka unseen wealth), or boxed-in short-term addictions/distractions that have been an organsiational obessession since the spreadshet became Gates' killer application of internet world - sustainability exponential governance and its entrepreneurial revolution truths are quite a controversial area of mapping so one I need some time to prepare a link to

another map suggests that the way the human brain recalls any identity is such that it links dozens of other reinforcing identities (in other word nothing you recall is separated from other stuff you recall) - what becomes interesting is if we agree 100% of us worldwide have heard of -eg olympics - will the next 5 things that come to my mind and yours be similar; if so we are likely to have common sorts of conversations quite quickly on olympics http://worldclassbrands.tv http://passports.jp ; now lets move from something fun but trivial, to something life-critical eg poverty - will we start with the same associations in mind on that context http://ecomap.tv ? how differently will we be able to network depending on this mapping (commons awareness) question?

Last comment added: Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:43:04 PDT