Posts about TIME's 100 Most Influential People

• Lin-Manuel Miranda and Stephen Curry: "Stage Your Life"
• Pope Francis: "Why Is the Pope Going to Philadelphia?" "Warning to Students: Don't Cheat," "Good News from Cuba," "We Have a Pope"
• Christine Lagarde: "When to Buy/Sell in the World Market"
• Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton: "What Are You Wearing in the New Year?"
• Jin Liqun: "China's Corruption Crackdown, New Bank Backing, and Release of PR Activists"
• Barack Obama: "Good News from Cuba," What Moscow Could Learn from History"
• Xi Jinping: "Time to Revisit China's and the World's Foreign Currency Exchange Rates," "China's Corruption Crackdown, New Bank Backing, and Release of PR Activists," "Let's Visit China"
• Aung San Suu Kyi: "Who Are Your Country's Super Heroes?" "Hope for the Future"
• Hillary Clinton: "It Takes a World to Raise a Child"
• Vladimir Putin: "What Moscow Could Learn from History," "Hearing Voices from Mexico and Russia," "Hope for the Future"
• Kim Jong Un: "Corruption Has Consequences," "Nuclear Straight Talk," "Reasons to Celebrate Global Victories," "Hope for the Future"

How Do Films Depict Countries?

Renowned film authority and co-author of the film bible, Film Art: An Introduction,  Kristin Thompson, once said, "I think you tend to get interested in films from countries you've visited." After I saw a Persian/Iranian film at a foreign film festival this weekend, I would rephrase her observation to read, "I think you tend to get interested in countries from films you've seen."

     According to Film Art, the elements that directors put into each frame of their films, their mise-en-scene, are: setting, costumes, lighting, and the actors' expressions and movements. The movie I saw this weekend used these elements to show me an Iran without terrorists. Instead, waves lapped along a beach at the Persian Gulf, where the humid climate caused structures to rust and fog reminded me of San Francisco and London. The setting also showed a country with a mix of gated single-family homes, a modern high rise apartment, and many low small rundown dwellings. A female actor's costume changed from a plain brown headscarf to a colorful flowered one, when she went to meet her boyfriend. Male actors wore jeans, but women didn't. Dim lighting set a somber tone of a troubled relationship. Unlike what we might expect in a Muslim culture, unchaperoned men and women stood and walked close together when they were dating, men and boys freely gambled on games and sports, and children misbehaved and talked back to their parents.

     At this weekend's foreign film fest, I also saw a movie where actors in the role of German business consultants in Pakistan and Nigeria found their glib solutions didn't work when confronted by terrorists.

     Often foreign films aren't suitable for children, but in earlier posts, "See the World in Oscar-Nominated Films" and "See the World at the Movies," I identified some that were. Since movies offer an excellent glimpse of other countries and cultures, keep looking for children-suitable ones like the upcoming Pele: Birth of a Legend. Seeing Brazil in the film will provide an interesting way to compare the movie's setting, costumes, lighting, and actors' expressions and movements with the real life we'll see in this summer's Olympic games in Rio.

Want An Exciting Career?

Students who will begin their careers in the next five to 20 years will be working to about 2060 to 2075 or longer. They can worry about being unemployed by robots or discover Africa.

     Of course, Africa already has been discovered as an exotic home of wild animals, gold, diamonds, rubber, slaves, and the origin of mankind. Because of the scramble for colonies, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch are spoken there along with local languages. Currently, with advances in mobile communication; transportation, including by drones; and medicine, Africa is on track to come into its own normalcy. The middle class is growing. And the size of the continent suggests regional divisions into northern, western, southern, northeastern, and southeastern markets. A recent acquisition recognized the opportunity to finance trade in Africa. Helios Investment Partners, the private equity investment firm founded and managed by Africans, Tope Lawani and Babatunde Soyoye, in 2004, acquired the UK's Crown Agents Bank and Crown Agents Investment Management in April, 2016.

     What might be most attractive to the world's future tech-savvy, well-educated, independent workforce is the challenge Africa presents. The enticing work environment Sydney Finkelstein describes in his new book, Superbosses, is one where creative energy is purpose-focused on a vision, commitment to a task is satisfying, and talent is recognized and rewarded at an early age.

     Some international bankers already are enjoying unique opportunities to figure out how to handle complicated financial deals in Africa. Lending for African projects from Asia's investors, Japan, China, and India, for example, is secured by assets, such as the turbines Japan provided for a coal-fired power plant in Morocco, and repaid from revenue that the projects, such as the power plant, will generate. Similarly, when a loan for buses will be repaid by future bus fares, bankers have to know what questions to ask. Which government agency has authority to make the purchase? Will the buses be able to handle African road and climate conditions? Who will train drivers and maintenance workers? Is payment to be made in local or hard currency? Is there a way to hedge against the devaluation of local currency, and what are the options should emergency measures prevent hard currency from leaving the country?

     Gaurav Wahi of India's Jindal Steel and Power Limited, a company with operations in South Africa and Mozambique, called attention to a May 16, 2016 Forbes article that provided excellent practical advice about doing business in Africa. Companies looking for immediate, low-risk African opportunities have limited options in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Swaziland. Half of China's $12 billion investment in Africa between 2005 and 2015, for example, went to South Africa. Few African countries currently have relatively high per capita GDP incomes and reliable infrastructure (ports, roads) and institutions (legal, police, and educational systems).

     Elsewhere in Africa, companies that can become "early pan-African powerhouses" need patience and moxie to do the following:

• Identify home office talent with the ability to live in a foreign environment, to accommodate company policies and processes to local cultures, and to connect with local employees.
• Manage relations with governments (secure agreements and contracts)
• Deal with a lack of government regulations and poor land ownership records
• Develop self-sufficiency that might require vertical integration from raw material sourcing to production and distribution
• Provide low-cost products and services
• Expand uses for mobile phones (prepaid bank accounts, marketing, customer service)
• Train employees and provide benefit retention packages that prevent poaching by competitors
• Establish firm guidelines (ethical reputation requirements, experience working with other foreign companies) for evaluating potential local partnerships
• Provide security
• Form contingency plans for insurrections and political instability
• Anticipate economic volatility from commodity price swings
• Gain guarantees from multilateral organizations, such as the World Bank 

     No one doing business in Africa will be stuck implementing a bureaucratic playbook. Marketers will be reading the accounts of explorers and missionaries to identify routes to their target markets along rivers and in desert oases. Freight forwarders will fill their Rolodexes with importers and exporters, if they know which carriers can be counted on to meet delivery schedules and if they know how to fill shipping containers to get the best cargo rates. Manufacturers will prosper when they attract the best employees, because they have a reputation for providing excellent training programs and benefits.

     Just considering a normal bell curve distribution of talent, not only business, but African agriculture, sports, education, security, law, fashion, and the arts are all fields ripe for development in the coming years. An exciting career awaits those willing and able to work together with Africans.

(Also see the later post, "There's No Business Like Bug Business.")

Slow Economic Growth's Impact on Global Shipping

Low anticipated growth in North American and European markets from 2016 to 2018 means Asian traffic to the US and Europe will not expand, And although growth in 2016's shipping capacity is expected to be half of what it was in 2015, freight rates for cargo traveling on the high seas will drop or, at best, hold steady.

    By the end of 2018, 17 carriers are expected to transport 32% of all tonnage (measured by teu capacity, i.e. the number of 20-foot long, 8-feet tall and wide shipping containers that a ship can carry) on their ultra large container ships. Smaller capacity ships will be hard pressed to stay in business.

     At the same time the amount of tonnage being shipped is unlikely to increase, the capacity the Panama Canal can handle will double in 2016, when the current expansion project is expected to be completed. The enlarged canal will permit passage of more ships and the larger New Panamax ships that can carry twice as much cargo as current Panamax models.

(Additional information about cargo shipping is available on the earlier post, "What Do You Want to Be?)

Let There Be Environmentally Friendly Light

An estimated 1.3 billion people live without electricity in the so-called off-grid world. Even in countries that are moving from low-income to middle-income status, such as India, Ghana, Pakistan, and Vietnam, Bill Gates has observed that there are pockets of poverty that have no electricity. Unless families can purchase an expensive and heavy lead storage battery that needs to be carried to and recharged at a shop all day, going outside after dark is dangerous, indoor kerosene lamps release toxic fumes, and children can barely read or do homework by candlelight.

     Around the world, individuals, non-profit organizations, and for-profit companies are working on solar solutions that provide electricity without increasing greenhouse gases from fossil fuels.

     Thanks to startup funds from Pepsi, the Zayed Future Energy Prize, and other sources, Philippines-based Liter of Light is putting solar-powered lights in thousands of low-income homes in the Philippines, Colombia, Malaysia, and Mexico. Liter for Light is a project run by the non-governmental-organization, My Shelter Foundation, founded by social entrepreneur and actor IllacDiaz. While studying in the US at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Diaz discovered an invention by Brazilian mechanic, Alfredo Moser. Moser had used sunlight on water in a plastic bottle (including some bleach to prevent algae growth) to emit light from a ceiling "bulb" during the day. At night, light was emitted from a plastic water bottle holding LEDs wired to a little solar panel that had been exposed to sun for three to four hours during the day.

     M-Kopa Solar is the Kenya-based "pay-as-you-go" commercial energy supplier for 280,000 homes in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda that lack electricity connections. Customers buy a $30 solar system that they operate with credits for use purchased in 50 cent increments. Of the $51 million
 M-Kopa Solar raised in 2010, London-based Generation Investment Management invested $19 million. Debt and other investments accounted for the rest.

     Solar Home System is a project developed by South Korean, Akas Kim, in order to install a rooftop solar panel that can light homes in Cambodia for four hours. Families combine their incomes to make an initial payment of $200 and another $350 in monthly installments.

     South Korea's 2007 Social Enterprise Promotion Act is worth studying by other countries. By providing work spaces, mentoring, and government and private funding from companies such as Samsung and Hyundai, the Act backs startups that have a social purpose.

(An earlier post, "Don't Study by the Fire," mentions a backpack that has a solar powered light.)

   

New Art Forms and Functions

Joining innovative artists like Christo, who wrapped a bridge in Paris with cloth, and those who create sculptures out of sand and ice are contemporaries using solar power in their art and creating digital art that exists as a piece of software. Other artists are activists expressing environmental concerns and promoting participatory art that can flourish outside galleries and museums.

     Visitors need to go deep inside a limestone cave in Puerto Rico to see a work by minimalist artist, Dan Flavin. Solar panels at the mouth of the cave power the pink, yellow, and red fluorescent lightbulbs that cast a reddish glow on the surrounding rock formations. To protect the lights from humidity and bats, the bulbs are hermetically sealed in a glass case.

      The Phillips Gallery in New York reports that a digital image of a grain silo in Kansas that was created using algorithms appealed to a geneticist and a high-frequency trader, because it related to the mathematical processes they used in their jobs.

     During a UN conference on climate change in Paris in December, 2015, visitors saw ice from Greenland slowly melting at the Place du Pantheon. Danish-Icelandic artist, Olafur Eliasson, created his work of art, "Ice Watch," by breaking an 80-ton block of ice into 12 chunks arranged in a circle.

     Artists, activists, researchers, farmers, scientists, and architects have come together to dramatize the importance of preserving the seeds of ancient grains no longer in wide use. A sailing ship will return the seeds from Oslo to their native soil in Istanbul and the Middle East. Some students are designing and making the ship's sail and sailing outfits out of plants grown from seeds used for ages.

    Not only can students be on the look out for new forms and functions of art around the world, they can try creating some themselves. Try attracting bees by planting a variety of flowers and vegetables in an artistic design this summer.