African American aviation pioneer, John Robinson, who constructed his first airplane out of spare automobile parts in the 1930s, found opportunity in Africa when he went to the aid of embattled Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia before World War II. Today Mr. Robinson is known as one of the founders of Africa's most reliable premier Ethiopian Airways.
Like Haile Selassie, in 2017 Neema Mushi, founder of Licious Adventure in Tanzania, was eager to make a U.S. connection. She was looking for U.S. companies willing to carry the African textiles and other items her shop sells to the tourists her company's guides lead up Mount Kilimanjaro and to the beaches of Zanzibar. Now, however, not U.S. companies but Chinese ones, such as Anningtex, Buwanas, Hitarget, and Sanne, fill Ms. Mushi's shelves with mass produced, Chinese-made "African" textiles, called kitenge. Locally-owned African textile producers in Nigeria and Ghana, unable to compete with lower-cost Chinese goods, have gone out of business.
The point is: if you are an importer; photo journalist or documentary filmmaker looking for a story; someone interested in trying out a new teaching or low-cost home construction technique; a miner or an adventurer seeking opportunities of any kind, Africa welcomes you.
Two essential ingredients help you get started: money and contacts. With a nest egg, car to sell, or Sugar Daddy, you can plunk down $1000-plus for an airplane ticket and head for Africa immediately. Although a crowdfunding appeal, saving from a job, or persuading a media outlet to fund your project, will delay your take off, keep an eye on the prize.i Also consider submitting a Scholar Registration to Birthright AFRICA at birthrightafrica.org. This new non-profit in New York City is the brainchild of Walla Elsheikh, an immigrant from Sudan who began his career in finance at Goldman Sachs. His vision is to send young African-Americans on free trips to Africa to explore and connect with their cultural roots. On these trips, young adults also have an unique opportunity to discover ways they could begin their careers in Africa.
Economic officers in foreign Embassies and consulates should be able to provide helpful local contacts in Africa, but don't neglect seeking assistance from missionary communities. Religious orders in your home country can put you in touch with their superiors in African host countries. For example, in Namibia, Africa, China built a container terminal and nearby oil storage installation at Walvis Bay, and South Africa's De Beers Group extracted 1.4 million carats from the offshore coastal waters. I also saw Sister Patricia Crowley, at the St. Scholastica Monastery in Chicago, was about to leave for Windhoer, Namibia, to serve as spiritual director on a one year assignment at a Benedictine missionary community there. An appointment with Sister Patricia in Chicago could lead to a letter introducing your purpose and background to those who could help you in Namibia.
Likewise, visiting communities of Dominican nuns in a home country could provide contacts with the nuns who teach girls to make a living by sewing and using a computer in Bukoba, Tanzania, and the nuns who teach farmers to plant hybrid tomato crops that withstand heat and insect infestations in Nairobi, Kenya.
On their outposts in Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, the Jesuit order can provide inspiration and information for those investigating Africa careers. While assigned to the Jesuit Refugee Service in East Africa, Father James Martin, author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, helped set up tailoring shops, several small restaurants, a bakery, a little chicken farm, and the Mikono Centre that sells African handicrafts. By following in the path of African-inspired Picasso and a Mozambican wood carver who sold a three-foot-tall ebony sculpture at the Mikono Centre, artists from around the world may find fulfillment working in Africa.
In Hia, Ghana, Bishop Afoakwah would appreciate a visit from a journalist willing to investigate the complicated land ownership rights, deeds held by chiefs, and government's incomplete database of mining concessions. Although the bishop thought the church held a legal deed to land a chief donated for a clinic and nursing school, Chinese miners began digging "Mr. Kumar's" gold mine on the property.
Ghana is not the only African country in need of land use planners, legal assistance, doctors, teachers and others willing to discover career opportunities in Africa.
Showing posts with label Kenya. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kenya. Show all posts
Monday, March 2, 2020
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Artificial Skies
Look up on a clear night and you might see the moon, stars, an airplane, a Pentagon observation balloon, police drone, one of Elon Musk's Starlink communication satellites, or a Loon balloon from Google's Alphabet fleet that can provide wireless internet access to rural and remote areas.
Shortly after a Starlink rocket launch, a satellite is almost as bright as the North Star, a magnitude 2. When it reaches its orbiting height 342 miles above Earth, unless sunlight hits just the right angle, the satellite dims to magnitude 5 to 7. Beginning three to four hours after sunset in a summer, satellites can be visible to the naked eye all night.
With U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval, Musk's SpaceX program is in the process of launching 12,000 satellites in a Starlink network designed to facilitate high-speed, global broadband internet access. Sometime in June, 2020, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is expected to launch the eighth batch of satellites, about 60 more, for the broadband network. His artificial satellite constellation raises concerns about space safety and the impact on ground-based telescopes exploring deep space.
At different heights above Earth, the orbits of satellites pose different problems. At about 300 miles or less, atmospheric drag downs and vaporizes satellites. Starlink system satellites designed to orbit 700 miles above Earth are too high for a quick and disintegrating re-entry. If satellites carry fuel, working ones can be maneuvered back to higher levels, and high-level ones that no longer work can be lowered and subjected to disintegration. Of course, the presence of fuel in a satellite increases the chance of an explosion.
Whether working or out-of-service, at any level above Earth satellites can collide and break apart into "space junk." Fragments of debris go into their own separate orbits ready to cause additional collisions and, therefore, even more space junk. That is what happened when the Chinese sent a missile to hit a satellite no longer in use. Resulting shrapnel fanned out into numerous orbits of space junk. Potentially, damaged debris could necessitate avoiding whole regions of space.
Besides the danger of collisions, bright satellites that compete with the stars are a problem for astronomers who have been exploring deep space for centuries. Since photographing objects light years away can require exposing an image for hours, satellites orbiting the Earth already spoil the view. Those who use radio telescopes to study the universe expect interference from satellite transmissions that use frequencies close to the radio waves from distant objects.
Loon's internet balloons fly at 10 to 15 miles above Earth. With five to 10 balloons, Loon is especially useful in providing temporary service to an area in need of communication after a disaster. Service is now provided in Puerto Rico, Peru's rainforest, and Kenya.
Problems associated with space, including satellites, balloons, spacecrafts, and military applications, are expected to worsen. In addition to the approximately 5000 satellites already orbiting Earth and 12,000 launched by SpaceX, the OneWeb company plans to add 650 and Amazon's broadband project would deploy 3200. Along with the satellites powering the U.S. GPS, other navigation systems: Russia's GLONASS, China's BeiDou, the EU's Galileo and OneWeb, now owned by the UK and India's Bharti Global, also have launched satellites. Unless atmospheric drag is allowed to remove space junk and satellites no longer in use, the likelihood of collisions and interference with deep space research will increase unchecked.
At present, no international agreements govern the safe use of space, observes Dr. Lisa Ruth Rand, a research associate at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and post doctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin. To date, the use of space seems to rely on the ambitions of Elon Musk, individual countries and companies, and aliens exploring new frontiers. Urgent international negotiations are needed, at least by Earthlings.
Shortly after a Starlink rocket launch, a satellite is almost as bright as the North Star, a magnitude 2. When it reaches its orbiting height 342 miles above Earth, unless sunlight hits just the right angle, the satellite dims to magnitude 5 to 7. Beginning three to four hours after sunset in a summer, satellites can be visible to the naked eye all night.
With U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval, Musk's SpaceX program is in the process of launching 12,000 satellites in a Starlink network designed to facilitate high-speed, global broadband internet access. Sometime in June, 2020, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is expected to launch the eighth batch of satellites, about 60 more, for the broadband network. His artificial satellite constellation raises concerns about space safety and the impact on ground-based telescopes exploring deep space.
At different heights above Earth, the orbits of satellites pose different problems. At about 300 miles or less, atmospheric drag downs and vaporizes satellites. Starlink system satellites designed to orbit 700 miles above Earth are too high for a quick and disintegrating re-entry. If satellites carry fuel, working ones can be maneuvered back to higher levels, and high-level ones that no longer work can be lowered and subjected to disintegration. Of course, the presence of fuel in a satellite increases the chance of an explosion.
Whether working or out-of-service, at any level above Earth satellites can collide and break apart into "space junk." Fragments of debris go into their own separate orbits ready to cause additional collisions and, therefore, even more space junk. That is what happened when the Chinese sent a missile to hit a satellite no longer in use. Resulting shrapnel fanned out into numerous orbits of space junk. Potentially, damaged debris could necessitate avoiding whole regions of space.
Besides the danger of collisions, bright satellites that compete with the stars are a problem for astronomers who have been exploring deep space for centuries. Since photographing objects light years away can require exposing an image for hours, satellites orbiting the Earth already spoil the view. Those who use radio telescopes to study the universe expect interference from satellite transmissions that use frequencies close to the radio waves from distant objects.
Loon's internet balloons fly at 10 to 15 miles above Earth. With five to 10 balloons, Loon is especially useful in providing temporary service to an area in need of communication after a disaster. Service is now provided in Puerto Rico, Peru's rainforest, and Kenya.
Problems associated with space, including satellites, balloons, spacecrafts, and military applications, are expected to worsen. In addition to the approximately 5000 satellites already orbiting Earth and 12,000 launched by SpaceX, the OneWeb company plans to add 650 and Amazon's broadband project would deploy 3200. Along with the satellites powering the U.S. GPS, other navigation systems: Russia's GLONASS, China's BeiDou, the EU's Galileo and OneWeb, now owned by the UK and India's Bharti Global, also have launched satellites. Unless atmospheric drag is allowed to remove space junk and satellites no longer in use, the likelihood of collisions and interference with deep space research will increase unchecked.
At present, no international agreements govern the safe use of space, observes Dr. Lisa Ruth Rand, a research associate at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and post doctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin. To date, the use of space seems to rely on the ambitions of Elon Musk, individual countries and companies, and aliens exploring new frontiers. Urgent international negotiations are needed, at least by Earthlings.
Saturday, November 10, 2018
How Can Bananas Be 29 Cents a Pound?
You may have noticed Chiquita prints labels on bananas from Honduras over pink ribbons supporting breast cancer research. Possibly the company has seen research by Kantar Consulting in the UK. Kantar's Purpose 2020 study found "almost two-thirds of millennials and centennials...express a preference for brands that have a point of view and stand for something." Consultants went on to conclude consumers expect brands to use their social power for positive change.
Nowadays, the world has a wide variety of models that affect positive change. Religious missionaries and JFK's Peace Corps show how to bring education and skill training to impoverished areas. Experienced nongovernmental organizations rush water, food, and medical quick-fix support when earthquakes and other natural disasters strike, while international banks grant low-cost loans to finance the projects and equipment for long-term solutions. Foundations, universities, and major stockholders pressured South Africa to end apartheid by withdrawing investments from South African companies. Supermarket shoppers lent their economic power to Cesar Chavez's campaign to better conditions for lettuce pickers.
The mothers, children, and other relatives walking, riding, and floating north to escape violence and poverty in Central America crave positive social change. According to ethicalconsumer.org, United Fruit, now Chiquita, and Standard Fruit, now Dole, came to Central America in the 1890s, because fertile land and government corruption provided excellent conditions for their banana businesses. In time, grocery chains habitually began to use bananas as loss leaders, offering them at low prices to attract shoppers who would buy other items, such as greeting cards that can be $3 or more, at profitable prices. These shoppers now are in a position to pressure supermarkets to buy from suppliers who treat workers fairly. Customers, who work for a living themselves, understand employees are entitled to fair compensation for their work. Those who climb trees to harvest bananas in Guatemala cannot be expected to subsidize grocers by accepting low wages, poor education and housing, and medical problems from unsafe working conditions.
Today's greater access to worldwide information prompts both consumer concern for the exploitation of labor in foreign countries and exposure to the consequences of government corruption. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission in Kenya recognizes foreign companies involved in corrupt practices "ruin our country." At the same time, what company wants to risk prosecution for bribing government officials for a construction contract in Brazil or to pay off officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, if the same commodities are available in Australia?
Migrant refugees don't want to walk miles to seek asylum from violence and poverty. Consumers and businesses have the power to change the conditions that can help them stay home.
Nowadays, the world has a wide variety of models that affect positive change. Religious missionaries and JFK's Peace Corps show how to bring education and skill training to impoverished areas. Experienced nongovernmental organizations rush water, food, and medical quick-fix support when earthquakes and other natural disasters strike, while international banks grant low-cost loans to finance the projects and equipment for long-term solutions. Foundations, universities, and major stockholders pressured South Africa to end apartheid by withdrawing investments from South African companies. Supermarket shoppers lent their economic power to Cesar Chavez's campaign to better conditions for lettuce pickers.
The mothers, children, and other relatives walking, riding, and floating north to escape violence and poverty in Central America crave positive social change. According to ethicalconsumer.org, United Fruit, now Chiquita, and Standard Fruit, now Dole, came to Central America in the 1890s, because fertile land and government corruption provided excellent conditions for their banana businesses. In time, grocery chains habitually began to use bananas as loss leaders, offering them at low prices to attract shoppers who would buy other items, such as greeting cards that can be $3 or more, at profitable prices. These shoppers now are in a position to pressure supermarkets to buy from suppliers who treat workers fairly. Customers, who work for a living themselves, understand employees are entitled to fair compensation for their work. Those who climb trees to harvest bananas in Guatemala cannot be expected to subsidize grocers by accepting low wages, poor education and housing, and medical problems from unsafe working conditions.
Today's greater access to worldwide information prompts both consumer concern for the exploitation of labor in foreign countries and exposure to the consequences of government corruption. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission in Kenya recognizes foreign companies involved in corrupt practices "ruin our country." At the same time, what company wants to risk prosecution for bribing government officials for a construction contract in Brazil or to pay off officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, if the same commodities are available in Australia?
Migrant refugees don't want to walk miles to seek asylum from violence and poverty. Consumers and businesses have the power to change the conditions that can help them stay home.
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
February's International Film Festival
One of the most pleasant ways to learn about a country is to go to a movie made in or about somewhere you don't live. When Oscar nominations for short and feature films are announced, it's time to start looking for theatres that show them, because many of these potential Academy Award winners have an international connection.
This year, in the animated shorts category, South Africa presents Revolting Rhymes based on Ronald Dahl's dark spin on fairy tales. One French short, Negative Space, shows a sad relationship between father and son can exist in any culture, and, in another French short, two amphibians explore a deserted mansion. These shorts are shown together with two U.S. films: the Pixar short, Lou, that ran before Cars and Kobe Bryant's retirement letter, Dear Basketball.
Since the live action shorts nominated for Oscars often portray news events, they can be a pleasant way to see both uplifting and unpleasant aspects of a country. Watu Wote (All of Us) shows how Muslims risked their lives to protect the Christians riding on a bus with them, when Islamic terrorists attacked in Kenya. The British short, The Silent Child, introduces the social worker who taught a deaf 4-year-old girl the sign language that enabled her to come out of the shadows and be included in family conversations. Two U.S. entries cover a school shooting in Atlanta titled DeKalb Elementary and My Nephew Emmett based on the 1955 racist murder of Emmett Till. Australian humor is on display in The Eleven O'Clock, a short about an appointment between a psychiatrist and patient that try to treat each other.
Families already may have seen the animated feature, Coco, which has a Mexican theme depicting how a death in the family shouldn't end memories of a relative. Loving Vincent probably won't have wide distribution, but if young people have a chance to see this Polish-British feature, it might be their only time to see a movie where each frame about Vincent Van Gogh is made by an oil painting. Since Angelina Jolie produced The Breadwinner, this animated feature likely has wider distribution. It shows how an 11-year-old girl disguised herself as a boy to grow up with more opportunities under the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Although too advanced to be appropriate or understood by young people, the live action foreign language films nominated for Academy Awards provide adults with points of view from Chile (A Fantastic Woman), Lebanon (The Insult), Russia (Loveless), Hungary (On Body and Soul), and Sweden (The Square).
Oscar winners will be announced on Sunday, March 4, 2018.
This year, in the animated shorts category, South Africa presents Revolting Rhymes based on Ronald Dahl's dark spin on fairy tales. One French short, Negative Space, shows a sad relationship between father and son can exist in any culture, and, in another French short, two amphibians explore a deserted mansion. These shorts are shown together with two U.S. films: the Pixar short, Lou, that ran before Cars and Kobe Bryant's retirement letter, Dear Basketball.
Since the live action shorts nominated for Oscars often portray news events, they can be a pleasant way to see both uplifting and unpleasant aspects of a country. Watu Wote (All of Us) shows how Muslims risked their lives to protect the Christians riding on a bus with them, when Islamic terrorists attacked in Kenya. The British short, The Silent Child, introduces the social worker who taught a deaf 4-year-old girl the sign language that enabled her to come out of the shadows and be included in family conversations. Two U.S. entries cover a school shooting in Atlanta titled DeKalb Elementary and My Nephew Emmett based on the 1955 racist murder of Emmett Till. Australian humor is on display in The Eleven O'Clock, a short about an appointment between a psychiatrist and patient that try to treat each other.
Families already may have seen the animated feature, Coco, which has a Mexican theme depicting how a death in the family shouldn't end memories of a relative. Loving Vincent probably won't have wide distribution, but if young people have a chance to see this Polish-British feature, it might be their only time to see a movie where each frame about Vincent Van Gogh is made by an oil painting. Since Angelina Jolie produced The Breadwinner, this animated feature likely has wider distribution. It shows how an 11-year-old girl disguised herself as a boy to grow up with more opportunities under the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Although too advanced to be appropriate or understood by young people, the live action foreign language films nominated for Academy Awards provide adults with points of view from Chile (A Fantastic Woman), Lebanon (The Insult), Russia (Loveless), Hungary (On Body and Soul), and Sweden (The Square).
Oscar winners will be announced on Sunday, March 4, 2018.
Friday, October 20, 2017
Puzzle
People are not black boxes; they can explain how they arrived at their conclusions. And, even when they arrive at the same conclusion, they can explain the different approaches they took.
On the Teaching Channel (teachingchannel.org), kindergarten teacher Donella Oleston showed how she positioned two green squares, two yellow squares, and six white squares in different locations on two boards that each had ten squares. Then, she asked students to tell:
1. What do you see?
2. What is the same?
3. What is different?
In that way, her students learned to explain their answers and to show each other there were different ways to think about a problem.
I just came across a real life puzzle that older students could discuss in a similar manner.
When two teams are playing for a championship, in anticipation that either team could win, manufacturers print T-shirts celebrating the victory of both teams. What happens to the T-shirts boasting about the victory of what was the losing team? Often they are bundled up with used clothing and sent to Africa. Now, African countries are trying to develop their own clothing industries which cannot compete with cheap imports. When I began listing the following factors involved in this situation, I realized it would give students a wonderful opportunity to explain what they noticed and what solutions they would suggest, in other words, experience with critical thinking.
Situation
1. For African countries to achieve greater economic growth, they need to diversify beyond producing raw materials (agricultural commodities and minerals for domestic use and export).
2. Both clothing manufacturers and seamstresses offer Africa an avenue for economic diversification into the production of higher-priced goods. Enabling women to provide revenue from sewing also enhances their value to the family and, in cases where men have died from disease and in war, sewing can keep children from dying from starvation.
3. Prices for African-produced clothing are too high to compete with unwanted, used, and Chinese clothing imports.
4. African countries, such as Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, and South Sudan, plan to raise tariffs to make clothing imports more expensive than locally produced clothes.
5. Africans who sell clothing imports protest raising tariffs, because they would lose their livelihoods.
6. The United States, which now gives favorable terms to some African imports, is being urged to retaliate against Africa's higher tariffs on clothing imports by canceling these favorable trade terms.
The U.S. Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association of 40 used clothing exporters claim high African tariffs would put 40,000 sorters and packers out of work and send more clothes to U.S. landfills. Since the U.S. also uses favorable trade deals to pressure African countries to make democratic reforms, it would lose this leverage if African countries were more concerned about fostering local industry than exporting raw materials to the U.S.
7. African leaders see the dignity of their people undermined when their countries are used as a dumping ground, not only for clothing, but also for old cars, buses, airplanes, expired drugs, medical equipment, computers, and electronic equipment.
What solutions can students suggest?
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Women Used by Human Traffickers Need International Amber Alert
"...humans, unlike drugs, can be sold for repeated use."
There is nothing comfortable about the globalization involved in this statement by the president of an Asian movement against human trafficking, mostly of the estimated 7 out of 10 who are women and girls kidnapped or lured into this new form of slavery.
Women are taken by force like the 276 schoolgirls the terrorist group, Boko Haram, abducted in northeastern Nigeria in 2014. They are the objects of sex tourism for old white European men on the coastal beaches of Kenya. And they are promised "good" jobs by the traffickers in India who sell them as maids, prostitutes, and bonded laborers in households, brothels, and factories. If they are rescued and returned, as at least 82 of the kidnapped Nigerian women were, they need counseling and help to be reintegrated into society.
Slavery prevention requires military and police protection and organizations that provide poor females with food, education, sewing, farming, and other alternatives to earn an income for themselves and their families. By distributing pamphlets, producing street plays, showing documentary films, and putting up posters, organizations also warn girls and women about the false promises used to entice victims.
Stories about women who have been spotted and rescued on airplanes and trains suggest how teachers, and even students, should be suspicious and ask questions about students who suddenly disappear. U.S. airlines, aware they are vehicles for human trafficking, train their agents to recognize warning signs: young travelers with no identification and no adult with them, small bags rather than luggage, one-way tickets paid for by cash or credit cards not in their last names and possibly flagged as stolen. In one case, when a customer service agent spotted these signs, she told two girls they wouldn't be able to fly and called the local police department. On social media, a man had invited the girls to New York for the weekend to earn $2000 modeling and appearing in music videos. The man disappeared as soon as he knew the police were on to him.
A woman on a train from Bhopal to Mumbai, India, was able to ask a nun for help, because the man who her husband allowed to take her to a job was riding in another coach. She was told to meet him on the platform at Borivali, a station in Mumbai. The quick thinking nun took a photo of the passenger, told her to get off the train one station before Borivali, and gave the woman the cellphone number of a nun who could meet her and help her get on a train to return home. This story had a happy ending, because the husband thanked the nuns for their help.
A woman on a train from Bhopal to Mumbai, India, was able to ask a nun for help, because the man who her husband allowed to take her to a job was riding in another coach. She was told to meet him on the platform at Borivali, a station in Mumbai. The quick thinking nun took a photo of the passenger, told her to get off the train one station before Borivali, and gave the woman the cellphone number of a nun who could meet her and help her get on a train to return home. This story had a happy ending, because the husband thanked the nuns for their help.
Other rescues are more dangerous, since traffickers are well organized and financed. In India, trafficking is a multibillion dollar business. By working with the police, a non-government organization in India did successfully free women confined in a fish-processing plant, force the company to pay back wages, and transport the women back to their homes.
Sister Florence Nwaonuma tells how her experience networking with religious congregations in Nigeria was effective, because training acquainted the nuns with human trafficking issues and prepared them to collaborate and avoid ego conflicts. Working with immigration officials in Lagos, Nigeria, sisters resettled trafficking victims there or helped them go on to Benin City, where other religious congregations were ready to provide short term housing. In many jurisdictions obtaining licenses for shelters also requires cooperation with government agencies.
At shelters, traumatized victims of trafficking often require the same services, such as medical attention, as victims of sexual abuse. Psychosocial support is needed to heal memories, provide reassurance about safety, and listen in counseling sessions. In some cases, where legal action is possible, victims are prepared to testify in court. Long term drug therapy also may be needed for those who have contracted HIV/AIDS.
The U.S. holds a National Human Trafficking Awareness Day on January 11, and the UN-sponsored World Day against Trafficking in Persons is July 30. Plan now, how to mark these days in your communities. In thinking about the future, check the Trafficking Day websites to find out about job opportunities in this important field.
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
China is Everywhere in Africa
"The Chinese are everywhere," writes a friend who is a missionary in Tanzania. News of China building sports stadiums, roads, railroads, pipelines, ports, bridges, hospitals, schools, and office buildings throughout the continent confirms her observation. China enjoys a reputation of making the lowest bid, not requiring local reforms, and bringing projects in on time.
A consortium of companies led by the China Communications Construction Company broke ground this year on its $478.9 million contract to build the first three berths on phase one of a $5 billion infrastructure project on Kenya's coast at Manda Bay. To the Chinese, the islands of Lamu, Manda, and Pate that lay just off Africa's Indian Ocean coast may have resembled the Hong Kong and Macau areas of China.
When completed in 2030, the Lamu area will be a deep-sea port hub with 32-berths, a pipeline to oil fields in Kenya (10 billion barrel reserve) and Uganda (2 billion barrels), a natural gas power plant, and a railroad that runs south to the Mombasa-Nairobi line and north to link landlocked Ethiopia and South Sudan to the Lamu port. The latter link would help free South Sudan's oil shipments from depending on Sudan's northern pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
Security at the Lamu project is a major concern. Islamic extremists, the Shabab from Somalia, killed in Lamu county in 2014 and at a Nairobi shopping mall in 2013. Earlier, violence left 1000 people dead and another 600,000 displaced during the 2007 election of Kenya's president, Uhuru Kenyatta. Poaching of elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns for art objects and folk medicine in China, Vietnam, and Thailand continues to reduce Africa's wildlife population. One Chinese woman was jailed in Kenya for two and a half years for trying to smuggle 15 pounds of ivory pieces onto a Kenya Airways flight by claiming they were macadamia nuts.
Originally, China's interest in Africa resembled that of the Europeans who carved up the continent in the 19th century. They were intent on extracting raw materials. While it is true that China still builds roads in Ghana to mine gold and into Mozambique to cut timber, the forecast of three billion people added to the continent's population between 2000 and 2100, now also motivates China to open manufacturing plants in Africa and to develop a market for its exports. Some African manufacturers suffer by not being able to compete with China, but resellers benefit from higher profits on, for example, Chinese shoes, motorbikes, smartphones, and counterfeit goods. In return, China is a market for Africa's tea, cut flowers, and, of course, chemicals, minerals, and lumber. But China's infrastructure improvements will not benefit China alone. They will be open to all marketers who see an opportunity to get more goods in and out of Africa.
A consortium of companies led by the China Communications Construction Company broke ground this year on its $478.9 million contract to build the first three berths on phase one of a $5 billion infrastructure project on Kenya's coast at Manda Bay. To the Chinese, the islands of Lamu, Manda, and Pate that lay just off Africa's Indian Ocean coast may have resembled the Hong Kong and Macau areas of China.
When completed in 2030, the Lamu area will be a deep-sea port hub with 32-berths, a pipeline to oil fields in Kenya (10 billion barrel reserve) and Uganda (2 billion barrels), a natural gas power plant, and a railroad that runs south to the Mombasa-Nairobi line and north to link landlocked Ethiopia and South Sudan to the Lamu port. The latter link would help free South Sudan's oil shipments from depending on Sudan's northern pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
Security at the Lamu project is a major concern. Islamic extremists, the Shabab from Somalia, killed in Lamu county in 2014 and at a Nairobi shopping mall in 2013. Earlier, violence left 1000 people dead and another 600,000 displaced during the 2007 election of Kenya's president, Uhuru Kenyatta. Poaching of elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns for art objects and folk medicine in China, Vietnam, and Thailand continues to reduce Africa's wildlife population. One Chinese woman was jailed in Kenya for two and a half years for trying to smuggle 15 pounds of ivory pieces onto a Kenya Airways flight by claiming they were macadamia nuts.
Originally, China's interest in Africa resembled that of the Europeans who carved up the continent in the 19th century. They were intent on extracting raw materials. While it is true that China still builds roads in Ghana to mine gold and into Mozambique to cut timber, the forecast of three billion people added to the continent's population between 2000 and 2100, now also motivates China to open manufacturing plants in Africa and to develop a market for its exports. Some African manufacturers suffer by not being able to compete with China, but resellers benefit from higher profits on, for example, Chinese shoes, motorbikes, smartphones, and counterfeit goods. In return, China is a market for Africa's tea, cut flowers, and, of course, chemicals, minerals, and lumber. But China's infrastructure improvements will not benefit China alone. They will be open to all marketers who see an opportunity to get more goods in and out of Africa.
Monday, May 1, 2017
All Aboard for China's African Railroads
A new Chinese built railroad scheduled for next month's trial run from Kenya's busy Mombasa port to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi offers students a good opportunity to study the map of East Africa. At the same time, this infrastructure improvement will benefit, not only the Chinese, but all future marketers who want to get their commodities and products in and out of Africa.
China has seen Africa's need for railroads as a promising use for its excess steel production and a way to avoid charges of dumping, i.e. exporting overcapacity at below fair market prices. Since Africa's population is expected to boom from one to four billion between 2000 and 2100, China also is looking ahead to the need for ports and transportation links capable of handling a growing market for Chinese goods (and Africa's own growing economies).
China has experience building railroads that connect African ports, known to handle 90% of the continent's exports and imports, with the interior. In the 1970s, China financed and built the TAZARA Railway from Zambia's Copperbelt to the port at Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Other Chinese railroads connect Nigeria's capital at Abuja to Kaduna, and an electrified railway that opened this year gives landlocked Addis Ababa in Ethiopia access to the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea in Djibouti.
By the time the Mombasa-Nairobi line is ready to handle passengers and freight in January, 2018, it will have taken seven years for a process that required: Kenya and the China Road and Bridge to sign a memorandum of understanding, to finalize $3.6 billion in financing from China's Exim Bank and Kenya's government, to lay tracks, to build and deliver locomotives and cars, and to complete trial runs. Kenya's attitude toward the Chinese-built Mombasa to Nairobi railway turned negative as ballooning costs turned four times the original estimate and raised suspicions of corruption.
Plans call for extending the Mombasa-Nairobi line farther west around the northern coast of Lake Victoria, up to the Uganda border by 2021, and then on to Uganda's capital in Kampala and Kigali, Rwanda, with a branch line to Juba, South Sudan. Extending the Mombasa-Nairobi line into Uganda would facilitate oil shipments from new fields in and around Lake Albert and copper, cadmium, and other mineral shipments from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It also would improve the supply route to the Dominican nuns mentioned in the earlier post, "Celebrate Uplifting Efforts to Promote Self Reliance in Africa."
Although the Mombasa-Nairobi route is only about 300 miles long, terrain required 98 bridges, embankments, cuttings, and an elevated section through Tsavo National Park that provides six openings for wildlife to pass underneath. Annually, freight trains are expected to carry 22 million tons over the line, 40% of all cargo entering Mombasa. Trips from the freight terminal at Mombasa to container depots at Embakasi/Nairobi are expected to take less than eight hours. New standard gauge trains traveling at 75 mph could reduce a passenger's trip from Mombasa to Nairobi to four hours compared to the current all day trip on the deteriorated, leftover meter gauge railway built before Kenya's independence. The trip will take longer when any stops are made for passengers at the 40 stations expected to be completed along the route.
Africa's Chinese railroads are a work in progress. Funding and loan repayment, as well as stolen materials, have plagued these projects. In some cases, the China Communications Construction Company will operate Africa's railways while local employees are being trained. Over Easter, Nigerians complained about changed schedules and poor communication. The same poor maintenance that left colonial railroads in disrepair after African countries gained independence could be a problem in the future.
China has seen Africa's need for railroads as a promising use for its excess steel production and a way to avoid charges of dumping, i.e. exporting overcapacity at below fair market prices. Since Africa's population is expected to boom from one to four billion between 2000 and 2100, China also is looking ahead to the need for ports and transportation links capable of handling a growing market for Chinese goods (and Africa's own growing economies).
China has experience building railroads that connect African ports, known to handle 90% of the continent's exports and imports, with the interior. In the 1970s, China financed and built the TAZARA Railway from Zambia's Copperbelt to the port at Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Other Chinese railroads connect Nigeria's capital at Abuja to Kaduna, and an electrified railway that opened this year gives landlocked Addis Ababa in Ethiopia access to the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea in Djibouti.
By the time the Mombasa-Nairobi line is ready to handle passengers and freight in January, 2018, it will have taken seven years for a process that required: Kenya and the China Road and Bridge to sign a memorandum of understanding, to finalize $3.6 billion in financing from China's Exim Bank and Kenya's government, to lay tracks, to build and deliver locomotives and cars, and to complete trial runs. Kenya's attitude toward the Chinese-built Mombasa to Nairobi railway turned negative as ballooning costs turned four times the original estimate and raised suspicions of corruption.
Plans call for extending the Mombasa-Nairobi line farther west around the northern coast of Lake Victoria, up to the Uganda border by 2021, and then on to Uganda's capital in Kampala and Kigali, Rwanda, with a branch line to Juba, South Sudan. Extending the Mombasa-Nairobi line into Uganda would facilitate oil shipments from new fields in and around Lake Albert and copper, cadmium, and other mineral shipments from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It also would improve the supply route to the Dominican nuns mentioned in the earlier post, "Celebrate Uplifting Efforts to Promote Self Reliance in Africa."
Although the Mombasa-Nairobi route is only about 300 miles long, terrain required 98 bridges, embankments, cuttings, and an elevated section through Tsavo National Park that provides six openings for wildlife to pass underneath. Annually, freight trains are expected to carry 22 million tons over the line, 40% of all cargo entering Mombasa. Trips from the freight terminal at Mombasa to container depots at Embakasi/Nairobi are expected to take less than eight hours. New standard gauge trains traveling at 75 mph could reduce a passenger's trip from Mombasa to Nairobi to four hours compared to the current all day trip on the deteriorated, leftover meter gauge railway built before Kenya's independence. The trip will take longer when any stops are made for passengers at the 40 stations expected to be completed along the route.
Africa's Chinese railroads are a work in progress. Funding and loan repayment, as well as stolen materials, have plagued these projects. In some cases, the China Communications Construction Company will operate Africa's railways while local employees are being trained. Over Easter, Nigerians complained about changed schedules and poor communication. The same poor maintenance that left colonial railroads in disrepair after African countries gained independence could be a problem in the future.
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Celebrate Uplifting Efforts to Promote Self Reliance in Africa
On this Easter Sunday, what better time is there to recognize the day-to-day efforts nuns in Tanzania and Kenya make to improve the lives of women and the poor in Africa?
Sister Stella Storch, a member of an order of Dominican nuns who runs a sewing and computer program for orphans whose parents died of AIDS. malaria, and TB in Tanzania, observes, "I've been to a lot of trafficking conferences for years, and they're all rescue programs after the women have been damaged, but this is preventative of trafficking, so that makes this program unique."
Sister Storch aims to develop self-confidence and esteem in young women by teaching skills they can use to earn a living for themselves and their families. She points out how these women love their country and their families, and if they are not hungry, they won't be tempted by traffickers to leave Africa. Sister Storch works with the UN's "Empowering Women's Future AIDS Orphan Sewing Project "(unanima-international.org) that Sister Helllen Bandino of the St. Therese of the Child Jesus order helped found in Bukbuba, Tanzania 16 years ago.
Although nuns and missionaries are inspired by the teachings of Christ, they are practical rather than mystical. "There's no McDonald's for these girls to work at, says Sr. Storch. When girls are hungry, a straight seam isn't important to them, but I have to make a straight seam seem important. I tell my students, without straight seams I can't sell their placemats, napkins, clothing, and bags. To help raise the $5000 needed to buy 20 sewing machines a year from China and ship them over sea and poor roads to the western side of Lake Victoria, Sr. Storch also sells about 100 scarves she knits each year for $20 each.
The girls who board and learn at the Dominican order's motherhouse pray before class, at the end of the day, and for benefactors. When it comes to menstruation, good hygiene, and relationships with men, Sr. Storch says, I teach them "(A)ll the things a mother would normally teach a daughter."
Dominican Missionary Sisters in nearby Kenya have a different challenge, barren land unable to produce food for Nairobi's metropolitan area. One of the Sisters, Dominica Mwila, learned how to do agricultural research from her father, who directs an Agricultural Training Institute. Although the nuns had built six greenhouses to control temperatures, manage drought and rainfall conditions, and prevent loss from insects, rodents, and other wild animals, plants died of wilt disease from a bacteria infection. Research discovered hybrid tomato seeds that resisted the disease.
The Sisters invited local farmers to their greenhouses to see their healthy tomatoes and to share with them information about their farming methods. Harvests outgrew the needs of the religious community which also began to grow peppers, broccoli, maize, onions, and cabbage outdoors as well as in greenhouses. Neighbors used to a two-mile walk to the nearest market were happy to buy the nuns' surplus produce. Revenue from these sales pays salaries of tutors for 80-100 children and farmworkers who come from Nairobi's Kalinde slum for training. The Sisters encourage trainees to use the knowledge and skills they learn to start their own projects.
"Self-sustainability is tough and challenging," Sister Mwila says, but greenhouse farming is a sure way to have food and money. Alleluia!
Sister Stella Storch, a member of an order of Dominican nuns who runs a sewing and computer program for orphans whose parents died of AIDS. malaria, and TB in Tanzania, observes, "I've been to a lot of trafficking conferences for years, and they're all rescue programs after the women have been damaged, but this is preventative of trafficking, so that makes this program unique."
Sister Storch aims to develop self-confidence and esteem in young women by teaching skills they can use to earn a living for themselves and their families. She points out how these women love their country and their families, and if they are not hungry, they won't be tempted by traffickers to leave Africa. Sister Storch works with the UN's "Empowering Women's Future AIDS Orphan Sewing Project "(unanima-international.org) that Sister Helllen Bandino of the St. Therese of the Child Jesus order helped found in Bukbuba, Tanzania 16 years ago.
Although nuns and missionaries are inspired by the teachings of Christ, they are practical rather than mystical. "There's no McDonald's for these girls to work at, says Sr. Storch. When girls are hungry, a straight seam isn't important to them, but I have to make a straight seam seem important. I tell my students, without straight seams I can't sell their placemats, napkins, clothing, and bags. To help raise the $5000 needed to buy 20 sewing machines a year from China and ship them over sea and poor roads to the western side of Lake Victoria, Sr. Storch also sells about 100 scarves she knits each year for $20 each.
The girls who board and learn at the Dominican order's motherhouse pray before class, at the end of the day, and for benefactors. When it comes to menstruation, good hygiene, and relationships with men, Sr. Storch says, I teach them "(A)ll the things a mother would normally teach a daughter."
Dominican Missionary Sisters in nearby Kenya have a different challenge, barren land unable to produce food for Nairobi's metropolitan area. One of the Sisters, Dominica Mwila, learned how to do agricultural research from her father, who directs an Agricultural Training Institute. Although the nuns had built six greenhouses to control temperatures, manage drought and rainfall conditions, and prevent loss from insects, rodents, and other wild animals, plants died of wilt disease from a bacteria infection. Research discovered hybrid tomato seeds that resisted the disease.
The Sisters invited local farmers to their greenhouses to see their healthy tomatoes and to share with them information about their farming methods. Harvests outgrew the needs of the religious community which also began to grow peppers, broccoli, maize, onions, and cabbage outdoors as well as in greenhouses. Neighbors used to a two-mile walk to the nearest market were happy to buy the nuns' surplus produce. Revenue from these sales pays salaries of tutors for 80-100 children and farmworkers who come from Nairobi's Kalinde slum for training. The Sisters encourage trainees to use the knowledge and skills they learn to start their own projects.
"Self-sustainability is tough and challenging," Sister Mwila says, but greenhouse farming is a sure way to have food and money. Alleluia!
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Small-scale Successes
Small hydroelectric plants and oil from croton nuts supply villages in India with electricity and Kenyans with biofuel. These solutions are too small to attract major foreign investments. In marketing management terms, they would be considered "dogs" with a very little share of overall electricity and fuel markets and limited growth potential.
Yet I always have respected "dogs." They are like every small scale business, such as a bed and breakfast, barber shop, or organic farm, that provides services/goods and generates enough income to support one or more families.
Along India's rivers in the Himalayas, Vaishnavi Consultants and other private companies subsidized by the government are building hydroelectric plants that can use small amounts of water to light 100 homes 24 hours a day in remote villages. This clean power adds no pollution in India, the world's third largest sources of carbon dioxide emissions. And the plants provide employment for the day workers who build them and about 25 local people who run them. The government commits to buying the energy for the villages, and, by law, local councils receive a small percentage from the plants' profits.
Despite the advantages of India's small hydroelectric plants, these projects are not problem free in a country suffering from drought and clean water shortages. Even though the government's bureaucratic process to obtain the necessary permits to built a hydroelectric plant can take two to five years, a lack of oversight and exemption from the government's environmental impact act require remedies. Too many plant sites along the same stream can compromise plant performance and unregulated deforestation by developers almost always violates environmental rules.
Like India's small hydroelectric plants, biofuel from Kenya's croton trees produces energy with fewer carbon emissions than coal, oil, or gas. Further, without deforestation or replacing agricultural land needed to grow food crops, the Nanyuki-based Eco Fuels company presses oil from the nuts of the croton trees that grow wild in the Mount Kenya and Rift Valley regions. Farmers do not need to water or fertilize the trees that they can harvest for six months out of the year. Eco Fuels pays 5,000 farmers for the nuts on delivery, unlike coffee farmers who have to wait months for payment.
The croton oil used in generators, water pumps, and tractor engines is cheaper than diesel oil and generates 78% less carbon dioxide emissions. The protein-rich seedcake paste left from pressing croton nuts is sold as poultry feed and husks are sold as organic fertilizer.
Don't discount India's small scale hydroelectric plants or Kenya's croton nuts. For some, these "dogs" are families' best friends.
Yet I always have respected "dogs." They are like every small scale business, such as a bed and breakfast, barber shop, or organic farm, that provides services/goods and generates enough income to support one or more families.
Along India's rivers in the Himalayas, Vaishnavi Consultants and other private companies subsidized by the government are building hydroelectric plants that can use small amounts of water to light 100 homes 24 hours a day in remote villages. This clean power adds no pollution in India, the world's third largest sources of carbon dioxide emissions. And the plants provide employment for the day workers who build them and about 25 local people who run them. The government commits to buying the energy for the villages, and, by law, local councils receive a small percentage from the plants' profits.
Despite the advantages of India's small hydroelectric plants, these projects are not problem free in a country suffering from drought and clean water shortages. Even though the government's bureaucratic process to obtain the necessary permits to built a hydroelectric plant can take two to five years, a lack of oversight and exemption from the government's environmental impact act require remedies. Too many plant sites along the same stream can compromise plant performance and unregulated deforestation by developers almost always violates environmental rules.
Like India's small hydroelectric plants, biofuel from Kenya's croton trees produces energy with fewer carbon emissions than coal, oil, or gas. Further, without deforestation or replacing agricultural land needed to grow food crops, the Nanyuki-based Eco Fuels company presses oil from the nuts of the croton trees that grow wild in the Mount Kenya and Rift Valley regions. Farmers do not need to water or fertilize the trees that they can harvest for six months out of the year. Eco Fuels pays 5,000 farmers for the nuts on delivery, unlike coffee farmers who have to wait months for payment.
The croton oil used in generators, water pumps, and tractor engines is cheaper than diesel oil and generates 78% less carbon dioxide emissions. The protein-rich seedcake paste left from pressing croton nuts is sold as poultry feed and husks are sold as organic fertilizer.
Don't discount India's small scale hydroelectric plants or Kenya's croton nuts. For some, these "dogs" are families' best friends.
Thursday, December 22, 2016
I Love Coffee; I Love Tea
South African tea farmers, who formed the Heiveld co-operative in the Suid Bokkeveld, are among the Africans who have learned to play the game. Not satisfied with the low prices middlemen brokers paid, and the subsequent low wages they received for the long hours (up to 10-12 hour days) they worked on tea plantations, they formed a co-operative to sell directly to Fairtrade importers who pay fair prices. Their incomes tripled by dealing with companies, such as Lemonaid & Chari Tea.
Fairtrade certified co-operatives are a good fit with companies formed to satisfy health conscious consumers who are willing: 1) to pay a slightly higher price for products that use natural ingredients and 2) to treat all farmers fairly and with dignity. In the case of Lemonaid & Chari Tea, the company also set up a foundation which uses per bottle contributions from its specialty drinks to finance solar energy and education projects for co-operative members.
For coffee bean farmers, current conditions are not this favorable. Rising temperatures and, in some areas, unusual drenching high altitude rain associated with climate change have caused a decline in harvests and an increase in pests and widespread roya, a leaf rust fungus, in Central America and Africa. While several big coffee companies are helping farmers move to higher ground, move away from the equator, develop more resilient coffee plants, and diversify crops, most coffee growers are poor small scale farmers unable to mill and market their own coffee beans.
Since worldwide coffee demand is growing and coffee yields are shrinking, criminal gangs in Kenya and elsewhere have an incentive to overpower private security guards, pay off police guards, steal entire harvests from storage facilities, and sell stolen bags of beans to unscrupulous or unsuspecting middlemen.
Coffee plantations also have an incentive to scam coffee certification systems that are designed to recognize farms for good environmental, social, and economic practices. Inspectors for the Rainforest Alliance, the Netherlands' UTZ seal, and the Fairtrade International seal have failed to spot problems in Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer. When confronted, farm owners have been known to claim violations were corrected before a deadline, labor issues were resolved, and information about code non-conformities and improved conditions is confidential. Noted certification violations include: false pay deductions for absences, for pay advances and for days off and a failure to register seasonal workers and provide their required medical exams.
In some counties, government regulations requiring coffee marketers to provide sizable bank guarantees and to obtain export licenses have hampered the formation of coffee co-operatives that can sell directly to companies, such as Starbucks.
(An earlier post, "Coffee Prices Going Up; Allowances Going Down?" also addresses the coffee shortage.)
Fairtrade certified co-operatives are a good fit with companies formed to satisfy health conscious consumers who are willing: 1) to pay a slightly higher price for products that use natural ingredients and 2) to treat all farmers fairly and with dignity. In the case of Lemonaid & Chari Tea, the company also set up a foundation which uses per bottle contributions from its specialty drinks to finance solar energy and education projects for co-operative members.
For coffee bean farmers, current conditions are not this favorable. Rising temperatures and, in some areas, unusual drenching high altitude rain associated with climate change have caused a decline in harvests and an increase in pests and widespread roya, a leaf rust fungus, in Central America and Africa. While several big coffee companies are helping farmers move to higher ground, move away from the equator, develop more resilient coffee plants, and diversify crops, most coffee growers are poor small scale farmers unable to mill and market their own coffee beans.
Since worldwide coffee demand is growing and coffee yields are shrinking, criminal gangs in Kenya and elsewhere have an incentive to overpower private security guards, pay off police guards, steal entire harvests from storage facilities, and sell stolen bags of beans to unscrupulous or unsuspecting middlemen.
Coffee plantations also have an incentive to scam coffee certification systems that are designed to recognize farms for good environmental, social, and economic practices. Inspectors for the Rainforest Alliance, the Netherlands' UTZ seal, and the Fairtrade International seal have failed to spot problems in Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer. When confronted, farm owners have been known to claim violations were corrected before a deadline, labor issues were resolved, and information about code non-conformities and improved conditions is confidential. Noted certification violations include: false pay deductions for absences, for pay advances and for days off and a failure to register seasonal workers and provide their required medical exams.
In some counties, government regulations requiring coffee marketers to provide sizable bank guarantees and to obtain export licenses have hampered the formation of coffee co-operatives that can sell directly to companies, such as Starbucks.
(An earlier post, "Coffee Prices Going Up; Allowances Going Down?" also addresses the coffee shortage.)
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Will African Roses Replace Dutch Tulips?
World events can have both positive and negative effects on countries. By voting to leave the EU, Britain's new tariff relationships hold promise for Africa. On the other hand, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket explosion on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on September 1, 2016 casts doubt on a deal between a US and Chinese company and much more.
While the UK currently imports most of its fresh fruit from Spain and 70% of its fresh vegetables from Spain and the Netherlands, African countries anticipate they will gain a larger share of the UK market for flowers, vegetables, fruit, and tea, should tariffs on EU goods increase and tariffs on African imports end. South Africa already is the second largest source of the UK's fresh fruit, and a quarter of Kenya's fresh produce exports go to Britain. Changes in taste also might continue to boost UK imports of African produce, like pineapples, melons, and avocados, not grown domestically. Retailers caution African exporters, however, that regulations require imported produce to be safe and responsibly produced.
Although African countries might gain from Britain's EU exit, they suffered from the Falcon 9 rocket explosion. The Amos-6 satellite that was destroyed would have given Africa internet access to Facebook.
While the UK currently imports most of its fresh fruit from Spain and 70% of its fresh vegetables from Spain and the Netherlands, African countries anticipate they will gain a larger share of the UK market for flowers, vegetables, fruit, and tea, should tariffs on EU goods increase and tariffs on African imports end. South Africa already is the second largest source of the UK's fresh fruit, and a quarter of Kenya's fresh produce exports go to Britain. Changes in taste also might continue to boost UK imports of African produce, like pineapples, melons, and avocados, not grown domestically. Retailers caution African exporters, however, that regulations require imported produce to be safe and responsibly produced.
Although African countries might gain from Britain's EU exit, they suffered from the Falcon 9 rocket explosion. The Amos-6 satellite that was destroyed would have given Africa internet access to Facebook.
Monday, June 20, 2016
Why Will Africa Overcome Poverty?
In the 200 years of transformative moments compiled at citi.com/200, few of those moments transformed Africa. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1834, work began on the Suez Canal in 1880, the Berlin Conference partitioned Africa in 1884, the first cases of AIDS were reported in 1981, Nelson Mandela was freed in 1990, and the Arab Spring occurred in 2011. What were missing were advances in manufacturing, transportation, communications and information technology, science, and medicine.
Nowadays efforts to conquer disease in Africa have been effective. The world rallied to stamp out eBola in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. People like President Carter have worked tirelessly to eradicate Guinea worm disease, river blindness, polio and other diseases. President Bush has made sure treatment for AIDS has been funded. And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has focused on stopping the scourges of malaria and dengue fever with mosquito nets and more.
It is easy to trace the lack of security in Africa from the bands of boy soldiers, terrorists, and robbers that pose a threat from Libya to Nigeria to Rwanda to South Africa to the lack of education and job opportunity on the continent. I remember learning that when Belgium granted independence to the Congo, the new state had only one college graduate. Unlike Mansa Musa, who crossed Africa from Mali to Mecca to find the Arab scholars he brought back to a university and library at Timbuktu in the 14th century, the countries that plundered Africa for slaves and raw materials and claimed territory at the Berlin Conference had no interest in identifying genius and educating the population.
Just as disease now has less impact on Africa's poverty, training and education have the power to overcome a lack of development. In a speech at the University of Pretoria on July 18, 2016, Bill Gates suggested teachers may be able to use mobile phones both to teach students basic skills and to receive instant feedback that enables them to catch problems and tailor the pace of instruction. Samaschool, a non-profit founded by Leila Janah, already provides digital training online and in Kenya. When Gates noted Africa's need to invest in high-quality public universities essential for the education of scientists, entrepreneurs, educators, and government leaders, I was reminded of John Zogby's idea of forming a Technology Corps. The tech-savvy educators in this corps would be ideal professors at such universities (See the earlier post, "Work Around the World.").
Africans now work in computer fields. According to an item on trendwatching.com, a Dutch organization, Butterfly Works Foundation, has launched Tunga, a platform in Kenya that brings African programmers together with tech companies looking for coders. Leila Janah's Samasource employs marginalized women and youth in Uganda, Kenya, India, and Haiti to turn data, images, content, and voice surveys into algorithm-ready, clean, searchable data for projects at Google, eBay, and Walmart. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg discovered Angela, campuses in Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, Kenya, that provide six months of intensive training for male and female engineering programmers who go on to work as software developers with technology firms, such as Google, Microsoft, and startups like 6Sense and the Muse. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, founded by Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Dr. Priscilla Chan, has given Angela $24 million. Other investors in Angela include 2U, Spark Capital, Omidyar Network, Learn Capital, GV, and CRE Ventures.
Zuckerberg observed, "We live in a world where talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not....Priscilla and I believe in supporting innovative models of learning wherever they are around the world--and what Angela is doing is pretty amazing." Jeremy Johnson, head of the 2U startup and co-founder of Angela, said the goal was "to cultivate a next generation of founders and executives of great companies across Africa." Two African entrepreneurs have tourism startups. David Ssemambo in Uganda, provides transportation, hotel bookings, and tours for visiting foreign dignitaries, investors and tourists. (See his website at sendeetravels.com.) Ssemambo is even studying how to use China's social media to attract Chinese tourists to Africa. If you wish to climb Mount Kilimanjaro or bask on a beach in Zanzibar, you can contact Licious Adventure (liciousadventure,com), which is run by another local entrepreneur in Tanzania.
(Also see the later post, "Africans Learn to Play the Game," and, for additional information about business opportunities in Africa, see the earlier posts, "Invest in Africa's Agricultural Future" and "Want An Exciting Career?")
Nowadays efforts to conquer disease in Africa have been effective. The world rallied to stamp out eBola in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. People like President Carter have worked tirelessly to eradicate Guinea worm disease, river blindness, polio and other diseases. President Bush has made sure treatment for AIDS has been funded. And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has focused on stopping the scourges of malaria and dengue fever with mosquito nets and more.
It is easy to trace the lack of security in Africa from the bands of boy soldiers, terrorists, and robbers that pose a threat from Libya to Nigeria to Rwanda to South Africa to the lack of education and job opportunity on the continent. I remember learning that when Belgium granted independence to the Congo, the new state had only one college graduate. Unlike Mansa Musa, who crossed Africa from Mali to Mecca to find the Arab scholars he brought back to a university and library at Timbuktu in the 14th century, the countries that plundered Africa for slaves and raw materials and claimed territory at the Berlin Conference had no interest in identifying genius and educating the population.
Just as disease now has less impact on Africa's poverty, training and education have the power to overcome a lack of development. In a speech at the University of Pretoria on July 18, 2016, Bill Gates suggested teachers may be able to use mobile phones both to teach students basic skills and to receive instant feedback that enables them to catch problems and tailor the pace of instruction. Samaschool, a non-profit founded by Leila Janah, already provides digital training online and in Kenya. When Gates noted Africa's need to invest in high-quality public universities essential for the education of scientists, entrepreneurs, educators, and government leaders, I was reminded of John Zogby's idea of forming a Technology Corps. The tech-savvy educators in this corps would be ideal professors at such universities (See the earlier post, "Work Around the World.").
Africans now work in computer fields. According to an item on trendwatching.com, a Dutch organization, Butterfly Works Foundation, has launched Tunga, a platform in Kenya that brings African programmers together with tech companies looking for coders. Leila Janah's Samasource employs marginalized women and youth in Uganda, Kenya, India, and Haiti to turn data, images, content, and voice surveys into algorithm-ready, clean, searchable data for projects at Google, eBay, and Walmart. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg discovered Angela, campuses in Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, Kenya, that provide six months of intensive training for male and female engineering programmers who go on to work as software developers with technology firms, such as Google, Microsoft, and startups like 6Sense and the Muse. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, founded by Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Dr. Priscilla Chan, has given Angela $24 million. Other investors in Angela include 2U, Spark Capital, Omidyar Network, Learn Capital, GV, and CRE Ventures.
Zuckerberg observed, "We live in a world where talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not....Priscilla and I believe in supporting innovative models of learning wherever they are around the world--and what Angela is doing is pretty amazing." Jeremy Johnson, head of the 2U startup and co-founder of Angela, said the goal was "to cultivate a next generation of founders and executives of great companies across Africa." Two African entrepreneurs have tourism startups. David Ssemambo in Uganda, provides transportation, hotel bookings, and tours for visiting foreign dignitaries, investors and tourists. (See his website at sendeetravels.com.) Ssemambo is even studying how to use China's social media to attract Chinese tourists to Africa. If you wish to climb Mount Kilimanjaro or bask on a beach in Zanzibar, you can contact Licious Adventure (liciousadventure,com), which is run by another local entrepreneur in Tanzania.
(Also see the later post, "Africans Learn to Play the Game," and, for additional information about business opportunities in Africa, see the earlier posts, "Invest in Africa's Agricultural Future" and "Want An Exciting Career?")
Monday, May 9, 2016
1 Invention + 1 Invention = 1 New Invention
Combining two inventions to make a new one has solved a world of problems. Kids need outdoor exercise and water so a South African entrepreneur combined a merry-go-round and pump (See the earlier post, "Hope for the Future.").
There are many reasons to invent a machine to solve the back-breaking problem of planting trees in the hot African sun. Drought-plagued countries, such as Ethiopia and Kenya, need to plant trees along river banks to prevent agricultural soil erosion. New trees also are needed to replace those harvested for firewood and charcoal and eaten by goats. And by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air, trees reduce the greenhouse gases associated with climate change.
The Equinox Community Farm in Wisconsin, USA, has come up with a "water wheel transplanter" it uses to save time and the back breaking work of planting onion seedlings in straight rows. A tractor drags a sort of flatbed trailer that has three large wheels lined with hollow spikes that dig and water holes to ready them for two men who ride on the flatbed and plant pre-grown seedlings. by two men seated on the flatbed. Two 80-gallon tanks leak water out of the spiked wheels that make Could this system be modified to simplify the process of planting trees? After the trees are planted, another pass over the field might put the plastic cones that conserve water over each new tree.
Obviously this is just one idea for creating an invention that can plant the trees Africa needs. There are a wide variety of organizations, government agencies, and companies already looking for solutions: the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100); World Resources Institute (WRI); government Ministries of Agriculture, Environment, Forest, and Climate Change; Farmers Managed Natural Regeneration; Kenya-based Komaza; the Unique Forestry and Land Use consulting firm; Moringa Partnership.
(Incidentally, by purchasing cards at arborday.org/giveatree, you can plant trees in America's National Forests in honor of family and friends.)
There are many reasons to invent a machine to solve the back-breaking problem of planting trees in the hot African sun. Drought-plagued countries, such as Ethiopia and Kenya, need to plant trees along river banks to prevent agricultural soil erosion. New trees also are needed to replace those harvested for firewood and charcoal and eaten by goats. And by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air, trees reduce the greenhouse gases associated with climate change.
The Equinox Community Farm in Wisconsin, USA, has come up with a "water wheel transplanter" it uses to save time and the back breaking work of planting onion seedlings in straight rows. A tractor drags a sort of flatbed trailer that has three large wheels lined with hollow spikes that dig and water holes to ready them for two men who ride on the flatbed and plant pre-grown seedlings. by two men seated on the flatbed. Two 80-gallon tanks leak water out of the spiked wheels that make Could this system be modified to simplify the process of planting trees? After the trees are planted, another pass over the field might put the plastic cones that conserve water over each new tree.
Obviously this is just one idea for creating an invention that can plant the trees Africa needs. There are a wide variety of organizations, government agencies, and companies already looking for solutions: the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100); World Resources Institute (WRI); government Ministries of Agriculture, Environment, Forest, and Climate Change; Farmers Managed Natural Regeneration; Kenya-based Komaza; the Unique Forestry and Land Use consulting firm; Moringa Partnership.
(Incidentally, by purchasing cards at arborday.org/giveatree, you can plant trees in America's National Forests in honor of family and friends.)
Saturday, April 9, 2016
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.)
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.)
Sunday, November 29, 2015
Cheating is Easy, but...
When my daughter was using a game to teach a concept, the student who won suddenly jumped up and said, "Yes!" Whether a student is learning a new concept in a dirt floor classroom in Sudan, in an air conditioned one in Saudi Arabia, or in a slum in Chicago, the joy of understanding can't be underestimated. As Pope Frances observed last week during his trip to Nairobi, Africa, a country riddled with bribery and government graft, corruption is easy, but it robs a person of peace and joy. Conversely, mastering a concept gives joy.
I have been very interested to read in Elmira Bayrasli's book, From the Other Side of the World,
how entrepreneurs in unlikely places are countering what India calls chai paani, "a little bit of extra," the tradition of taking a bribe before correcting an erroneous and costly customs classification, performing a medical test, issuing a telephone number, or awarding a construction contract.
When I taught international marketing, I used to dread teaching the chapter that discussed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits US businesses from paying bribes openly or using middlemen as conduits for a bribe, when the middleman is known to use part of the payment for a bribe. I felt naive teaching that US corporations would resist the temptation to maneuver around the law when multi-million dollar contracts were at stake. I remembered the story of the overseas diplomat who took a visitor from the US to see two new office towers. "There were supposed to be three," he said, "but, after paying kickbacks, there was only money left for two."
With this background in mind, I was surprised and delighted to read how the ability to obtain licenses, register property, and obtain other government services online has eliminated contact with officials who have discretionary power to do their jobs only after they collect a bribe, the little bit of extra.
Although there are still many instances where bribes and kickbacks could help a business handle government paperback faster, companies like the "Dial 1298" private ambulance firm in India and high tech Infosys and Wipro in Pakistan refuse to engage in corruption. They decided to create a new corporate culture built on well defined and uncompromising values and standards that employees are expected to internalize. Moreover, organizations like Transparency International and Ipaidabribe.com, have sprung up to monitor corruption and to invite reports of bribes required and paid in India, Pakistan, Kenya, and Russia. Narenda Modi, India's current prime minister, considered it a winning message to campaign on a promise to end corruption.
Bayrasli observed that the middle class expects functioning public services and reliable governance. As globalization expands the middle class throughout the world, wise parents and teachers may need not only to punish cheating but to reward the value and joy of learning.
(Also see the earlier posts, "Warning to Students: Don't Cheat" and "Learning Can Be Fun.")
I have been very interested to read in Elmira Bayrasli's book, From the Other Side of the World,
how entrepreneurs in unlikely places are countering what India calls chai paani, "a little bit of extra," the tradition of taking a bribe before correcting an erroneous and costly customs classification, performing a medical test, issuing a telephone number, or awarding a construction contract.
When I taught international marketing, I used to dread teaching the chapter that discussed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits US businesses from paying bribes openly or using middlemen as conduits for a bribe, when the middleman is known to use part of the payment for a bribe. I felt naive teaching that US corporations would resist the temptation to maneuver around the law when multi-million dollar contracts were at stake. I remembered the story of the overseas diplomat who took a visitor from the US to see two new office towers. "There were supposed to be three," he said, "but, after paying kickbacks, there was only money left for two."
With this background in mind, I was surprised and delighted to read how the ability to obtain licenses, register property, and obtain other government services online has eliminated contact with officials who have discretionary power to do their jobs only after they collect a bribe, the little bit of extra.
Although there are still many instances where bribes and kickbacks could help a business handle government paperback faster, companies like the "Dial 1298" private ambulance firm in India and high tech Infosys and Wipro in Pakistan refuse to engage in corruption. They decided to create a new corporate culture built on well defined and uncompromising values and standards that employees are expected to internalize. Moreover, organizations like Transparency International and Ipaidabribe.com, have sprung up to monitor corruption and to invite reports of bribes required and paid in India, Pakistan, Kenya, and Russia. Narenda Modi, India's current prime minister, considered it a winning message to campaign on a promise to end corruption.
Bayrasli observed that the middle class expects functioning public services and reliable governance. As globalization expands the middle class throughout the world, wise parents and teachers may need not only to punish cheating but to reward the value and joy of learning.
(Also see the earlier posts, "Warning to Students: Don't Cheat" and "Learning Can Be Fun.")
Monday, August 24, 2015
Warning to Students: Don't Cheat
Children who are motivated to cheat by copying another student's work, paying someone to write their papers, or hiring another student to take a standardized test for them could learn a few lessons from those who have avoided corruption or engaged in it around the world.
Even if the current business culture in a country sanctions corruption, the honesty espoused by Bulent Celebi's AirTies firm in Turkey offers a promising example. When Celebi established his WiFi company, which does not rely on phone lines or fiber optic cables to transmit data, he had six founding values. Besides customer satisfaction and engaged employees, he stated AirTies would be ethical. Therefore, he did not rely on bribes but, according to Elmira Bayrasli's book, From the Other Side of the World, he launched his business by working through the laborious process of dealing with Turkey's bureaucracy and paperwork. Shortcuts, he felt, would start AirTies off in the wrong direction.
While on a visit to Nairobi, Kenya, in November, 2015, Pope Francis told a cheering crowd that corruption was easy and sweet but in the end it makes politics, even in the Vatican, and a country sick. He urged the crowd to keep corruption out of its lives, because corruption takes away joy and robs people of peace in their lives.
Major European auto and truck maker, VW, will pay at least $15 billion for developing a cheating way to pass emissions tests.
As a result of bribing doctors and hospitals by giving them kickbacks, the Japanese-based manufacturer, Olympus, paid a $646 million fine.
By pretending subprime mortgages were sound, Goldman Sachs, one of the US firms that helped bring on the 2008 recession, is expected to pay about $5 billion to resolve state and federal investigations.
In Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff and House Speaker Eduardo Cunha have been implicated in a corruption scandal involving construction firms that paid bribes to Petrobras, the state energy firm. Marcelo Odebrecht, former head of Brazil's giant construction company, designed the scheme that paid kickbacks to win contracts from senior Petrobras officials and that funded political campaigns. In March, 2016, Odebrecht was sentenced to 19 years in prison. Although Rousseff thus far has been found blameless in the Petrobras scandal, the charge of her involvement has led to a call for her impeachment and hurt the country's economy by stopping building and energy projects. Petrobras has had to stop paying dividends, and the company has cut $32 billion from its 5-year $130 billion investment plan. Now that the Federal Accounts Court has ruled that Rousseff's administration used illegal accounting practices, the prospect of impeachment is even greater. Eventually, Rousseff was out, but in June, 2017, new President Michel Temer was charged with taking $11.5 million in bribes for helping a meatpacker who had tax and loan problems.
Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, Iceland's Prime Minister, was the first victim of a leak of papers from the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca. In April, 2016, he stepped down, when it was disclosed that he and his wife owned an undeclared off shore account where he concealed millions of dollars from taxes. The papers reveal Mossack Fonseca also has formed off shore shell companies to help other clients launder money, dodge sanctions, and evade taxes.
Nigerian authorities fined the South African-based MTN multinational mobile telecommunications company $5.2 billion, later reduced to $3.4 billion. Of MTN's 62 million subscribers, the company failed to disconnect 5.1 million unregistered, and therefore unidentified, Sim card accounts. Kidnappers had used an unregistered Sim card from MTN to demand a ransom for Nigeria's former finance minister, Chief Olu Falae.
A November, 2015 report from the World Anti Doping Agency alleging State-sponsored doping of Russia's Olympic athletes could result in banning the country from competing in 2016's Summer Olympics. And the head of the agency that selects the countries that hold World Cup soccer matches had to resign, when winning host countries were found to have bribed their way into the honor.
In Indonesia, the government's failure to keep an up-to-date land registry results in an inability to assign blame for the devastating forest fires on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo that also have spread a thick haze of smoke to Malaysia, Singapore, and southern Thailand. All together, the smoke has caused an estimated 500,000 respiratory tract infections, and 100,000 premature deaths are a possibility. Fires are set by cheap slash and burn methods used to clear for new planting by both small scale farmers and corporate palm oil, timber (used for paper), and other agricultural corporations. Standards for the hiring and working conditions of migrant labor in the palm oil industry have failed to remedy abuses. When an investigation by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil found the Malaysian palm oil company, IOI, failed to correct deforestation violations in its concessions, Unilever and 9 other major companies cancelled their contracts with IOI.
You can read about charges of corruption Russia faces in the earlier blog post, "Hearing Voices." And Communist Party officials throughout China have been severely punished as reported in the earlier blog post, "China's Corruption Crackdown, New Bank Backing, and Release of PR Activists."
Even if the current business culture in a country sanctions corruption, the honesty espoused by Bulent Celebi's AirTies firm in Turkey offers a promising example. When Celebi established his WiFi company, which does not rely on phone lines or fiber optic cables to transmit data, he had six founding values. Besides customer satisfaction and engaged employees, he stated AirTies would be ethical. Therefore, he did not rely on bribes but, according to Elmira Bayrasli's book, From the Other Side of the World, he launched his business by working through the laborious process of dealing with Turkey's bureaucracy and paperwork. Shortcuts, he felt, would start AirTies off in the wrong direction.
While on a visit to Nairobi, Kenya, in November, 2015, Pope Francis told a cheering crowd that corruption was easy and sweet but in the end it makes politics, even in the Vatican, and a country sick. He urged the crowd to keep corruption out of its lives, because corruption takes away joy and robs people of peace in their lives.
Major European auto and truck maker, VW, will pay at least $15 billion for developing a cheating way to pass emissions tests.
As a result of bribing doctors and hospitals by giving them kickbacks, the Japanese-based manufacturer, Olympus, paid a $646 million fine.
By pretending subprime mortgages were sound, Goldman Sachs, one of the US firms that helped bring on the 2008 recession, is expected to pay about $5 billion to resolve state and federal investigations.
In Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff and House Speaker Eduardo Cunha have been implicated in a corruption scandal involving construction firms that paid bribes to Petrobras, the state energy firm. Marcelo Odebrecht, former head of Brazil's giant construction company, designed the scheme that paid kickbacks to win contracts from senior Petrobras officials and that funded political campaigns. In March, 2016, Odebrecht was sentenced to 19 years in prison. Although Rousseff thus far has been found blameless in the Petrobras scandal, the charge of her involvement has led to a call for her impeachment and hurt the country's economy by stopping building and energy projects. Petrobras has had to stop paying dividends, and the company has cut $32 billion from its 5-year $130 billion investment plan. Now that the Federal Accounts Court has ruled that Rousseff's administration used illegal accounting practices, the prospect of impeachment is even greater. Eventually, Rousseff was out, but in June, 2017, new President Michel Temer was charged with taking $11.5 million in bribes for helping a meatpacker who had tax and loan problems.
Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, Iceland's Prime Minister, was the first victim of a leak of papers from the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca. In April, 2016, he stepped down, when it was disclosed that he and his wife owned an undeclared off shore account where he concealed millions of dollars from taxes. The papers reveal Mossack Fonseca also has formed off shore shell companies to help other clients launder money, dodge sanctions, and evade taxes.
Nigerian authorities fined the South African-based MTN multinational mobile telecommunications company $5.2 billion, later reduced to $3.4 billion. Of MTN's 62 million subscribers, the company failed to disconnect 5.1 million unregistered, and therefore unidentified, Sim card accounts. Kidnappers had used an unregistered Sim card from MTN to demand a ransom for Nigeria's former finance minister, Chief Olu Falae.
A November, 2015 report from the World Anti Doping Agency alleging State-sponsored doping of Russia's Olympic athletes could result in banning the country from competing in 2016's Summer Olympics. And the head of the agency that selects the countries that hold World Cup soccer matches had to resign, when winning host countries were found to have bribed their way into the honor.
In Indonesia, the government's failure to keep an up-to-date land registry results in an inability to assign blame for the devastating forest fires on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo that also have spread a thick haze of smoke to Malaysia, Singapore, and southern Thailand. All together, the smoke has caused an estimated 500,000 respiratory tract infections, and 100,000 premature deaths are a possibility. Fires are set by cheap slash and burn methods used to clear for new planting by both small scale farmers and corporate palm oil, timber (used for paper), and other agricultural corporations. Standards for the hiring and working conditions of migrant labor in the palm oil industry have failed to remedy abuses. When an investigation by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil found the Malaysian palm oil company, IOI, failed to correct deforestation violations in its concessions, Unilever and 9 other major companies cancelled their contracts with IOI.
You can read about charges of corruption Russia faces in the earlier blog post, "Hearing Voices." And Communist Party officials throughout China have been severely punished as reported in the earlier blog post, "China's Corruption Crackdown, New Bank Backing, and Release of PR Activists."
Monday, May 4, 2015
Recess Differs Around the World
.jpg/450px-Children_climb_in_a_tree%2C_in_one_of_the_Dadaab_refugee_camps%2C_north-east_Kenya_(5942667571).jpg)
As seen by photographer, James Mollison, in his new book, Playground, how students play, learn, and live is very different around the world.In Tokyo, Japan, children in clean shirts and shorts play in a gym with plenty of space under a roof that opens and closes. At school in Hull, UK, young men in uniforms of white shirts with navy sweaters and pants fool around in a brick courtyard. Recess in Africa is quite different. Hundreds of students in drab uniforms stand around in the dirt in front of their ramshackle school in Nairobi, Kenya. In Freetown, Sierra Leone, students in blue shirts and dark shorts share their recess with pigs in a stream.
Sitting at outdoor ping pong and chess tables, students in Tel Aviv, Israel, wear military uniforms, while the dress code on the students standing around outdoors in a cement lot in Bethlehem, West Bank, is blue shirts and dark pants.
Outdoors in Karvag, Averoy, Norway, active students in sweaters spend their recesses climbing trees in a wooded lot. Some African children also like to climb trees in their free time.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Girl Power?
Lured by the romance of joining the "jihadi girl power subculture," young tech-savvy Western women are developing contacts with ISIS terrorists, just like the Latin Queens who have been drawn to the gang of Latin Kings. The question is: Are women who join terrorist groups and gangs exhibiting girl power or their willingness to become tools of male power? Are terrorist groups grooming women to use their quick reflexes to detonate car bombs, their devotion to become suicide bombers, or their feminine wiles to return to their home countries to attack targets determined by men?Female Kurdish soldiers also have taken up arms against ISIS. Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned Marxist leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) that has long fought a war for independence from Turkey, recognized how his support for gender equality would help enlist women who understand ISIS's intention to restrict the rights of women.
Girl power is seen in other forms by the following women:
- Malala Yousafzai The Pakistani girl who recovered from being shot in the head by the Taliban and went onto win a Nobel Peace Prize for supporting the education of women throughout the world In 2015, Time magazine named her one of the "100 Most Influential People." Her story is told in the book, I Am Malala.
- Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe This nun from the order of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, recognized as one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People" in 2014, ministers to the girls abducted and raped by soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army in Southern Sudan and Uganda. At the Saint Monica Vocational School in Gulu, Uganda, these girls learn to grow their own food, make their own clothes, tenderly care for their children, and sew the purses and other items they sell to support themselves and their families. Profits from the book, Sewing Hope, the story of Sister Rosemary, support her work.
- Mantza Morales Casanova When this Mexican woman saw children harming animals and plants, she decided to form Humanity United to Nature in Harmony for Beauty (HUNAB), an organization determined: 1) to put education about the environment into schools, 2) create Ceiba Petandra Park, a free area where 64,000 children can have an interactive learning experience about climate change, wetland conservation, wildlife protection, and pollution, and 3) to provide the education that children need to become environmental leaders who change the world.
- Shivani Bhalla Determined to save Kenya's lions, she founded: 1) Lions Kids Camp, where children often see lions in the wild for the first time, and 2) Ewaso Lions, a community outreach program designed to give tribal warriors, women, and children reasons to embrace conservation and to respect and coexist with lions.
- Shabana Basij-Rasikh At a risk to her own life and theirs, her parents sent her to a school in Afghanistan, where she excelled and went on to earn a degree from Middlebury College in the United States. To prepare other girls to attend universities abroad, she co-founded the School of Leadership, Afghanistan, a boarding school for girls. She has said, "The most effective antidote to the Taliban is to create the best educated leadership generation in Afghanistan's history. Our girls of today - the women of tomorrow - will make it happen."
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
International Fashion Designers Find Consumer Niches
On "Project Runway" (Lifetime channel at 9 pm ET Thursdays), this season's televised competition is showcasing the influence of international designers. Sandhya channeled her heritage from India to turn a dip-dyed flowered print into an original summer frock that won the show's first challenge and puzzled her U.S. competitors.
What designers such as Sandhya are doing is satisfying consumers who search for fashions and accessories that express their individuality. They may be motivated to wear T-shirts that support a cause as Vivienne Westwood's "Save the Arctic" one does (See the earlier post, "North Pole Flag."). Or they look for the environmentally, sustainable clothes mentioned in the earlier posts, "The World of Fashion" and "Fashion Forward." Mumbai-based fashion designer, Rahul Mishra, for example, espouses "slow fashion." His garments draw on the craftsmanship of India's embroidery experts and weavers to involve many talented village hands in the process of making his clothes. Why? He sees fashion as an opportunity for participation, not just consumption.
Some fashion consumers also want to be the first to go upscale to provide employment to those manufacturing luxury brands "Made in Africa." One designer who caters to this upscale consumer is Hanneli Rupert, daughter of Johann Rupert, chairman of the Richemont group that includes Cartier, Van Cleef, and other luxury goods. In 2009, she first introduced her Okapi brand, named for the "zebra giraffe" from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At her Okapi website (okapi.com) and at her Merchants on Long store in Cape Town, South Africa, Ms. Rupert sells bags, card cases, and other African-sourced leather goods. This fall the Okapi brand also will be available online at the luxury fashion Net-a-Porter website (net-a-porter.com).
The New York Times (July 31, 2014, page E5) observed that consumers looking for hard-to-find, unusual products are willing to pay top dollar to artisans with incredible fashion, furniture, and textile skills whether they live in Pakistan, Ethiopia, Peru, or Kenya. This season's "Project Runway" contestants are on the brink of exciting careers.
What designers such as Sandhya are doing is satisfying consumers who search for fashions and accessories that express their individuality. They may be motivated to wear T-shirts that support a cause as Vivienne Westwood's "Save the Arctic" one does (See the earlier post, "North Pole Flag."). Or they look for the environmentally, sustainable clothes mentioned in the earlier posts, "The World of Fashion" and "Fashion Forward." Mumbai-based fashion designer, Rahul Mishra, for example, espouses "slow fashion." His garments draw on the craftsmanship of India's embroidery experts and weavers to involve many talented village hands in the process of making his clothes. Why? He sees fashion as an opportunity for participation, not just consumption.Some fashion consumers also want to be the first to go upscale to provide employment to those manufacturing luxury brands "Made in Africa." One designer who caters to this upscale consumer is Hanneli Rupert, daughter of Johann Rupert, chairman of the Richemont group that includes Cartier, Van Cleef, and other luxury goods. In 2009, she first introduced her Okapi brand, named for the "zebra giraffe" from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At her Okapi website (okapi.com) and at her Merchants on Long store in Cape Town, South Africa, Ms. Rupert sells bags, card cases, and other African-sourced leather goods. This fall the Okapi brand also will be available online at the luxury fashion Net-a-Porter website (net-a-porter.com).
The New York Times (July 31, 2014, page E5) observed that consumers looking for hard-to-find, unusual products are willing to pay top dollar to artisans with incredible fashion, furniture, and textile skills whether they live in Pakistan, Ethiopia, Peru, or Kenya. This season's "Project Runway" contestants are on the brink of exciting careers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)