North Korea, Nuclear at 75

On Saturday, October 10, 2020, North Korea will parade the fruits of 30 years spent above ground and in secret underground tunnels developing a nuclear ICBM deterrent, possibly including advanced multiple independently targetable missiles and missiles that can maneuver in flight and on re-entry. North Korea is suspected of paying for its 2020 nuclear-related purchases with $275 million in hacked cryptocurrency. When Pyongyang commemorates the 75th anniversary of Stalin's founding of North Korea's communist Workers' Party, the world will be able to identify contributions countries, such as Russia, Ukraine and Iran, made to Saturday's military models, just as the world saw how Pakistan helped develop the uranium enrichment process on display in North Korea's first 2006 nuclear bomb test. Saturday, the world also might see evidence of Iran's hand in a North Korean submarine capable of launching solid-fueled ballistic missiles. These missiles, known as Pukguksong, again were paraded on January 14, 2021. Activity at North Korea's Sinpo South shipyard suggests development of such submarines. The 1989 collapse of the USSR was both a loss and a blessing for North Korea. Boris Yeltsin withdrew North Korea's Russian protection in 1991, but Pyongyang found it could recruit unemployed Russian and Ukrainian experts needed for its nuclear and missile program. Porous sanctions failed to prevent North Korea from becoming a nuclear power. Saturday's parade will demonstrate North Korea is, not only a nuclear power, but also a source able to supply weapons eagerly desired by would-be members of the nuclear club. With an economy crippled by sanctions and crop damage from unusually heavy typhoon rain, North Korea is likely to look for such a deal and, by using cryptocurrency, the transactions would be nearly impossible to trace. In one sense, North Korea finds the US and South Korea pitted against Russia and China, but global dynamics are more complicated. After North Korea and the US seemed on the brink of war in 2017, South Korea and China recognized, at the very least, such a nuclear confrontation destabilized the area. Just a year later, when the US and South Korea began improving relations with North Korea, Beijing made overtures to Chairman Kim designed to block greater US involvement on the peninsula. By 2000, Vladimir Putin took control in Russia and he too reached out to restore relations with North Korea. North and South Korea also have an on-again, off-again relationship. In June, 2020, the two countries cut off communication with each other, and Pyongyang blew up their joint liaison office in Kaesong, North Korea. Two months later, Chairman Kim was reported to be in a coma. In September and October, 2020, he was wishing President Trump a COVID-19 recovery and apologizing to Seoul for killing one of South Korea's officials in waters North Korea controls in the Yeonpyeong islands. Detailed disclosure about the incident compromised South Korean-US joint intelligence methods. Finally, just weeks before Saturday's parade of military hardware, a North Korean spokesperson said Pyongyang was satisfied with its military deterrent and planned to focus on economic development in 2021.

China's One Belt, One Road: Pakistan's Cautionary Tale

Back in 2015, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) section of China's One Belt, One Road (OBOR) Initiative was expected to bring economic development and jobs to Pakistan and also provide substantial benefits to China. The new deep water port at Gwadar, Pakistan, on the Arabian Sea would enable China to transport oil from the Middle East up through Pakistan to western China rather than across the Indian Ocean and through the congested Malacca Straight between Indonesia and Malaysia to the South China Sea. By encircling India, the CPEC offered a way to balance or neutralize democratic India's influence in the region, but the CPEC also involved China in India's Kashmir border dispute with Pakistan high in the Himalaya Mountains. Shots fired on the border in Septemebr, 2020, violated an Indo-Chinese agreement. Pakistan found the terms of the CPEC less than transparent and a debt burden Beijing was unwilling to renegotiate. The Chinese support Pakistan expected for its border dispute with India failed to materialize. In fact, in September, 2017, China and India signed an anti-terrorist declaration that criticized Pakistan for shielding terrorist groups. The US even floats the notion that China might be an ally willing to help persuade Pakistan to pressure its Taliban friends to help stabilize neighboring Afghanistan. The bottom line is: Pakistan's deteriorating economy, made worse by the coronavirus, finds 18 million employees out of work. China, which expects repayment for the CPEC, has no need for Pakistan's textile exports. CPEC construction jobs failed to satisfy Pakistan's need for the education, technical training and scientific research necessary for modern employment, such as monitoring and correcting Pakistan's poor air quality. Finally, the CPEC involves atheistic China with a Muslim country, when China is trying to eliminate the Uighur Muslim culture in Kashgar, home of the Id Kah Mosque, and to control up to one million Uighurs in so-called re-education camps. At the same time, Pakistan's Hindu minority, already discriminated against in better economic times, is converting to Islam just to receive assistance from the government and charities.

Expand Family and Business Income Streams

Economic suffering from jobs lost to automation and the COVID-19 pandemic accelerate the need for multiple income streams from family members and businesses. The earlier post, "Rebirth of Self Worth," suggests ways children even can help generate income by adding lemonade and hot dog stands and entertainment to family yard sales. The following examples show how some businesses find new market segments eager to try their products.

     Hard to mow hilly parks overgrown with invasive buckthorn bushes and honeysuckle inspired the formation of the HaakHagen Goat Grazing farm run by a couple of friends in Wisconsin. Their 88 agile goats, rented out to private landowners and government land, also help preserve prairies by nibbling invasive species and shrubs that block the sun needed by shorter native plants. The goats are gentler on the land than heavy mowing machinery, what they leave behind eliminates the need for some fertilizer and adults and children find the goats fun to watch.

     Renting out RVs during the pandemic has become a new business catering to both vacationing families and virtual employees looking for office space while sheltering at home. When pleasure and business travelers return to the skies, they are likely to receive airline-branded Honeywell Safety Packs containing single-use gloves, hand wipes and face masks. Trendwatching.com reports Honeywell offers airline crews reusable packs of safety glasses and face masks with interchangeable filters.

     What is obvious from these three businesses is the way they each seized opportunities to serve multiple market segments. Clothing manufacturers now have an opportunity to produce double-duty items for home and business wear. Educational suppliers can think in terms of the home and school markets. Online retailers might gain multiple incomes from pop-up holiday shops, and more and more similar ideas will create new jobs and economic growth. 

   

What Happens After Wars?

 Wise decision making does not need data from another war. Human history already has enough data about the positive and negative results of wars to make additional surveys unnecessary. Marathon runners race 26 miles in the Olympics, because the Greeks defeated the Persians in 490 B.C. But no battle is responsible for Olympic figure skating.

     Clearly, wars have resulted in: disarmament, unemployed military personnel and weapon designers and manufacturers, collective security, land grabs and new borders, displaced populations, inflation, economic collapse, new financing for rebuilding, foreign aid, competing ideologies, independence and self determination for ethnic populations, release of prisoners, and medical advances. The question is: could positive outcomes from wars be achieved without bloodshed?

     Students attend Model UN meetings to discuss current world problems, and each year the Foreign Policy Association (fpa.org) prepares a Great Decisions Briefing Book and DVD to guide group discussions and provide topics for student essays. There also could be summits where students decide what wartime achievements could be gained without wars. (In 2019, the Great Decisions' discussion topics include: nuclear negotiations, cyberwarfare, U.S.-China trade and U.S.-Mexican relations, regional conflict in the Middle East, refugees/migration, European populism.)

     The challenge is to find out how similar subjects have been handled successfully after past wars. Has there ever been a way to incorporate a country's former rebel and military leaders into a productive government? Or could the Kurds who now live in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria break away peacefully and form their own country the way the Czech Republic (Czechia in English) and Slovakia did? Instead, as U.S. troops began pulling out of Syria, President Trump has called on Turkey's government, which is responsible for harsh treatment of its Kurds, to protect the Kurds the U.S. troops fought with in Syria, a questionable idea.

   

Venezuela Shows Need to Beware of Government Actions during Crises

Due in part to conflict erupting during an ongoing economic crisis, the first baseball player from Venezuela to be inducted into Cooperstown's Hall of Fame was absent from the ceremony honoring past greats at this year's All Star Game. Luis Aparicio, the celebrated, base-stealing Major League shortstop who lives in Maracaibo, is just one of the Venezuelans who has been affected by the food and medicine shortages caused by the world's falling oil prices that used to finance the country's economy.

     Street sit-downs by citizens, barricades set on fire by masked young men, and public rosary-praying by members of religious orders have led Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro to:

1. Send Venezuela's National Guard troops to fire tear gas into protesters from highway overpasses,
2. Postpone regional elections, 
3. Support the Supreme Court's attempt to strip the National Assembly of its powers.

     In her new book, No Is Not Enough, Naomi Klein recounts case after case where governments have used crises to blame scapegoats and to impose measures they have been longing to enact. Fear and confusion enable governments to get away with actions that would be unthinkable in normal times. But whether its economic collapse, natural disasters, election fraud, war, or cyber attack, there's no clear choice between the powers a government needs to deal with a problem and those the government has been looking for an opportunity to grab.

     During wars, history shows the United States passed Alien and Sedition Laws to deport or imprison male subjects of enemy countries and to punish those who published anti-government material; suspended habeus corpus which requires persons to be lawfully charged with a crime before they are detained; and sent Japanese citizens to internment camps.

     Just as governments may be ready to cut funding for education and Social Security to fund a military buildup, to muzzle the press, or to increase surveillance during a crisis, the public needs to be ready to come together to support voting rights, to defend the independence of courts, to demand constitutional guarantees, and, most of all, with a fierce determination not to repeat mistakes of the past. Will citizens be up to the task of discerning which powers a government needs for the crisis at hand?

Russia's Alternative to Putin

Does Russia have a viable alternative to Putin? The more than a thousand protesters, who were detained when they marched with Alexey Navalny in Moscow, and the nearly 100 other Russian cities on Sunday, March 26, 2017, think so.

     Unlike the Chinese leaders who, realizing personal gain and other appearances of corruption undermine public support, adopted the Supervision Law that places everyone in the country's public sector under anti-corruption supervision (Under the guise of searching for corruption, Chinese authorities, of course, also position themselves to uncover other prosecutable violations), Putin and the oligarchs he enabled to accumulate their wealth continue to present their soft underbelly for Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation to document on his blog. Someone's $15 million worth of gold bars even fell out of a cargo plane leaving Yakutsk, Russia, according to TIME magazine (April 2, 2018). A Chinese spokesperson said China is willing to lend a hand to other countries that need help fighting corruption. Neighboring Russia is yet to take up the offer.

     Moscow's cyberpropaganda concerns U.S. and European democracies, and Putin's adviser, Andrey Krutskikh, brags that Russia is "at the verge of having something in the information arena which will allow us to talk to the Americans as equals"(TIME magazine, May 29, 2017). But these so-called "triumphs" do nothing to prevent government corruption and a failing economy, based on falling oil prices, from motivating protests in Russian streets.

     While Vladimir Putin basked in his March 18, 2018 sham election victory, ordinary Russian citizens continued to see their disposable income and standard of living deteriorate. By 2018. senior citizens protested Putin's plan to raise the age when they could retire and claim pensions. Although Putin promises to make Russia a great power again, he, like little North Korea's leader, stakes Russia's claim to world respect for its spheres of influence on new nuclear weapons (In December, 2018, he showed a new missile reaching Florida.) rather than the thriving economies and nuclear weapons that support the powerful positions of the United States and China. Where are Russia's wind farms, medical advances, and hybrid seeds to end world hunger?

    Putin has problems: volatile oil revenues far below a once per barrel high near $150; failure to engineer relief from sanctions from the Trump administration; a younger generation getting its news from social media rather than official, state-owned radio and TV stations; corruption favoring oligarchs; a war dragging on in Syria; and a revolt by the Orthodox church in Ukraine. Just as China fears the competing influence of international religions and locks up Uighur Muslims in re-education camps and caused Buddhism's Dalai Lama to flee Tibet, Russia fears the independence of the Orthodox church in Ukraine, supported by Patriarch Bartholomen in Constantinople and Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko. Russia's President Putin, who considers the allegiance of the Russian Orthodox church, including in Ukraine, critical to his authority, threatened to punish those who worshiped in churches affiliated with Constantinople and raised concern that Russia would take over Orthodox cathedrals and monasteries not affiliated with Moscow. The West needs to be prepared to respond to any excuse Putin can use to further strengthen Russia's grip on Ukraine or former Soviet satellites.

     The Kremlin has employed various strategies to silence Navalny and prevent him from running for President against Putin. After he was charged with stealing timber from a state-run forestry in 2013, he was sentenced to five years in prison, despite a lack of evidence. In protest, 10,000 took to Moscow's streets and failed to leave. The next morning Navalny was released. Following his release he ran for Mayor of Moscow and won 27% of the vote to come in second to Putin's candidate in a six-candidate field.

     Later Alexey Navalny and his brother, Oleg, were charged with shipping company fraud. Again a conviction was rendered with no evidence. Oleg was sentenced to three and a half years in a penal colony, where he has been punished repeatedly for minor infractions and his requests for parole were refused twice. Alexey received a suspended three and a half year sentence and house arrest. Russia was using a traditional method of silencing one family member by imprisoning others. But Alexey cut the tracking bracelet off his ankle, announced what he had done on his blog, and started leaving his family's apartment at will. However, his fraud case is used to keep his name off the ballot in  presidential elections, and, for staging protest rallies, he served 30 days in jail in 2018 and was re-arrested again two minutes after his release.

     In the later blog, "29 Countries Influence 7 Billion People," see what the former leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, wrote about Vladimir Putin and democracy.

Commodity Crush Careers

Commodity traders keep an eye on prices like the following every day.

Per day prices

____________________________________________________________________ 

Commodities            1/18                1/24               1/31                   2/1                   2/3

____________________________________________________________________

Cotton                     72.3                                                                                        76.3

Corn                                                363.5

Coffee                    149.5                152.2             149.6                                       146.8

Cocoa                     2229                 2202              2091                                        2063

Rough rice               9.94                  9.98              9.54                9.53                   9.51

Soybeans                                                              33.83

Sugar                      20.95                20.55            20.49                                        21.3

_______________________________________________________________________________

But commodity traders are not the only ones whose careers involve commodity prices. Whether we live in Toronto or Timbuktu, trading money for goods and bartering goods for goods are what we do all our lives. On the global level there are careers in shipping agricultural commodities that go into what we eat and the mineral commodities that go into what we use. Crude oil is the most traded commodity in the world and coffee is the second. 

The prices buyers are willing to sign a contract to pay for commodities roll across the bottom of the CNBC station every trading day. You also can find commodity prices on the internet. I like to check them occasionally to see if there is an up trend or down trend, like the above prices show for cocoa, or up and down volatility.

What each quoted price means is complex. The price quoted for coffee beans applies to 37,500 pounds and the price for sugar applies to 112,000 pounds. These are the amounts that fit in one overseas shipping container. Since a ship might carry 18,000 containers, you can figure how much a company would pay for one shipload of a given amount of pounds.

Commodity prices are also important to those who price consumer goods. In the case of coffee beans, there are the additional costs of roasting the beans, repackaging the 250 bags that carry 37,5000 pounds of coffee on ships into the smaller bags or cans a consumer wants, distributing the coffee to thousands of stores, and advertising a brand.

How to increase prices

When a crop is harvested in countries that produce agricultural commodities, such as coffee, farmers will be offered lower prices if a harvest is large and marketed at one time. If a harvest is smaller because of drought or disease or because it is stored and sold gradually, prices will increase. Countries also can increase coffee export revenue, if they develop roasting facilities. Consequently, there are potential careers in water and pest control, storage, and processing. Some of these same subjects are covered in the earlier posts, "I Love Coffee, I Love Tea" and "Become a Discriminating Chocolate Consumer.")

I

Worldwide booms and recessions are a matter of concern to those whose careers in companies and countries depend on demand for the mineral commodities used in industrial production. Politicians in mineral-rich countries are tempted to take out loans in good times that voters will not want to repay with higher taxes in bad economic times. (The earlier post, "Falling Commodity Prices Spur Diversification in Emerging Markets," lists some of the counties affected by demand for certain mineral commodities.)

Commodities offer a vast field of career opportunities now and probably even more in the future as AI, robotics, and sensors are incorporated. For those interested in investing, the site, investopedia.com, covers the basics and more.

   

                                                                                                     

Future Career Opportunities

For youngsters around the world, where they will work or launch a business seems many years away. Yet, thinking about what factors a country needs to offer employees and employers can begin at any age. Forbes magazine (December 21, 2016) helped the process of identifying "Best Countries for Business" by ranking 139 countries on a composite of factors including: taxes, innovation, technology, regulations, corruption, property rights, investor protection, per capita income, and trade balance. Other factors to consider might be: infrastructure; political stability; threat of terrorism; human rights of men, women, and children; and health conditions.

     The Forbes ranking placed Sweden first and Chad last. At forbes.com/best-countries-for-business/list/, there is a brief evaluation of the business climate in each of the 139 counties listed. You can find out why a negative trade balance, regulations, government intervention in the housing and health insurance markets, budget deficits, and modest growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) positioned the United States 23rd among countries best for business.

     Looking for future opportunities, I paid special attention to the 26 countries with economic GDP growth of 5% of more. Admittedly, countries with less developed economies may be able to show the greatest growth compared to countries with more developed economies, such as the US with 2.6% growth. Nonetheless, growth is an important factor to consider.

Best for Business                                         GDP growth
     Ranking

     4                         Ireland                             26.3%
    130                       Ethiopia                           10.2%
    106                       Cote d' Ivoire                     8.5%
     85                       India                                  7.6%
    134                      Laos                                   7.6%
      97                      Dominican Republic            7.0%
    122                      Tanzania                             7.0%
    123                      Cambodia                           7.0%
     78                       Rwanda                              6.9%
    102                      China                                 6.9%
    133                     Dem. Republic of Congo      6.9%
    117                     Bangladesh                          6.8%
     98                      Vietnam                              6.7%
    113                     Mozambique                       6.6%
     81                      Senegal                               6.5%
     30                      Malta                                  6.2%
   109                      Mali                                   6.0%
   111                      Tajikistan                            6.0%
     89                      Philippines                         5.9%
    59                       Panama                              5.8%
  128                      Cameroon                           5.8%
  105                      Kenya                                 5.6%
    63                     Namibia                               5.3%
    94                     Bhutan                                 5.2%
    44                     Malaysia                              5.0%
  100                     Benin                                   5.0%

Of these 26 countries, almost half are in Africa. Youngsters might keep their eyes on what these countries do to remedy the problems identified in their Forbes descriptions, since African countries might offer the best opportunities in the future.

New Year's Resolution for Dictators

President-elect, Adama Barrow, who ended the 22-year reign of Yahya Jammeh in The Gambia, said colonists handed over executive power peacefully, so we should be able to show our children (an even) better example.

Yahya Jammeh and Joseph Kabila in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had an opportunity to follow the model of Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria, but instead they have clung to power like Mobuto Sese Seko and Robert Mugabe.

Ahead of Iran's scheduled May 19, 2017, election, Supreme Leader Ayatolla Ali Khamenei, who heads what has been called a "clerical dictatorship," began helping the radical opposition led by Ebrahim Raisi, by criticizing the lack of economic improvement current President Hassan Rouhani promised the country when the nuclear deal was ratified. Nonetheless Rouhani won in a landslide. The public continues to resent Iran's jailing of opposition leaders, banning of newspapers, and cancellation of concerts. Business leaders come to Iran looking for opportunities but leave when they consider the political climate.

     In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a "Muslim democrat," when he gained power in 2001, but as the winner of a constitutional referendum in 2017, he claimed authoritarian powers unknown in the years after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded a secular republic.

Conditions are similar in the Congo, where President Kabila's Republican Guards arrested opposition leader, Frank Diongo, and the popular opposition leader, Moise Katumbi, who owns a successful soccer club. Etienne Tshisekedi, opposition leader of the Congo's Union for Democracy and Social Progress party died at 83 in February, 2017. Despite being known as a country rich in minerals, poverty, inflation, a lack of jobs, corruption, and crime plague the economy. Social media is cut off. Although the Constitution bans presidents from seeking a third term, Kabila's second 5-year term as president ended December 19, 2016, without plans for a new election until possibly 2018.

In The Gambia, President Yahya Jammeh, a Muslim who came to power as an army lieutenant in 1994, at first accepted defeat in the country's December 5, 2016, election. He then decided to contest the results before his term expired January 19, 2017. When a coalition of West African countries threatened to use military force to oust him, Jammeh left Gambia on January 21, 2017.

Adama Barrow, the victor in The Gambia's December election delivered a Christmas message calling for "peace and tranquility." In contrast to Jammeh's condemnation of homosexuality and gay rights, Barrow promised to "protect the right of each Gambian to hold and practice the religion or creed of one's choice without any hindrance or discrimination." From the beginning of his presidency in 2011, Jammeh was criticized for his repression and intimidation of the opposition. Media criticism was met with death threats to and arrests of journalists. The editor of a Gambian newspaper, The Point, was murdered in 2004.

Under Barrow, a truth and reconciliation commission hopes to recover millions of dollars Jammeh is accused of stealing from The Gambia, recipient of $3 million a year in US aid. Barrow also plans to establish a team of experts to design a blueprint for The Gambia's poverty eradication and economic development. Two winners of a Student Inspiration Award at the University of Pennsylvania used their $25,000 prize money to travel to The Gambia to do research and conduct a feasibility study for a goat dairy farm that would improve community nutrition and generate revenue for a local hospital now under construction..

Peaceful transfers of power, what a great New Years Resolution

 for world leaders and the people they lead.

Slow Economic Growth's Impact on Global Shipping

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

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

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

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

Maps Provide a Quick Study of the World

You may have heard about all that it takes to make Nutella. Well, the tenth map in the collection of 40 that the Washington Post published on its website (washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/01/13/40-more-maps-that-explain-the-world/) provides a map that brings all the information together. We can easily see that Nutella needs natural resources, such as sugar, cocoa, nuts, from four continents; manufacturing facilities in eight countries;and a global distribution network. That's just a beginning of how much can be learned quickly from the Washington Post's maps.

     Maps also are the subject of the earlier posts, "You Are Here" and "Map Gazing."

Uncover the Economic Value of Wood

We are used to valuing trees because they absorb greenhouse gases (See the earlier post, "A Healthy Environment.") and provide the shade other crops need to grow (See "Coffee Prices Going Up, Allowances Going Down?"). But at a recent 4H meeting of young people who enter their animals and agricultural projects in competitions at county fairs every year, one of the members demonstrated the value of trees after their growing days are finished. Seeing the bowl he had made out of a variety of local woods started members thinking.

     What happens to trees that are uprooted by wind and storms, trees that are removed to make room for roads, utility poles, and developers' projects, evergreen trees after Christmas, and all the area trees that have been removed because they were infested by the emerald ash borer insect? Some dead trees are used for firewood, but others just rot.

     When my sister was in college, I remember she drove several students in one of her art classes to a lot that collected bits and pieces of wood. I have the statue she carved, sanded, and oiled to show, not only the form of a woman, but also the beautiful grain of the wood she used. Besides the grain of wood, the perfume of freshly sawn cherry tree logs first attracted the man who now owns a custom-made furniture business.

     Beyond firewood, there is a market for useful and beautiful objects made from the world's sustainable and rotting wood. Leafing through a catalog from SERRV (serrv.org), I saw how artisans in the Philippines had turned coral tree and acacia wood into birdhouses and bowls, Bangladesh craftsmen had used albizia wood to make stools, and carvers in India had stained and transformed mango and shesham wood into tables. I've also read how a Mozambican wood carver sold an expensive three-foot-tall ebony sculpture to a tourist in Kenya.

     Clearly, trees can play an important role in sopping up greenhouse gases that cause global warming, and wood products can boost a country's economy. A UN study concludes forest land the size of South Africa has disappeared since 1990. In square miles, an article in TIME magazine (September 28, 2015) shows deforested areas have been lost fastest annually since 2010 in the following countries: Brazil (3,799 square miles), Indonesia (2,641), Burma (2,108), Nigeria (1,583), and Tanzania (1,436). Before turning trees into logs for export, these countries and others need to consider how builders can use whole trees instead of steel to support structures and how an increase in their middle class populations represents the income potential of future furniture markets. Moreover, Global Witness and the Environmental Investigation Agency reports illegal logging of rosewood in Madagascar deprives the country of $460,000 a day. Illegal logging also has been used to fund conflicts in Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

     Kids might begin to get an appreciation of uses for wood by making craft projects out of Popsicle sticks. They might go on to think about finding jobs operating tractor-powered sawmills, learning how to dry wood, or if they would like to sell products made from wood. Who knows, some day they may be in a position to invite architects and planners to consider showcasing local woods in major projects. For more ideas about the use of wood, check wisconsinurbanwood.org.



   

Never Too Young to Invest in the Future

Small and large scale investments offer money-making opportunities throughout the world. Check out $25 gift-giving ideas for kiva and other organizations at the blog post, "Gifts for Happy Holidays."

     A Special Report in the Financial Times (October 6, 2014) is cause to consider major money-making opportunities in Africa. Javier Blas wrote that high commodity prices, cheap Chinese loans, and improved governance have led to Africa's currently healthy growth. (Go to the later blog post, "Chocolate's Sweet Deals," to see how cocoa growers and investors can cooperate to benefit from the growing demand for chocolate in emerging markets.)

     The African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association estimates there is now $25 billion worth of private investment in Africa. It is in basic household goods, power, telecom transmission and pipeline projects, not just commodities, oil, diamonds, gold, and other minerals. When the US Carlyle Group launched its maiden African fund with a $500 million target, it closed at $700 million. It's first African investment, $150 million in Nigeria's Diamond Bank, was followed by an investment in a tire and parts retailer in Johannesburg, South Africa. Runa Alam, chief executive of London-based Development Partners International (DPI), a private equity fund that invests in African businesses, observed that top business schools are producing investors with skill sets that include global and local networks that can sniff out investment worthy companies in Africa, not only in China and Latin America.

     Indeed, private investment continues to find opportunities in Africa. In February, 2015, Actis Capital (a London-based private equity firm that concentrates its investments in emerging markets) and Mainstream Renewable Power (a Dublin-based clean energy developer) teamed up to invest $1.9 billion in a new Lekela Power venture that will operate solar and wind power projects in South Africa, Ghana, and Egypt.

     That is not to say Africa is problem free. Economic conditions have not improved across the board. Potential unemployment hovers over large chunks of the new middle class. The young population of one billion, on its way to four billion by 2100, is disillusioned and under-educated. (See the later blog post, "Recess Differs Around the World," to get a glimpse of Africa's under funded schools.) Compared to Asia, Africa's young people are unqualified for manufacturing jobs. (The earlier blog post, "Discover Africa," however, tells how young Africans take advantage of entering and winning contests and are starting their own businesses.)

     The Ebola crisis showed that disease can still devastate some parts of Africa; the abduction of over 200 teenage girls in Nigeria shows how religious and ethnic divisions persist; and corruption and greed continue to infest government and motivate leaders, except in Nigeria (See the later blog post, "Nigeria's New Beginning."), to cling to their positions after their constitutional terms of office end. With mobile phones and social media, however, young people have the means to voice their demands and frustrations and to receive solicitations from Islamic extremists. Nonetheless, young voters can be a powerful bloc capable of making their call for change heard. In the end, Africa is an investment opportunity that should not be overlooked.