Rocky on the Ropes

No pandemic would send Rocky Balboa or the folks on the World War II home front into a black hole of loneliness and depression. Follow their advice: Get physically fit. Activate you own version of Rocky's raw egg concoction and his run up Philadelphia's Art Museum steps. Grow your wealth. During World War II, Captain America advised citizens to fight for freedom by investing $37.50 in a war bond that would yield $50 in ten years. Today, bonds are sold online at treasurydirect.gov. Discover farming. Pick apples, berries and watermelons at local farms, buy fresh corn at stands along country roads, plant tomatoes in your own Victory Garden and grow flowers to attract the honeybees that pollinate crops. Enjoy home entertainment. Once listeners gathered around the radio to hear a closet full of items tumble out on "Fibber McGee and Molly" or they read comic books in lighted closets during blackouts. Choose from a much wider variety of ways to enjoy home entertainment today. Hone your arguments. While sheltering in place, take time to scroll through social media, listen to talking heads, read up on the issues and then express your opinions in "Letters to the Editor" and elsewhere.

Beware the New Normal

In the US, a wealthy, powerful and privileged plutocracy has defined a new normal that fails normal people, according to an article by Anand Giridharadas in TIME magazine (December 2-9, 2019), His observations apply equally to the elite hyperwealthy who govern in many countries throughout the world. Those who Giridharadas calls plutes know how to mask their influence by using the following tactics real normal people need to recognize and reject.

They:

• Emphasize job creation, when they expect tax breaks where they locate a new business, contribute to climate change, or disregard environmental and worker safety laws. 
• Benefit from ongoing corruption involved in constructing a sports arena that provides a day of entertainment for fans.
• Offset massive returns from investments of questionable social value, such as production of sugary soda drinks, by making some do-good investments and philanthropic contributions.
• Learn to describe their fear of losing wealth to taxes as harmful to those who benefit from their philanthropy and research to develop new products and drugs.
• Win elections by posing as the ones who are providing the food supplied by humanitarian organizations.
• Prefer paying fines, even major ones, to making actual reforms of harmful and unfair practices.
• Hire public relations' experts to brand harmful and unfair practices with deceptive labels and descriptions that sound like public services.
• Blame poverty on the victims of government policies or people who just don't like to work.

Whatever a person's religion or lack of religion, the Christmas season offers a reminder that it takes a god to be a savior. The world is too complicated for a wealthy individual to govern alone; it takes an administration. Fair elections enable lucky voters to choose between a one-person administration dedicated to maintaining a wealthy elite or an administration with a president, cabinet, congress, and courts devoted to the rule of law and institutions that serve the public interest.

How to Make A Capitalist

First, provide a child with a pack of index cards, a rubberband, and a pen or pencil. On each card, suggest children write down the names of companies that make the items they use, such as toys, playground equipment, snacks. They also can make cards for the retail shops and grocery stores they visit and for companies that provide services: banks, dry cleaners, fast food restaurants, Netflix, and those that provide repairs.

According to Peter Lynch's book, BEATING THE STREET, identifying firms you know is one way to decide where to invest, where to hold stock in a company, i.e. where to become a company owner.

At home or in a classroom, once children get in the habit of checking the names of companies they and their households use, they can add more information to each card. They might add the locations of company headquarters they find noted on boxes or that they find by checking internet contact information to see if companies are domestic or foreign. They can add the names of products, especially new products, these companies produce, as well as prices and, maybe, the number of ounces in each product.They might start counting cars in parking lots to note which stores are doing better than others.

In Britain, Imperial College transferred seed money from the school's endowment to a student investment fund. Young people can begin "investing" by becoming their household's and classroom's financial advisers by monitoring stock prices on CNBC or the internet and recording stock prices over time. If prices rise, they can figure how much the initial value of an investment would have increased. And stock might be listed as the gift they want for their next birthday or other special occasion. 

Fools Aren't the Only Ones Who Soon Part with Their Money

Money is part of our lives from morning to night and, if we are earning interest, even while we sleep, writes John Hope Bryant in his book, The Memo: Five Rules for Your Economic Liberation. All the things and services in our lives cost money, and we don't have any control over the prices charged for everything we need and use.

     But, you say, we do control what things and services we choose to buy. After examining human behavior, Nobel-prize-winning economist Richard H. Thaler challenges that idea. What Thaler has to say in Nudge, the book he co-authored with Cass R. Sunstein, expands on the financial literacy both he and Bryant see as a valuable foundation for happiness in every child, woman, and man in the world.

     Financial literacy, like literacy itself, can begin at an early age, when a child learns it's dumb to take two quarters for one dollar. Thaler also used a Halloween trick-or-treater example to show how the investment choices people are given can affect their decisions. If children were to visit two adjacent homes that both offered Three Musketeer and Milky Way candy bars on Halloween, each child might select a different bar at each home. In another situation, if these children could visit only one home that offered the same two different bars and were allowed to each select two bars, they might choose two of the kind they liked best. What would happen if investors were given a choice of putting their retirement money in a fund composed of all stocks and one composed of all, more conservative and less risky, bonds? Most would split their funds half and half, just like the children visiting two homes. Another group of investors could put their money in an all-stock fund and a "balanced" fund that was invested half in stocks and half in bonds. Although they split their money half and half, their retirement depended on the performance of 3/4 stocks, more like the result of the children who took two of the same kind of candy bars.

     Thaler cautions everyone about human failings. He cites a distinction between rapid, instinctive automatic thinking and reflective, rational thinking and presents a problem to demonstrate.
A bat and ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
     Cost of ball = x
     Cost of bat = $1.00 + x
     Cost of ball and bat = $1.10
     x + $1.00 + x = $1.10
                       2x = $1.10 - $1.00
                       2x = .10
                         x = .05 NOT .10

     In Nudge, Thaler suggests the world could design slight nudges that, like a friend, could help our automatic thoughts make better choices and avoid the bad ones. Students would see the fruit and yogurt before the cookies and ice cream in the school lunch line. Best choices would be the default options offered by manufacturers, insurers, sales people, mortgage brokers, and credit card companies. But Thaler knows our best interests are not everyone's objectives. Reflective, rational thinking really needs to come into play, when there are many options and/or humans have little experience, poor information, and delayed or infrequent feedback about mistakes or success. Firms have a great incentive to cater to irrational beliefs. Suggesting everyone is doing something, like paying for a warranty on a small appliance, can provide a kind of peer pressure. The financial aid staff at colleges and doctors, for example, may be receiving gifts to recommend certain private lenders and expensive new drugs.

      Humans tend to cling to the status quo, the monetary decisions they have made in the past, such as buying a new bathing suit every year even if they rarely go swimming. If we choose the TV show we want to watch on NBC at 7 pm, we'll be watching NBC shows until we go to bed. If our first vote for President was a Republican candidate, we may never change political parties. Thaler suggests, "Sometimes it's good to learn what people unlike us like....If you're a Democrat,...you might want to see what Republicans think; no party can possibly have a monopoly on wisdom." He also recommends diversifying investment portfolios. 

What Can Unemployed People Do?

Concern about technological unemployment from AI, robots, sensors, and the like has led to dire observations. In the factory of the future, there only will be two non-machines, a person and a dog, and it will be the dog's task to keep the person away from the machines. In other words, let's prepare for the future by making a list of what unemployed people around the world can do.

1. Do nothing.

Although unemployed, most people still have their physical abilities.

2. Improve athletic abilities by practicing to become a professional athlete

3. Take whatever risky, possibly illegal, demeaning, poor paying job is available

4. Make and repair things from found objects

5. Sell or demand ransom for what they take by force from those who have something of value

Use brain power to study the economic environment and prepare to join it.

6. Learn to develop software

7. Learn how the stock market works and invest

8. Become a supplier to those who are making money: Manufacture robots, identify global exporters and become one of their suppliers, grow produce, operate a food truck, provide leisure entertainment by arranging tours, design websites, teach, invent, provide promotional/marketing expertise, write a story/song/play, provide spiritual guidance--------------------------------------------------------------------

There's No Business Like Bug Business

Chickens, pigs, and some other animals don't share the same distaste for bugs that people did in the thriller novel and film, Snowpiercer. (Although in parts of the world, people do eat caterpillars, locusts, and termites.)

     Some kids keep ant farms and net containers, where caterpillar larvae turn into butterflies. Sean Warner and Patrick Pittaluga kept the larvae of black soldier flies in a laundry room of their apartment building to start their company, Grubby Farms, in Georgia. Other firms, such as Enviro Flight in Ohio, Enterra Feed in Canada, J.M.Green in China, and Agri Protein in South Africa, also are attempting to make a profit by producing animal feed from black soldier fly larvae.

     What is the dual objective motivating this effort? Protein from black soldier fly larvae could replace the fish meal animals now eat. About 75% of the fish in fish meal comes from anchovies, herring, sardines, and the other disappearing small fish eaten by commercial seafood catches, whales, sea lions, and other large mammals. Moreover, since black soldier fly larvae live on food and human waste, they could reduce what ends up in landfills.

     At present, the industrial scale production technology needed to make this waste mass into biomass process profitable is still developing. The operation requires heavy machinery to move waste tonnage to a processing plant where heavy buckets of waste are carried to the shallow bins where larvae feed. After oil and protein powder are produced, markets need to be found. Government approvals present other obstacles. A blog developed by dipterra.com does an excellent job of presenting the many challenges confronting this business.

     Since the technology involved in the bug business is still in its infancy, African investors and entrepreneurs have a good opportunity to become players in the field. Africans might find insects other than black soldier flies that could become a new protein source, and Africa, with its growing under-35 years of age population, also has the right innovators to take advantage of new opportunities. As Bill Gates noted in his speech at the University of Pretoria on July 18, 2016, he and Mark Zuckerberg were college-aged, when they made their innovative contributions to society.

(Also see the earlier posts, "Why Will Africa Overcome Poverty?" "Invest in Africa's Agricultural Future," "Want An Exciting Career?" and "Look Beyond Africa's Current Woes.")

African Aquifers Tested

The International Water Management Institute is seeking to implement the goals of the Goundwater Solutions Initiative for Policy and Practice (GRIPP) by accessing sub-Sahara Africa's subterranean aquifers, especially for farming irrigation. Although more reliable than rain, aquifers require policies that make them sustainable or else they can be exploited and depleted as they have been in north Africa. Since sustainable use of aquifers requires community cooperation, a pilot project in China offers promise. Farmers have access to a set amount of water from the state pumping system by using their pre-paid smartcards.

     Africa also needs investment in aquifer mapping to determine the amount of groundwater available and investment in rural electrification for pumping.

Invest in Africa's Agricultural Future

Following the Battle of Waterloo, although Napoleon had been defeated, Baron Rothschild of the 18th century British banking family is said to have observed that the most profit can be made when there is no consensus about the future. His actual quote is believed to have been, "Buy when there's blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own." A potential Disney investor might have said the less gruesome, "Buy when Mickey is still a steamboat captain." When I lived in Hawaii, I often heard the quote, "Missionaries came to do good, and they did very well (financially)."

     The point is, now is the time to get in on Africa's future, especially the continent's agricultural potential. It takes time to develop a profitable African connection, and time is on the side of today's young people who have 40 or more years of work ahead of them. One option to explore is the process of putting together a supply chain that buys and brings processed African produce to markets in developed countries. Another is to process, brand, package and bring African products, such as Go Honey, to the growing African market.

     Shoppers in Madison, Wisconsin, now buy cassava flour from West Africa at the African & American Store on East Johnson Street. Thanks to Hugh Jackman of Wolverine and musical theatre fame, New Yorkers now drink his Laughing Man Ethiopian coffee at two cafes he opened in Manhattan. A film, "Dukale's Dream," which can be rented at tugg.com/titles/dukales-dream, tells the six-year story of how Jackman and Dukale met and how Dukale's family has prospered. The family that used to spend the day growing coffee and collecting firewood now has a gas system that provides light and a cooking flame. Dukale increased coffee production by buying more land, hiring workers, and training other farmers. His wife owns a small shop and his children attend school.

     As a growing continent which now has more than 1 billion mouths to feed, Africa also provides a healthy opportunity for future agricultural sales and profits. The roads and rails China built to move minerals and lumber to ports for export have improved infrastructure for distribution within Africa as well. Countries, such as Nigeria, that have seen falling oil and mineral export prices damage their economies, have been forced to rediscover their agricultural pasts and improve their farm to market road systems.

     Director Chris Isaac at the venture capital company, Agdevco, cautions that it can take a 10 to 20 year view to overcome barriers to big returns from African agriculture. He cites competing claims on land that make it difficult to lease or buy. Then, there are poorly educated farmers, poor quality seed and fertilizer, limited access to credit, a lack of infrastructure, an undeveloped marketing network, and a corrupt bureaucracy, especially at the local level. These barriers obviously also impede the progress of women who make up half of Africa's poor farmers. (Also see the earlier post, "Want An Exciting Career?")

     What's going on in Uganda suggests the kind of advantageous landscape agricultural investors should seek. Once in the grip of Joseph Kony's Lord Resistance Army (LRA), Uganda is on track to become a rice and maize success story. Millions of dollars of investment have come to the area north of Kampala from international private equity, global venture capital, and private companies, such as German-based Amatheon Agri. What these investors provide are land, high quality seed and fertilizer, leased machinery, training, a market for farmers' output, a grain processing facility, and an integrated value chain for selling grain nationally. Uganda's government has invested in roads and power and has given tax breaks to foreign investors.

     With $25, anyone can invest in Africa's agricultural future by going to kiva.org.

Want An Exciting Career?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Invest in Water?

At the end of the movie, The Big Short, there was an item about Michael Burry. He was one of the investors who cashed in on the collapse of the housing market built on a shaky foundation of subprime mortgages that was doomed to fail. Supposedly, Burry now only invests in water,

     Could Burry be noticing that progress in some economic sectors is having a negative impact on water resources? When the French company, Perrier, began exporting mineral water in green glass bottles, it seemed like a hard sell. Now, the hard sell is convincing those who drink bottled water at the world rate of 30 litres per person per year that their consumption is bad for the planet. There is the fuel cost of transporting bottles from one country to another that already has its own safe, unpolluted water supply. Plastic bottles pollute the land in dumps. Insufficient recycling limits how much recycled content is used in bottled water, although efforts have been made to produce bottles out of organic sugarcane waste and to reduce the weight of plastic and glass bottles.

     Data from NASA's space observations show groundwater from 13 of the world's 37 major basins is being depleted faster than it can be restored. Not only the amount of water used by agriculture and business is a concern; water quality and contamination needs to be addressed as well.

     Alternatives to fossil fuel have increased the use of water to produce crops made into bioethanol. That adds to the nearly 70% of the world's accessible freshwater already used by agriculture. Moreover, dams used to produce hydroelectricity create reservoirs that cause the evaporation of water that farmers and others traditionally relied on downstream. Alternative energy sources, such as wind, do not require water.

     Water also is under pressure from factories that dump heavy metals and chemicals from recycled electronics into local lakes and rivers. The winner of the Stockholm Junior Water Prize, 18-year-old Perry Alagappan, does have one remedy that filters 99% of heavy metals out of water through graphene nanotubes that can be cleaned with vinegar and reused. The tubes can be fitted to the taps on sinks at home and in industry. To maximize availability of his invention, Alagappan will not patent his idea.

     Water keeps the equipment that processes data cool. Data centers that have used water-intensive cooling methods to improve energy efficiency now are looking at ways to use recycled rather than potable water in their cooling systems. Also, there is an effort to consider locating data centers in climates, such as Sweden's, where outside air can cool facilities all year.

     While fertilizers increase crop yield, they also cause nitrogen and phosphorous runoff that enables aquatic plants to deplete oxygen and create water dead zones where fish cannot survive. Palestinian farmers are attempting to deal with water shortages by building a wastewater treatment plant to provide water for agricultural use. But even with a major use of electricity, existing technology can only remove 10% to 30% of nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater. Where 90% of sewage in developing countries is discharged without any treatment, research on algal projects that rely on sunlight to grow algae that can break down nitrogen and phosphates in wastewater and produce sludge for biofuel have promise for agricultural areas, where sun is abundant in Africa, South America, and Asia.

     Fracking, which blasts oil and gas out of shale rock, is viewed as a way to help the United States and other countries become energy independent. As the earlier post, "The Lure of Shale Oil Independence," points out, however, the fracking process is suspected of contaminating water.

     These are just some of the water projects that Burry could be eyeing for investment. By going to kiva.org, you already can invest $25 in a water project that will help a household in India, Vietnam, Cambodia, or Indonesia install a toilet and improve sanitary conditions.

(Water is also the subject of earlier posts, "A Healthy Environment," "Personal Response to the World's Problems," and "Good Works Multiply Fast.")

Look Beyond Africa's Current Woes

Falling commodity prices and a terrorist attack in Tunisia haven't prevented the private equity Abraaj Group's institutional investors, pension funds, and development finance institutions from making a total $1.37 billion investment, mainly in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia.

Arif Naqvi, Abraaj's founder, sees middle class consumption doubling in the region between 2014 and 2024. Consequently, what the fund looks for is well-managed, mid-market businesses where the fund can influence strategy and growth in fields that benefit from the growing middle class. These fields include: healthcare, education, consumer goods and services, business services, materials, and logistics.

Remember when Lucy in the "Peanuts" cartoon said what she wanted as a gift was real estate. Grandparents might look beyond the latest toys and video games advertised on TV and give their grandchildren a stake in a fund with emerging market investments. It won't be a favorite gift now, but when the high costs of college and grad school come around, kids (and their parents) will be very grateful.

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.

Discover Africa

The African continent is three times the size of the United States and nearly three million square miles bigger than Europe, including the Asian portion of Russia. By 2100, the U.N. estimates Africa will have 3 billion more people than it has now. Future opportunities in this vast and growing continent need not be overlooked because of the world's somewhat warped historical viewpoint. A new guide, Emerging Africa, by Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu dispels some of the assumptions about lack of development on the continent. And in 2015, one of the discussions in the Foreign Policy Association's Great Decisions program will feature "U.S. Policy Toward Africa."

    Headlines do not tell the whole story of what is happening in Africa. News reports rightly warned that the Ebola virus was out of control in West Africa. In April and May of 2014, the world heard that over 200 teenage girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group in northern Nigeria. Since then, the group has taken additional girls and women as wives, cooks, and suicide bombers; young men and boys have been abducted to serve as soldiers. On January 15, 2019, al-Shabab terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda would kill at least 21 in an attack on a hotel/office complex in Nairobi, Kenya. In April, 2015, jihadis from al-Shabab killed 147 in a raid on a Kenyan university. Earlier,  terrorists attacked at a Kenyan mall.

     Europe's scramble to colonize the continent between 1876 and 1912 left independent African countries in the 1960s with an uneducated population, some leaders who exploited their people in imitation of former colonial administrators, disease, and transportation ties to Europe rather than each other. To this day, Fastjet is still having trouble launching its plan to provide affordable African flights.

     But just like Pablo Picasso in 1907, when he first saw the African artifacts that caused him to create a new form of art, young people are in a position to look at Africa in a new way. Beginning with the book Ashanti to Zulu, kids can learn the alphabet and 26 African traditions at the same time. With the help of ePals.com, classrooms can connect with African students in several languages by email, Skype, and project collaborations.

     Students need not see Africans only as impoverished children who can live on 50 cents per day donations. According to trendwatching.com, 65% of Africa's 8- to 18-year-olds have access to a mobile phone. In Gambia and Ghana, trendwatching.com reports entrepreneurs run solar-charging kiosks where the public can charge their mobile devices for a fee. In addition to social contacts, mobile devices are facilitating education and job-hunting in Africa. By 2060, trendwatching.com expects there will be 1.1 billion middle class Africans. Already, the SABMiller bottler and Coca-Cola have joined forces to profit from Africa's growing middle class.

    Africa's growth is attracting $24 billion in foreign investment this year. In fact, the Financial Times (April 4, 2014) reported that return from private equity investments in Africa is comparable to the return on investments in China and Latin America. No wonder the Rothschild Fund is looking to invest $530 million in African projects that have a long term social development aspect to them. And the Swedish risk capital firm, Swedfund, is investing in a partnership between the H&M retailer and Ethiopian textile firms that manufacture according to high social and environmental standards. (Also see the later blog post, "Never Too Young to Invest in the Future.")

    Forbes magazine listed 27 billionaires in Africa. Today's richest African is Aliko Dangote of Nigeria, who makes his money from the cement used for construction throughout Africa. Recognizing the potential for African construction, Dubai has invested $300 million in Dangote Cement. Other riches have been made in areas, such as oil, sugar, flour, banking, media, telecommunications, luxury goods, diamonds, supermarkets, and pharmaceuticals. Looking past the current drop in oil prices, Dangote increased his oil refinery investment from $9 billion to $11 billion in December, 2014. (Nonetheless, his estimated $21 billion fortune has taken a $5.4 billion hit due to sagging oil prices.) Stephen Saad of South Africa, founder of Aspen Pharmacare, is making his fortune by manufacturing generic drugs. Isabel dos Santos, Africa's first female billionaire, a former head of Angola's state oil group, and the daughter of Angola's president, is a major player in the banking industry. She seeks to block Spain's CaixaBank's attempt to assume full control of the Portuguese bank, BPI, where she is the second largest investor. As an alternative, she has proposed a merger of BPI and Portugal's Millennium BCP bank to reinforce their presence in Africa's Portuguese-speaking Angola and Mozambique. (As of President Joao Lourenco's election as President of Angola, Ms. dos Santos no longer heads Angola's national oil company and the former president's son has been charged with fraud for transferring $500 million out of the country.)  Bob Diamond's Atlas Mara, founded to invest in Sub-Saharan African financial institutions, continues to expand with its latest interest in a 45% stake in Banque Populaire du Rwanda.

     African startups also are winning outside support. IBM's "Project Lucy" coordinates the work of local universities, development agencies, startups, and others who want to create ventures that solve key African issues. BiztechAfrica reports that, as part of its 4Afika Initiative, Microsoft has made five innovation grants to the following startups: Uganda's access.mobile, which facilitates information sharing in the fields of agriculture and healthcare, Kenya's Africa 118, a mobile directory service, and Kytabu, which rents textbooks on tablets (A US entrepreneur just found funding for a similar project on the TV show, "Shark Tank"), and Nigeria's Gamsole, which creates games for Windows, and Save & Buy, which facilitates e-commerce purchases.

     In a long entry in March, 2014, " trendwatching.com's African" described how African governments and developers are facilitating areas, like Ghana's Hope City, Nigeria's Eko Atlantic, and Kenya's Konga Techno, that invite entrepreneurs to set up shop. Better than being  unemployed, business-minded young adults are responding by using crowdfunding platforms, such as Globevestor; developing tech applications, such as Nigeria's bus travel website (bus.com.ng); entering competitions (South Africa's First National Bank holds an "Ideas Can Help" competition for inventors, Yola sponsors a build-your-own website contest, there's a Anzisha Prize and a TechCabal Battlefield prize); and formalizing Africa's informal economy of outdoor markets, street hawkers, and resellers. Kenya's e-commerce Soko platform, for example, now connects global shoppers with local jewelry artisans who use natural and upcycled materials. FirstBank Nigeria is one of the firms that facilitates secure online payments.

      Projects involving the rich history of Egypt are already a staple of school curricula. Tracing Mansa Musa's religious pilgrimage from Timbuktu, the West African city in Mali, to Mecca in 1324 introduces an African mogul who distributed gold on his journey and returned with an architect to build a great mosque and scholars who created the Sankore University. A video about Shaka Zulu can introduce students to a military genius.

     Looking back through previous blog posts, Africa is mentioned in a variety of contexts.

• There are T-shirt designs from Swaziland and a U.S. artist who studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa ("Global Drawing Power")
• Somali children were featured in Asad, the live action short nominated for a 2012 Academy Award ("See the World at the Movies")
• Paul Simon's "Graceland" recording incorporated the township rhythms of South Africa ("Music of the Sphere")
• Ghana's kente cloth was mentioned in "The World of Fashion" and Ghana's chocolates tempted taste buds in "Pizza, Plantains, and Moo Goo Guy Pan."
• In 2004 Wangari Maathai of Kenya won a Noble Prize for mobilizing a campaign to fight global warming by planting trees and launched the U.N. project to plant a billion trees around the world ("Hope for the Future" and "A Healthy Environment")The website, About.com African History, has a list and description of Africa's 25 Nobel Prize winners. 
• Students located the African countries that produced the products they found in their scavenger hunt bags ("Games Children Play")

Just like the missionary, David Livingston, who happened to come upon the African falls he named for Queen Victoria, Africa still is open for discovery. China has discovered Africa's many minerals, such as iron ore and copper, and is building railroads to transport them to ports for export. French-speaking Chinese students have followed Chinese companies to work for them in former French colonies. Oprah Winfrey has founded a school for girls in Africa. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has set out to help eliminate malaria and HIV in Africa. George Clooney sent up a satellite to watch for atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan. And, like Alexander McCall Smith, the author of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Botswana, there's still the possibility of finding riches by writing one of Africa's fascinating stories.