LinkedIn Dear helpafricafriends., This is a reminder that on June 23, felix ntube sent you an invitation to become part of their professional network at LinkedIn. Follow this link to accept felix ntube's invitation. https://www.linkedin.com/e/isd/627866130/OzFHxOzE/ Signing up is free and takes less than a minute. This is a reminder that on June 23, felix ntube sent you an invitation to become part of their professional network at LinkedIn.
> To: helpafricafriends. .com [eweyf.blog@blogger.com]
> From: felix ntube [eweyf@yahoo.com]
> Subject: Invitation to connect on LinkedIn
> helpafricafriends.,
>
> I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.
>
> - felix
The only way to get access to felix ntube's professional network is through the following link: https://www.linkedin.com/e/isd/627866130/OzFHxOzE/ You can remove yourself from felix ntube's network at any time.
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© 2009, LinkedIn Corporation
 Faith-based groups (meaning the full range of formal and informal religious communities) are among the most active social sector organizations in many parts of the world. If religious orgs are serious about building and enhancing community, why are they so behind in leveraging the latest and greatest technology tools to do so? And if nonprofit and do-gooder techies are serious about social change, why aren't they tapping into some of the largest and most effective community-based organizations out there – which are faith-based? It's a missed opportunity IMHO [Note: social media jargon for In My Humble Opinion]. Fortunately there are some murmurings. A couple of weeks ago, Time magazine ran a story on U.S. churches using Twitter during their regular services. And the online virtual world of Second Life is fertile ground for a whole range of active faith based communities from across the religious spectrum. You may want to check out this Guided Tour of Spirituality in Second Life. There are a few great postings on Church 2.0 offering an overview of some of the most cutting edge and technology-relevant happenings that involve faith-based communities in the United States. But they are an exception to the rule. Many traditional religious institutions are experiencing a decline in membership among youth - perhaps in part because they don't fully understand how to communicate in a changed world? Take a look at the official website of the Catholic Church, representing one of the largest religions in the world, and you'll know what I mean. I sense a lot of fear among traditional religious institutions around embracing and leveraging technology change. And the silence is deafening from the technology community on how new tools and technologies can be leveraged to support the rich and important spiritual practices of people all over the world – not to mention to support the incredible social action work of religious communities on the ground. So in an attempt to walk the talk I am launching a "Technology & Spiritual Practice" program, designed to help faith-based communities make the leap into the brave new world of technology and social media, and to start a dialogue between spiritual leaders and technologists. But we need your help…
LinkedIn helpafricafriends.,
I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.
- felix PS: Here is the link:
https://www.linkedin.com/e/isd/627866130/OzFHxOzE/ felix ntube has a LinkedIn profile to connect with colleagues, find experts, and explore new opportunities. © 2009, LinkedIn Corporation
 Brash, ambitious, and optimistic, Herman Chinery-Hesse has already accomplished what many considered impossible -- building a thriving tech business in his native Ghana. His new goal: to spark an entrepreneurial revolution in Africa by bringing e-commerce to the most remote corners of the continent.
It's just past midnight, and Herman Chinery-Hesse can't sleep. The 43-year-old entrepreneur is lying on his back, eyes closed, mind cranking.
He's working through the details of a pitch to American and European investors -- many of whom have never backed a company like the one he's proposing. The pitch is absurdly ambitious: a tech company that aims to reshape the business climate for small entrepreneurs in Africa while grabbing a share of the $28 billion that Africans living abroad send home every year. His start-up is a long shot, will cost millions of dollars to execute, and could take five years to get off the ground. In other words, it's not the kind of thing you would expect from a company based in West Africa, a place known for many things -- malaria, civil wars, famine -- but definitely not disruptive technology companies.
But Chinery-Hesse thrives on just this sort of contradiction. He's a technology entrepreneur on a technologically barren continent, an atheist in a deeply religious country, and a capitalist raised amid the excesses of socialism. He also loves an uphill battle -- and this particular battle is just too intriguing to pass up.
I know this because I'm lying in bed next to him. I had come to Accra, the capital of Ghana, to understand what African entrepreneurship looks like, and I had sought out Chinery-Hesse in particular to answer this question: Who in his right mind would sell software in Africa? I had been following him around for a week, a frenetic experience that typically began each day in the late morning and lasted until midnight. I observed Chinery-Hesse make hundreds of phone calls, send thousands of text messages, and smoke a carton of Benson & Hedges cigarettes. And now, I was cowering close to the edge of a king-size bed around midnight, reluctantly conducting an interview.
This is not as weird as it sounds. Business in Africa is much more informal than in the United States. Meetings are not typically pegged to a specific time, and lateness -- even several hours' worth of lateness -- is not considered worthy of reproach. And then there are the sleeping arrangements. In Africa, it is not uncommon for two people of the same sex, when pressed for space, to platonically bunk up. This point had been mentioned to me several days earlier, but it acquired a terrifying immediacy when the tiny hotel where we had intended to stay was booked, and a friend of Chinery-Hesse's offered to let us stay at his place.
Chinery-Hesse is an imposing man. He stands 6 feet tall, has a Tony Soprano -- size gut, and possesses a salesman's mannerisms, including a blistering laugh and a fondness for crass language that belies his upper-crust background. Most of the time, his clap-you-on-the-shoulder pose is endearing. But his size and tendency toward overfamiliarity make him a less than ideal companion in situations -- a bed, say -- in which personal space is scarce.
Still, it's a big bed, and I figure I can simply turn on my side, avoid eye contact, and fall asleep quickly. Chinery-Hesse will have none of it. "We can still chat," he says matter of factly from the other side. "You can still ask me questions."
When you come to Africa, take everything you know about Europe or America and turn it upside down." This advice, given to me by a Ghanaian entrepreneur named Kingsley Awuah-Darko, was meant not as preparation for unfamiliar mores but as a key to understanding business on the African continent. Judge a company in Accra by the standards you would apply to one in Akron, and you're likely to form mistaken impressions and miss opportunities.
Charity Computer Aid International is turning to Twitter today to source used PCs from UK organisations to help equip education and health projects in Africa. Skip related content
Followers of the charity are being encouraged to use Twitter to publicise the drive for 10,000 PCs to be donated in the next four weeks with an initial aim of 1,000 PCs in the first four hours of the online campaign.
Computer Aid professionally refurbishes PCs and laptops in its London workshop and ships them for re-use in schools, hospitals and community organisations in developing countries.
The charity is the most experienced non-profit provider of IT for development, having provided almost 150,000 PCs and laptops to support e-learning, e-health, e-inclusion and e-agriculture projects in more than 100 countries such as Rwanda, Ecuador and Zambia.
We are experiencing an incredible increase in orders of PCs from schools, hospitals, universities and community organisations. We estimate there are thousands of PCs currently collecting dust today in back rooms and store cupboards across the country and we are urging people to take action and get involved in the Computer Aid Twitterthon to help raise awareness of this need and meet the demand, said Computer Aid founder Tony Roberts.
Reusing old PCs is much better for the environment than recycling them down to their component parts and it also provides an invaluable opportunity for disadvantaged schoolchildren who would otherwise have no access to IT in education. We can put a PC on a school desk in Africa within six weeks of receiving the donation and we estimate that one donated PC will deliver at least a further three years use."
To support the Twitterthon campaign, follow Computer Aid at http://www.computeraid.org/twitterthon.htm or visit http://www.computeraid.org/tweet4c harity for more information.
Computing is a long-term partner of Computer Aid and helps to raise funds as well as promote the charitys activities to IT professionals in the UK. A separate campaign currently underway is seeking sponsors for a vital telemedicine project in rural Africa click here for more details
 The chinese offensive in the african continent is on a continuos rising and with the actual state of the world economic tumoil and the prolonged post colonial enslavement to the western world;African countries are more than opening up to this "profitable?"uprising.This picture shows a railway bridge in Nigeria built by the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation.
Africa has now become well-established as the single most important overseas market for the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC), China's largest infrastructure development business. In 2008, almost half of the company's $9.6 billion overseas revenue came from projects in Africa.
As of May this year, CCCC had secured 28 projects with a number of African nations, each worth more than $100 million apiece. With two of the deals - one in Angola and one in Libya - worth an estimated $1 billion each, it is small wonder that this is the third year that Africa has topped the list of CCCC's overseas markets.
Speaking of the company's success in Africa, Wang Xiaoguang, general manager of CCCC's overseas business department, says: "CCCC's business in Africa has grown by around 33 percent per annum in recent years. Fortunately, the plans already in place for infrastructure development in many African countries have remained unaffected by the current global financial downturn with much of the funding already in place through Chinese governmental loans."
As part of its commitment to developing its African business base, CCCC is currently drawing up plans to train 30,000 local staff into skilled workers to work on a number of construction projects, primarily in Angola and Libya.
At the beginning of the year, CCCC won a contract from the Libyan government to deliver 5,000 apartment homes. The total value of the project, including foundation construction, is said to be in the region of $1.05 billion.
BERLIN, June 16 (UPI) -- A group of 20 German companies wants to invest $555 billion in concentrated solar power plants in northern Africa to sell green power to Europe and make the continent less dependent on oil and gas imports. It would be one of the world's biggest private renewable energy projects: Some 20 German companies are planning to join forces to build CSP plants in northern Africa and transport the electricity to Europe via new, direct current power grids. The consortium, to be formed by mid-July, includes, among others, economic powerhouse Siemens, finance institution Deutsche Bank and energy giant RWE, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reports. The ambitious green project, dubbed "Desertec," could produce power as early as 2019 and eventually satisfy 15 percent of Europe's electricity demand, Torsten Jeworrek, a Munich Re board member, told the newspaper. The companies, backed by German government officials and the Club of Rome, plan to invest some $555 billion in the deserts of northern Africa. The money would not only be used for building the CSP plants, but also the gird infrastructure needed to bring the electricity to Europe. "This is no longer a distant vision but technologically fascinating and also achievable," Jeworrek said in a statement Tuesday. "Desertec is clearly banking on the right incentives in the long term, namely climate protection and a low-carbon energy sector."
1.5 million investment in SMEs does not seem much, but when you consider, it creates over 1000 meaningful jobs in sustainable businesses and supports a multiple of family and community members, it certainly makes a difference
images generated by Luxmart
We believe that investing in high growth SMEs in developing countries is economically viable if done right. The higher risk of investing overseas is set off by higher possible returns that investments in new emerging markets bring with them. Managing these investments is complex, but there are innovative ways to do that more efficiently.
Economic reasoning would be enough to consider the above mentioned investments. But besides that these investments have a significant impact on the economic and social development in these countries. 1.5 million investment in SMEs does not seem much, but when you consider, it creates over 1000 meaningful jobs in sustainable businesses and supports a multiple of family and community members, it certainly makes a difference.
Therefore “economic investments” in high growth SMEs can also be seen as “social investments” that might bring a financial return. The Dutch Internal Revenue Service (Belastingdienst) considers these investments as “philanthropy” and they are, therefore, tax deductable when structured right. This means you have about 50% more capital to invest.
 While most of the news from Africa seems to center on nations torn apart by violence and mired in poverty, there's a lot of good news to be found as well. "The Takeaway" talks with former U.S. Ambassador Charles Stith, who describes the current state of many of the countries in Africa: "The continent is on a real growth trajectory at this point. We track 16 countries on the continent, and they are all serious about democratization, they're serious about reforming their economies along free market lines; and though it's only 16 countries out of the 53 in the continent ... over all it's about two-thirds of the population of the continent ... so the good news is the vast majority of folks on the African continent wake up every morning in a country where they can participate and decide in who runs the country ... where the leadership is really trying to reform the economies in a way that they can maximize their opportunities and improve the quality of life for them and their families."
 Women's World Banking, Ghana, (IWWBG) arguably the most innova¬tive microfinance institution in Ghana has won an award at the recent Women's World Banking Global Network and Capital Markets meeting held in New York from April 27 to May 5. The meetings are held every two years to promote interaction and learn¬ing among network...
 You are welcome to the Challenge Camerounais 2009, the biggest cultural, sportive and economic Event of the Cameroonian Diaspora of Europe. The celebration of this 18th edition will take place from the 29th to the 31st of May in Cologne, the major city of the North Rhine- Westphalia and will hopefully be patroned by H.E Chantal Biya, first Lady of Cameroon and President and founder of CERAC.
About 8000 People are expected in Cologne on the week-end of Pentecost. A festival of culture as a symbol of the diversity of the Cameroonian Culture will presented to the guests. There will be many other sportive activities besides the traditional Football challenge. The Business and Social Forum will be focused on the "agenda of the contractor in Cameroon" and the course of economic relations between Cameroon and Germany. The Gala Evening and the election of Miss Challenge will close the festivities.
 The second phase of ticket sales for the 2010 World Cup has attracted more than 297,000 applications within a week, according to Fifa.
There are 100,000 tickets on offer in the latest batch, which excludes the two semi-finals and the final.
The tickets will be on sale until November and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
More than 112,600 of the requests so far came from South Africa, world football's governing body said.
Applications can be made either through a South African bank or on Fifa's website.
The demand is matching the popularity of the first phase of ticket sales between 20 February and 31 March, which attracted more than 1.8 million ticket requests.
Nearly 556,000 tickets for that phase were distributed by a random computerised draw last month, 44 percent of them to South Africans.
Fifa also said on Wednesday that 351,121 tickets for the Confederations Cup have been sold, with just over a month to go until the tournament kicks off in South Africa.
A total of 640,000 were available for the event.
This link is sent to you from http://www.socialedge.orgYou are receiving this mail because someone read a page at
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 It is quite clear that we Africas are the real precursors of our poverty and thus the suffering of our own people;and coupled with unscrupolous jackals from the west,the mathematical equation is more than clear to the eyes of everyone.How can people be having the hardest of times during this period of obsterity and we learn to know that most of our leaders and their entourage have "golden" bank accounts in foreign banks,gotten through swindling of public funds or rather all forms of corrupton.Read on... US investigators have traced $150m in bribes given to Nigerian officials to Swiss banks, Nigeria's justice minister has said. Michael Kase Aondoakaa said the money was part of $180m in bribes given by US construction company Halliburton to Nigerian officials. The Nigerian government says it has asked the US to release the names of officials who negotiated the bribes. Halliburton admitted paying the bribes to top officials between 1994 and 2004. "We have discovered that $150 million of the bribe money is in Zurich. That is the first shocking discovery. The entire money is $180 million. $150 million is already trapped in Zurich," Mr Aondoakaa said. Halliburton and its engineering subsidiary Kellogg Brown Root negotiated bribes with "three successive holders of a top-level office in the executive branch of the government of Nigeria" during that time, according to the plea agreement the company made with the US Department of Justice. The Nigerian government has come under pressure from the media to follow up the findings of the US court and prosecute the Nigerian bribe-takers. Mr Aondoakaa said they had requested the court unseal the judgement and pass on the names of the officials. Albert "Jack" Stanley, the former chief executive of KBR who pleaded guilty to making the bribes in order to secure $6bn in contracts, is to be sentenced on 6 May. KBR has agreed to pay more than $402m in fines, of which Halliburton, as the former parent company, agreed to pay $302m.
 pic from "smoke&mirrors"
Minister of Information and Communications, Professor Dora Akunyili, has said Nigeria is formidable in media and entertainment industry in sub-Sahara Africa, saying that Nigeria has a lot of untapped potentials in the sector.
Professor Akunyili stated this at a book launch titled "Nigerian Media and Entertainment Industry, the next frontier, Making Steady Progress" organized by Fountainhead media Group, noting that very few nations in the world can match the prospects that Nigeria is endowed with.
According to her, "Nigeria a bellwether for the continent remains a formidable market for the media and entertainment industry. With a population of 140 million people, a growing middle class and societal thirst for new information and entertainment, very few countries in Africa and the world can match Nigeria's promise and potentials. However, there are many grounds in my opinion yet to be explored by the industry in Nigeria."
The Minister re_emphasis the need for all Nigerians to support the ongoing re_branding campaign as this will help the nation in achieving is millennium development goals.
"To this end, I therefore, urge all Nigerians, the private and public sector to buy into the national re_branding campaign. The campaign is targeted at changing the negative perception of Nigeria abroad. Through re-branding we must start to believe in our country and its future.
She stressed, "But we cannot change the image of Nigeria without attitudinal change. We as a people, from the leadership to the led must form positive attitudes in both our private and public lives." Akunyili said.
 Washington, DC — The impact of the global economic meltdown on Africa, preventing fresh debt problems and the response of global financial institutions, will dominate talks at a meeting expected to feature the Nigerian Minister of Finance, Dr. Mansur Muhtar, and his counterparts from other African and Caribbean countries next week The meeting tagged "The Commonwealth Ministerial Debt Sustainability Forum" is organised by the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) and will take place at the World Bank headquarters in Washington D.C. on April 22, a couple of days before the Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) Spring Meetings. The gathering will afford finance ministers from some 53 countries representing 1.9 billion of the world's population the opportunity to compare notes on how to deal with the global financial turbulence wrecking havoc in developing countries. Conveners are specifically concerned with the possible resurgence of excessive and unmanageable debt in the face of deteriorating financial conditions worldwide. Some African countries, including Nigeria had in the past couple of years successfully paid off and managed their debt profile. Nigeria's external debt as at February 2009 was $3.5 billion, down from $38 billion before 2006 while the domestic debt was N2.3 trillion, according to the Debt Management Office (DMO). Both domestic and external debt profile constitute 11 per cent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a figure the Director General of Debt Management Office, Abraham Nwankwo, was quoted as saying is under control. However, the financial crisis is placing immense pressure on nations struggling to meet up with demands. This has prompted concerns about fresh borrowings in developing countries particularly because it is not certain when the situation will change. "Debt has for a long time been an issue for most of these countries. We might have thought that this was yesterday's news but now with the economic troubles, there is fear that progress the countries had made in securing debt relief and managing their debt may be lost due to a decline in trade, remittances, investment and aid," stated the head of International Finance and Capital Markets at the Commonwealth, Mr Jonathan Ockenden. According to Samantha Attridge, an adviser on Global Issues at the Commonwealth, "With governance revenue falling and pressures to increase spending, countries may be under more pressure to borrow to help offset the impact of the crisis and meet the reasonable expectations of their people. as financing conditions deteriorate there is a real risk that countries could get into debt problems." The ministers will share practical experiences in dealing with the current crisis, debt management and the response of the World Bank and IMF. They will have the opportunity to question the adequacy of the response of the two institutions as well as discuss and propose ways of collaboration.
By Annelise Sander GENEVA, Mar 17 (IPS) - Trade experts are sceptical about the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s renewed emphasis on South-South trade to counter the global economic crisis. Fostering South-South ‘‘recently much-expanded’’ economic cooperation and trade to soften the impacts of the economic and financial crisis on developing countries was discussed at an expert meeting convened by the United Nations’ Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in February this year in Geneva. ‘‘A global financial crisis has shaken the economic foundations of the North and is threatening to shatter the growth and development aspirations of the South. The timing is right to explore how greater South-South cooperation can help developing countries cope with the crisis,’’ UNCTAD Secretary-General Supachai Panitchpakdi told the meeting. Esperanza Duran, director of the Agency for International Trade Cooperation and Information (AITIC), remarks that, ‘‘every time there is a problem, there is a call for increased Southern trade and cooperation. ‘‘But that will not get us out of this crisis, which is an economic and financial one. The main obstacle is the lack of credit that is essential for export and export guarantees, affecting trade both in the North and in the South. ‘‘Credit is the oil needed to keep the machine functioning. In theory, increased South-South trade could mitigate the effects of the current crisis but in practice, I don’t see how.’’ AITIC is an intergovernmental organisation promoting trade-led growth in developing countries. Mariarosaria Iorio of the International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN) in Geneva also questions what kind of South-South cooperation UNCTAD is referring to. IGTN is an international network of feminist gender specialists who provide technical information on gender and trade. ‘‘In Africa, trade has meant mainly exports of primary commodities, such as minerals, that increased as the continent fed off the economic boom in China. But for trade to bring real benefits, it should also involve manufactured goods that have an added value.’’ Therefore, in light of the current economic and trade systems, growth of South-South trade would demand a reorientation of local production capacities from mostly primary to manufactured products. It would also entail a re-balancing of international trade rules and more active participation of Southern partners in global economic decision-making processes, Iorio argues. Mark Halle of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) in Geneva finds South-South cooperation ‘‘a good idea but South-South trade is still limited. ‘‘This is because the principal reason for promoting it tends to be politically motivated - to replace inequitable market relationships between the North and South with fairer ones between Southern countries.’’ The problem, Halle argues, is that the latter is not necessarily fairer: Southern businesspeople also look for profit and trade works everywhere on the basis of the market, not political criteria. ‘‘Where South-South trade has happened, like in India, China, Brazil and South Africa, it was for the usual commercial reasons, not for political ones.’’ IISD is a policy research institute that promotes sustainable development. Read on...
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- matchmaking service that will allow delegates with shared interests to network in One-on-One business meetings. 
