HAPPY 2013

As year 2012 is preparing to leave us, let's learn from the mistakes we've made and celebrate the successes we've earned.

May year 2013 come with better ideas and opportunities, for an even more successful 12 months.

Best wishes,

Eric  

Can "Greed" Save Africa?

I have decided to adopt this title for today's post ironically but do not think it is appropriate, as the subject hereunder discussed construes serious matter.

In other form, I would have asked if increasing private sector involvement, to an extent that overwhelms public sector and charity altogether will be enough to bring the ever sought human development on the African continent.

Statistics on foreign aid to African's development (estimated at more than $600 billion since 1960s) hint that the continent has been huge receiver of hundreds of billions of dollars of donors' money, but evidence suggests that these funds have been the curse that has fed today's rampant extreme poverty and isolation for the populations and unparalleled levels of corruption amongst politicians and local businesses.

Africa has increasingly become an attractive place for private business ventures in sinc with China's interest on the continent, fuelled by its thirst for natural resources. The continent has been seeing a growing number of western private investors, adventurers and mercenaires all interested to level of returns unseen nowhere on earth. Some are organized to modern forms of private equity firms developing ventures in various sectors, from agri-business to mining, to oil&gas, to energy, to sustainable ventures having the aim to reinvest profits locally. A few are simply mainstream investment banks moving ahead of the curve and snapping already organized local bunch of Harvard alumni that have headed home attracted by opportunities otherwise increasingly less available in the Western hemisphere.

Carbon Manna Acknowledged in the WSJ

To refresh minds, Carbon Manna is a carbon micro credit scheme invented by my folk David Palella, a San Diego based entrepreneur with the cause of the poorest of world's rural populations in heart. 

The project aims at creating an incentive for rural people to offset their carbon footprint through the adoption and use of high-efficiency charcoal stoves, in lieu of burning the limited wooden resources. Carbon Manna system is based on existing infrastructure and uses simple mobile text message to transfer micro credits on recipients mobile devices. The good news is that mobile phone penetration amongst world's rural individuals has reached levels comparable to those in developing countries.

I came across this brilliant idea during MBA classes and fell in love with it, as I was fascinated by its simplicity and its exclusion of the middleman, hence zeroing any corruption risks and any form of admin costs. Another point fort which I immediately caught is its ability to stand firm against rampant inflation which is often a plague in poor spots.

Charcoal Stoves Distribution in Kenya (Carbon Manna Implementation)