Is Kenya really depression-proof?

October 28, 2008: A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to sit in at an awards ceremony celebrating Kenyan entrepreneurs. The Top 100 SMEs was not a ceremony for nascent start-ups such as mine, but for the men and women who have given years of energy to create companies that from one or two or three founders are now employers of 60 or 100 or 150 with a firm place in their markets and leading reputations.

Do the sums and together the award winners that night represented a set of businesses employing more than 10,000 people, which adds to a monumental achievement. However, one of the striking things that gala evening, besides the entrepreneurs, was the address by Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi. He spoke passionately on the role and place for entrepreneurs in Kenya, on Kenya, on its future, its society, and then, on its Government.

And then he threw us all a challenge. Bemoaning a media obsessed with political jockeying and too little focused on performance and issues, he told us all: You should be telling us what you want from government. You should be telling us what you expect.

Well I’m an entrepreneur, and there’s something I want from this administration, and I think it would make a difference.

Please, please, please Mr Mudavadi, can you give us more information? Last week I was in South Africa, where the headlines right now are not about political jockeying (where perhaps they should be), but wall-to-wall on the global financial meltdown. From Business Day to The Sun, the world’s biggest story in half a century is on the front pages of every newspaper in South Africa.

Clear-out time for IMF, World Bank

The IMF has over the past decade renounced its monetary role. Dominated by political slogans, it has portrayed itself, instead, as a poverty fighter. Both institutions wanted to promote good governance and fight corruption in Africa, as if corruption existed only in Africa and nowhere else. Although fighting corruption has no clear or measurable meaning, most likely turning humans into angels, such demagoguery shows how far removed both institutions have been diverted from their Bretton Woods mandates.

Malawi Women Push for Parliamentary Positions With Help of 50:50 Program

As Malawi prepares for presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for next year, women have embarked on a campaign for equal access to parliamentary seats. Championing the efforts are the Ministry of Women and Child Development and an umbrella body of women, the Gender Coordination Network. Voice of America English to Africa reporter Lameck Masina in Blantyre says the crusade dubbed the "50:50 Campaign" is in line with the African Union declaration calling for member countries to ensure that women make up half of all legislative bodies.

Nigeria misses out on S/Korea’s $760m African fund

By Obinna Ezeobi, in Seoul, South Korea

Published: Wednesday, 29 Oct 2008

The South Korean government announced on Tuesday, that it would commit $760m to its extensive economic cooperation with Africa, with Nigeria missing from the list of the 11 nations that would benefit.

The announcement was made at the second day of the Korea-Africa Economic Cooperation Conference in Seoul, being attended by ministers and delegations from 21 African countries, the African Development Bank and representatives of the Korean government and its private sector.

Participants at the meeting agreed that there was a need to expand economic cooperation between South Korea and Africa, and decided on the KOAFEC Action Plan 2009-2010, a strategy geared towards the achievement of six development goals, which it hoped to give priority to.

They also decided that investments be directed towards infrastructure and sustainable development, information and communication technology and human resource development.

Other key areas are knowledge sharing on Korea’s development experience, agriculture and rural development, and green growth partnership.

The benefiting countries include Angola, Ghana, Madagascar, Mozambique, Senegal and Tanzania. Other listed nations are Cameroun, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Cote d’ Ivoire, and they to receive assistance to the value of varied sums for interventions in the six key areas decided at the meeting.

Coalition aims to combat lottery scams

CONOR POPE

Two of the world’s biggest technology companies have formed an alliance with an African bank and financial-services provider to raise awareness of lottery scam e-mails.

The collaborative move by Microsoft, Yahoo, Western Union and the African Development Bank aims to help web users protect themselves against frauds in which victims are deceived into paying money up front in the hope of receiving non-existent gifts or cash prizes.

Many scammers misappropriate the name of the African Development Bank, communicate through bogus Yahoo email accounts and ask people to send them money via Western Union.

China and Rwanda celebrate years of economic and trade cooperation

BY JOSEPH MUDINGU

Rwanda’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Rosemary Museminali, on Tuesday, appreciated China’s support to Rwanda in the areas of health, agriculture, education, capacity building and infrastructure development. Museminali, was speaking during a one day seminar, on China’s Development and China–Rwanda Cooperation, hosted by the Chinese embassy in Rwanda. “The Rwandan Government appreciates the support of the Government of China for the expansion of Kibungo Hospital, the construction and rehabilitation of the National Stadium, and the construction of useful roads in Kigali city,” said the minister. In a wide ranging speech that touched on China’s investment efforts in Rwanda, the minister also encouraged China’s stance on the global arena where she has stood in solidarity with poor African countries, solidarity which has also included support for the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

Some W. African FDI flows may be drug proceeds: UN

By Pascal Fletcher

PRAIA (Reuters) - Sharp increases in foreign direct investment in at least three poor West African states could point to a surge in illegal proceeds from cocaine-trafficking swelling their economies, U.N. crime experts said on Tuesday.

A report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on "Drug Trafficking as a Security Threat in West Africa" singled out Guinea-Bissau, Gambia and Guinea as states which had seen a jump in foreign direct investment (FDI) and other inflows not clearly justified by economic performance.

These countries are part of a West African region which U.N. anti-narcotics experts say is under attack from powerful Colombian drug-trafficking cartels which are channelling at least 50 tonnes of cocaine each year, and possibly nearly double that, through the area on its way for sale in Europe.

An Afghan guard with the shipping firm shot the Briton and the South African and then took his own life, authorities say.

By Laura King
October 26, 2008

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan -- Security for Westerners in Afghanistan took a sharp turn for the worse Saturday when an Afghan security guard working for the international shipping firm DHL shot dead the company's top two executives in the country before killing himself, authorities said.The early-morning attack, which killed a Briton and a South African, was as symbolic as it was bloody. It targeted a major multinational corporation at a time when Afghanistan is hungry for foreign investment. And it took place in a prosperous district in the heart of the city even as Western military officials are trying to calm fears that Islamic militants are tightening a noose around the capital.