In 1967 when Botswana became independent, a South Africa geologist discovered kimberlite in the country.  Kimberite is a volcanic rock that hosts diamonds.  Sure enough, Bostwana had the world’s larges supply.

In devleoping the business, Botswana has had a transparent government and turned great wealth into social gains.

In twenty to third years, the supply of diamonds will end, and Botswana is preparing for the future.  They have become a financial services hub for Africa.  And they have figured out how to keep diamonds central.  They have employees already trained in the businesses that surround diamonds:  cutting, setting, poishing and sales.

DeBeers is moving all their sales operations from London to Gabarone.  Major diamond sales take place every five weeks or so.  High end businesss people come from all over the world, and service businesses flourish.

Like Norway which is taking steps to prepare for the end of oil, Botswana is preparing for a time when diamonds can no longer be mined.

W-T-W.org Women and Finance recommens a twenty-year Infrastructure program to give people jobs while we figure out how to fit properly trained people to available jobs.

Megan McArdle writes about the recent election and notes that Republicans won even though the economy appears to be improving and new jobs are up.

She observes that the kind of jobs that satisfy people are often not available.  People can’t find jobs where they have a future.  Business startups and small businesses that employ so many people are on a decline.

It may be that a party that disapproves raising the minimum wage is perceived as being more sympathetic to the real jobs issue.

4-H is a uniquely American phenomenon, and in many ways it is. Born in the heartland of the US iin the early 1900s. when land-grant universities sent representatives to rural schools, it sought to teach the next generation of farmers, and through them reach adults skeptical of newfangled techniques. The club thrived until the middle of the century, but as industrial-scale farms gobbled up family operations and America became less rural, membership began to decline.

However, unlike many bygone rural institutions—one-room schoolhouses, barn raisings, and rural free delivery, the club, now part of the Department of Agriculture and still administered through land-grant universities, has managed to reinvent itself. It has expanded in both scope (adding science and engineering to its old standbys of agriculture and animal husbandry) and size: Today, 4-H boasts 7 million members in more than 50 countries.

It is introducing yourng people to farming as a career and these modern farming entrepreneurs are thriving.

Yet DuPont has found a very willing partner in 4-H. “We want 11- and 12-year-olds to gain an appreciation for agriculture as a possible career and a business opportunity,” says Shingi Nyamwanza, who heads 4-H’s programs in Africa. “DuPont is making that possible.” The program started as a small pilot in Tanzania in 2010, and in 2012, it expanded it to Ghana, where 3,500 children, ages 6-19, enrolled. In 2014, 4-H and DuPont have rolled out school gardens in Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa.

So is DuPont Pioneer, as critics charge, using 4-H kids as free advertising for a product that will put their families’ farms out of business? What’s clear is that 4-H’s African program is indicative of the continent’s transition from subsistence farming to industrial crop production. As of 2010, foreign interests—including American agribusiness giants like Monsanto and Cargill—owned up to150 million acres in Africa.  The US government has helped make those deals happen: Since 2010, the Agency for International Development has given $7 billion in grants to a wide range of corporations, including Walmart and PepsiCo. to partner with farmers in the developing world. Many of the funds came through a new program called Feed the Future, which a USDA administrator described as a push to “increase agricultural business investments in priority countries.”

In cracking the vast new market in Africa, the 4-H gardens “are essentially demonstration plots,” DuPont’s Captain told me. “We are going to work with you, and you can show your neighbors in your tribe and village what you can do. And then they want the seed as well.”

The Palestinian Information Technology Association is making a big contribution to the Palestinian economy.  Five percent of Palestine’s workforce produce 8% of its output.

IT specialist Ala Alaeddin says that the big jump in IT use was the risky move by John Chambers of Cisco to invest in Palestine.  IT may become the engine of the Palestinian economy. The goal is to combine media with IT and to help emerging NGOs. Some complain that the govvernment puts more money into telecommunications than IT.

While Africa’s middle class may be smaller than the oft-reported figure of 300-million, it is growing at a strong rate – and the broad-based income growth is likely to encourage more companies to invest in the region, according to a report released by Standard Bank.  There are 15-million middle-class households in 11 of sub-Saharan Africa’s top economies this year, up from 4.6-million in 2000 and 2.4-million in 1990, the report states. This represents an increase of 230% over 14 years. The report, titled “Understanding Africa’s middle class”, found that the combined GDPs of the 11 measured economies – Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia – had grown tenfold since 2000.

Income discrepancies, however, are vast among the 11 economies, with almost 86% of the 110-million households falling within the low-income band. This is expected to fall to around 75% by 2030. “While the scale of Africa’s middle-class ascent has, we believe, been somewhat exaggerated in line with the at times breathless ‘Africa Rising’ narrative, there is still plenty of scope for measured optimism regarding the size of the middle class in several key Sub-Saharan Africa economies,” said Simon Freemantle, an economist.

Freemantle said there was cause for optimism among investors as the results suggest even greater scope for future growth. The number of middle-class households in the sub-Saharan African countries is likely to increase significantly in the next 15 years. “Including lower-middle-class households, the overall number swells to over 40-million households by 2030, from around 15-million today,” the report says. The 11 countries covered by the report account for half Africa’s total GDP (75% if South Africa is excluded) and half its population. The figure of 300-million middle-class Africans – one-third of Africa’s people – comes from a study by the African Development Bank in 2011, which defined “middle class” as earning between $4 and $20 a day. “Such individuals would still be exceptionally vulnerable to various economic shocks, and prone to lose their middle-income status,” Freemantle said.

The report found there was “an undeniable swelling” of Africa’s middle class, irrespective of which methodology was used. “Reliable and proven data should if anything spur more interest in the continent’s consumer potential by adding depth to what was previously conjecture,” said Freemantle. As a caution, the report states: “Though there has been a meaningful individual lift in income, it is clear that a substantial majority of individuals in most countries we looked at still live on or below the poverty line (measured as those with a daily income of USD2 or less).”