The Agriculture Fast Track is the first and only project preparation fund focused exclusively on agriculture in Africa. Building on the commitments under the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, the Agriculture Fast Track develops and advances a pipeline of bankable food security projects that support Africa’s agriculture transformation agenda.  African entrepreneurs and particularly women are invited to apply for grants.

Recent projects receiving grants are:  An irrigation system for small shareholder production, a hulling facility to create stronger market links for small shareholders; power source for center to train small shareholders.  Currently open to citizens of Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique, and Tanzania.

A project of the Africa Development Bank.

Higuchi Yoshio of Keio University writes: Facing a decrease in potential growth due to the aging of the population coupled with a low birthrate, the Japanese economy has slipped into a downward spiral of continued shrinking. We should maintain and increase the per-capita national income even amidst the population decline and realize a society in which a matured and enriched lifestyle can be enjoyed. The economy should shift to creating and expanding value added.

In order to increase their international competitiveness, Japanese businesses must rid themselves of the inward-looking attitude based on a rather homogeneous Japanese society which is typical of Japanese organizations. By increasing the transparency of their operations and evaluations and reviewing their business culture and labor practices, companies can recruit high quality personnel domestically and abroad irrespective of gender, age, and nationality.

Some of the driving powers for value creation are knowledge and experiences in different fields, respect for different values, and an increase in the labor force participation. We should create a society in which more people participate in value creation and enjoy working in accordance with their respective surroundings and abilities through diversification.

The project aims to clarify the impact of women’s participation and leadership on economic growth and business competitiveness. We address this issue from the following two directions. First, using an econometric approach, we will clarify the impact of women’s participation and leadership on firms’ performance or productivity. Second, using a case study approach, we discuss recruiting high quality personnel by taking full advantage of women’s ability and promoting diversity and work-life balance management.

A recent report shows that over the past 5 years, in Italy, women entrepreneurs have fared better than men.

Since 2009 the total number of entrepreneurs, meaning by that term holders and shareholders of companies, has increased from 4 million to 4 million 514 thousand 308 thousand in 2013 .  Women have shown a greater capacity for resilience than men. In view of the fact decrease of 158 thousand entrepreneurs (-5%) , among women the losses were lower.  The combined effect of the various trends resulted in a slight increase although the level of feminization of Italian business : the impact of women entrepreneurs on the total number of entrepreneurs has in fact increased from 29.8 % in 2009 to 30.1% in 2013.

The economy of Southern Italy had more impact on entrepreneurs between 2009 and 2013.  Even in North production losses were significant.  In the NorthEast, men were more severely hit than women.  Of note is the situation in Central Italy , which records a better economic and employment situation.

The services sector continues to be the industry that enjoys better health.  The number of women entrepreneurs has remained virtually unchanged over the difficult years, 2009-2013.  Women have  further consolidated their presence in those sectors in which womne-run companies traditionally play a central role :

Organizing events, catering, beauty  salons, and tatoo salons have flourished. The sector that provides social assistance is small, but women account for 59% of the business.

Women entrepreneurs are entering traditional male businesses with great success.
Financial assets and insurance , brokerage , brokerage, subcontractor where women account for only 29.5%, but this is up 4.3% in the last year and continues to expand. In real estate women representing 44.5% of the entrepreneurial base.

In short, no matter how strongly affected by the crisis, women not only in recent years have shown a greater resilience than men , limiting the negative effects on the business system, but proved even more able to detect the areas of innovation, of change and growth offered by the service sector by the crisis and seize the opportunity to get back into the game and turn it into a real opportunity.

The main findings that emerge from the Observatory Confcommercio – CENSIS on the evolution of women’s entrepreneurship in the service sector between 2009 and 2013 is that women cope better than men.

Surviving an Econnomic Downturn

Venetia Rainey writes from Dhour Choueir, Lebanon:  In the hallway of Dhour Choueir High School, perched high up in the craggy hills of Mount Lebanon, teenagers cluster around a fist-sized computer chip with wires protruding from various sides.  On the attached screen, a monkey walks from side to side catching bananas that fall from the sky, with a speech bubble that says “yummy” appearing every time he succeeds.

In the middle of the crowd, a 17-year-old explains how it works. But he’s not talking about how to play the game, he’s talking about how to make it.

This is Raspberry Pi, an innovative new education tool that can teach children as young as 5 how to create computer code and program, which lets them create anything from video games to music. The device costs $25 – way less than a computer, laptop or tablet – and all you need to plug in is a screen (for example, a TV), a keyboard, a mouse and some power.

Created in Britain by a group of men who feared the younger generation was losing the ability to control the technology mushrooming around it, Raspberry Pi has snowballed from an idea in 2006 into a movement that is taking the world by storm.

With the help of UNICEF, the International Education Association, the Education Ministry and the Muna Bustros Foundation, Raspberry Pi was officially launched on Friday in the Middle East as part of the Pi For Learning program.

“This is the future,” said 17-year-old Ryan Loukih, a student at Dhour Choueir High School. “The whole world is going toward coding and programming, and Raspberry Pi simplifies it so that everyone can use it. There are endless possibilities.”

The pilot project in the Lebanese public school in Dhour Choueir teaches students how to use a visual programming language called Scratch, and the older students that have been experimenting with it over the last few months were eager to show off the fruit of their work.

“This game is like a basic version of pong,” explained Ian Saba, 17, pointing to a screen where a ball was bouncing between two horizontal lines – essentially a game of ping pong seen from above.

“With coding, we can control the rules and bend them to our will, so if he is winning,” Saba smiled and gestured to his work partner, “I can press a button and change the direction of the ball with no warning.”

For IT teacher Viana Mansour, the introduction of the devices to her computer lab has been revolutionary.

“They thought that computers were all about social media sites like Facebook and so on, now they know that they can make their own games, animations, music – anything.  Children are way more excited to come to IT now.”

“Everyone in the world is looking at this experiment,” Candace Johnson, an American angel investor and high-profile telecommunications entrepreneur, said to those gathered at the launch. “I built my own transistor radio when I was 6, and it put me in a place where I was able to build the world’s largest satellite system.  If we give young people the ability to code, they will build things in the future that we can’t even imagine now.”

This message was echoed by UNICEF’s new innovation specialist, James Cranwell-Ward, a key driver behind the agency’s plan to bring Raspberry Pis to schools in neglected parts of Lebanon.  “You could potentially give birth to and establish a whole generation of technologists who could go on to build the next Facebook,” he told The Daily Star.

UNICEF is particularly hoping to target school-aged Syrian refugees, some 300,000 of whom are receiving no education at all because of the lack of capacity, resources and funds.

“We will be using the RP as a vehicle to teach basic numeracy, Arabic and science,” Cranwell-Ward  said.

 

Cost: $25
Value: Priceless

In a groundbreaking disclosure, Google revealed how very white and male its workforce is — just 2 percent of its Googlers are black, 3 percent are Hispanic, and 30 percent are women.

The search giant said Wednesday that the transparency about its workforce — the first disclosure of its kind in the largely white, male tech sector — is an important step toward change.

“Simply put, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity,” Google Inc. senior vice president Laszlo Bock wrote in a blog.

The numbers were compiled as part of a report that major U.S. employers must file with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Companies are not required to make the information public.

The gender divide is based on the roughly 44,000 people Google employed throughout the world at the start of this year. The company didn’t factor about 4,000 workers at its Motorola Mobility division, which is being sold to China’s Lenovo Group for $2.9 billion. The racial data is limited to Google’s roughly 26,600 workers in the U.S as of August 2013.

Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg recently said the social networking company is headed toward disclosure as well, but it was important to share the data internally first.

Apple Inc., Twitter, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Microsoft Corp. did not respond immediately to queries about possible plans to disclose data.

Bock said Google has been working to diversify, not just its offices but in the broader tech sector. Since 2010, the firm has given more than $40 million to organizations working to bring computer science education to women and girls, he said.

The company also is working with historically black colleges and universities to elevate coursework and attendance in computer science, he said.

“But we’re the first to admit that Google is miles from where we want to be, and that being totally clear about the extent of the problem is a really important part of the solution,” he said.

Gender and ethnic disparities are reflected throughout the tech industry. About 7 percent of tech workers are black or Latino in Silicon Valley and nationally. Blacks and Hispanics make up 13.1 and 16.9 percent of the U.S. population, respectively, according to the most recent Census data.

In the coming months, Google said, it will work with the Kapor Center for Social Impact, a group that uses information technology to close gender and ethnic gaps in the Silicon Valley workforce. The center will be organizing a Google-backed conference in California focusing on issues of technology and diversity.

Co-founder Freada Kapor Klein, who started the Level Playing Field Institute 13 years ago to teach and mentor black and Latino students in science and math, said Google is showing leadership “which has been sorely needed for a long time.”

“Google is the company known for the moonshot, and applying that part of Google DNA to this problem is a breath of fresh air,” she said.

Earlier this year, the Rev. Jesse Jackson launched a campaign to diversify Silicon Valley, asking to meet with leaders of several iconic technology companies about bringing black and Hispanics into their workforce and leadership.

Since then, he’s been leading delegations to annual shareholder’s meetings at firms including Google, Facebook, eBay Inc. and Hewlett-Packard.

On Wednesday Jackson said Google is to be commended.

“It’s a bold step in the right direction. We urge other companies to follow Google’s lead,” he said. “Silicon Valley and the tech industry have demonstrated an ability to solve the most challenging and complex problems in the world. Inclusion is a complex problem — if we put our collective minds together, we can solve that too.”

Iris Gardner, a manager at nonprofit Code2040, which places high performing black and Latino software engineering students in internships with top tech companies, said Google’s disclosure could mark a pivotal moment in the push to diversify Silicon Valley.

“It is a big deal for them to be transparent about something that most companies haven’t in the past been willing to share,” she said

Not Google

The New York Forum Africa has just met in Libreville, Gabon.  Chinese business interests were well represented.  China-Africa trade has grown rapidly in the past decade. In 2000, the bilateral trade between the two sides was around $10 billion, while in 2012 it topped $200 billion. Chinese foreign direct investments in African nations is expected to reach $50 billion by 2015, according to a report published by Standard Bank, a South African lender.
In March last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Tanzania, South Africa and the Republic of Congo as part of his first overseas tour as president.
Earlier this month, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang made an eight day trip to Africa and visited Ethiopia, Nigeria, Angola and Kenya, as part of China’s efforts to expand economic ties with the continent. Li’s visit concluded with the signing of a number of deals on trade, energy, investment and development, including a call to expand cooperation in infrastructure and a pledge to increase Chinese aid to Africa by $12 billion (which includes $10 billion in loans and $2 billion for the China-Africa Development Fund).
In Kenya, Li signed agreements with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and other East African leaders to build a $3.6-billion, 380-mile railway line connecting Nairobi to the Kenyan port of Mombasa. Construction is expected to start in October and go on till March 2018 and will be part of a regional railway system that will extend through Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and South Sudan. The Export-Import Bank of China will fund most of the project and the balance by the Kenyan government.
Attias says that China’s commitment to build infrastructure will help in forging long-term relationships with local communities in Africa.
“It’s important to understand the vision and strategies of the Chinese companies,” he says.
Wang Xiaoyong, secretary-general of China-Africa Business Council, says the railway agreement is an important milestone in Sino-African relations.
“Building the railway is a significant step for Kenya and other African countries. At the same time, it is also important for China to be part of this process and help in the actual construction,” Wang says.
According to Wang, constructing the railway line will involve not only financing and construction but also materials supply and vocational training of local workers. “Chinese investors can help on different fronts and it will help them build their reputation as investors in Africa,” Wang says.
Lankoande, the author of the book the political economy of China’s Foreign Direct Investments in Africa, says China stands out as an investor not by short term but “by long-term return on investment in Africa”.
“While oil and mining remain an important focus, Chinese investments are targeting sectors ranging from manufacturing to food. This diversification is very important for the African economy,” Lankoande says.  “I think the most important thing the Chinese investors can bring to Africa and make a difference is through technology transfer,” he says. “As we all know, China became a major player in technological innovation and it has several technologies that meet Africa’s needs, especially in terms of the features and cost,” Lankoande says.
Terming China, “a human resources power in the global market”, Lankoande says there is immense potential to create a win-win partnership with Africa in vocational training.
“China produces over 400,000 engineers every year, and this is huge compared to any other country in the world. These engineers can help make technology transfer from China to Africa a reality,” he says.
There are also opportunities for Sino-Africa technology transfer in natural resources also as Chinese engineers are facing the same development challenges that African engineers are striving to overcome, Lankoande says.
He says that most of the investment opportunities in Africa are still untapped. “Africa is the last frontier for growth,” Lankoande says. “Many African countries are generating wealth at a rate presently unmatched in any other part of the world and that makes them primary destinations for investment from all around the world.”
Opportunities with high return on investments exist in sectors such as infrastructure, manufacturing, agriculture and telecommunications, he says.
“Africa is a playground for ICT (information and communications technology) innovation, especially in the telecoms sector. With a mobile market of over 700 million people, Africa is definitely the place to be for any telecom company,” Lankoande says.
Chinese investors have already tapped into most of the industries including health, education, transport and storage sectors. There are now more than 1,600 Chinese development finance projects totaling $75 billion in more than 50 African countries.
Lankoande says Chinese investors are also facing challenges.  “These challenges are the political instability in some countries, macroeconomic instability, insufficient infrastructure and the lack of market insights.”

Michael Spence discusses the new world.

The world we are entering is one in which the most powerful global flows will be ideas and digital capital, not goods, services, and traditional capital. Adapting to this will require shifts in mindsets, policies, investments (especially in human capital), and quite possibly models of employment and distribution. No one knows fully how all of this will play out. But attempting to understand where the technological forces and trends are leading us is a good place to start.

No, you were not downloaded. You were born.

Mark Tercek who heads up the Nature Conservancy made  lot of money as a Goldman Sachs partner.  Daniel Max, writing in the New Yorker, looks at what he has done to raise environmental and global warming awareness, not by scolding and accusing, but by pointing out the advantages of being green-aware.  Not to stave off picketers, but rather as a good business practice that does not cost any more, and may cost less in the long run.

When Terek opened up conversations with Dow, he told them that the Nature Conservancy were not eggheads out of touch with the real world.

Already Dow is helping rebuild marshes near its Texas plant.  This has a future benefit.  Global warming is going to make water encroach on Dow’s factory territory.  The marshes will keep the waters at bay, and cost much less than building barriers.

Is this a model for going well by doing good?