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Fihankra and 20/20 Group To Build 500 Homes and a Boarding School In Ghana, West Afri

Fihankra and 20/20 Group To Build 500 Homes and a Boarding School In Ghana, West Africa
Ghana-Based NGO and African American Investment Group Combine To Build Community

Philadelphia, PA (BlackNews.com) - In August 2005, the 20/20 Real Estate Investment Group took a long awaited step toward uniting two continents, Africa and America, when 25 returnees, Americans of African descent took part in the ceremonial coming home march across the Volta River in Ghana.

In this case, unlike the many civil rights marches of old, there were no Bull Connors or sadistic dogs, or venomous mobs, only the love and respect of reawakened kinship. This group of black Americans represent the first wave, the vanguard it is hoped of a planned emigration of the descendants of American slaves back to the motherland to develop their own version of the city on the hill.

The culmination of the August trip was the 2-day homecoming to Ye Fa Ogyamu. In addition to the Crossing Over Ceremony, the groundbreaking of the secondary and vocational school complex, the group was treated to performances by local artistic groups, shopping for indigenous crafts, arts and clothing, and sampling of the local cuisine.

Fihankra International, a Ghana based non-governmental organization (NGO), and the 20/20 Group, an African American Real Estate Investment Group operating out of the United States, are the driving force of this unique initiative, a joint venture aimed at the expansion of Fihankra by developing this 30,000 acres of land in the Volta region of Ghana, West Africa into a state of the art, self-sustaining community.

Fihankra, which translates they left without saying goodbye, initiated this township development in 1997. In one of the earth's most spectacular rolling mountain ranges and virgin forests, the NGO has carved out the beginnings of a full service community burgeoning with potential. A major part of Fihankras mission is promoting the cultural and economic reintegration of Africa by its Diaspora. The establishment of this partnership with the 20/20 Group is the next phase of that mission.

This monumental undertaking arises out of the historic atonement ceremony held in December 1994 in Accra, Ghana where representatives of Ghana's National House of Chiefs, along with the Spiritual Head of the Godian Mission of Nigeria, ceremonially opened the gateway to Africa to the descendants of Africans born in the Diaspora as a direct result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This historic ceremony customarily referred to as The Purification of the Stool and Skin of Fihankra consisted of an apology for the participation of some chiefs of the past who supported and profited from the slave trade. The event was witnessed by the more than 3,000.

A large area of land was then set aside with the intent to provide both a spiritual and customary home for Diasporan Africans wishing to repatriate to Ghana. The portion of land upon which the township is being constructed is part of that larger land area. The township named Ye Fa Ogyamu, means we have passed through fire and reflects the trials of Africans of the Diaspora over centuries of separation from their ancestral homeland. This historic venture comes at a time when the world's attention is being captured by events in and concern for the Motherland as exemplified by the recent Live 8 Concerts and G8 Summit.

Each of the twenty-five 20/20 Group future homeowners, for the price of an annual real estate tax, gets a 10,000 sq. ft. plot to develop into a home site for a planned retirement, a vacation property or second home. These home sites are to be part of a planned series of self-sustaining eco-villages, a community of some 250,000 residents that will boast an international school.

"The school and other facilities will be developed upon the dual foundation of respect for history and the application of scientific knowledge in a creative and sustainable environment," said Ali Salahuddin, founder of the 20/20 Group. Fully 30,000 acres of prime Volta River property is being set-aside for this project that organizers see as a 15-year 90 million dollar initiative.

In its own way the Ghanaian government is in the forefront of a move by West African nations to atone for their own complicity in the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, which brought the ancestors of these modern day Americans across the seas and deposited them in circumstances whose legacy we are still dealing with to this day.

With the launch of this project the union of cultural reawakening and cooperative economic planning are welded into a concrete form through which all African people will benefit.

Its a win-win. Ghana gets the benefit of the expertise, money and resources of these intrepid, African Americans and these homesteaders get their own piece of the motherland to develop as a legacy for future generations. Once again the land of their ancestors is theirs to cherish and revive.

The 20/20 Group was established by the dZert Club in January 2000 as a limited partnership after the club visited Ghana with 220 students, parents and adult group leaders with the express purpose of investing in real estate development projects in Africa.

To learn more about the d'Zert Club, please visit www.dzertclub.com

All those interested in employment, business and travel opportunities or in acquiring land in this community should call the 20/20 Group at 215-247-1545 or email dzertclub@aol.com

http://www.blacknews.com/pr/2020group101.html
 
donating a single book could help many people

<font size="4"><center>Our mission is to Empower Africa through Reading.
Our vision is to provide access to books for the children of Africa.

It is hard to imagine that donating a single book could help
many people in a civil war-torn and AIDS ravaged country,
that doesn’t have an infrastructure of libraries
</font size></center>


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Tips on Starting A Business In A 3rd World Country

<font size="5"><center>Valuable tips for launching start-ups in Liberia</font size>

<font size="4">"... article is intended to enlighten these aspiring entrepreneurs
on what to do when starting a business in a third world country;
this will enable them to make good discussions, resulting in success,
while avoiding costly mistakes that could lead to their demise."</font size></center>


10/9/2005 8:55:39 PM

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This was an EXCELLENT post!! I may have to print it to follow up on some of the info and keep as a reference to share with others. THANKS MUCH!!
 
<font size="6"><center>Rush for Liberian citizenship</font size></center>



FrontPage Africa
Sidiki Trawally
strawally@frontpageafrica.com
December 29, 2005


The Liberian diplomat also disclosed that several Africa- Americans are in high spirits to go to Liberia and establish businesses there, but they want to obtain Liberian citizenship in order for them to do so. “They are so serious. They know that the 1839 constitution has a clause which provides for immigrants from the United States to automatically become citizens, and even the 1986 constitution also gives them that advantage.”

He said several African-Americans continue to lobby the state department and other organizations to make their aim become a reality. Abu said some of the lobbyists have already met with president-elect Ellen Sirleaf on the issue during her private visit to the US recently. He also told Frontpageafrica that the Liberian embassy continues to receive numerous calls from African- Americans across the country for Liberian citizenship, to allow them to return to their “motherland.”

Abu is not certain if the increase in the requests for documents would end soon, adding, “We are observing the trend up to the inauguration and we anticipate that it will even increase after the inauguration.”

The diplomat also disclosed that applicants, whose businesses were shut down by the late Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor's regimes are also in hot pursuit for travel documents to return to Liberia to revive their companies and other businesses. “Some of them also want to undertake new ventures,” he said.

Abu also revealed that lots of Liberians in the US are selling their personal belongings including houses and cars to return to Liberia. “Some of these people may end up in places in government that they don’t know about. They have been out of the country for a long time, but are going with enthusiasm,” he noted.

Excerpted from: http://www.frontpageafrica.com/RunS...1008&NWS=NWS&ap=NewsDetail.asp&p=ASP\~Pg0.asp
 
Try to free your minds then you can help poverty
..........................Africa is not your home.........................you can help but it still isn't your home......get over yourself only Jews now Zionism
 
Re: Micro finance report

D Town Redd said:
Here's another idea: Buy African products like coffee and agricultural ingredients from Africa.
Click to expand...
Yeah, like the Buy Black Campaign, right ??? :(

QueEx
 
Re: Micro finance report

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I know several people who have had personal experiences with this organization.

[frame]http://www.fatefoundation.org/about/about.htm[/frame]

From what I have read and heard it is an incredible NPO that produces tangible results, fosters entrepreneurship and helps to further economic development in Nigeria one small business at a time.

No disrespect to the socialist viewpoints posted, but the capitalist approach can and will work to help reverse the effects of centuries of opression. If the same forces, knowledge and training that has been used by the oppressors are provided to the oppressed, they can be a more powerful tool for positive development than any other strategy.

I've never worked with the FATE Foundation personally, but I believe they provide opportunities for people to volunteer, consult, or donate. However you chose to get involved, the opportunity is there to help.
 
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There was a a thread on Investment in Africa that
apparently got deleted in the Great Deletion.
__________________________________________



<font size="5"><center>African mobile firms brave risk in race for growth</font size></center>

Reuters
Fri 19 May 2006 5:03 AM ET
By Rebecca Harrison

NAIROBI, May 18 (Reuters) - African cell phone operators are increasingly braving political risk and even violent unrest as they jockey for a foothold in some of the world's last untapped markets.

Africa's mobile industry has exploded in recent years, but as growth in the continent's richest markets like South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria starts to slow, the boldest are trying their luck in former or current trouble spots like Congo, Sudan, Mozambique and even Somalia.

"There are challenges but the demand is there," said Mohammed Sheikh, chief executive of Telsom Somalia in Somalia, where milita battles killed around 150 people last week.

"Communication is one of the most basic needs, after water and food. People want us here," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a mobile telephony conference in Nairobi this week.

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan, both resource-rich countries recovering from protracted civil wars, are being touted as Africa's next big growth markets as increased stability heralds investment.

Africa's second and third ranked operators, Vodacom and Celtel, run networks in DRC and are battling negligible infrastructure, inhospitable terrain and sporadic fighting to extend their networks across the country, where less than 5 percent of people have mobile phones.

Africa's biggest operator MTN last year snapped up an operator in war-split Ivory Coast and has agreed to pay $5.53 billion for Investcom, whose most coveted markets include Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria.

"The appetite for risk in Africa is increasing," said Paul Hamilton, telecoms analyst at Global Insight research group. "There is so much interest in the opportunities that it's offsetting the challenges of instability."

MORE TALK

Many of the problems in volatile countries are common to all industries: security, problems raising funds, uncertain regulation and poor infrastructure.

But people need to communicate, and due to travel restrictions, they often use mobile phones more than usual during war or unrest to check up on family and friends.

Unlike oil or mining companies who are sometimes seen as exploitative, African rebels and governments need the cell phone operators to stay, and tend not to threaten their staff or destroy their property.

"People now see communication as a fundamental right, so as long as operators do not get involved in politics, generally they are warmly received," said Hamilton.

And while the cellular industry is capital intensive, base stations are quick and easy to erect and more likely to withstand fighting than the fibre optic cables needed for fixed-line networks.

In Somalia, which is controlled by rival warlords, the lack of any real government or regulation has ironically made for some of the cheapest tariffs on the continent. With no licencing regime, four operators fight for market share and cover 75 percent of the country, more than in many African countries.

Bad debts are a problem, finance hard to raise and security expensive, but Somali operators are banding together to create black lists of customers and are thinking about issuing shares to ordinary people to raise funds in a makeshift IPO.

"Somalia is a naturally competitive market. We have no regulation and some of the cheapest services on the continent," Hormuud Telecom Somalia Chief Executive Ahmed Yusuf told Reuters. "We don't need regulators to tell us to go into rural areas, the market takes us there."

((Reporting by Rebecca Harrison; Editing by Margaret Orgill +27 82 465 5638))

http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=114802950947
 
Ghana looks for a few good investors

Saturday, 13 May 2006
Ghana looks for a few good investors
In exchange, descendants of slaves could get lifetime visas or dual citizenship

ACCRA, Ghana (Chicago Tribune) - Ever since Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, invited his classmates from Pennsylvania's Lincoln University to come home with him to help build Africa, African-Americans have been coming to Ghana to visit, work, volunteer, invest or live in what has become the quintessential African homeland.

W.E.B. Du Bois lived here. So did Maya Angelou. Today the country, once at the heart of Africa's slave-trading routes, has the largest community of African-Americans in West Africa, most of whom have come looking for their roots and a sense of purpose.

Now Ghana, a poor country eager for more American tourists, donors and investors, is about to make life even easier for its far-flung black diaspora: It plans to soon offer slave descendants lifetime visas or even dual Ghanaian-U.S. citizenship.

"Who we most want as tourists and investors are our own people who left 200 or 300 years ago," said Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, the country's tourism chief, whose department last month was renamed the Ministry for Tourism and Diasporan Relations. "It's not just about blood ties. It's good economic sense."

Lifetime visas should be easy for regular visitors to get. But the new passports - still awaiting approval in Parliament - won't be handed to just anyone, Obetsebi-Lamptey said. African-Americans eager for formal Ghanaian identity will have to commit to invest, help develop or live in Ghana because "citizenship carries some responsibility," he said.

Ghana does not offer any particular tax breaks for investors from the diaspora. But it is eager for help from its relations abroad, be it regular visits from American tourists, donations to development projects or investment in job-creating enterprises it desperately needs, officials said.

Winning such commitment should not be much of a problem if the existing African-American community, which the U.S. Embassy estimates at below 5,000 people, is an indication.

Valerie Papaya Mann, president of the 100-member African American Association of Ghana, for instance, put together $10,000 in donations from Americans to build toilets and a cafeteria for a school in a rural region she has adopted. Villagers in the area have declared the former Washington AIDS expert, who has lived in Ghana three years, their "queen mother of development" and given her a traditional Ghanaian royal name: Nana Ama Jygnewa.

Naima Mateen and her husband, Ron Pickings, came to Ghana four years ago, mainly because "my husband wanted to make a difference," Mateen said. The couple, formerly a university admissions director and a corporate accountant in Ohio, sell solar ovens in the hills an hour's drive from Accra, the capital.

For them - as for many African-American immigrants - adjusting to life in Ghana has been more of a challenge than they anticipated.

"In the U.S., I was very much aware of my African-ness, of being different. I came here thinking I was really in touch with my African-ness," said Mateen, who now wears a traditional Ghanaian robe and headdress. Instead, "I found out how much I was in touch with my American-ness," she said, laughing.

Ghanaians, whom she had hoped would greet her as a lost sister, called her obruni, or "white foreigner," the term used for any foreigner with a lighter skin tone. Giving up her "country club lifestyle" for a house in the sticks wasn't easy either.

She says she still misses being able to buy high-quality things cheaply. And when a Ghanaian acquaintance insisted that her ancestors' being kidnapped into slavery had been God's will and his way of ensuring she wouldn't become Muslim - many slaves were taken from Muslim areas of Africa - Mateen, a convert to Islam, didn't know what to say.

"Here I'm obruni, an American, a foreigner," she said. After years of touting her African roots, "now I think of the U.S. as home," she said.

Mona Boyd, an Arkansas native who moved to Ghana in 1994, also had a rough time at first.

When the former real estate investor opened a tourism agency in Accra, her employees didn't show up when it rained. Other days they insisted they needed time off to attend the funeral of "my uncle's cousin's best friend."

"I'm a typical Type A person, and I was so frustrated I was spitting bullets," she recalled.

But more than a decade later, Boyd has settled in. She's learned a little Ewe, the language of her Ghanaian husband, developed a taste for roasted goat and learned to temper her once "brutal" frankness. Her employees now get days off to accommodate funerals, and when they arrive late on a rainy day, Boyd - who today runs one of Ghana's top tour companies - is philosophical.

"I'm part African, and they're part American," she said with a laugh. "I've changed tremendously. You have to."

While few African-American arrivals in Ghana count their move to the land of their ancestors as a complete success, some come close.

Kohain Halevi, a New York rabbi and part of the U.S. black-consciousness movement, had toyed with the idea of moving to Africa "as long as I can remember." On a first visit to Ghana he "fell in love with the spiritual connection," and in 1994 he left the school he was running in the U.S. to make a permanent jump to West Africa.

More than a decade later, he and his Ghanaian wife, Mabel, run a small hotel and restaurant serving Southern fried chicken.

The move had its rough spots, including new neighbors who expected a "rich" American to solve all their problems.

"It's been a long time since we were together," Halevi said of life with his Ghanaian kinsmen. But now, "I realize how much I have in common with people here." And "it's not many people who can achieve a lifelong dream," he said. "I feel blessed."

Obetsebi-Lamptey, Ghana's tourism minister, said his agency is working hard to make life easier for African-Americans coming to Ghana. Next year, to mark the country's 50th anniversary of independence, it hopes to launch a media campaign to educate Ghanaians about the country's slave-trading past - a topic still largely overlooked in classrooms - and about how to treat visitors.

He wants Ghanaians to stop referring to African-Americans as obruni, for instance, and instead call them awkwaaba anyemi, which roughly means "welcome brother (or sister)."

"They come here, and the first thing they're called is `stranger,'" he said. "It's a real slap in the face. We want them to be called `kin.'"

http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/printnews.php?ID=104203
 
An African building boom made in China

An African building boom made in China
Filling a void, Chinese firms are working on hundreds of projects, many of them partnerships. They are paying political dividends, too.
Shashank Bengali, McClatchy Foreign Correspondent
Last update: September 18, 2006 – 12:43 AM

KHARTOUM, SUDAN - This summer, the biggest oil refinery in Sudan completed a $341 million expansion that doubled its capacity, boosting exports and the country's domestic gasoline supply.
A few dozen miles away, on a riverbank that once was a trash dump, developers pressed ahead with plans for a $4 billion business complex that they hope will turn Khartoum into a commercial hub.

Both projects are showpieces for Sudan, which is enjoying an unprecedented economic boom, and neither would have been possible without China. Chinese firms built the refinery and operate it in partnership with the Sudanese government, and are among the lead contractors on the business complex.

This reflects a trend across Africa, where Chinese companies are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into construction projects of all sizes, including refineries, dams, roads and shopping malls.

Over the past decade, China increasingly has turned to Africa to feed its seemingly boundless appetite for natural resources, becoming the continent's No. 3 trading partner. But the $40 billion-a-year-and-growing trade relationship isn't just about oil and precious minerals anymore.

With the United States and other Western countries having all but abandoned big infrastructure and industrial ventures in Africa decades ago, deeming them unprofitable or too risky, Chinese companies have swooped in.

Helped by low labor costs, Chinese enterprises are taking on the work that cash-starved African countries need but lack the capacity to do themselves.

Chinese companies have built or agreed to build hospitals and railway lines in war-ravaged Angola, roads and bridges in Sudan and Kenya, dams in Ethiopia and Liberia, and telecommunications networks in Ghana and Zimbabwe, along with scores of other projects.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who just concluded a two-week tour of the continent, told a recent Congressional Black Caucus legislative conference: "One of the striking things about traveling through Africa is everybody says that the United States' absence is as noticeable and prominent as the Chinese's presence."

Analysts say it's unclear whether the Chinese are reaping big profits.

But by doing work that the United States and others don't do, China is cementing ties with African leaders while securing support for its own agenda, especially its efforts to prevent Taiwan from having diplomatic relations with any countries.

The United States and its European allies have tried to cripple authoritarian regimes, such as those in Sudan and Zimbabwe, with heavy sanctions, only to find China doing business with them with no political strings attached. Unlike U.S. policy, Chinese investment comes with no conditions on making democratic reforms or promoting human rights.

"The Chinese are operating from a different set of business calculations," said J. Stephen Morrison, the Africa director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a national-security research center in Washington. "They're entering these settings with a strategic political blessing, but they're also entering them as a business enterprise."Western countries may think these projects are too small. But China doesn't think they are small," said Shao Weijian, an economic adviser at the Chinese Embassy in Kenya.

Analysts say China's top priority is still energy, and it often uses infrastructure projects to sweeten oil and mining deals.

In 2004, there were 450 Chinese investment projects in Africa, the vast majority in manufacturing and services, the World Bank said. Unofficial estimates put the number of Chinese companies in Africa at more than 700.

But the changes may go deeper. Chinese investment is altering the playing field on a continent where Western countries have long controlled the purse strings of development assistance, and by extension the political agenda.

It's over Sudan that China and the United States have been most clearly at odds. The Bush administration says Sudan's Islamic regime is presiding over genocide against ethnic Africans in the Darfur region. Meanwhile, industry observers say China has sold Sudan weapons and military equipment worth tens of millions of dollars, including the helicopter gunships that the government is thought to have unleashed on civilians in Darfur.

Despite international sanctions, Chinese investment has helped Sudan become Africa's third largest oil producer. Of the $2 billion in oil it exports annually, half goes to China.

http://www.startribune.com/535/story/683308.html
 
Re: An African building boom made in China

But by doing work that the United States and others don't do, China is cementing ties with African leaders while securing support for its own agenda ...
Click to expand...
```
 
Re: An African building boom made in China

I Will Help ...no Doubt.
As Soon As I Get Some Bread In My Pocket.
Im Hurting Right Now...seriously.
But In A Few Ill Donate Some....mark My Words.
 
Re: An African building boom made in China

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Re: An African building boom made in China

An African building boom made in China
Filling a void, Chinese firms are working on hundreds of projects, many of them partnerships. They are paying political dividends, too.
Shashank Bengali, McClatchy Foreign Correspondent
Last update: September 18, 2006 – 12:43 AM

KHARTOUM, SUDAN - This summer, the biggest oil refinery in Sudan completed a $341 million expansion that doubled its capacity, boosting exports and the country's domestic gasoline supply.

A few dozen miles away, on a riverbank that once was a trash dump, developers pressed ahead with plans for a $4 billion business complex that they hope will turn Khartoum into a commercial hub.

Both projects are showpieces for Sudan, which is enjoying an unprecedented economic boom, and neither would have been possible without China. Chinese firms built the refinery and operate it in partnership with the Sudanese government, and are among the lead contractors on the business complex.

This reflects a trend across Africa, where Chinese companies are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into construction projects of all sizes, including refineries, dams, roads and shopping malls.

Over the past decade, China increasingly has turned to Africa to feed its seemingly boundless appetite for natural resources, becoming the continent's No. 3 trading partner. But the $40 billion-a-year-and-growing trade relationship isn't just about oil and precious minerals anymore.
Click to expand...


<font size="4"><center>
Chinese aid to Africa may do more harm than good
· UK says cash and cheap loans will lead to debts
· Fears for good governance over no-strings handouts </font size></center>


liberians372ready.jpg

Liberian children greet China's president, Hu Jintao, on his
arrival in Monrovia. Photograph: Christopher Herwig/Reuters


Chris McGreal in Lilongwe
Thursday February 8, 2007
The Guardian

Britain has warned China that its offer of billions of dollars in unconditional aid and cheap loans to African governments risks driving back into debt countries that have only just benefited from debt relief, and undermines efforts to create democratic and accountable administrations.
The international development secretary, Hilary Benn, on a visit to Malawi, told the Guardian that Britain has already made its concerns known to Beijing but that it is planning to "ratchet up" the level of representation on the issue.

But Mr Benn also criticised the World Bank for tying financial support to African countries to ideologically driven economic policies such as privatisation.
His warning comes as the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, completes a 12-day tour of African countries in which he handed out hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, loans and aid. Beijing has promised $5bn (£2.6bn) in soft loans and grants to African states in the coming years as China increases trade with the continent.

Mr Benn said the Chinese money could do more harm than good. "If countries are borrowing to the extent that their debt becomes unsustainable then that undermines all the work that has been done in trying to tackle unsustainable debt. The issue for debt is not debt per se, it's can you afford it?" he said.

"The other issue is governance because in the end China, with all its increasing stake in Africa, has just the same interest as the rest of the world - and the people of Africa - have in good governance. We need to talk more to China about how we can work together because we both have the same interests, which are the development of Africa as a continent."

The international development secretary said China's failure to match the conditions placed on aid by countries such as Britain - including evidence of good governance, respect for human rights and spending directed to alleviate poverty - could set back progress toward democratic administrations.

"Building accountability and responsiveness is in the end how these countries are going to develop," he said.

Mr Benn added that one of the problems in raising these concerns with China was who to raise them with. "It's not always easy to know whose door to knock on, who's in charge of this," he said.

China bills its involvement as a "strategic partnership with Africa, featuring political equality and mutual trust, economic win-win cooperation". It is a message tailored to suggest that China will not demand democratic reforms, good governance and anti-corruption drives as a condition for aid and trade.

Instead China says it "respects African countries' independent choice of the road of development". Critics say that is a way of justifying doing business with abusive regimes such as in Zimbabwe and Sudan.

Zimbabwe is in negotiations with China over a $2bn loan to prop up its collapsing economy under the burden of inflation running at about 1,000%. Western governments, banks and international financial institutions have cut off support.

Mr Hu has announced hundreds of millions of dollars worth of trade, investment and aid to African countries during his tour. Cameroon alone received $100m in grants and loans, although the terms were not immediately made public.

Mr Benn's concerns echo those voiced by the president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, who last year described China's lending policies in Africa as "a problem" that risked driving African countries back into the debt trap.

But Mr Benn had his own criticisms of the World Bank and other lenders that tie financial support to ideological economic policies such as privatisation.

"It's not right and proper in my view to say that you've got to open up your trade in return for our development assistance or for ideological reasons we think you should privatise these industries. We stopped that," he said.

Britain dropped such requirements six years ago but still ties aid to a proven commitment to reduce poverty, such as increased spending on health and education, the upholding of human rights and evidence of good governance, such as fighting corruption.

"For me that's the right kind of conditionality and I've been having discussions with the World Bank to try and persuade them to follow suit and we've made some progress," said Mr Benn.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2008249,00.html
 
Greed said:
sticky? let free market forces reign supreme.

when this shit falls to page 8 that means people dont care and are full of shit.

no names of course. cant get personal.
Click to expand...

Well, it didn't fall to page 8; it fell to page 70 . . .
 

The Great African Land Rush​
​

Speculators, among them Muammar Qaddafi, are snatching up
much of Africa's arable soil -- enough acreage to cover Norway
in a single year -- driving up food prices and leaving locals homeless​


hinshawapr14p-thumb-600x300-47904.jpg





KEUR MOUSSA, Senegal -- Hours into the interior of this agrarian nation sits a cabbage, onion, sorghum, and lettuce field the size of Gibraltar that once belonged, it is said, to the villagers of Keur Moussa. They may never get it back.

In 1999, a well-to-do religious leader managed to acquire the title for the 1,500 acres of farmland that this village had long held in trust. Since he nabbed it, the plot has sprouted sheds, power lines, a water tower, tractors, and pick-up trucks that give it more the look of Iowa corn country than a Senegalese lot. Village women who used to grow, sell, and profit off its produce are now trucked in and out daily, tilling their grandparents' soil like migrant workers. It earns them two to four dollars a day.

"It's better than nothing," one of the women, Maty Ngom said.

Across the dirt road, the president of Senegal's Senate holds a 250-acre stretch, while a second religious leader claims another 2,200 acres. There is also the mystery businessman -- one "Baba Diop," a Senegalese name as generic as John Smith -- whose title to 285 acres, village gossip says, is a front for a foreign investor. A Lebanese, Ngom claims.

Whoever this land once belonged to, it's just a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of square miles of farmland that have been procured -- some bought, some leased, some stolen -- from the villagers of the tropics. The speed and scale at which ground in the developing world is being auctioned up is extraordinary: between 2008 and 2009 alone, the World Bank catalogued 174,000 square miles of land acquisitions in poor countries -- an acreage the size of Sweden. The lion's share of it, 124,000 square miles -- the size of Norway -- sits in Africa, in nations like Sudan, Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Mali. All are famous for their famines. None, not incidentally, are famous for good governance.


Neither China nor the U.S. is driving the land scramble:
Saudi Arabia and its neighbors are. Demand for arable
land is growing, while supply is shrinking​


Those 174,000 square miles, meanwhile, are only the plots the World Bank could confirm. The local religious leader in Keur Moussa -- whose minders chase away camera-wielding journalists -- may or may not be on the list. Colonel Muammar Qaddafi is. The Brother Leader boasts a 99-year lease on a 386-square-mile, Dallas-sized plot of Malian corn land, plus a chicken farm in Togo. That puts him in the company of such landholders as Saudi Arabia's Sheikh Mohammed al-Amoudi, who holds a century-long lease on Ethiopian rice valleys; Indionesia's Sime Darby, a conglomerate that charters 850 square miles of Liberia's palm oil marsh; the South Korean government (Sudan, wheat); and a host of hedge funds that scout out the cheapest rents left on the meager eight percent of the planet that is arable land.

This is the fire sale of a continent lurching from the farm to the factory. At the turn of the century, Africa is trying once more, as it did in independence days, to industrialize. It's an endeavor that will set it back a fortune. In the past decade, governments like that of Guinea or the Democratic Republic of Congo have swapped billions of dollars worth of mining rights in return for ports, dams, and railroads. Normally possessive governments are selling off their biggest assets -- like Nigeria's electric company -- and taking out historically large bonds to borrow whatever start-up cash the World Bank won't front them.

In Senegal's capital, a two-hour drive from Keur Moussa, the government is calculating ways to boost its $2.3 billion in state revenue by $500 million a year. And it needs $1.2 billion beyond that -- ten percent of its economy -- just to buy the petrol and grid improvements to power low-level industry, never mind its mammoth cement and car factories. To raise that colossal sum, the state is hiking visa fees, piling on new phone taxes, bullying customs agents into stricter suitcase searches, and has asked everyone from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to one of Rahm Emanuel's brothers for help.

Failing all that, Africa's industrial hopeful's like Senegal can sell land, the one resource -- more than mines or high-profile foreign assistance -- each has in abundance. And that, three years after China became a net food importer, and two years after catastrophic spikes in food prices, is a resource worth selling.

The world's largest continent, despite or perhaps because of its poverty, is also its fourth largest food importer. Yet unlike, say, Japan, Africa's dependence on foreign food has nothing to do with a lack of terrain. It has more to do with the fact that a car mechanic like Cheik Gueye can't afford nice things. Born in Keur Moussa, Gueye quit his five-year stint fixing fenders in Dakar to return home and attempt his own land grab -- on a mechanic's budget. The cheap, used irrigation gear he could finagle leaks more than it irrigates, leaving mosquito pools that qualify this farm as malarious. Because his 500 acres sits on a lousy patch on the water table, every well he drill has to go deeper than the last one. Gueye worries that his workers spelunking his latest well to rev the pump-powering generator 15 meters down will asphyxiate on its diesel fumes, fall, and die trying to lift recalcitrant groundwater from a crummy well.

And Gueye is one of the few lucky villagers who even has electricity. The rest, like Ndiaga Ndiaye, use buckets to water garden-sized plots of vegetables. Ndiaye works the sandy floodplain on the edge of the religious leader's 1,500 acre lot. His bucket-fed sandtrap cabbage farm yields a pretty pathetic crop.


Africa holds half of the
land that will be made
arable before 2030​



"We just work here to eat," he said. At 3 p.m., he changes clothes, and starts his shift as a taxi driver.

Ndiaye's plot is the only land being farmed in view. All around him, land is owned, but unused, as is most of the land investors have acquired in Africa in the past five years. "Only 12 percent of it is actually being farmed," Oxfam Senegal's Head of Economic Justice Lamine Ndiaye said. "The other 88 percent is just sitting there. It's just for speculation. You buy it, and three years later, you sell it at a higher price."

Ndiaye wants to farm the unused plots, he said.

"I have the experience -- years of experience -- and if I had the means, I could exploit this land," he said.

But the last time he tried, he got chased off.

• • •​

However bizarre a circus of villager frustration and arcane property deals Africa's land scene may be, it's hard to image a safer investment in the third millennium than soil. China is losing 1,400 miles of the stuff to desert every year, according to the Earth Policy Institute. Texas and California have each lost fifteen percent of their irrigated area since the 1990s, the group's president said.

But neither China nor the U.S. is driving the land scramble: Saudi Arabia and its neighbors are. The Persian Gulf's water reserves are diminishing, and in 30 years they may be kaput. In the gulf, and elsewhere, demand for arable land is growing, while supply is shrinking.

Africa holds half of the land that will be made arable before 2030, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. It's not bad land. Rice paddies in the Senegal valley, for example, yield 50 percent more than the global average -- and, unlike Asia, this chunk of the tropics has yet to see its green revolution. A Saudi Arabian company called Foras says it's here to bring about just that. The land acquisition fund is looking to acquire "large" amounts of land in Senegal, Benin, and Mauritania, according to spokesman Momar Gueye. "What we are trying to do here is raise the quality of rice that's being produced locally," he said. "We bring new technology, like new seeds to improve production."

Gueye said the company will sell much its Senegal-farmed rice in local markets, instead of exporting it all back to Saudi Arabia. A persistent complaint about companies like his is that ship the precious food they sow in a poor state like Senegal away to wealthier shores. But Foras is under no obligation to sell to anyone other than the highest bidder. Should the price of rice spike, it's hard to fathom why they wouldn't.

And while Gueye declines to comment on it, Reuters reported last year that the company is already negotiating for a 99-year lease on a 770 square kilometer stretch of Senegalese farmland. The lease is just half of the 1,500 square kilometers Reuters reports that the country's Agriculture Ministry is looking to rent to Saudi investors.

That's a stretch of turf four times the size of New York City. The question isn't just where in Senegal the Agriculture Ministry found that land, but where the people undoubtedly living on -- and off of it -- will go.

"There is no elsewhere," Ndiaye, the Oxfam researcher, said. "The myth that's brought so many investors is this thinking that there is so much empty land in Africa. The land is not empty. They're being occupied by the community, it's just that they're not recognized as owners of that land."




http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/04/the-great-african-land-rush/237260/
 
What Happens When You Just Give Money To Poor People?

What Happens When You Just Give Money To Poor People? (15:04)
November 08, 2013 7:42 PM

There's a charity called GiveDirectly that gives money to poor people in Kenya — no strings attached.

When we did a story about GiveDirectly earlier this year, they told us we needed to check back in. It turned out, they were in the middle of a big study designed to figure out what happens when people get money for nothing. Do they invest it? Waste it? Something in between?

Now, the results of the study are in.

On today's show: What happens when you give farmers in Kenya more money than they've ever had? Also: giving money to thieves and drug addicts in a country that's much worse off than Kenya.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013...ppens-when-you-just-give-money-to-poor-people
 

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