Digital Archive....

The Danger of a Single TED Talk AFRICA IS A COUNTRY Africa.com have made a movie that's going to change the way you think about Africa. If the trailer is any indication of what the film's about, then we've reached only one conclusion: Africa is officially boring. We've blogged about this kind of boosterism before, including Vogue Italia's special  "Rebranding Africa" issue earlier this year, which decided UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon should be the continent's new face, salivated over Nigeria's notoriously corrupt oil minister, and scrupulously avoided any mention of anything "sad, trashy or poor" . To cut a long critique short, we're pretty sure Africa isn't a brand and we find the clamour for "positive news" from Africa inane and condescending . Plus if Africa.com 's movie really does go on for an hour, as has been threatened, it's going to be unbearable. Who exactl...

African economies rising – but are they taking the people with them? – By Richard Dowden African Arguments How long before Africa's demographic dividend becomes a disaster - scaring away investors for another generation? After 26 years of the most horrific war, Liberia seems to have settled down despite noisy disenchantment with the rule of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, now in her second term. I recently attended a conference on Liberia for some 300 investors and potential investors. During this, I heard very many positive statements from companies that have already invested in the country and praise for the remarkable recovery it has made since the war finally ended in 2003. The biggest ventures are in mining and palm oil plantations, though there was also talk of housing projects and even tourist beaches. President Johnson Sirleaf was originally on the billing but pulled out. Many people would have liked to have heard her speak, and I would have welcomed ...

Possible Economic Bubble In Ethiopia? Bankelele --> A guest post by @Kahenya Ethiopia has a very positive economic outlook and yes, it has a lot of development going on, but is this sustainable, now that the linchpin (Meles Zenawi) is gone? The one thing that is universal about the entire continent is that the poverty line seems to grow every year, sometimes it shrinks, but only for a moment. The cliché remains, that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and there is no true middle class -   and if there is, its only based on people who don't want to imagine that they are less than middle class. Africa is the kingdom of billion {insert any local currency here} projects. Ethiopia also finds itself in the same quagmire, except for one thing. They are actually making it work for their benefit. In Ethiopia, construction and infrastructure development are at an all time high. It was necessary for this to happen until Mele...

'We let them starve' Global development news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk The former UN food envoy explains his claim that we are all accomplices in creating a world where children starve to death – in a confrontational interview with Swiss media Jean Ziegler was until recently (2000-2008) the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and subsequently, in a similar function, he served on the Advisory Committee to the UN Human Rights Council. He is also a vocal critic of global capitalism's effects on the developing world, especially Africa. The last few days he has been doing the media circuit promoting his new book, "Mass Destruction: The Geopolitics of Hunger" ( the French title ) or "We Let Them Starve: The Mass Destruction in The Third World" ( the German title ). There's no English title available yet. Ziegler is a well-known Swiss author and politician — his writing is prolific and ever ...

Get the listing Seth's Blog Most successful (and honest) real estate agents will tell you that their business is about the listings, and that sales ability comes second. All other things being equal, the agent with a better home to sell will make a better sale.  The same thing is true for baseball managers—if you have a better lineup you're more likely to win the game. And of course that's true for the sushi restaurant with fresher fish. And the tech company with better programmers, and the college with better professors... If this is all so obvious, why do we spend all our time trying to find cheap average inputs and then make them special through our magnificent sales and management skills? Why do we industrialize the hiring process, spend very little time on scouting, and seek out the replicatable instead of the special exception? Our ego demands that we spend all day polishing the average instead of seeking out the exceptional. Be...

Waiting for all the facts Seth's Blog "I'm just going to wait until all the facts are in..." All the facts are never in. We don't have all the facts on the sinking of the Titanic, on the efficacy of social media or on whether dogs make good house pets. We don't have all the facts on hybrid tomatoes, global warming or the demise of the industrial age, either. The real question isn't whether you have all the facts. The real question is, "do I know enough to make a useful decision?" (and no decision is still a decision). If you don't, then the follow up question is, "What would I need to know, what fact would I need to see, before I take action?" If you can't answer that, then you're not actually waiting for all the facts to come in. Sent with Reeder  (verzonden vanaf tablet)

The Tricky Business of Cultural Change SSIR Opinion & Analysis "We start where people are, but don't accept that culture is ever an excuse." That was Mallika Dutt, the founder and director of Breakthrough , an international organization that changes cultural norms through 21 st -century public awareness campaigns, speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative last week. She was part of a session, titled Influencing Behaviors and Attitudes , along with Tostan's Molly Melching and Unilever's Miguel Pestana. The conversation focused on how to change the harmful cultural norms of poor people. Pestana talked about educating people about germs and the simple intervention of regular hand washing. Dutt talked about Breakthrough's highly successful Bell Bajao! campaign, which encourages male bystanders to "ring the bell" when they hear domestic violence afoot, ostensibly disrupting it and, in the process, taking resp...

One-Hit Wonders The Baseline Scenario By James Kwak Meg Whitman is what is known as a superstar CEO. She became CEO of eBay in 1998 and took it public; during her reign, eBay became one of the most successful, most valuable Internet companies in existence (and Whitman became a billionaire). She used her celebrity to mount a high-profile, expensive, and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to become governor of California (losing to career politician Jerry Brown) before being named CEO of HP, the iconic Silicon Valley company. Why did HP, one of the largest information technology companies in existence, hire Whitman, who preceded her stint at eBay (auction house for random stuff from people's attics) with jobs at Disney, a shoe company, a flower delivery service, and a toy company? Because of the idea of the superstar CEO, with transferable general management skills, who can transform any organization. Charles Elson and Craig Ferrere have written a ...