Monday Money Wealth

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the corporate struggle, the entrepreneurship struggle - they still use the laws, politics, enforcement, traditions, all to keep some people down and everybody has had enough of it.

1. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah: From code-switching to daily microaggressions, here’s a slice of what Black people go through in corporate America. 

2. Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj : The Legal Marijuana Industry Is Rigged

As rich, white business owners monopolize newly-available marijuana licenses, states continue to arrest people of color for cannabis crimes, even after it’s legal. This leads Hasan to ask: if cannabis can’t be legalized fairly, should it be legalized at all?

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From Cairo to Lagos - still can't do? See maps.

Africa’s international road network has missing links, while administrative and regulatory barriers block existing connections - AfDB (African Development Bank infrastructureafrica.org for details)

The Trans-African Highway still has long gaps

Also:
...only 1 in 3 rural Africans has access to an all-season road;  but [roads] critical to raising agricultural productivity.
...in cities, road construction has not kept pace with urbanization...mobility problems caused by too few paved roads and inadequate public transportation systems.
...road freight will continue to be costly and inefficient until competition in the trucking industry is increased and barriers to trade are lifted.

Google Maps shows no gap, and suggests you could make the trip in a few days.  Maybe not advisable?  Then the more direct route takes you through a couple of war/strife zones.

Rail is worse: in the context of transcontinental travel, let's just say trains are nonexistent.  (Or do we just need a new map - this map is old)

You would think Lagos, Cairo, each with about 20million inhabitants, are not so far apart that they should 'feel' so far apart.  On my wish-list for 2020... Till then, thank God for air travel.  And the internet. 

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What's it like on Mara Mentor?

Over 100,000 facebook likes, and it offically launched just last week.

Mara Mentor is an application you can use to connect with a mentor in business.  That is, you can easily volunteer to be a mentor, or sign up to be mentored by other people that you look up to.

It seems like a really cool idea.  I just want to know if you've tried it yet.  Thanks.

More from the mara-foundation.org website:
Mara Mentor is an online community that connects ambitious entrepreneurs with experienced and inspiring business leaders. The initiative encourages idea and knowledge sharing among Africa’s most promising young entrepreneurs, inspiring a collaborative approach to business start-up and growth. Mara Mentor has been created to empower Africa’s youth in their business endeavours, in recognition that they are the driving force behind the continent’s growth and future prosperity.
Mentees are encouraged to interact with the online community by:

• Raising a question
• Kick-starting a discussion
• Reaching out for personalised advice

Mentees can use the platform to showcase their business ideas and seek out like-minded individuals to identify new business opportunities. Over the next few months, Mara Mentor will be developing a full range of online training materials, including free guides and tools for start-up businesses, along with a series of inspiring videos and articles from Mara’s Mentors.
Mara Mentor gives successful and experienced business leaders an opportunity to give back to Africa’s next generation of entrepreneurs and play a part in the development of the African continent. Mentors are encouraged to share general business tips and resources, get involved in discussions and offer one-on-one advice to those that need it. Whether they log in every day or dedicate an afternoon once a month, Mentors will be inspired by the great minds of Africa’s entrepreneurs – they are, after all, the future of Africa.
Mara Mentor can be accessed via the website and an app available on iPhones, Blackberry, Android and many Nokia smart phones. Simply download from iTunes, Blackberry, Google Play, Samsung Apps or Nokia Ovi.
In addition to the online mentorship, Mara Foundation offers One-on-One mentorship in Kampala (Uganda) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). For more information regarding these programmes please follow this link.

Also see a history; more from the 2012 preview: Young African Millionaire Launches Mara.com, Africa's First Online Mentorship Network, by Mfonobong Nsehe for forbes.com

All about solutions...The Smallholder Foundation and Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu

NI: We at the SmallHolders Foundation believe that education is critical – education is development for us. Education opens the mind and motivates the quest for results. We believe that an educated person will make a better choice, more than an uneducated person. In that case we looked at the whole chain and we saw that one of the things that kept farmers trapped in poverty was the inefficient agricultural extension services. Agricultural extension services should be a tool that organizations and government agencies can use to educate farmers about new techniques, new crop varieties, new livestock, how to control crop and livestock diseases. But this critical service does not exist anymore. 

So we decided that we have to establish a radio station. In 2007, we established a smallholder farmer’s rural radio. Today the radio station designs and broadcasts agriculture environment and market information to 250.000 small farmer listeners, in the local Ibo language, 10 hours a day. It teaches them how, when and where to cultivate and for whom there are cultivating; how to rear livestock properly and at the same time the market to sell livestock. For example, we taught them how to gather rainwater during the abundant rainy season to use for vegetable gardening in the dry season.

The radio station is also educating farmers how to open bank accounts, the need for accurate record keeping and how they can check their input and their output. I believe that by the time a farmer decides to cultivate maize, he should make a simple budget, Every morning the radio station gives farmers commodity prices from eighteen regional markets so they decide which market to go to.

I think we are better because so many of the organizations have not been able to attract knowledge from farmers themselves. Farmers have knowledge. Farmers know the environment more than those organizations. Farmers know where it hurts most, why there are not increasing their agricultural yield year after year. What farmer A is doing can also be applicable to farmer B, C and D. Several organizations design projects for farmers; they don’t allow farmers to design projects for themselves. For a very long time that has been the norm within the government and civil society sector in designing agricultural projects and I think that has to stop. I’m a farmer myself. I know how difficult it is to get an agricultural loan. Because so many loans out there, even the ones given by microcredit funds, are not designed for agriculture. Why? Because agriculture is high risk.  We can’t even control the weather. There could be flooding tomorrow; the whole harvest can be lost for the year. That is why no loan is specifically made for farmers.

Read the full BMW Foundation interview with Nnaemeka, founder and executive director of the Smallholder Foundation here.  In 2011, he was named Young Person of the Year at the Future Nigeria Awards. 

Corruption: A bigger picture

Source: aljazeera.com Flipping the corruption myth by Jason Hickel

...Corruption in the form of bribery and theft by government officials, the main target of the UN Convention, costs developing countries between $20bn and $40bn each year. That's a lot of money. But it's an extremely small proportion - only about 3 percent - of the total illicit flows that leak out of public coffers.

Tax avoidance, on the other hand, accounts for more than $900bn each year, money that multinational corporations steal from developing countries through practices such as trade mispricing...This is a massive - indeed, fundamental - cause of poverty in the developing world, yet it does not register in the mainstream definition of corruption...

...During the 1980s and 1990s, the policies that these institutions [the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation] foisted on the Global South, following the Washington Consensus, caused per capita income growth rates to collapse by almost 50 percent...Western corporations have benefitted tremendously from this process, gaining access to new markets, cheaper labour and raw materials, and fresh avenues for capital flight.

...Voting power in the IMF and World Bank is apportioned so that developing countries - the vast majority of the world's population - together hold less than 50 percent of the vote, while the US Treasury wields de facto veto power.

Read more: aljazeera.com Flipping the corruption myth by Jason Hickel

Here are some directions to follow without delay:
- Require corporate interests, including multinationals, to contribute more to the public good of their host countries/communities and less to the bad (income inequality, environmental degradation, ...)  More immediately, structure tax payments so that they lead to development not to further fattening a fat central government.

- Evaluate the most modern financial market, accounting, and trading practices.  Categorize those that are clearly criminal, merely experimental, and so on and understand their risks and benefits in various scenarios.  Understand how the world of work has changed, and guide a global adjustment to lowered factory/office employment rates for instance.  

- Not tokenism, but a drastic shift in the way people of the world are represented in international bodies. In population, the world is roughly 1/6 Chinese, 1/6 Indian, 1/6 African, 1/6 American, 1/6 European, 1/6 Pacific. 
Notes on the regions/sixths
African: African and Arab/Middle Eastern || American: North, Central, South American  ||  European: with Turkey, Iran, and every -stan  ||  Pacific: South East Asia, with Japan, Bangladesh, Korea, Australia,