3rd Carnival of Africa Enterprising

[beninmwangi]

The 3rd carnival will be here soon AUg 6 on whiteafrican.com.

What do you think the theme should be?

I like the idea that Emeka mentioned in the comments for the last
carnival of telling unheard stories regarding success and empowerment
within various entrepreneurial communities from or within the African
continent.

But what do you think?

[Omodudu]

I'd like to learn more about
1. China's role in Africa A gift or a second curse.
2. The Internet As a tool for Change in Africa (deployment mostly)
3. The whole Cheetah-Hippo debate, moving from theory to deployment,
how to avoid adding this idea to the list of fads that have come and
gone in the NGO universe. (Thanks Imnakoya for crystallizing this
idea)
Afew things I'd love to read about.

[G. Kofi Annan]

These are all good topics. I think the China-Africa topic is a good
one. It lends itself to to a lot of business method analysis - good,
bad, alternatives etc.. One can even argue that it's a debate about
cheetahs/hippos as well.

-Kofi

[beninmwangi]

I agree with both you-Omodudu and you-Kofi.

I like all of the suggestions too. The ones that resonate the most
with me are the hippo/cheetah topic, china africa (though to me this
one tends to sometimes get political),and the internet as a tool for
change.

I am open to all of them and would like to see if we can reach a
consensus, though its tough because the topics you mentioned were so
equally engaging. My specific vote would be on the cheetah/hippo topic
because it encompasses both the China-Africa investment items, as well
as the internets affect on the continent.

Thanks guys for the excellent suggestions!

> >> But what do you think?- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Imnakoya]

All the aforementioned are valid possibilities. However, I'm
interested in seeing how our virtual discussions can be made more
relevant to the societies we write about, particularly in Africa.

The size of the informal economy in Africa is huge - this is all I can
state since there are no accurate estimate of the size ( e.g the
formal Nigerian economy is about 30 to 60% of the total, this will be
my guess).

What challenges exist for the folks manning this sector? African
Unchained presents a documentary- Self-Regulated Systems: Informal
Economies (http://africaunchained.blogspot.com/2007/06/self-regulated-
systems-informal.html) - that provides a glimpse of what this is like
in Lagos (Nigeria), in the slum of Lagos particularly.

How can these folks be enabled? (See Grandiose Parlor-
http://grandioseparlor.com/2007/07/unlocking-the-wealth-at-the-nigerian-bottom-of-the-pyramid/,
and Nii Simmonds' http://nubiancheetah.blogspot.com/2007/07/does-bop-address-wealth-creation.html
, and I'm sure there are other relevant posts addressing this issue as
well).

The beauty of this approach is that the discussion becomes multi-
faceted (political, policy, social, private vs public sector, etc) and
breaks out of the rarefied arena of just talking about "business". It
also incorporates the several angles already suggested above. And it
can be easily (hopefully) synthesized into actionable points/agenda
that we/someone/TED Cheetahs can explore (point #3 from Omodudu)
further. Thanks.

[Benin "Mwangi"]

Hmmm...I am liking the direction that this discussion is taking. To be
honest with you the informal sector is probably one of the aspects of
business continent that I haven't blogged much about-but you said
something very insightful-it ties together a lot of different sectors
and brings about a holistic point of view about getting things done.

Plus, it works well with the TED cheetahs topic.

If there are no other ideas on it, then lets see what we can do with this...

Good day to all!

--
*Benin "Mwangi" Brown*
Sales & Marketing

*African Path Directory*
<http://www.africanpath.com/directory>
We're hiring! <http://www.linkedin.com/e/jsc/African+Path+Directory/>
*Email:* thebr...@yahoo.com <mailto:thebr...@yahoo.com>
*http://www.linkedin.com/in/beninmwangib*
*Read My Blog <http://www.beninmwangi.com>*
See who we know in common <http://www.linkedin.com/e/wwk/8354510/> Want
a signature like this? <http://www.linkedin.com/e/sig/8354510/>

[Hash]

Imnakoya and Benin,

I'll weigh in on this since I'm hosting this month's carnival. The
relationship that my blog has with the informal market (through
AfriGadget) could make a lot of sense. In fact, if we were to say
that we'd like to find stories dealing with the informal economy,
micro-entrepreneurs and inventors, then I would rather post that on
AfriGadget instead of WhiteAfrican.com anyway.

I'm going to write a blog post on White African telling what the theme
is as soon as it's decided.

Erik/Hash

On Jul 16, 10:21 pm, "Benin \"Mwangi\"" <thebrown...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hmmm...I am liking the direction that this discussion is taking. To be
> honest with you the informal sector is probably one of the aspects of
> business continent that I haven't blogged much about-but you said
> something very insightful-it ties together a lot of different sectors
> and brings about a holistic point of view about getting things done.
>
> Plus, it works well with the TED cheetahs topic.
>
> If there are no other ideas on it, then lets see what we can do with this...
>
> Good day to all!
>
>
>
> Imnakoya wrote:
> > All the aforementioned are valid possibilities. However, I'm
> > interested in seeing how our virtual discussions can be made more
> > relevant to the societies we write about, particularly in Africa.
>
> > The size of the informal economy in Africa is huge - this is all I can
> > state since there are no accurate estimate of the size ( e.g the
> > formal Nigerian economy is about 30 to 60% of the total, this will be
> > my guess).
>
> > What challenges exist for the folks manning this sector? African
> > Unchained presents a documentary- Self-Regulated Systems: Informal
> > Economies (http://africaunchained.blogspot.com/2007/06/self-regulated-
> > systems-informal.html) - that provides a glimpse of what this is like
> > in Lagos (Nigeria), in the slum of Lagos particularly.
>
> > How can these folks be enabled? (See Grandiose Parlor-

> >http://grandioseparlor.com/2007/07/unlocking-the-wealth-at-the-nigeri...,
> > and Nii Simmonds'http://nubiancheetah.blogspot.com/2007/07/does-bop-address-wealth-cre...

> *Email:* thebrown...@yahoo.com <mailto:thebrown...@yahoo.com>

[whythawk]

The Carnival was picked up and ranked highly at
http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2007/08/on-moneyed-midways-august-10-2007.html

[beninmwangi]

Thanks Gavin!

By the way I finally did a reply post to you and memed others to do
the same...

http://beninmwangi.com/2007/08/12/whythawk-meme-on-informal-market-economies-in-africa/

On Aug 10, 3:52 pm, whythawk <whyth...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The Carnival was picked up and ranked highly athttp://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2007/08/on-moneyed-midways-...