My Day With Cardinal Peter Turkson

I had the distinct honor of participating in a conference celebrating fifty years of Vatican II in Africa held at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Even though I presented a paper that was well received at the conference, one of the highlights for me was the time I spent with Cardinal Turkson, who is currently the President of the Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice and Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Coast, Ghana. He graced the occasion with a presentation on what the Roman Catholic Church is doing concerning issues of peace and justice around the world, with particular emphasis on Africa.
My interest here is not so much in the paper he presented as in his demeanor. He was very jovial and interacted with all of us with extreme humility and simplicity. I stayed in the same house and rode to the airport in the same car as the Cardinal. While we were leaving the house for the car to head for the airport, one of the priests carried the Cardinal's bag and the Cardinal had only his file in his left hand. I had two bags. When the Cardinal saw that I was carrying two bags, he offered to help me carry one of my bags. I thanked him but said no. Then, when it came time for us to enter the car, the Cardinal asked me whether I preferred to sit in the front or the back of the car. I told him that he should make the choice. He sat in the front. When we arrived at the airport, the Cardinal wanted the priest who had taken us to the airport to just drop us off in front of the departure terminal so as not to suffer the incovenience of having to find a parking spot. But the priest said no. He looked for a place to park and then helped us into where we were supposed to check in. The Cardinal went first class and I went coach. During the time I spent with him I saw an amazing form of simplicity that I hardly see with Africa's big men. He gave me hope that the church may be a sight for the transformation of our continent. He embodied one of the points he made in his presentation: that the church is focusing on raising transformative leaders for the continent. I saw the possibility of such transformation in his own person. Perhaps he would be different if he were a government minister rather than a minister of the church. That, I do not know.

Yours truly is on the left of the picture. The Cardinal is second to my left

Do Nigerian Women Need Male Escorts To Attend The Hajj?

Some Nigerian women hajj pilgrims have been detained in very humiliating condition in Saudi Arabia because the Saudi government thought that the women had to be accompanied by male male escorts.

Rethinking Assumptions About Africa

From Harvard Business Review Blog:

Rethink Your Assumptions About Opportunity in Africa

by Jonathan Berman  |   7:00 AM September 14, 2012

"There are children starving in Africa. Eat your peas."
Surely I am not the only person whose first impressions of Africa were shaped along these lines. Whether it was your mother excoriating you about wasting food or an advertisement for Oxfam showing malnourished babies, the earliest impression of Africa many of us have received is of deprivation.
While that's still a reality, it is by no means the whole reality. More importantly, it is not the reality that will have the greatest impact on Africa's future, and yours.
The more forward-looking reality is that Africa is a dawning success, a globally-important locus of innovation and sustained growth. In the decade just past, Africa's economy grew at 5.7% annually. The IMF's most recent projection (in which it downgraded global growth estimates by one basis point) is that Africa's economy will continue to grow this year by 5.4%, more than twice the anticipated growth rate of Brazil. For those who wonder if that is growth off a tiny base, it is not. Africa's formal economy is $1.9 trillion, slightly larger than India's, and about as big as Russia's. And, after two slow decades, it is now growing at over 5%.
So, what is Africa? The turnaround story of the new century, and a business opportunity of titanic proportions. Consultancies including McKinsey, BCG, PWC and KPMG have ably documented it. Quality journals like the Financial Times and The Economist (which fully and honorably recanted its unfortunate May 2000 description of Africa as "the hopeless continent") now report on African growth regularly. Terrific blogs like The Africa Chronicles and How We Made It in Africa take it as a given.
Nonetheless, in my experience the vast majority of businesspeople and policy makers are either unaware of the change underway in Africa or underestimate the associated opportunity. Not long ago, I led a team interviewing thirty of the top global US investors, financial intermediaries and trade experts about Africa. We asked them how many African companies they thought had more than $100 million in annual revenue. The typical response was between 40 and 50. The correct answer is over 500 and over 150 African companies have annual revenue of $1 billion or more, according to the indispensable Africa Report.
For those wishing to see the story clearly, it may be helpful to call out some of the lenses that distort our vision of Africa today and then propose one corrective lens. Let's start with the distortive lenses. While there are many, this is my informed, if subjective, priority of the top three.
First there's the preconception of Africa as the embodiment of need. Our mothers, their peas and all the other major influences of childhood have a remarkably persistent impact on our adult, and even professional, perception of Africa. Those perceptions are reinforced by a news media (the above exceptions notwithstanding) that is quick to cover famines, slow to cover successes. By successes I do not mean the occasional ox farmer or microenterprise doing well, which is critical to reducing poverty but of limited interest to a business audience. I mean African business successes at scale, like the mobile banking innovator Safaricom or the world-beating new media company Naspers.
Second, the entertainment sector has built a fortune depicting Africa as a place of happy animals and miserable people. In global entertainment, the only empowered Africans are the Lion King and Idi Amin. Nelson Mandela is doing OK, but only after 27 years in jail. Africans who are not animals, despots or Nelson Mandela are portrayed as suffering under the heel of poverty, war and disease. Think of the last two movies you saw with Africans in them and you'll see what I mean.
Finally, even when there is reporting on African success, it doesn't stick because we are rarely exposed to the people leading that success. The data is out there, but fails to penetrate or provide real insight. For that, you need to begin to understand the people succeeding in Africa and their perspective on what it means to win.
I happen to have spoken to two of those people this week. They are quite different, but their perspectives are remarkably similar.
Sam Jonah is the CEO of Jonah Capital, the former CEO of AngloGold Ashanti, and described by Forbes as among the 20 most powerful businessmen in Africa. Born in Ghana, not far from the company's mines, Sam led Ashanti in its successful bid to become the first African company to list on the NYSE, and today he serves on multiple boards across many of Africa's growth sectors. I asked Sam what US companies could do better to capture the opportunities in African growth. "Be bold." he said without hesitation. "You need the full commitment that US companies showed in Europe after WWII, in Mexico with NAFTA, and in China in the current decade. I talk to a lot of US companies 'looking' at Africa, testing it on the margins. That will not work. The companies that succeed here take bold, assertive action."
Perry Cantarutti's background could not be more different from Sam's, but his experience bears out Sam's counsel. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Perry went to business school in Chicago, and joined the aviation industry to "see the world and bridge peoples and cultures." Today he leads Delta Air Line's business in the Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Delta began direct flights from the US to Africa with two routes in 2006. Today it is flying direct to five cities, the largest presence of any US airline. "We are committed to Africa for the long term," Perry told me recently. As an example, he recalled his company's initial flights into Liberia, a formerly war-torn country now enjoying the growth born of peace and democratic governance. "I was a passenger on our first plane the day we landed in Monrovia (Liberia's capital). Touching down at that airport was as safe and secure as landing in any airport in our network. To get to that day takes a different investment than we make at home — we were full partners with government in building out that airport, its infrastructure and systems. In many ways it's the role we played in the earliest days of aviation in the US."
Sam's comments and Perry's reminded me of a lens through which I sometimes see Africa today: A continent at the dawn of its emergence, a bit like America at the dawn of the last century. The promise is as vast as any I've encountered in twenty years in frontier markets. So are the challenges, and the personalities of the men and women rising to meet them.

More blog posts by Jonathan Berman

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Jonathan Berman

Jonathan Berman is an author and advisor to Fortune 500 companies and investors operating in frontier markets. His views on frontier markets have appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal's CFO ledger. His first book, Success in Africa, will be published in 2013 and you can follow him on Twitter at @Jonathan_Berman.

14-Year Old Orphan Enters University in Zimbabwe

This is an inspirational story of a forteen-year old Zimbabwean orphan, Maud Chifamba, who has defied the odds against her to enroll into an Accounting program at the University of Zimbabwe.

Lapiro de Mbanga Escapes Paul Biya's Dictatorship

It is being reported that Lapiro de Mbanga, a firebrand musician and political activist who has suffered years of imprisonment under the dictatorship of Paul Biya, has been granted asylum in the United States.

Chantal Biya Resurfaces In France

Chantal Biya, the wife of Cameroon's dictator, Paul Biya, has apparently resurfaced in France with medical treatment as alibi. The sickness she is suffering from is not known and the duration she is supposed to be there is also not known. In spite of persistent rumors that the dictator's wife has run away and the fact that she has now apparently turned up in a medical center in France, the dictator still thinks it is none of the business of the Cameroon people to inquire about the absence of his wife. So he is staying mute.
It is reported that Chantal Biya is in a presidential palace in France. It is however not clear whose presidential palace that is: is it the French presidential palace or does Cameroon have another presidential palace in France? If it is the French presidential palace, then we will need to here from the French president about the matter. If Cameroon has another presidential palace in France, we would like to know who runs the palace and how long it has been in existence.
Another issue this raises is why the wife of the president could not obtain medical treatment in Cameroon. Under Paul Biya's watch, the medical system in the country is so dilapidated that good medical care can hardly be obtained in the country. Because he sits on the cash of the country, he can afford to send his wife to France (if we believe that story) while others die at home. The wife of the president deserves good medical treatment while the wives of peasants do not. It is a sickening situation that Paul Biya is creating in Cameroon.
In a related story, it is reported that the wife of Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria's President, has been receiving medial treatment in a hospital in Germany. Just another example of how Africa's leaders fail to develop decent medical facilities in their own countries.

Dear Archbishop Rowan Williams . . . African President For Anglican Communion

Dear Archbishop Rowan Williams:

It is being reported that the Anglican Church is looking for a president to oversee the global Anglican Communion so as to give the Archbishop of Canterbury more time to deal with the Anglican Church in England. This change seems to be a recognition that most Anglicans are today outside England. More especially, there are more Anglicans in Nigeria than in England. It would also appear that there are more Anglicans in Africa than in other places around the world. We write this letter to draw your attention to this important point and to request that the person to be chosen for this role should be an African. Much has been made of the fact that Christianity is shifting to the global South and especially to Africa. Appointing an African as president of the Anglican Communion would serve to acknowledge the important place which Africa has in contemporary Christianity. More especially, appointing an African to this important position will be pleasing to God because it will be a sign that the Anglican Communion is just.

Yours Truly,

FlourishingAfrica

The Kora

Listen to the master play the kora.

The Woman Who Wants Africans To Work For Two Dollars A Day

A stupendously rich woman in Australia, Gina Rinehart, who makes a million dollars an hour, has threatened to take her business to Africa where people are willing to work for two dollars a day. She has come under fire in Australia not because she is proposing a dismal pay scale for Africans but because she dares to compare mighty Australians with Africans. This is a manifestation of racism and the greed of capitalism all wrapped in one debacle. Africans are the people who are willing to live with less! This explains the Australian treatment of the aborignal people of that country. It is sickening.