AFRICA: A STORY OF GROWTH

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Africa represents what we like to call "frontier" markets. To provide some perspective, you can think about global markets in three distinct segments. "Developed" markets like the U.S. and Europe sit at the top—they have strong regulation, a lot of liquidity, and broad, diversified industries. "Emerging" markets like China and India are a level down from there in terms of development. And "frontier" markets, like most of Africa and the Middle East, are areas where people haven't really invested before—they're nascent markets that have been very illiquid. Historically, you haven't been able to get much exposure to them, but now they are becoming investable thanks to greater integrity in the general business environment, a number of infrastructural improvements, and greater stability overall thanks to social, economical and political reforms. And because these markets are starting from such a low base, they're growing very quickly.

ANGOLA GOOD NEWS: OIL RICHES TRICKLE DOWN

Many countries in Africa suffered from poverty and war. Angola was no exception. Luckily, it is now blessed  with peace and oil riches. Some of that money is being used to improve the lives of the general population. Spreading the wealth is the path to long term prosperity.  

Where is Angola?

Check out the Embassy of the Republic of Angola site: http://www.angola.org/

Picture from: African Arguments

http://africanarguments.org/2011/12/13/angola%E2%80%99s-new-oil-banking-legislation-by-kissy-agyeman-togobo-songhai-advisory/

 From The Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/21557811

"Generally deemed wretched after a 14-year war for independence from Portugal followed by 27 years of civil war that only ended in 2002, Angola is now one of Africa’s economic successes—thanks almost entirely to oil. With a population of 20m, it has Africa’s fifth-biggest and fastest-growing economy. Between 2004 and 2008 its GDP surged by an average of 17% a year, topping 22% in 2007. It is the continent’s second-biggest oil producer after Nigeria. Foreign investment is pouring in at a rate of more than $10 billion a year. In the past decade GDP per person is said to have tripled."

SUCCESS AT OVERCOMING GREAT ODDS

It was all a set up to make all Black males appear to be criminals. There must be something wrong with us. The fact is that there is nothing wrong with Black men. Everyone needs more money, more education, better health, deeper understanding. Khalil Gibran Muhammed argues in his book, The Condemnation of Blackness, that African-Americans were systematically condemned as criminal and inferior without being allowed the opportunity to prove otherwise. The amazing thing is the degree of success many African-Americans have enjoyed despite being vilified.  

Photo: http://mycrains.crainsnewyork.com/40under40/profiles/2011/khalil-gibran-muhammad

Interview with the author: Khalil Gibran Muhammad
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-confronting-the-contradictions-of-america%E2%80%99s-past/


From: Harvard University Press Blog
 http://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2010/01/whites-commit-crimes-but-black-males-are-criminals.html

"In The Condemnation of Blackness, Muhammad shows how “the racial data revolution” was made to work against blacks even as social scientists, journalists, and reformers created pathways to rehabilitation for Irish, Italian, and other foreign-born immigrants once tagged with a similar stigma of criminality. Where white criminals enjoyed the privilege of “racial anonymity” and were afforded an understanding of the structural roots of poverty and crime, black criminals, whose crimes, we can now see, differed little in form and function from those committed by whites, were made to stand in for the imagined deficiencies of the race as a whole, so that in evaluations of black fitness for modern life, the innocent came to be tarred along with the actually guilty. “Whites commit crimes, but black males are criminals”—in exposing the roots of this persistent refrain, one that has justified not only racial violence but the kind of benign neglect that has relegated blacks to the margins of an American social sphere that has historically expanded to incorporate new and different groups, Muhammad shows how this particular mismeasure of man has become foundational to our thinking about modern urban America, and how its insidious logic remains with us to this day."