Sierra Leone’s government is luring agricultural investors by promoting its cheap farm labour (usually just $2 or $3 a day) and its cheap land – leasing for just $5 to $20 a hectare annually, compared with $100 in Brazil or $450 in Indonesia. I hope our leaders will be better than this.

^^ Lol, So when are you, Generale, going to rise above clan.

^ It should be piece instead of peace.

Mooge;875590 wrote: isn't clan federalism better than sub-clan federalism? loool. 18 regions federalism is better than sub-clan federalism because minority clans will be protected from tyranny of the majority by regional and federal constitutions that guarantee political participation. .

^^ I forgot, we need millions of men and women like him in our continent..

Lander, did you have to bring your partisan agenda to my thread? :)This peace speaks to all Somalis.

Everybody knows America is a rogue Empire, but I would rather have a leader who works to end corruption, nepotism, inequality and unemployment. While rest of Latin America economies were growing before and during the financial crisis, Venezuela economy was and has been shrinking. There is a lot mismanagement going on now that America can't be blamed for. It's ironic, with all the propaganda, that the majority of venezuela's oil is exported to US.

General Duke;875580 wrote: Garowe is insignificant we have been told:D Garowe is significant, so is Hargeisa, Borama, Baidoa, Kismayo, Hudur etc. Garowe is just a part of a bigger sum[somalia].

MMA, I'm for democratic socialism, but sometime the cult of personality can get in a way of economic and social justice. For me Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was Latin America's best leader.

Or as my Indian-American friend K. R. Sridhar, the founder of the Silicon Valley fuel-cell company Bloom Energy, likes to say, “ When you don’t have resources, you become resourceful.” In our case, warlordism, land and sea piracy and terrorism.

^ We need a million of him across the continent.

Somalia;875566 wrote: Mario B [/b] - no more Khaatumo cheerleading mate? mashallah. I'm against clan federalism, but I support 18 regions federalism. Much more democratic.

I wish him a productive trip, iA.

Lol @ this thread, it just brings out the my "clan is better than yours" bigots. But people have cut off their affair (of unity), between them, into sects: each party rejoices in that which is with itself. [Quran 23:53]

Wilfred Sam King

GEOFFREY YORK FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE The Globe and Mail Published Monday, Sep. 24 2012 By the age of 33, Wilfred Sam-King had earned and lost a fortune three times over. Each time he built a business from nothing, he saw it looted or torched in a coup or a rebel invasion. When rebels laid siege to Freetown in 1999, they searched everywhere for Sierra Leone’s famed businessman, aiming to take his money. One day they captured him – but he had disguised himself in shabby clothes, pretending to be his own cook. He made soup for the rebels for three days before escaping. Refusing to leave his homeland – even after his wife and children found shelter in Canada during the civil war – he patiently rebuilt his fortune again, and today has created a small empire of hotels, retail shops and other businesses worth $20-million. His determination has made Mr. Sam-King one of Sierra Leone’s most successful entrepreneurs – and living proof of the persistence and imagination that is transforming Africa’s economy. While foreign mining and oil investors are one reason for the African boom, the new class of indigenous entrepreneurs is equally important. Their stories are testament to the business acumen of Africans themselves, unleashed by the end of war and the fall of dictatorship. Wilfred Sam-King was born in a tiny village in the south of Sierra Leone, where his parents were impoverished rice farmers. They couldn’t afford to send him to school. So from the age of nine, he went into business, buying and selling kerosene and palm oil, often lugging it five kilometres from the nearest town. He didn’t know how to count, so he marked notches on a box to count the coins. When his parents finally scraped up the school tuition fees, he was embarrassed to be entering Grade 1 at the age of 11, so he paid older students to tutor him. He became fascinated with reading, devouring novels in the local library. At university, unable to afford the cost of accommodation, Mr. Sam-King slept in classrooms at night, paying his tuition by mopping floors and washing dishes for Peace Corps volunteers and visiting professors. With his earnings, he bought a cheap camera and became the first photographer at his university to offer colour prints – which he accomplished by sending the negatives to Britain for printing. This, in turn, provided the startup capital for bigger ventures. Soon Mr. Sam-King was selling vegetables and other supplies to local mining companies. He built it into a $1-million business – and then saw it all stolen by rampaging rebels in 1994 in the early years of Sierra Leone’s civil war. “I lost everything,” he said. “Our stock was completely destroyed. I didn’t have a dollar left.” He moved to Freetown and opened a stationery shop and office equipment business. Three years later, he lost everything again in the chaos of a coup. And when he rebuilt it for a second time, it was destroyed again in 1999 when the city was invaded by rebels who looted and killed indiscriminately. The war ended in 2002, and the ensuing peace and stability finally allowed him to thrive. Mr. Sam-King became the local Canon dealer, sold office supplies, ran a construction company, managed a container port, built roads and hotels, and branched into tourism with beach resorts. “There wasn’t much competition,” recalls Mr. Sam-King, wearing a sharp pin-striped suit as he chats at his office supplies outlet. “Not many people even wanted to think about Sierra Leone.” Now he plans to go public with a share offering on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. “I want my company to live on,” he said. “Most African companies die with their owners. But this country is definitely going to grow. I’m a strong believer in Sierra Leone.” While he had to fight hard for everything he earned, Mr. Sam-King remembers that others helped him along the way. Now he tries to do the same, paying the school or university fees of about 100 needy youths. “Just a small hand to someone in need can transform their life,” he said. He still lives frugally, rising at 5:30 every morning to begin work. He never regrets his decision to stay in Sierra Leone instead of emigrating. “When material things cloud your vision, you can’t be successful,” he said. “My passion is to finish what we’ve started in Sierra Leone. Migrating to another country would jeopardize the whole effort.” It’s an increasingly common belief among African entrepreneurs. There is no need to leave, they say, when there are so many opportunities at home. In war-torn Liberia, Sierra Leone’s southern neighbour, hotel and restaurant owner Sam Mitchell has blazed the same trail as Mr. Sam-King: He is an entrepreneur who refused to quit, even after his business was repeatedly wrecked by civil war. And he, too, has prospered under peace. Mr. Mitchell grew up in a business family, the son of parents who sold rice in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. By the 1980s, he was running a restaurant, selling used cars and distributing beer, among other enterprises. Then the war broke out. His house was looted and heavily damaged, and his businesses were shut down. “We lost everything,” he recalls. Liberia’s war ended in 2003, and a new democratic government soon took office. That’s when Mr. Mitchell’s prospects turned around. He went back into the car business, opened a restaurant, and launched a hotel project. After opening a 75-seat restaurant last year, he saw his sales jump by 50 per cent in a year. And behind the restaurant, the hotel is slowly rising. By the end of this year, it will have grown to 50 rooms over four storeys. He aims to build it to 10 floors. It hasn’t been easy. While the government is eager to lure multinational companies to Liberia, it has neglected the small-business sector. Banks are reluctant to provide capital to small businesses, and interest rates are high. Mr. Mitchell managed to borrow $250,000 last year to finance his hotel expansion, but was required to repay it in 26 months, making it impossible for him to repay it with revenue from the new hotel rooms. He argues that Liberia must reduce its dependence on the “enclave investments” of foreign mining projects. “When they leave Liberia, they’ll just leave a big hole,” he said. “They’re putting up prefab houses that will only last for 20 or 30 years. When they finish with the ore, it will be a ghost town again.” Mr. Mitchell’s children, most of whom fled Liberia during the civil war in the 1990s, recently came back for a visit. One son, now living in Texas, brought dozens of packages of tea for his father – only to discover that Monrovia is full of well-stocked shops these days. “He didn’t realize that we had supermarkets,” Mr. Mitchell chuckled. “They were surprised by the development here. Their whole perception has changed.”

^^ I agree, there are sectarian [sunni,Shia, Christian] faultlines in Lebanon that work against their national interest by becoming proxy's to S Arabia's, Iran's or Israel's hegemony in the region.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/news-video/video-the-return-of-land-grabs-in-africa/article4561010/?from=4576431" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen> Sime Darby, a large Malaysian company, is developing heavily in Liberia. In the process, it is clearing land that used to belong to villagers.

Oil can no longer blind Venezuelans to their leader's failure. The flaws in Chávez's 21st-century socialism are all too clear. Franscisco Toro As Venezuelans get ready to head to the polls for the most closely fought presidential election of the past 14 years, one question is at the forefront of everyone's mind: does Hugo Chávez still have it? By "it", I mean his legendary, intense, emotional connection with the poor – a kind of attachment that has, for many, a feeling of religious fervour. Of faith. "Chávez is the only one who has ever really cared about the poor" – you hear his supporters say it again and again, with real feeling, and now more than ever it's the centre of his pitch to voters. Chávez: Heart of my Fatherland – the slogan turns up everywhere, right down to the water bottles given away to keep his supporters hydrated at rallies. But 14 years on, as even his most hardcore supporters acknowledge, Chávez's experiment in 21st-century socialism isn't really working. After the chaotic nationalisation of most of the agro-industrial chain – from the farm to the supermarket – food shortages have become chronic, with various staples disappearing from shelves. Lines at subsidised government grocery shops are long, and particularly scarce commodities sell out almost the second they're delivered. On closer inspection, the only thing that appears to be 21st century about Chávez's 21st-century socialism is the presidential Twitter account. The economy is still run along the same rigid lines that crippled eastern bloc economies for much of the 20th century. One after another, industries have been nationalised only to become outsized money-pits unable to produce the goods needed. The steel and cement industries can't produce enough to meet the country's housing needs; electric utilities have brought chronic blackouts throughout the country; and the phone company has failed to deliver adequate internet access. Venezuelans like to joke that Julian Assange passed over Venezuela for political asylum simply because the internet is so slow there. That Venezuela's economy doesn't grind to a halt, Zimbabwe style, amid the waste, corruption and mismanagement of incompetent central planning is down to a single word: oil. Sitting atop the world's largest reserves at a time of extraordinarily high prices, the government is kept afloat by a torrent of petrodollars that more or less papers over the cracks. When steel production falls by two-thirds after a botched nationalisation, the government simply re-routes part of the petrodollar stream to finance steel imports. When nationalised farms suffer a similar fate, food imports are jacked up. Oil wealth is a magical elixir that keeps up the appearance of normality, even as the country sinks deeper and deeper into the economic morass. In many ways that near-mystical bond with the poor is the most important of the assets that oil funds. Chávez has been careful to keep the spigots open, channelling a constant stream of populist giveaways to his supporters. An oil-for-appliances deal with China, for example, has allowed Venezuela to import more than 3m Chinese-made stoves, refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners and flat-screen TVs, goodies handed out directly to governing party supporters as part of "My Well-Stocked Home" – a government social programme, whose logo includes the comandante presidente's face. The guiding principle to Chavista social policy is simple: people must never be under the impression it's to the welfare state they owe their access to oil-financed goodies – all gratitude and loyalty must be focused on Chávez himself. The resulting cult of personality is neatly captured in that slogan. Chávez, we're told, is no mere politician: he is the "heart of my fatherland" – with that possessive pronoun to cement each voter's twin loyalties to the nation and its leader. It's only the tiniest step from that formulation to its flip-side: failure to support the leader is tantamount to treason. It has taken Venezuela's long-suffering opposition movement 14 years to decode Chávez's intoxicating appeal and formulate a compelling alternative. This year the opposition has finally united and rallied around Henrique Capriles, an energetic young state governor who has put pragmatism and problem solving at the centre of his campaign. Capriles can't match Chávez for charisma, and doesn't try to. But after 14 years of deepening economic dysfunction, administrative chaos and dependence on oil, he has sensed an opening for a no-nonsense campaign centred on institutionalising the revolution's social advances while sweeping away its legacy of political sectarianism, ideological rigidity and mismanagement. "Never again should you have to show a Socialist party membership card to access a social programme," Capriles says in his stump speech, invariably bringing the house down. The line hits home because every person in the audience knows someone who has been shut out of access to the latest oil bonanza for ideological deviance. Capriles senses there's a thirst in Venezuela to move beyond the divisive politics of the Chávez personality cult; that for more and more one-time Chavistas the old visceral pull of the caudillo's charisma has worn thin in the face of a mass of unsolved problems; that Venezuelans crave the type of minimally competent government they've not had for years; and that they're ready to take a chance on change. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/27/hugo-chavez-cult-oil-venezuela?commentpage=2#start-of-comments

Xaaji Xunjuf;875517 wrote: Mario actually she was in a way the Americans said the following We reaffirmed our respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence and unity of Somalia and pledged our support to a peaceful, democratic, stable and prosperous Somalia. COMMUNIQUÉ on Secretary-General's Mini-Summit on Somalia. Thursday, September 27, 2012

oba hiloowlow;874855 wrote: apo watch this " frameborder="0" allowfullscreen> The international community didn't promise a thing to this woman. And no, this is not hate statement!

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN EVERY so often someone asks me: “What’s your favorite country, other than your own?” I’ve always had the same answer: Taiwan. “Taiwan? Why Taiwan?” people ask. Very simple: Because Taiwan is a barren rock in a typhoon-laden sea with no natural resources to live off of — it even has to import sand and gravel from China for construction — yet it has the fourth-largest financial reserves in the world. Because rather than digging in the ground and mining whatever comes up, Taiwan has mined its 23 million people, their talent, energy and intelligence — men and women. I always tell my friends in Taiwan: “You’re the luckiest people in the world. How did you get so lucky? You have no oil, no iron ore, no forests, no diamonds, no gold, just a few small deposits of coal and natural gas — and because of that you developed the habits and culture of honing your people’s skills, which turns out to be the most valuable and only truly renewable resource in the world today. How did you get so lucky?” That, at least, was my gut instinct. But now we have proof. A team from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or O.E.C.D., has just come out with a fascinating little study mapping the correlation between performance on the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, exam — which every two years tests math, science and reading comprehension skills of 15-year-olds in 65 countries — and the total earnings on natural resources as a percentage of G.D.P. for each participating country. In short, how well do your high school kids do on math compared with how much oil you pump or how many diamonds you dig? The results indicated that there was a “a significant negative relationship between the money countries extract from national resources and the knowledge and skills of their high school population,” said Andreas Schleicher, who oversees the PISA exams for the O.E.C.D. “This is a global pattern that holds across 65 countries that took part in the latest PISA assessment.” Oil and PISA don’t mix. (See the data map at: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/9/49881940.pdf.) As the Bible notes, added Schleicher, “Moses arduously led the Jews for 40 years through the desert — just to bring them to the only country in the Middle East that had no oil. But Moses may have gotten it right, after all. Today, Israel has one of the most innovative economies, and its population enjoys a standard of living most of the oil-rich countries in the region are not able to offer.” So hold the oil, and pass the books. According to Schleicher, in the latest PISA results, students in Singapore, Finland, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan stand out as having high PISA scores and few natural resources, while Qatar and Kazakhstan stand out as having the highest oil rents and the lowest PISA scores. (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Algeria, Bahrain, Iran and Syria stood out the same way in a similar 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or Timss, test, while, interestingly, students from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey — also Middle East states with few natural resources — scored better.) Also lagging in recent PISA scores, though, were students in many of the resource-rich countries of Latin America, like Brazil, Mexico and Argentina. Africa was not tested. Canada, Australia and Norway, also countries with high levels of natural resources, still score well on PISA, in large part, argues Schleicher, because all three countries have established deliberate policies of saving and investing these resource rents, and not just consuming them. Add it all up and the numbers say that if you really want to know how a country is going to do in the 21st century, don’t count its oil reserves or gold mines, count its highly effective teachers, involved parents and committed students. “Today’s learning outcomes at school,” says Schleicher, “are a powerful predictor for the wealth and social outcomes that countries will reap in the long run.” Economists have long known about “Dutch disease,” which happens when a country becomes so dependent on exporting natural resources that its currency soars in value and, as a result, its domestic manufacturing gets crushed as cheap imports flood in and exports become too expensive. What the PISA team is revealing is a related disease: societies that get addicted to their natural resources seem to develop parents and young people who lose some of the instincts, habits and incentives for doing homework and honing skills. By, contrast, says Schleicher, “in countries with little in the way of natural resources — Finland, Singapore or Japan — education has strong outcomes and a high status, at least in part because the public at large has understood that the country must live by its knowledge and skills and that these depend on the quality of education. ... Every parent and child in these countries knows that skills will decide the life chances of the child and nothing else is going to rescue them, so they build a whole culture and education system around it.” Or as my Indian-American friend K. R. Sridhar, the founder of the Silicon Valley fuel-cell company Bloom Energy, likes to say, “When you don’t have resources, you become resourceful.” That’s why the foreign countries with the most companies listed on the Nasdaq are Israel, China/Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, South Korea and Singapore — none of which can live off natural resources. But there is an important message for the industrialized world in this study, too. In these difficult economic times, it is tempting to buttress our own standards of living today by incurring even greater financial liabilities for the future. To be sure, there is a role for stimulus in a prolonged recession, but “the only sustainable way is to grow our way out by giving more people the knowledge and skills to compete, collaborate and connect in a way that drives our countries forward,” argues Schleicher. In sum, says Schleicher, “knowledge and skills have become the global currency of 21st-century economies, but there is no central bank that prints this currency. Everyone has to decide on their own how much they will print.” Sure, it’s great to have oil, gas and diamonds; they can buy jobs. But they’ll weaken your society in the long run unless they’re used to build schools and a culture of lifelong learning. “The thing that will keep you moving forward,” says Schleicher, is always “what you bring to the table yourself.” A version of this op-ed appeared in print on March 11, 2012, on page SR1 of the New York edition with the headline: Pass the Books. Hold the Oil..

xiinfaniin;874181 wrote: ^^My point is no matter how hard you try to run from us the world around you sees you as one of us.

D/P