Late September is always a busy time in New York and Washington for world leaders. New York is crowded with heads of state and visionaries at the UN Assembly or the Clinton Global Initiative, and in Washington, DC, the World Bank Group and IMF Annual Meetings that took place this past weekend always spur an assortment of organizations with global economic development missions to gather their flocks. We all wonder what all these expensive ‘meetings of the minds’ are accomplishing. To share my own bias, it prompts me once a year to check in and see how much development bureaucrats are really seeing and listening to the entrepreneurs on the ground doing the work.
In case you missed them, there are a couple of commentaries you should check out.
The first is from the front page of the Wall Street Journal on September 24 by Peter Wonacott. “Small Factories Take Root in Africa” offers an example of how a 34-year-old Brooklyn entrepreneur, Tim McCollum, located a rare source of premium cocoa in Madagascar and is now helping villagers learn how to deal with local customers. McCollum is an example of how entrepreneurs are going where many large firms will not, and—whether through shoes in Nigeria or hot sauce in South Africa—how abundant natural resources and low per capita income in Africa offer a still-untapped opportunity for startups and the resulting value they bring to those developing economies.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Looking Past the Talk on International Aid - Entrepreneurship.org
Author:Jonathan Ortmans
