Good Africa, Bad Africa...

This TIME magazine article underscores my mood about positive economic growth forecasts coming out of Africa. Can bad Africa become good Africa? At the risk of being the party pooper, I'd suggest the we watch the growth trends with hawk eyes and guard the loot more carefully. as some have suggested that growth may not be enough.

The lesson? Economic growth – even very high one – is not enough for successful development unless it’s derived from an economy that is inclusive and productive as a whole. In contrast, most of Africa’s top growth performers derive their impressive GDP growth figures from a reliance on high-priced natural resource exports, the benefits of which bypass the majority of the population.

Having said that, it appears that Africa is the place to be right now. For the first time Omodudu is considering moving to Nigeria. Updates coming soon.

Ari de Carvalho, a board member of ANIP, Angola's private-investment agency, thinks so. "Right now [the boom] benefits those who finance and carry out the projects," he admits. "But it will benefit the people in the long term." That's a minority view. Another Luanda-based observer says a change of course would require a change of government, but Angola's President José Eduardo dos Santos has not held an election since 1992.

Francois Woo's $200 million-per-year business is a microcosm of globalization in action. It buys raw cotton from Asia and Africa, ships it to Mauritius, spins it into yarn and makes it into clothes designed in-house. Those are shipped to retailers in Europe, Asia and the U.S. "We have to import all our raw materials, and we are very far from our customers," Woo says. "So the challenge is clear. We have to be the most efficient factory in the world."....Today Cassolongo's company, Cassca Technologies, is one of the only online testing centers in Angola for international IT certification, and as the economy booms--a predicted 35% this year--demand for Cassca courses is soaring. But unlike Woo's, Cassolongo's difficulties are entirely domestic. "We face a lot of corruption," he says, using the Portuguese slang gasosa, which literally means fizzy drink. "Documents don't come out until you pay. You have to have connections everywhere."