In the Grandiose Parlor…

I discovered James Shikwati by accident in 2005 while blogging about the Live-8 concerts and reading the dissenting views of several bloggers and other pundits. James – a staunch anti-aid proponent – stood out as he presented a convincing argument against foreign aidthen via an interview on the German magazine – Spiegel. James Shikwati’s op-Ed on Mohammad Yunus, the 2006 Bangladeshi Nobel price (peace) winner, reveals, as usual, some thought not only anchored in common sense but driven by a social entrepreneural spirit: 

“By awarding Yunus a [tag]Nobel Peace Prize[/tag], the Norwegian Committee has vindicated those of us who have been arguing against the idea of pegging Africans to the ‘less than a dollar a day.’  It has also brought to the fore the fact that, all that is needed in Africa is to get professors and their ‘yellowed notes’ out of the classroom to the field to push the 70 per cent population out of subsistence farming. The biggest lesson from this award is that business is the key to fighting poverty!”

“…Educated Africans have many entry points to create their own multi nationals: supply quality agricultural farm inputs to improve food security and set up supply chains for fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides that the rural market can afford. Do not wait for the government – do it for profit…If you are unemployed, open newspaper pages not to look for job vacancies but to get stories that can be turned into business opportunities.”

A social entrepreneural spirit is just what African nations need to compensate for several failing government and limited social infrastructure.

James Shikwati is an economist and the author of African Executive, a weekly  online opinion magazine published by the Inter Region Economic Network (IREN), an independent, non-profit, non partisan research and educational organization.

A Glimpse of [tag]Mohammad Yunus[/tag], via PBS: 

“Nothing in the economic theories I taught reflected the life around me. How could I go on telling my students make believe stories in the name of economics? I needed to run away from these theories and from my textbooks and discover the real-life economics of a poor person’s existence.”

Yunus went to the nearby village of Jobra where he learned the economic realities of the poor. Yunus wanted to help, and he cooked up several plans working with his students. He found that one of his many ideas was more successful than the rest: offering people tiny loans for self-employment. Grameen Bank was born and an economic revolution had begun.

Today, more than 250 institutions in nearly 100 countries operate micro-credit programs based on the Grameen Bank model, while thousands of other micro-credit programs have emulated, adapted or been inspired by the [tag]Grameen Bank[/tag]. According to one expert in innovative government, the program established by Yunus at the Grameen Bank “is the single most important development in the third world in the last 100 years, and I don’t think any two people will disagree.”

via Public Broadcasting Service