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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: energyplay who wrote (66763)	7/31/2005 2:52:30 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 74559

Business in Africa a day to day view: If you are going to open a business you have to buy a generator because the electric utility can't provide a decent power supply. You have to bore a water hole, construct storage tank and water pump because there isn't a decent water supply. You have your own gas station because there is fuel shortages, or strikes disrupt distribution, fuel on the gas stations, are tinted with water or are plain dirty and the drivers cheat you. You have to have a mechanical/electrical technician with a driver and a pick up truck to keep repairing all that. Then you have to have security and armed guards because the 'baraus' -thieves- attack you and the state can't provode safety. You have to have your own workshop for your cars. Pot holed roads destroy your car in a year or two. You have to have rented guest houses due to the lack of hotels. Telecoms is start to improving now with private mobile operators but you still need fixed (operated by a state-owned telco) for fax, leased line and Internet. The labor law is (amazingly!!) the British law, yes that one that finished off industry in England. Our financial controller said he can get a Jordanian expat for what it costs a Nigerian and still be better off since the Jordanian would perform better. The banking system is 30 years bahing the rest of the world. The banking system is not trust worth. And money scams have so prevalent that no one would wire money there. (Only Western Union and they charge 10% of the value!!) As you can see the cost of doing business there is extremely high. Hence it makes much more sense to import stuff than to make them there. The difference between China and Africa is: Before 1978 China had a lousy government. Africa still does. China changed its government approach to how the economy should be managed and there you have the results. In Africa, anything that is the hands of the state is done miserably. Energy (oil and electricity), Telecoms, water, roads, security, education... The problem are those state owned enterprises. Need to privatize everything!!!! The less money Africans have managed by their governments, the less they steal it!! All that I didn't learned in the books. I was there. And went back there after 13 years out to see how it was today.