Equatorial Biofuels-Crude Palm Oil via Timbuktu Chronicles

Timbuktu Chronicles reports on Palm Oil for Biofuels.

CS Monitor reports on David Parker's company Equatorial Biofuels,which :

Has taken over the 36,000-acre Palm Bay plantation and plans to invest up to $10 million initially to rehabilitate the estate and begin producing palm oil industrially again.

Their goals are to:

Africa enterprise fund - Mo Ibrahim

From Timbuktu Chronicles

"...The Africa Enterprise Fund founded by Mo Ibrahim will seek out promising companies in financial services, consumer goods, energy and agricultural processing. The aim is to focus on established businesses that need cash and experienced management to grow, and the average investment is expected to be around $20m....",Economist.

Timbuktu Chronicles - Afrika! Afrika!

Emeka Okafor at Timbuktu Chronicles reports on Afrika! Afrika!. An African version of Cirque du Soleil.

Afrika! Afrika!

Cultural capital can be of inestimable value if harnessed and nurtured. The acclaim and success of Andre Heller's Afrika! Afrika! described as an African Cirque du Soleil is further testament to the potency of the continents less tangible and undervalued human resources .Charles Spencer of the Telegraph writes:
The show's Viennese-born creator André Heller and his team scoured the length and breadth of Africa for two years looking for the best dancers, musicians, variety performers and circus acts they could find.They ended up with more than 100 artists from 17 African nations and have put them together in a show that leaves one feeling both breathless and elated.

My comment about outsourcing on Timbuktu Chronicles

I commented about Outsourcing on Timbuktu Chronicles


Nice post Emeka. Africa can seize this opportunity by adopting international standards for communications infrastructure. We also need expatriates to come back to Africa and invest in science and technology education, then we can start to build African versions of Wipro, Infosys, and Tata’s.

There are also some opportunities for outsourcing within Africa itself. Many multinationals have businesses in Africa that are not part of its core. If an African entrepreneur wants to get into BPO, the best bet is to look inside the continent for outsourcing opportunities then scale outside to larger markets such as Europe or North America.

Furthermore, because of the turnover rate in the BPO industry in India, look for India to start outsourcing work to Africa in the next 5-10 years.

This is belated, but thanks TED and Emeka Okafor

Chris Anderson, Emeka Okafor, and David McQueen

I was sitting in the subway today and was thinking how fortunate it was that I was invited to TED. Organizing that event was not that easy, I organized the 2003 Ghana Outsourcing Conference a few years ago in Philadelphia and that was hard. Multiple my event times 1000 and you have TEDGlobal 2007 in Arusha, Tanzania.

First, I owe a lot of people thanks to. I want to thank Bono, who had the vision of bringing this event to our continent and for even showing up. I want to thank Chris Anderson the owner of TED for putting his resources and time into organizing a wonderful event. I want to thank the TED staff, for without their help we probably would be stranded in Arusha or Nairobi (I believe some did actually...like me). I want to thank the all the sponsors, especially Google and Dan Shine from AMD on giving the Fellow's a choice of our own laptop (PC or Mac).

The last person I want to thank was very instrumental in getting many of the speakers. I've talked to this person via email a couple of times before we actually met at the annual Wharton African Business conference. I want to thank Emeka Okafor for a brilliant, masterful, and diverse speaker line-up for TEDGlobal2007. If Emeka hadn't told me to apply for a Fellowship I might not have made it to TED.

Many know Emeka as the face behind his blog Timbuktu Chronicles, jokingly I introduced Emeka to a friend of mine Derrick Ashong, at the Wharton Conference last November as the Walter Cronkite of Africa. No, Emeka is not a journalist. I think if you would talk to Emeka, he would say he is an entrepreneur with a journalist itch of spreading the word every now and then. Emeka in every sense is an entrepreneur, he is co-owner of specialty Food company called Caranda foods. Caranda specializes in Coffee, Tea and specialty foods.