Reposted from The Globe and Mail
By Geoffrey York
PART 1: What is gained and lost as investment outpaces aid
PART 2: Russians building luxury homes in Congo? Get used to it
PART 3: The hotel magnate who used to hide from rebels
NOW: Weary of handouts, Africans try enterprise
PART 5: The impact of the new land grab
PART 6: How the boom can transform Africa
In this fourth of a six-part series, Globe and Mail Africa correspondent Geoffrey York investigates how Africa’s growth is changing its future.
Claudio Scotto paces the factory floor and throws his hands to the sky. His machinery is idle, the diesel generator has broken down – and now the repairmen are insisting on cash before they stir themselves.
“I had a moment of hope, but it disappeared very quickly,” he mutters. And then he rushes off to negotiate with the truckers who transport the raw material to his factory. They, too, want a raise.
It’s just another stressful day at Africa Felix Juice, a pioneering enterprise on the outskirts of Sierra Leone’s capital. Its product may seem mundane – barrels of mango and pineapple juice concentrate – but it represents a crucial breakthrough: The company is the first manufacturer to export from Sierra Leone since the end of its long civil war in 2002.
Africa Felix Juice also reveals a new strategy for aid in Africa. Instead of just digging wells or providing medicine, foreign donors are increasingly trying to encourage African business and markets.
“We’re all now doing some soul-searching on what it means to serve the poor,” said Canadian aid worker Richard Schroeder. After 17 years toiling for aid agencies in Asia and elsewhere, Mr. Schroeder is trying a new approach.
He became the president of First Step, a donor-supported profit-making company that created the special industrial zone where the juice factory was born. Continue reading “Africa next: An enterprising hand up, not a handout (Part IV)”
Brian Langis 