I had a wonderful conversation with George Ayittey last friday about the recent TED conference in Arusha, Tanzania. I have profound respect for George because he is a old-school pragmatic thinker. Dr. Ayittey is trained as an Economist, but he doesn't talk like most Economists who talk about Africa such as Jeffrey Sachs or others.
During our 30 minute conversation about the TED conference, George asked, "so Nii how do we get you TED Cheetah's to contribute to African development"? I thought about it for a second and said, "I would be nice if TED sponsored fellows to their respective countries to use their professional work experience to help a business for a month or so. I heard a pause, and George said, "well that is nice, but what about a fund, called a Cheetah Fund that is sustainable was set-up to help TED fellows or other African Cheetahs with funding for their respective businesses".
Wow, I said to myself, how come I didn't think about this before. African chiefs have been using this system for centuries before colonialism, we just have to go back to some of our indigenous roots. George mentioned that the fund would be sustainable by having the Cheetah's repay the fund the amount giving to him or her, this way the fund would be sustainable.
In Africa, before there was European colonialism, African tribes taxed each other to fund small-scale businesses. If a business would fail that tribe would pull it's resources together to help that particular business. African countries had these types of systems in place years before any Wall Street Hedge Fund, or a Silicon Valley venture capitalist like, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) were around.
We as Africans have to be progressive with our future and start addressing African opportunities. This Cheetah Fund is a good start to address African opportunities.
To learn more about this author, visit Nii Simmonds's Website.
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Nii Simmonds
(Visit Nii's Website)
Nii Simmonds is founder of NAFRICOM, a
non-profit trade association for IT
Software and Technology Services industry
for Africa and a blogger on African
development. Mr. Simmonds is also a
Co-founder of EmergingictGroup, a global
ICT research, training, and
advisory/consultancy. Under Mr. Simmonds
leadership, his organization NAFRICOM
organized the 1st annual 2003 Ghana
Outsourcing Conference.
Through his experience working with many
African oriented organizations in the
field of Information Technology,
development, and globalization, Mr.
Simmonds has become a leading speaker and
presenter on African development, ICT
policies, outsourcing/BPO market in Africa
and other emerging markets, social
entrepreneurship, technology education,
and Globalization. Professionally Mr.
Simmonds is a consultant specializing in
corporate finance, globalization, business
strategy, and outsourcing.
Mr. Simmonds has been acknowledged for his
research in globalization and offshore
market by Mckinsey, IBM Global Services,
AT Kearney, Keane, Wharton School,
Harvard, Government of Ghana, Ghana
embassy, Smeal College of Business,
Harvard Business School NeoIT, ITESA,
Summit Circuit, Bloomberg News, Wall
Street Journal, Avaya, Affiliated Computer
Services (ACS), Data Management
International and many others.
Mr. Simmonds got his B.S. in
Management/Finance from Smeal College of
Business at Pennsylvania State University
and a minor in Information Systems and
Statistical Analysis. Mr. Simmonds holds a
Business Process Outsourcing Master
Certificate from the Wharton School.
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