In the past my articles have been centered around technology, products and applications used within the business world. This weeks entry is a bit different. My friend and business partner at Odyssey Consulting Group, Daniel Egan has a once in a lifetime opportunity this week. To be one of fifteen people who get to have lunch with Bill Gates.
CNN has an interesting video ("Online campus gossips won't show their faces) about a popular campus website called, Juicy Campus.
Long story short, the site allows people to post anonymously and it's
allowing a lot of people to be really nasty. Granted, it does allow
some folks to post relatively innocuous items ("what sorority should I
join") but if you visit their Most Discussed page the first thread rea Read more
In a recent blog, I told you
about a trip to Walmart and how they have slashed waste in all of their stores,
saving money and the environment at the same time. The more I talk about this,
the more I realize how many companies are starting to look for “gold” and
“green” in the dumpster.
Back in the 1990s, California passed a law to divert half its waste from landfills
by 2005.
In a 4x4 vehicle arranged by a local group that monitors Mozambique's forests, I travel to Maganja da Costa in the once-heavily-wooded Zambezia province, the country's poorest. Maganja is a tiny district, a five-hour drive along tortuous, dusty roads -- traveled by villagers on bicycles with huge bags of firewood on their heads -- from Quelimane, one of the country's main port cities. Quelimane was journey's end for Livingstone on his trek from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean in 1856. But it is the start of my trans-African journey.
When my plane smacks down in Equatorial Guinea -- where if the captain misses the runway, you could end up in Cameroon -- I become the first American journalist to visit this pint-sized republic (population: 550,000) in nearly three years. That was when Equatoguinean officials forced two American reporters to leave after they'd spent just a few days in Malabo, the capital, asking questions. One of them, Peter Maass, was booted for "spying" simply for walking down a street chatting with a European ambassador.
I ask Xiao Ye, an Africa statistical researcher for the World Bank, whether a clear chart or table exists laying out the full extent of China's economic involvement in Africa. "I don't know anyone who has done such a thing," he responds. "As far as I know, China no longer releases [its] foreign direct investment to Africa country by country." Or as Lucy Corkin, the China-Africa think-tank expert, explains, "You've got Africa, the big black hole of data, and China, the big black hole of data -- put the two of them together and it's a disaster."
