Dr. Ndemo, I would defer to you on the strategic policy effort to deal with ownership. One of the submissions we have made to the Ghana government is to work a mechanism where natural resources like Oil etc can be converted to cash and such cash can be used for strategic investments. Am not sure, i entirely agree with you that we dont have the money to invest. The issues are around how do we mobilise liquidity and turn them into instruments for investment. Really, am not an economist or financial strategist but we need to put those brians to work. We need them to realise that, it cant be business as usual, we have a problem and they must work to change the status quo. The amount of money outside the banking sector and under pillows and buried in farms is outstanding. Am sorry to branch off this discussion on BPO to investments but i think we would end it here so the original trend can proceed. Eric here On 4 Jun 2009, at 17:40, bitange@jambo.co.ke wrote:
Eric, Unemployment in Africa is at a critical level. In Kenya we are on the edge where 75% of the population are youth with lots of energy and I belive other African countries are the same. We can choose to use this energy by all means or fail for fear of losing control of ownership (which we do not have in the first place). To attain reasonable economic growth and achieve lower unemployment rates with acceptable price stability, you need extraordinary measures in Africa. Schumpeter's creative destruction (entrepreneurialism) becomes imperative irrespective of sources of capital.
We have failed three times to attract FDI to the communications sector by simply trying to accomodate local ownership. Yes it is critical that we have local participation in strategic investments. But I am almost correct to state that we do not have individual capital that can match the desired investment. Collectively, we can own large junks of even multinationals. That is the reason why we changed the policy to require that investors have up to three years to list in the stock market or seek for locally monied investors. This type of model will ensure that we provide quick employment and at the same time allow the employees to accumulate resources to participate in ownership or break away to set up similar investments.
Regards
Ndemo.
Dr. Ndemo,
Please allow me to differ with you on the subject of ownership. I have being spending abit of my time through my private research firm to relate ICT to outcomes. A 2009 World Bank report has analyzed the impact of broadband on growth in 120 countries from 1980 to 2006, showing that each 10 percentage points of broadband penetration results in 1.21% increase in per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in developed countries, and 1.38% increase in developing countries.
Ghana's GDP was $74MUSD in 2008 which represented a 7.8% growth, alot of African countries had considerable GDP growth including Kenya but we have experienced decline in incomes, employment, health etc, why? The reason between 35 and 60% of African economies are owned by foreigners which means that 35 to 60% of the GDP growth leaves the country. Back in the day the economist used Gross National Product (GNP) were they argued that you need to deduct the foreign participation from the GDP to know the real impact on the local economy.
To your point, my submission is that we neeed to have some considerable and in my view "majority" level of local ownership of the productive sectors of our economy in order for GDP to make sense, otherwise we need to find ways of dealing with "capital flight" otherwise we would create jobs etc but the return effect would be minimal. In the same way we want to create jobs etc, we need to also seek simultaneously to own the ventures that create the jobs.
Eric here
On 4 Jun 2009, at 09:15, bitange@jambo.co.ke wrote:
Prof. You raise good questions. In my my view, the question on foreign ownership should not arise now when we have thousands of our youth jobless. Most of those who would work in foreign owned enterprises are our future entrepreneurs. They will have the opportunity to learn through the ropes before embarking on an expensive venture.
We are focusing the resources into infrastructure now but in the next few months, we begin to address capacity development. This has been on our rader as we developed the Multimedia University. We did not have funding to push the two development aspects concurently. I am open for suggestions.
The SEZ policy is ready at Trade Ministry. The Law to establsh the incentives is underway but nevertheless we shall leverage on the current EPZ Law.
Regards
Ndemo.
Dear Dr. Ndemo,
Attached is material to guide theme 2 of e-discussion on BPOs. Any comments so far? Best wishes.
Tim Waema
On Sun, 2009-05-31 at 08:28 +0300, Prof. Waema wrote:
Dear Dr. Ndemo,
I hope this finds you in a good state of health.
Attached is the first theme of the BPO e-discussions over KICTANET FYINA. We have 5 themes which will be discussed over a two week period, starting Tue June 2nd.
Please note that we have changed the day of the stakeholders' workshop to Wednesday July 1st. You had agreed to be the guest of honour with the earlier date. Please confirm that you can still be the guest of honour to open the workshop on this new date.
Best wishes.
tim waema
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