Learn more at our website
twitter.com/PDTglobal:
Marching forward
Will van Engen for National Post Farhad Saafi, 23, reopened his father’s long-shuttered clothing factory after a Canadian NGO funded by CIDA tipped him off about an army boot tender. When the contract is over, he plans to “put a big padlock on the gate.” In the 10 years since the invasion of Afghanistan, foreign donors — including Canada — have spent more than US$57-billion in aid there. But what kind of country is Canada leaving behind? As the recipient of the 2011 Michener-Deacon Fellowship for public service journalism, which underwrote her research, Jane Armstrong spent seven weeks in Afghanistan this summer assessing what Canada’s aid contribution has achieved. This is the final part of a four-day series. Jane Armstrong KABUL • The assembly line at Farhad Saafi’s factory outside Kabul is running full tilt once again. Afghan workers are bent over a conveyor belt, pasting rubber soles to suede army boots. Mr. Saafi hired 700 employees to work 12-hour shifts, 24 hours a day, to meet his production deadline. Kabul Melli Trading won a multimillion-dollar U.S. military contract to produce 200,000 boots for the Afghan National Army. The deal resurrected a clothing factory founded by Mr. Saafi’s father in 1979, but idled by decades of war. That feat put his 23-year-old son in rare company. Most military and reconstruction contracts go to Western companies, leaving Afghan businesses out in the cold. A Canadian non-governmental organization, Peace Dividend Trust (PDT), tipped off Mr. Saafi about the boot tender and helped him win the business. The achievement means jobs and profits stay in Afghanistan, Mr. Saafi says. “Now the army can say, ‘These boots were made in Afghanistan.’ I provided jobs to 700 people — all Afghans.” Kabul Melli Trading is a rare Afghan business success story. But the source of Mr. Saafi’s good fortune won’t last forever. Western military and aid money, which has sustained the Afghan economy for a decade, has peaked.
(Source: news.nationalpost.com)
Read more
African women making a change
Jessica Horn, Activist, Writer, Entrepreneur
Country: Uganda
Jessica Horn is a writer, women’s rights activist and founder of Akiiki Consulting www.akiiki-consulting.org. As a consultant and activist she has worked with NGOs, progressive donors, the UN and community-based initiatives around advancing sexual rights, ending violence against women, supporting women living with HIV and ensuring women’s rights in post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding. Prior to founding Akiiki Consulting, Jessica managed funding for women’s rights and minority rights at the Sigrid Rausing Trust, one the largest private human rights funders is Europe. She is also the former coordinator of Amanitare- the African Network on Sexual and Reproductive Rights. Jessica currently serves on the boards of the international women’s fund, Mama Cash and Urgent Action Fund-Africa, and is an advisor to the journal Development. She is a founder member of the African Feminist Forum Working Group.
As a writer, Jessica engages issues of women’s bodily integrity and autonomy and feminist approaches to human rights in African contexts. Jessica is co-editor of Voice, Power and Soul: Portraits of African Feminists, which profiles 79 African feminist leaders. She is also a published poet.
Jessica holds an MSc (Distinction) in Gender and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA (Magna Cum Laude) in Anthropology from Smith College.
Go Jessica!
#geographyteacher
Brazil entrepreneurs thrive on the web
The internet is transforming people’s lives in many different ways around the world - but is it making us individually richer and, if so, how?
Brazil is a country with a foot in two camps - part rich, mainly poor, so it’s a good place to take the financial pulse of a global phenomenon like the internet.
Brazilians love the web. Not everyone has access, but those who do spend an average of 70 hours a month online, which is more than anywhere else in the world.
Less than a third of Brazilians have a connected computer at home, so most people go online at internet cafes, known locally as Lan Houses.
There are more than 100,000 Lan Houses dotted around the country.
Hacking the Internet!
What do you need to get online in rural Africa?
Find out from Boukary Konaté, from Rising Voices grantee project Segou Village Connection.
Hacking Together Rural Internet
Now that’s the kind of can-do we like to see.
(via fastcompany)
Candy factory, Kabul - Afghanistan, 2007
Wow - I love watching how such commonplace things are made. This is a really beautiful photograph.
A group of entrepreneurs from Ghana have teamed up to create ReelAfrican.com, an online television and movie site similar to Hulu, that will give users high quality access to films and TV shows from the continent. Access will be free, as the site plans to use advertising as a revenue stream. The group is in talks to upload content mainly from Nollywood, and Ghana’s movie industry (also known as “Gollywood“), but films from countries like Kenya and South Africa will be available as well.
“The market that wants to watch these films is in the U.S. We would like to see good content coming out of Africa, (but) there’s no way to watch it.” says Victor Mallet, one of the site’s investors.[Variety]
With African filmmakers fighting piracy tooth and nail, this new site seems like the perfect antidote to rampant bootlegging that does more to hurt the various african film industries than help it. The site is set to launch this Fall and has plans to expand into Europe and the Caribbean soon after. Read more here.
Fantastic! Best of luck!
Pul-I-Khumri, Afghanistan, 1992
Great picture - love the light at the time of day (and those melons look delicious).
(Source: blogs.hbr.org, via invest2innovate)
