CWB NEWS

CEOs Without Borders inaugurates a 2.0 Mentoring Guide at www.wikilearning.com

Visitors who wish to provide mentors and mentees with useful tips to maximize the success of their mentoring experiences will create the contents of the guide. This initiative follows up on the notorious increase in the number of 2.0 websites (those whose contents are contributed by visitors to the website, such as Wikipedia, Linked-in, Flickr and Wikilearning).

Many mentoring guidelines are available. While using them we first had the idea of putting together the dispersed knowledge and adding our mentor’s experiences. However, the latest meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos raised our awareness of 2.0 websites and their incredible power in knowledge accumulation and dissemination. Thus, we decided to make the guide in 2.0 format, in order for it to be richer in content, more versatile and continuously updated.
TIE-UK has already joined the initiative and we are now working together to make this guide a reference tool for business mentoring.

Stay tuned for the official launch of the guide in future Newsletters!

New collaboration agreements with ESADE Business School in Barcelona

ESADE students have volunteered to assist CEOs leading business cooperation projects in Africa. They will develop projects during the winter semester and travel to Africa during the summer time.

Website updates

New support material for mentors and mentees: Tips on how to make the most of a mentoring experience & everything you need to know about the business environment in Ghana.

Field News & Essential Readings

Nov-Dec 2007

The Globalization Index 2007

Foreign Policy  

Oct 20, 2007

Sub-Saharan Africa: Regional Economic Outlook

International Monetary Fund

Oct 18, 2007

The Digital Gap, More than a click to put Africa online

The Economist  

Oct 12, 2007

Indian Microfinance is attracting big business

Financial Times  

Oct 10, 2007

Tackling poverty a priority for Zoellick

Financial Times  

Sep 5, 2007

View of the day: Growth in Africa Financial Times  

Winter 2007

Molding the Middle Class Expanding, Kenya's Middle Class to Promote Growth

Harvard International Review

2007 Corporate Citizenship and Philanthropy Special Report

Financial Times  

Solutions for the World's Biggest Problems

Copenhagen Business School (November 2007)  

SUPPORT CWB

• We need contacts with individuals & companies who would like to promote a REVOLUTIONARY PROJECT: frozen ready-to-eat fruit pieces produced in less developed countries for export to Euorpe and the USA. Contact us for further details.

• FUNDRAISING CONTACTS: We are looking for new ways to sustain the activity of CEOs Without Borders. If you know an expert fundraiser that can help and/or contacts with corporations that might be interested in promoting CEOs Without Borders, put them in contact with us!

• INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITY in Communication and Marketing: Help us market CWB to the business community in Europe, the USA and Africa. Tasks: writing and editing, doing research and interviewing. Hours/days negotiable. We accept applicants from all over the world. English proficiency and experience required.

• Help us find MENTORS in:
  • Plastic and natural hair braids manufacture: Paulina Williams (Ghana) has been exporting to USA, Canada, and Europe during the last decade and is now facing strong competition from China.
  • Fruit Juice Manufacture: Leticia Osafo-Ado, Business Woman of the Year 2006, beginning the manufacture of fruit juice. Seeking know-how and a partner to begin exports.
  • Hotel Management: Lankesha Ponnamperuma is manager at the Coconut Beach Resort in Ghana. He is seeking support to jump from micro to macro management.

Profile of the month: Mo Ibrahim

Mohamed "Mo" Ibrahim (1946) is a Sudanese entrepreneur holding a PhD from the University of Birmingham in Mobile Communications. He rejects the notion of Africa as a lost continent and highlights in each interview the business opportunities of the continent, where he says the highest rates of growth are possible.

He is the founder of Celtel, a mobile communications spin off company he sold to Kuwaiti MTC for US$3.4bn in 2005. Celtel is an African success story: It began operating in 1998, and today covers more than 15 African countries. By the end of 2006 Celtel had 16.87 million active consumers and revenues of USD 2.05 billion. This is not a big piece of the pie compared to other telecommunication companies in Europe and USA, but it is adding 100,000 new customers each week on average. Current levels of mobile users in Africa are around 6% and expected to reach 20% by 2010. Use of mobile phones is concentrated in urban areas, but connecting to rural areas now too. See how Africans are using mobile communications at Mobiles are catapulting rural Africa, New York Times.

Ibrahim created the Mo Ibrahim Foundation which published the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, a comprehensive  measure of governance in 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. In October 2006, the Foundation launched the Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, the largest yearly prize in the world given to the sub-Saharan African leader who “surmount(s) the development challenges of their countries, improving the livelihoods and welfare of their people and consolidating the foundation for sustainable development.” The winner is selected from leaders who have left office during the previous three years. The prize is US$5 million over 10 years and US$200,000 annually for life thereafter. Also, US$200,000 a year is provided for 10 years towards the winner’s public interest activities and good causes. This prize is set up to encourage sub-Saharan African leaders to do the most for their countries. The first recipient of the prize was former president of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano, last October 22, 2007.

Link of the month: World Resources Institute (WRI)

WRI is an American think-tank founded 25 years ago to focus on environmental issues. Since then it has outgrown its initial emphasis to encompass a mission that includes practical ways to protect the earth and improve people's lives. WRI has recently launched www.NextBillion.net, a knowledge repository and a space for discussion and networking for those interested in the search of profitable solutions for the Bottom or Base of the Pyramid (BOP). Traditional approaches to poverty imply providing public service(healthcare, education, etc.). Market-based approaches consider poor markets as markets that are able to pay for services that are appropriately designed for their financials. The BOP is comprised of people with incomes below $3,000 in local purchasing power – less than US$3.35 a day- living in informal economies and underserved markets in developing countries. www.NextBillion.net features blogging, newsrooms, an activity database, events calendar, and a resource area.

In www.NextBillion.net you can find the core publication, “The Next 4 Billion: Market size and business strategy at the base of the pyramid,” by the WRI and the International Finance Corporation (World Bank). This publication attempts to analyze BOP markets at the national level for the first time. It estimates the BOP to be a $5 trillion global consumer market, analyzing the size of each market by geography (largest, by far being Asia), national composition (rural/urban & higher/lower income levels concentration depending on the country) and market by sector (dominated by food, energy and housing). It describes raising business interest in these markets -- with successful enterprises being which have re-imaged the business to focus on BOP (for example, micro-finance and low cost remittance); added value locally (involving local agents), enabled access (for example, one-use packaging) and founded new partners (NGOs, governments, etc).

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