African Soccer - My Missing Memories

I wonder why I woke up this morning with the feeling that I was missing something.

By the time I was getting through breakfast, the name of Emmanuel Maradas popped up in my head.

Mr. Maradas is a FIFA Media heavyweight these days, but in his former job he was the editor of the now rested African Soccer Magazine.

The only relic of that by-gone era is this link to what used to be the website.

What I am missing is the collection of that Magazine that I built up from my under graduate days at Ife. I hope it's still where I left it in the store at my parent's home in Nigeria. The only thing is I really doubt it.

I'm looking for anyone who is willing to part with old issues of African Soccer Magazine - please leave a comment here if you know of any.

Kofi Annan On the Record

So what is it with Africa? Yeah. I posed this question in Rwanda after the genocide: what is it in our society that makes us periodically turn on each other? Not only do we turn on each other, but then we blame the outside. I say this is a cancer from within that we need to fix.
...I was criticized for it. But it is a fact. It's good to have the support of the international community and all that. But the root of the problem is here. We know what the problem is; we know what needs to be done.

- Newsweek Interview, Feb 18, 2008 Issue

Beautiful Female Bankers as Endangered Species

I just came across the story below on the Reuters Wire.

My first reaction was to ask when it became a crime for a female banker to be good looking and attractive.
A quick visit to the homepages of all Nigerian bank Websites however revealed that 18 of the 25, ( that's a good 70% plus) prominently displayed such beautiful women. Will the Senate President's 'order' also have an effect on this aspect of Bank's marketing efforts too?

Nigerian banks told to stop using women to lure clients
Thu 13 Sep 2007, 8:41 GMT

ABUJA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Nigerian banks must stop using attractive women to persuade customers to open accounts, Senate President David Mark was quoted as saying in Thursday's newspapers.
Mark said that despite a consolidation of the sector in 2005 that reduced the number of banks to 25 from 89 and was supposed to make them more efficient, many banks still used women to attract new business.

"Banks have made it a policy to employ beautiful ladies and give them targets to meet," Mark said during the inauguration of the new Senate committee on banking and insurance on Wednesday.

"This is unacceptable and must stop. You ordered the consolidation, so I think you must do something to stop it," he said, addressing officials of the central bank.

"We thought that with the consolidation in the banking sector, the banks will have enough money and capacity to get customers. Why is it that all these girls are now moving around hustling as if they are looking for something other than money?"

The consolidation, triggered by the central bank's decision to raise the minimum capital base for banks twelvefold, has been hailed by the Nigerian government as one of the major successes of a broader programme of economic reforms.

Banking stocks have boomed on the Lagos stock market since the consolidation, but analysts say many of the banks remain weak because they are reliant on deposits from government agencies and do little retail business.

Photo Credit : www.ecobank.com

I Hope that Someone gets my Message in a Bottle

The heading of this post has come about largely because a song of that title by 'born again' music band-The Police, has been ringing in my head all day. I've even had to download the song on to my mp3 player this evening and I've been inflicting its sounds repeatedly on my eardrums.

But before I caught the 'message in a bottle' bug, I read an article in today's Lagos BusinessDay that brought back the memories of an idea that might lead to other concrete answers to Africa's power situation.

In the article, Funmi Omogbenigun of the telecommunications company MTN was reported to have said that they had spent 12billion Naira on Generators and the diesel that fuels them over the last year. Vast amounts you might say, especially if you multiply that by the four Big Telcos in Nigeria. The scale of these sums become more boggling when seen on a continental scale. It is without question that Africa is Mobile Telephony's remaining Klondike Gold Rush territory and the MTNs of this world are jostling for every inch of space.

But back to the idea I spoke of earlier on. A certain Big Brother of mine once suggested and I agreed with him that a good number of Generators in Nigeria did not operate at full capacity. Many generators in homes and companies generate power that ends up not being fully utilised, yet the power situation across Africa remains dismal.

With companies like MTN running mini Power generating 'subsidiaries', isn't it time that we begin to think about ways of harnessing some of this spare capacities and feeding it into the power gird for distribution. In the first instance, distribution could be channeled to the immediate areas surrounding the Generators. An incentive for the companies/ homes who own the generators could be in the form of diesel rebates or direct payments for electricity they generate.

These are just my initial thoughts about a 'half-bread being better than none' solution in the interim before he Bretton Woods + Private Finance Initiative on reducing energy poverty comes to stream.

The song is still singing in my head......

I'll send an SOS to the world,

I'll send an SOS to the world,

I hope that someone gets my

I hope that someone gets my

I hope that someone gets my Message in a bottle!