Dear Reader,

Greetings. It has been a stimulating exercise to edit and compile this issue with its searchlight trained on the present economic situation in Africa and neighbouring countries. One of the stories in this issue touches, with a sense of grave concern, the issue of the human and social cost of the global crisis and points out that unemployment in Africa could increase by more than ten percent and the number of the working poor and vulnerable workers could reach unprecedented levels. The ADB (African Development Bank) in its first 2010 edition of the Journal of Globalisation and Development has made several good recommendations to reinvigorate the continent's growth and sustain some of its recent economic achievements. Among the suggestions made is that Indian companies should look at Africa for business opportunities. In order to promote India's trade and investment relations with Africa, Exim Bank has in place various financial and promotional programmes. Exim Bank provides Lines of Credit (LOCs) to governments, government agencies, banks and financial institutions in African countries for financing export of projects, goods and services from India. As of today, Exim Bank has 75 lines of credit, covering 46 countries in Africa, with the value of credit amounting to US $ 2.5 billion. Exim Bank also provides information and advisory services and finance for promoting participation of Indian companies in projects in Africa funded by African Development Bank as also the World Bank. In the Country Focus of this issue we have focussed on Zambia. Alongside some grim revelations we have outlined the positive developments in the agriculture sector in Zambia. There is, in the pages of this issue, a heartwarming account of Hussein Saliman and his family, living in the poorest and most populous neighbourhoods of Cairo, who emerged as an example of a family using clean energy in the household. Soliman ventured into clean energy in 2008 when he joined Solar CITIES (Connecting Community Catalysts and Integrating Technologies for Industrial Ecology Systems), a development initiatives spearheaded by U.S urban planner Thomas Culhane. The project leverages local experience and innovation to develop cheap and robust clean technologies adapted to the rigorous operating environment of Cairo's poorest neighbourhoods. Culhane and his German wife, Sybille, have brought on board as innovators the residents of the low-income neighbourhoods in which they hope to make the greatest impact. The spotlight also falls on Kenya's plans to use clean energy by 2012. The country's government has already earmarked about $6.6 million to bring solar power in far-flung areas of the country where electrical infrastructure remains underdeveloped. Similar rooftop solar projects elsewhere in Africa have demonstrated enormously positive results. With electricity, schoolchildren can be exposed to new things and study longer during the day, and health clinics can acquire badly-needed equipment to improve quality of care. Africa gets top billing at the annual meeting of the rich and powerful in Davos in early 2010. The Africa of old aid-dependent, and with large tracts of the economy controlled by corrupt and capricious governments has not disappeared. But for all the previous false dawns, there is a growing belief that the continent home to 53 countries, a rapidly urbanising young population of a billion people and as much as a third of the world's natural resources is changing writes Neelima Meermira in a thought provoking piece on the untapped continent. As always our editorial content is a bid to balance the good and positive with the depressing and alarming aspects of any economy. In this issue, too, you have a fair measure of both.
Wish you happy reading

Satya Swaroop
Managing Editor
satya@newmediacomm.biz