“On a typical weekend these guys head to the boat club to board a private speedboat or jetboat to Ilhasa,” said Michael (not his real name), a regular at the house of the Nigerian high-society figure, referring to an exclusive beach known as Millionaires’ Playground, an hour away from the polluted lagoons of the commercial hub. “There’ll be girls in bikinis playing volleyball, barbecues and parties all night.

“On the right Saturday, you can bump into [Africa's richest billionaire, commodities trader Aliko] Dangote having a beach party at Ilhasa. If you’re a so-called big boy in Lagos and you don’t have a beachhouse, you’re kind of whack,” Michael concluded, sipping a Hennessey on the rocks inside an exclusive Lagos club.

Welcome to the charmed lives of a tiny elite that make up the super-rich across Africa. While millions live in crushing poverty, breakneck growth across the continent has expanded wealth beyond the traditional circle of government workers – for a lucky minority. This is the market the makers of Porsche hope to tap into, choosing to open its latest showroom on the continent – the first was in South Africa – in Nigeria. In an ultra-modern glass and steel building, the auto maker unveiled its latest Carrera and 911 models. “It’s the sports car that can still be used everyday,” Africa Porsche director George Willis said.

About 200 Nigerians own the luxury cars, each costing up to $180,000, brand manager Michael Wagner said. Porsche’s 4×4 Cayenne is by far the most popular model imported into Africa, suitable for still poor roads. In Nigeria, there are plans for a Porsche racetrack and a Porsche club “where people get together and compare, and go out on drives together”, Wagner said, shortly after officials revved the latest Carrera model for reporters and thrilled onlookers, some posing for photographs in front of the gleaming black car. In the sticky heat outside, an employee said owning one of the personalised Porsches he was washing would be “a dream. But I only earn $120 a month,” he shrugged.

While Victoria Island is home to some of the planet’s most expensive real estate, most of Nigeria’s Porsche sales will come from Abuja, the makers believe. In the moneyed capital city, where wedding-cake mansions overlook smooth cloverleaf highways, wealth is a more conspicuous status symbol.

“There’s a big market here. For example, I have a Bentley, a Porsche and a Ferrari, so I can easily buy another brand-new one,” said one businessman from Abuja who sponsors golf tournaments as a hobby. But he added: “People don’t travel by road anymore, they go by air. So the Ferrari in the garage hasn’t done 500 miles in three years.”

Others brands are also clawing out a slice of the super-rich pie in Abuja. Government fat cats and a new breed of young entrepreneurs flock to the boutique of the designer Chris Aire, a Nigerian who is based in the US. The “king of bling” designs for the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Angelina Jolie, and opened his first boutique in Africa in December.

Expensive spas compete to offer facials that smother pure gold leaf on customers’ faces, and gleaming malls are popular with affluent shoppers. There are other signs of the super-rich, even as Africa’s inequality gap yawns. Porsche is already planning a showroom in the Angolan capital, Luanda, similarly awash with petrodollars and ranked the world’s most expensive city 10 years after coming out of a 27-year civil conflict.

Over in the Ivory Coast city of Abidjan, once nicknamed the “Paris of Africa”, billboards advertise French perfumes and Rolex watches. The city is home to a glass-front luxury brand-only boutique, Zino’s. “Ninety per cent of our customers can walk in and spend $35,000 in one visit without thinking about it,” store director Jean Miguel Darde said.

While a top-end market is growing fast in Africa, Asia and the Gulf states still account for the lion’s share of Porsche sales. In Nigeria at least, the road ahead won’t be without bumps.

“Young guys with money need cars they can drive every day to show them off. There are cars that can survive potholes and there are cars that can survive potholes in Lagos,” said a Nigerian oil worker. “Porsche are going to have to adapt to Nigerian terrain, the same way as Mercedes did [by marketing more off-road vehicles].”

Shopping abroad remains the ultimate social status badge for many. Maddie, 33, from Abuja, who runs a boutique in between having gold-leaf facial treatments, said Dubai was fast edging out European capitals as the destination of choice. “I travel every two months but I couldn’t cope with going to London with my two children alone when both their nannies’ visas run out. They don’t need visas to go to Dubai, so it’s easier,” she said.

Still, luxury brand retailers are likely to flourish in a country where wealth is traditionally seen as a benefit to the community. “If we didn’t have such terrible leaders only concerned with buying themselves things, everyone in Africa would be rich enough to buy designer clothes for themselves and all their friends,” said Christina Akinjola, an unemployed secretary, as she stocked up on fake Chanel bags in the car park of a Lagos mall.
Culled from the Guardian

Lorem, 21, is an orphan from a South Sudanese village with no electricity. His parents never went to school, and he grew up without adult supervision in a refugee camp. Now he’s a freshman at Yale University.

All around the world, remarkable young men and women are on edge because today they finally hear of admissions decisions from Yale and a number of other highly competitive universities. So a word of encouragement: No one ever faced longer odds than Paul Lorem, and he made it.

“How I got to Yale was pure luck, combined with lots of people helping me,” Lorem told me as we sat in a book-lined study on the Yale campus. “I had a lot of friends who maybe had almost the same ability as me, but, due to reasons I don’t really understand, they just couldn’t make it through. If there’s one thing I wish, it’s that they had more opportunity to get education.”

Lorem’s family comes from a line of cattle-herders in the southeastern part of South Sudan. The area is remote. Villagers live in thatch-roof huts, and there is no functioning school or health clinic. The nearest paved road is several days’ walk away.

As Lorem was growing up, the region was engulfed in civil war, and, at age 5, he nearly died of tuberculosis. In hope of saving his life, his parents dropped him off at the Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya. They returned to their village and later died, and Lorem was raised in the camp by other refugee boys who were only a bit older.

Boys raising boys might seem a recipe for Lord-of-the-Flies chaos, but these teenagers forced Lorem to go to school, seeing education as an escalator to a better life. And Lorem began to soar.

His class sometimes consisted of 300 pupils meeting under a tree, and Lorem didn’t have his own notebooks or pencils or schoolbooks, but he practiced letters by writing in the dust. His friends died of war, disease and banditry, but he devoured the contents of a tiny refugee camp library set up by a Lutheran aid group.

Teachers took increasing pride in their brilliant student and arranged for Lorem to leave the refugee camp and transfer to a Kenyan school for seventh and eighth grades. That way he could compete in nationwide exams and perhaps get into high school.

Just one problem: those exams were partly in Swahili, a language that Lorem did not speak. But he poured himself into his schoolwork, and classmates helped him. Lorem ended up earning the second highest mark in that entire region of Kenya.

That led to a scholarship to a top boarding school near the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and then to the African Leadership Academy in South Africa. On his school vacation between junior and senior year of high school, Lorem undertook an epic journey across Africa to his native village. Then he guided his younger brother and sister to the refugee camp where he grew up so that they, too, could get an education.

Lorem loves Yale, but, academically, it has been a tough transition, partly because English is Lorem’s fifth language (he also speaks Didinga, Toposa, Arabic and Swahili). Jeffrey Brenzel, the Yale admissions director, puts it this way: “On the one hand, these adjustments are greater for him than for many, but, on the other hand, he has already overcome far greater challenges than other students have just to get here.”

The vast majority of children in poor countries never enjoy such opportunities. The United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal of all children completing primary school by 2015 will almost certainly be missed. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain is calling for the creation of a Global Fund for Education to help meet the goal, and I hope the United States backs the initiative.

Lorem plans to return to South Sudan after graduation to help rebuild his country. As I interviewed him in the tranquility of Yale, he choked with tears as he recalled the many people who had helped him: the boys in the camp who looked after him; the German nun, Sister Luise Radleimer Agonia, who enveloped him in love and helped pay his school fees; the bus driver in Juba, South Sudan, who put Lorem up in his shack for weeks while he struggled to get a passport to travel to Yale.

Education is the grandest accelerant for human potential. So congratulations to Lorem as well as to college applicants who receive great news today — and let’s work to help all those other Paul Lorems out there, at home and abroad, step onto the education escalator.

Paul Lorem epitomizes a blunt truth about the world: talent is universal, but opportunity is not.

Lorem, 21, is an orphan from a South Sudanese village with no electricity. His parents never went to school, and he grew up without adult supervision in a refugee camp. Now he’s a freshman at Yale University.

All around the world, remarkable young men and women are on edge because today they finally hear of admissions decisions from Yale and a number of other highly competitive universities. So a word of encouragement: No one ever faced longer odds than Paul Lorem, and he made it.

“How I got to Yale was pure luck, combined with lots of people helping me,” Lorem told me as we sat in a book-lined study on the Yale campus. “I had a lot of friends who maybe had almost the same ability as me, but, due to reasons I don’t really understand, they just couldn’t make it through. If there’s one thing I wish, it’s that they had more opportunity to get education.”

Lorem’s family comes from a line of cattle-herders in the southeastern part of South Sudan. The area is remote. Villagers live in thatch-roof huts, and there is no functioning school or health clinic. The nearest paved road is several days’ walk away.

As Lorem was growing up, the region was engulfed in civil war, and, at age 5, he nearly died of tuberculosis. In hope of saving his life, his parents dropped him off at the Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya. They returned to their village and later died, and Lorem was raised in the camp by other refugee boys who were only a bit older.

Boys raising boys might seem a recipe for Lord-of-the-Flies chaos, but these teenagers forced Lorem to go to school, seeing education as an escalator to a better life. And Lorem began to soar.

His class sometimes consisted of 300 pupils meeting under a tree, and Lorem didn’t have his own notebooks or pencils or schoolbooks, but he practiced letters by writing in the dust. His friends died of war, disease and banditry, but he devoured the contents of a tiny refugee camp library set up by a Lutheran aid group.

Teachers took increasing pride in their brilliant student and arranged for Lorem to leave the refugee camp and transfer to a Kenyan school for seventh and eighth grades. That way he could compete in nationwide exams and perhaps get into high school.

Just one problem: those exams were partly in Swahili, a language that Lorem did not speak. But he poured himself into his schoolwork, and classmates helped him. Lorem ended up earning the second highest mark in that entire region of Kenya.

That led to a scholarship to a top boarding school near the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and then to the African Leadership Academy in South Africa. On his school vacation between junior and senior year of high school, Lorem undertook an epic journey across Africa to his native village. Then he guided his younger brother and sister to the refugee camp where he grew up so that they, too, could get an education.

Lorem loves Yale, but, academically, it has been a tough transition, partly because English is Lorem’s fifth language (he also speaks Didinga, Toposa, Arabic and Swahili). Jeffrey Brenzel, the Yale admissions director, puts it this way: “On the one hand, these adjustments are greater for him than for many, but, on the other hand, he has already overcome far greater challenges than other students have just to get here.”

The vast majority of children in poor countries never enjoy such opportunities. The United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal of all children completing primary school by 2015 will almost certainly be missed. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain is calling for the creation of a Global Fund for Education to help meet the goal, and I hope the United States backs the initiative.

Lorem plans to return to South Sudan after graduation to help rebuild his country. As I interviewed him in the tranquility of Yale, he choked with tears as he recalled the many people who had helped him: the boys in the camp who looked after him; the German nun, Sister Luise Radleimer Agonia, who enveloped him in love and helped pay his school fees; the bus driver in Juba, South Sudan, who put Lorem up in his shack for weeks while he struggled to get a passport to travel to Yale.

Education is the grandest accelerant for human potential. So congratulations to Lorem as well as to college applicants who receive great news today — and let’s work to help all those other Paul Lorems out there, at home and abroad, step onto the education escalator.

•
Nicholas Kristof

For many of us, especially the older or aging generation, we cannot but recall a time when we assumed Nigeria was on her way to greatness, and standing shoulder to shoulder with the developed/developing countries of South America, Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. It might be difficult for the younger generation to imagine, but believe me: there was a time when the Nigerian landscape was awash with rabble-rousers and gadflies, intellectual giants, and world class social scientists and all manner of men and women who made the country and the world a better place. It was nice and glorious being a Nigerian.

Hyperbolism is not my intention here. And neither is it my aim to romanticise the Nigeria of my childhood. Of course, there were difficult and challenging times, i.e. the extralegal sacking of governments, violent conflicts of different stripes and the resulting political instability which made continuity and accountability difficult. Many events from that era continue to be a blot on our nation’s conscience. And so also were the mistakes of the post-war years. But the problems and challenges of those years cannot be compared to the rut and rot of the last three decades. Everywhere you looked, and with whatever lens or vantage point you look at today’s Nigeria, you cannot but wonder what befell her.

A country that was once celebrated around the world has become a monumental failure! It failed the international community. But far more than anything else, it failed the citizens (of Nigeria) to whom government should be responsible and accountable to. In today’s Nigeria, you feel the presence of government only when government is about to or is actually abusing its citizens. You feel the tentacles of government only when government is about to make mockery of the rule of law. You feel the presence of government only when government functionaries are about to misappropriate public funds. And you feel the presence of government only when government is about to commit war crimes. These and many other deranged acts are what the current and many past governments have generally excelled in (at both the local, state and national levels).

The government is really never there when you truly need her to be present and to perform her social, economic, political and constitutional functions. Of the over 140 million Nigerians, how many enjoy unfettered access to clean water, nutritious food, quality education and quality medical care, and to personal security and a clean and healthy ecology? In spite of the billions of dollars that have been allocated for the aforelisted functions and services, millions of Nigerians, on a daily basis, provide their own water, electricity, security and many other services government does not or poorly provides. In December 2010, the then Minister of Water Resources, Obadiah Ando, lamented that no fewer than 70 million people in Nigeria lacked access to safe drinking water. According to a United States State Department report, Nigeria spent US$2.1m on water supply and sanitation in 2009, yet the bulk of the people have no potable water to drink. Similarly, most of the national population have no access to adequate sanitation. Essentially, therefore, millions of Nigerians have, unwittingly, become micro-governments and or micro-nations.

A sizeable number of the homes in the big cities have boreholes and generators. Has anyone, or even the government, thought about the adverse effects of the hazardous smoke and fumes that emanate from these generators and from drinking unpurified water? In the foreseeable future, health problems, such as asthma, lung diseases and other forms of cancer may ravage the Nigerian society. How would a country without a single first-rate hospital and medical centre cope with such contagious waves? Obviously, danger looms!

If you are surrounded by poverty, you may not know how poor you are. If you are surrounded by hopelessness, you may not be aware of how dire your situation is. And in an environment where superstition, fatalism and preliterate conditions abound, not many are aware of how vastly underdeveloped Nigeria is. And many also do not know that they have the inalienable right to complain and to do something tangible about their sorry situation. Nigerians need not turn the other cheek. No! They should rise up against this or any government that consigns them to a lifetime of grief and destitution. There is just too much suffering in Nigeria. Unimaginable suffering, in some areas!

It is in times like these that I miss and remember that great African poet and prophet, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Nigeria has become those things he sang and talked about: vagabonds in power, thieves everywhere; the weakening of institutions; the abuse of state power; and a succession of governments that roam without direction and vision. People are suffering and dying everywhere you look. It doesn’t make sense. With all the resources at our disposal, it doesn’t make sense to have all these tragedies and human calamities. It simply doesn’t make sense!

Woodrow Wilson it was who said, “The State exits for the sake of Society, not Society for the sake of the State.” In Nigeria, it is the other way round. We have a country where government neither governs nor represents. Instead, it represents the interests and the aspirations of the very few. Nigerians, therefore, must be courageous enough to criticise and denounce, proffer alternative viable options and courses of action; and whenever possible, get rid of non-representative and non-governing governments. It is true that government cannot do it all – and we must not expect government to do it all. But really, what has the Nigerian government done for the people since the days of the late Sani Abacha until the present period? What?

Culled from the Punch Newspapers

How I happened to be thinking about her is that I was commenting on someone’s post and left a quote by Maya. After I did so, I thought about how often I use her quotes be it in a post of mine, in a comment or as a thought for the day to share with friends.

Because of her life experiences, she gained incredible insights on oh-so-many topics. Because she honed her skills as a writer, she is able to convey her thoughts in powerful messages.

Maya paints word pictures that speak to us. If we would follow her advice, we would, I believe, have a greater appreciation for our lives and would know what to do to make them better.

Enough of my comments. Enjoy reading these quotes from a word weaver extraordinaire.

1. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

2. Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

3. Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

4. You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

5. One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

6. My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry, to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

7. Love is that condition of the human spirit so profound that it empowers us to develop courage, to trust that courage and build bridges with it, to trust those bridges and cross over them so we can attempt to reach each other.

8. Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.

9. If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.

10. The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

11. If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

12. We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, bur rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

13. Nothing will work unless you do.

14. Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

15. The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

16. I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

17. When you learn, teach, when you get, give.

18. While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.

19. Nothing can dim the light that shines from within.

20. I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life. I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same thing as making a “life.” I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands, you need to be able to throw something back. I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

In closing, my wish for you is that your mission is as Maya Angelou’s:

21. My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

Are you a fan of Maya’s?

Which quote speaks to you?

Do you have a favorite to add to the collection?
Culled from Janet Callaway(The Natural Networker)

The election saw the president of Benin Republic, Mr Thomas Yayi Boni emerging chairman for the next year, as he took over from the president of Equatorial Guinea, Mr Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, who graced the occassion was among the first speakers at the new AU headquarters.

The new AU headquarters was financed and built by China, an African trade partner.

Mrs. Ojo Akijide, a Nigerian business woman reiterates’ the difficult position of women in the fight against corruption but reaffirms the positive contribution of women in the fight against the ugly menace. She clearly states that a key step will be the involvement of more women who are educated, equipped and supported with necessary resources. Besides women are not as materialistic as men, hence the desire to embezzle public funds running into billions of Nigeria currency is difficult.

As N’Dour made clear as he announced his candidacy for President on his own TV channel on Monday, he views as a real problem attempts by the elderly incumbent, 85-year-old President Abdoulaye Wade, to stay in power. Under Senegal’s constitution, Wade is not allowed to serve a third term. Wade argues, however, that he should be allowed to stay on as President as the constitution did not exist in its current form when he was first elected. When Wade tried to change the electoral rules in his favor last June, riots swept Dakar in which 100 people were injured. The violence was the culmination of years of frustration, said N’Dour during his announcement on Monday. “For a long time, men and women have demonstrated their optimism, dreaming of a new Senegal. They have, in various ways, called for my candidacy in the February presidential race. I listened. I heard.”

Culled from Time Magazine

Her determination to bring about a change has pushed her beyond limits she never imagined, despite continued opposition to her work in the home front. To her any form of opposition is in principle because those who oppose her work are directly responsible for the destruction of the environment, privatizing the forest, public lands and disrespecting human rights.

As an environmentalist the first thing is to ensure that the right thing is done to protect the environment. This gave birth to the planting of trees several years ago. Some of the reasons, at the time was the reelection of her husband into public office. The realization of the huge problem Africa will face if its environment is not protected. There is no doubt that the resources available to the continent have made it susptible to conflicts, as access to the resources and its distribution continues to be a problem. Another reason is the attraction people from outside the continent have to the existing resources, resulting in exploitation quite often at the expense of the African people.

After the colonial period many African leaders changed positions with the colonial masters so Africa ended up with leaders who instead of exploiting the resources to the benefit of the people rather exploited the resources to their benefit accumulating resources quite often excluding large numbers of Africans either because of their ethnicity or political affiliations resulting in conflicts that have caused damage to the economies of the continent.

Her message, which the Norwegian Noble Committee recognized is that Africa, has a lot of resources, a rich continent that must use its resources to the benefit of its people. Africa has to ignore the system of governance to better manage the resources more responsibly and sustain ably for the benefit of Africa, only then would Africa preempt many of the reasons why she and its people are fighting.

Furthermore, Africans should have an obligation to plant trees to help the environment. If each person has a responsibility to plant at least ten trees, the environment is beautified and cooled. This ensures that our planet stays alive.

With the many challenges facing Africa such as poverty, dependence on primary resources is the norm as such majority use energy from the world therefore contributing to the emission of carbon monoxide, making it difficult for poor people to think of tomorrow. They worry more about survival and tomorrow never arises therefore it is the responsibility of the leaders to address the issue. But, a problem arises when leadership trivializes the environment, and then of course the rest of the environment does not care.

Scientists tell us that Africa has not contributed very much to the emission of green gases, nevertheless, because of Africa’s geotropically positioning within the tropics, poor technology in agriculture dependency is on the subsistence level as such agriculture tends to destroy the environment and bring very little yield. Examples are the encroachment of the Congo forest and National forest, because value is not added to the timber, many companies try to access it to sell at give away prices.

Desperate measures are needed within Africa to ensure that Africa appreciates and takes care of its environment. To counteract the negative impact of climate change, better methods must be adopted. Knowledge, skills, more technology and capital are needed.

However if African leaders open their eyes to understand the threat of climate change, a lot can be done to reduce its impact.

If everyone is involved in the planting of trees to protect the forests; investment in alternative sources of energy is a priority. Implementation of these factors will make a lot of capital available to Africa and Africa will follow in the path of fossil fuel and invest in other sources of energy like solar.