Industrial initiatives

This board discusses industrial developments - initiatives that lead to manufacturing companies where African peoples can use their own primary resources to manufacture needed product "in country". The Foundation believes in the "simplistic" approach. If African farmers need tractors they should make their own. Simply put - if a tractor is manufactured in their own two dollar a day economic zone - then the farmer who earns two dollars a day can afford to buy one and have it serviced by mechanics also costing the same. Irrigation pumps fit in there very well too.

Similarly with electricity in rural areas - the west was "electrified" by locally made small generating plants in towns all over the country - the result was affordable power and the large central generating plants came later as the customer base grew. Distributed generation has also the advantage of being more easily made "environmentally friendly" as it is inherently more suited to burn locally collected biomass fuels - not the coal or oil presently powering a large percentage of western generating plants. The more efficient larger plants can come later when the population can afford the power from them - carbon neutral and low cost are important - the rest is not - at least for a start.

The list of potential industrial developments is enormous - we will start specific topics covering those we are involved in already and add more as they come up later. One thing very clear is the difficulties involved in many of these initiatives are in many ways unique - the more discussion and input we get and share to help overcome those difficulties - the better.

Frank