CBC Radio this morning ran a segment on its national program "The Current" that looked at the new Africa and the increasingly questioned concept of the Third World. You can link to the audio clip here (and scroll down for a text overview of the show). This is part of their ongoing "Africa at 50" series. Hopefully this series will at least begin to shift the mindsets of most Canadians who still think about the continent in two automatic modes: abject poverty and wholesale conflict.
Over at the Business News Network (BNN), Africa is increasingly popping up as a topic in its own right. For years, many financial experts or fund managers would come on the network and reveal their complete lack of knowledge about many African countries' economic direction and political trends. There would be no discussion about how major Canadian corporations, including SNC Lavalin, Bombardier, Canadian National Resources, and a whole host of senior and junior miners, were successfully navigating the seemingly impenetrable shoals of doing business across Africa. That is no longer the case. The recent Kinross bid for African-focused Red Back Mining (active in Ghana and Mauritania) put Africa's natural resources in the spotlight for yet another day. Not long ago, the CEO of Emerging Capital Partners was on "After Hours" to discuss another $700 million fund that will only invest in Africa. There is still a long way to go at BNN to educate the hosts, writers, and producers about the best questions to ask when it comes to African topics and stories, but for now they reflect the generalized limited knowledge already prevalent in the public and are learning right along with them.
Over at the Business News Network (BNN), Africa is increasingly popping up as a topic in its own right. For years, many financial experts or fund managers would come on the network and reveal their complete lack of knowledge about many African countries' economic direction and political trends. There would be no discussion about how major Canadian corporations, including SNC Lavalin, Bombardier, Canadian National Resources, and a whole host of senior and junior miners, were successfully navigating the seemingly impenetrable shoals of doing business across Africa. That is no longer the case. The recent Kinross bid for African-focused Red Back Mining (active in Ghana and Mauritania) put Africa's natural resources in the spotlight for yet another day. Not long ago, the CEO of Emerging Capital Partners was on "After Hours" to discuss another $700 million fund that will only invest in Africa. There is still a long way to go at BNN to educate the hosts, writers, and producers about the best questions to ask when it comes to African topics and stories, but for now they reflect the generalized limited knowledge already prevalent in the public and are learning right along with them.
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