Timbuktu Chronicles

From Black Business:Adzigbli "Nana" Ama Comfort, a furniture architect and designer from Ghana, has become famous for her skills and creativity in the field of carpentry - a male dominated industry. Her dad trained her before he died, and now she is the CEO and founder of Namas Decor GH - one of the fastest growing furniture design shops in the world!...[more]

From Stephen McCannA comparison of startup valuations, round sizes, and deal terms globally...[more]

From a16z:

Over at The Travel:West African cuisine is full of bold flavor and plays with ingredients to create healthy and hearty meals, making foodies fall in love with each one...[more]

From Tekedia:

Cyril Azubuine From ioTEA Labwrites:

Jim Ngokwey writing in Fresh Cup:I heard these words during a workshop organized by one of New York City’s major roasters; the instructor said this after I told her that I was importing delicious coffees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (also referred to as DRC or Congo). The instructor thought Congolese coffee was a myth because she would hear people rave about it, she heard whispers about its uniqueness, but she never saw it anywhere. Due to its absence from the market and the fact that, despite studying the industry and having worked in coffee for years, she had never tasted Congolese coffee, it had taken on a mythical status in her mind. As a newcomer to the industry (Mighty Peace Coffee turned 2 in September), I was shocked to hear her say that...[more] View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mighty Peace Coffee (@mightypeacegram) on Aug 28, 2019 at 10:08am PDT

From The Caribbean Export:

Kat Pattillo writes:Advice from veterans for entrepreneurs launching new education nonprofits or companies...[more]

From Tomi Davis:This video covers the journey of angel investors in Africa from your investment thesis through sourcing and doing deals to exits and reviewing the thesis. It's a handy guide on what you need to do as an angel investor on the continent. Please let me know what you think.

From Future Hub:In this episode, we explore a hypothesis – that Chinese tech companies have found success by building for the unique, and often under-penetrated, conditions in the Chinese market. This includes developing distinct business models for a divergent set of consumers in rural and peri-urban markets versus the big cities. And given certain similarities between China’s development and the conditions in African markets, we believe that select business models and lessons from China (especially in comparison to certain Western models and lessons) have merit on the continent...[more]

From the Anzisha prize:

A profile of ColdHubs,Solar Freeze, Youmma, Sparky Dryer,Evaptainersa growing movement is seeking to provide farmers, small businesses, and restaurants with affordable, solar-powered fridges and other alternatives that can drastically reduce food waste, improve profit margins, protect the environment, and combat hunger.

Here are five companies that are ending food waste in Africa and beyond with pioneering technologies...[more]

From Ausso Leadership Academy ALA:

From the African Journal O Laboratory Medicine:Abstract

Background: Diagnostic development for outbreak pathogens has typically followed a disease-specific reactive rather than proactive response. Given the diversity of outbreak pathogens, particularly those prioritised by the World Health Organization Research and Development Blueprint, a more flexible and proactive approach to epidemic preparedness is needed to expand access to critical molecular diagnostic tests in peripheral and resource-constrained deployment settings.

Objective: New and more sustainable directives are needed to spur the development of high-quality products, particularly for epidemics more often found in low- and middle-income countries. To leverage and de-risk the development process, we present the benefits and challenges of an open-source business model for co-development of molecular diagnostic tests for decentralised settings.

Methods: We identify key outbreak pathogens that are available only for testing in high infrastructure laboratories and compare in-country installed base platforms that could be leveraged for menu expansion. Key strengths and challenges for development are highlighted for both platform and assay developers, with discussion of how to leverage and de-risk the process through an open-source development model.

Results: Depending on the specific partner strengths, options for partnership roles are presented. The proposed open-source business model addresses the particular challenges in the detection of outbreak- and epidemic-prone pathogens in low- and middle-income countries, reduces development and deployment risks to support outbreak response, strengthens diagnostic capacity and creates a viable market for product developers.

Conclusion: We hope this model for a collaborative and open-source approach for molecular diagnostics serves to encourage stakeholders to consider co-development partnerships to improve outbreak preparedness and epidemic/pandemic response...[more]

From the Smithsonian:Abalone, a large sea snail native to the Western Cape, is a popular local delicacy. To meet demand, the seafood industry created abalone farms which gross $50 million annually.

From A Growing Culture: Growing up on his family farm, John and his 11 siblings helped his parents with a variety of tasks. Typical days included plowing, planting, and tending to the livestock. John’s favorite activity was heading down to the marsh with his father and uncle. Here, they fished using traditional spears and baskets, catching mudfish and other varieties. However, the spears were too dangerous for a young boy, so John would watch from the shore. Always curious, he often wondered how the fish fed themselves in the muddy marshes (he was used to feeding the livestock his family kept). As he grew older, his questions increased. He began to wonder: Could he create his own fish meal and raise fish on his property? Once he was old enough, he began experimenting to find out.

THE INNOVATION: After some trial and error, John successfully developed a fish meal formula. He combines a variety of dried plants and herbs–including spinach, amaranth leaves and seeds, and sukuma wiki (hearty greens such as kale and collard greens). Then, he mixes in cow dung, packages it in sacks, and throws it into his pond for the fish to feed on. Although the fish grow slowly on this fish meal, they are healthy and as tasty as the lake fish...[more]

From African Business:Kenya has introduced its first licensed investment fund for citizens living overseas, in a move that is expected to channel more of the diaspora’s money into development projects across the country...[more]

From Applied Physics Reviews:ABSTRACT

Computers have undergone tremendous improvements in performance over the last 60 years, but those improvements have significantly slowed down over the last decade, owing to fundamental limits in the underlying computing primitives. However, the generation of data and demand for computing are increasing exponentially with time. Thus, there is a critical need to invent new computing primitives, both hardware and algorithms, to keep up with the computing demands. The brain is a natural computer that outperforms our best computers in solving certain problems, such as instantly identifying faces or understanding natural language. This realization has led to a flurry of research into neuromorphic or brain-inspired computing that has shown promise for enhanced computing capabilities. This review points to the important primitives of a brain-inspired computer that could drive another decade-long wave of computer engineering...[more]

From TruHitz Multimedia: