Living The Live of Your Dream.

Life is designed for progression and not stagnation. One of the greatest discoveries you will make in life is this: as you change and improve, things and people will change and improve around you.

As these changes begin to occur, I want you to note that no matter what you want to achieve, your position does not count as much as your disposition. A positive disposition will ultimately guarantee a favourable position.

Postulation by Ralph Waldo Emerson,American Essayist & poet,that''the only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be''.

The Solution To The Global Food Crises.

The Solution to the Global Food Crisis Just Might Come from Nigeria

In one of West Africa's most turbulent countries, HBS alumni entrepreneurs are harnessing the extraordinary power of subsistence farmers.
Can they kick-start a green revolution?Ibrahim Mustapha grows maize in Katsina Fulani, a village of mud-brick houses topped by rusted corrugated roofs in northern Nigeria.
Like millions of farmers in his country, Mustapha is a "smallholder"; he and his family grow their crop on a 1.1-hectare farm, a plot roughly the size of a rugby field. The 50-year-old has been farming this small-scale way all his life, and he's been taken advantage of just about as long.

The Nigerian government, long considered one of the most corrupt on the African continent, had controlled the nation's seed and fertilizer industries for decades. And even though Mustapha and his sons had earned a reputation as hard workers, there was only so much they could produce within a system that left farmers either chronically undersupplied or dealing with bags of fertilizer cut with sand to meet labeled weights. In a given year, Mustapha would be lucky to harvest 1.4 metric tons of maize—one-fifth the yield farmers in Brazil and China can expect. To match their production, he'd need to invest about $500 per hectare. But Mustapha earned only around $600 a year—and that was if the weather cooperated.
In 2012, the weather did not cooperate. That year was among the rainiest on record, flooding more than 2 million hectares in northern Nigeria. Yet that December, Mustapha harvested 4.6 metric tons of maize, about triple his annual average. After saving some for his family and selling the rest, he netted an unimaginable $1,350. "I have plenty of money in my pocket and healthy maize for my family to eat," Mustapha said then. "My children are already looking healthier—I can barely lift my eight-year-old. He's the fattest in the village."
On a continent more likely to evoke save-the-children appeals than thoughts of agricultural innovation, Ibrahim Mustapha is at the vanguard of what could be a green revolution. He belongs to a new farming program called Babban Gona, the brainchild of Kola Masha (MBA 2006) that is aggressively transforming Nigerian subsistence farmers into commercial growers. By harnessing the largely untapped power of smallholders—increasing their yields, rebuilding supply chains, and opening access to economies of scale—Masha believes he is on the way to helping more than a million Nigerian farmers climb out of poverty.

Ibrahim Mustapha's farm tripled its annual harvest last year with help from Kola Masha's innovative franchise model.

It's a revolution that can't come soon enough for Nigeria. The country was once the breadbasket of West Africa until Royal Dutch Shell discovered vast oil reserves in 1958, and the agriculture sector began to wither from neglect. Now, nearly half of Nigerian children under five are undernourished, even as broken supply chains mean that up to a third of produce is wasted. The World Bank esimates that some 22 percent of the nation's 175 million people are unemployed; half of 15- to 24-year-olds in urban areas can't find work. Some are turning to terrorist groups such as Boko Haram, which at least promise something to eat.

Kola Masha

Managing Director,
Doreo Partners
Masha's Babban Gona system turns subsistence farmers into commercial growers using a franchise model that provides everything from seeds to loans.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian population is exploding. "Over the next 20 years, we have to generate 80 million jobs," Masha says. "That's the population of Germany, the world's fourth-largest economy." But endemic corruption has scared off many foreign companies. "Nigeria is a nightmare country. Things just don't seem to work well there," says Nancy Barry (MBA 1975), founder and president of Enterprise Solutions to Poverty, which mobilizes and supports leading companies and entrepreneurs in building profitable and inclusive businesses that incorporate millions of low-income people. "The biggest problem is not just infrastructure, it's government and corruption and trying to get rules that people abide by," adds Ray Goldberg, the George M. Moffett Professor of Agriculture and Business, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School, who conducts research in West Africa. "Because Nigeria itself has been such a frequent violator of so many of these things, people look on it as the most difficult country to change."
And yet, a shift appears under way. A new reformist government has started treating agriculture as a problem to be solved by industry rather than by aid. Private companies are springing up throughout the food chain, from factories that produce fertilizer, to investors like Masha working directly with farmers, to retail-focused suppliers rebuilding local appetite for food grown in their country.

Universal among these agribusiness entrepreneurs is a core belief: The answer to feeding Nigeria—and once that's accomplished, perhaps helping to feed the world—lies in finding ways to transform subsistence farmers into entrepreneurs. The global population is hurtling toward 9 billion by 2050, according to the World Bank, and feeding all those people will require a 70 percent increase in agricultural productivity. The existing system of multinational megafarms won't be enough—the hope for the future lies not in mass production, but in production by the masses.
And that's where Nigeria comes in. With only 40 percent of its arable land currently used by farmers, a more-than-ample water supply, and an exploding youth population that promises a vast supply of labor, there is potential unrivaled almost anywhere else in the world. "The whole country seems to be waking up to the fact that they have more natural resources than many other countries and more opportunities than ever in their history," Goldberg says. "They are ripe for enormous revolution."

In addition to chili peppers, Mustapha's farm grows onions, tomatoes, maize, and sugarcane.

To witness the limits of government intervention, Nigerians once needed to look no further than the state-owned National Fertilizer Company of Nigeria (NAFCON). According to federal estimates, only 11 percent of its subsidized fertilizer reached poor farmers; middlemen skimmed off much of the rest, often to sell to big farmers with deep pockets. The NAFCON factory closed in 1999 and fell into disrepair. It stayed that way until 2005, when Onajite Okoloko (OPM 37, 2008) and a team of investors bought the shuttered plant and got it up and running again. Adopting a local word for "genesis," Okoloko would call his new company Notore Chemical Industries Ltd.
Looking for professional managers two years later, Okoloko contacted Kola Masha, whom he'd met through a mutual friend. Masha had just graduated from HBS and was working at a medical-device company in Massachusetts. Okoloko's call came at the right time. Professionally, Masha was eager to join a start-up; personally, he'd resolved to move closer to his aging parents in Nigeria. At the end of the two-hour phone call, Masha knew he would be returning home.

Ndidi and Mezuo Nwuneli

Cofounders, AACE Food Processing & Distribution Ltd.
In a country where 90 percent of processed food comes from imported ingredients, AACE sources its spices from local growers, reducing costs to consumers while supporting regional farming communities.

In 2007, the two businessmen worked with a group of Nigerian banks to complete the consolidation of a $222 million loan—the largest in Nigeria's history—to rehabilitate the Notore plant. In 2009, a decade after NAFCON went dark, Okoloko brought it back online. "The African Green Revolution has indeed begun," he said at the launch.
From the beginning, Notore focused on Nigeria's smallholder farmers, who use about a tenth of the fertilizer of their peers elsewhere. Because farmers making a dollar or two a day couldn't afford the standard 50-kilogram bags, Notore started packaging the fertilizer in 1- and 10-kilogram sizes, and reinforced the stitching to prevent middlemen from breaking into them. To reach farmers outside the trading areas, Notore trained more than a thousand "Village Promoters," who sold fertilizer and used demonstration plots to establish its efficacy. Most important of all, they showed farmers that Notore and its products could be trusted.
Earning confidence among trading partners is a slow but essential enterprise in professionalizing agriculture, especially in a country like Nigeria where small farmers have historically had so little to depend on. "How do you go from a state of corruption to an orderly market?" says David E. Bell, successor to Ray Goldberg as the Moffett Professor of Agriculture and Business. "I think it has to start with you and me trusting each other. Then we find someone else we can trust, and they find others. Eventually there's an alternative economy of people who trust each other." The Village Promoter program, spearheaded by Masha, grew this way, eventually reaching about 58,000 small farmers. Overall, Notore's products and activities have impacted the lives of more than 14 million farming families and counting.
The six months Masha spent traveling the countryside to set up the Village Promoter program helped him see the scale of the challenges facing Nigerian farmers. The biggest problem wasn't the labor force—he'd never seen anyone work harder—it was a fragmented support system that no one could seem to fix. "The problems facing Nigeria and West Africa are too great for the public sector or traditional NGOs to solve," says Masha. "The private sector can make a much more concerted, long-term effort to address these issues while simultaneously doing what it does every day, which is make money."

Mustapha breaks for lunch near his home.

After leaving Notore in 2010 to set up his own investment group, Doreo Partners, Masha spent a short stint as chief of staff for Nigeria's agriculture minister, Akinwumi Adesina, helping develop a deregulation and investment program, the Agricultural Transformation Agenda, that seeks to create 3.5 million agriculture jobs and add 20 million metric tons of produce to the domestic food supply by 2015. (Adesina says they're already more than halfway to those goals.) In an innovative initiative developed at Notore, and now being studied by Brazil and India, the government has begun delivering subsidy vouchers electronically to more than 10 million farmers, a measure that has increased the amount of fertilizer that makes it to smallholders from 11 percent to 94 percent.

Masha returned to Doreo in late 2011, now able to launch the end-to-end investment he had imagined. He calls Babban Gona—which means "great farm" in the Hausa language of northern Nigeria—an agricultural franchise model, and it works much like a fast-food franchise: Babban Gona trains farmers-franchisees and offers them loans, then delivers seed and fertilizer directly to the farms on credit; district managers track production and dispense advice throughout the season. At harvest, Babban Gona provides transportation and support, including access to tractors that can do in one hour what would take a farmer 10 days to do by hand, and even the sacks, the needle, and the thread to package the maize. Masha's company warehouses the grain at the end of the process, commoditizes it, and sells it to food conglomerates like Nestlé, which uses it to make baby food and breakfast cereal sold in Nigeria and abroad. Babban Gona then pays the farmers via a quarterly dividend payment. The system won the first annualHBS Association of Nigeria New Venture Competition for the West Africa region last year.

Workers at a Nestlé distribution center in Lagos unload maize produced by one of Kola Masha's Babban Gona farms.

But improving farming conditions also required some upfront capital, and because many smallholders don't have clear title to their land—and therefore no collateral—banks are loath to lend them the funds they need. To unlock financing for his initiative, Masha turned to his friend Ladi Balogun (MBA 2000), CEO and group managing director of Nigeria's First City Monument Bank, which loans against measures like warehouse receipts. At the height of the growing season, First City has 9 percent of its $2.7 billion loan book invested in agriculture, compared to a national bank average of 3 percent. "There are millions of farmers that [still] need credit at affordable rates," Balogun says, adding that his bank expects lending to increase 21 percent a year for the next three years.
Here's what all of that looks like in practice: With a $500 input loan, 22-year-old Jamila Josua was able to afford much higher-quality materials for her 1.6-acre farm in the village of Nakala. And just as McDonald's trucks raw food to its franchisees from a distribution center, Babban Gona delivered those inputs directly to Josua's door, including 3 bags of improved seed, 14 bags of fertilizer (much of it from Notore), and 10 liters of herbicide. Because she is one of hundreds of Babban Gona farmers, and the system leverages economies of scale, all of these things come much cheaper.
To help protect Babban Gona's investment, a district manager visits Josua's farm and others in her immediate network, or Trust Group, twice a month (once announced, once not). That person, trained in agronomy and business, dispenses advice on everything from best practices to business ethics, while keeping track of growth rates and other performance measures with a smartphone app. This process also de-risks the loans in the eyes of banks. When the Nigerian government ran a loan program in the 1990s, the partial default rate reached as high as 73 percent. By comparison, 99.5 percent of the loans to Babban Gona farmers were repaid last season.

"Through this whole system, we've been able to demonstrate that we can get farmers a loan 50 percent cheaper than they can get themselves, and inputs that are 19 percent cheaper," says Masha. "We get them the knowledge to increase their yields up to three times the national average, and sell their produce for about 37 percent higher than what they can get themselves."
When Masha takes a moment to think back on what he's accomplished so far, his mind turns to his family's own history. His American mother was raised on a farm in South Dakota. Her father was poor, like most farmers in his community, but by the 1950s his fortunes had been reversed by working with a farming collective. "He had a larger farm, a tractor," Masha says. "He made enough money to send my mom to college."
Babban Gona farmers are beginning to experience similar benefits. Some have been able to buy cars and put new roofs on their homes; one is preparing to buy a tractor for his fellow members to share, another is sending his children to private school. The program is helping a farmer with 2 hectares secure financing to expand to 14—enough to earn him $10,000 a year. "It's been wonderful to see," Masha says.
As Nigeria struggles to crack the problem of feeding itself, boosting production is only half of the solution—the other half is convincing skeptical Nigerian consumers to eat what its farmers grow.
A couple of summers ago, Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli (MBA 1999) saw this dilemma firsthand when she stopped by a small restaurant outside Lagos in southwest Nigeria, not far from the home she shares with her husband, Mezuo Nwuneli (MBA 2003). It was a neighborhood place, and she wanted to know where the chef got ingredients such as produce and chicken. It turned out that they were bought at a nearby market, but actually originated from abroad.
Decades of corruption and haphazard regulations have conditioned consumers to see local food as overpriced and inferior, which it often is. (It's also sometimes dangerous: An estimated 20,000 people died in 2008 from eating produce treated with poisonous chemicals.) As a result, 90 percent of processed food in Nigerian restaurants and supermarkets comes from ingredients grown somewhere else.

Ndidi and Mezuo Nwuneli
Their investment firm is transforming the landscape by supporting small- and medium-sized agricultural enterprises.

Photo by Allison Shelley/Getty

"Changing mindsets among the local populace that 'Made in Nigeria' products, especially food, are high quality and suitable for consumption has proved difficult," says Ndidi. To change people's minds, she and Mezuo have decided to change the marketplace.
In 2009, the couple launched a start-up agribusiness called AACE Food Processing & Distribution Ltd., which buys bulk spices and other ingredients, then processes and packages them to sell to local customers. "Our vision," they say, "is to be the preferred provider of food for West Africans."
Ndidi and Mezuo, both children of university professors, approach the ambitious challenge with a combination of academic rigor and devotion to social justice. At HBS, Ndidi did a field study project with the Center for Women & Enterprise, founded by Andrea Silbert (MBA 1991/MPA 1992)—an experience Ndidi says directly inspired her pre-AACE work launching several Nigerian nonprofits devoted to social entrepreneurship. During his time at HBS, Mezuo served as co-president of the Africa Business Club and worked with the admissions office to develop and implement new strategies for attracting more students from the continent. Both always knew they would ultimately return to their home country to try to address hunger and build Nigerian enterprises.
The couple is using their investment firm, Sahel Capital, to attack the problem in two different ways. The first is through AACE. The second is by managing the new $100 million Fund for Agricultural Financing in Nigeria, a partnership between Adesina's Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and Germany's KfW development bank. Starting this year, the fund will make investments in small- and medium-sized agricultural enterprises that hold great promise. "We have always been driven to transform the landscapes in which we have worked," says Mezuo. In Nigeria today, "there are tremendous opportunities to transform the landscape by supporting smallholder farmers and providing growth capital to agribusiness-focused entrepreneurs."
When the Nwunelis started AACE, they experimented by sourcing their spices from local markets, similar to the one used by the restaurant Ndidi visited. But they soon ran into the same problems faced by other food companies: inconsistent supplies, opaque pricing structures, and mixed quality. But instead of turning to outside suppliers, they turned inward, building relationships directly with smallholder farmers and farmer collectives.
Like Masha and Okoloko of Notore, the Nwunelis believe in the benefit of working to build shared value over the long term. AACE provides groups like the Jaba Ginger Farmers Cooperative Society—which is made up of 3,000 smallholders, more than half of them women—with a trustworthy customer. In return, by sourcing ginger and chili pepper locally, AACE has been able to reduce purchasing costs of the spices by as much as 30 percent, savings it passes on to consumers.

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The Seeds of Agribusiness

In the 1950s, agricultural economics professor Ray Goldberg went to his dean at Harvard Business School to pitch a new kind of conference. For the first time, it would bring together players from all parts of the supply chain—subsistence farmers to multinational conglomerates, seed sellers to supermarket buyers—to share insights and piece together a perspective on the global food system. The resulting executive Agribusiness Seminar, which held its 54th installment in January, now brings to HBS each year more than 200 leaders from places like the Department of Agriculture, the World Bank, Monsanto, ConAgra, and Walmart. They come, Goldberg says, because "this is the only place where these groups can talk to each other."
Another reason people travel from around the world, though Goldberg is too modest to say so, is to learn from a giant of their industry. Goldberg, together with his late HBS colleague John H. Davis, codeveloped the field of agribusiness, teaching the first course on the subject in 1955. At the time, agricultural businesses tended to focus narrowly on their particular jobs, but the professors argued that agricultural was a social, economic and political enterprise, and studying the entire system would lead to better decisions. This magazine named the publication of their 1957 textbook, A Concept of Agribusiness, one of the 20 most-influential milestones in HBS history, and today there are more than 100 agribusiness programs offered at colleges and universities around the world.
Considered HBS's most prolific professor, Goldberg is the author, coauthor, or editor of 23 books, more than 100 articles, and more than 1,000 cases. He has taught nearly 20,000 students MBA students and Executive Education participants. One of his doctoral students, Michael Halse (MBA 1957, DBA 1979), helped lead the White Revolution in India in the 1970s and '80s, replacing an inept state-run dairy system with a farmer's cooperative now called Amul, one of the world's largest producers of milk.
These days, Goldberg has witnessed a resurgence of interest in agricultural entrepreneurship at HBS and elsewhere. "The students have rediscovered food, agriculture, and economic development as something exciting," he says. They've seen that agribusiness doesn't have to be entirely adversarial, but that buyers and sellers along the food chain can benefit from cooperation based on trust. "The world has finally, finally got it," the 87-year-old Goldberg says. "I'm just glad I was here to see it."

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The Nwunelis' system is tapping into a change to the Nigerian consumer base: The middle class of Africa's most populous nation has been growing quickly, now accounting for 23 percent of the population, according to the African Development Bank. "There has to be a big middle class" to support this kind of retail effort, says HBS professor David Bell. "If you have a society where there are only rich people and poor people, the rich people can afford to simply eat imported food, while the lower class lives off the farm."
Tracking the rise of the middle class, AACE started small but has grown quickly. In 2010, its first year up and running, the company sold 6 tons of product, and then more than quadrupled sales the following year. In 2012, a year the company invested in a dedicated processing facility, it sold more than 70 tons, and were on track to source 100 tons from smallholders in 2013. In the future, the systems the Nwunelis are putting into place can be adapted to all sorts of nutritious foods—AACE has added soybeans, maize, and sorghum to its product line—but spices have proven to be an effective proof of concept. It now sells products to customers in 6 of Nigeria's 36 states, including noodle companies, fast-food chains, and more than 30 supermarkets. AACE expects to directly employ 65 people within the next five years, and buy food from 1,000 farmers within the next three.
By systematizing new agricultural pathways that lead all the way to consumers, the Nwunelis hope that AACE will show that outside companies can succeed in Nigeria. Private industry seems to be redoubling efforts to invest in the country, after writing it off as impossible for some time. Cargill, for example, is working with smallholder farmers and investing in a plant to produce sweeteners from cassava, another important crop in the country. In 2012, SABMiller opened a $100 million brewery, its fourth facility in the country. Africa's richest man, Nigerian-born Aliko Dangote, is putting some $80 million into processing factories for fruit and tomatoes, two crops Nigeria produces in abundance yet spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year importing.
If Nigeria hopes to regain its ability to one day become a major exporter, its success will depend on testing its supply chains on the local market. That's how agricultural economies work out the kinks that accompany building up large-scale capacity. "If you look at the economies that have really become agricultural powerhouses, they built that global capacity off of a large internal market," says Masha. "That's how Brazil did it, that's how Thailand did it, that's how the US did it. They were all able to leverage their large internal markets to become major exporters."
It's about 7:30 in the evening in Nigeria, and Kola Masha sounds exhausted. Harvest is shifting into high gear, and he was working until 3:30 that morning, helping Babban Gona farmers stack 100-kilogram sacks of maize in a warehouse. Doreo Partners is still very much a hands-on company, even for its managing director. It's the second week of November, and a tractor-trailer full of maize is arriving every day from about 50 farms within a 20-mile radius. The same thing is happening at Doreo's six other warehouses, and it will continue that way deep into December. Being tired is a good problem to have.
Today, Masha has some particularly good news. As he tallies sacks of maize, he's seeing yields of up to 6.8 metric tons per hectare, which is about five times the national average and eight times the average in this part of the country. It's not yet time to harvest the farm of Ibrahim Mustapha—that smallholder with the chubby eight-year-old—but a yield assessment conducted earlier in the season showed he'll easily exceed 6 tons, which will break last season's record by 30 percent.
In the old way of doing things, Masha and his farmers would be in a simple trading relationship. He would look to get the lowest price from them, while they looked to get the highest price from him—someone wins and someone loses. But farming can't operate that way these days in Africa, says Nancy Barry, former president of Women's World Banking, an organization that has extended microfinancing to more than 20 million low-income entrepreneurs. "In agribusiness," she says, "you have to create win-wins, or it's not going to work." With Babban Gona, Masha believes he has created just that, working with the farmers as partners to bring up yields and increase his supply to customers.
This is something that Masha's biggest customer, Nestlé, has long understood. "In order to get milk locally for its products, Nestlé realized it had to be the one to train the farmers in production, in making sure the milk was safe, in how to manage the business," says Bell. "Nestlé benefited and the farmer benefited." Like Cargill, SABMiller, and other multinational firms, Nestlé—which now works with nearly a million smallholder farmers across West Africa—realizes that the future of meeting the globe's skyrocketing food needs lies in cooperation and a new model of agriculture. "As more and more companies figure out that this is the new capitalism," says Barry, "they'll make the private sector exceedingly well-positioned to make a difference."
But until those forward-thinking multinational giants are the rule rather than the exception, agriculture will need designs like Kola Masha's—ideas that help Ibrahim Mustapha feed his family of six and along the way, potentially pioneer a way to help feed millions.
 

Solution To Poverty And Unemployment In Nigeria- Radical Approach.

Solution to Poverty & Unemployment in Nigeria-A decisive & radical approach
This is from a concerned heart and a patriotic Nigerian.
Fellow Nigerians,
What am about to share with you is the very information that changed my status from that of the unemployed to the being employed/employer and from a poor man who can hardly feed himself to a man who is financially stable and can take good care of his family. So I recommend that you read it properly and apply it right. - Happy reading.
It is no longer news that the number one problem that plagues all categories of people in this country is poverty and unemployment, the media –radio & TV –and everybody talks about it, if you open the newspaper you will get gamut of statistical information about the pandemicity of poverty and unemployment in Nigeria. But am baffled because nobody seems to be offering or talking about the solutions, nobody seems to be coming up with a way out and day-in, day-out the statistics of poverty and unemployment keep increasing with new and fresh graduates that are released into the market every year.
                      WHAT THEN IS THE WAY OUT, WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?
  I know what am about to tell you may be shocking and senseless to you, but I believe you are reading this because you want to get out of poverty cycle, so I plead with you keep reading as you will soon discover the secrets I used to get out of the cycle myself. The solution to poverty and unemployment in Nigeria is for individual to take his/her destiny in his/her own hand, what do I mean by this? –GET INTO THE RIGHT BUSINESS. I know It may sound absurd, as you might have tried a number of businesses that have failed, or heard about those that have failed, or better still you are not business-inclined/ don’t know which business to venture into, have no startup capital…etc. All these reasons seem justifiable but you will notice that I said THE RIGHT BUSINESS, because not all business can get you out of poverty and unemployment, in fact some will even worsen it, and not all business will be compatible with your nature, passion and ego. So what I mean by a right business is that business that will get you out of poverty and unemployment cycle as fast as possible! These are the businesses am taking about: for some of them you don’t need any capital to start as you already have what it takes to start if you can read this article to this stage, for some you need very little capital to start and others you need only….
 TWENTY(20) of these RIGHT BUSINESSES I have fully researched and tested myself and am very sure you will found at least TEN(10) of these you can operate either on part-time or full time basis .for detailed information on these 20 guaranteed business ventures email:paulp3218@gmail.com or call/sms 08033197152.Remember that you are responsible for your decisions, actions and fortunes in life and History will not forgive you for failing to act. ACT NOW!!!
SEE YOU AT THE TOP.

SOLUTION TO POVERTY.

The causes of poverty are manifold. War, disease, famine and unemployment being the big players. What steps can then be taken towards addressing the massive social issue of global poverty that has afflicted humanity for centuries?

1. Employment generation

Carefully and extensively planned employment programs funded by the government can spur growth in jobs. Industries requiring substantial labour forces can also be given significantly larger aid from the government. Focus should be placed on developing companies that offer sustainable and long-term jobs to the community. Companies should also budget sufficiently for employee training and related community programs, so that employees and prospective employees can keep their skills relevant and up-to-date.

2. Drawing on various social institutions to fund poverty fighting programs e.g. charities, research institutions, U.N. , non-profit organizations, universities.

Money funnelled from every organization available adds up to powerful sums that can produce tangible change. When organizations develop an interest, albeit vested, they tend to be more strongly motivated. Organizations that have a concrete goal to achieve with strict project plans are able to efficiently concentrate their efforts into producing change. For this reason charities with numerous middlemen organizations should be discouraged to ensure money reaches those in need. Importance should be given to organizations that follow the teach a man to fish ideology rather than the give the man a fish one, unless in extremely dire emergency circumstances.

3. Transparency in government spending

Where and how a government chooses to spend taxpayers’ money and its own revenue should be visible to the media and the common man. This makes governments accountable for their actions and inaction becomes easier to pinpoint and address. It also discourages corruption in government systems. For example, transparency will be especially beneficial to civilians whose government might be allotting money to its nuclear weapons program instead of to its poverty programs.

4. Cancelling impossible to repay world debts

Many developing countries are trapped in the cycle of constantly repaying debts that are impossible to pay off. This ensures that they never get a chance to develop and become self-sufficient. The priorities of these countries are therefore unnecessarily skewed and the citizens of these debt-ridden nations are devoid of any hope for a better future.

5. Prioritizing programs that target fundamental human rights

Every individual should have access to housing, food, clean water, healthcare and electricity. Technically governments should only move on to other projects after they have made sure that programs that provide these basic amenities to their people are up and running. This might prove to be the hardest step yet.

6. Taxing the rich more and the poor less

Redistribution of wealth will be an imperative step in eradicating poverty. The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Taxing methods need to be tailored to an individual’s financial bracket to ensure that upward social mobility becomes an absolute possibility.

7. Building self-sufficient economies

Creating reduced dependence on oil, external financial aid and imports will help to ensure that alleviation of poverty remains on an upward but permanent curve, as opposed to a temporary revivalist injection in a dying economy. Steps in this area include investment in local infrastructure, transportation and schools that keep the ball of development rolling. Projects to launch new industries and businesses will also need monetary encouragement.

8. Education

As much as poverty is a social condition it is also a mental and psychological cage. With education, impoverished populations are able to visualize their way out of poverty and are able to work towards it in an organized and reliable manner. Education provides training to tomorrow’s workforce and thus fortifies the economy against poverty. Education in rich populations about poverty invokes sentiments of compassion and a sense of responsibility to the misfortunes of the rest of the world. Education also has the power to bring about social changes such as fights against racism and sexism – both conditions that happen to be linked intrinsically with poverty.

9. Involvement of the media

The media has the power to draw the eye of the global conscience to issues of poverty. It becomes too easy to forget the state of the less fortunate when the world is advancing at lightning speed. With effective media coverage of poverty-related catastrophes, the demand for social change rises collectively all over the world.

10. Micro-financing

Micro-financing makes financial services like insurance, savings and loans available to individuals in developing nations who wish to run their own small businesses. These individuals, suffering from lack of employment opportunities and financial backing from governments or banks, are able to create a profitable means of survival through micro-financing. Flourishing small businesses, in turn, create jobs, provide much needed services to their communities and help stimulate the economy for the long run.

Corruption in Africa using Nigeria as a case study

Keywords: Corruption, Leadership, Democracy, Godfather ism  Introduction  It is not disputable that Africa is the poorest continent in the world, and the richest in terms of natural resources. Today the image of this blessed continent is battered by corruption and leadership crisis. Corruption has tragically devastated African societies and made millions of people destitute. The tentacles of corruption has reached everywhere in the African continent. From the offices of presidents and prime ministers to the smallest administration unit of government, corruption is found everywhere. Crucial to this crisis of corruption engulfing the African continent is the problem of purposeful leadership that could act as architect and engineer of progressive change and development.  In Nigeria which this paper focuses on, we see corruption and inept leadership as a fact of life. It has been argued in many fora that the main problem that has bedeviled Nigeria is poor leadership and corruption. These two have been generally identified as the root causes of Nigeria‟s socio-economic and political problems. Nigeria‟s leadership is characterized by such negative features as lack of direction, neglect and drift, fraud and insensitivity to the plight of the citizens. It is no longer news that while the poor in Nigeria are languishing in abject poverty and hunger, squalor, disease and destitution, Nigerian leaders are only after working out strategies on how to enrich and perpetuate themselves in office.  The major problem that the country is facing today is the insincerity and insensitivity of her leaders to the needs of the ordinary people whom they have been elected to serve. Today, at the national, state and local government levels, the Nigerian people have as their leaders a hardcore, small selfish money-minded few individuals who wage political and economic war against the vast masses of exploited and oppressed people. The democracy embraced by Nigerians in 1999 has produced leaders who have blighted the lives of Nigerians who now wallow in poverty, illiteracy, hunger and unemployment. These leaders are corrupt and have criminally mismanaged the country‟s resources.  Corruption and ineffective leadership have impacted negatively on Nigeria‟s democratic stability and her economic development. The Nigerian legislature is a product of political corruption as men and women elected into the two legislative chambers got there through election rigging. 
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Corruption and Leadership: A Conceptual Approach  CORRUPTION: Defining corruption can be, and has been approached in many ways. According to Amuwo (2005) and Obayelu (2007) corruption is the exploitation of public position, resources and power for private gain. In their own conceptualization, Fjeldstad and Isaksen (2008) and Ogundiya (2009) define corruption as “the betrayal of public trust for individual or public gain. Obayelu went further to identify corruption as “efforts to secure wealth or power through illegal means for private gain at public expense; or a misuse of power for private benefit.” Corruption covers a broad spectrum of activities ranging from fraud (theft through misrepresentation), embezzlement (misappropriation of corporate or public funds) to bribery (payments made in order to gain an advantage or to avoid a disadvantage).  Sen (1999) defines corruption or corrupt behavior as “the violation of established rules for personal gains and profit.” From a sociological point of view, Altas (1968) sees corruption as a symptom of dysfunctionality of the relationship between the state and the people, characterized by bribery, extortion and nepotism. From a political point of view, Aiyede (2006) views corruption as “the abuse or misuse of public or governmental power for illegitimate private advantages. His view corroborates that of Lipset and Lenz (2000) assertion that corruption is an effort to secure wealth or power through illegal means for private benefit at public expense. Such an abuse of public power may not necessarily be for one‟s private benefit. It may be for the benefit of one‟s party, class, tribe, or family (Tanzi, 1998).  Corruption as phenomenon is a global problem, and exists in varying degrees in different countries. While it is more prevalent in the developing countries like Nigeria and other African countries, the developed countries experience corruption at a minimal level. The important reason for the minimal level in the developed nations is that the control mechanisms are more developed and effective than in the developing countries. The efficacy of control mechanisms in the advance democracies of the world further accounts for the relative political and democratic stability that these countries enjoy.  LEADERSHIP: Ayodele (2006) defines a leader as “an individual appointed to a job with authority, and accountability to accomplish the goals and objectives of the society.” He asserts that a leader must be a good manager as well as an individual who is able to effectively coordinate the activities of followers or a team towards pre-agreed or pre-defined goal or objectives within the limits of available resources. “A leader must be astute with both man and material. A leader must possess the ability to create in the followers the necessary enthusiasm/motivation to put in every necessary effort to deliver on set goals. Thus the ability not only to conceive but also to communicate a vision or idea is of utmost importance as an attribute of leadership. Above all, a leader must first and foremost be a member of his own team, internalize their feelings and galvanize their potentials towards reaching the goal.” (Ibid)  In his conceptualization of leadership, Eze (2002) posits that “all over the world, leadership is the most important number one factor that determines whether a nation can develop”. He argued further that “a leadership that is free, brave, patriotic, people-oriented, destination-bound; the leadership that understands the psychology of leading and applies it to the development of the people must be at the affairs of men” (Ibid).  Anybody in a position of authority as a leader must provide good leadership for his followers. Leadership has to do with the management of people with clearly defined goals or objectives. “It involves mobilizing and motivating people for greater productivity.” It is the ability to operate effectively through other people making them accept the goals of the leader while the leader still has the freedom to do things their way. According to Ajayi (2004), leadership is one of the essential determinants of development and a core ingredient in organizing, mobilizing and inspiring societal resources for the attainment of goals.  One of the most important things about leadership is the ability to inspire. In other words, a leader is one who can inspire, and instill passion and direction to an individual or group of individuals, using his position to affect that group consciously or subconsciously. A leader is the driver or force behind the progress of the people he is leading.  Leadership Crisis in Nigeria: Issues and Perspectives  In his discussion on leadership, Lee Kuan Yew, the celebrated father of modern Singapore wrote in his book – “From Third World to First: The Singapore Story, 1965 – 2000” “we need good people to have good government. 
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However good the system of government, bad leaders will bring harm to their people. On the other hand, I have seen several societies well governed inspite of poor systems of government, because good, strong leaders were in charge.”  The Nigerian society has never been well governed since independence from the British in 1960 because “good, strong leaders” have never been in charge. The Nigerian state, from the first democratic experiment in 1960 to military regimes and back to democracy as practiced today, has been managed by leaders who are selfish and corrupt. They accumulate wealth at the expense of national development without devotion to the cause of the people. Since independence in 1960, the state has produced leaders who have blighted the lives of Nigerians who now wallow in poverty, illiteracy, hunger and unemployment. The leadership of Nigeria in every government, be it civilian or military, has criminally mismanaged the country‟s affairs and resources. Nigeria‟s political leaders, during electioneering campaigns, make fantastic promises in order to win elections, but as soon as they secure the people‟s mandate, the people are shortchanged of the dividends of democracy. 
An analysis of the plethora of leaders on Nigeria‟s political landscape revealed selfish, mediocre, tribal leaders and opportunistic small money-minded people masquerading as leaders. From Tafawa Balewa (1960 – 1966) to Olusegun Obasanjo (1999 – 2007), the crisis of leadership remains the same.  According to Arthur Nwankwo (1989), Alhaji Tafawa Balewa who ruled Nigeria from 1960-1966 lacked the capacity to chart a progressive course for national development because of lack of consciousness of development; J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi (January – July 1966) who was brought up under the most passive and apolitical circumstances of colonialists military institution neither understood the meaning of politics in general nor was he able to diagnose the specialties of the Nigerian political system whose leadership was placed on his shoulders. He was neither confused nor misled, he was simply ignorant and naïve; General Yakubu Gowon who ruled Nigeria from 1966 – 1975 was apparently the only Head of Government anywhere in the world who had so much money that he did not know what to do with it. The transient national affluence occasioned by the innocent but unsolicited upsurge of mineral resources cast a spell of short-sightedness over Gowon and his reactionary advisers. They mistook the transient flow of petroleum for a permanent future of the Nigerian economy and without conducting a critical analysis of the international market forces which determine the cost of petroleum and its relevant place to national development; General Murtala Muhammed‟s coming (July 1975 – February 1976) was revolutionary as well as challenging. He brought a new sense of mission and was radical in his approach to governance. He was cut short by the inordinate ambition of young military officers, who cannot comprehend the firebrand approach to governance. The regime was however short to allow a better assessment.  Although General Olusegun Obasanjo who took over after the assassination of his boss, General Murtala Muhammed, charted a new course for democratic governance and constitutional development, he, however, has a pathological hatred for the intellectuals and did not see any intellectual dimension that is germane to national development. According to Ayodele, “his policy actions were frustrating the Ivory Tower; he starved the universities of funds and began the distortion of the educational institutions through untoward policy action.” (Ayodele, 2006). 
Shehu Shagari‟s administration (1979-2003) also witnessed leadership crisis. His government did not strive to dismantle the existing power structure and a social relation that has kept Nigeria prostrate. His administration was characterized by a wild appetite for transient materialism (Ibid). In trying to achieve his desired goal of maintaining strict financial discipline and accountability, Buhari who ruled the Nigerian state from 1983to 1985 imprisoned every corrupt politician while draconian decrees were promulgated to check leadership excessiveness. “The leadership folly rested on the conceptualization of the primary purpose of government as the imprisonment of activists and other critiques.”  The military president after Buhari was General Ibrahim Babangida who turned the country to a political laboratory, and came up with a grandiose political transition that was described as the most expensive transition in Africa and at the end produced no democracy. With his intelligence and personal charm, his visionary and innovative program, Babangida could have been placed in a historical vantage position of a leader, however, he was unable to meet it with sincerity and discipline required of good leadership. He institutionalized prebendal politics and made little effort in infrastructure development. 
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General Sani Abacha who ruled the country between 1993 and 1998 governed with iron-fist. While the entire country became an extension of his personal estate within this space of five years, he amassed so much wealth than most countries in Black Africa. His transmutation agenda was however cut short by divine intervention in 1998 when he died mysteriously. Leadership was thrusted on the shoulder of General Abdusalam Abubakar. He was a cool headed and compassionate man, though he emptied the foreign reserves of the country in the name of democratic transition.  The transition process saw General Olusegun Obasanjo coming to power again in 1999, this time as a democratically elected President. His effort at combating corruption was fruitless as he and officials under him were corrupt. He sold government property to himself and his cronies below the cost price. His successor, Alhaji Yar‟Adua was an incompetent leader who lacked the qualities of good and strong leader. The people of Nigeria and the world are watching to see the direction of the current administration of President Goodluck Jonathan.  The above graphic analysis of past and present leaders of Nigeria show evidences of massive failure on the part of successive leadership.  Effects of Corruption  Aiyede (2006) posits that “corruption poses a serious development challenge. In the political realm, it undermines democracy and good governance by flouting or even subverting formal process. Corruption in elections and in legislative bodies reduces accountability and distorts representation in policy making; corruption in the judiciary compromises the rule of law; and corruption in public administration results in the unfair and inefficient provision of services. More generally, corruption erodes the institutional capacity of government as procedures are disregarded, resources are siphoned off, and public offices are bought and sold. Thus, corruption undermines the legitimacy of government and democratic values of trust and tolerance.” 
Omar et al (2001) assert that evidences abound to suggest that corruption creates major impediments to doing business in countries where it is prevalent. The negative effects of corruption on national development can be monumental, and in any corrupt regime, a nation could lose billions of dollars into the pockets of the nation‟s leaders. “Corruption exacerbates poverty and disproportionately affects those of lower income because it pulls resources from the national treasuries, placing the money into the bank accounts of a few individuals who are politically powerful. This type of corruption exerts devastating effects on developing economies that desperately need the money.” Based on the above, Igwe (2010) posits that “It is easier for a developed country to weather through the storms of corruption than an emerging economy to do so. This is the reason why growth cannot be expected from African countries enmeshed in corruption. Orthox economic theory teaches that lower investment rates lead to lower rates of economic growth.”  Corruption undermines efficiency as time and money are wasted through corrupt activities at the expense of productive activities and which altogether discourages prospective investors. This weighs on both public administration and private enterprises. Public sector efficiency becomes compromised because corruption superimposes informal practices over the proper rules and procedures of government adding direct and indirect costs to the execution of programmes. Corruption undermines human and capital development in any society or nation.  Corruption also generates economic distortions in the public sector by diverting public investment into capital projects where bribes and kickbacks are more plentiful. It also lowers compliance with construction, environmental, or other regulations, reduces the quality of government services and infrastructure, and increases budgetary pressure on government. Corruption slows down the pace of economic development through manipulation of funds for projects; it destroys or weakens efficiency and effectiveness of public service; it detracts government from giving priority to the areas of income and social inequality, poverty, malnutrition and other areas of need. The net impact of corruption on society is negative.  Corruption and Nigeria’s Economic Development  A one-time Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bellow University, Zaria, Nigeria asserts that “corruption has eaten deep into the fabrics of Nigerian society.” Late Professor Claude Ake of the Centre for Advanced Social Sciences noted that corruption is consolidated in Nigeria partly as a result of the attitude of Nigerians toward the affluent in the society whose source of affluence is questionable. 
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He observed that “wealthy people who are known to be corrupt are regularly courted and honoured by communities, religious bodies, social clubs and other private organizations.”  Corruption has adversely affected Nigeria‟s economy. Financial resources which would have been used to facilitate the country‟s economic development have been diverted into private bank accounts abroad. More worrisome is the fact that these stolen funds meant for economic development are not invested in the country to create employment for the unemployed citizens of the country. This is indeed the reason for high level of poverty, insecurity and widespread diseases. Nigeria, in spite of its phenomenal earnings from the exploration and exportation of crude oil, its great human resources and other extensive potentialities, is still predominantly poor as a result of corruption.  The poverty level in Nigeria is worsening as unemployment is soaring on daily basis. The quality of education, health and other social services is dwindling all over the country. The agricultural, general merchandising and other social services which, hitherto, provided employment for the ordinary citizens have become very unattractive.  Corruption undermines Nigeria‟s economic development by generating considerable distortions and inefficiency. In the private sector, corruption increases the cost of business through the price of illicit payments. It raises the management cost of negotiating with officials and increases the risk of agreements being breached.  The Human Right Watch (2007) comments that, “despite record-setting government revenues in recent years, corruption and mismanagement remain a major cause of Nigeria‟s failure to make meaningful progress in improving the lot of ordinary Nigerians.” It has been argued by observers of the Nigerian political process in recent times that in the face of hardship, believed to have been propelled by widespread corruption, it will be a hard task to convince an average Nigerian to continue to make unending sacrifices and swallow without a limit the bitter economic pills which is not a natural consequence but an inevitably effect of a corrupt system.  The near total collapse of social infrastructure and other social institutions could easily be linked to corruption. This has resulted to retarded and stunted development. Official corruption in Nigeria siphons off money intended for the development of the country. Apart from making profit on investments from Nigeria‟s stolen billions of dollars, European countries and banks turn around and loan such money to Nigeria and other African countries at exorbitant rates. Much money is spent in the payment of interest on such loans than is spent on health and education combined. The critical issue in economic development is not whether corruption happens, but whether the stolen money is invested in the country. Massive corruption (as it relates to stealing of public funds) and economic development can co-exist, if the stolen money is invested in the expansion of the country‟s productive sector. This reminds one of Igwe‟s observation. “In Nigeria, the post-independence elite initially invested their new-found wealth domestically only to see those assets appropriated by incoming administrations. The likes of Sani Abacha who sent an estimated four billion dollars abroad were careful not to repeat the mistake. The thinking is always: I am certain to be probed once I leave power, so I had better put everything abroad.” (Igwe, 2010).  Democratic Instability in Nigeria: A Consequence of Political Corruption  At the heart of democratic instability in Nigeria is corruption and bad leadership. Corruption has not only made a mockery of the basis of the authority of the state, but it poses a great challenge to the legitimacy of democracy as the best form of government. This has consequently led to democratic instability. Corruption has reached a level in Nigeria such that an average Nigerian citizen believes that there is an inextricable link between corruption and democracy.  Political corruption which is a form of corruption perpetrated by the political elite in Nigeria has affected the cognitive perception of Nigerians since the current democratic experiment began in 1999. First there is doubt about the ability of the Nigerian state to organize a free, fair and credible election; second there is this perception that political appointments are one sure way to wealth and elevation of social status; and third, there is also the perception that the political office holders cannot be responsible and accountable to the citizens. The impact of this on democratic stability is clear. Electoral contest has become a do or die affair with the prevalence of contract killings, political assassinations and electoral violence resulting in the general destruction of lives and properties.   
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“Consequently, as the philosophical basis and fundamental ethos of democracy are being swept under the carpet, the Nigerian electorate expectedly lost faith not only in the electoral process, but fundamentally on the government which a fraudulent process produced.” (Ogundiya, 2006) The legitimacy of democracy as the best form of government has been seriously eroded. More distressing to democratic stability is godfatherism in Nigerian politics. “One of the major damaging consequences of corruption in Nigeria in the recent time is the emergence of political „kingmakers‟ and gladiators commonly known as the political godfathers”. Godfatherism has created a lot of problems in the Nigerian democratic process. It is one of the biggest dangers to democracy in Nigeria.  Elections would remain a farce when they are not rule-compliant. Democracy is rule-driven and no election can be better than the extent to which people obey electoral rules. Godfatherism has created doubt about the legitimacy of the electoral process and the elected as the godfathers violate the integrity of the electoral process in Nigeria.  Reviewing the corrupt nature of godfatherism and its effects on democratic stability in Nigeria, Gambo posits that “the phenomenon of godfatherism fits into what Richard Joseph persuasively described as “Prebendal politics”. Joseph attributed the prebendal nature of politics to the excessive premium on political power which makes Nigerians have unfaltering faith in the belief that political power holds the key to limitless resources in the land. This belief was reinforced and consolidated during military rule which was characterized by irrational and obsessive acquisition of wealth through brazen corrupt practices. This indeed provides the overriding motivation for godfathers to aid godsons get into elective public offices and use them for self-enrichment and to shield them against the long arm of the law.” (Gambo, 2006)  When, therefore, few individuals who are in the minority become too powerful to dictate for the rest, the integrity of the process of choosing leaders is compromised. This leads to total absence of culture of accountability and it negates one of the normative attributes of democracy which is a responsible and accountable government. Good governance predicated on the rule of law, due process, accountability, transparency in the management of public space is precariously compromised. (Ibid) This poses serious threat to the growth and stability of democracy in Nigeria.  Conclusion  The expectations of Africans that their leaders, after independence, would bring development to their various independent states were met by corruption and abysmal failure of leadership to harness the vast human and natural resources available in the continent for the benefit of the African people. The continent‟s resources are personalized at the expense of the people. What pervades in the states of the continent is abject poverty, inadequate health facilities, unemployment and inadequate shelter for the people.  The Nigerian experience shows the failure of her leaders from independence till date to stimulate the Nigerian people to the path of socio-economic and political development. The near total collapse of social infrastructure and other institutions is traceable to massive corruption and leadership crisis. “Corruption has greatly eroded the fundamental values of democracy and the essential principle that government should be representative and accountable to the citizens. Invariably, the Nigerian political leaders as it is presently constituted lack the moral fibres to champion the cause of the Nigeria society. When political leaders are perceived to be pursuing their personal interests excessively, citizens become disenchanted, questioning the legitimacy of leaders and the state, and even the legitimacy of the process and the system that produced them.”  Corruption has become prevalent and has not only greatly eroded the basis of the authority of the state but also challenge the legitimacy of democracy as the best form of governance. The problem of democratic instability persists because the political system has failed to engender, maintain and sustain the belief in Nigerians that democracy is the most appropriate system for them. Democratic stability will be difficult to attain in Nigeria as long as corruption remains endemic and unchecked and leadership crisis persists.  This paper has been able to demonstrate that corruption and inept leadership have robbed Nigerians, the government which they chose to represent and pursue their interest and the consequence is that democratic instability is inevitable.

New Study_Poverty leads about 16.8 million children to early grave.

Poverty leads 10 million children to an early grave 
New estimates add weight to the urgency of Africa's needs
About 10.6m children under five die each year, most from preventable causes, World Health Organization advisers estimate.Almost four in 10 die within 28 days of birth and more than four in 10 deaths are in southern and western Africa.

The figures, published soon after Tony Blair's Commission for Africa called for huge injections of aid to improve health on the continent, confirm the size of the global public health disaster international bodies such as the G8, the WHO and UNICEF are trying to tackle.

Scientists believe their latest estimates, based on an analysis of death registrations, long-term research and improved models for calculating mortality rates between 2000 and 2003, are the most accurate yet.

The deaths are mainly from pneumonia (19%), diarrhea (17%), malaria (8%), measles (4%), HIV/Aids (3%) and injuries (3%). Premature birth (28%), sepsis or pneumonia (26%), and asphyxia (23%) are the most common causes of very early death.