The baobab goes global

Growing up in Africa, I never gave much thought to the baobab tree even though it was pretty familiar to me. But now the baobab is about to hit the big time as experts have discovered the varied and healthful uses of the tree, which is “rich in antioxidants, potassium and phosphorus, and has six times as much vitamin C as oranges and twice as much calcium as milk.”

Africans have long used parts of the baobab to heal everything from malaria to toothaches. But if the essence of the tree becomes popular in the Western world, there are potential consequences for the supply in Africa and the few other parts of the world where it grows.

I’ll have to check out how it ends up being packaged and marketed to us next time I’m at Whole Foods, but in the meantime, here’s the New York Times look at What Will Happen When the Baobab Goes Global?

International man of misery: Jeffrey Sachs

This month on Portfolio.com, an interesting in-depth profile of philanthropist and poverty’s chief public intellectual Jeffrey Sachs: International Man of Misery.

Thinking of Sri Lanka

Given the recent onslaught of turmoil in Sri Lanka, I wonder when I’ll manage to return for a visit to the place where I was born. The stories are abundant of the killing, the homelessness and suffering. It has been at least two decades since I was last in Colombo with my family, and it’s taken me many years of growing up to grow into my culture and truly appreciate it.

The New York Time’s bureau chief in India, Somini Sengupta, captured for the Times her return to her birth place of Calcutta and I read her account, which is filled with great tips for travelers, pondering what my own return to Sri Lanka might be like.

International paradox: Growth without profit

Here’s an interesting article in the New York Times today about the growing demand for online content in emerging markets like Africa and India — which should potentially be a good thing.

The ‘International Paradox’ means that content-rich services such as social media (from Facebook to YouTube) are finding that enormous numbers of users in these markets are sucking up bandwidth — without any corresponding revenue growth. Read on: In Developing Countries, Web Grows Without Profit.

The Blue Sweater may change you…

I just read a new book called The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz. For weeks I’d seen reviews of this woman’s account of her journey to fight poverty in Africa, including one review that began, “Be careful, this book will change you…”

Novogratz herself begins the book with Nelson Mandela’s words: “There is no passion to be found playing small in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”

This book does a great job of combining a personal narrative of finding one’s true calling with concrete examples of what any of us could do to help fight global poverty. It tells Novogratz’s story from her childhood to working in the banking industry evaluating foreign investments to starting her own fund to invest in entrepreneurs in poverty-stricken countries. The journey that her old blue sweater takes from her hometown to a child in Rwanda is a great story in and of itself about how we are all interconnected.

Novogratz delves into practical steps each of us can take, including some that are written about really well in another book called The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer. Singer’s book asks you to take a look not so much at what you are doing — and whether that makes you a good person — but at what you are not doing. This is more philosophy than biography, if that’s your preference.

I make no claims of being a great humanitarian. I try to do my part each year by donating to UNICEF and volunteer now and again for organizations serving my local community, but these books really did inspire me. And truth be told, made me feel guilty about how little effort it would take on my part to make a bigger difference.

Even if you don’t have time to read the whole book (which I rarely seem to do anymore), next time you’re at Barnes & Noble, flip through a few chapters of The Blue Sweater. It’s well worth it.

Emerging markets ripe for product innovation

Here’s an approach to innovation that’s becoming popular — first design and develop products for emerging markets where necessity demands lower barriers to access and adoption. In the article Innovation Trickles in a New Direction, BusinessWeek takes a look at how large corporations like GE are selecting products traditionally created in rich nations but choosing to develop and test them in emerging markets first before mass marketing them in established markets. This is an R&D strategy (and a potentially cost effective one) that many companies may start paying more attention to in virtually every sector, especially in tough economic times.

Tracking Nairobi on the innovation map

Last summer, the New York Times examined Nairobi as an innovation hub, asking the question, “Inside Nairobi, the next Palo Alto?” Perhaps the comparison was a bit of a stretch, but it did recognize Central Africa as ripe with potential. Even IBM, along with other large tech companies, finally included African countries in their definition of emerging markets, exploring sustainable economic development in the region.

Having lived in Nairobi during the seventies, my memories of it are mostly of my family navigating political chaos, until we finally left in 1979. So I’m particularly interested in learning about new developments there — beyond the lightweight apps that the lucky few with Net access are able to commercialize.

While there hasn’t been much coverage about it lately, a blog I’ve been following to learn more about developments in Africa is Shashank Bengali’s Somewhere in Africa, where he covers innovation, business, politics, and snippits of life in the continent, through a journalist’s eye.

Zimbabwe then and now

A friend of mine who recently returned from Harare described how Zimbabwe has been devastated by the political and economic turmoil. People carry around bags full of money just to pick up a few groceries — if you can find them at all. And no one tries to steal your money — it’s just not worth it. Especially now that the inflation rate has hit an unfathomable 231 million percent, and the government has started issuing a $50 billion note.

My family moved to Zimbabwe in 1980, the year of its independence from Britain. It was a good time for the country because of a newfound hope and promise. It was a beautiful country but even then, at the best of times, we were always dealing with droughts, food shortages, and frequent trips to South Africa to stock up on supplies. We left Zimbabwe in 1987 when it appeared that things were starting to deteriorate. We would never have imagined that it could get this bad. And it doesn’t seem to be at the bottom yet.

One of the best sources of news about the country and its struggling neighbors is the dedicated coverage on the BBC’s site. In particular, its recent reportage about the stunning cholera epidemic, exacerbated by the collapse of government services as well as all functioning hospitals, is truly heartbreaking.

Building a green city: The Masdar Initiative

My family lived in Dubai years ago, at the beginning of the massive economic and building boom, but even then it was clear that the United Arab Emirates was undergoing some dramatic changes.

The Masdar Initiative to build a ‘green city’ is one such monumental effort worth tracking. It provides a platform to find and build solutions including those involving sustainable energy and water conservation, and to drive the commercialization of these research technologies. It will also create new industries and new markets for the UAE, and provide an interesting model for the rest of the world.

Recruiting techs from emerging markets

Like much of the tech industry, alphaWorks looks to emerging and growth markets to source technology. While many of our strategic techs come from primary labs in the U.S. like Almaden and T.J. Watson Research Centers, we’re also seeing many come from international labs in China, India and one that I have a particular interest in — the Haifa Research Lab.

Outside of the U.S., Israel is a hub of venture capital and investment growth, as well as entrepreneurial activity. Local as well as heavy international VC funds are helping to fuel startup development especially in telecom and wireless technology.

Historically, we’ve showcased innovative projects from Israel including one of our top downloads of all time, the IBM Toolkit for MPEG-4, which was a joint development between Haifa and T.J. Watson.

This year, I’m excited about a SaaS offering from Haifa/Almaden called PHIAD, an on-demand system that enables the public health industry to integrate and share data from public health institutions across proprietary systems and political boundaries. If adopted widely, this service has the potential to impact the management of global health information.

And there’s more in the pipeline from Silicon Wadi.