NAIROBI, KENYA (Business Daily) – Kenya continues to lose out in the lucrative shipping industry as it continues to rely on ships for hire to transport its exports.
The hope that one day the country could own its own shipping line continues to remain a mirage despite its neighbour cashing in on the high freight.
The Ethiopian Shipping Lines (ESL) continues to carve a niche in the world’s shipping industry as Kenya National Shipping Line (KNSL) shows no hope of owning its vessels soon.
Maritime experts are now calling on the government to offer incentives to private entities interested to buy ships that could fly the Kenyan flag.
“The dream that the country would one day own a ship, which led to the formation of KNSL in 1989, has died,” says Wilfred Kagimbi, Kenya Maritime Authority chief surveyor and receiver of wrecks.
Mr Kagimbi says KNSL dream has been overtaken by time as other African countries which purchased their own vessels have already relinquished management to private hands.
By Brad Sugars
Do you have one good reason to start your business right now?
How about 10?
Regardless of what people around you (including the media) may say, right now is the best time to get into business. Just go back and look at the economic slowdowns throughout history. Most recessions in the post-World War II era last an average of 10 months, followed by growth cycles that last an average of 50 months.
What this means for the startup is there’s no better time than right now to get going and start pursuing your business dreams–in anticipation of the next period of growth.
So with a nod to David Letterman, here are my top 10 reasons you should start your business now–despite the current downturn:
- Everything is cheaper.
Let’s face it: There is great value right now in this and in world markets. This is the right time for fantastic deals in virtually every category, from land and equipment to commercial office space, personnel and labor. As asset prices have been knocked down, there is no better time to get into the real estate or financial markets, or even heavy equipment and construction. Some people have waited years to find value in these markets–and now that time has come.
- You can hire more and better-qualified people.
In an era when even Microsoft is laying off, you can find great resources at affordable rates. Thinking about getting your high-tech startup off the ground? There are plenty of engineers waiting to be hired. Thinking about forming a professional services firm? There are many accountants and attorneys looking for their next opportunity.
- People are looking to change suppliers.
From a cost perspective, everything is on the table for most companies. Even if your prices are higher, if you can come in with greater value, you have a good chance at winning new business. You also have the advantage of being the new kid on the block when it comes to pitching your products and services. Many companies are desperate to find new partnerships with new companies that have a different, better or more innovative way of delivering those products and services.
- Ownership equals tax incentives.
Business ownership offers a variety of tax benefits that aren’t available to employees. While taxes should never be the sole reason to go into business for yourself, it should be one reason to add to you “benefits of business ownership” list.
- Family and friends don’t want to (or can’t) invest more money into the stock or real estate markets.
That means they may be willing to finance a portion of your new venture, or the expansion of an enterprise that has proven itself over time. The main benefit is that they know you and have a relationship with you–and if you have a solid business plan that delivers real numbers, your chances of raising the capital you need increase exponentially.
- Suppliers are giving better credit.
Because the credit markets have virtually shut down, the B2B credit flows are keeping money circulating out of sheer necessity. That means a bullish outlook for companies looking for good terms on stock and/or inventories. The main advantage is that all parties have more incentive than ever for finding true win-win situations that allow for cash and stock flow. When everyone is looking to survive, great deals can be had.
- You can get good PR by showing you are going against the trend.
The media loves aberrations, and if you are optimistic by expanding or getting into business now, you would be in that category. That means you can generate some great PR by demonstrating your “alternative” view of the market.
- You can buy everything you need at auction.
In addition to everything being less expensive, you can find great deals at auctions, especially in terms of any large equipment and office furnishings. Auctions are also a great place to find hardly used or “gently” used restaurant and bar supplies at great prices. These days, you may even be able to get deals on fleets of vehicles and trucks for a delivery service or hauling or construction company.
- You can find great “low money” or “no money” down deals.
This is simply being aware of good opportunities others have buggered up, and finding deals where you could get an entire business simply by taking over a lease (along with all the equipment). Many business owners want out at any cost, meaning you can negotiate great win-win deals that allow the current owners an escape while giving you an opportunity to turn around what could be, if run right, a very viable business.
And finally . . .
- You’ve lost your job, and you have to do something.
Sometimes, the best business decision is the one you are forced into, and the incentive (as well as need) for income is often enough to push those previously “on the fence” to strike out on their own. There’s nothing wrong with being in this position; it simply means there is greater urgency to do something that will start to generate income as quickly as possible.
There you have it: my top 10 reasons to start your business in a recession. After all, the odds are on your side that the expansion will be many times more robust than the present slowdown.
There’s no better time to start than the present, especially if people around you are more comfortable with their own list of reasons why they shouldn’t start pursuing their own business dreams right now. It only means you’ll be facing a lot less competition.
(Brad Sugars is Entrepreneur.com’s Startup Basics columnist and the writer of 14 business books including The Business Coach, Instant Cashflow, Successful Franchising Billionaire in Training. He is the founder of ActionCOACH, a business coaching franchise.)
AUSTRALIA (smh.com.au) – The world’s 43rd richest person, Mohammed Hussein Ali Al Amoudi of Ethiopia, has been named as the mystery sheikh being courted by officials of Tasmania United FC who are bidding to become an A-League team.
The club’s football director Ken Morton refused on Tuesday to confirm or deny reports the man in talks with the club about becoming its Roman Abramovich is Ethiopia’s richest person.
The difference between Chelsea’s Russian owner Abramovich and Mohammed Al Amoudi in terms of net wealth is about $US500 million ($A758 million) in the sheikh’s favour.
Tasmania United FC bid boss John McGirr let slip about “a sheikh” at a news conference in Hobart on Monday, saying he could become the proposed club’s sole sponsor: “Just like (Roman) Abramovich at Chelsea”.
The sheikh’s name was revealed by the Mercury newspaper on Tuesday.
Morton said on Tuesday a meeting with “a businessman” – he will able to name soon – is being arranged after promising preliminary sponsorship talks.
“We have a businessman, who is up there in the rich list and is interested in football, and the first indications are that this proposal seems interesting to him,” Morton said.
Earlier this year Forbes magazine ranked Al Amoudi as the 43rd richest person in the world with a net worth of $US9 billion ($A13.64 billion).
His father is Yemeni and his mother is Ethiopian. He immigrated to Saudi Arabia in 1965 and became a Saudi citizen.
Al Amoudi made his fortune in construction and real estate before branching out to buy oil refineries in Sweden and Morocco.
Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich is the 51st richest man in the world with a net worth of $US8.5 billion ($A12.89 billion), according to Forbes.
The cost of becoming Tasmania’s Abramovich is $A6 million over three years.
Other revenue streams make up the $A7.5 million per year cost of running the team who could play their home games in front of a large, covered grandstand across an end of Bellerive Oval.
Gold Coast and North Queensland Fury will join the A-League next season, making it a 10-team competition.
McGirr said the 11th licence has gone to a Melbourne bid.
Tasmania United FC will go up against bids from Sydney, Wollongong and Canberra for the 12th A-League licence.
MEROWE, Sudan (AFP) — Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir inaugurated a massive hydro-electric project on Tuesday that has displaced tens of thousands and is the largest to be built along the Nile in 40 years.
[Nile River originates in neighboring Ethiopia, but an agreement signed with the British government a century ago prevents Ethiopia from using it for such purpose.]
The 1.8-billion-dollar (1.4-billion-euro) Chinese-engineered Merowe dam looks to double Sudan’s power production to about 1,250 megawatts. Two of its 10 turbines, which were built by French group Alstom, are already in operation.
More than 40,000 people have had to leave their homes to make way for the dam and the vast reservoir that will be formed behind it north of the capital Khartoum.
It is the biggest project of its kind since the construction of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt in the 1950s and was developed by China’s CCMD consortium under the supervision of German group Lahmeyer.
The dam’s inauguration comes on the eve of an announcement by the International Criminal Court on whether it will issue a warrant for Beshir’s arrest over alleged war crimes in Darfur.
Thousand of Sudanese gathered for the ceremony in an apparent show of support for the president.
Many of them held up posters of Beshir scribbled with the message: “We are with you.”
Pictures of ICC prosecutor general Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who recommended last July that the court issue the arrest warrant, were strewn on the ground to be trampled on by the crowd.
On Sunday, Beshir addressed a huge rally in Khartoum to rally domestic support ahead of the ICC’s announcement.
Despite the six-year-old war in Darfur, China has maintained close relations with Beshir’s regime, drawing criticism from international human rights groups.
NEW JERSEY — The field of archaeology requires uncommon patience. Is that specimen so painstakingly coaxed from the hard earth animal or early human? Is it historically, significantly old or just old enough to be mildly interesting? The answers come slowly, sometimes in months, often in years.
So it was that New Jersey archaeologist David Braun tempered his excitement after he and other researchers, among them a Rutgers University professor and a group of Rutgers students, found what looked to be very unusual footprints in the ancient sediment of a riverbed in Kenya.
“We knew we might have something special, but we also kept thinking, ‘OK, these could be from a baboon,'” Braun said.
Turns out all that caution was unnecessary. Over three summers, Braun and his colleagues unearthed a bit of archaeological gold: what’s believed to be the first known footprints of Homo erectus, an ancestor to modern humans. The finding was reported Friday in the journal Science.
The researchers, who included Rutgers professor John W.K. Harris and a team of international experts, determined the feet that left those prints 1.5 million years ago were almost exactly like ours, with nearly identical heels, insteps and toes. Significantly, the big toe ran parallel with the other toes, suggesting a modern upright gait.
The footprints also indicated that those who left them took long strides like modern humans, allowing them to run and travel long distances. That squares with the fossil record, which shows that Homo erectus began migrating out of Africa about 1.8 million years ago.
Only one cluster of older pre-human footprints has ever been found. They were discovered in 1978 in Laetoli, Tanzania, and had been left 3.7 million years ago by Australopithecus afarensis, the small, apelike species to which the famous skeleton “Lucy” belonged.
Hunting for history is Braun’s life work. The 32-year-old Elizabeth native has spent every summer since 1996 digging in Kenya’s Turkana Basin, a treasure trove of fossils. A graduate of Haverford College in Pennsylvania, he obtained masters and doctoral degrees at Rutgers, where he studied under Harris.
Both men are now co-directors of a field school, run jointly by Rutgers and the National Museum of Kenya, that trains young archaeologists. Braun also teaches at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He lives in New Jersey about four months of each year.
It was in the summer of 2005 that the researchers made their discovery a few miles east of Lake Turkana, though they didn’t know initially how big it would be. The group was cutting into the wall of a bluff to examine the geology of the area when they noticed deformations in the sediment.
“It was odd-looking,” said Braun, the son of a Star-Ledger columnist, Bob Braun. “We were looking at it from the side, and it wasn’t until we excavated from the top that we realized these were footprints.”
They were mostly animal prints, he said. Zebra, antelope, water birds. But there were also tantalizing prints that looked a lot like human prints.
A fuller excavation began in the summer of 2006, followed by two more in 2007 and 2008. Their excitement growing, Harris and Braun turned to other experts for help.
Matthew R. Bennett, a professor from Bournemouth University in England, used a digital laser scanner to create three-dimensional images of the footprints in 2007, showing them in detail.
Braun said more than 50 people crowded around Bennett’s laptop when the images were first created, clamoring for a look.
“When we saw that, we realized that what we had was really spectacular,” he said.
Never before had ancient footprints come to life so thoroughly. Such prints are almost always destroyed over time. In this case, Braun said, the river appeared to change course, washing sand into them without extensively damaging them.
In all, the group found more than a dozen prints on two layers of sediment separated by about 10,000 years. In one layer, they found two trails of two footprints each and one that included seven prints. Three prints were found on the lower layer.
More than 30 Rutgers undergraduate students rotated in during the three summers, along with about 15 graduate students.
Rutgers graduate Robert Abrunzo, 23, of North Haledon, returned to Kenya three times to participate in the field school and the dig. He said he remains awed by the experience.
“Getting to see these footprints come out was amazing,” Abrunzo said. “To look at something and say, ‘A million and a half years ago our ancestors were walking here, there’s no words to express it.”
By Mark Mueller | The New Jersey Star Ledger
WASHINGTON DC (examiner.com) In a report released by the Washington D.C. health department, 3 percent of residents over the age of 12 have HIV or AIDS. Nearly 70 percent of the cases are men, and 76 percent are African American.
D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, flanked by the city’s top health officials, unvailed a report on the spread of HIV/AIDS in Washington DC – March 17, 2009
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According to the city’s HIV/AIDS Administration director Shannon L. Hader, those numbers, higher than that of San Francisco and Baltimore, are probably an undercount.
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty released the report Monday at a news conference, calling it one of the “most serious problems” facing the capitol.
City officials will work towards more aggressive testing in hopes of controlling the virus.
“Past studies have highlighted the HIV/AIDs problems in the District, but this reports details how individuals are putting themselves at risk for the disease,” said Mayor Fenty.
“These facts serve as a blueprint that allows us to improve how we prevent HIV and better serve people living with the virus.”
The 3 percent rate is in line with several African countries. Africa has been hit hardest by the virus, accounting in 2.5 million deaths in 2005 alone.
Though the situations in Africa and North America seem like polar opposites, the report offers a sobering view of how dire the situation is worldwide.
“I’ll bet half the people in this crowd don’t know their status and you need to tell your partner your status. If you don’t do those things you’re increasing your chances of getting it and that what’s happened,” Mayor Fenty said on Sunday in one interview.
