Centerstage Africa

I came across this wonderful piece and I would love to share it with the Continent of Africa. It's such an inspiring piece, full of truth and worth imitating. Its a little review of The Kansas Prayer. Sources say that a session of the Kansas State Senate was opened in prayer by a Pastor Joe Wright.  His prayer was a sizzling one and prompted controversy.  The story says that several members of the Senate got up and walked out and that Paul Harvey aired the text of the prayer and it prompted the largest response he's ever had.  This event actually happened in the Kansas House (not Senate) in Topeka on January 23, 1996.   Joe Wright is the pastor of Central Christian Church in Wichita and was guest chaplain that day.  He prayed a prayer of repentance that was written by Bob Russell, pastor of  Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. According to an article in the Kansas City Star from January 24, 1996, his prayer did stir controversy and one mem...

By Dinfin Mulupi “I read this story about a man who went to a rural village in Africa to sell shoes and saw everyone walking barefoot. He concluded there was no market for him there so he left. Another man arrived a short while later and concluded there was a big market to sell shoes. “I believe it all depends on how you look at the challenges in Africa.” So says Hatem Hariri, managing director for Africa at US-based business communications company Avaya. The company calls itself a “leader in helping organisations around the world succeed by integrating communications with business strategy and operations”. In 2012 Avaya signed a five year contract with Bharti Airtel to operate and manage IT requirements for Airtel’s contact centres across Africa. Hariri currently lives in Dubai with his wife and children and travels across Africa frequently to oversee 52 markets in the continent. Once an ignored market as companies favoured other continents, Hariri says Africa is now an im...

Côte d’Ivoire’s victory against Ghana during the 2015 African Cup of Nations final was widely unexpected and regarded as a historic victory. The Elephants, the Ivorian national football team, were certainly not the favourite team, but they surprised most observers with a repeat of their victory against Ghana 23 years ago, a match again won on penalty kicks. As an economist and a football fan, I cannot resist drawing a certainly non-linear correlation between soccer and economic growth, and revisiting a compelling comparison between the different economic trajectories the two countries have taken in the last decade, and their performance in the most popular sport in the world. The relationship between soccer performance and economic performance has never been confirmed, although Goldman Sachs found an interesting relationship between World Cup victories and equity markets. According to their study, the victory outperforms the global market by 3.5% in the first month, yet such enthu...