Anyway, my confusion with the growth of African economies, including places like Angola is that there does not seem to be a drop in the poverty numbers, especially in a country like Angola with all it’s oil. How does one explain that.

What is Malawi doing? surely it can’t just be tobacco? or is it? What about their AIDS problem?

http://www.economist.com/marke.....d=12818136

Even I was amazed that the majority of the fastest growing economies in 2009 will be in Africa….this is why I gave Obama’s Accra speech a B- at best. As an African entrepreneur there was nothing mildly inspirational, like tell me something that the broad swathe of Africans do not already know.

Moving on, just shows that the Chinese are turning and burning in Congo Brazzaville and Angola…I am intrigued though by Malawi, was there recently and was impressed at how ‘orderly’ a society they were and how they have managed as a land-locked country to cough out of thin air 8% growth with primary commodity being tobacco?

In terms of software and security issues, I am sure you are aware that most security updates are now done electronically. Therefore, if you are going to steal software, you can do it from any physical location. In fact, a software company is the best example of a business that may not need permanent offices.

Reading your article I didn’t see where it was defined that an entreprenuer had to start out small. It is quite possible to start out with 40 employees depending on the type of business and capital you have.

The idea of virtual offices is an ideal and utopian idea but you also ignore the negatives that come with it. Take for example a person starting out a software development company that has major security issues you dont want such people operating from home. In any case even the lone entreprenuer will get big at some stage. In addition not all entreprenuers are in the same type of business.

Take for example entreprenuers in the tourism industry or farming how will you do without employees or an office or will you grow your fruits & vegetables in cyberspace? How about your visitors to a hotel will they come and be served purely by computers? Doctors and lawyers need office space to serve their clients. True some businesses could do without employees if they are sole proprieterships on a micro-level and with no need to produce actual goods.

I think you missed the point.

Capitalism, at it’s core demands that you “take from someone”. i.e. if you want to get rich, you’ll have to find a way to extract money from other people & this process is not necessarily pretty or smooth or even fair. Hence, it’s comparison to a vampire system that sucks the blood out of someone else. So, the analogy here to being a vampire is the idea of sucking the blood (read: money) from someone else (as opposed to taking it from yourself).

This is not a criticism of capitalism per se, it is simply an acknowledgment of it’s basic tenets. You must take from “someone”.

And I think that is the reason why ‘office parks’ are becoming more popular e.g. in Nairobi, whereby you can lease office space for micro-durations i.e. hours as opposed to months. Attitudes have changed which is great!

Global economy is bad, but this is the time great winners are produced,

just my view