At 231 million percent Zimbabwe’s currency is literally in the tank. This pic from Robert Gray explains it all…

via Freakonomics

Africapractice published this press release that reveals high expectations for African businesses in 2009:

Business leaders are still bullish about Africa for 2009. africapractice asked business leaders with interests in Africa about their investment plans for 2009; 62 per cent plan to expand significantly, while 38 per cent said they will expand slightly.
The global economic crisis [...]

Two Ugandan programmers, Harry Barry (22) and Seruyinda Simon (24), have built an Internet platform to enable investors to trade virtual stocks online. The platform, called Libre Exchange is set to be operational in 2009. It will allow users to start trading virtual shares from seven mock companies and will later go on to [...]

Adeo Ressi, founder of TheFunded, recently gave an interesting indictment of Silicon Valley explaining the problems with VC culture. One accusation is that venture capitalists rely too heavily on their network of friends, not including enough ‘outsider’ talent. Another is that more money is being invested into venture firms than those same VC firms [...]

Zimbabwe’s economy has all but collapsed, leaving it’s currency worth far less than the paper it’s printed on…
The hyperinflation is now estimated at over a quintillion percent, although no one really knows.
Most Zimbabweans are switching to barter and the Zim dollar is virtually useless. The South African rand and the US dollar are now the [...]

Shanta Devarajan is the Chief Economist of the Africa Region at the World Bank. He gave a lecture yesterday at the Colombia Business School on how to stimulate the private sector in Africa. Here are the main points…

Despite relatively rapid economic growth, private investment in Africa is still relatively low
The proximate reasons are [...]

BizSpark is a new initiative by Microsoft to give away it’s products to young start-ups making less than 1million USD a year…

Some major U.S. cities are now as unequal as those in Africa, according to a new UN report…
Major U.S. cities including New York, Washington, Atlanta and New Orleans have levels of economic inequality that rival cities in Africa … The most balanced city in the world is Beijing, with the most egalitarian cities on average [...]

When I posted the article “20 Ideas for Social Entrepreneurs” I was pretty sure I’d soon discover a number of those ideas already being implemented that I simply wasn’t aware of prior to writing it. One of those services is MyC4 which takes the idea of peer-to-peer lending and allows people from all over [...]

The Economists looks at Africa’s prospects and advantages amidst a shaky world economy. Is the continent’s virtual isolation it’s greatest asset?
Despite the litany of problems, the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa (hereafter referred to as plain Africa) are, by several measures, enjoying a period of unparalleled economic success. And despite the turmoil in the world’s [...]