I want to summarise (as if I were a journalist) what I have observed about yunus and africa these last 6 months http://www.futurecapitalism.tv/id34.html  ; at the same time I want people who really know/love africa (the only country I have really been to is s,africa and then 20 years ago) to decide how they connect networks; there's no point me being an extra piggy in the middle in this

urgency: over the next 6 weeks more people I know (especially mostofa; mark, alexis) will be doing stuff in Dhaka than any other time of year; so we need to take this opportunity to ask questions or make suggestions of what could be done

perhaps people on this circulation list can reply adding what yunus specific contributions they feel they have already made in an african direction because that may help you choose/map who's who nominated to link what... the examples I mention here are pretty random, so please dont feel left out just because I did or dint mention you

 s.africa we know that yunus is interested in free university and cida Johannesburg is the number 1 model; he's also a mandela elder an network that branson sponsors; branson also  shares his ideas on entrepreneur course work at cida and his http:/www.viginunite.org is one of the world's benchmarks for going beyond corporate social responsibility by empowering employees to social action - for all these reasons lesley Williams, a south african, seems to me to be one of our keys in africa yunus networking assuming she wants to be

clearly the second area we have alot of flows in is kenya and nigeria due to pamela, samuel, ken, maria ... and others in the networks; there is also Rebecca’s and her team after the world entrepreneur summit in Nairobi but I am still unclear how much they wish to have a yunus supporters network in the midst of all the other stuff they do

we also have French interests; if I may I will guilhem to speak for network friends from france as I know he is passionate about kenya too; no city has supported yunus more than paris with an SMBA starting this fall, and the first 3 multinational social business cases being danone-grameen, veoila-grameen, and grameen credit agriocle

we also have spencer and peter and maria and rachel and alexis,  marriah in new york; I get a bit muddled about their priorities as spencer and peter's are very african,  rachel and alexis are very microcredit and very womens networking but with ASA

we have sofia and tav and mark in london who will probably be able to remind me if their networkers have other african foci I may not recall; then raimo will be able to tell us out of finland who there flows to and from afruca

POINTS TO NOTE

at the end of july, the biannual microcredit summit http://microcredit.tv  is being held in bali, and almost the top issue is how to make sure increasing funds for africa are spent on deep microcredit

whilst ebg microcredit or yunus experts may want to correct this very approximate way of looking at things, here are perhaps 4 different interests that those supporting grassroots africa may want to explore, 3 of which are yunus connected

1 deep yunus and Bangladeshi-style microcredit done the Bangladeshi way is not just about loans but working out what a community needs to reverse any collapses and become sustainable over say 15 years; it is always anchored on the poorest women in the community and in effect developing ownership of the bank around them

2 there is something which I will call minicredit though others call it microcredit- this is not done with any particular attention to the whole community but aims to attract small business social entrepreneurs; often this method is more applicable in cities- one of the best at this is probably myc4 which lesley knows; google.org is entering this field along with acumen fund but perhaps investing in medium size starts ups; kiva may or may not be a primarily electronic version of this- while minicredit probably out to be constituted as a social business I am not aware of yunus having spent much time on this type of credit

3 the yunus book aims to widen everything he has learnt from microcredit1 to why not start this up for microhealth, microeducation, microagriculture etc using a mathematically defined system - social business - designed so that ownership is always rooted in the community never creamed off by some hidden global hand or indeed any other ownership group which over time has no interest in specific community building

4 is social action teamwork competitions (the first way for youth to enter yunus and microeconomics/community building world) and diaries which chapter 11 of yunus book is about

I will leave there and hope people will rsvp with some information on whether they agree 1 to 4 above are the main games to explore; which ones who wants to be known to be connecting out of which localities plus any other comments , questions

these sorts of opportunities are not likely to come again with such a community-up focus, so I hope we all join in

chris us tel 301 881 1655