11:00am

Just finished a session on Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Africa. Spoke on how Africa has plenty of entrepreneurs what they need is capital to fund their projects. Its odd that we talk about people surviving on $1 a day but we don’t recognise that to do that one needs enormous amounts of resilience, creativity, and focus- the kind of assets any entrepreneur deems essential to business success.

The only difference is that the one is an entrepreneur by necessity while the other is by opportunity.

One lady panellist made an informative presentation on the kind of transformation work her women based NGO is doing in Tanzania in the area of micro finance, modernising agriculture and advocacy for women’s rights.

Camerapix’s Salim Amin made a strong case for the media to change the perspectives on Africa. Showcase more opportunity and less of the images of hunger, disease and death.

Allon a South African entrepreneur moderated. He has an interesting background running an enterprise incubation center for over 200 companies-
he is looking to develop that platform to 2,000 companies.

The World Economic Forum main sessions begin today. Dar is flooded with visitors to the Forum- they really have done a good job especially with government averting a major public sector strike that would have caused big disruptions.

Forgot to mention yesterday the interesting people who have become YGL’s – among them Australian swimming champion Ian Thorpe.

The sessions have began now….

More later….

Interesting afternoon session on change models and case studies for change.

Great presentation by Alejandro Litovsky on “Pathways to Scale” using the examples of Green technology and sustainability projects.

6.30pm

Just concluded the last session of the day with the YGL/Professor Klaus Schwab (Chairman/President of the World Economic Forum). Spirited discussions on change and the possibilities in emerging economies. The session is alive and all appreciate Schwab taking this much time to engage the YGL community. There is a discussion on a conference theme which re-positions Africa. We are taking a group photo.

We are off to dinner with the community. The Forum starts tomorrow.

I would like to hear back from you on what kind of issues you think need to be raised at the Forum. Tomorrow I’m speaking at a discussion group on Entrepreneurship and innovation; Thursday, I moderate a session on the Water-Food-Energy nexus.

Later….

Monday (3rd) and Tuesday (4th) are dedicated to the Young Global Leaders Annual Summit 2010.

Monday 3rd:

Began the day with welcome remarks from Lawrence Masha (Tanzania Minister for Home Affairs and Dr Ahmed Salim Salim former Tanzania Diplomat and now Ex Dir of Julius Nyerere Foundation). Fascinating stuff. Masha is 40; good to see a young and articulate African give a good impression to the 300 YGL’s in attendance.

We were divided into several clusters that will embark on impact journeys across various communities to review several social economic projects.

I belong to the water and environment cluster and on monday 3rd we visited an operation of the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group two hours outside Dar. Great bus journey with some brilliant YGL’s, great discussions too on the difficulty of measuring impact in such short time frames, and the scope of the development challenges that both public, NGOs and private sectors face.

Tuesday 4th:

We are now in the Mlimani City Conference Centre giving cluster group feedback. Interesting suggestions from Arthur Mutambara (Deputy PM, Zimbabwe), Von Jones (Obama’s former Green Tzar) is managing the session.

Conclusion is that there has to be an national vision to address the development strategy of the nation here, better stakeholder cross sector participation for greater understanding and impact and also stronger linkages with YGLs with ability to make a contribution; where they have relevant skill sets.

11.55am – Going in to plenary session now…..