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Transparency and Accountability Network (Tr-Ac-Net)
Tr-Ac-Net is an international network of people and organizations committed to the idea that official relief and development assistance (ORDA) resources need to be accounted for in a much improved way. It is time to make excellence in transparency and accountability the norm rather than the exception.
High quality financial analysis(Tr-Ac-Net)
I cooperate with Penn Consulting Inc (PCI) to do strategic planning, business plans and financial analysis for profit improvement, financing or possible sale. Revenues from this work help support the Tr-Ac-Net initiatives

SUCCESS ...
We hosted a Wiki on the www.afrifund.com website starting in November 2003 and compiled a huge amount of information about organizations around the world. FAILURE ... the Wiki is now so slow as to be useless. We are in the process of migrating the information to a much higher performance website with a lot of analytical capability.

THE FAILURE OF DEVELOPMENT ...
Probably the biggest issues of our time
Today 3 billion people are poor and hungry. This is disastrous development failure. A lot of people and major organizations like the UN agencies and the World Bank write about it with the help of consultants and academics ... but the net outcome is more poverty today than decades ago. While global wealth has increased enormously, there has been an ongoing dramatic decline in the quality of life of poor people in poor countries.

The underlying root causes of development failure need to be addressed. WHY has development failed in so many places?

In the past fifty years the industrialized countries (the NORTH) have doubled their wealth every 10 years. This is a result of profits, reinvestment and technological progress. Meanwhile the poor in poor countries have experienced significanlty increased deprivation. Poverty, hunger and a health crisis have reduced life expectancy dramatically during the past decade.

THE HEALTH CRISIS - AIDS, TUBERCULOSIS AND MALARIA
Everyone remembers September 11 2001? The day terrorists struck in the USA and more than 3,000 people died. But what do we know about premature death caused by poverty and the health crisis.

A round number is that 20,000 people die every day because of failed development, poverty, AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

The problem is huge and widespread, but probably worst in Africa. Most everybody in Africa is affected by the crisis, though not infected. The leadership response in Africa has been generally poor ... too little too late. But then it was not leadership in the USA that changed the rules, but activists and advocacy groups that forced leadership to do something.

Activists and advocacy groups are starting to build a groundswell of support for those who are working on the frontlines of the pandemic and living with the crisis day by day in their communities. There is a lot of care being given, mainly by people who do not have very much. They need our help.

GLOBAL COFFEE CRISIS...
Buy Coffee .... help end the Coffee Crisis
Huge industry - Big profits - Starving farmers!

A variety of coffee marketing plans are in development. A marketing program for coffee that has "Fair Trade" characteristics is being development. The Mother Trucker's brand is emerging from the shadows. It is a high quality Gentle Java blend for people who want or need caffeine for top performance. If you are interested in buying coffee to benefit coffee farmers in Africa and elsewhere, send me a private message and I will have details sent to you.



The Afrifund Database and my book is a start
This book is called "Turning Development Upside Down" and is about failed development, but about solutions more than about problems. It is about how development can be organized to be successful. The idea of “Turning Development Upside Down” is the basic proposition that people and not organizations should be defining the priorities and the allocation of resources.

Economic Value Adding and the Value Chain
The good news is that development will succeed when people implement "economic value adding" activities and use resources productively. With modern technology the world has surplus production in almost everything. The resources to have success in development exist.

Information in Development
The information used to manage development is pathetic. We need the right sort of information, "management information". This will let people make decisions so that the "value chains" are right and there is socio-economic value adding. With management information, the resources and people needed to do good things can be put together.

Small is beautiful
There are lots and lots of small things being done very well while it is the big things failing miserably that get the media attention and does the economic damage. Most ODA work and foreign direct investment (FDI) has been "value destroying" for the SOUTH and the host communities.

The situation in the global economy is a mess.
Mr. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank has said that 1 billion of the world's 6 billion people live in developed economies and own 80 percent of the wealth. Rich countries are spending $300 billion a year on agricultural subsidies and $600 billion for defense - while only $56 billion is spent on development assistance. He argues that it is impossible to win the 'war on terrorism' unless global poverty and inequity are tackled aggressively."

Raising awareness - doing something
The Afrifund Database is a practical initiative to start making it possible for awareness to be based on easily accessible independent development information. This initiative is driven by WiKi open source software. Anyone can add in their own information, or correct what is already in the database. Please research what has been done and improve it where you can http://www.afrifund.com/wiki/index.pcgi?page=DevelopmentData

One outcome of this work will be to counteract misinformation, both in the media and in official statements and publications of the development institutions. Too many people have the impression that the big development organizations and governments are doing all that needs to be done! Oops! Misinformation at its best!

Eventually, the goal is to establish an independent Internet accessible database system to provide oversight information about development performance. None of the official development assistance (ODA) organizations want this. Surprise surprise. For the first time the intended beneficiaries will be able to have their voices heard in a systematic manner.

You can get more information at www.afrifund.com

More about me - my Bio
I learned engineering and Keynsian economics at Cambridge University. I learned chartered accountancy with PriceWaterhouseCoopers in London and then spent a fifteen years helping corporate organizations improve their accounting and management systems (including installing mainframe computers) to improve profit performance.
With my engineering / economics / accounting background I was good at identifying profit improvement opportunities that could come from doing simple practical things in the factory or with the product. I was not an accountant that was creative in fiddling around fixing the books.
My last corporate employment was perhaps the most interesting. I was the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for Continental Seafoods Inc., a US based international fishing company that used to operate in more than 26 countries around the world. This was a turnaround situation. When I was recruited the company was essentially bankrupt, but 18 months later we were efficient and we were very profitable. We also knew the value of sustainable fishing resources. No fish. No profit. So we did a lot of work to help improve fisheries resource management. And we had excellent accounting wherever we were operating!
In the late 1970s I started working as a development consultant for the World Bank, the United Nations (mainly UNDP) and many other development organizations. After a number of years and a lot of work it became apparent that good people were not achieving good results. Something was wrong. In fact many things were wrong, and it has taken me a long time to understand how things might be improved. Again, development experts do not like an accountant looking at what is going on. A lot of the money does not do much of value!

What to do about today's global issues?

(1) Help me to speak out about the failure of development. ASK ME TO SPEAK TO YOUR GROUP. Help me to participate in fund raisers.

(2) Help coordinate the effort to build the database about development activities, about development accounting and accountability, and about fund raising for development / emergency and help gather critical content

(3) Help get people in the NORTH to get involved .. just in a small way ... like buying our coffee ... or helping some small NGO with a little cash to help care for someone with AIDS in Africa ... or to help someone caring for orphans

(4) Help get members of corporate boards and mainstream institutions to get interested on a personal level and at a policy level.

If you do nothing more, simply get facts about global issues and talk with your friends about them.

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