Africa: A New Gold Rush

It's no secret that I like information. In my Strengths profile, Learner is very high (Learner: People strong in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.). Because of that, I quickly look at any new source of statistics. A couple of days ago, the Wall Street Journal posted an interactive map of Africa showing a variety of statistics. They termed it: Africa Map: A New Gold Rush.

Granted, I'm not quite sure at this point how these might be useful to mission work in Africa. At the very least, they help give a clearer general picture of what's going on in a given country.

One thing that stood out to me is the very low direct foreign investment in Kenya, the country where we have served for almost a quarter of a century. It's lower than any country in Sub-Saharan Africa. On the whole continent, only Ethiopia and Eritrea are lower. There's no explanation but, based on experience and current topics of high interest in Kenya, I would guess it's the natural result of corruption — nobody wants to deal with that.

• What do you see in regards to your country that stands out?

For the Kingdom,

Bob A

PS

I haven't posted in quite a while. Partly, that's been because of the apparent lack of interest. That's quite all right. If this doesn't meet a need, then that's fine. But, the other reason has been my own schedule and the holiday season. We were in West Africa for a month helping with orientation for new personnel. Then, our adult children and daughter-in-law were here over the Christmas holidays. We had a great time but non-essential tasks were shelved.