Calestous Juma

Calestous Juma died today. He was a very interesting and smart man.

I had quotes of his in an article I wrote a while back called "Food":
(this one: https://writingsonsubjects.blogspot.ca/2015/11/food.html)

He was a writer, educator, and prolific user of twitter. No stranger to math and science his world view was pretty based in reality. In his books and articles he covered African development issues.

Africa is a part of the world most people who don't live there know very little about. If you ask someone on the street about various African countries they'd probably tell you that it's very poor, dangerous, and bad there ... but that's not really true. The African continent has come a long way in the last hundred years and it has a lot of potential for growth to become a very healthy economy.

Juma's final article was a recommendation for a Pan-African trade agreement.

(This One: When it Comes to Trade, Africa really Should be a Country)

It's not an easy undertaking as borders of Africa after World War 2 were drawn up by mediators at random and internal conflict is rife in Africa.

It's fun to read the writings of people with big dreams ... It's really sad he died ... he was like one of those people who really seemed to have a positive outlook on the world and how to make it a better place.

Africa has a lot of potential to be a healthy and prosperous entity. Last article we talked about Age Pyramids in this blog a bit ... when it comes to Age Demographics, Africa is one of the only places on earth where Young People outnumber Old People by a huge margin. Take Nigeria for example ...

Nigeria already has a 405 billion GDP (27th out of 194 countries worldwide), which is pretty good, and it has a very young well educated force of young people coming into adulthood. It's potential for economic health is A+.

Remote regions in Africa is a big issue they have to deal with as they have hubs here and there like Nigeria and half a dozen others that are decent economies with great potential ... but lack of continental-wide roads and infrastructure has kept this progress out of remoter regions.

But with PIDA PAPA 2020, and PIDA 2040 ... it seems a lot of projects are on their way to try and remedy this problem.

PIDA, See: https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Project-and-Operations/PIDA%20note%20English%20for%20web%200208.pdf

Connecting these hubs with roads, rails, energy lines, pipe lines, and internet is already being planned to be implemented.

Seems like Africa by 2040 will be a pretty healthy economic region. Scientist, Statistician, and Innovator Calestous Juma was a catalyst and advocate for this and it is a shame he won't be here to see it come to fruition.