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Dear faithful reader,

TO BUILD FROM EXISTING ASSETS OR TO START AFRESH FROM RUBBLES?

Since three years, the international community witnessed with amazement and bewilderment the erratic land reform's policy performed by Zimbabwe's Mugabe - click here for updated news on Zimbabwe.

Now, in the middle of year 2002, came the time of reckoning: Zimbabwe is hit by famine. Mugabe declares states of emergency. In other words Mugabe launches a May-Day message for Aid Agencies to supply food to Zimbabwe. Mugabe is blaming persisting drought in Southern Africa for the famine.

One could, however, wonder if drought isn't the perfect scapegoat behind which Mugabe is hiding to escape from his glaring political and economical mistakes. Is drought the real cause for famine in Zimbabwe? As a faithful reader of AFRICABIZ Online put it:

From: @daffodil.com Sent: Friday, May 03, 2002 5:50 PM To: editor@africabiz.org Subject: ZIMBABWE GOVERNMENT SPONSORS DESTRUCTION OF PRODUCTION AND CALLS FOR SUPPORT AT THE SAME TIME ? Thought you might have an answer to such a question ? How can a Government sponsor and support wholesale looting and destruction of a once very productive food base (and foreign currency earner) and at the same time go out and call for international aid ?

Sad. Isn't? To see Zimbabwe in such dire straits. A country which used to stand as a regional economic power to be now down on its knees to such a "degrading" state of begging for food.

It is obvious that land reform to empowering Zimbabwe's black farmers is an absolute necessity. That reform, however, could have been planned and performed with sagacity to protecting the existing and efficient agricultural structure developed by Zimbabwe's white farmers.

In the contrary Robert Mugabe led a demagogic policy of land invasion and seizure, which doubtless played a great part in the current state of famine as per May 2002.

One could wonder why the land reform problem remained dormant for quite 23 years (since the independence day) to be suddenly addressed in a manner of improvisation, confusion and snafu. It seems that Zimbabwe's ruling party, under the leadership of Mugabe, acted just to satisfy the interests of a gang, which only target is to hang on to power. Disregarding, first, the detrimental economic and social cost to the country; and second, subsequent damage done to Africa's image and standing vis-à vis the international community of investors.

Let's hope that other African decision makers throughout the continent will learn from the sad and quick crash of Zimbabwe's agriculture. Let's hope that they will stop short from making the same aberrant political and economical mistakes. Let's hope that they won't act like Emperor Nero.

We Africans will gain more in terms of economic development if we always take sound political and economic decisions to preserving existing assets. Whatever may be the resentful thoughts we still ruminate about past behavior of former colonial powers and some of African citizens we must resist temptation of harsh actions, which are counter productive.

We should realize that it is always better to build on existing assets; instead of starting from rubbles.

Any African country, which nowadays adopts destructive strategy like Zimbabwe's Mugabe cannot expect to be salvaged by the international community. Anyway, even if some international aid is given in such circumstances, the country is still loosing as donated food competes with local agriculture's production and deprive local farmers from much needed revenues.

Furthermore there are now plenty of other countries around the world, which cry for help and deserve more to be assisted than those which purposely destroy their own hard built assets.

- THIRD ANNIVERSARY

This delivery marks the third anniversary of AFRICABIZ Online. Every month, since 37 months, we provided you with news and information about sub-Saharan African countries - with regards investing atmosphere - and delivered to you score of astounding business opportunities capable of generating double-digit annual growth rate. Many feedback encourage us to continue on the same line of delivering free content about investing and trading in and out Africa.

"CONTRIBUTOR'S GUIDELINES" are available here. You are invited to contribute to AFRICABIZ ONLINE MONTHLY ISSUE - with articles related to "How Africa Could Bridge The Developing Gap".

Many thanks for subscribing to Africabiz. See you here next month on June 15, 2002.

Dr. B.M. Quenum
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Business Opportunities

TROPICAL FRUIT INDUSTRY AS INCOME BUILDING POWER FOR AN AFRICAN COMMUNITY / PART IV: GLOBAL OVERVIEW OF PASSIONFRUIT AGRIBUSINESS

In Issue N° 35 an investment estimate to establishing 500 hectares of Passionfruit agribusiness had been exposed.

In Issue N° 36 investment related to establishing a processing plant for the transformation of 7,500 metric tons of passionfruit produced by the plantation had been discussed.

- ANIMAL FEED PRODUCTION

During the daily processing of 28,846 metric tons of passionfruit, 2,500 kg per hour of following byproducts are generated:

Rinds Residual Pulp Pips

These byproducts are suitable to manufacturing animal feed through an adequate technology of mixing them with limepowder. The resulting hydrated cake is pressurized to remove the remaining juice. The dehydrated cake is then dried out in a desiccator to produce granulates of good quality animal feed.

Quantity of granulates per hour: 563 kg / hour (from 2,500 kg of raw material as above outlined). That is to say 4,500 metric tons per days or 4,500 x 260 = 1,170 metric tons per year (Capacity of the Passionfruit processing plant: 7,500 metric tons of passionfruit; one shift; 5 days / week (260 days / year - click here for more)
.
- HOG FATTENING / ANIMAL BREEDING

The quantity of animal-feed granulates resulting from the agribusiness operation based on the establishment of 500 hectares of passionfruit plantation (35) and the processing of related 7,500 metric tons of passiionfruit (36) could be used for hog fattening operation here exposed, which demonstrates that economic activity based on passionfruit development is a real economic catalyst.

- GLOBAL OVERVIEW OF PASSIONFRUIT AGRIBUSINESS AS INCOME BUILDING POWER FOR AN AFRICAN COMMUNITY

Items	Amount (US$ x 1,000)
INVESTMENT
1-Total investment 500 hectares Plantation of passionfruit	2,450
2- Total investment Processing Plant for 7,500 metric tons of passionfruit	2,450
3- Total investment for animal breeding	750
Total investment for the operation	5,750
PRODUCTION LEVEL
1- Passionfruit = 7,500 metric tons
2- Passionfruit Concentrate at 32° Brix = 529 metric tons
3- Passionfruit Syrup for carbonated soft drink = 1,725 metric tons
4- Animal feed granulates = 1,170 metric tons
5- Finished hogs = 3,060
OPERATING COSTS
Total Operational Expenses	1,580
GENERATED REVENUES
1- Passionfruit = 7,500 metric tons x 78 US $ per metric ton	585
2- Passionfruit Concentrate at 32° Brix = 529 metric tons x 3,500 US $ per metric ton	1,886
3- Passionfruit Syrup for carbonated soft drink = 1,725 metric tons x 1,000 US $ per tons	1,725
4- Animal feed = 1,170 metric tons x 50,51 US $ per metric ton	60
Total OF Revenues	4,256

- IMPORTANT REMARK ABOUT REVENUES

The international selling price of passionfruit concentrate can reach up to US $ 6,000.00 per metric ton for product of very good quality with 32° Brix.. You will notice, however, that we have been very conservative and chose a selling price far bellow that level: US $ 3,500.00. That is to say only 58% of the selling price for good quality product.

Nevertheless one can notice the astounding result that this venture can produce. The Ratio of Revenues versus Operational Expenses is : 4,226 / 1,580 = 2,67. It is a real and powerful Income Building Power capable of driving upward the economic development of a regional territory in any African country as here extensively exposed.

-This is a real niche opportunity for any international investor or African country to improving its foreign exchange balance. It is also a perfect Economic Catalyst

Control Your Desktop

VIRUSES ON THE LOOSE! BETTER BE PROTECTED!

You certainly have noticed the high level activity of virus attack; particularly of the Klez worm variety. A mass-mailing worm that searches Microsoft Outlook Express and Outlook address book for email addresses and sends messages to all recipients.

The latest version of the Klez email worm is more deadly as the subject and attachment name of incoming infected emails are randomly chosen; it is therefore very difficult for mails receivers to spot suspicious mails. And everyone who had had mail exchange with anyone else is a potential target if not protected.

It's bad enough to know that infected mails may be dispatched to you from your correspondents without their consent. But what about tainted mails purposely sent to you by rogues and unscrupulous people only to creating havoc in your system? Some infected mails had been purposely dispatched to my Inbox with address like: doomed@businessafrica.net or down@africabiz.org. Obviously some people relish in doing bad thing around.

Fortunately I had not waited for the outbreak of the KLETZ worm to take precautions. Here in this "Control your desktop section" I have relentlessly raised the security problem. One of my delivery was titled "Beware of freeware" and dealt with SPYWARE.

Do not make it easy for rogues and mad people to destroy your hard work. Get protected. Install an efficient virus scanner; update it frequently and have also other security tools installed.

- The installation of a spam killer as here exposed in combination with security tools here available will strengthen your protection. SpamKiller make it easy to spot suspicious infected mails as it does not process them. It only reads their headers; you can then delete them directly from the server without download into your system. The featured FREEBIE OF THE MONTH below outlined: ePROMPTER is also an useful protection device if configured to read only mail headers.

Freebie Of The Month

MANAGE YOUR SEVERAL EMAILS ACCOUNTS IN ONE GO

Here is ePrompterT; a small and handy tool that seats quietly in your system tray. It can be configured to handle up to 16 accounts out of a long list of hundred of email domains: AOL, AltaVista, Earthlink, Email.com, Go.com, Hotmail, Juno, Lycos, Mail.com, Mindspring, MSN, Netscape, OneBox, POP3, Rediffmail, USA, Yahoo. Etc.; all at the same time and notifies you of the arrival into your several email InBox of any new mail.

It features also a mini e-mail client, which lets you forward and reply through the account where your messages were received.

You can also use it to send original messages through any account you have on your ePrompter. It also has an address book. You can store in it web applications links for quick access. You can use it together with a SpamKiller (see also section above about "Control Your Desktop") to protect yourself from scam and unsolicited mails. It is free and isn't a spyware.

Click here to get EPROMPTER.