This panel will focus on the comparative effectiveness of aid and foreign investment in achieving economic development and advancing social and economic rights in African nations. Beginning with an examination of recent trends in foreign investment and the objectives and methods employed, participants will then speak to the extent to which the profit-seeking incentive is an appropriate model for ensuring the sustainability of capital in-flow into Africa and laying the bedrock for economic self-sufficiency.
Featuring:
 |
BARBARA JAMES Principal, Henshaw Capital Partners Barbara James is Founder and CEO of the first independent Pan-African private equity Fund of Funds – Henshaw Capital Partners. Henshaw invests in private equity and venture capital funds across Africa. Henshaw is a vehicle for institutional investors – pension, insurance, endowment and sovereign funds in Africa and internationally, to invest in African private equity, through its diversified portfolio of professionally selected funds. Henshaw also conducts institutional investor seminars on African private equity. After a 15-year career in business applications of information technology, Ms. James entered the African venture capital industry and helped establish the African Venture Capital Association (AVCA). From 2005 to 2007, she was Managing Director of the African Venture Capital Association (AVCA) and served on its Executive Board until 2009. At AVCA, she was responsible for the development, fund raising and implementation of programs to promote and strengthen the private equity and venture capital industry in Africa including AVCA’s research and publications program, training program, industry briefing and conference program, advocacy and regulatory programs. Ms. James has been instrumental in the development of innovative venture capital solutions in Africa. They include initiating the African Diaspora SME Fund; advocating for UK (and G8) tax incentives to investors in African venture capital; an African Technical Assistance Fund and the first independent African venture capital Fund of Funds. In 2007, she advised the Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ugandan Governments on the setting up of an SME venture capital fund, a technical assistance facility and an enabling regulatory environment for venture capital in East Africa. Ms. James has been featured in several print, electronic and broadcast media including CNN and the BBC discussing issues of venture capital and development in Africa. She has a BSc in Computer Science and an M.Sc. in Business Systems Analysis and Design. She also qualified as a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) and a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and has trained professionally as a venture capital general partner (manager) and Limited Partner (investor).
|
 |
ERIC KASHAMBUZI United Nations Liaison and Principal Advisor, Millennium Promise Eric Kashambuzi is the United Nations Liaison and Principal Advisor for Millennium Promise. He is also Senior Policy Advisor to the Bureau of Development Planning in the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). His long career with the UN also includes working with the UNDP in Africa and in New York, in the Secretariat servicing the UNDP and the UN Population Fund Executive Board, and as Senior Policy Advisor to the UN Millennium Project. Mr. Kashambuzi is a widely published author on the subject of African development. He has addressed numerous conferences at MIT, Harvard, Columbia, and at The Hunger Project Conference among other institutions and conventions. Mr. Kashambuzi holds degrees in geography, economics, demography, and international law and diplomacy from University of Nairobi (Kenya), University of California, Berkeley and University of Lusaka (Zambia). He has taught geography and economics at Nairobi and Addis Ababa Universities. |
 |
ANDREW RICE Journalist, The New York Times Andrew Rice’s award-winning journalistic work has covered a wide variety of subjects, including literature, dictatorship, democracy, politics and war. He is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, and he’s reported from Africa for other publications, including The Economist, The New Republic and The Paris Review. Rice is a native of Columbia, SC, and a graduate of Georgetown University. He worked for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Observer before moving to Uganda in 2002 as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs. The Teeth May Smile But The Heart Does Not Forget, his first book, was published by Metropolitan Books in 2009. The New York Times called it a “vivid prism for examining some of the largest themes in Africa’s history.” In January, Mr. Rice’s book was named as a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize, which honors works in the field of international affairs. |
 |
GRAHAM SINCLAIR Investment Advisor and ESG Architect, Sinclair & Company Graham Sinclair is a sustainable investment strategist, ESG investment architect and global project leader. His research and advisory engagements model investment architecture integrating environmental, social and governance factors in emerging and frontier markets, especially Africa. Since 2006 Sinclair & Company has delivered design and strategy for the IFC, UN, WBCSD, trillion-dollar investment managers, and international organizations. Before joining KLD in Boston, he worked in pensions consulting and investment banking through 2002. Mr. Sinclair has graduate degrees in business and law and leads sustainable investment seminars in North America, Europe and Africa. He resides in Vermont, USA and Cape, South Africa. |
 |
Panel Moderator: SCOTT SHUSTER Scott Shuster, a Producer of NPR’s “All Things Considered” and long-time director of an editorial unit of Business Week, was also an ABC News foreign correspondent working principally in Sub-Saharan Africa for nine years. Mr. Shuster later joined the adjunct faculty of the Columbia School of Journalism and wrote a much-quoted article for the Columbia Journalism Review titled “Foreign Competition Hits the News,” in which he predicted the rise of indigenous African news correspondents who would supplant the work of foreigners like himself. Mr. Shuster is now principally on the lecture circuit moderating public and private discussions for such clients as the Corporate Council on Africa, Microsoft Corporation’s Unlimited Potential corporate division, the Hashemite Royal Court (Government of Jordan), the Government of Dubai, the US Dept. of State, and the UN. Scott Shuster holds an MBA from IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland. |