World Bank Managing Director Encourages Mozambique...

...to Accelerate Growth by Improving the Business Climate and Governance

“Mozambique is a country of significant achievements and great opportunities. It takes strong government leadership and vision, a transparent and flexible regulatory framework, and a vibrant private sector to extend and deepen the impressive growth performance of the past decade into the next ten to twenty years”.

...“this Mozambican flagship investment is a good example of how countries can effectively combine support from various parts of the World Bank Group [International Development Association -IDA, International Finance Corporation - IFC, Multilateral Guarantee Association – MIGA] to create jobs, and fight poverty.”

By the way Foreign Direct investment has increased 36,5% in 2006. For more information you can go to the World Bank webpage for Mozambique.

Kulunga... Perfect...

There are still some questions regarding what am I doing in Mozambique... I am working to a company called Kulunga. Kulunga means in one of the Mozambican dialects (changana... or shanghana) something good, from the word xiLunguile=it's very good... divine...

The meaning is not always the same, depending on the person we are talking to in Mozambique, but it is always something positive. Recently I discovered that this word exists in other areas in Africa, such as in Kimbumdo from Angola. It's a verb and means to triumph, to be right.

So what better place to work, than this. It is a start up company in Market Research and Training. That is why I left Philips.

In and out...

Visa issues are always something important when one is living an non EU country. So after entering all the documents needed to get a permanent visa, it takes some time, and me and Tiago went out of the country to get a new border visa for 30 days.

We went to Koomatiport in South Africa to go out Mozambique, had a nice breakfast and planned to get back when... we realized that we needed to stay 4 days outside of Mozambique to get another visa for 30 days at the border... or go to Nelspruit to get a visa in the consulate... Impossible to get because all the consulate staff was out at 3 p.m. It was Friday.

Thanks to some friends that know some friends we were able to get our visas and get back to Maputo... Krueger park will wait again.

Wow...

I was looking at the previous post... That is an interesting stuff... but to cheer up a bit, here is a pic from Inhaca Island in Mozambique. Great weekend :-)

Prediction! No more prevention...

When going through the news one of this days I was caught by this article in portuguese. The possibility of predicting an heart attack. This took me to one of the previledges I had for the last almost 2 years of the health sector: some chats during lunch and the learnings I took from them.

This new possibility that by a simple blood test I can have the prediction of having an heart attack in the near future is an incredible change on how we see medicine nowdays. The time will come that we can predict that you will have an heart attach in 3 years, 7 months, 2 days and 2 hours... So instead of preventing deseases, we might just predict them... And then do something about it. On the other hand, we won't like our insurance companies to know about it... If you are a woman, you may try it here.

Meanwhile, not even prevention arrives to most parts of the world, nor the basic medical assistance.

Floods

Dear Friends,

Despite all the news you might have heard, that are true and sad, I am quite away from the Floods. It's around 1000Km away from Maputo.