Cape Verde (I)

In June, 2001 I had the opportunity to address a IC2 Fellow special session, held in Lisbon. IC2 Institute, based on University of Texas in Austin, is an interdisciplinary research unit that the has advanced the theory and practice of entrepreneurial wealth creation (IC2 stands for Innovation, Creativity and Capital). IC2 institute has been founded in 1977 by Dr. George Kozmetsky (1917-2003).
This Lisbon meeting was focused about a transatlantic dialogue: "Learning by comparing US and European experiences on Innovation and competence building". IC2 Fellows was a distinguished group of scholars, most of them north americans. In the previous years I had been involved with corporate business in Africa and I had the opportunity to visit different african countries. So I used the opportunity to make a plea for Africa, calling for "joint scholar (action) research about innovative policies in Africa".
The "Africa Renaissance" idea launched during the 90's (and strongly supported by Bill Clinton) was doing its way. But most of the americans were (still are) very much ignorant about Africa - not only ignorant, but usually also afraid. I tried to arise their interest about Africa using some tales of my personal experience in Mozambique and Guinea-Bissao. Then I introduced a strange country in Africa, a peaceful and stable democracy with very positive results in education and health, in contrast with the everywhere drama of slow or negative growth and lower life expectancy in most of Africa during the 80's and 90's: Cape Verde.

Slides here