@PatrickGibbs

Do not expect to get ever reliable exact data about the costs of materials or the man-hours needed ! It always depends

In the attached file I have given You 2 examples with current real data respective realistic estimates why data about raw material cost and manufacturing time vary so much. Do You really expect that a guy with a small table lathe manfactures a part in the same time as someone with a large high-power CNC controlled lathe ?
The same applies for someone with a hand torch compared with a CNC-controlled table.

Mike

Hello Matt:

I may have worded what made you laugh wrong - lol, but I Africa is made up of more than 50 countries, hundreds of ethinicities, thousand of tribes and languages. Most Africans know they live in poverty, but most are discouraged from being innovative by governments and some cultural beliefs. I offer several examples of businesses that can work in these communities, I suggest each reagion should create their own requirements document. I propose Cluster Villages were houses should be built within close proximity as opposed to 100 and 500 apart as in some communities which makes it expensive to deliver service like water, sewage and electric.

No I am not suggesting charitable, I make reference to "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" by late CK Prahalad an Indian professor who did extensive research to support this theory. Being African, I have seen his arguments to be true. Why is cell phone access growing at such a fast rate in Africa and India and companies profitable, and yet no one there has $15 or $100 data plan? All in coming calls are free. Then there is mobile banking and mobile money transfers that are found in regions not deemed possible only a few years ago. Yes volume works and it will work. For certain goods, the poor actually pay more than you even in the US. This like sugar, detergent, salt and floor. Most cannot afford to buy a 2 kg package of sugar, so someone buys it 1 package and repackages to sell it to the poor, by time one gets by the whole package it ends up costing them more.

Internet can be delivered cheaply in Africa than it is done now there or in the West. The whole concept is to also build the infrastructure to make this possible, affordable goods and service. Eliminate reliance on foreign oil, Africa is huge - dedicate agriculture production to food and fuel. Target 20 - 30 percent bio-fuel to suppliment imported fossil fuels. If a country imports 100 million worth of oil it means 20-30 of that now goes to local farmers. The consensus is for Africa to grow food for export to earn foreign much needed foreign exchange, so they say. But I believe Africa should focus on intra trade, between communities and nations on the continent. Infrastructure to support this will come, thanks to other and OSE.

I cannot ask anyone to stop giving aid, but I can sure encourage people to stop depending on it. Aid has had serious consequences on Africa, infact most people in the West think they are helping, most have very good intentions, but in my opinion and opinions of others who watch this closely we believe Aid to Africa is actually the leading contributor to African poverty and most proplems we see.

I am supported here by Dambisa Moyo, also a Zambia and Author of best selling "Dead Aid - why aid is not working and how there is another way for Africa". Paul Collier a renowed economist from Oxford and an expert on Aid also believes the Aid system needs to be structured - his Book "The Bottom Billion - why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it." I have discussed aid with him in detail and his book argues that not everyone in Africa needs aid or should be considered poor. Then there is "Lords of Poverty" by Graham Hancook, again he argues very well why Aid has been killing 'poor' economies. People in the West keep sending used mosiquito nest, used clothes and even grain and all they are doing is killing local industry. The Aid structure has made Africa a dump for things you people in the so called rich nations don't want. Read any foreign department website from the UK to Canada or the US, for every dollar you guys send to African as Aid, you get back more than 1.10, how is that aid? If that is the Aid, we don't want it. My point here is not to discuss aid, it will become a distraction.

What I like about OSE is that, for this to be sustainable someone has to pay for something some how, and because it is open source, most African communities can affordably pay for most of your machines. My book suggests food processing, tourism, small manufaturing e.tc. the same things OSE talks about.

So I am more than prepared to replicate this process and have it tested in Africa. I have a lot of land close to the City that I can use to test this. Our traditional home is in the place called Chilubi Island, this place has never seen a grader, a back hole or a front loader. All the roads there were made with Axes and holes.

My book is also supported by another renowned Economist Hernando De Soto of Peru. Who shows examples that because the poor have not been accorded the tools to build proper infrastructure, they only have what he calls "Dead Capital" - in the book "The Mystery of Capital".

I will try to contact the Canadian guys, thanks for the link.

Cheers