IFAF Objectives and Strategy
Statutes for "Industries for Africa Foundation"
§ 1. Name and Registered Office
§ 1.1. The name of the Foundation is "Industries for Africa"
§ 1.2. The registered office of the Foundation is in Gothenburg Sweden.
§ 2. Object
§ 2.1. The object of the Foundation is to:
1. Establish a range of economically viable locally owned manufacturing Industries in the Sub-Saharan countries of Africa able to manufacture all the equipments needed to develop and operate oilseed plantations where the final product is refined Biofuel.
2. To provide equipment design and support services to such industries by maintaining a central design office in the area and providing suitably experienced project engineers for the start up phase of the industries.
3. To make available suitable machine tools and CAD CAM systems at a cost that allows the individual companies so formed to be able to be financed by local financial institutions without recourse to any foreign investment unless that investment is structured to enable local control and majority ownership to be maintained in the country the activity is established.
4. To assist local technical institutes by supplying equipment and instructors able to establish training programs where sufficient skill is transferred for such industries to be able to self sufficient without long term reliance on western trained and supplied engineers and managers.
5. To ensure that all energy needs by the manufacturing companies and the plantations supplied by these companies are met without the use of fossil fuels.
6. To ensure that any company or plantation so created provides a positive benefit to its workforce and local community within guidelines given by any relevant UN body.
§ 2.2. The Foundations overall objective is to use the driving force created by the West's demand for clean fuels to generate added value, wealth and spin off benefits in the Sub Saharan African region where there is significant poverty and unemployment. The method the foundation will use to achieve this objective is the transfer of sufficient know-how, designs and sufficient support for any industrialisation to become self-perpetuating.
§ 3. Financing
§ 3.1. The Foundation shall be financed through donations from individuals, companies, organisations, foundations, government bodies and any appropriate European Union initiatives.
Obviously the objectives outlined above are a challenge. Africa is a continent consisting of many countries and about 900 million people. Many of those countries suffer from extreme poverty and the political instability and strife that almost always accompanies poverty. We aslo must accept that Africa is a huge place with many peoples. The best we could ever hope to achieve is a few small pockets of development with sufficient technological standards to provide a platform for further development.
No such development can take place unless it makes commercial sense and can be more than just a foreign exploitation of cheap labour - being exploited does not engender productivity in anyone. Production of anything can also only be viable if there is a market that both needs it and can afford it.
The ever increasing price of oil, the western panic driven demand for Biofuels and the fact Africa has vast areas of drylands suitable for non-edible oil plants combine to give a "window of opportunity" for some to break out of that trap. Exactly how to help do that is this Foundations "raison d'être" - and our strategy for achieving that is in fact quite simplistic.
The first step was to set a scale for Biofuel production and then design all the needed component and infrastucture parts. That we have done and the next step is to establish the many cottage industries needed to support the endgame of establishing 500 000 Hectares of oil producing plantations - with all refining and machine needs met by African industry.
Now we are in the "implementation" phase - best described as the commercialisation of all the completed designs in the form of Cottage industries owned and run by Africans with the knowledge support of our people. In parallel with this we start the preparation and planting of many thousands of Hectares of drylands.
This stage also involves the realities of dealing with Africa - the negative stuff! Whether we like it or not - there does exist a culture of hand-outs, dependency and widespread corruption involving any financial dealings. What is clear in all this is the fact this corruption is restricted to a quite limited "strata" of officials and administrators - and largely restricted to dealings with foreigners and others who are seen as cash opportunities - and frankly behave as such. Same as people everywhere!
We provide no cash or capital - business opportunities go to Artisans and working people - directors and managers must be majority women - and majority shareholding must be African. Any juxtapositioning later is simply the "nature of the beast" - but juxtapositioning there will certainly be - the nature and effect of which we will find out soon enough.
