Africa's Moment: With Africa's Growth, Company launches Comprehensive Guide for Investors, Donors

March 31, 2011 - PRLog -- Africa receives billions of dollars in Aid and Billions of dollars of Foreign Direct Investment from the West. However little knowledge of the continent still abounds in America and Europe and sometimes this may lead to investors and charities falling prey to misdirected funds or losses of investments.

As a result, Crane Consulting House recently launched a one of a kind guide that would be low-cost one called the AfriGuide. The guide is supposed to have comprehensive information on all African Countries from geographical data to economic to historical data. A company spokesperson explains, “Little is still known about Africa, outside of Africa. In fact some of my friends were even surprised to learn that there are some 53 countries. Surely with the billions (in Aid and FDI) coming to Africa, someone had to provide such key information. We took up the challenge and developed The AfriGuide. Anybody can use it but investors, students and individual donors, who give even $50, would find it very useful in getting to know more about the countries their money is going to.”

Indeed there have been reports of NGOs working in Africa yet most of the donations they receive would end up in sometimes suspiciously high administrative fee claims. In a recent case, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the foreign AID agency of the UK government, cut off funding of the UN Habitat. This was after a comprehensive review by the DFID (a key donor to the UN Habitat) found that the UN Habitat was not reaching its goal of improving lives of slum dwellers in the developing world. In fact a lot of the monies were channeled to administrative fees. In explaining the decision, the DFID report said the Cameron government was determined to get “value for money” in the foreign aid that it gives. The report noted that it heavily relied on sources other than the UN Habitat when carrying out the review. This decision to cut funding was explained as part of a broader range of actions by the UK government to get the heavily indebted treasury out of the red. A review appeal was made to the UK government by the UN Habitat.

Though this is a case of an institutional donor with capacity to find as much information as it needs, the post recession environment still calls for investors and individual donors to be prudent and have knowledge of the regions their money is supposedly going to help. Information resources such as The AfriGuide could prove to be a shot in the arm for increasing investor and donor awareness and consequently donors would be able to interrogate the NGOs on where their money goes and how much of it really impacts lives.

The guide could also prove to be a wonderful resource for students especially those studying African history or International Affairs.

The AfriGuide has a free version and a comprehensive version valued at $8.95 both available on PDF from the company website.

Crane Consulting House is a company based in Kenya whose aim is to provide quality information to investors into Kenya and Africa, as well as donors. To find out more about the company and The AfriGuide visit www.craneconsultinghouse.com.

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Crane Consulting House is a company based in Kenya whose aim is to provide quality information to investors into Kenya and Africa, as well as donors and students in International or African Affairs