Words from the editorial desk. Central Africa Economic Integration Convention. Shea-butter production in West Africa. Other business opportunities AFRICABIZ FORUM: for international investors. Freebie you cannot live without. Control your desktop. Sponsorship welcomed for AFRICABIZ editions. Get free ebooks and courses

EDITORIAL:

Dear subscriber and international investor, September month begun with a very good and important event for the Democratic Republic of Congo: the signature of a peace agreement between the central government of President Kabila and the various and disparate waring movements challenging its authority. The picture below shows Mr. Emile Ilunga, head of the Congolese Rally for Democracy's main faction - one of the waring movements - preparing to sign the agreement. After months of tortuous negotiations, a peace deal was signed on September 1 - in Lusaka, Zambia - by rebel leaders and the six African nations, who have deployed troops on either side of the year-old war. The rebels are backed by Rwanda and Uganda while Democratic Republic of Congo is supported by troops from Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe. Even if agreement terms and articles are nebulous as far as peace monitoring process - among other important matters - is concerned, the main fact is that an agreement had been devised to end the civil and inter-African war. For the first time in modern Africa history, a multiple and inter-African conflict had been ended by African themselves. A victory for Africa as negotiations and discussions making the peace settlement a reality had been planned, sponsored and executed by African governments under Southern Africa Development corporation - SADC - umbrella. Let's pray and hope that the agreement holds all its promises and opens a new era of political stability in Central Africa Region. The region badly needs such a stability to fully express its huge economic potential and becomes one of the major development driving force of Africa. AFRICABIZ will attentively follow the course of events in the Central African Region - and particularly in The Democratic Republic of Congo - in order to spot and promote profitable projects originating from the region. The main project AFRICABIZ is promoting this month concerns the establishment, in a Western African country, of a company to produce cooking oil and fats based on "Shea-butter" - also well known in French speaking countries as "Karité". With this issue,AFRICABIZ starts a new heading named "CONTROL YOUR DESKTOP". Under said column, we will, month after month, share with you our experience in controlling a computer desktop in order: to avoid - as much as possible - computer crashes. to recover all your data when such occurrence happens. to increase your productivity. As we all know, operating systems crashes are inevitable whatever may be precautions we have taken to avoid such a nigphpare. You never know which executable program or software is going to behave weirdly. One month ago I was really fortunate to recover all my data - three years of hard work - from an unexpected bug from a Microsoft beta which blocked the booting of my system. I was obliged to format the C:\ drive and reinstall Windows 98 and all my bundle of software - fifty-nine, at the time of writing. It took me three complete 14 hours working days, but I was able to recover everything from utilities and massive database down to a single mail thanks to the tricks of the trade I'll be sharing with you every month. Thanks for poppingin and see you next month. Dr. B.M. Quenum Editorial Director of AFRICABIZ editor@africabiz.org Return to top

CENTRAL AFRICA CONFERENCE:

From November 23 to November 28, at the Congress-Hall of Yaoundé - Cameroon - the Secretariat Executive of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) is organizing: The Central Africa Integration Conference. The conference called "Journées CEMAC 1999" is aimed at studying, investigating, analyzing the economic, financial, institutional ways and means necessary to improve, accelerate and consolidate the global integration of the CEMAC members States into a strong and economicly performing regional entity; in order to boost the social, economic and cultural development of the CEMAC zone. Attending this convention on "The Central Africa Integration Conference" is a tremendous opportunity to penetrate one of the world quite economic virgin territory left over for bonanza profits. Visit this link Cemac and plan ahead to conquering

SHEA-BUTTER PRODUCTION:

VEGETABLE OIL AND FAT PRODUCTION FACILITY IN WEST AFRICA The project promoted by AFRICABIZ in this issue concerns the establishment of an oil refinery to produce all kinds of vegetable oils and fats for industrial use and human consumption (from vegetable seeds such as ground nuts, shea-nuts, mango nut, cashew nuts, palm kernels.) for Benin's national market; ECOWAS regional market and international market. Potential market segmentation is shown in the following graph: Total production level at full capacity - all productions included: oils, fats and cakes - is 68,645 metric tons, for a global potential market of 500,000 metric tons. Production at full capacity reads as follows: 1- Shea-butter: 11,419 metric tons. 2- Cake from crushed shea kernels: 16,536 metric tons. 3- Cooking oil from ground nuts: 13,634 metric tons. 4- Cake from crushed ground nuts: 27,055 metric tons. Shea-butter production and related by-products stand for 41% of total production and account for 57.6% of the sales; cooking oil contributing to 30% and cakes for the remaining 13.4%. TOTAL SALES FORECAST WHAT IS SHEA-BUTTER? Shea-butter is a grease - labeled "wild-fat" in the international products classification - extracted from the nut (shea kernel) of a wild tree which growing area expands from Mali (West-Africa) to Sudan in the Horn of Africa. Chance is that you daily use shea-butter: it is included as ingredient in many manufactured products. SHEA-BUTTER UTILIZATION In its growing-area region, shea-butter is used by locals for cooking, body care and health ingredient as medicinal balm. The shea-butter grease is incorporated into many preparation world wide: cosmetics (soaps, perfumes, hair conditioner, lips sticks...), pharmaceuticals (massage products, skin smoother...), food industry (bakery,chocolate ingredients...) PROJECTED CASH FLOW Cash flow balance is positive from beginning of operation and remains so over years. Oil producing company will meet its debt obligations with punctuality and without financial trouble. Management can increase capital expenditure up to US$ 75,000 per month without jeopardizing the financial basis of the company. That is to say additional equipment can be purchased - without long-term borrowing - to cope with increase in demands for shea-butter; and diversification of oil producing company's activities: bottling of the cooking oil and installation of a complete animal feeds production unit. Illustration below highlights the sound financial state of oil Company:

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES IN AFRICA:

Many other business opportunities are still available and reported in former issues of AFRICABIZ at the following links: http://businessafricanet.is/africabiz/ezine/arc/vol1/issue1.php Rice production in Uganda / Fishing company searching for partnership: http://businessafricanet.is/africabiz/ezine/arc/vol1/issue2.php Flowers production in Benin: http://businessafricanet.is/africabiz/ezine/arc/vol1/issue3.php Opportunities linked to West Africa Gas Project: /africabiz/ezine/arc/vol1/issue4.php Return to top

AFRICABIZ FORUM:

AFRICABIZ features a moderated discussion board: AFRICABIZ FORUM.  You may apply as moderator and manage topics pertaining to trading and investing in Africa. For more on how to use efficiently AFRICABIZ FORUM click here. Please feel free to use extensively AFRICABIZ FORUM; post messages about your products, offers, bids, investments proposals; etc. and get replies from other users all over the large world. In brief, converge at the "MEETING POINT" of people involved in trading and investing in Africa. Return to top

ADD YOUR URL AND YOUR CLASSADS:

You may add your URL and Classads for free; courtesy of AFRICABIZ. Click hereto add your Classads Click here to get free ebooks and courses Return to top

LOCK YOUR MAIL:

You certainly heard about the hacking of Microsoft Hotmail which occurred last week. Microsoft was obliged to shut down Hotmail for quite one day, to patch a security glitch which allowed hackers to gain access to some accounts; read and send email under the name of the real subscribers of the accounts. That's really a serious matter and some people got badly hurt as confidential mail were revelled on hackers' sites. I hope you were not amongst those burned. In a previous issue AFRICABIZ raised the security problem with regards email. Here we are giving you again another alternative to protect your mail privacy. A new web-based mail service is now available which make impossible the kind of misfortune above mentioned about Hotmail. The service provided by HushMail.com is FREE and secured. HERE IS HOW IT WORKS 1- With HushMail, users create their own passphrases, and the secure HushMail server does the rest. 1,024 bits of random numbers are converted into a pair of user keys -- one private key and one public key. (What the public key locks, the private key unlocks, and vice-versa.) 2- Every HushMail user will have their own unique set of these two keys. The user's passphrase is used to encrypt (and decrypt) the user's private key so that no one but the user ever has access to it. Not even Hushmail team. The passphrase plus the Blowfish algorithm encrypts the private key. 3- A one-time message key, unique to each email that is sent, is used to encrypt (and decrypt) the email message itself.  The message key (128-bit Blowfish) encrypts the email. 4- The recipient's public key is used to encrypt the message key. The message key is asymmetrically encrypted using the recipient's public key 5- Both the encrypted email and the encrypted message key are sent to the recipient. The email can only be decrypted by using the one-time message key. The message key can only be decrypted by using the recipient's private key. The recipient's private key can only be decrypted by entering the recipient's personal passphrase. So, not only is the email securely coded (before it is ever stored on a server), but the key to decode the email is also encoded. And the key to decrypt this key is also encrypted. All that sounds complicated, but it's really simple and setting-up a hushmail account is a snap! It all boils down to cooking the right "Passphrase" which in simple words is just a password written like a phrase; and your correspondent also should have a hushmail account. YOUR PASSPHRASE CONTRIBUTES TO TIGHT SECURITY When choosing a passphrase, don't forget that you will have to type it every time you log into your HushMail account. Without your passphrase, there is no way to read your email! So, don't forget to keep your passphrase in a safe place. Before you logon to http://www.hushmail.com to open your account, please work out your passphrase; jot it down on a paper. You have to cook-up a passphrase that you won't forget, but remember: a hard-to-guess passphrase will ensure the security of your email. Try something like: agassi1970wonswimbledon1992 or theguy1100 nextdoor15avenue; be creative ! IMPORTANT: If you forget your passphrase, even HushMail people cannot retrieve it for you. It is lost for ever. So, now logon to hushmail and have a secure account. You can even send attachments. By the way: AFRICABIZ's editor hushmail is: bienmaquen@hushmail.com Return to top

SPONSORSHIP:

AFRICABIZ welcomes your sponsorship for the Permanent and php on-line Editions: /africabiz/ezine/home.php http://businessafricanet.is/africabiz/ezine/current.php and the email editions; see descriptions of email editions at: http://businessafricanet.is/africabiz/newsletter.php Please contact the editor for sponsorship agreement: editor@africabiz.org Return to top

CONTROL YOUR DESKTOP:

PARTITION AND STABILIZE YOUR HARD DISK The first item of our new heading - Control your desktop - deals with your computer system stability; that is to say the characteristic of limiting irritating annoyances - Microsoft operating system infamous "fatal error..." - and resulting crashes of your desktop to only actions initiated by unexpected bugs; and not to the inherent default configuration of your hard disk. SYSTEM INSTABILITY FROM THE START When you purchased your computer, I bet one buck that it was delivered to you with what I call a one-full hard disk; in another word a non-partitioned hard disk. Anyway that was what I got - three years ago - when I acquired my new multimedia computer: Intel Pentium 166 MHz, 32 MB RAM memory, 2,1 Giga hard disk. (Since one year I upgraded the same Pentium 166-base to a 96 MB RAM memory and a 4 Giga hard disk.) What I am pointing out to is that 96% of desktop computers are delivered to their owners with a non-partitioned hard disk; and this fact, portends of future and inevitable troubles, is the main factor of instability for the system. PROGRAMMES ARE CRAMMED INTO A COMMON FOLDER On such "one-full hard disk" computer, 90% of executable programmes are crammed into a common folder: the c:\Program Files\*.* the default folder for any new software you may install. Month after month, that folder inflates to huge proportion with the amount of software added to your system; and one day or another a conflict will undoubtedly arise from mingled DLL (dynamic linking libraries) files; the whole system may end up showing sign of instability and finally crash! And when a crash does happen, you are sure to experience a lot of difficulties to fully recover your data if you cannot boot with the "safe booting" procedure. If you are not - as most of us a computer geek - you have to run and beg for the support of your seller...and retrieve your valuable working tool at least after a 48 hours delay. The seller support team may be helpful if you provide a back-up...If you haven't took the precaution of performing a back-up, the seller support team won't embark in a time consuming search, find and repair process to retrieve all your files and data; they will just format the c: hard drive and you can kiss bye bye to your numerous data and installed software other than the classics: operating system, word processing etc. Yeah, after many misfortunes I have learnt my lesson and thought about ways and means to make my system more stable. IT IS COMPULSORY TO HAVE A PARTITIONED HARD DISK If the software installed on your system are limited to the minimum: that is to say: an operating system a office package (word processing, spreadsheets, Internet browser) you may, safely, stick to a one-full hard disk. However, as soon as you start adding utilities - with all these goodies available to download, we are all tempted, right? - it is better for your "sanity" to partition the hard disk of your system into at least three (3) partitions labelled: C:\ ; D:\; and E:\ and distribute the various software amongst these partitions: operating system in C:\ together with any proprietary software related to the operating system manufacturer in C:\Program Files\*.*. most of utilities software in their personal folder in D:\ xxxx\*.* instead of the default folder C:\Program Files\*.* data files and any known instable executable - yes, yes! everything out there off the net isn't pure bread; we all know that "vaporware" do exist! - in E:\xxxx\*.* where xxxx stands for their personal folder. That will stabilize your system and make it run more smoothly. Partitioning alone is not the silver bullet which will solve everything concerning the stability of your system, but it will play a great part in reaching stability. HOW TO PARTITION YOUR HARD DISK Before the triumphal apparition of Microsoft Windows 95, partitioning a hard disk was not necessary; only those computers fans who have deep pockets were able to afford maximum 100 to 500 MB hard disk; and anyway partitioning was not for the faint heart; a real pain in the neck...That was four years ago...a millennium in digital age! Nowadays, it's done on a fly thanks to good utilities available. I use PartitionMagic - the name speaks for itself; easy simple for a dummy like me; in 10 minutes max it was done pronto! - from http://www.powerquest.com to perform the partition of my hard disk. I choose PartitionMagic instead of any other available similar tool because PowerQuest provides - as a bonus - another utility - MagicMover - to move software from one partition to another one on your hard disk. Next month, with Issue N°: 6, AFRICABIZ will continue this series and show you: how to use the partitions to perform back-up of your system. how to restore operating system, files, data and executables after a crash. You will see that you don't even need any additional hardware to perform back-up and restore!PartitionMagic and another very useful utility will do the trick for you. See you next month! Return to top

Dr. Quenum & Associates International Contact: Mr. Khalid Thomas / President Dynamic Group Ltd / BusinessAfrica™ 1106, Carlyon Rd Cleveland, OH 44112 United States Of America Email: Click here Tel: + 1 216 373 0112 (USA) Fax: + 1 815 377 1008 (USA) For sponsorship and advertisement visit AFRICABIZ ONLINE'S Media Kit Click here

AFRICABIZ Published by Dr. Quenum & Associates / BusinessAfrica™ http://businessafricanet.is EDITOR Dr. Bienvenu-Magloire Quenum editor@africabiz.org Editorial coordinator / Webmaster Sarah-Baï Quenum. tenders@tenders.businessafricanet.is

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