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David Fick, a graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, has scored a hat trick in Continent of Economic Opportunities. His first book, Entrepreneurship in Africa: A study of Successes, is a useful forerunner to this manuscript � truly encyclopaedic in its breath.

Inspired by his travels in the continent and research on African businesses in 2000, Fick sets out to identify through numerous case studies in different countries in the continent, the opportunities and roadblocks that the cultural, economic, social, political and physical environments provide in Africa.

He does this by painstaking correspondence with people in Africa and around the globe who are interested in the sustainable development of the continent. Unlike most literature on the continent, Fick focuses on the micro rather than macroeconomic picture, recognising that it is small and medium enterprises that create the majority of new jobs.

The book also actively advocates that African countries do more business with each other by means of regional groupings and provides examples of how this has worked and can continue to improve.

The first part is an analysis of the economic and political policies and challenges and opportunities on the continent, written in broad brush strokes. Part 2 is case work in various countries. People in their environments are exposed to the reader in a way that arms you with vital intelligence.

Writes Fick: �Africa: Continent of Economic Opportunities is meant to tell the story of people and their communities that are successful in developing Africa. - Business in Africa Magazine

Publisher: STE Publishers