Dear Anand,
Thank you for your very timely response. I will certainly be contacting you offline. And thanks to all other participants on this ENN forum; I have found all your comments very helpful.
Anand, and others on this forum, very briefly and at a very high level, my background and areas of special interest to me:
I have now lived in the US for about 20 years, and I am quite as settled here as anyone can be. However, I have always maintained connections to my native Kenya. But most certainly, I have no complaints about my life in the US. In fact, quite the contrary.
My professional training and employment here has been in accounting and the related fields of financial reporting, management accounting and even financial systems analysis. Experiencing first-hand how things work in the US corporate environment has been invaluable, literally. That said, I have watched and followed closely in amazement as Africa is getting transformed at an unbelievable pace, especially in the last 15 years or so.
For example, my native Kenya is now almost a completely different country than the one we left behind about 20 years ago. But going hand in hand with my following (and fully embracing) the Africa Rising narrative, has been my acute awareness of the many challenges that face us.
My contrasting Africa's challenges with my experience and knowledge of life in the US has heightened my awareness of the tremendous opportunities in Africa... Opportunities to help address / solve some / any of those challenges. And in so doing create employment and other opportunities for people there. That is why I have been in a period of mental / mind-set transition, so to speak, for the last 2 years or so.
(Oh, but just for clarity, I am not just talking about Africa just from over 7000 flight-miles away, I relish visiting Kenya every one or two years. I have cultivated and today maintain strong relationships with some energetic, visionary people there... potential partners in future endeavors.)
The issue of food security / food production, and related basic Agro processing and marketing, are the areas of my core interest.
Side point: It was while researching these issues that I was shocked to learn of the sheer quantity of peanuts produced and consumed, across the board, in the US! But don't believe me, google it for yourself. When I contrast this with the somewhat prevalent view in Kenay that peanuts are "the poor man's snack food", (man as in person), I realize just how much the greater part of Africa's challenges are to do with Education. Not academic or book education, but citizenry awareness of many issues.
I could go on and on... My apologies for this too-long post. Anand, my email is dbachia@hotmail.com. I will certainly be in touch. Your experience with peanuts processing is right up my alley!
To others, for anybody for whom my post strikes a cord, and especially if you are already doing or are planning to do something related in Kenya, I would really appreciate any helpful comments.
Thank you all for enduring this here my rant! Sometimes I am like that... Other times even worse!
Best regards to all,
David B