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Clip from Africa Report TV series showcases successful entrepreneur Susan Deiters of Café des Arts in Kenya.

Slide show on the ‘black diamonds’, South Africa’s increasing upwardly mobile black middle class.

(Click image for an article on the film via africasacountry)

Black diamonds is a term increasingly used to refer to the burgeoning new black middle class in South Africa. The short documentary, by Dutch filmmaker Saska Vredeveld offers an inside view of the personal lives of three black South African entrepreneurs Felicia Mabuza-Suttle, Richard Ndlela and Vusi Vardos Mahlaba (pictured above). View the film here (it’s in english).

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Wol Kolade, managing partner at Isis, is worried. The future of private equity – and the UK economy as a whole – is at a turning point, he says, and he’s not sure which way things will go.

And when Kolade worries, people should listen – he knows what he is talking about. He joined the private equity vehicle 17 years ago, having worked on scores of investments – most of them, he boasts, providing a generous rate of return. He has also had a stint as chairman of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, taking up the role in the bad old days of 2007, when his industry was hated, just in time to receive the grilling of his life from the Treasury Select Committee.

Small business is his passion, the force that gets him out of bed in the morning – “hug an entrepreneur” he jokes at one point – and he thinks it can be the saviour of the British economy. “Big companies don’t really care about the UK,” he says, speaking with the measured enthusiasm of a seasoned speaker. “They will go anywhere. It’s SMEs who drive the economy.”

The Royal Bafokeng Stadium at night..

The campus and nearby stadium where England played their opening Fifa 2010 World Cup match against USA on June 12 are both owned by the Royal Bafokeng Nation. They built and manage the Royal Bafokeng Stadium which will host some of the key early games during the 2010 World Cup. According to the BBC, profits will be ploughed back into the local community. Of all the ten venues for the World Cup, this is the only one outside a major city and the only one owned by a rural community.

The Royal Marang hotel and the interior of Bafokeng Sports Campus Accommodation.

Matches played/to be played at The Royal Bafokeng Stadium during the 2010 FIFA World Cup:

12 June England v USA
15 June New Zealand v Slovakia
19 June Ghana v Australia
22 June Mexico v Uruguay
24 June Denmark v Japan
26 June Round 2 (1C v 2D)

King Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi, 36th king of the Bafokeng nation (pictured).

The Royal Bafokeng Nation is a community of 300,000 people in the North West Province of South Africa, with its capital city in Phokeng (pronounced “po keng”). The King of the Royal Bafokeng Nation is Kgosi Leruo T. Molotlegi, an architect, who is trying to break Africa’s so called resource curse.

The Bafokeng people have been able to afford such a stadium because of wealth generated from mining. According to Sky News, they are believed to be the richest tribe on the planet after the world’s biggest platinum deposits were found on their land in 1924.

The twenty-nine villages of the Royal Bafokeng Nation boast some of the most innovative approaches to sustainable development in Africa. These include holistic education reform, the use of sport to generate social and economic momentum, and converting mineral resources into the world’s leading community-based investment company.

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Karanja Macharia is the founder and CEO of Mobile Planet, a mobile company in Kenya that provides third party services to both the main mobile providers and other corporate clients. They’ve been around for a number of years, Google invested in them 2 years ago, and most importantly, they’re profitable.

Karanja carries around a Nokia 1600, the cheapest data-enabled phone you can buy ($25). Why? He does this so that he understands what his customers need and use. His clients aren’t your upper-class Blackberry toting professionals, they’re the “wananchi” (the ordinary person).

It takes a paradigm shift in the understanding of people, culture and spending habits to tackle this market. It’s not a population that understands the PC-web in the same way that you, me or anyone from the West does. It takes a different perspective, and a different type of entrepreneur.

Amos Winbush, 27, is founder and CEO of CyberSynchs L.L.C., which provides phone data backup and recovery services. His business currently supports 98% of all mobile devices, and its users are expected to number 12 million-plus by the end of 2010 Read More….