My last post on Emergent Democracy posited a lot of questions and very few answers. It got some terrific feedback, for which I’m very grateful. But I’m concerned that a session that just offers critique will be received badly. I’d like to be able to point to some of the great work being done out there to ensure that new Emergent Democracy communities are open to the entire world. And I’d love help from folks reading my and Joi’s blog on identifying projects worth celebrating.

I’m looking for projects that do one of three things:

- help address media attention gaps by reporting on underreported parts of the globe, or work explicitly on increasing people’s understanding/caring about these parts of the globe

(for example: BlogAfrica, Open Knowledge Network, Blogalization, etc.)

- help include people from developing nations in online deliberations, or work on removing barrier to participation (translation, support for local languages, etc.)

(for example: TakingITGlobal, Kabissa

- bring online/distributed decisionmaking into real-world action, including activism, fundraising, elections, etc.

(for example, the use of cellphone-enabled smart mobs to organize protests in Kenya or to monitor elections in Ghana)

Please, help me find projects I haven’t stumbled upon yet – I’d like to share as much good news as possible with the folks at the Digital Democracy Teach-in.

Databank, run by the very brilliant Ken Ofori-Atta, is reporting that Ghana’s stock exchange had the best returns of any equity market, worldwide, in 2003. Ghana’s stock market returned 144%, in US dollar terms, for 2003, followed closely by Uganda at 140% and Kenya at 112%.

Ghana’s tremendous performance owes something to the Ashanti Goldfields takeover by Anglo American and something to the dollar’s decline. But Databank points out that, as a whole, Africa returned 37% on equity markets. Remove Zimbabwe, the world’s worst performing stock market (for obvious reasons) and that return rises to 44%. Which means:

This compares favourably with a return of 30% by the MSCI global index, 32% in Europe 26% in the US (S&P) and 36% in Japan (Nikkei).

Throwing a little cold water on this news is Andrea Bohnstedt for World Market Research Centre, who points out:

Although often delivering unexpectedly good performances, many stock markets in sub-Saharan Africa remain small and therefore illiquid. This indicates that they are primarily of interest for specialised investors with a long-term investment horizon and a higher risk tolerance.