Here’s your Daily Brief for October 28th through November 2nd:

Africa heading for 2009 growth due to China – Can China single-handedly lift Africa above the pressures being imposed by the global economic climate? This Reuters article headlines:

All African economies bar South Africa will grow this year because of China’s demand for their raw materials, a leading South African analyst said on Monday.

African view: What Have the Chinese Ever Done for Us? – Yet this post from the BBC recently taunts the role of China in Africa (particularly in Ghana). While the Chinese are welcomed with open arms by African government leaders anxious to cozy up to the unscrutinizing global superpower, civil society sees right through the murky arrangements of neocolonial proportions.

Essential tools to start a social enterprise (via Martin Montero) – Entrepreneurship is by no means a title reserved for the MBAs of the world. In fact, most of the world’s successful entrepreneurs had no business background at all. I’ve always said, don’t study what you love because you’re passion will quickly be buried by the mundanity of academia.

Starting a business, however, requires a degree of business acumen or the financial backing to pay the experts to take care those things for you. I’m personally a very involved entrepreneur — I swear by writing my own business plans and doing the dirty work involved with launching a venture.

It’s not hard to self-teach if you have the resources available to you. Martin put together this awesome list of tools for social innovators to build their business acumen and skills.

When Great Minds Come Together: ColaLife and FrontlineSMS – I get really excited when I see great minds and great ideas coming together to solve global and social challenges. Simon from ColaLife (one of my favorite up-and-coming nonprofits) published on his blog that he was in talks with Ken Banks and Ben Lyon to talk about integrating the FrontlineSMS platform to verify delivery and payment of ColaLife’s AidPods — I think it’s a great match and I’m glad these two projects were able to find each other!