How many entrepreneurs have sat down and thought to themselves, “If only the Chinese would buy my product…Heck, if only one in 10 Chinese would buy my product, I’d be rich!”  Call it the China Dream. It has a long history.

James McGregor wrote a book in 2005 on doing business in China called One Billion Customers. If the title sounds familiar, it may be because a man named Carl Crow wrote a book called 400 Million Customers, back in 1937. You see, the dream only gets bigger over time!

For the most the part, this dream remains a mere dream. But sometimes, someone, somewhere, figures it out. Carl Crow was someone who figured it out, and it made him a rich man.

Carl Crow led an adventurous life. Born in Highland, Missouri, in 1884, Crow started out as a newspaperman. Eyeing his fortune, he started China Press in Shanghai in 1911. But

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Citing record production and sales, Malawi’s sole sugar manufacturing company, Illovo Sugar Limited of South Africa, announced a K6.353 billion profit–up 23% from last year. Sales and export volumes increased by 13% over the previous year (despite the resilient strength of the Kwacha against the U.S. dollar), and domestic sales grew by 11%.

The company expects a cane crop in excess of 310,000 tons next year, given typical weather conditions and increased production capacity. Illovo, which is also listed on the Malawi Stock Exchange, has paid an interim dividend of K2.40 to its shareholders, while its Directors have declared a second interim dividend of K3.70 per share.

In related news, Zambia Sugar Plc, the country’s largest sugar producer, said it plans to more than double output in the year to end-March 2010 after expanding its plantation and factory and buying a

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More pomp, please

Zambians are headed to the polls today in order to elect a successor to late President Levy Mwanawasa, who died in August in France after a stroke. About 4 million registered voters are expected to cast their ballots in the 6,456 polling stations across the country. The favorites? Rupiah Banda is the vice-president of the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) and has acted as the nation’s caretaker since Mr. Mwanawasa’s death, overseeing a 5.4% increase in growth in the process. But punters point to the 71-year old Michael Sata, a former MMD stalwart, leader of the Patriotic Front and a “fiery populist” per The Economist who was defeated in 2006, as the likely choice. A poll last week by the Steadman Group, a Nairobi-based market ...