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@Mister_Baxter
Ok - here's a way forwards. It would make a genuine contribution to the development of many countries if they had a thriving local industry paid in stable western currency. Email scams are a carbon-neutral, high-skill industry that incentivises literacy and IT training. However, at the moment, the product that they are producing is frankly not export-standard. And it's not very ethical, focussing as it does on extracting large amounts of money from people who can't afford it.
What Africa needs is better scams - scams that target the greedy, the unethical and the middle-class over here, yet sting each of them for a relatively small amount of money.
Here's my first contribution to ScamAid:
Dear Sir,
PLease allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dr Alfredo Semi-Freddo. I am a Zimbabwean citizen, struggling to make a living under the crushing and oddly inept black-on-black tyranny that afflicts my country.
Not many people know that Mr Robert Mugabwe was a keen cyclist in his youth. Like many cyclists, as he has aged and put on weight he has spent less and less time on the bike and more and more on eBay buying highly desirable vintage bicycles.
My brother in-law is the Keeper of Mr Mugabwe's bicycle shed. The collection stored therein now amounts to over 1270 whole bikes and an uncountable amount of frames and components. This collection includes countless vintage steel bikes with lovely curly lugs and unmarked Italian classic track bikes, ripe for converting into repulsive baby-pink fixies.
A shipping container or so of this stuff would never go amiss. I am looking for a business partner who will front me £500 to hire a truck and get this shit on a ship to Europe. I will slap your address on it, you eBay the lot and we'll split the profits. Deal?
Yours etc,
Dr thingy whateverisaid