My note about M-Pesa yesterday drew a note by Kenn from Kenya via Canada. He visited his Nairobi-based daughter over Xmas and that she used the cellphone payment system to pay for taxi cabs and everything under the sun. "It is slick as a whistle, fast, and trouble free. I predict it will take over the world." My reply in Swahili was: Jambo (hello). Asanti sana (thank you).

Oops 2: Reader Van pointed out that the cost of a gas pipeline cannot be $1 per mile and is likely to be $1 mn/mile. He gets a 3-mo sub extension for correcting Maurice's correction. This is becoming costly.

Today is April Fool's Day. A US banker, Bob Diamond, is ex-CEO of Britain's venerable Barclay's Bank, the old Quaker institution which bought most of Lehman Brothers in 2009. He was removed in 2012 at the orders of the Bank of England, the UK central bank, for failing to control staff manipulating interest and exchange rates.

Mr Diamond and partners have created a new fund to invest in Africa, Atlas Mara. It raised $325 mn from investors and just announced its first deal, to buy Botswana's BancABC, with a third of its business in Zimbabwe. It will pay $265 mn in cash and shares. This is no April Fool's joke. It's real.

Our sole Zimbabwe holdings are via a closed-end fund. You cannot buy in the Zimbabwe or Botswana stock markets as a non-resident retail investor. You cannot even buy in Kenya where I tried to open an account on my last safari. Our fund's strategy is based on market arbitrage similar to what I think lured Mr Diamond into ABC: that the Zimbabwe stock exchange can be a cheap back-door way to acquire cheaply assets elsewhere in Africa countries. We already have a return of 17% on this fund only bought in mid-Dec. 2013.

More on this and other news from around the globe in today's global investing including lots on closed-end funds where we invest our starter portfolio, for those with $20,000 to invest outside the US. Plus another article on the perils of Africa investment for a metals giant, news from Guinea and Ethiopia, Belarus, and Russia, Mongolia, and China plus staid old Canada, Ireland, Holland, Israel, Singapore, and Britian.

Our holding is Africa Opportunity Fund, AROFF in the US or AOF in London, a Cayman Island registered closed-end fund currently in London on the Alternative Investment Market, their Nasdaq. It is up 7% today. As part of a capital increase via convertible shares, the fund is moving to the main London Stock Exchange, one reason for the boost in its share price. I must admit I knew this before the information was public and even mistakenly wrote that it had already been done in my first article on AROFF.

Another is that emerging and frontier markets are doing better overall since the end of last year when there was a scare based on US Fed tapering. (Yield-seeking investors go into higher-risk markets offering higher interest rates or dividends, like developing countries, if US interest rates are low, and reverse course when US rates rise.)

Gossip I cannot confirm has it that some recent Africa deals have gone well. More fund news below.

*Teva bounced on the Supremes letting it enforce its key Copaxone patent longer than next month, until they can rule on its validity. Today a lower US court ruled against Teva's planned generics violations of a regimen patent for administering Alimta, a lung cancer drug held by Eli Lilly. Generics are halted until 2022, much longer than Teva got. Lilly makes $2.7 bn/yr for how it administers Alimta, after injecting patients with a combination of folic acid and vitamin B12.

*Global Logistics Properties fell in Singapore trading on confusion. The logistics leasing firm revealed that it leased 21,000 sq meters of Japanese facilities to Sagawa Global Logistics, a competitor and Japan's No. 3 warehouse leasing firm. GBTZF

*Covidien CFO Charles Dockendorff's sale of 90,730 shares for ~$3 mn was to cash out of stock options, not because there are problems in the accounts. He still owns over 112,000 shares in the Irish medical devices firm.

*JP Morgan slashed its 2014 iron ore price estimate to $118/metric tonne on expectations of slower Chinese growth, but still overweights Vale, which it says is better at handling lower ore prices than Australian producers and which can also boost output faster to keep up earnings. As noted yesterday, I am worried about whether VALE will be able to retain its 51% interest in the Simandou mine in Guinea, purchased for $2.500 bn from Israel's Beny Steinmetz after which Vale set out to build facilities and a rail link. BS Group Resources is accused by the Conakry govt of having won the concession it passed to Vale by bribing the former president's wife for all of $160 mn.

*The latest news from the potash cartel confirms the rule of thumb: Monopolies tend to last; cartels tend to break. Having failed to stop Belarus from discounting to $427/metric tonne the price of potash produced by Belarussian Potash Corp, today OAO Uralkali, URKA, the Russian former cartel partner of BPC agreed to sell at a mere $322/tonne to Indian Potash Ltd. That's only part of the reason why we sold Israel Chemicals, miner of potash from the Dead Sea, and participant in another (legal) cartel for the agricultural fertilizer run byPotash of Saskatchewan. We also sold out of Soquimich, again for fear the cartel would break up, and because of insider trading and corporate governance issues. We bought Allana Potash, a startup potash miner with big plans in Ethiopia, and Agrium, a Canadian cartel member which is less dependent on potash than POT. AGU hit a new high today of over C$108. ALLRF, which is still trying to raise funding for its huge Ethiopia plans, fell 2.5%, right back to my buy price of Dec. 17. I am buying more.

*Non-cartel stock Canadian Solar won a C$50.5 mn term financing and guarantees to build Ontario's 10 mW Mighty Solar power plant from Manulife. The plant will be sold to Concord Green Energy, a ute, when completed. CSIQ is up ~2% on the news.

*Dutch Chicago Bridge & Iron landed an $40 mn contract from ORPIC (Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Co) for CBI's SRT low-pressure refrigerated ethylene tech, plus engineering and design for the Sultanate's Liwa plastics project. This will include an 800,000 metric tonne/yr ethylene cracker, a pygas unit, MTBE and butene polymer plants, a gas production unit, and a pipeline.

*Also Dutch, Schlumberger Ltd may gain from an anonymous article on how it can repeat its 28% dividend boost again from "Stock Gamer". SLB investor relations doesn't pay writers for pump and dump articles which have recently afflicted the site he appeared on, www.seekingalpha.com.In my own experience SLB will help you write them up. I was walked through the accounts by no less a light than Jerôme Seydoux of the ruling clan when I wrote SLB up for The Economist. Under the UK magazine's rules I was not allowed to buy the stock until my article appeared. Nothing stopped Jerôme who already was a big shareholder before becoming my source. SA is running something about SLB almost daily.

*As the owners of its bonds we can avoid concern over excess executive compensation at Barrick Gold. No company will put its ability to repay bonds at risk by overpaying its brass. The new attempt to link executive options and shareholdings (which they will not be allowed to sell for a 5-yr period) with those of shareholders came after even institutional investors complained that new co-chairman. John Thornton was paid C$17 mn in 2012 plus a US $11.9 mn signing bonus to leave investment banking for Barrick. Now there is confusion over how much retiring co-CEO Peter Munk was paid last year and whether or not he will pass go to collect a retirement bonus. The Canada firm he founded issued a release that Munk only got C$3.9 mn last year, not $4.3 mn reported yesterday. What is $400,000 among friends. Mr. Thornton got C$9.5 mn. Now there is a new scorecard to align the interest of fatcat execs with those of shareholders.

*Michael Jorrin (AKA Doc Gumshoe) commented on my note yesterday about GlaxoSmithKline. He thinks it is "looking for glimmers of hope" from Phase III trials after it "sunk fortunes into the process." That's why GSK says it is looking at subgroups of patients who did well. I am publishing his remarks because he is one of the pro biotech analysts I read. We own GSK in our yield portfolio and are mainly interested in its cash from its existing drug pipeline. Like Mr Jorrin I also worry about GSK's corporate culture, with Chinese hospitals being bribed despite a new-broom CEO. To read Mr. Jorrin regularly, you can sign up forwww.stockgumshoe.com and by the way he is not an M.D.

Two readers suggest that I write up GSK announcing plans to invest £130 mn in a research lab and manufacturing facility to find and make new drugs for Africa. According to CEO Sir Andrew Witty GSK will use a longer time-scale for its Africa investment than usual.

More fund news follows:

*I failed to report news about Mexico yesterday after saying there would be something. Fibra Uno will host a further conference call about its new plans for employee compensation with more details. It is today at 2 pm and I am joining it. FBASF.

*Mongolia Growth Group issued 125,000 shares at C$2 per to new CEO Paul Byrne under the previously announced private placement of shares. By ABX standards, MNGGF or YAK is a piker.

*Eaton Vance Tax Managed Global Diversified Equity Income Fund (phew, EXG) distributed yesteday to shareholders .0813 cents/sh all of which was net investment income. This monthly payment does not necessarily indicate that future payments will come from the same sources.

*Aberdeen Global Income Fund, FCO, paid 7 cents/sh in dividends yesterday of which 96% was net investment income and rest return of capital which is not taxed.

*Aberdeen Asia Pacific Income Fund, FAX, paid 14 cents in monthly dividends yesterday of which 63% was net investment income and the rest ROC.