Asset management

Asset management, broadly defined, refers to any system that monitors and maintains things of value to an entity or group. It may apply to both tangible assets such as buildings and to intangible assets such as human capital, intellectual property, and goodwill and financial assets. Asset management is a systematic process of deploying, operating, maintaining, upgrading, and disposing of assets cost-effectively.

The term is most commonly used in the financial world to describe people and companies that manage investments on behalf of others. These include, for example, investment managers that manage the assets of a pension fund.

Alternative views of asset management in the engineering environment are: the practice of managing assets to achieve the greatest return (particularly useful for productive assets such as plant and equipment), and the process of monitoring and maintaining facilities systems, with the objective of providing the best possible service to users (appropriate for public infrastructure assets).

Africa Action

Africa Action is a national human rights nonprofit organization that is based in Washington, DC, working to change U.S.-Africa relations to promote political, economic and social justice in nations of Africa. They provide accessible information and analysis, and mobilize popular support for campaigns to achieve this mission. This organization is the oldest nonprofit in the United States to work on African affairs.

Predecessor organizations

Africa Action is the name the organization adopted in 2001, after three organizations, the American Committee on Africa, the Africa Fund, and the Africa Policy Information Center, merged.

The American Committee on Africa (ACOA) was founded in New York in 1953 by George Houser. It was created by a group of black and white civil rights activists led by Bayard Rustin under name Committee to Support South African Resistance who had organized support for the historic Defiance Campaign in South Africa the previous year. In the book, No Easy Victories, ACOA is described as the “premier U.S. Africa solidarity organization.” It became this way through “coalition building…work with the young United Nations and by cultivating good relationships with emerging African leaders.” New York was a center of activity for ACOA through the 1980s in organizing anti-apartheid activities.