our Auto Show I will only do share and
he share photo the wealth that enslaves
the owner is not well this is the Yoruba
proverb my proud Nigerian father would
tell me every Monday before giving me my
allowance I would look at the 1900 and
think of all the ways I was going to
spend it for those of you unfamiliar
with Nigerian currency a thousand naira
is equivalent to about two dollars and
seventeen cents so my options were very
limited but I never really understood
exactly what he was trying to say until
2008 when I was old enough to understand
the World Bank’s development assistance
report and economist dumb visa Moyo
published dead aid 300 billion dollars
that’s billion with a beef a little bit
more than 1000 naira that’s the amount
of money that is washed over the African
continent since 1970 in some form of
development assistance like eight or
charity three hundred billion dollars
that have bypassed the people that
needed it the most while at times lining
the pockets of others three hundred
billion dollars somewhere on the African
continent but with very little to show
for it you see my favorite part of
growing up as the daughter of two
diplomats
besides very fast airport security was
the constant and consistency of setting
I’ve been to some pretty unpredictable
places in the most
predictable of times I was in Kenya
during some of the worst post-election
violence in 2008 I was in Ethiopia when
they celebrated the Millennium seven
years after everyone else I was in Benin
and Togo during the Ebola outbreak that
ravaged western Africa and I was a
toddler in Uganda during the Rwandan
genocide when the entire continent saw a
mass exodus like they haven’t seen in
recent history but the single recurring
character and the story of my life has
been Africa I love that continent with
every fiber of my being its beauty its
heterogeneity and its nuances
they’ve always enraptured me and you get
used to the mosquitoes at one point or
another but I had no idea that the
subject of Africa has a completely
different connotation outside of the
continent this first dawned on me when I
went to summer camp for the very first
time in the United States and I was
immediately pummeled with questions once
they found out where I’d come from I was
asked about the height of giraffes about
the size of my mud hut why I’m wearing
shoes that was a weird one
and if elephants were the African
equivalent of school buses but the most
shocking was when a girl came up to me
and asked me or told me really that her
family gave a hundred dollars every year
to Africa and that I should be grateful
because she was saving the country
besides the common misconception that
Africa is a single country what she told
me actually started me on a journey of
understanding just how systemic the
model around Aid is and the sense of
hierarchy that’s partnered with it you
see
been seventy years of the same model
built solely out of pity and with forty
five billion dollars now funneling into
the continent annually if you do some
investigating the number of people
actually living on a single dollar a day
has increased drastically there has to
be something wrong with a system that
has pushed countries to default on a
trillion dollar loans cause a lack of
government accountability compromise the
very idea of democracy and cultivated a
space for rampant corruption with all
these negative effects due to a problem
so ingrained in our global psyche you’d
actually be surprised that the solution
is not as radical as you think if we all
engage in it together nine must disclose
I am NOT an economist nor am I an
anthropologist or a historian and God
knows I am NOT a politician I’m just a
girl who grew up in a couple of super
cushy suburbs across sub-saharan Africa
who has seen way too much to not say
anything I’ve seen as how the simple
donation of clothing into African
countries has ruined the local textile
industry because would you buy clothes
when you can get them for free
I’ve sat back and witnessed as NGOs
brought in mosquito nets into a small
city in Tanzania which ended up hurting
the local economy because Tanzanians
were already producing and selling their
own mosquito nets but weren’t able to
compete with the ultra low prices of
handouts you see the problem lies in the
mutually destructive idea of charity
when it’s coupled with no sense of
accountability
the African people have lost their boys
and the practice of democracy has
metamorphosized
into this ugly yet tamable beast you see
in these transactions between
governments money is traveling with no
strings attached meaning that the
government has no reason to use the
money to benefit their own people and
without a proper system of checks and
balances citizens are left wondering
exactly what rights are beholden to them
because when a country depends so much
on aid the government has no real reason
to set up a proper system of Taxation
because the money is already coming from
somewhere else and while we would all
love to live in a world where we didn’t
have to pay taxes we then lose the power
to hold our government accountable to
provide us with crucial things such as
health care public had education and
just basic infrastructure think of it
this way
remember the 1909 stream of money
because it was coming every week like
clockwork my supply would be renewed
regardless and the way I spent it was
never dictated in addition to the fact
that I didn’t even work for it and I
didn’t earn the money meant that I lost
the understanding for the value of the
dollar or the naira in my case because
of that I spent it quickly and on things
I definitely didn’t need this is why
insouciance
is prevalent amongst African
policymakers because with aid there
lacks an impetus to find other more
viable ways of financing their country’s
long-term progress aid
is the wolf in sheep’s clothing it’s
really modern-day colonialism when you
think about it because it is shackled
the entire continent to development
assistance really the end of colonies in
the continent didn’t necessarily
liberate African countries to set their
own agenda because colonialism was
treated with charity to disrupt this
cycle money has to be used as an
investment people rarely realize that
Africa is filled with entrepreneurs who
understand the issues in their own
backyards and are creating innovative
answers to the questions of Africans
it’s not all giraffes and Tigers and
benefit concerts headlined by Bono it’s
so much more a biomedical smart jacket
was invented in Uganda that has the
ability to diagnose pneumonia four times
faster than a doctor in South Africa
they’re in the process of building the
world’s largest telescope Kenya is
making its headway in the car industry
by creating a cost-effective luxury SUV
that can withstand the rough terrain of
Kenyan roads and whoa labs a start-up in
Togo one of the world’s poorest
countries created the first made in
Africa 3d printer completely from a
waste this list alone can be its own TED
talk and not to blow your minds but
Africa is a good investment with 20% of
the population being between the ages of
15 and 24 the continent has a growing
workforce and with that prime example
for a potential market
and economic strength think about that
this youthful Africa is happening in
juxtaposition with an aging world it’s
no surprise that the International
Monetary Fund the IMF projects that
Africa will be the second largest
economy within the next few years that
being said there are some multinational
companies and investors that have deemed
Africa too risky to be worthy of
investment for reasons that have
actually resulted in years of donor aid
dependency the country the continent
hasn’t set backs
unlike Asia Africa doesn’t have economic
role models until recently we’re
starting to see sleeping giants awaken
with Rwanda a landlocked naturally
resource depleted country that went
through a genocide now making major
strides in economic transformation by
creating a sustaining a GDP growth rate
the thing is even government instability
has stopped investors in their tracks
because in Africa the struggle for
democracy has created an economic
dimension time and time again when we
see leaders abuse power they end up
compromising national prosperity but
countries such as Ethiopia and Uganda
are showing that even in the face of
political worry their leaders have been
able to stimulate a ethos of economic
the potential the economic potential of
Africa goes beyond that of the scenes of
blood diamonds and commodity trading
Africa has been able to offer the
highest return on foreign direct
investment in the world so you can
invest in the oil assets of the north or
the diamonds and gold of the south but
don’t forget to invest in the innovative
ven ventures that are sprouting across
the continent in accelerators and
incubators because in reality Africa has
been investing in the Western world for
quite some time having spent a total of
four trillion dollars in the
international market to date but now the
hard part how do you and I invest in
Africa there is the way of
exchange-traded funds and the market
vector index of Africa but there is a
more direct more real way for those of
us who operate outside of the business
world of stocks and bonds it’s by
visiting Africa by engaging in the local
tourism by enjoying and participating
and attaching your own personal value to
these 54 countries from the Nile to the
Cape and if you can’t take the long
flight you can invest in Africa right
here from the US by engaging with
African owned businesses either online
or in whatever city you’re in
with the growing interconnectedness of
our world I am willing to bet you more
than 1,000 IRA that wherever you are you
can find Ethiopian coffee beans a
Senegalese owned restaurant or a Kenyan
with a tech startup in the New Haven
area alone there is Lalibela an
Ethiopian restaurant just south of
temple there is a Nigerian
get off of Whaley Avenue and right
between West Haven and New Haven
there’s the headquarters for a Liberian
owned beauty shop in this area alone but
the issue is time and time again Africa
has been left out of the loop it’s not
been invited to the table as big
businesses and corporations have
leveraged and appropriated in stolen
African styles to maximize profits
profits that are never realized in the
continent or even worse they take
advantage of lacks regulations in these
countries and they employ children
forcing them into labor conditions you
wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy just
to cut costs this has to stop in order
to fight against these old world views
and tactics we have to come at it with a
new world mentality we have to engage in
the dynamic relations that are governing
our society we have to stop perpetuating
and fuelling a decrepit system in which
the Western world’s is the donor the
savior and the low income countries are
the recipient in need of saving that
system is built for disaster Africa can
no longer be treated as a child waiting
for its allowance from the Western world
but rather should be viewed as equals if
not a potential competitor this is
something easily applicable across
emerging market countries many rife with
talent but constantly just constantly
overlooked we have to take note of the
changes afoot we have to wake up and we
have to shift our perception away from
charity and towards partnership because
then then we can see the advancement of
our global economy and finally the
dismantling of a hierarchical system
that is forced countries to stay down in
order for us to take and be a part of
some of the world’s fastest-growing
economies we have to rethink our
traditional business models so we can
encourage social and economic
advancement not only for the African
people but for our global community now
I have to give credit where credit is
due
a lot of what I’ve spoken about today
has been part of my own personal
narrative sitting on the lap of my
father as at a very young age as he
talked about theories of change and what
Africa could be and should be it was a
huge part of his career the enhancement
of the African landscape after I lost
him a little over a year ago now I tried
as best as I could to pick up where he
left off I mean he had a PhD and over 40
years of experience and I’m still
struggling for my masters but it’s been
his influence and the stories I’ve
picked up along the way that have
instilled in me a confidence in knowing
that there is no such thing as a low
resource country it’s these
conversations and the conversations that
stem from today that can and will
reverberate across borders it will do
away with this old practice of charity
and revolutionize the way we look and
interact with the world around us the
potential to do so is within you it’s
within me it’s within the new generation
and the
generation just waiting to be tapped so
don’t feel bad for Africa believe in Africa thank you