#15 - Magatte Wade: Unleashing Africa's Potential

27:15See, people also confuse capitalism with a governance system. You know, the governance system doesn't have to be the same as your economic system. It can be separated. And that's another problem that people have a hard time understanding. But anyways, when they threw the baby out with the bathwater, in this case, capitalism was the baby. They threw it out with the bathwater. What happened there is that was in flagrant denial and misunderstanding of our African roots prior to slavery. Right. You say in your book, there was this common misconception that Africa was always a socialist place because of this concept of Ubuntu.

27:52Ubuntu, yes. Ubuntu. Yes. But you then say, actually, that conflation was probably the worst thing that's ever happened to Africa. That's right. As bad as colonialism and slavery. Now, that's a big statement. And I stand by it. Can you explain what Ubuntu is and why it's not socialism? And actually, why pre-colonialization, it was actually a very market-driven place. Yes. So what Ubuntu is, is this African philosophy of, I am because we are. So this very strong emphasis on the community, right? Because when you look at Africans, we live very communal. It seems like a communal life. We rely on each other a lot.

28:33The community, it's a very strong sense of community. It's all about community, family, exactly. And even beyond the families, like the community, your clan, all of that stuff. So we're very strong about that. And people would think, you know, so when you look at it from that standpoint, you're thinking, aha, you're collectivist. No, no, no. Remember, capitalism is just an economic, it's just an economic system. It's not like your social system. See, socially speaking, we're socialists. We're socially speaking, we're collectivists. Socially speaking, we're about the family, the community. But economically speaking, the way we made our money was capitalist.

29:14So you make your money this way, but then you spend it this way. You can be collectivist, socially speaking, but it doesn't have to be the economic system that you use. And in fact, free market capitalism can go hand in hand with socialist sociability. I don't know how you would say it like that, but this is something that people are struggling with. But where we need to make the differentiation is, One is an economic system, and another one is a form maybe of governance or even how you as a society want to operate. But it doesn't have to do much with your economics. Because I like to say, I don't care.

29:57You want to distribute your money all you want, like the Scandinavian nations, fine. But first, somebody has to make the money. And there's one way to make money. One way, last time I checked. One way. So do whatever you want with the money you made, but you've got to make it first. Many Africans, they resent the idea of capitalism because for them, it goes against that identity of theirs that's very Ubuntu-like. And I say, I am Ubuntu like you are, but it has nothing to do with the way we make our money. And actually, George would show that when people made money in Africa pre-slavery, one third would, the person who made it decides to put it back into the community.

30:36The other third to reinvest and the other third to keep. That's what makes the most sense actually to me. So it's what people then do. They make their money in a capitalist way, but how they then distribute it is actually quite social. That's right. That seems like a very healthy balance. I would think. So when you go back and you go back and you look at the work of people like Professor George Ayite, Ghanaian economist, who really had the insight to look places where no one was looking at for his time, because in his time, it was really, it was not good to be not socialist. Everybody was going with a pattern.

31:12And he's like, no, there's something at all here. And when I asked him, when I said, Professor, why did you look there? When everybody was looking north, you're looking south. What's it? Are you just a contrarian? He's like, no, because everything I knew about our past, and he would like to argue that in his case, when he talked about the past of Africa, this is what he says. And I noticed most of us, the story of Africa starts with slavery. But no, no, no, there were people there before the white man ever sat foot on the continent. Hundreds of thousands of years. You know what I mean? There were people there.

31:43And who were we? What were we doing? How are we operating? What's going on? And eventually you learn that, you know, Africa, we had some of the most sophisticated, you know, trade droughts in the world. You know, there is definitely open, you know, trade. And then people, when they arrive at a center where trade is happening, all of a sudden you have these insurers kind of being born out of nowhere. So to ensure the trade that's happening and then when the trade is over, then everybody moves on. So it was a very sophisticated market. Sophisticated for that time. Yeah, market-driven economy. Exactly.

32:14The chief, you find that in many societies, the chief was just basically a person in which the people have entrusted. It's almost like you are the safe, right? But anytime we're not happy with you, we take back our stuff from you. It's not yours. So there was a form of democracy as well. Yes, yes. And better than democracy, I would like to argue, and this is going to be the topic of my next book, this whole concept of critarchy, the law of the judges, rather than the law of the legislators. Critarchy? Yes, critarchy. So critarchy, that's all it means. It means the law of the judges. So it's the judges.

32:45So in many African communities, especially this is very known, especially with the Somalis, if you read this book, The Law of the Somalis, I mean, that book is one of my favorite books. And that's the one that my next one is going to be building off of because the gentleman who wrote it could not finish it. He died. He was a Dutch scholar married to a Somali woman and living in her clan on the land with her. So he totally got to understand a lot of these things. But anyway, in many African nations, as George also would show, there was nothing to judge until there was a crime. So a court would only be formed once there is a crime.

33:21And every crime has a price. And this idea of jail, we did not know. Jail was not part of our thing. So if there's a price to pay, if you, who committed the crime, live, you could not pay for it, then your family is going to have to come up with it. If the family cannot come up with it, the Klan cannot come up with it. So there's a self-enforcement mechanism. There's strong incentives of people to slap down any crime emerging in your community. That's right. And even better, when a crime occurs, let's say you came, you stole a cow from me, that's the crime. And we're going to have to educate this thing, right?

34:00So what happens there is now a court is going to have to be formed to educate this case. And guess what? The beauty of it is that both you and I are going to be nominating the judge. One judge, but it's going to be somebody that you said yes to and I said yes to. And it was such a big pride in the community to be elected judge. So everybody is exerting the virtues. Everyone feels like you're fair. Exactly. Everybody now is working on the virtues on a regular basis to be a good judge. So people are really outperforming themselves to be fair. because you're not going to vote for somebody that you know is going to be biased against you or whatever.

34:35So by definition, that judge we pick, you and I, we know it's going to be most fair to both of us. And see, these are how we were doing things. So that's why I like to argue that Kretarki, in my mind, especially if we can find a way to upgrade it, and that's the next book I'm going to work on. It sounds like a very bottom-up form of justice and legal governance. Yes. I would like to revive Kretarki, updated for 21st century, where the rights of the minorities, especially women and children, is going to be more respected, right? And all types of other minorities. So that's the one thing I'm working, that's the one piece that I have to get right.

35:17But then everything else in my mind is, if we can get that piece added to what critarchy traditionally was, then we come up with something that in my mind is going to be superior to democracy as we know it. Because we can all see that democracy has shown its limits. This democracy winner takes all. We all agree that this is better than anything else we have had so far. But for me, it's showing its limits. So yeah, that definitely goes against a lot of intuitions, I guess. It's, you know, the image that gets pushed to someone like me growing up in the West who knows very little about Africa, it's like kind of, it's strong men.

35:53And there's these power maximizers who control everything. But it sounds, and that was what it was always like. But it sounds like that wasn't the case at all. It wasn't. It wasn't. It wasn't. Because then what happened is... Power is actually quite decentralized. Exactly. And fluid. You got the right word. It was completely decentralized and it was fluid. Which means it could adapt to its time and to the circumstances. Which sounds like a very healthy system. Thank you very much. So that's why my goal is to bring this back, but I got to figure out the minorities things. And then one more thing about that is also, so it's when they came, the colonizers came, and they said, oh, look at these savages.

36:24For them, the right way of governance was to be centralized. And when they did that, we went from tribes to tribalism, because tribes are not stupid. If you centralize a power, and also we've had the money, because we had all the money coming with it, then people are going to fight to control this. And if you don't control it, your tribe might be at risk. And so you see all of a sudden how we went from these very decentralized tribes, for the most part, maintaining the peace. Maintaining the peace for the most part. I'm not saying they were not fighting. Fighting is everywhere. I mean, humans all across the ages fight.

36:56But for the most part, they knew how to maintain the peace because it's super decentralized. But it's when they brought this idea of centralization because they said it was a superior way. That destabilized the carota. They destabilized everything. And to this day, in Somaliland and in Somalia, a lot of these issues you're seeing still goes back to that. And you find that the minute that they get their fingers out of it, things get better. And then when things get better, the international community comes back and says, okay, now we're going to come and help them. When they come back, they bring that back with them.

37:24You know, a lot of people are fans of socialism. But they often obviously see it through a Western lens. Explain to me, because you go into this quite extensively in your book, why socialism specifically was so damaging for these African nations. Because it wasn't just, it sounds like it's the combination of socialism plus this disruptive force of suddenly centralized control mechanisms. This is why when you say so many people, maybe your audience are going to be fans of socialism. And this is where I would love to have them in front of me, because they're going to have to tell me what do they A, mean by socialism?

38:00Because I have a hard time believing that anybody, if they identified socialism to be the force that has killed so many millions of people around the world, for them to still say, and we think it's a good system, it just has not been done right. I would like for them to tell me, I'm genuinely, genuinely curious, but I will tell you what, for me, what I talk about when I talk about socialism here. I talk about this whole centralized, controlled ways of the economics, right? And also this idea that everything needs to come from the top. I'm talking about all of it. I'm talking about an environment that doesn't allow for open trade, doesn't allow for open markets.

38:52That's more what I'm talking about. Yeah, because you actually talk about J.J. Rawlings. Yeah. And because actually it was women that would create the markets. That's right. Often, right? They were called market women. To be a day. They were setting the prices and, well, they weren't setting prices. The prices was emerged naturally through trade. Yes. And he was so, J.J. Rawlings was so dedicated to socialist price controls. You know, you can't set the price. that he would literally bash their babies' heads in as punishment. So what you have to understand is a lot of these African liberators, by the way, were trained in the West during times when socialism was en vogue.

39:31No respectable intellectual was not socialist. All of them were, for the most part, socialist. So when you're living in times where the accepted philosophy is X, it takes extraordinary people to go against the grain, right? So in this case, most of them were brought up in times when socialism was en vogue. And for the most part, they were also raised, they were also trained abroad. That's another point that Professor Aitia made to me because I said, why? What happened to these people? He said, they just didn't know their history. They just didn't know who they were. They didn't know the culture.

40:05They didn't know the culture, if you think of it. And that made sense. And so, because if they knew, they would have known that in pre-slavery Africa, no chief would ever have dared to tell Liv or Magat, you get to sell bread, but this is the little amount of profit you can make. If you make beyond that, you're going to be in trouble. The chief does not decide what you and I get to sell to each other. Do we sell to each other or not? What do we do? How much do we sell? And how much profit? Never. No one would dare to do that. This was an import. This ideology was an import. And so for the socialism that makes it that, you know, that looks for equal outcomes, because to me that's really in the end, that's their big ends that justifies all the means, you know, because we all have to end up in the same place, so therefore whatever it takes, because that's a moral way to be.

40:57And in the name, but the truth is you and I, do you really, we don't want to be the same. We don't. I look at these fingers, none of them is the same height as the other, but they work together. And so my point is, so that's what happened. So these people brought these ideologies that were completely foreign to us, completely foreign. And our people drank it. They drank the Kool-Aid. They didn't think, because when he was doing that, when Rollins was doing that, he was telling me right away, he did not know to which people he belonged to in the first place. To this day, markets in Africa are dominated by women.

41:34See, that's another thing. Many African nations, many African societies were matrilineal, meaning the child would carry the name of the woman. The Amazons, many people think Amazons are these exotic ladies somewhere in the Amazons because of the name. Do you know where the Amazons are from? Benin. Really? Yes, they were the first recorded, I think maybe the only probably also, female army defending the king. That's what the Amazon says. I think the movie finally just came out. It's called a woman, women warrior or King, whatever her name, the name of the movie is. That's what it is. So a lot of these things, we had it like that.

42:14So it was actually, so it was actually much more gender balanced or even matriarchal societies were existing. Yes. And then that does not go with the narrative again. It's like, it's patriarchy, patriarchy everywhere. We've been, we've been fed so many crazy things. And then the other thing is also same thing. They came the way the West, especially some of our, you know, very Puritan for the most part, and they said to write a social order between men and women is the men in front and the women in the back. They did that. They did that. Many societies, it's women who would own the land. This is things that people don't know.

42:50But that's why for me, us Africans have to really remember who we are and where we came from. And there's a lot of things about us that were right. So right here, I will assert this is my birthright to be a capitalist, and I would say better maybe a free market capitalist. Right, well, because I'd love to get into the different types of capitalism that you would advocate for. You know, there are many different flavors of it. You've got like laissez-faire, state-guided. what form of capitalism would you like to see for example in Senegal or like what would your action plan for Senegal be? What I believe is no person left behind and what I mean by that is as simple as everybody needs equal access to opportunity what they do with that access it's up to them.

43:44Right because that that phrase no person left behind has been co-opted in some ways I know, that's why I use it. Into not equal opportunity, but equal outcomes. And now we're getting back into the sort of downsides of socialism and communism, right? The idea of leaving no one behind is a good thing. But the way you leave no one behind is providing everybody with equal access to opportunity. Again, what they make with it or don't, it's going to be up to them. But should we all work super hard for as many of us to have access to the same opportunity? I think we should. Should we help as many of us to make sense of that opportunity?

44:21I think we should. But I cannot walk the last mile for you. And that's where everything is, that last mile. I can give you everything you need. I can provide you with all the support, everything. But if you don't want it or don't want to show up for it, there's nothing else I can do. And this is where we need to agree. This is where my job stops and yours starts. And this is also where your responsibility is at. If we can have peace with that, I think we'll be better people. But this idea that equal outcomes, so I don't agree with that. So because of that, because I care about equal access to opportunity, for me, we go back to the environment.

45:00And this is something that takes me back to this conversation I was having with Vitalik about EA, the world of EA, effective altruism for people who don't know what EA stands for. I've always had good inclinations toward the EA community because I always thought that bringing rationality into figuring out philanthropy was a good thing because I'm the first one to be upset with stupid philanthropy and philanthropy can be very stupid plenty of it, exactly so I was like, thank God we have people who are going to use their mind as well to work together with the heart and get us to a better place but I think when that happened And where for me, you know, I'm definitely solidly in that camp of EA, but where EA kind of lost me was with the fact that I felt, but I'm like, okay, can we push the thinking further down?

45:55Do we have to stick at the social fact of somebody is poor, so it's a matter of us thinking about what we're going to give them and how we're going to give it to them and make sure it's done in a way that's going to be effective? How about we push the envelope further along and say, but do people really have to be given things? Or can we not trust the fact that given the right circumstances, and that's a key word, circumstances, they too can lift themselves out of poverty? Or do we believe that they just need to be given? Well, interestingly, some of the most cost-effective and therefore impactful interventions have trended towards being things like cash transfers or startup loans, which is, okay, yes, it's not quite changing the system from the outset, but it's one layer above that.

46:46It's giving, identifying promising communities and giving them an influx of essentially capital, which they can then deploy. That's right. So it's still a form of charity, right? Because it's sending money with sort of minimal strings attached. But it's productive. It's way more productive than what was there before. Because when you're doing that, you are doing a part, you're doing a part of what is what I call the entrepreneur's toolkit. If indeed, as remember when we said, poverty solved by jobs, jobs coming from companies, businesses, but those businesses need the right environment. When you call that whole business environment, all of the stuff that goes into it is what the economists would call economic freedom.

47:31And in economic freedom, you would also have access to capital, access to investment. But that's not all. You need that, but that's actually going to happen better and go further if you have everything else to be right as well. We're talking about rule of law. We're talking about clear and transferable property rights. We're talking about people understanding what the law is and also trusting that cases will be educated in a fair, quick, and cheap way. All of that stuff has to happen. So when you're saying we're going to provide you with capital, that's more than what was there before, for sure.

48:05And it's definitely part of the entrepreneur's toolkit because we need to liberate those entrepreneurs so they can create all the wealth we're talking about. So when you're doing that, you're doing better than before. But still, where's the environment? Exactly. It sounds like you're saying the most effective thing that could be done is creating, again, changing the rules of the game, creating a soil that is fertile enough in terms of minimal regulation, the right amount of regulation to enable little community, things to actually grow, entrepreneurs, to allow intellectual capital to actually do its thing.

48:39Giving people... Exactly. And I mean, I would completely agree with you. And I think that's a fair critique of not just effective altruism, but all forms of philanthropy and that it probably doesn't go deep enough to that systemic layer. I would say that at least, I can't, again, speak for other forms of philanthropy, but the charities, the effective altruism charities I've donated to, like Against Malaria Foundation, Give Directly, those kind of charities, they've never claimed that they are trying to do a systemic change. That's not their expertise. They're just like, we don't know how to go in and change a system.

49:14That's probably an overreach. Someone should do that. Those problems, this is the best way in the current system to try and help lives. That's right. Now, it doesn't stop anyone else coming in and trying to, which is, I guess, what you're trying to do, right? You're trying to do the systemic change. Actually, before we move on into the systemic change and the different types of capitalism, I'd love to get your thoughts on foreign aid. Because that's now, that's a very different thing. It's technically a form of philanthropy. But if we've talked about effective philanthropy, that's from what I can gather from the way you're rolling your eyes.

49:49that's the most ineffective and possibly even net negative. So can you explain why? Sure, sure. So foreign aid for people who might not be familiar with it. So first of all, before I even go into the whole thing of aid, I want to make it clear, and I always make it clear, I don't have an issue with humanitarian aid. When disaster strikes, we all have to go and help. And that's just, we help first. Like a big earthquake. Yeah, exactly. We help first and we talk later, right? We don't ask questions. It's just like, it's a no-brainer. So never. Exactly. Never do I have an issue with that. But when it becomes chronic, then we have an issue.

50:23The fact that in Haiti we still have people who are there, that's a whole other problem, and that's going to be what we're talking about. So foreign aid is government-to-government aid. So because, like we said earlier, you know, towards the end of colonialism in Africa, basically because the African liberators, sorry, had drank, did I tell you, had drunken the socialist Kool-Aid of their times, most African nations, pretty much all of them, started out with socialist leaders, having in place very socialist policies. Even the ones who would say, oh, no, no, we were not completely socialist like Nigeria or something.

51:01But I'm like, even you are following five-year, a la Soviet-style type of, you know, top-down, you know, policies. So even there. And so that's kind of how we started on this journey. And as we all know, you follow, you know, socialist policies in the end, you don't have much to show in the form of wealth and prosperity that you have built. So because we did that and we embraced this deadly ideology, we ended up where we are today, meaning 60 some plus years later, my country became, you know, free April 4th, 1960. So we're in it almost 64 years now soon. Senegal is one of the 25 poorest countries in the world, despite being one of the two countries in Africa that never had a coup, never had a civil war.

51:45And you could say that we were supposedly a beacon of democracy. So that's my other problem also with democracy because so many people have been distracting us with making us think that democracy equals prosperity building. Is that a good thing to have democracy? Yeah. Is that a prerequisite? I think the Chinese model, all of these other models, it doesn't mean that I'm against it. It's a correlation, not necessarily a causation. Exactly. It doesn't mean that I'm against it. That's also what I want to make sure people don't hear. Oh, my God is into, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. But again, I feel like we've been distracted because again, I think this whole, what you're asking me about is, we've been distracted a long time.

52:16So anyway, so because we have been showing, we have had nothing to show for our socialist ways, our nations are still poor 60 some plus years after colonization because we have embraced socialism and never questioned it, by the way. That's why this book, The Heart of a Cheetah, we have to question all of this. We have never questioned it. We take it for granted and we're trying to fix our problems within the social fact. So because of that happened, we're poor. Poorest region in the world. The rest of the world feels like it always has to help us. Foreign aid. Government to government aid. So you could think, then people are like, why are you complaining about foreign aid?

52:51We're here helping you build your roads. We're building your hospitals. All of that stuff. I'm like, okay, lady. Because in this case, it was a lady that I had a fight with last time. So I'm like, okay, lady. I'm like, let's think about your foreign aid. Because you know, Liv, you know, life is all about trade-offs. Right? So let us look at the trade-offs. So for your foreign aid, I get a few roads. They're not even the best roads, because guess what? A road that was supposed to mobilize, I'm just making up a number,$5 million to make a road if you want to do it right. It costs$5 million, but I know you only put$2 million in it because you stifled the other$3 million.

53:30The other$3 million went half in the pocket of the corrupt leader that you're dealing with, and the other half went straight back to you with all of your agencies that are serving also the foreign aid world. So we get two million, if we're lucky. The rest is separated between the leader of this country, corrupt leader of this country, this foreign nation, and the other comes straight back to Tokyo, comes straight back to Paris, comes straight back to Washington, D.C., and so on and so forth. So actually it's not really trickling down where it needs to be. No, no. It's just getting all siphoned off.

54:04and squandered. For the crappy road, I guess what? I get what? I get a leader that's never going to want to leave because he or she wants to stay to keep taking that money. Because remember we said $5 million road,$3 million is not accounted for. Some of that is in the pocket of that guy or that woman, oftentimes guys. And they're going to use that money to go buy chateaus in the south of France. They're going to have Swiss bank accounts. They're going to have all types of goodies like that. So, but because of that, because they want access and control of that foreign aid, they're going to fight.

54:41Right, that's the thing. If you've already got corruption, then foreign aid will actually entrench that corruption further because there's just more and more power going to the people who are willing to do that. So that's one thing. People who never leave the violence, the violence that that provokes. Then you also have a culture of dependency. Entire generations of Africans who learn that we're given stuff. For whom at some point, what's normal is not to work. What's normal is to be given. What do you mean work? What do you mean? You can't have an entrepreneurial, you know, like society with a mindset like that.

55:18So you're robbing, you're really - Robbing agency. Yes, and that's big. That one is big. Right, because that continues then down generations. It becomes a mindset. Exactly. Very cancerous. Exactly. And least but not least, because when you're doing all of this, foreign aid and all of that, it's in a way covering the real problems. When you're doing all of this, no one is talking about the business climate. And then some people will say, oh, no, no, what are you talking about? During the Washington Consensus, the World Bank and others told the African nations that they're going to have to clean up their business environment a little bit because otherwise we're not going to give money.

55:57And you know what many of them did? they cut healthcare and they cut education. They didn't cut their having one more mention. They didn't cut having 20 million girlfriends. How much is spent on bureaucracy in general? Nothing. They cut where they thought it would be the easiest to cut which is the most ridiculous thing because I mean health and education are always going to be the last thing that I personally and even as a bleeding heart libertarian maybe because I'm a bleeding heart libertarian but the one thing where I argue with so many you know like libertarians because I'm like giving money to education and to health, I will never have a problem with that.

56:31Never, never, never, never, never, never. I argue that there are ways it can be done better. I want to help with the education of children, even if they're not mine. I want to make sure that a man or a woman or a child is upright, not on a bed. I want that. And if the only way to do it would be to donate, fine, let's donate. But I just want to make sure it's effectively going to go to them and do what it's supposed to do, educate them, and or give them health. So because foreign aid covers all the problems, we're still not addressing the issue. And as long as the issue is not addressed, Africans stay poor.

57:08And guess what? Africans stay poor, Lev, what does it mean? It means racism. My friend Remy Adekoia, he's in England, he wrote this book that I think everybody should read. It's called It's Not About Whiteness, It's About Wealth. I believe that 80 % of racism is due to the fact that Africa being home to 90 % of a representative of a black race, skin color, happens also to be the poorest in the world. And that blackness has come to be linked to less than. The day we correct that, the day we become prosperous, I like to argue 80 % of it is going to disappear. 80%. This is not to take lightly. And so for me, that's a worse one, in addition to just people living in poverty, which is the most indignified thing in the world.

58:04And the fourth one is neocolonialism. He who makes the gold makes the rules. There's this feeling of indebtedness. It keeps perpetuating that cycle. Yeah, and because you give me the money, so that's how the French, that's how the Americans, All of these people get to actually decide even who we elect. Make no mistake. Many Africans and their allies think, I'm African, but I'm not the type of African who thinks that way. So many Africans think that Africa is poor because of neocolonization. They'll say, okay, colonization is done, but we're still colonized, we're neocolonized. Meaning like everybody's meddling with our affairs and everything.

58:46And or buying our resources on the cheap. Basically, we're still neocolonized. And I say, make no mistake. We are neocolonized because we are poor. We're not poor because we're neocolonized. Very different. They don't think about it. And as long as we remain poor, the rest of the world will help themselves. Before we get into some of these solutions, what's an example of foreign aid that you do support? Basically, the only forms of aid that I support is a form of aid that helps people be productive. Which actually brings back to almost like the type of give directly. Yes, I always support. Like, you know, some people are asking when something happens, even when there is a disaster that strikes, I say try to support people on the ground.

59:34And this is my other thing with centralized versus decentralized. Local is always going to know better. And that's why I hate socialism as well. Local is always going to know better than the central planners. Right. It's just the nature of a beast. It's just a richer information landscape. That's it. Yeah, you're going to have higher quality information. And the feedback loop is shorter and it's more important. So that's why socialism, who thinks everything comes top down, compared to free market capitalism where it comes from the bottom and bubbles up, the market instructs us of what is needed, when it's needed, how much is needed, where it needs to go and how it goes.

1:00:08So some people would argue that capitalism has, Because if I look around here in America, I mean, even somewhere like here in Austin, which is actually more, it has a sort of stronger religious vein to it. And there are a lot of churches around. And yet even here seems like it's losing that community feeling. and some would argue, and I wonder it myself, is that a result of this very capitalist structure that has broken down the strength of community? And I would worry that would that same thing then happen to Africa? No, I would argue the opposite. I would argue that the reason why we have gotten to where we are is not because of capitalism.

1:00:54It's actually because the state has been taking on more and more. Right, and robbing communities of their coherence. Exactly. Whether it's through self-enforcement. Yeah, because at first, when it was all of these mutual aid societies were more or less, you know, private, because a church, it's all private, right? You're doing, it's people coming together, getting something together, a church, a mosque, or whatever, or just, I don't know, like a woman's house for women. What happened is, the more the state takes that responsibility, the more it takes control of that, what happened is all of a sudden, live.

1:01:28If you're living in a community where, you know, which church are you part of, which mosque are you part of, which synagogue are you part of, which temple are you part of, whatever it is, or which group are you part of, you choose whichever works for you. And in a way, it's going to inspire you to be a good community person. Because in a way, you're down on your luck. You're going to depend on these people, right? If you're going to be a jerk to everybody, I'm sure people are probably going to try to help you for sure, because we need to help sometimes no matter what. But you also sense that in return, you also are going to be a little bit more community-oriented.

1:02:08Also do your part. Do your part whenever you can. So that way, whenever you need, you can take out of a pot. But you also have to feed the pot. So you contribute. And that forces you in a way to be part of a community and have that sense of community. Right? But now imagine now, the state takes it. Now you're like, I don't give a shit about any of you guys. Why do I care about any of you? Because if I need something, I don't care. Indiscriminately, it's going to come down. So this is not capitalism that did this. It's things actually becoming more socialized through the state that it became this.

1:02:40Because all of a sudden now, you took away the incentive that this woman or this man or this child had to be a good community member. So one of the solutions you are strongly advocating for, for Africa, that harnesses the best bits of capitalism are sort of these startup or charter cities, they're sometimes known as special economic zones. Can you explain what those are? And can you perhaps give an example of one you'd like to see that is starting? So earlier when you were talking about capitalism, which type and all of that. So for me, I'm all about, you know, the only one that's worth anything is free market slash entrepreneurial capitalism.

1:03:18So that's the one where you have to build, you have to grow the pot in order for it to work. Not be a rent seeker because that's not capitalism that way, that's crony capitalism. And I think it's important we bring that up because many people in the name of crony capitalism despise capitalism. Crony capitalism is this force by which you get to get ahead because you have friends in business, in government especially, basically where the power is, government power especially. People who are setting the rules. Exactly. And you set them to influence, to help yourself. It's another form of corruption basically.

1:03:53But too often when people think of capitalism, they think of that. Yes. And I'm like, it's very important there again that we make the differentiation. Because capitalism is really about giving everybody a fighting chance. if you're an entrepreneur, I'm an entrepreneur. We don't have mommy and daddy, aka the state, using its power, which is the rules and regulations, to kind of tweak them in a way that, oh, I want Liv to be the winner. So if Liv is short, I'm going to make sure that, you know, play to her, play to whatever she... Design the rules so that short people have a letter. Yeah, exactly.

1:04:26Or it's Liv is tall. But isn't this going to be inevitable? Is it going to try? Yes. Do we have to let it be? No. but the US has really gone a very, very bad direction on this. Don't take me wrong. The US is still one of the best countries to do business in the world to this day, despite its problem. But the US is going to have to catch itself because it's really backtracking. So going back to entrepreneurial capitalism, and also I want to say I'm a firm supporter of conscious capitalism. And the reason why I bring it up is because... Can you define that? Yeah. So conscious capitalism is basically this whole concept around purpose maximization versus profit maximization.

1:05:05For us, the relationship between purpose and profit is just the relationship between, if I say live, what's your goal, your dream in the world? And I know you're going to tell me it's something about changing the world, right? You want to change the world. Finding the win-wins. There you go. But in the no circumstances will you say, my goal is to build as many, to produce as many red blood cells as possible. But you need to produce them if you want to stay alive so you can do all of those big things. That's the only thing. So John Mackey says it the best. Profit is to the human being with these big goals.

1:05:45Wet blood, the red blood cells, that's it. You've got to have them. You've got to produce them. They've got to be abundant. It's a metric, but not the metric. Exactly. It's not the end goal. If you don't have profits, you cannot sustain the whole machine. But it's not the end game. So purpose maximization over profit maximization. But what we have found is if you go for purpose maximization, you tend to do better than those who don't care about purpose maximization. And it makes sense because for conscious capitalists, a business has six stakeholders, employees, your suppliers, your customers, Mother Earth herself, as well as the community in which the business is working, and yes, your shareholders.

1:06:35And anytime you make a decision, it's got to be a win, win, win, win, win between all six. The pushback is that the company that sacrifices a few of those will get their leg up. Like if they're the ones who, let's say, don't also make sure that Mother Earth wins because they can externalize the costs, some form of pollution and thus because they're kicking out those costs they're not they're not factoring them into their equation they can put that money straight back into growing faster arguably they would then get a leg up ahead of the ones who do the like the slow more expensive things such as taking care of mother earth so that's where i that's where my internal struggle is with, you know, I still describe myself as a capitalist, but like, that's what this Moloch problem is.

1:07:29No, and it's a very good point. How do we beat that? It's a very good point. And this is why us conscious capitalists, we like to say that we're all about value. It's about value. And what do we mean by value is, first of all, because what you described, you see, one is short term looking, the other one is long term looking. Many conscious capitalists, and that's why in a way the companies that can do this the best is the companies where you still have a founder. That's why I have so much respect also for companies like the Giga Fund, where it's explicitly we're going after founders that are working on problems that are 20, 25 years down the road.

1:08:09Very long view type. And we want these founders to be in the game for long, because we have found that actually those type of companies are better served by the original founder. or the family, if it's a family, it's a family, it's a family company like in Europe or whatever. We have found that it's just so much better. So this is why, and if you want to provide value, there is a connotation of time baked into this equation. And so this is also where our dialect, our verbal dialect is different. The words we use are very different. What we go after is very different. But it is known that in the long run, Key word, in the long run, we win.

1:08:50And this is also where we show, where it's easier to be a conscious capitalist when you're a B2C, direct-to-consumer or business-to-consumer, where the consumer gets to definitely vote directly. So it's easier for Whole Foods... Exactly, exactly. So it's easier for Whole Foods to win, for example, compared back in the days to Walmart, because you get to see exactly what's happening and you leave it to the market to communicate about what they're doing better than the other guys. It's thanks, actually, to companies like Whole Foods Market, who were way smaller than Walmart, then actually Walmart became the biggest seller of organic cotton in the world.

1:09:33It's because once we started putting the emphasis on it and the consumer base started to realize these issues, then they started to vote with their dollars. So it's easier for them to vote with their dollars when they have a direct, like you said, the direct feedback loop and they know what's going on. And so traditionally for B2C companies and brands, it's been much easier than, let's say, if you're patronizing a bank because you don't necessarily know what they're going with the bank or even your pension fund plan. You don't know where and who they're investing in. Clear information flows. Exactly, exactly.

1:10:08So because of that, all the things you're talking about is true. But I would argue that, again, this is, to me, this is an opportunity. I don't see that it's a challenge, but a challenge that calls for an opportunity. We need for B2B to be better communicators. Okay, so it sounds like your philosophy is very much, certainly when it comes to Africa, but in general, slash, get rid of a lot of regulations. Most regulations are dead weight. They're actually counterproductive. And coming back to this idea of startup cities, it sounds like these, So from my understanding of them, I'll explain and feel free to connect.

1:10:47Correct. A startup city would be an area that is built on a greenfield site. So it's not building within, it's not taking an existing urban area and repurposing it. You're starting a brand new city from scratch, including its design, its physical infrastructure, but also its governance infrastructure. Presumably it needs some starting rules and regulations. So what are examples of rules that a healthy startup city should have? The best way to think of them is that these are next generation special economic zones with their own law, their own governance, especially when it comes to commercial law.

1:11:23And also that they have custom, that they also have a custom regulatory framework. The reason why we go for zones rather than for the whole country at once, because we're having some of these conversations with some nations that are like, if you're saying that our law is inferior, why are we keeping them? let's just leapfrog to what you're going to do with us. And the problem there is, it's one thing to put the law, to say the law is changing. You know, like, first of all, when you say which laws have to change and all of that, what people have to understand, because that's what happened. When I talk about it, it's like, my God, so where do we start?

1:11:57Where do we start? We're doing business index ranking. Where do we start? There's 10 indicators, and every indicator has sub-indicators. Where do we start? I say the problem is, it's complicated. Because what it is, is it's not about touching this law, touching that law. It's like you have to have a certain amount of reforms happening together at the same time for it to all of a sudden make sense. It's almost like, you know, in Italy right now, they're giving you these homes for the symbolic euro because all of these villages are emptying themselves. But I'm like, oh, sweet, sweet. But what if you come up?

1:12:33Yeah, it's one euro to get it. but oh you're going to need I don't know how much money to renovate the damn place that's fine you might say yeah I have to renovate oh but once you're done renovating it uh the taxes on this home is going to be I'm just making it up 50 percent or and and by the way the way you're going to have to renovate it is going to have to be back to standards of back in the days meaning you cannot just use whatever you want you cannot just build it where you want you have all of these things to happen and so all of a sudden that one euro but you're you're like no keep your keep your thing.

1:13:03Yeah. You know, so that's the same thing. If you come and you say, for example, the, the, the, the labor laws, for example, in the labor laws, and you say, okay, my God, we get it. We get it. That is so wrong that right now, in order for you to hire Liv, you basically have to sign a pay, a contract in free, in free sets. And then you, you most importantly, you have to bring it physically because our government people don't open their emails. So you have to travel to them. and we're in the countryside, it's two hours, an hour and a half to two hours to get there to take this thing. And there, some government official who has probably never even gone to my village, has never built a business.

1:13:43Gets to decide. Yeah, let alone work in one business. This person is going to get to decide if Liv and I can work together. He's going to be, this is right now, because when I talk about these things, people think I'm talking about crazy stuff like laissez-faire. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm talking about things where a government official gets to tell you, gets to decide if you and me can work together. And then they say, oh, and go to your doctor. Liv has to go to her doctor and get a certificate to show that she's physically apt to do this job. Oh my God. A desk job? Really? No, but this is rent-seeking for the doctors.

1:14:16These laws are there. If she tries to take it off, guess who's going to be in the streets? Probably them, because you're taking away income from them. And so you can say, but then let's say we fix that. Let's say it's all fixed. But at the same time, the tax laws are still so complicated that, like it is today, it's truckloads worth of laws, which means it's complicated, which means complicated laws means you're going to make mistakes, honest mistakes. And in this case, honest mistakes tax-wise means you're going to be harassed by the government and or put in jail. So, okay, now all of a sudden you said, fine, you and Liv can enter freely into a contract.

1:14:51I don't have to oversee it. Same thing when you fire each other. I don't have to, because that's the same thing. I cannot fire you without the approval of the government. And so why would you ever hire anybody if he's taking on all this burden? Exactly. But let's say all of that is fixed. But still, your tax code is so complicated, you're going to make mistakes, meaning you're going to be harassed by government, whatever. Meanwhile, the permits, the time it takes to take permits for construction or whatever, it takes forever. All of these things, do you think that even though it's now a good thing that I don't have to consult with the government to hire you or fire you, that's definitely lighter.

1:15:21But do you think it's still worth it for me to get into business? No. So you see how you have to have a minimum threshold of reforms to happen together at the same time for it to finally be like quick. Sounds like you need to really just start again. Thank you. You just said it. Start again. But you can't start again at a whole country level. No. Because for good or for bad, there are people there. They're doing what they're doing. So there's the inertia. There's people's inbuilt status quo bias, even the people who are suffering. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. They can't imagine a better world. Exactly.

1:15:48And especially in many cases, you find that you're going to have to go from civil law to common law. Almost all Francophone African nations are going to have to migrate from civil law to common law because the French forced their colonies to retain civil law even after colonization. It was part of a deal. Can you define very quickly the difference between common law and civil law? So common law, the best way to think about it is everything is allowed until there is a problem. And then it gets brought up. Where civil law is nothing is allowed unless it is specifically allowed. So one comes from an absence of rules and another one comes from an abundance of rules.

1:16:23Exactly. Where here, the absence of rules, eventually some rules are going to start to build, but they're going to be better rules because they come out of reality. They come out of reality. They're not some of an idealized theoretical thing from people sitting in an ivory tower figuring it out. Exactly. Figuring it out and totally missing the mark. So that's why in so many ways you can understand why common law is so much better for business than civil law is. Civil law basically you have the right to do nothing unless it was specifically told you, you were told that you can. So how can you innovate within that, right?

1:16:56Where the other one, innovate all you can, and then when there is a problem, we'll educate. So the problem is, so a lot, my country, my country is going to have at some point to migrate from civil law to common law Senegal. We've had many others like that. And so if, because we do know that definitely to have, because remember, the goal here is to provide best in class business environment. It's the goal. To nations that don't have it, that's why they are where they are. You can't do it at the nation level because of what we talked about. All the forces against you, including the people themselves who are like, why do I have to change every way from one day to another?

1:17:38And most importantly, especially if you're having to switch from civil to common, everything else has to follow. The judges have to follow. The judges have to be trained. The judges have to be brought up to speed in how to educate the cases because it's radically different from the other way. The lawyers, your whole legal system, your whole judicial system, everything has to follow. It's not just, I made the change at the legal level that everything follows. It's going to take time. People have to be trained. They have to understand what's going on, all of that stuff. So you can understand that for all of these reasons, trying to do something like this at the national level, it's almost calling for its own disaster.

1:18:21So that's why you want to start in a very small... You start zone by zone. Yep. So then what you're saying is, you're saying, okay, in this country, we know why things are the way they are. And we also know that a clean, a world-class business environment, and by the way, that's the other word, world-class. Because oftentimes people are like, oh, well, these SEZs, special comming zones you're talking about, has been tried many times in Africa, it never worked. It never worked. Why? Because for it to work, you have to remember that you belong to a global world. And many African SEZs are still running on an AD software.

1:18:5880 software in 2024 the people are going to go where there's 2024 software so you upgrade your damn software or people are going to leave you behind and that's exactly what's been happening to us so that's why I say next generation special academic zones because people might be confused otherwise so you say we're going to do it in a zone zone by zone to start with and ideally green field because it means there's nobody there there's no one there you're not taking away from anybody or anything And there you say, here, this is going to be our chance to do it right. We have a clean canvas to start from, and let's do it right.

1:19:34So what these startup cities are is they're on this particular piece of land where the rest of the land is running on the worst software possible when it comes to business environment. Here, we're going to proceed to give them the best in class business environment. And how is this funded? Privately funded? Yes, because again, markets remain the best. And that's another thing about SEZs as well, special academic zones. It is known that the ones that are more or less, that the more private they are and the better they perform. And it makes sense because you're subjected to the forces of the market.

1:20:05It's not like some government that has no accountability, just doing whatever sounds right in theory and paper, doing it in reality, whatever. So that's the other thing. So these things happen privately, but they happen with the government. So for this to happen, you can't just come to a country and be like, Like, oh, I bought this piece of land, so I'm going to do whatever I want. You can't. It doesn't work like that. You identify a piece of land. Sometimes the government will be willing to give it to you because many countries like mine, a lot of the land belongs to the government. So they can decide to be like, okay, we're going to do it on this land.

1:20:38If you identify this as the best place to do it and it works for us as well, then let's do it here. Or in some other places, you can buy a piece of land somewhere, but you still need to negotiate with the government in order because we're talking about laws here, right? And so here, I'll give you the example. So in this case, for me, my favorite example is Prospera out of Honduras in Roitan, the island of Roitan. And full disclosure, I think Prospera is doing such a great job, but I'm actually joining them. And I'm the co-founder of Prospera Africa. I'm very excited about all of this. But so in this case, they bought the piece of land, you know, and it was more or less like a big resort.

1:21:22It was a big resort that it started off from. And eventually, but with that, way before Prospera happened, way back in the days, we're talking about maybe 10, 15 years ago, someone by the name of Octavio Sanchez, he was the right hand of a then president of Honduras, Harvard lawyer trained, who understood exactly what we understood. Spent a lot of time visiting the SCZs in China, special economic zones in China. Spent a lot in Dubai. Visited a lot of places with his cabinet to kind of have a better understanding. Went to Singapore, all of that, to really understand what's going on. Because by the way, everything we're talking about is what Singapore has done, Hong Kong has done, even China has done through its SCZs.

1:22:09So there's no rocket science here. It's just the fact that people don't think about it for Africa just boggles my mind. Anyway, so Octavio Sanchez, along with some other people, but he really is one of my key figures for this. Obviously, people like my husband worked on these projects, but all of this came from someone like Octavio Sanchez saying, there's a pattern here. There's a pattern. How can we do something similar? And so that's how the ZAs were decided. ZAs, I should know the Spanish name, but it's pretty much a special academic zone for development economy, but in Spanish. And so the government of Honduras worked with people like my husband and others to actually establish the ZEA law, the law for these zones.

1:22:57And what they did, I think, it's just mind boggling. Because so they established the laws where basically you allow for a way for these zones to start fresh when it comes to commercial law. See, that's the other thing. You're not touching anything that touches the sovereignty of a nation. You're not touching family law. You're not touching criminal law. You're not touching immigration law. You're not touching any of those things. It's really about the business of the rules of the games that rule the life of a business. And so they established the premises for that to be done. And then that's what they called the ZA law.

1:23:39And then from there, anybody who wants, basically, we said, Anybody who finds the right type of land in Honduras can apply for a ZA with the government. You apply, you get it, you can go do what you need to do. There, what it allows you to do is to come up with a set of laws that you would think is the best for the business environment. But it still has to adhere, presumably, to a certain subset of government laws. Because it's not like a complete Wild West. Very good question. No, it's not Wild West. And this is another thing that many people don't understand. That's why when I hear some people be like, oh, this is wet dream for libertarians, I'm like, you just don't get it, do you?

1:24:21What it is, is for this to work, again, remember, we're after the best business environment in the world. And having the best business environment in the world doesn't mean you get rid of all regulations and all laws, all is gone. It doesn't mean that. You can dump litter into the ocean or whatever. No, that would be the stupidest thing to do, by the way. Because it's going to make everyone hate you. Not only everyone hates you, but if you're thinking about the laws of a market, what you're thinking about is, you see, investment and capital likes nothing less than uncertainty. It doesn't. It doesn't like it.

1:24:57It doesn't like what it doesn't know. So you going wild west, it doesn't know that either. Because it's thinking, oh, if a dispute happens, what's going to happen to me? Investment doesn't want that. Capital doesn't want that. Talent doesn't want that. It's incentivized to make it nice and... Yes, you're naturally incentivized to be predictable. So you have to do two things. You have to be predictable and you have to be efficient. Predictable, why? Because capital and talent doesn't like, especially capital does not like uncertainty. It does not like if something happens, who are these judges?

1:25:31How do they judge? What's the precedent? All of that stuff. Because the precedent gives you a lot of information and it has to be super efficient. So what it is, is that then what happens is that in the case of Prospera, but really anybody who wants to do this, what you have to do is you have to now start looking around the world at what are about every single thing. It's almost every single law, you have to start looking about where are the best practices. And so this is why Prospera really at its best is, it's a governance platform, literally, that offers the best in choice for law. So, for example, if you are a health company, like you're in the biotech or like you're in the medical device or like some type of health related company.

1:26:21what Prosper has designed is a system where you have a choice of law where you can say based on the company that I'm operating you get to choose which OECD law do you want to follow which one so you could say I am going to follow US law I'm going to follow Japan law I'm going to follow some EU country law or I decide to choose the Honduran one you see how it attracts It attracts all of them because now they're like, oh, you mean I can run my medical, my biotech company just like if I was in America, which by the way, in this case, I decided was the best for this type of, for my field? You mean straight from Roytan, I can run a company like that?

1:27:08Or, oh, screw the one from America. We know that for this type of drugs, we know that the FDA is causing all types of problems. But we know that Germany is saying this is approved. So then you're going to say, I'm going to follow German. So Honduras, on their own, on the Doing Business Index ranking, I think that 140 or 142, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, out of 195 or whatever number of countries are. Yeah, that's bad. That's no good. That's bad, right? Yeah. Do you know the Prospera zone? What ranking? No, but I'm going to guess it's like... Nine. Oh, wow. Nine. Okay, I wasn't expecting that. Top 10.

1:27:44Top 10, as measured by Ernst & Young. It's amazing. It's amazing. So that's what the startup cities at their best are. And so that's what you're doing. And that's really pretty much, for me, that's the promise of the bright future for Africa. It's like we get these cities, and the beauty here to live is Africa is the poorest region in the world, but we get one of these going. It's over. It's game over. No, I see that because it's like planting a seed. And again, it shows if it actually is prosperous, then people are going to want to emulate that. Yes. So how can the people watching, you know, Win Winners, who are a fan of this podcast, there's a lot of people with a lot of energy for this kind of idea, this kind of project.

1:28:28What would you advise for them? How can they get involved? First of all, especially for when it comes to Africa, because that's really what I'm going to speak of mostly. I'm the head of global affairs for Prospera Global and also co-founder for Prospera Africa. But when it comes to Africa, I would suggest to people to start, you know, even if it sounds self-serving, I wrote this book because I wanted people to understand. So the heart of a cheetah is a good place to start with so you have a better understanding of the lay of the land. What's going on, what happened, and most importantly, how do we get out of this, and the role of a startup citizen.

1:29:04And I can attest, it's a really fun book. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. So I would say start there, and then also join us. Right now there are two things I'm doing. One is just this year, we're creating what we call the African Development Fund for the startup cities in Africa. What this is, it's a fund, it's what we call the Exploration Fund. So this is a fund that's going to allow for more of these explorations to happen because I have a few more countries in the roster that are interested and it's a matter of talking to them. Because what you have is at the bigger level, they're understanding more now the startup cities slash charter cities, what it is.

1:29:40And again, good work has been done by everybody in the ecosystem, including people, obviously, the charter cities and people, people like Nicholas Anzinger, who has a venture capital firm specifically devoted to investing in companies that are in prosperous zones. Everybody that's interested in that should reach out to me because this is our exploration fund. Like I said, we have a few more countries in the roster that are interested in all of this. and beyond that obviously yeah there's going to be investment opportunities in these cities and again like I said remember everybody Africa is the youngest population in the world 19 years old and by 2050 one quarter of every person working this earth will be African so as Noah Smith said it futurism is Afro futurism and the sooner you get on the better it is and for me it's also another way to it's also another way to reconcile the world.

1:30:38It's sort of another way to heal us, to heal each other. Heal the history. Yes, to heal the history. And do it in a way where it's not about guilt from here or guilt from there or your ancestors. No, no, no, no, no. You, me, we have no say in what our ancestors have done. You're from England, I'm from Senegal. You know, we have no say in what our ancestors have done. Some of my ancestors, you know, Africans, we're selling other Africans. Your ancestors, we're buying. them and all of that was happening. Okay. So everywhere you look, there is, there is pinks. You can point. You and I have nothing to do with that.

1:31:16There's nothing absolutely we can do about that. And surely the future and the present and the future does, can, does not need you and me sitting here and having a misery. Yes. Lamenting about that. But what the, what today needs and what the future needs is for you and me to hold hands and look forward and work together. to change the future. And that, you ask me, we have everything live right now to do that. Everything. It's George Ayite who said, the cheetahs, the future of Africa, and I would like to argue the future of the world lies on the back of cheetahs. Cheetahs versus hippos. The hippos are these people who are part of a system.

1:31:56They're glued, like the hippo is like, you know, in the water, in the river, and it's like so stuck over there. Aggressive. You know, they're aggressive and they're crazy, right? Scary. Yeah, and they're like, don't eat my food. And they kill all people, I think they're pretty much it beside mosquitoes. No, they're the worst. Of the large animals, they're the most dangerous. They're the most dangerous. So those hippos are over there. They're kind of stuck in their ways and all of that stuff. Cheetahs, have you run, have you seen how cheetahs run, how they hunt? Cheetahs are the fastest land animals, you know, goes from...

1:32:22And they work together. They work together. A cheetah coalition is a beautiful thing to watch. It's so coordinated. 80 % of their action is in preparation and 20 % is the run and then they go. It's crazy. I just love cheetahs. They're very efficient. Oh, very efficient. So that's who we are. That's us. The cheetahs are the people who said, we are not going to wait for anyone or anything, especially not government, to get it right. So this is what we all are. You know, you're a cheetah, I'm a cheetah, everybody's a cheetah. And we got to find each other. And the good news is only take one to 5 % of the population to change the world, for good or for bad.

1:32:54That's the promise of it too. So let's find each other and let's join hands. A lot of the groundwork has been done. Poverty truly can be solved in our lifetime. because anytime this has been done, it takes less and less time to see the result. When the first, you know, the ancestors of a startup cities were happening, it was taking 35 years maybe for people to see the difference. Dubai, which went last, was done in 20 years, I believe. We're talking less than a generation. By the time we do the African cities ones, maybe 12 to 15 years, we can see the difference. So when I hear people saying, how do we solve poverty?

1:33:32this is how you solve poverty. But we're going to have to be radical about this. And if the philanthropy world is not getting it because they're designed in a way that they can't address systems, then it's going to be up to the rest of us to design something that can address systems. And this is something that for the longest time folks thought we could not do anything about. But now we're proving them you can do something about it. But our world is not designed to support systems. And as you can hear in everything I explained, There is nothing colonial about anything I described, because the fact that companies have access to better jurisdictions, multinationals, it's known.

1:34:15Multinationals can choose, pick and choose which ones they're going to be ruled by. Now let's bring it down all the way to the littlest person in the community. And so this is pretty much what's there. And I think I know no better, more beautiful way than to finally all of us come together, finally kick poverty down to the curb, because we've got bigger job to do than trying just to sustain people. You know, we have cancer to solve. We have, you know, more rockets to send into the earth. We have more of a diseases to solve. Every one of these Africans is one brain that's going to waste, as it is right now.

1:34:54It is the most stupid thing that we're doing to ourselves collectively to leave anyone behind living such unproductive lives due to poverty. There was a really interesting statistic about actually the most unemployed people, and certainly in some of the Western African nations, are the most educated. The more educated you are, the more likely you are to not have a job. That's nuts. Think about the waste of this. Think about this. It's all this intellectual capital, these brilliant young minds, and they're just sitting there doing nothing, and they're so frustrated, which then creates conflict.

1:35:26Yes, yes. So this is why, for me, that's where this whole promise is. I mean, we have such a beautiful world ahead of us, right? I personally, there's no other time I would prefer to be alive, okay? As a black woman evolving in the world, this is the best time to be alive, and I can almost say for sure that I believe it's the same for you, because even if back then maybe you would have been queen or who knows what else, still you would have had to maybe die in childbirth for reasons that don't have to be or who knows what else. Today's not the case. So in all metrics, by all metrics, we are living our best lives, our best lives.

1:36:00Let no one tell you otherwise. And we can make it even better by bringing out everybody else out of poverty into prosperity. And from there, we all kind of tackle bigger issues. So for me, this is what we should be focused on. Let all the division go by the sideways. You know, even this stuff, you know, I see people saying, oh, there is a war, there's a civilizational war going on. I know it's very popular to think these things right now, but for me, it's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Do we have people like the Muslim Brotherhoods who are involved in the civilizational war? Yeah. Do we have on the other end of that, on the other extreme end of that, people in the Western world involved in the religion world because they think the Euro-Christian background is the best or whatever, the right or the wrong, whatever?

1:36:52Probably. But I like to argue that those are two small factions fighting these weird things, but in between you just have people like you and me bumbling along, trying to make it as we're going along. That's it. And all we want is for our families to be safe, for our children to be taken care of, and for us to be not being thrown by the sideline when we fall sick or we fall ill or we fall handicapped or whatever. We just want to live. We just want to be. And so for people who are allowing themselves to be distracted by bogus, you know, stuff, they sit there and they say there's a civilizational, or when you're being a politician, they think there's a civilizational war.

1:37:37when I'm like, no, all I see is people who are clearly telling you they don't have enough, whether it's the immigrants that are coming, you know, or the people who are here and are telling you, like the yellow vest, we cannot make ends meet. And you're talking to me about climate change. That's what started the yellow vest. And so these two people have the same problem, which is called poverty. And they have the same solutions as well. But instead of addressing that, we address the consequences. And of course we go for the easiest culprit, which is in this case, skin color is the fastest, the quickest things to see.

1:38:16And then beyond that, religion as well. So we go for the easy markers to start to differentiate ourselves and say this is the reason, like the things that differentiate us. When we need to go back and remember the poverty here and the lack, lack, lack. So the key is to unlock abundance, get rid of scarcity. We'll find our way back to each other. we will find our way back to each other. So there we go, folks. Thank you so much for listening. And of course, to Magat for this conversation. Do check out her book that's out now, Heart of a Cheater. Super, super cool. I've also linked below some of the resources that we discussed, including some of her research papers that I'd also really recommend you read.

1:38:56And of course, please like, share, subscribe. You know the drill. Either way, I will see you in a couple of weeks.

1:39:07Thank you.