Transcript
00:00:00 you have to have the free markets
00:00:03 in order to build prosperity.
00:00:04 And prosperity means economic power.
00:00:09 If you have economic power, no one messes with you.
00:00:14 Or if they’re gonna do it, they’re gonna have to think twice
00:00:15 and when they do, they’re gonna have to pay consequences.
00:00:20 The following is a conversation with Magat Wade,
00:00:23 an entrepreneur who’s passionate
00:00:25 about creating positive change in Africa
00:00:28 through economic empowerment.
00:00:31 This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
00:00:33 To support it, please check out our sponsors
00:00:34 in the description.
00:00:36 And now, dear friends, here’s Magat Wade.
00:00:40 You were born in Senegal.
00:00:42 You have lived and traveled across the world.
00:00:45 So let me ask you, what is the soul of Senegal?
00:00:48 Like, its people, its culture, its history.
00:00:51 Can you try to sneak up on telling us
00:00:55 what is the spirit of its people?
00:00:58 Taranga, Taranga.
00:01:00 Taranga, it’s a Wolof word.
00:01:02 Wolof is the main indigenous language of Senegal
00:01:05 and it means hospitality.
00:01:07 That is what us, the people of Senegal, are known for.
00:01:11 And it transpires in everything that we do,
00:01:15 everything that we say.
00:01:16 It’s a place where, I guess with hospitality,
00:01:19 goes this concept of warmth.
00:01:21 So we are a very warm people.
00:01:25 So in a nutshell, that’s us.
00:01:26 That’s us, the place where you come
00:01:28 and everybody will just embrace you,
00:01:31 make you feel very comfortable,
00:01:32 make you feel like you’re the only person in the world
00:01:35 and that we’ve been waiting for you our whole life, right?
00:01:37 So that’s my country.
00:01:39 So that’s for people in Senegal, people in Africa,
00:01:43 or also people across the world,
00:01:45 weird strangers from all walks of life.
00:01:47 So hospitality towards everyone.
00:01:49 For everyone, for everyone.
00:01:51 Especially towards the foreigner
00:01:54 because it’s very ingrained in us,
00:01:57 this understanding that especially the foreigner,
00:02:00 the foreigner is called foreigner
00:02:01 because the foreigner is coming from somewhere else.
00:02:03 So if someone has taken the time and the energy,
00:02:07 whether in a forced manner or because it’s a choice
00:02:11 to travel so far to come to a place that’s not theirs,
00:02:14 to start where that’s where the foreigners again,
00:02:17 then it is your duty to welcome them,
00:02:20 to be uber welcoming to them.
00:02:23 So there’s not a fear of the foreigner.
00:02:24 There’s not a suspicion of the foreigner.
00:02:26 No, no, no.
00:02:28 And I think this goes with the other way around.
00:02:31 Maybe it has to do with just,
00:02:34 you know, when you feel good about yourself,
00:02:36 when you’re very grounded yourself,
00:02:37 it’s very easy to open yourself to others.
00:02:39 And I’m wondering if that’s not, you know,
00:02:42 the other side of the equation in a way.
00:02:45 So no, we don’t have a fear towards a foreigner.
00:02:49 That’s just no.
00:02:50 When you have a pride of your culture,
00:02:53 pride of your own people, it’s easier to sort of embrace.
00:02:56 I mean, it’s interesting how these kind of cultures emerge
00:02:59 because, you know, the Slavic countries
00:03:02 are sometimes colder.
00:03:05 They’re slower to trust others.
00:03:07 We’re now here in Austin, Texas.
00:03:09 One of the reasons I fell in love with this place
00:03:11 when I showed up is there’s that same hospitality
00:03:13 as compared to other cities I’ve lived in,
00:03:17 sort of Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco.
00:03:22 There’s a hesitation to open up, to be fragile,
00:03:26 to be caring before understanding
00:03:31 what I can gain from you kind of calculation.
00:03:34 It’s really interesting.
00:03:35 And I wonder how those kinds of dynamics emerge
00:03:39 because they’re certainly parts of the world.
00:03:41 Like Austin is one of them
00:03:43 where you just feel the kindness,
00:03:45 just radiate without knowing kindness from strangers.
00:03:49 You know, if I were to advance one thing,
00:03:52 and I had the same experience
00:03:56 after having lived in San Francisco first,
00:03:59 then we went to New York, then we came to Austin.
00:04:02 And when we came to Austin, I felt,
00:04:04 it took me a while to put my finger on it,
00:04:06 but what I found in Austin, people just hang.
00:04:10 People, right?
00:04:11 They’re real.
00:04:13 They’re real.
00:04:13 And like what you were saying, I feel like
00:04:15 in these other places, people are,
00:04:18 it’s a destination for people who want to come and perform.
00:04:21 I think maybe the early San Francisco people,
00:04:24 it was different for them.
00:04:26 But later as prosperity starts to come in
00:04:30 and success comes in, then you attract a different breed.
00:04:34 At first, we’re the people who made it,
00:04:36 who made this place be what it is.
00:04:38 And then it attracts all the bling followers
00:04:41 and the bling attracted people.
00:04:43 And when those people show up,
00:04:45 it’s time for all of us to get out.
00:04:47 And that’s one of my worries about Austin too.
00:04:49 And I guess I’m one of, I count myself in it,
00:04:51 but you know, because we’re also new arrivees,
00:04:54 always been furious now.
00:04:56 But how are we gonna protect this place?
00:04:58 Yeah.
00:05:00 Yeah, these are, you know, the best possible version
00:05:02 of the Austin history.
00:05:04 This is the early days of Silicon Valley in Austin.
00:05:07 And so you get a chance to build
00:05:09 on top of this culture that’s already been here
00:05:12 of the weirdos, the artists, the sort of the characters,
00:05:18 but also the general kindness and love
00:05:21 that just permeates the whole place,
00:05:23 build on top of that entrepreneurial spirit.
00:05:27 So like the tech companies, new startups,
00:05:30 all that kind of stuff.
00:05:31 And then you get a chance to build totally new ideas,
00:05:35 totally revolutionary ideas and make them a reality
00:05:38 and dream big and build it here.
00:05:40 I think Elon represents that with all the people
00:05:44 that kind of try to do the cutting edge stuff
00:05:50 they’re doing at Tesla and SpaceX.
00:05:52 But there’s a bunch of other companies,
00:05:53 they’re just like coming up.
00:05:54 I get to talk to a bunch of tech people
00:05:56 and they’re just incredible.
00:05:58 Versus San Francisco, there’s a cynicism a bit.
00:06:03 And also some of the interaction with strangers,
00:06:06 there’s always a bit of a calculation,
00:06:08 like how good is this going to be for my career?
00:06:11 Or how can, yeah.
00:06:12 How can hanging out with this person can advance me?
00:06:14 You go to a party, they’re seizing up.
00:06:18 It’s like, I’m not gonna talk to so and so
00:06:19 because that’s not gonna advance me.
00:06:21 Who’s gonna advance me next?
00:06:22 And so this is what I would not wanna see here in Austin.
00:06:27 And I think maybe there’s one way to try to,
00:06:30 I really would like to see Austin
00:06:31 not go the way San Francisco did
00:06:33 and other towns before.
00:06:34 I like how you pronounce San Francisco with a French accent.
00:06:36 San Francisco?
00:06:37 Yeah, that’s great.
00:06:39 That’s the one word you go with a French accent.
00:06:42 You have to.
00:06:42 It sounds beautiful.
00:06:43 San Francisco.
00:06:44 San Francisco.
00:06:45 But you know, so now that you find that cute,
00:06:50 you’re gonna have to forgive me when I mess up my English
00:06:53 because English is not my first language.
00:06:55 So I always try to make sure people know that.
00:06:58 But you know Lex, this is why I am very interested
00:07:01 in what some folks here are working on.
00:07:03 And I’m just gonna be very selfish here
00:07:05 because I wanna help her with what she’s doing.
00:07:07 It’s someone like, you know, Nicole Nodzak and her project,
00:07:11 you know, with the housing project that they have right now,
00:07:14 making sure that Austin remains a town
00:07:16 that’s affordable for people of all walks of lives.
00:07:20 If we can accomplish making sure that all walks of lives,
00:07:24 doesn’t matter how little or big you’re making money wise,
00:07:28 that you can stay in this town
00:07:29 so the diversity at that level can remain,
00:07:32 then I think Austin stands a chance to really show the world
00:07:34 how to do things differently.
00:07:36 And what I love about, you know, her initiative
00:07:38 is just how they’re really trying, you know,
00:07:42 to again work on keeping affordability down for most people.
00:07:46 I think it’s important to,
00:07:48 because it seems like it matters to you,
00:07:50 I know that it matters to me.
00:07:51 I absolutely would not wanna see Austin go away
00:07:55 that San Francisco did.
00:07:56 And I think the key to that is making sure
00:07:58 that true diversity,
00:07:59 not like the fluff, fluff crap diversity we’re hearing over there.
00:08:02 And that’s another thing by the way,
00:08:03 because San Francisco likes to pride itself in,
00:08:05 oh, you know, we are so into diversity,
00:08:09 but I’m like, if diversity for you means gender,
00:08:13 difference of gender, skin color, you know,
00:08:16 maybe the different accents we have,
00:08:18 and you think check, check, check, check, check,
00:08:19 I’m like, it’s not enough.
00:08:21 Can we also add diversity of thoughts?
00:08:24 And that’s the other problem I have with that place,
00:08:26 you know?
00:08:26 And I know some folks who are scared of saying much
00:08:29 around people, that’s also another thing.
00:08:31 So not only they’re sizing you up,
00:08:33 but everybody’s also, there is this invisible,
00:08:36 this invisible, how should I say this?
00:08:40 There’s this invisible agreement
00:08:43 that they all seem to have to stay on script.
00:08:47 Yeah, there’s a feeling like you’re following
00:08:48 a certain kind of script that’s very kind of shallow.
00:08:51 And there is a bit of a categorization going on,
00:08:54 which category do you belong to?
00:08:55 And let’s put this into a simple math equation,
00:08:58 what comes out, as opposed to just the free, open embrace
00:09:03 of people, the weirdos, the characters, the interesting,
00:09:06 the full, deep sense of diversity.
00:09:09 Not just ideas, but backgrounds, and rich and poor.
00:09:16 Artists, engineers.
00:09:17 High school dropouts, PhDs, all of this.
00:09:20 Yes, yes, that’s what makes for a rich society
00:09:24 if it’s gonna get ahead.
00:09:25 I’m glad you mentioned Nicole’s efforts,
00:09:27 I know she really is passionate about.
00:09:30 I don’t know how complicated that work is,
00:09:32 because there’s probably a big force trying to increase
00:09:40 how much it costs to live in Austin.
00:09:42 I don’t know how you resist that.
00:09:45 Whenever I go to New York City,
00:09:47 just the fact that there’s a giant park in the middle of it,
00:09:50 I wonder, how did they pull this off?
00:09:53 This is amazing.
00:09:54 It’s like to resist the force of the increasing price
00:09:59 of the land, and still to protect this idea
00:10:02 of having a park.
00:10:05 And then in the same way, protecting the ability
00:10:08 for people from all walks of life to live
00:10:10 in the center of the city, to live around the city,
00:10:13 to chase a dream when they don’t get any money
00:10:16 in their pocket.
00:10:17 Absolutely.
00:10:18 I don’t know how you do that.
00:10:19 It’s partly political, probably, regulation,
00:10:22 all that kind of stuff.
00:10:23 A lot of it has to do with regulations.
00:10:25 And this is where her and I also very much see eye to eye
00:10:31 in terms of the free markets and also prosperity building,
00:10:35 because it’s always the same problems most of the time,
00:10:38 most places.
00:10:40 Here, what you have is some people in the name of,
00:10:43 we gotta stand for, and I don’t like to use this word,
00:10:47 but maybe you help me find a better one,
00:10:49 but at least that’s a word that people can understand.
00:10:51 We gotta stand for the lesser fortunate among us.
00:10:54 Some people would call them, maybe oftentimes use the word,
00:10:57 maybe the underdogs, whatever it is.
00:10:58 I will just say maybe the lesser fortunate among us, right?
00:11:02 In the name of standing up for them,
00:11:04 you’re promoting policies that are actually gonna backfire
00:11:07 and where they end up being the first ones
00:11:10 to suffer from it.
00:11:11 So let’s take this whole housing issue
00:11:14 that Nicole and her team are working on.
00:11:17 We find that oftentimes the cost at the end of the day,
00:11:20 it’s the good old supply and demand equation.
00:11:26 If you’re gonna make it so hard
00:11:29 that the supply level of housing remains
00:11:33 below a certain threshold,
00:11:34 remains lower than the demand of people who need,
00:11:38 especially affordable housing, housing altogether,
00:11:41 what’s gonna happen is scarcity, prices go up,
00:11:45 and who gets kicked out first?
00:11:47 The lesser fortunate among us.
00:11:49 And so, but I find that oftentimes people
00:11:52 in the name of We Care don’t engage their mind.
00:11:55 And a friend of mine said this, and he said it so well.
00:11:57 He said, having a heart for the poor, that’s easy.
00:12:03 Having a mind for the poor, that’s the challenge.
00:12:06 And oftentimes we all have a heart for the poor.
00:12:09 But when it comes then to, then what do we do
00:12:13 to have a real impact on making sure
00:12:17 that people get a chance at going up,
00:12:20 then that’s where everything starts falling apart.
00:12:23 And then you have people who,
00:12:25 then they start pushing for policies, housing policies,
00:12:28 making it super hard for you to even renovate
00:12:30 or add one more store to your home or anything like that.
00:12:33 By doing that, you’re messing up with the supply,
00:12:36 with the supply of housing.
00:12:39 And therefore the people who can’t afford,
00:12:43 people get priced out of the market.
00:12:45 And so what people like Nicole are doing
00:12:47 are going back to where all of this is taking place
00:12:49 and they’re going back to the regulation side.
00:12:51 And just like, I’m sure we’ll talk about it here,
00:12:53 but people wonder today, why is Africa
00:12:56 the poorest region in the world?
00:12:57 We go back to the same culprit.
00:12:59 Bad laws and tons of senseless regulations.
00:13:04 If you make it so hard that in Berkeley,
00:13:06 for someone to build one more store to their home,
00:13:09 which means maybe one more unit
00:13:11 that could be rented out to someone.
00:13:13 And if many more people do that,
00:13:14 then you have a much bigger supply,
00:13:16 which means the prices will go down,
00:13:18 which means more people have access and among them,
00:13:20 especially the lesser fortunate among us,
00:13:22 then we’re starting to see a winning proposal, aren’t we?
00:13:25 But instead, if you go the other way around,
00:13:27 then all of a sudden you’re pricing them out of the market.
00:13:29 Same thing was done with us.
00:13:30 So oftentimes when I see problems of this nature,
00:13:33 you can betcha that regulations and census laws
00:13:37 are the heart of it.
00:13:37 And that’s what they’re tackling.
00:13:39 It’s not popular, it’s not fun.
00:13:41 And people tend to not even understand
00:13:43 where you’re coming from.
00:13:44 But this is a problem we have
00:13:45 with people not understanding economic econ 101.
00:13:48 Well, so it’s the regulation and the laws
00:13:50 and the system that props them up
00:13:51 and increases the span of those laws.
00:13:53 And we’ll talk about that,
00:13:55 the fascinating way those kinds of things develop
00:13:57 when it works, when it doesn’t.
00:13:59 Let me sort of step back
00:14:01 and ask you a question about Africa.
00:14:03 In the West, in many places in the world,
00:14:06 Africa is almost talked about like it’s one country,
00:14:10 like it’s one place.
00:14:12 So in what ways is Africa one community?
00:14:16 And in what ways is it many, many, many communities?
00:14:20 Just from your perspective from in Senegal and beyond.
00:14:24 Right.
00:14:25 So at the most basic of what makes us one
00:14:30 goes back to even what makes you African.
00:14:33 You are African, I’m African.
00:14:34 We’re one big family.
00:14:36 Africa is very much at the end of the day,
00:14:38 the foundation and the birth of the human race.
00:14:44 So from that standpoint, at the most basic level,
00:14:47 we’re all Africans.
00:14:48 Where this whole thing started.
00:14:50 Exactly, exactly.
00:14:51 Where this whole thing started
00:14:53 and how at some point humanity was hanging
00:14:56 by its fingernails.
00:14:57 Only 2000 of us were left on this earth.
00:14:59 And eventually we started, we went for survival.
00:15:02 And that’s how we started to spread around
00:15:04 and some going up north, some going this way, that way.
00:15:07 And as you’re traveling to different places
00:15:09 then features start to change to adapt
00:15:11 to where you are, right?
00:15:13 So hair gets lighter for some people,
00:15:16 eyes get different shape for others to adjust
00:15:19 to our new natural habitat.
00:15:21 You know, the genomics program,
00:15:22 I think at the National Geographic did that so well
00:15:26 for people who are interested in going back
00:15:28 to that work with Spencer Wells and such.
00:15:30 But yeah, so at the very basic, most basic level,
00:15:34 that’s what unites us all first of all.
00:15:37 And then I would say that the continent, especially here
00:15:41 I will group it into black Africa, you know, black Africa.
00:15:47 Unfortunately our common stories, you know,
00:15:50 of having gone through this terrible, horrible period
00:15:54 of around the same time the whole continent being,
00:15:56 you know, enslaved and colonized.
00:15:58 So that in a way forms, not that we were ever
00:16:02 the first people or only people ever, you know,
00:16:05 enslaved in this world.
00:16:06 As a matter of fact, I mean, the word slaves comes
00:16:09 from esclav, you know, esclav, slave, slavs, les slavs,
00:16:13 right, from the Eastern block.
00:16:15 So the first slaves were actually people looking
00:16:17 more like you than looking like me, right?
00:16:19 So, but we don’t necessarily remember all of that
00:16:22 because in our human psyche, the closest to us in history
00:16:28 of a big mass of people being enslaved is African people.
00:16:32 We were the last, you know, group like that.
00:16:35 You know, the pain of World War I and World War II
00:16:39 permeates Europe, but it certainly does
00:16:43 for the former Soviet Union, the countries
00:16:46 that made up the former Soviet Union.
00:16:48 Does in the same way, the pain of slavery
00:16:56 and empires using Africa, does that permeate the culture?
00:17:01 Is there still echoes of that?
00:17:02 In a way, yes, especially the fact that, you know,
00:17:06 in many different places, whether it’s Ghana
00:17:10 or my country or Benin, where you have these places
00:17:15 that we call the door of no return or the places
00:17:17 of no return, which this was the last place
00:17:22 where the slaves were standing or, you know,
00:17:25 this is in Senegal, we call it the door of no return.
00:17:29 There is this one door, you’re there in the slave house.
00:17:31 And once they go, they go, that’s it.
00:17:34 That’s gonna be the last time they see back home.
00:17:38 So, you know, those, of course, of course,
00:17:43 it creates for a common lived experience,
00:17:48 which becomes a common lived history.
00:17:54 And of course, it’s gonna tire us up.
00:17:56 Is there a resentment, because you mentioned hospitality,
00:18:00 is there a kind of a resentment of the foreigner
00:18:03 that there’s a rich, vibrant land?
00:18:07 There’s many resources, there’s powerful cultures.
00:18:10 Are they just going to show up and use us?
00:18:14 That’s a way to see geopolitics in this modern world.
00:18:16 This is, okay, so where it plays very differently is,
00:18:19 so if you came to Senegal today,
00:18:21 there is not really a problem at that level.
00:18:23 Where people’s resentment start to come from is,
00:18:28 of course, when bad behavior shows up,
00:18:31 meaning like you have so many white people who can show up
00:18:33 and just in the attitude,
00:18:35 they have an entitlement attitude, right?
00:18:38 And they think that in a way, we’re all still servants.
00:18:43 Some people in your face, some people more,
00:18:46 but that can cause some little resentment,
00:18:48 but where really the resentment is.
00:18:51 And that can, the entitlement can take different forms,
00:18:53 like even pity.
00:18:55 Yes, don’t even get me going on that one.
00:18:57 I was trying to be polite today.
00:18:59 So just don’t, Lex, do not.
00:19:01 You know, sometimes I tell myself,
00:19:03 my God, today you’re going to be all composed.
00:19:04 You know, Lex is all composed.
00:19:06 So don’t go there and make a fool of yourself.
00:19:08 Just behave.
00:19:09 But if you get me on some grounds,
00:19:12 that’s when it’s all going to go to hell.
00:19:15 So yeah, let’s move beyond that too.
00:19:17 So resentment, there’s a dance
00:19:20 between hospitality and resentment.
00:19:21 And resentment.
00:19:22 So when you come in, you’re you, you live your life.
00:19:25 You’re just a normal human being
00:19:26 and you treat me decently
00:19:27 like you would treat a friend, normal people.
00:19:30 I have no problem with you.
00:19:31 I’m not going to come back and be like,
00:19:32 well, you and your ancestors have enslaved me.
00:19:35 You, you’re not going to see that stuff.
00:19:38 Sometimes I’m in this country where I feel like that’s,
00:19:40 you know, it might look like that,
00:19:42 but we in Africa don’t do that.
00:19:45 Now, if you come, you have this nasty attitude.
00:19:48 You think you’re still serving servants around.
00:19:50 Well, you can have a problem with someone like me.
00:19:52 I might even grab you by the back of your neck
00:19:54 and, you know, take you back to the airport.
00:19:56 That’s when you’re lucky.
00:19:58 I’ll be you very quickly.
00:19:59 Exactly.
00:20:00 But where things come up is,
00:20:05 especially nowadays with the African youth,
00:20:07 when we have to be reminded of the World Bank,
00:20:10 when we have to be reminded of even the world,
00:20:13 places like the World Economic Forum,
00:20:14 you know, like all of these places that seem to constitute,
00:20:19 they would, the way they describe them,
00:20:22 when I say they, it’s primarily my Pan African friends.
00:20:26 So here maybe terms are worth describing.
00:20:30 So the Pan African movement goes way back when,
00:20:37 we’re talking about, you know, way back when,
00:20:39 started in the thirties going on all the way from there.
00:20:44 So what you have there is people
00:20:47 who have started coming together
00:20:50 and dreaming up an emancipated Africa
00:20:54 away from the colonies,
00:20:55 because at that point there were still colonies
00:20:57 and dreaming up all of that.
00:20:59 So we’re talking about people like Kwame Kuma of Ghana,
00:21:02 we’re talking about Julius Nyerere of Tanzania,
00:21:04 talking about Blaise Diagne of Senegal
00:21:06 and other people like that, Bandi of Malawi.
00:21:09 So anyway, so, and the African youth of today,
00:21:12 we’re still hanging on to those,
00:21:15 onto some of these ideas of,
00:21:16 and on some of these dreams of a reunited Africa.
00:21:19 So when you were talking about what seems to unite you,
00:21:22 there is that, you know, also,
00:21:25 meaning like we all feel like we’re part of the same family.
00:21:27 Is it only in our heads?
00:21:29 Is it in reality?
00:21:30 Many, for many different reasons,
00:21:31 there is definitely what we call a Pan African movement.
00:21:34 And I very much myself, consider myself one of them.
00:21:38 I don’t agree all the time with our,
00:21:40 where we want to go and how we want to go there,
00:21:42 but not where we want to go.
00:21:45 Where we want to go is we would love to see
00:21:46 a united Africa for sure.
00:21:48 But how to get that accomplished,
00:21:50 that’s where oftentimes we have issues.
00:21:52 So on something like that,
00:21:55 so this Pan African, especially the Pan African youth,
00:21:57 but it’s beyond the Pan African youth,
00:21:59 it’s the youth in general in Africa,
00:22:02 World Bank, UN, all of these organizations
00:22:04 that they tend to qualify as imperialist organizations.
00:22:09 And it’s not always a correct way to describe them,
00:22:12 but I’m sure you get the sentiment.
00:22:14 And from that place, there is tons of resentment
00:22:19 because for the longest time,
00:22:22 these groups, organizations,
00:22:24 and some that preceded them,
00:22:27 have proceeded to actually decide
00:22:30 what even our new frontiers would be.
00:22:33 You see, when you go to a place like Senegal,
00:22:35 Mali, all of that, different countries,
00:22:37 but we were one people,
00:22:40 one group, one kingdom.
00:22:42 And then at some point they decided just,
00:22:45 when you look at Africa,
00:22:46 have you looked at how straight some of these borders are?
00:22:48 You’re like, did a robot just draw these?
00:22:51 Really?
00:22:52 No offense to robots.
00:22:53 No offense to robot, especially this one,
00:22:54 he looks so cute.
00:22:55 But you know what I mean?
00:22:56 So they have continued deciding
00:23:02 what it would be to be us,
00:23:06 to live on our land,
00:23:08 and how do we even progress?
00:23:10 And it just keeps on going.
00:23:11 They get to decide how are we gonna,
00:23:16 which type of even economic development path
00:23:19 are we gonna choose or not?
00:23:20 So it’s very, so from that standpoint,
00:23:22 yes, there’s a lot of resentment,
00:23:23 including even from people like me.
00:23:25 Yeah, and it’s interesting that the invader
00:23:27 and the oppressor and the empires
00:23:29 have actually created a force for unity.
00:23:33 I’ve seen that in Ukraine and the invasion of Ukraine,
00:23:36 where it was a pretty divided,
00:23:38 not a pretty, a very divided country with many factions.
00:23:41 But the invasion really forced everyone to think
00:23:45 about the identity of this nation together,
00:23:48 beyond factions, beyond all of that.
00:23:51 It allowed it to look at its history and its future.
00:23:54 Like they all say that all great nations
00:23:57 have had to have a war of independence.
00:24:00 And this is our war to find our own identity.
00:24:04 And so in that sense, Africa as one place,
00:24:09 as one continent had to find multiple times its identity
00:24:14 through the resistance of the oppressor.
00:24:17 Especially subterranean Africa,
00:24:18 especially subterranean Africa, yes.
00:24:20 And there’s an interesting aspect to this
00:24:22 because the president of Senegal is also
00:24:23 the head of the African Union.
00:24:26 So we’ll talk about the fascinating geopolitics
00:24:30 of that whole situation.
00:24:33 But let me ask in general,
00:24:36 you talk about this question, this fascinating question,
00:24:41 what does it take for a country to prosper?
00:24:44 What does it take for a country to prosper?
00:24:48 You see many countries in the world that really struggle
00:24:51 and many that flourish.
00:24:54 And it’s not always obvious why
00:24:56 because some have natural resources, some don’t.
00:25:00 Some have wars, some don’t.
00:25:04 Some have sort of authoritarian regimes, some don’t.
00:25:11 And some have democracies and all that kind of stuff.
00:25:13 So the dynamics aren’t exactly obvious.
00:25:16 Is there commonalities?
00:25:18 Is there fundamental ideas that result
00:25:22 in a prosperity of a nation?
00:25:24 Today, I can confidently say yes,
00:25:27 despite all the differences that you talked about.
00:25:29 And I think then this is where it becomes very important
00:25:33 that we are very clear about the question you asked me.
00:25:37 You said, what does it take to make a country prosperous?
00:25:41 So I’m just gonna stick to prosperity
00:25:44 because prosperity doesn’t necessarily mean,
00:25:46 sometimes it has nothing to do with maybe how
00:25:50 you conduct yourself otherwise, socially speaking, right?
00:25:56 So you can be prosperous.
00:25:58 And still when it comes to your family laws,
00:26:02 all the way you approach the other aspects of your life,
00:26:04 maybe you’re running a very communist lifestyle
00:26:08 or you’re in a very liberal society.
00:26:14 So for me, when we talk about prosperity,
00:26:16 I just want to make sure that we’re clear on that
00:26:18 because some people might say that,
00:26:19 might be somewhere and be like,
00:26:21 well, because I know what I’m gonna talk to you about next.
00:26:25 And some people are gonna sit there and be like,
00:26:26 well, China is not like that.
00:26:27 Or even Dubai is not like that.
00:26:32 No, so what I’m talking about is this thing.
00:26:34 And that’s what I love about this.
00:26:35 If we just stick to the word prosperity.
00:26:37 To me, I see prosperity as this.
00:26:38 It’s like, economically speaking,
00:26:40 what are we gonna be to be a prosperous nation?
00:26:43 Meaning we are a middle to high income nation.
00:26:46 I’m not talking about what are the rights of your women
00:26:50 to vote or can people live like this?
00:26:54 Or I’m not talking about any of that.
00:26:56 Economic, fundamentally economic prosperity.
00:27:00 Because I think that distinction is very important
00:27:01 because over the years,
00:27:03 I’ve seen people push back on all types of things
00:27:05 and it occurred to me
00:27:06 that that’s what the misunderstanding was there.
00:27:08 So if we’re gonna talk about prosperity,
00:27:11 making sure that the country can make money
00:27:13 so that it can take care of its needs
00:27:15 and the needs of its citizens,
00:27:17 then what I have come to find is that at the root of that
00:27:22 is gonna be what we call economic freedom
00:27:25 and what I call the toolkit of the entrepreneur.
00:27:28 In that you can put the rule of law,
00:27:30 you can put the concept of clear
00:27:32 and transferable property rights.
00:27:34 Economic freedom is at all the levels
00:27:37 that which will allow entrepreneurs
00:27:42 and business people to create value
00:27:46 and create value entrepreneurially.
00:27:48 We’re not talking about rent seeking or anything like that.
00:27:51 It’s like you found a pie to be this big
00:27:53 and you make it this big.
00:27:55 So that’s what we’re talking about.
00:27:56 Create value.
00:27:57 Create value, yes.
00:28:00 So when it comes to that,
00:28:02 we have found that whether you’re looking at two countries
00:28:07 that start out the same,
00:28:08 we’re talking the same people,
00:28:10 East Germany, West Germany,
00:28:12 South Korea, North Korea,
00:28:15 very similar people to start with, right?
00:28:18 But yet radical outcomes.
00:28:23 I know that today Germany is united,
00:28:26 but we’re talking about back in the days
00:28:27 when you had East and Western block.
00:28:30 Same people, very different outcomes.
00:28:32 Like I said, South Korea, North Korea,
00:28:35 and so on and so forth.
00:28:36 And at the same time, very different nations.
00:28:40 Dubai compared to Singapore or to England,
00:28:45 very different yet the same outcome.
00:28:48 So it seems to me like whenever we’re looking at prosperity,
00:28:51 if a nation is prosperous,
00:28:53 regardless of whatever other shenanigan
00:28:57 they might be running,
00:28:58 whatever other operating software
00:29:01 they might be running for anything
00:29:03 that’s not related to business,
00:29:05 if on the business side,
00:29:08 they are proponents of a free markets
00:29:11 or at least a base level of free markets,
00:29:16 we know that such countries will create prosperity.
00:29:19 So what are the aspects of the operating systems
00:29:21 that lead to Singapore and to South Korea
00:29:25 and all that kind of stuff?
00:29:26 So can you speak to different elements
00:29:28 that enable the toolkit for entrepreneurs?
00:29:30 Sure, sure.
00:29:31 And maybe here,
00:29:34 let me just maybe illustrate it with my own story
00:29:36 and then I can take you back to…
00:29:38 Yeah, what’s your…
00:29:39 Oh my God, tell us your story.
00:29:42 No, no.
00:29:43 Who are you?
00:29:44 It’s just because it started with me coming here.
00:29:45 You showed me the robot and everything
00:29:46 and now it looks like we know each other for too long.
00:29:49 And then you’re like, tell people.
00:29:50 No, no, no.
00:29:51 But so this is where this question,
00:29:54 even when you asked me,
00:29:55 how do some countries become prosperous?
00:30:00 That question, Lex, I had it when I was seven or so.
00:30:05 That’s when my family moved me to South Korea
00:30:09 to from Senegal for the first time of my life,
00:30:12 I left my country, I left my continent
00:30:14 and I was headed to Europe to go join my people,
00:30:17 my family, my parents who were there as economic migrants.
00:30:21 My parents had migrated for a better life
00:30:24 as so many people have to,
00:30:27 so many people have to coming from poorer places,
00:30:29 coming from low income countries.
00:30:31 You saw the difference?
00:30:32 Yes.
00:30:33 Between the two places.
00:30:35 How else would you call it?
00:30:37 Here you are in Senegal,
00:30:38 minding your own business,
00:30:40 causing tons of trouble everywhere,
00:30:42 just being a happy free wrench kid that I was.
00:30:45 Yeah, so you were always a troublemaker, not just now.
00:30:48 Okay, great.
00:30:49 Life wouldn’t be fun without it.
00:30:50 Yeah, of course, I agree.
00:30:51 Right?
00:30:52 So, because even you,
00:30:53 and you’re all put together front,
00:30:55 I know there’s a lot of troublemaking behind you.
00:30:57 Desperately trying to keep it together.
00:30:59 I know you are, but with me,
00:31:01 I’m gonna totally bring it out.
00:31:02 So just, yeah.
00:31:03 So.
00:31:04 So you saw the difference.
00:31:05 Right, I saw the difference.
00:31:06 I’m walking in here, back home,
00:31:09 and I tell people this story
00:31:10 because to me it’s a defining story.
00:31:13 Back home, to take a shower, it takes time.
00:31:18 Grandma has to make the charcoal catch
00:31:21 on a little stove like you use when you go camping.
00:31:25 And then she puts a pot of water on it, it boils.
00:31:28 She takes it, puts it in a bigger bucket,
00:31:30 mixes it with some colder water.
00:31:32 Then we put a little pot in it,
00:31:34 and a stronger member of the family
00:31:36 has to drag it to the shower.
00:31:37 And then there, finally, I can proceed to take my shower.
00:31:42 Here I’m in Germany in the middle of the winter,
00:31:43 and my mom’s like,
00:31:44 my god, time for your shower.
00:31:45 I’m like, I’m not getting naked.
00:31:47 Where is the bottle?
00:31:48 Where is the bucket of hot water?
00:31:51 She’s like, oh, you silly, come on, just jump in.
00:31:53 And I jump in the shower, turn the buttons,
00:31:55 the water is coming down temperature.
00:31:56 I’m like playing with.
00:31:58 It’s like, are you kidding me?
00:32:00 So amazing.
00:32:01 I’ve been cheated out of life my whole life.
00:32:03 So that’s what happened.
00:32:05 And then I’m like, oh, and all of these roads,
00:32:08 they’re paved roads.
00:32:09 And like back home, everything is like sandy,
00:32:11 and my feet are always ash.
00:32:13 I always have to wash off when I go back home,
00:32:16 and your shoes get ruined most of the time.
00:32:20 And it started, and I had this question,
00:32:22 and it was just like, wow, how come they have this?
00:32:25 And we don’t.
00:32:26 So I was not being like, oh, you know,
00:32:28 how come they have all of this money?
00:32:30 I was not, it was just like, how come?
00:32:32 And I think what I was alluding to was,
00:32:34 how come life is so easy here, and back home it’s not?
00:32:39 And easy, not in a negative sense, in a beautiful sense.
00:32:43 Sometimes I get, you know, just having traveled
00:32:46 through the war zone, just to come back,
00:32:48 traveling through Europe, back to America,
00:32:50 it just, I’ll just get emotional just looking
00:32:53 at the efficiency of things, like how easy it is,
00:32:56 how we can, first of all, in Ukraine,
00:33:00 you currently can’t fly, right?
00:33:02 It’s a war zone.
00:33:03 Just even the transportation, you said roads.
00:33:06 Yeah, the quality of roads in the United States is amazing.
00:33:09 Just not, you know, many of the places
00:33:11 that drive in Ukraine, you’re talking about,
00:33:14 I mean, really bad conditions of roads.
00:33:19 And I’m sure in many parts of Africa
00:33:21 and many parts of the world, the roads are even worse.
00:33:23 Right, right.
00:33:24 And outdoor, you know, having an indoor toilet
00:33:28 is a fascinatingly awesome luxury to have.
00:33:32 It is, it is.
00:33:33 And don’t take me wrong, Lex.
00:33:35 Do we have some great roads now in many parts of Africa?
00:33:41 Yes, main arteries, great roads,
00:33:44 you’re like, whoa, this is moving.
00:33:46 Yes, we do.
00:33:48 But definitely more today than in my time growing up.
00:33:53 Do we have, you know, a country like Nigeria
00:33:58 that just birthed six unicorns last year alone?
00:34:02 Yes.
00:34:03 Do we have the African youth out there
00:34:06 being so amazing and, you know, living their lives?
00:34:10 Yes, we have all of that.
00:34:12 But it is still, unfortunately,
00:34:14 just like we’re scratching the surface.
00:34:18 And those people still are getting all of that accomplished
00:34:21 literally swimming through molasses.
00:34:23 This is some of the most gross,
00:34:27 immoral, unfair waste of human capital.
00:34:35 And so that is the, started with you as a seven year old
00:34:41 asking, wait a minute,
00:34:43 how do amazing people in Europe do this
00:34:48 and the amazing people in Africa don’t?
00:34:50 Yeah, and that’s a key word, amazing.
00:34:52 Because that’s what I realized later
00:34:55 because it was not always like that for me,
00:34:57 amazing and amazing, right?
00:34:59 I knew instinctively that of course we are amazing too.
00:35:02 But so eventually the question became how,
00:35:06 so I went from how come they have this and we don’t
00:35:09 to the country as I’m growing up and researching
00:35:11 because it stayed with me.
00:35:12 When I tell you I’m obsessed, I’m haunted.
00:35:14 I am haunted.
00:35:16 So you can laugh all you want, but it’s,
00:35:19 so the question became, the question became,
00:35:23 how come some countries like the United States,
00:35:27 Singapore are rich and some others like mine
00:35:32 and many others in Africa are poor?
00:35:35 That became the question.
00:35:37 And along the line, like along the road,
00:35:41 I continued on living my life, wondering about this question.
00:35:45 And I’ve heard all types of reasons
00:35:50 as to supposedly why that might be the case.
00:35:53 Some people with a very straight face
00:35:56 are still peddling the IQ fury, according to which,
00:36:00 come on, darling, it’s not your fault.
00:36:03 You know, your skin color goes with a gene sequence
00:36:05 that just doesn’t allow you to be as smart
00:36:07 as white people are.
00:36:09 And it’s not your fault, but just accept it.
00:36:12 That stuff is still out there.
00:36:14 It’s very real.
00:36:16 I and I have to hear it.
00:36:17 And others would say to me, oh, it’s just because,
00:36:21 you know, you guys don’t have adequate level of education.
00:36:25 And I say, you know, maybe you gotta go say that
00:36:29 to most of the street sellers you go see in Senegal.
00:36:33 You go up to any of these,
00:36:34 to many of these street sellers in Senegal,
00:36:37 they are wading through cars and moving cars
00:36:41 under the hot sun, fumes thrown at their face,
00:36:48 trying to sell you anything that you think
00:36:51 you might be able to use.
00:36:53 Whether we’re talking about an ironing board
00:36:56 to an umbrella, to Q tips,
00:36:59 to, you know, toothpicks,
00:37:02 selling you whatever you need from your car,
00:37:04 these are street sellers.
00:37:06 And you ask them, dear, do you have any degree?
00:37:10 Yeah, I have this great degree in math
00:37:14 or in literature or whatever.
00:37:17 Some very, very educated people.
00:37:20 Yet they’re right there, this is what they’re doing.
00:37:22 So that’s just at scale wasted human potential.
00:37:28 Thank you.
00:37:29 So that has to do, the wasted human potential
00:37:32 has to do now with the system,
00:37:35 with something about the laws.
00:37:37 Which is, yeah.
00:37:38 Something about sort of the things that limit
00:37:43 or enable the entrepreneur.
00:37:45 Yes, because at that point I’ve heard this,
00:37:48 you know, I heard people say,
00:37:50 yeah, your IQ is no good.
00:37:52 Yeah, you don’t have enough degrees
00:37:54 or you’re not educated.
00:37:56 Yeah, some people would even say,
00:37:57 it’s because you guys are malnourished,
00:37:58 you’re malnourished, you need to be fed.
00:38:01 Others, oh, well, maybe I’ll give you some shoes
00:38:03 and maybe something is gonna change, whatever.
00:38:06 And then, so I heard all of this nonsense, Lex,
00:38:08 but you guess what, but guess what?
00:38:09 None of them made sense.
00:38:10 You know why it didn’t make sense?
00:38:12 Because if any of that crap was true,
00:38:14 why, oh, why is it that my parents
00:38:19 or any other people from these places,
00:38:22 and oh, and by the way,
00:38:23 some people call those places God forsaken land.
00:38:28 That’s also the type of cred you always have to hear
00:38:31 when it’s not just flat out,
00:38:33 SHIT whole countries from, you know,
00:38:36 one person a few years ago, president of this country.
00:38:40 That sentiment is sometimes there.
00:38:42 It is, it is.
00:38:44 As I go on with my life,
00:38:45 trying to find the answer to why are some countries
00:38:48 like mine poor while others are rich,
00:38:50 I’m hearing all of these reasons thrown at me.
00:38:53 And then they make no sense because then how come then
00:38:57 if my parents move as it is usually anyone else
00:39:01 who moves from a poorer nation
00:39:04 to a nation that supposedly is rich,
00:39:07 all of a sudden they get to manifest the greatest potential.
00:39:12 So I’m starting to think this has nothing to do
00:39:14 with a person per se,
00:39:16 because we’re talking about the same person,
00:39:17 same background, same name, features, everything.
00:39:20 Now I’m starting to think
00:39:22 maybe it doesn’t have to do with a person.
00:39:24 Maybe we’re talking about something that has to do
00:39:26 with a place that they came from
00:39:28 or the place that they’re going to.
00:39:30 So this little thing is starting to be in my mind.
00:39:33 Again, remember, this is not something
00:39:34 that I woke up to overnight.
00:39:36 I’m like, voila, I got my question.
00:39:38 It took me for a long time.
00:39:39 And I had to face off
00:39:42 to have many different ideologies face each other.
00:39:44 I had to really have a reckoning
00:39:46 literally in my heart and in my mind.
00:39:50 And so then that’s what I’m thinking.
00:39:53 It cannot be, no, no, no, it’s the same people.
00:39:57 It has to be about the place.
00:39:58 It has to be about the place, but then what about this place?
00:40:00 But then even about the place, you’re thinking,
00:40:05 again, two countries, different backgrounds, same outcome,
00:40:07 same background, different outcome.
00:40:10 What is this?
00:40:11 And then I go on.
00:40:13 I start, I am in Silicon Valley
00:40:17 in the late 90s, early 2000s,
00:40:21 that come boom, all of that.
00:40:23 And I’m starting to discover this concept
00:40:26 of this thing called entrepreneurship.
00:40:28 You know, I’m in Silicon Valley
00:40:30 and just getting to experience what seems so cliche by now,
00:40:34 but you know, people getting together
00:40:37 in the back of a napkin, talking about an idea,
00:40:39 putting it out, and then they go out
00:40:40 and they talk to some of these investors
00:40:43 who’s gonna invest in it.
00:40:44 Then they have the lawyers
00:40:45 who get to put all of this stuff together.
00:40:47 And then they have the big four CPA firms,
00:40:49 this whole ecosystem of what they call entrepreneurship.
00:40:52 And then eventually this concept of entrepreneurship
00:40:54 being this idea of creating something out of nothing.
00:40:59 So there I am.
00:41:00 And at some point I become an entrepreneur myself.
00:41:03 And the way I became an entrepreneur was not like,
00:41:04 I woke up and I’m like,
00:41:06 I wanna make money, so I’m gonna become an entrepreneur.
00:41:09 No, and this is also another problem I have with people
00:41:12 who have a problem with entrepreneurs or business people.
00:41:15 Most entrepreneurs do not start a business to become rich.
00:41:19 Most entrepreneurs start a business
00:41:22 because they have found, identified a problem
00:41:25 that bothered them enough,
00:41:26 that they said, enough is enough.
00:41:28 I’m gonna do something about it.
00:41:30 What entrepreneurs are are people who criticize by creating.
00:41:34 Do they always get it right?
00:41:35 No, as a matter of fact,
00:41:37 the failure in entrepreneurship is humongous.
00:41:40 It’s kamikaze path to take the entrepreneurship path.
00:41:45 We lose our spouses.
00:41:46 My first husband passed away
00:41:48 as soon as I was about to sign my first term sheet.
00:41:51 And yet I had to keep going.
00:41:54 What force can keep you going
00:41:57 after you just lost the love of your life?
00:41:59 What force keeps you going?
00:42:01 The force of, oh, I just wanna be rich, really?
00:42:04 When your whole world is upside down,
00:42:08 your whole world is upside down and you just want to quit.
00:42:12 You just want to go meet him and join him in death.
00:42:16 I stayed, why?
00:42:17 Because of the same reason why I started my company.
00:42:20 I stayed because of the women
00:42:22 whom I had put back to work by then.
00:42:25 We’re talking about some of the most vulnerable women
00:42:27 in my country.
00:42:28 These are women who grow the hibiscus,
00:42:31 which we need to make the bisap,
00:42:33 which is the juice of taranga, remember?
00:42:35 This is our national identity drink.
00:42:37 And for the longest time, women grow this hibiscus
00:42:40 that we use for the national drink, for this drink.
00:42:43 And now that Coca Cola, Pepsi, and all that
00:42:45 had made it through the marketing
00:42:46 that it is more cool to drink those beverages,
00:42:49 now there is no more market for the hibiscus.
00:42:52 And with that goes the livelihoods of these women.
00:42:56 And for me, that bothered me enough
00:42:58 because in that force, I saw two things.
00:43:00 One was a part of my culture.
00:43:03 We’re talking about, I mean,
00:43:06 part of my cultural identity, for Christ’s sake,
00:43:10 the juice of taranga.
00:43:11 You asked me, what defines you?
00:43:12 I said, taranga, there’s a juice for it.
00:43:14 So my culture is disappearing.
00:43:16 And at the same time, these women
00:43:20 are sliding into abject poverty
00:43:22 because what they used to make no one needs anymore.
00:43:25 So that is what got me to start a company.
00:43:31 And the company was created just because of that.
00:43:34 I wanted to build a company that would allow me
00:43:38 to not only preserve this very important aspect
00:43:42 of my cultural identity,
00:43:44 and at the same time, put these women back to work.
00:43:48 And maybe it’s more difficult to put into words,
00:43:51 but there’s a kind of, it’s a basic human spirit
00:43:55 where you see the place where you came from
00:44:00 breaking apart in some kind of way,
00:44:03 and you have the entrepreneurial fire
00:44:06 that dreams of helping.
00:44:08 Yes.
00:44:09 And that, sometimes it’s hard to convert that into words.
00:44:13 You have to tell nice stories and so on,
00:44:15 but it’s the basic human desire to help.
00:44:17 Yes.
00:44:18 And like I said, criticized by creating.
00:44:21 Especially when you’ve been,
00:44:22 especially when, and let’s face it,
00:44:26 do we all, are we all a bundle of circumstances,
00:44:29 some happy, some worse?
00:44:31 Yes, we are.
00:44:32 And oftentimes I ask myself, my God, why you?
00:44:37 Why did you get to have the opportunities that you have?
00:44:42 What makes you different from, let’s say,
00:44:44 even your cousin that couldn’t, that is still home, trapped?
00:44:49 Because we call ourselves trapped citizens.
00:44:51 When you’re trapped in these countries that go nowhere,
00:44:54 we’re like a bunch of trapped citizens.
00:44:57 So you see, Lex, when my husband passed away
00:45:02 and I wanted nothing more to do than to quit
00:45:04 and to send, investors had already said,
00:45:07 we understand if you want to stop.
00:45:09 Whatever you decide to do, we’ll do that.
00:45:11 And I wanted to quit and I was actually on my way.
00:45:15 I was in Senegal for a month,
00:45:17 trying to really get a bearing over myself.
00:45:20 And by the end of the month, I had decided I’m letting go.
00:45:25 There’s no way.
00:45:26 The pain was too great, nothing made sense anymore.
00:45:30 It was too much.
00:45:31 So I went to see this woman and I talked to the one who,
00:45:36 you know, we’re talking back then,
00:45:39 there were 400 of them, later on we grew to 9,000.
00:45:43 And I told the representative of all of them,
00:45:47 and I told her, this is very, this is her old lady.
00:45:51 And just looking at her,
00:45:53 I knew I was going through some pain,
00:45:54 but this woman has probably gone through 10 times,
00:45:57 not that pain is, you know, like measurable,
00:46:00 but you could tell this woman probably lost a child
00:46:02 as oftentimes happen in places, you know,
00:46:05 that are lower income countries.
00:46:07 Probably lost a husband also, probably who knows,
00:46:11 so many people, loss is part of our lives.
00:46:13 You can see the pain.
00:46:14 You can see the pain, yet she’s so, so dignified.
00:46:18 She’s so dignified.
00:46:19 And that already kind of made me like,
00:46:22 my God, stop crying.
00:46:23 But, and I told her that I was quitting.
00:46:28 I could not look her in the eyes.
00:46:29 And she said, look at me.
00:46:33 I could not look her in the eyes.
00:46:34 She said, look at me, child.
00:46:36 And I looked at her and she said,
00:46:41 you know, I know you’re in pain,
00:46:44 but where your husband is, where your beloved is,
00:46:48 is absolutely nothing that you can do for him.
00:46:51 But for us, you can change everything.
00:46:54 And I went back.
00:46:55 So that’s what entrepreneurs are at their best.
00:47:01 Did she help you find your strength?
00:47:03 Yes, and I was weak still,
00:47:08 but I said, you put that aside.
00:47:11 There’s a job to do here.
00:47:13 And I went back and I fought with everything that I had.
00:47:16 And this company that I started in my kitchen
00:47:20 became this company that had the who’s who
00:47:22 of the beverage world,
00:47:24 with at some point, Roger Enrico, the chairman of PepsiCo
00:47:27 sitting on my board.
00:47:30 And yeah, I went back because of that.
00:47:34 So the reason why I tell this story for me is important
00:47:37 because the world needs to understand
00:47:43 that there is a viable way of caring
00:47:50 and of being part of a solution
00:47:54 for the lesser fortunate
00:47:57 in terms of not keeping them where they are
00:48:00 and we’re like the saviors coming
00:48:02 and giving them food and all that.
00:48:03 No, no, no, no, no.
00:48:05 But it’s just like the leg up I got in my life.
00:48:07 Give somebody else a leg up.
00:48:10 What are the things you’re fighting against in Africa
00:48:14 when you try to build a business like that?
00:48:17 So then we’re building this company.
00:48:20 And back then, this was in 2004
00:48:24 that was when I built my first company.
00:48:28 We had to have two sister companies, one there, one here.
00:48:32 So the one in Africa was about the whole supply chain.
00:48:36 And the one in America was research and development,
00:48:42 sales and marketing, all of that good stuff.
00:48:45 And then at some point I look around,
00:48:48 I’m like, wait a second.
00:48:50 Here, back in the days before we had the,
00:48:52 they would talk, they would say, oh, we have this one stop shop
00:48:55 for business registration.
00:48:56 But the truth is very quickly
00:49:00 you can set up an LLC in the US.
00:49:01 We’re talking about less than, even then less than,
00:49:05 today it’s super fast, 20 minutes online, done.
00:49:07 Back then it was less than few hours to get it done,
00:49:13 cost you almost nothing.
00:49:14 We’re talking about a few hundred dollars,
00:49:16 three, two to 350 depending which state you are.
00:49:19 So LLC, starting a basic company takes almost no time.
00:49:23 No time, no time, no money, almost.
00:49:25 You don’t have to know a guy that knows a guy
00:49:29 that slipped some money to the politician and so on.
00:49:33 No, none of that stuff, none of that stuff.
00:49:35 And so at the same time, also things like,
00:49:39 and this I can take you even to today’s day.
00:49:42 Okay, Lex, I don’t know if you have employees
00:49:44 on payroll or anything like that,
00:49:46 but do you have to go every month
00:49:50 or anybody listening to us right now,
00:49:52 do they have to go every single month
00:49:56 to three different type of agencies,
00:50:02 like governmental agencies to do one step?
00:50:07 This one is basically you’re gonna go
00:50:10 and give them your retirement money,
00:50:14 like the pension part of the salary
00:50:16 that you took out from your employee.
00:50:18 You have to go to this agency
00:50:20 and put that application through.
00:50:22 So you leave that money behind,
00:50:23 then you go to another agency.
00:50:25 This one is for the health, care, whatever.
00:50:28 You have three of those places
00:50:30 where you have to literally go to in person,
00:50:33 three times, three places every single month
00:50:37 to drop off these paperwork.
00:50:41 Do you have to do that anywhere in the US?
00:50:42 I mean, do we have that situation
00:50:45 anywhere that you know of right now?
00:50:47 No, no.
00:50:48 And do you think that’s a business friendly
00:50:50 or do you think it’s cumbersome in business?
00:50:52 And that’s not just cumbersome sort of physically,
00:50:55 it’s cumbersome psychologically,
00:50:57 that there’s a feeling like the system around you,
00:51:01 yeah, there’s a feeling like you’re trapped.
00:51:03 It’s a feeling like the system doesn’t want you to succeed
00:51:07 versus a system that does want you to succeed.
00:51:09 Exactly.
00:51:10 You’re in a country like we’re in Texas.
00:51:13 If you make less than a million bucks in revenues a year,
00:51:18 all you do, five minutes it takes you,
00:51:19 you’re filing your franchise tax, that’s it.
00:51:27 It’s below that number, tell them what it is,
00:51:29 then you have nothing to give them
00:51:30 or anything like that, you move on.
00:51:33 Us, even if I make this much,
00:51:38 there is a minimum tax that you have to pay,
00:51:40 which is $1,000 in Senegal right now.
00:51:42 For the listener, my guy was holding up a zero.
00:51:47 You make no money.
00:51:49 You still have to pay.
00:51:49 You still have to pay.
00:51:52 And then, oh, let me walk you through what happened to me
00:51:55 when we had to try to get the electricity hooked up
00:51:59 on our first office.
00:52:00 So we go, they say, oh, first you have to apply,
00:52:03 you know, like you normally you have to apply.
00:52:05 Then we apply, we pay the money.
00:52:08 Remember again, here you have to also go,
00:52:10 this was like, you know, you go to the office and you pay.
00:52:13 And then we wait, and we wait, and we wait.
00:52:16 And when I say we wait, I’m not talking about
00:52:17 we waited 24 hours, we waited 48 hours.
00:52:20 A month, two months, three months, four months,
00:52:24 five months, you go, you send your assistant,
00:52:26 she goes, she comes back.
00:52:28 Well, they say we send it to wait.
00:52:30 At some point I’m like, I gotta go there.
00:52:31 So I go there and I asked to speak
00:52:34 to the head of the district for, you know,
00:52:38 and I’m just like going on and on and on and on
00:52:41 about how we’ve been delayed.
00:52:43 This is gonna be a problem.
00:52:44 We have to produce, everything is delayed.
00:52:46 And I risk losing my business.
00:52:49 We already presold some of these products to our customers.
00:52:53 I gotta, something needs to happen.
00:52:55 So at some point the gentleman looks at me,
00:52:58 he’s like, lady, look over there.
00:52:59 I look over there, I see a pile of paper this high.
00:53:03 We’re talking about maybe hundreds of applications.
00:53:07 Each one of them is a single sheet.
00:53:10 Each single sheet is an application
00:53:12 for getting the electricity.
00:53:15 And he says, do you see that?
00:53:16 I said, yeah.
00:53:17 And he said, look over there.
00:53:18 I look over there to the other side.
00:53:20 I see two meters.
00:53:22 He’s like, each of these applications needs one of those.
00:53:26 How many do you see?
00:53:27 I said, two.
00:53:28 Then I knew I was in trouble.
00:53:31 And then I said, what do I do?
00:53:33 And he said, lady, it’s not at our level.
00:53:37 And I agreed with him.
00:53:38 It was not on his level.
00:53:40 But eventually, by now you can tell
00:53:41 that I pretty much get what I need because,
00:53:44 and at that point what I did was not threaten him
00:53:46 or anything like that.
00:53:46 I didn’t even pay a bribe or anything,
00:53:47 but you could see why people pay bribes.
00:53:50 Because when you have a pile like that,
00:53:52 then the only way to advance your file,
00:53:53 and that by the way happens even at the passport office.
00:53:56 You come, you apply for your passport, which is your right.
00:54:00 They forced us to have passports.
00:54:02 It’s your right as a citizen to have a passport.
00:54:03 And even there, if you want yours
00:54:06 to keep going through the process,
00:54:07 you have to bribe somebody so it can go
00:54:09 even the pace it’s supposed to go, let alone faster.
00:54:11 So here, I’m thinking I have a problem.
00:54:15 And at that point, I did what I do.
00:54:17 I talked to him about all the things I was trying to do.
00:54:19 I explained to him why I’m here, why I’m trying to do this.
00:54:22 And even him said, lady, someone like you,
00:54:25 you have no reason to even be here.
00:54:28 You could be back in America, living your life,
00:54:30 la vida loca, you don’t have to be here.
00:54:32 So that I think gained a lot of his respect.
00:54:35 And I said, if you don’t do, if you don’t help me with this,
00:54:38 I understand I shouldn’t be of a priority
00:54:40 or anything like that, but I beg you, I beg of you.
00:54:43 I need for this to go on this week.
00:54:46 And he said, okay, that’s how I got my meter.
00:54:48 One of those two meters became mine.
00:54:50 So then he said, but we have a problem.
00:54:52 And I said, what?
00:54:53 He said, well, the truck, we need a truck to be here
00:54:57 to do it because of where you are from the poll,
00:55:00 we need long cable lines to get it all done.
00:55:05 But the truck is, I don’t know,
00:55:06 I don’t know where the truck was
00:55:07 because they had this one truck
00:55:08 for I don’t know how many customers.
00:55:10 So I go to the mayor of a town
00:55:11 with whom I’m quite friends, but you see, I know people,
00:55:15 but it shouldn’t be this way.
00:55:17 So I go to the mayor of a town and I said, mayor,
00:55:21 he happens to have the same name as me,
00:55:22 first, last name, same, but except he’s the ugly one,
00:55:25 I’m the pretty one because, you know, he’s, you know.
00:55:28 That’s so people can tell you apart, she’s the pretty one.
00:55:32 Exactly, I’m the pretty one and he’s the whatever.
00:55:34 So I got to the mayor and I’m like, mayor,
00:55:37 I need your help, you need to help me with this.
00:55:38 He’s like, now what?
00:55:40 And I explained to him and he’s like, okay,
00:55:42 you can take the truck from the city hall.
00:55:45 I’ll tell the guys that they can allow you to have it.
00:55:47 And then they come and then you guys can do this.
00:55:50 And then we arrived there.
00:55:51 Guess what?
00:55:52 I thought I was done, Lex, but I was not done.
00:55:54 Because now the electricity company, by the way,
00:55:56 whom we paid, everything was there.
00:55:59 They’ve been sitting on our money for nine months by now.
00:56:02 Well, we need a ladder long enough to, you know,
00:56:06 like one of the super, super professional ladders
00:56:08 that normally the electricity companies have.
00:56:10 Theirs was in some other village and they didn’t know
00:56:15 if it was going to be back for another three days
00:56:16 or four days.
00:56:18 I said, are you kidding me?
00:56:20 He’s like, no.
00:56:21 So I call mayor again.
00:56:23 I’m just like, mayor, do you have a ladder?
00:56:25 And I explained and he said,
00:56:26 and that’s how I got my electricity hooked up.
00:56:30 Otherwise I probably would still be waiting.
00:56:33 So Lex, you add all of these things together.
00:56:36 And also the fact that in my country, by the way,
00:56:38 the labor laws are so stringent.
00:56:41 Basically you are married to employees for good or for bad.
00:56:44 And some people say, oh no,
00:56:45 you’re not married for good or for bad,
00:56:47 except that it will just cost you a lot of time and money
00:56:50 to get rid of any of them.
00:56:52 It doesn’t matter the circumstances.
00:56:54 Do you think I really, an entrepreneur really need
00:56:56 to hear something like that?
00:56:57 You know, the head of the ILO,
00:56:58 I had an argument with him at the UN.
00:57:01 And I said to him, listen, and you listened to me very well.
00:57:04 The reason, if you want to protect employees,
00:57:10 as you claim, everything you’re doing is to protect employees.
00:57:13 A, you know better of a human being than I am
00:57:17 in terms of wanting to make sure
00:57:18 that people are treated right and fairly.
00:57:21 But last time I checked, Google, for example,
00:57:24 is not offering their employees chef cooked meals,
00:57:28 super healthy, anything they want,
00:57:31 feeding them from morning till evening,
00:57:34 having some babysitters, having childcare on site,
00:57:39 all of these perks that come on top of really cozy salaries.
00:57:44 It did not happen because you, the ILO, told them,
00:57:46 you have to do this.
00:57:47 It happened because there are enough jobs created around
00:57:51 that now you’re in an employee’s market
00:57:54 and employers have to fall all over themselves
00:57:57 to attract the best talent among us.
00:58:00 That’s how it’s done.
00:58:01 And not with your nonsense that you’re imposing me right now,
00:58:05 which the only results you’re gonna get,
00:58:07 like in my country, do you know what we have to show
00:58:09 for all of these, the fact that the Senegalese employees,
00:58:12 the most protected employee on paper in the world?
00:58:15 Well, we’re one of the 25 poorest countries in the world.
00:58:19 That’s what it got us.
00:58:23 So let’s try to just untangle this.
00:58:26 So there’s a system in place.
00:58:28 There’s a momentum with that system.
00:58:30 Like you said, ladies, it’s not my level,
00:58:33 which is for somebody who grew up in the Soviet Union,
00:58:38 at least echoes some of the same sounds I heard
00:58:42 from people I knew there.
00:58:45 It’s kind of this helpless feeling like,
00:58:48 well, this is just part of the system,
00:58:50 this gigantic bureaucracy.
00:58:52 And the corruption that happens is just like the only way
00:58:56 to get around, to get anything done.
00:58:58 And so the corruption grows.
00:59:01 Maybe could you speak to the corruption?
00:59:03 Is there, to what degree is there corruption
00:59:06 in Senegal and Africa, and how do we fix it?
00:59:13 So when you said to which degrees there is corruption,
00:59:16 I will respond to you the same I respond to people.
00:59:18 I say, yeah, we have corruption,
00:59:19 and it’s almost as bad as in Chicago, right?
00:59:23 So now what I want people to understand
00:59:27 when it comes to corruption,
00:59:28 it’s because we are misguided with corruption.
00:59:33 We think corruption is the root cause of problems.
00:59:35 When corruption is simply a symptom
00:59:38 of the deeper root problem.
00:59:42 In this case, if you make the laws so senseless,
00:59:52 meaning, let me give you an example of senseless laws.
00:59:55 Every time I have to import something in my country,
00:59:59 I have a business, we’re making lip balms in this case
01:00:02 and all those skincare products.
01:00:06 Some ingredients I’m able to find in the country
01:00:09 at the standard that I need in order to remain competitive.
01:00:13 Because for example, our products are sold
01:00:14 at Whole Foods Market.
01:00:16 You can understand it’s a pretty sophisticated
01:00:18 and really, they don’t just put anybody on the shelves.
01:00:22 But the thing is, it means that on the other end,
01:00:25 my inputs has to be right.
01:00:28 So out of those, some, we have seven ingredients,
01:00:32 seven items that need to come from abroad
01:00:36 to go into the making of this product.
01:00:38 Some packaging and some raw material.
01:00:42 But guess what, Lex, for five of them,
01:00:45 I am paying a 40% tariff
01:00:48 and for the other two, almost 70% tariff.
01:00:51 That I call senseless laws.
01:00:54 These tariffs are senseless.
01:00:57 Yeah, corruption is just a symptom.
01:00:59 They reveal that something was broken about the laws.
01:01:02 And the laws are, so taxation,
01:01:08 this kind of restricting laws,
01:01:10 like laws that slow down the entrepreneurial momentum.
01:01:14 They do, they do.
01:01:15 Because in this case, when my product comes,
01:01:19 what do people have to do?
01:01:21 Because every time, if you add 40%,
01:01:25 you’re basically on the other end.
01:01:26 So every time you add,
01:01:28 if let’s say my product normally costs a dollar
01:01:31 and with your 40%, by the time I’m done,
01:01:33 I had to pay, now it’s costing me 140.
01:01:36 By the time it arrives in my warehouse,
01:01:39 in my manufacturing facility, it’s now at 140
01:01:42 because of a tariff I left behind.
01:01:44 That 40% you added to it,
01:01:47 do you know how much it’s gonna add to my final cost
01:01:49 that once the product is finished,
01:01:51 I have to sell it to the customer?
01:01:53 I have to sell it for $1.60 more because of that 40 cents
01:01:57 extra you took from me.
01:01:58 In order for me at the end of the day
01:02:00 to have some type of profits,
01:02:02 because profits at the end of the day
01:02:05 is the blood of a business.
01:02:08 There are two people are misguided.
01:02:09 They say, oh, you dirty, greedy business people.
01:02:13 And it’s all about profit, profit, profit, profit.
01:02:17 You know, I belong to this organization called,
01:02:20 I’m a board member on the conscious capitalism.
01:02:23 It is the largest organization of purpose driven
01:02:27 businesses and entrepreneurs.
01:02:29 The type of people I told you about,
01:02:31 we’ve started our businesses because we see something
01:02:34 that needs to be taken care of in society.
01:02:36 Whole Foods Market is one of them.
01:02:38 The Container Store, you know,
01:02:40 all of these companies that are beloved in the US
01:02:43 that you can hear of.
01:02:44 We believe that the end goal of business is purpose.
01:02:49 But in order to do purpose,
01:02:52 you have to have profits to stay alive.
01:02:57 And the best way for people to think of profits
01:02:59 so that they’re not all twisted about it.
01:03:02 Lex, if I asked you, what’s your goal in the world?
01:03:07 You’re probably gonna tell me your dream.
01:03:09 You’re gonna talk to me about what you’re doing right now
01:03:11 and how you want to be uniting,
01:03:13 or you want a more harmonious world.
01:03:15 You want human flourishing.
01:03:16 That’s what you’re working towards.
01:03:18 That’s what you say to me.
01:03:20 You’re not gonna say, well, my biggest goal in the world
01:03:23 is to produce as many red blood cells as I can.
01:03:25 Except you need to produce those, otherwise no Lex.
01:03:28 And if no Lex, no one working.
01:03:31 Yeah.
01:03:32 You know what I mean?
01:03:33 Yeah.
01:03:34 So that’s how people need to stop
01:03:35 with this whole profit, non profit.
01:03:37 Do we have some psychopaths among us?
01:03:40 Yeah, one person of us in this world are psychopaths
01:03:42 in every field, anywhere you look.
01:03:45 And surely you’ll find that in the entrepreneurial field.
01:03:48 Entrepreneurs world as well.
01:03:50 Yeah.
01:03:50 So we have one person of us who are psychopath for sure.
01:03:53 But do they define the rest of us?
01:03:55 Absolutely not.
01:03:56 And thankfully not.
01:03:57 So let’s just be clear on that.
01:03:59 So here, you know, you charge me 40% tariff,
01:04:04 which is outrageous.
01:04:05 Then you’re forcing me to sell it for $1.60 more
01:04:09 than my competitor who does not have to go
01:04:10 through that nonsense because she’s an American woman
01:04:12 who is operating in America.
01:04:14 And she doesn’t have that nonsense put on her.
01:04:16 So now I’m on this market competing against this woman
01:04:18 eye to eye.
01:04:20 So if we’re selling the same value product,
01:04:23 mine costs $1.60 more simply because of some stupid rules
01:04:27 from back home, then guess who is going to stay in business
01:04:29 and who doesn’t?
01:04:31 See, they want to talk about equality.
01:04:33 That’s the type of equality I want to see.
01:04:35 The playing field has to be leveled.
01:04:39 Told you English is my fourth language.
01:04:41 It was two people talking between us.
01:04:44 Maybe we’ll have this English thing figured out.
01:04:46 We’ll have it figured out.
01:04:48 So the idea of capitalism,
01:04:50 the idea of conscious capitalism is the thing
01:04:53 that in large part enables this level playing field.
01:04:57 That’s what we want.
01:04:58 So what you’re trying to say, so here,
01:05:01 so when I talked about census laws, that’s an example.
01:05:03 So when you make the tariff so high
01:05:05 that you’re going to render me, you know, noncompetitive,
01:05:10 then that’s where, for people who might make sense,
01:05:14 when the product arrives at port, they say,
01:05:17 hey, I give you this.
01:05:20 What I give you, maybe it’s 10% of the price or 5%.
01:05:23 It’s surely not 40%, but you are happy with it.
01:05:27 You’re the government official.
01:05:28 That’s what we call a bribe.
01:05:30 And me, I’m like, hey, I saved myself money.
01:05:33 And also I saved myself time.
01:05:36 But you see, if the laws where you pay 5%
01:05:40 or even the 10% that I just left behind or nothing,
01:05:43 you come, you pay it, you move on.
01:05:45 Because who has a business of fooling around
01:05:46 and staying behind?
01:05:47 And no, you do that when it’s actually makes sense to do that.
01:05:51 So I’m not sitting here telling people
01:05:52 I engage in unlawful practices in my case,
01:05:55 because I’m around saying the things I’m saying right now.
01:05:58 So I’m a target.
01:06:00 You have to do things cleanly.
01:06:01 And I believe in doing things that way.
01:06:03 So what I had to do was go to the ask again mayor.
01:06:07 We have a problem.
01:06:08 Mayors, whenever he sees me, he’s like, now what?
01:06:10 So I’m like, we’ve got a problem.
01:06:13 You’re best friends now.
01:06:15 So I say, now it’s the customs.
01:06:18 And he’s like, what do you want me to do?
01:06:20 I said, do you know anybody at customs?
01:06:21 I need to hire up at customs,
01:06:23 because I got to explain to them what’s going on here.
01:06:25 They all know, of course,
01:06:27 but I think they’re not always maybe understanding
01:06:29 or maybe they understand.
01:06:30 And in this case, he understood.
01:06:33 So we went and he’s like, yeah, I know this is not,
01:06:37 this is not very, yeah, this.
01:06:39 And I said, what do we do now?
01:06:41 And I saw him going through binders and binders
01:06:44 in his office, because he’s going to try to go and look
01:06:47 where in the law can we find something
01:06:51 that can help me escape these rules.
01:06:55 And you know, the best he found Lex was,
01:06:58 oh, well here, see this one.
01:07:00 If you’ve been in business for two years,
01:07:03 then we can allow you, there’s a special term for it.
01:07:06 It’s French, it’s technical.
01:07:08 We can allow you to bring your raw material,
01:07:11 but you have to tell us exactly how much you’re bringing.
01:07:15 And it has to match your formulation because, you know,
01:07:17 they don’t want you to bring in more that we need
01:07:19 and maybe sell some of that to the rest of the market
01:07:21 and they didn’t make their money on it.
01:07:24 So there, it means I have to give them my recipe.
01:07:27 Imagine Coca Cola being asked to give their secret sauce
01:07:31 to government officials in a country
01:07:34 that you can’t even know what might happen,
01:07:36 let alone even in business, you don’t do that.
01:07:37 I mean, trade secrets are trade secrets,
01:07:40 but here you’re asked to be putting it in front
01:07:42 of some people you don’t know
01:07:43 where it’s going to go after that.
01:07:44 Because there they get to see, okay,
01:07:46 her recipe calls for X amount of Candelilla Wax,
01:07:52 X amount of coconut oil.
01:07:56 Okay, and on top of that,
01:07:57 we have to think about how much foliage might there be or not
01:08:00 because again, we don’t want her to buffer it over there.
01:08:03 So you have to get naked in front of them
01:08:05 in terms of your recipe,
01:08:06 which might end up only God knows where tomorrow,
01:08:08 maybe competition or maybe even them,
01:08:11 they start a business and they compete with you
01:08:12 because we’ve seen that.
01:08:13 So you have to do that.
01:08:15 And then each time fill out a paperwork,
01:08:18 get the approval, then it can come in.
01:08:19 So when it can come in, you don’t have to pay the tax.
01:08:21 Oh, and by the way, you have one year,
01:08:24 one year to make this product and get it out.
01:08:26 And all of it needs to be back out
01:08:28 because if any of it stays here,
01:08:30 you’re going to pay the taxes that we held up.
01:08:33 So you’re basically forced by these census laws
01:08:38 to be dishonest if you want to succeed.
01:08:41 All of this is so cumbersome
01:08:43 because it means more paperwork, paperwork everywhere,
01:08:47 maybe having to disclose your things.
01:08:48 So me, in my case, what I did is this person said,
01:08:53 okay, we’re going to see how we can work with you.
01:08:56 But for the first two years,
01:08:58 we were more or less in the gray area.
01:09:00 Yeah, so even gray area is good.
01:09:04 Yeah, but what does it mean?
01:09:05 In a situation like that,
01:09:07 whenever they want to mess with you,
01:09:09 it means they can come and they will look
01:09:11 and they will find something.
01:09:13 So it means that every day I’m trying to do business,
01:09:15 I’m running the risk of being harassed
01:09:17 and or maybe even put in jail, depending on what it is.
01:09:21 I mean, you’re an incredible person
01:09:24 because it seems like there’s two ways to change this.
01:09:28 One is to become president or gain power in the country
01:09:34 and to try to change the laws,
01:09:37 which seems really difficult to do.
01:09:39 And the other way is fight through the laws
01:09:43 and create the business anyway,
01:09:45 build the business community and through that method,
01:09:47 create a huge amount of pressure to change the laws.
01:09:50 You’re totally getting it with your last part
01:09:53 because this is the other thing.
01:09:55 And this is where I get so upset sometimes
01:09:58 with my fellow Africans
01:10:00 because they get so disgusted by what they’re seeing, right?
01:10:04 And they think the answer is to go for politics.
01:10:08 Let’s go be president.
01:10:09 Let’s go be this.
01:10:10 Let’s go be that.
01:10:11 And we’re gonna change everything.
01:10:12 I see that in the US too.
01:10:13 People thinking that presidents have all this power.
01:10:15 Do you know who has the least power in government?
01:10:17 The president.
01:10:18 I mean, people don’t get that.
01:10:20 Your best bet, if you insist on going into politics,
01:10:23 stick to the local level.
01:10:25 That’s where all the skeletons are buried and hidden.
01:10:28 And that’s where you can make the most impact, local level.
01:10:31 I know it’s not shiny.
01:10:32 I know it’s not exciting, but that’s where it’s at.
01:10:34 So if you must go into politics, but there’s another way.
01:10:37 So in my case, what I do is two things.
01:10:40 I preach and I practice.
01:10:41 I preach, when I’m here talking to you about this,
01:10:44 I’m preaching.
01:10:45 I am sharing with people that is which I found.
01:10:48 And by the way, the answer was there.
01:10:51 I was doing these two businesses,
01:10:52 realizing the difference in treatment
01:10:54 of the doing business environment
01:10:58 of the US compared to the doing business environment
01:11:00 of Senegal.
01:11:02 And at first I was like, of course, us,
01:11:04 everything is messed up.
01:11:05 It’s because we’re a poor country.
01:11:07 But when I started to put two and two together,
01:11:09 I’m like, you’re poor because you have no money,
01:11:12 at least not enough money to take care of your basic needs.
01:11:14 You have no money because you have no source of income.
01:11:17 Where does a source of income come from for most of us?
01:11:21 It comes from a job, doesn’t it?
01:11:23 And then some people, sometimes at my UC Berkeley class,
01:11:26 they say, oh no, it comes from government too.
01:11:29 I’m like, I would like to think that even if you work
01:11:30 for government, you’re going to be paid something, right?
01:11:32 And they’re like, yeah.
01:11:33 And then even before I can say something, they’re like,
01:11:35 yeah, because that money we use to pay our public officials
01:11:39 comes from taxes, you know, employers, employees,
01:11:43 we go back to the private sector for most of it,
01:11:45 from where this whole thing is created.
01:11:47 So it’s clear, you’re poor because you have no money,
01:11:52 no money because no source of income,
01:11:53 source of income for most of us is a job.
01:11:55 We’re talking about, so where do jobs come from?
01:11:57 The private sector, primarily small
01:12:00 and medium sized enterprises.
01:12:01 Then don’t you think that we should make it easy,
01:12:06 that we should have a friendly doing business environment.
01:12:12 And also a lot of it comes not just from the small
01:12:17 and medium sized businesses, but I think a lot
01:12:21 of the values created from new ones being launched, right?
01:12:26 It’s not just like me, like saving somehow
01:12:29 through regulation, the ones that are already there.
01:12:32 It’s like letting the market,
01:12:35 letting the new better ideas flourish.
01:12:38 It’s about what I mean by doing business environment
01:12:42 is all the things that you and I talked about earlier.
01:12:45 Even the access of electricity is part
01:12:47 of a doing business, but doing business.
01:12:49 So basically when I discovered all of that,
01:12:52 when I put all of those dots together,
01:12:54 then I’m like, well, I guess the business,
01:12:56 and it makes sense, Lex.
01:12:58 If you want to grow tomatoes,
01:12:59 you’re gonna have to have two things.
01:13:01 One is a good seed, right, that has good attributes.
01:13:05 And then you’re gonna have to have a good environment
01:13:09 for it.
01:13:10 Is the soil the right one?
01:13:12 What’s your pH level?
01:13:14 All of those good nutrients that you’re gonna put in it.
01:13:16 Is it in a place that has tons of sun?
01:13:18 How much sun exposure or not?
01:13:19 The climate in general, is it gonna be cold?
01:13:21 Not, not.
01:13:22 You can have some beautiful tomatoes
01:13:25 in the middle of Siberia, last time I checked.
01:13:27 So same thing here.
01:13:28 You know, Mohammed Yunus, the Nobel Laureate for Peace,
01:13:33 said, poor people are bonsai people.
01:13:38 They’re the same people.
01:13:40 If you put them in the normal, natural, friendly habitat
01:13:44 where they can thrive, they become the tallest tree
01:13:48 in the forest.
01:13:49 Poor people are bonsai people.
01:13:51 So you see that tiny pot you put around the bonsai tree?
01:13:55 That’s the tiny pot that’s created
01:13:57 by giving me such a hostile business environment
01:14:02 that basically we’re put together by the set of laws
01:14:05 that you have put, that basically I have to jump through
01:14:08 as a business person, practicing business in my country.
01:14:12 If you turn that environment into a friendly environment
01:14:18 where I am not married to my employees,
01:14:20 I have flexibility of the labor laws
01:14:24 are simple, straightforward, clean,
01:14:26 where the tax code is very simple.
01:14:29 It’s not worth truckloads of laws like in my country.
01:14:32 It’s so complicated.
01:14:33 You have to hire a CPA, which costs more money.
01:14:36 And even them tell them, girl, we’re gonna make some mistakes.
01:14:38 They don’t talk to me like that.
01:14:39 They don’t tell me, girl, they shouldn’t, they better not.
01:14:43 But they say, whatever they say.
01:14:45 They say.
01:14:46 I’m scared.
01:14:47 You know.
01:14:47 You know, they’re like, we’re gonna,
01:14:51 but bottom line is we’re gonna make mistakes.
01:14:53 This thing is so complicated, we’re gonna make mistakes.
01:14:55 So, which means my ass is on the line.
01:14:57 So anyway, so if the tax code was so simple,
01:15:02 straightforward, like it is maybe in Texas,
01:15:04 where up till a threshold, you owe me nothing,
01:15:07 go online, five minutes, fill out your taxes,
01:15:10 you’re compliant, keep building your business
01:15:13 because that’s what we need from you.
01:15:15 If you made it so easy and straightforward,
01:15:19 then you know what?
01:15:20 That’s when you get all of these people,
01:15:22 Lex, that you’re talking about saying, you know what?
01:15:25 My name is Aminata,
01:15:28 and I live in the middle of nowhere, Senegal.
01:15:30 But you know what?
01:15:31 I’ve got this great idea for this really hot,
01:15:33 nice hot sauce that I know the Americans are gonna love.
01:15:35 I’m hearing that hot sauce is a big thing.
01:15:38 Let me bring it to them.
01:15:39 But everything is there for you to jump
01:15:41 into the ring of entrepreneurship.
01:15:44 You don’t have to know someone like my God.
01:15:47 You don’t have to even have the ability
01:15:50 to sell yourself maybe like I can sometimes.
01:15:53 You are someone with a great idea.
01:15:57 You’re willing to work hard for it
01:15:59 and pour everything you got into it.
01:16:00 Guess what?
01:16:03 It’s there.
01:16:04 You can get into the race.
01:16:05 You can be a dreamer,
01:16:07 and you can be a dreamer in a rural little village.
01:16:09 And then that has ripple effects
01:16:11 throughout the entire country.
01:16:12 Young kids growing up, you know,
01:16:14 I wanna be the next X, whatever.
01:16:16 And it doesn’t have to be the next Steve Jobs.
01:16:19 That seems really far, far away.
01:16:21 It’s at all levels.
01:16:23 You create local heroes because representation matters.
01:16:29 Right?
01:16:30 So, and we are so badly in need of that.
01:16:33 And so that’s what all the things
01:16:36 that have been stolen from us
01:16:37 as long as things remain the same.
01:16:39 So Lex, once I found out that basically at the end of the day
01:16:42 the answer is economic freedom.
01:16:45 And that when it comes to that,
01:16:46 the indexes, economic indexes that measure that,
01:16:48 whether it’s the doing business index ranking
01:16:50 of the World Bank,
01:16:51 or the Fraser Economic Freedom Index
01:16:54 of the Heritage Foundation.
01:16:56 When you look at all of those indexes and others,
01:16:58 what do they have in common?
01:17:00 One after another they show you
01:17:02 that it is harder to do business
01:17:04 in almost anywhere in Sub Saharan Africa
01:17:06 than it is per se anywhere in Scandinavia.
01:17:10 So it is telling you that Scandinavian nations,
01:17:13 that socialist Americans tend to love so much
01:17:16 and take as an example,
01:17:17 although there too they’re showing you
01:17:18 that they don’t understand
01:17:19 what’s going on really in Scandinavia,
01:17:21 that Scandinavia is more capitalist.
01:17:25 Scandinavian nations are more capitalist
01:17:27 than almost any Sub Saharan African nations.
01:17:30 Ultimately, the political systems
01:17:32 actually don’t even matter nearly as much
01:17:35 as the private sector being able
01:17:39 to operate the machinery of capitalism.
01:17:42 There you go, there you go, there you go.
01:17:45 And it’s almost like, like I said,
01:17:47 it’s almost like its own little widget within it.
01:17:49 You can have whatever type of society
01:17:51 you want to practice,
01:17:52 you want to exercise at whatever level you want to.
01:17:55 But if you’re serious about becoming a capitalist,
01:17:59 becoming a middle to high income nation,
01:18:03 there is no other pathway that we know of at this point.
01:18:07 And you know what made me super excited about that
01:18:11 beyond having finally found my answer.
01:18:16 I have to tell you when I found that answer,
01:18:18 I literally fell to my knees.
01:18:21 It was the type of feeling that,
01:18:24 you know, if something is not well with you,
01:18:28 whether it’s physical or mental,
01:18:30 something is not well, you’re not well.
01:18:32 And you go around and you go to the so called specialists,
01:18:35 some of them, you know,
01:18:37 but you’re going around for years,
01:18:39 going around trying to get help for your ailment.
01:18:42 And here they don’t know.
01:18:45 Here they tell you things that you can’t tell why,
01:18:48 but you just know it’s not true.
01:18:50 They’re this, they’re that.
01:18:51 And it’s going on for years after year after year.
01:18:54 And finally you meet this one person
01:18:56 and boom, it’s there.
01:19:01 Not only the liberation,
01:19:05 but also this whole new world that comes with it.
01:19:07 You know, I’m still ill, but guess what?
01:19:13 There’s a path forward.
01:19:14 We know that.
01:19:16 I’m going to have a lot of work to do, but there’s hope.
01:19:20 Yeah, and you’re the beacon of hope actually,
01:19:23 for a lot of people in that part of the world.
01:19:25 And those beacons are actually really necessary.
01:19:28 So not only is there hope, but you can become,
01:19:32 I mean, the beacon for your people, your home,
01:19:37 this power that you see that you feel all around
01:19:40 to become, to escape the feeling of being trapped.
01:19:46 Is there a device you can give to people that,
01:19:51 to young girls and boys dreaming somewhere in Africa
01:19:56 of how to change the world?
01:19:58 That’s right.
01:19:59 And by the way, I want to say there are bigger beacons.
01:20:03 There are better beacons than me.
01:20:05 I just happen to be someone who has the chance
01:20:08 of talking to you right now.
01:20:11 And one of my goals is to open the same doors
01:20:14 that were opened for me, because together, our voice,
01:20:17 there’s such amazing stories out there.
01:20:20 And so bigger beacons, better beacons out there.
01:20:26 One thing here for me, the reason why I do
01:20:32 what I’m doing right now, and it’s almost to a point
01:20:34 of self destructing my own health.
01:20:37 I feel invested with such the mission of,
01:20:41 I have been afforded the truth.
01:20:43 So it is my moral duty to try to take it around.
01:20:45 I know I sound, people sometimes say,
01:20:48 when I listen to you, I feel like I’m talking to a priest.
01:20:51 And I’m like, because the gospel, I receive the gospel.
01:20:56 So anyway, but the thing is, Lex,
01:20:59 who tells you these things to this day?
01:21:03 When they talk about the poverty of Africa,
01:21:04 what do they talk about?
01:21:06 They sit in front telling you,
01:21:07 oh yeah, it’s because of colonialism.
01:21:08 It’s because of racism.
01:21:09 It’s because of imperialism.
01:21:11 It’s because they’re stealing raw material, blah, blah, blah.
01:21:14 Is any of those guilty to some level of where we are today?
01:21:21 Maybe part of the reason where we are today?
01:21:23 Maybe, maybe.
01:21:25 Is that the only reason or the overwhelming reasons?
01:21:29 No.
01:21:30 Is that insurmountable?
01:21:31 Absolutely not.
01:21:33 So for me, don’t stay in that place
01:21:36 that steals and robs you of your agency.
01:21:40 So I think it’s important for people to A,
01:21:43 get the right diagnosis as to why we are where we are.
01:21:45 Because what you and I just talked about,
01:21:48 the mainstream does not talk about this
01:21:50 when they even talk about Africa
01:21:52 in terms that are not the usual suspect of,
01:21:55 oh, famine is building over there.
01:21:57 War is building over here.
01:21:58 Oh, we’re having Ebola is coming.
01:22:00 All of that stuff.
01:22:01 Even when they were talking about the monkeypox,
01:22:02 which at first, in this wave,
01:22:05 it started with white people in Europe.
01:22:07 Well, even in the many newspapers you pull out,
01:22:09 it’s black people with monkeypox on their skin.
01:22:13 I’m like, wait a second.
01:22:14 This time around, it did not start with us.
01:22:17 So why are you always showing us
01:22:18 when it’s right now happening to white people?
01:22:21 So all of that is happening.
01:22:24 So for me, the thing is,
01:22:26 we, the world simply right now,
01:22:29 does not have the right diagnosis
01:22:32 as to why this continent right now,
01:22:34 despite all of its riches,
01:22:36 because Lord knows it’s got riches
01:22:37 starting it with its young population.
01:22:40 75% of the population in my country
01:22:42 is below the age of 25 years old.
01:22:44 So when we’re talking, I know we’re talking about,
01:22:47 repopulation, it’s an important,
01:22:50 we’re gonna have to go for that.
01:22:53 Maybe you’ll get me going about comments,
01:22:54 I don’t know, but anyway.
01:22:57 So here, my point is,
01:22:58 A, we need the right diagnosis
01:22:59 as to why this continent is the poorest continent
01:23:02 in the world, despite its riches
01:23:03 starting with its young people,
01:23:05 all the natural resources, diversity in land,
01:23:08 people, cultures, languages,
01:23:10 everything that make for great ingredient for awesomeness.
01:23:15 Despite all of that,
01:23:16 we are the poorest region in the world.
01:23:18 People need to know that the reason why that is,
01:23:21 it’s because we also happen to be
01:23:23 the most overregulated region in the world.
01:23:27 At the end of the day, what Africa,
01:23:30 and I dare to say Africa here,
01:23:32 and treated as one,
01:23:34 we are 54 countries, 55 depending on how you count,
01:23:37 yet we almost for a tiny minority of these countries,
01:23:43 we almost all lack one of the most crucial freedoms
01:23:48 that there are.
01:23:49 If you’re serious about prosperity building,
01:23:51 we lack economic freedom.
01:23:54 And economic freedom is the thing
01:23:55 that unlocks that human potential of the young people just.
01:23:58 Yes, for them to run,
01:24:01 to run with their ideas, to start businesses,
01:24:05 or to start initiative.
01:24:06 It doesn’t have to be for profit all the time, right?
01:24:08 But it is this thing that gets you to get up
01:24:12 and go and do something, criticize by creating.
01:24:15 Young people are naturally wired
01:24:17 to wanna criticize by creating.
01:24:19 They’re not sitting around waiting or complaining usually,
01:24:21 unless you put them in a tiny box
01:24:23 and they have no other way to go.
01:24:24 And in this situation, what they do,
01:24:26 let’s talk about precolonial Africa,
01:24:29 of four favors before slavery ever happened.
01:24:33 There were black people on the continent.
01:24:35 You see, when we talk about the story of black people
01:24:37 and Africans, black people in Africa,
01:24:40 for most of us, even me,
01:24:43 I noticed that unconsciously it starts with slavery.
01:24:46 But you’re like, no, we were there before,
01:24:49 before white men ever set foot.
01:24:50 Who were we?
01:24:51 What were we doing in our diversity?
01:24:54 What economic systems were we running on?
01:24:58 And then you realize that for most of them,
01:25:00 they were free marketeers
01:25:02 and they were very much on the free trade,
01:25:03 on the free enterprise side.
01:25:05 So even that is a reinforcement.
01:25:07 This is a place where we do not understand our history.
01:25:11 So proper diagnosis, Africa is a poorest region in the world
01:25:14 because it happens to be
01:25:16 the most overregulated region in the world,
01:25:19 lacks economic freedom.
01:25:20 Number two, what do we do about that?
01:25:22 We gotta become serious about reforms, economic reforms,
01:25:25 so that we can become beacons of free markets.
01:25:30 Just like the Asian tigers,
01:25:32 that’s what the Asian tigers did.
01:25:33 They had to become serious.
01:25:35 Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea,
01:25:38 those guys had to become serious about the free markets.
01:25:43 Lee Kuan Woo, he’s just like, we gotta do something.
01:25:48 And he looked around and he realized at some point,
01:25:51 we gotta make these reforms.
01:25:53 And he went onto that journey of reforms,
01:25:56 making his country one of the most free market countries
01:25:59 in the world, and voila, the magic happened.
01:26:02 Back in the 30s, the stock market crash
01:26:05 and the Great Depression and everything,
01:26:08 the world and with all the lies that were told
01:26:11 to the world coming from the Soviet Union, Stalin,
01:26:15 while they were starving and dying over there,
01:26:17 but oh no, I mean, Durante was telling the world that,
01:26:20 oh no, no, everything is going well,
01:26:22 nobody’s dying when we know now
01:26:24 and getting political prices based on this stuff.
01:26:26 But then the world went on believing that,
01:26:29 oh no, capitalism failed.
01:26:31 This crash that you had in the stock market
01:26:37 is proof this is what late stage capitalism produces.
01:26:40 You guys always have your big ups and downs.
01:26:42 And by that time, it was so hard on people
01:26:44 that they’re like, we’re done with this.
01:26:46 And at the same time, we were told the lies
01:26:48 coming out of the Soviet Union,
01:26:49 that supposedly the communism was doing just fine.
01:26:51 And you’re at the point where the free market concept
01:26:54 almost died and it’s the Asian tigers
01:26:59 who kind of helped bring that idea back to life, right?
01:27:04 Their success having used the free markets.
01:27:06 And so for me, we gotta make a new commitment
01:27:11 to the free markets on this continent
01:27:12 if we wanna go anywhere, if we wanna go anywhere.
01:27:15 And the timing is perfect because the young people,
01:27:18 there is a kind of freedom
01:27:22 for the revolutionary free markets in this whole space.
01:27:25 Exactly, and you said something, oh, say that again,
01:27:28 because I wanna tell you what I’m hearing in that,
01:27:30 because something’s really cool.
01:27:31 Say it again, come on, Lex.
01:27:32 I don’t know which part, English is my second language too.
01:27:36 No, you said there’s something revolutionary in that.
01:27:40 Because you know how young people are attached
01:27:41 to the revolution and how, I understand,
01:27:45 look Lex, I understand and I am willing
01:27:49 to give the benefits of a doubt
01:27:51 to some of these socialists who came to it
01:27:55 because they had to witness
01:27:58 some of the horrors of their times.
01:28:03 There’s a revolutionary spirit behind that.
01:28:05 It’s ultimately criticized by creating.
01:28:08 Exactly, exactly, but violent revolution
01:28:11 is never the answer.
01:28:12 But that’s what they went for in 1789 in France,
01:28:15 the French Revolution, and Marx and Engels,
01:28:19 they’re promoting these ideas that usually,
01:28:21 for them, justifies violent revolution.
01:28:24 Then in all of these people,
01:28:27 I am with them when they say that they want
01:28:30 to see equal rights for people.
01:28:32 Of course, I don’t agree with their,
01:28:33 therefore, we need to push for equal outcomes.
01:28:36 Equal rights is right, but equal outcomes is not right.
01:28:39 But I am with them for all the way to equal rights,
01:28:43 but this is where the two paths go this way.
01:28:45 And also, the fact that they have no issue
01:28:50 with violent revolution, people get killed.
01:28:53 People get put in gulags and people get, that’s not right.
01:28:57 So what you just said here, just give me goosebumps,
01:28:59 because there is revolution in the free markets,
01:29:02 but that’s the type of revolution we want.
01:29:04 The revolution that comes from people creating,
01:29:07 criticizing by creating, it’s one of the best forms
01:29:09 of revolution.
01:29:10 If you ask me, that’s the most sexy way of revolution.
01:29:14 Criticize by creating, but what,
01:29:16 you’re gonna go shoot people or be like,
01:29:18 what’s his name, Che Guevara, who tells you,
01:29:22 I love, it’s in writing, I love nothing more
01:29:25 than to fry the brain of a man with his gun, really?
01:29:30 Well, in terms of sexy, there is power in that message
01:29:35 of the oppressor, the abuser, the enemy that has abused
01:29:41 their power, they need to be destroyed,
01:29:44 and there’s power in the message of that violence.
01:29:47 Unfortunately, the lessons of history show
01:29:49 that the violence, one, doesn’t work,
01:29:53 but it does the following.
01:29:55 There is something about human nature,
01:29:57 as the old cliche goes, that power corrupts
01:29:59 and absolute power corrupts absolutely,
01:30:01 is the people who are in charge of committing that violence
01:30:05 it does something to their head.
01:30:07 The first person you kill, the second person you kill,
01:30:10 for some reason, you lose your ability,
01:30:13 the compassion for other humans.
01:30:16 Even if you began as a revolutionary,
01:30:18 as the Soviets did, fighting for the worker,
01:30:21 for the rights and the basic humanity of the people
01:30:26 that really do the work, you lose the plot somehow
01:30:31 because of the violence.
01:30:33 So in that way, it seems like the lesson,
01:30:36 at least of this part of the human history,
01:30:38 until the robots take over, is that the economic freedom,
01:30:44 free markets, and protecting those,
01:30:46 and allowing anyone from your country to dream
01:30:53 and to make that dream a reality by creating it
01:30:56 with as few sort of roadblocks as possible.
01:31:01 Exactly, so that’s why for me, the message is very clear,
01:31:05 is what we talked about today.
01:31:07 The reason why Africa is the poorest region in the world
01:31:09 is because it happens to be the most overregulated region
01:31:13 in the world, and for some people who might be put off by it
01:31:17 because they’re like, oh, she’s talking about laissez faire!
01:31:20 No, let me put it maybe in a way that you can understand.
01:31:24 Do you think that it should be as easy
01:31:28 for any person in Africa, for any entrepreneur in Africa
01:31:30 to enterprise than it is for any person in Scandinavia
01:31:35 to enterprise?
01:31:36 If your answer is yes, which I would hope it is,
01:31:38 then you have a moral obligation to work with me
01:31:42 to make my country, and as a whole, my continent,
01:31:47 more free markets.
01:31:48 It’s that simple.
01:31:49 At that point, there’s no like, yes,
01:31:51 but on the other hand, uh uh, no.
01:31:53 And for me, on that question,
01:31:54 and I yet have to find somebody who claims to say no.
01:31:57 If you say no, then we have a whole nother problem
01:31:59 that I’m not even talking to at that point anymore.
01:32:01 So yeah.
01:32:02 So just to clarify, there’s a perception in some reality
01:32:06 that the Scandinavian countries have elements of socialism
01:32:10 in their politics, in their society,
01:32:12 even in their economics.
01:32:14 So at the very least, Africa should have,
01:32:18 in terms of economic indices, should be as free
01:32:23 as the Scandinavian countries.
01:32:24 You’re just giving that example.
01:32:25 As economically free, yes.
01:32:27 Because see, the Scandinavian, they do have
01:32:32 a subsidized, you know, like a welfare system,
01:32:34 that’s what, a more socialized welfare system,
01:32:37 but the way they make their money
01:32:39 is very much the way of the free markets.
01:32:41 So there is how you make your money,
01:32:43 and then there’s how you maybe decide
01:32:44 as a country to redistribute it, right?
01:32:49 And so even there, even in Scandinavia,
01:32:54 again, yes, they have more economic freedom.
01:32:56 So then from there, Lex, where we go is my job
01:33:00 and my goal is for every single African, young and old,
01:33:08 to know what I have come to learn.
01:33:13 We are not doomed.
01:33:16 It’s not over for us.
01:33:19 We will never catch up.
01:33:21 The time for catch up is gone, but guess what?
01:33:24 We’ve got a strong, strong possibility
01:33:27 and chance to leapfrog, and leapfrog we will.
01:33:33 It is still time, but for that to happen,
01:33:35 like I said, we need to know
01:33:36 what we just talked about today
01:33:38 because that is not what the mainstream
01:33:40 keeps us abreast with.
01:33:41 When you go to the World Bank,
01:33:43 they don’t necessarily work along these lines.
01:33:46 They’re still, it’s not, when you go to universities,
01:33:51 I will ask you, MIT, the MIT Econ Department,
01:33:54 or even some, most of the professors,
01:33:57 are they free market oriented?
01:33:58 We find that oftentimes in academia,
01:34:01 there is a strong anti capitalist bias.
01:34:03 There is a strong anti free market bias.
01:34:06 So this is a problem.
01:34:08 This is a problem.
01:34:09 Nobody cares about the economists anyway.
01:34:11 Yeah, so we move forward.
01:34:14 In MIT, the spirit of the entrepreneur burns bright,
01:34:18 not in the economics department
01:34:20 because they just write op ed articles,
01:34:23 but in the dreamers, the young undergrads
01:34:26 that actually build something.
01:34:27 No, I get that.
01:34:28 But then we cannot be stifling their efforts
01:34:32 by putting these artificially made regulations and laws
01:34:37 that stand in the way and clip their wings.
01:34:39 So that’s why when you were saying,
01:34:41 what advice do you give to them?
01:34:43 The advice I give to them is each one of them,
01:34:47 they have to pay attention to this discourse we just had.
01:34:51 I don’t ask anybody to agree with me on face value.
01:34:55 Go back, do like I had to do.
01:34:57 I come very much from the left of the left,
01:34:58 if you can believe that.
01:34:59 But I had to have my own intellectual journey.
01:35:02 And in this case, my intellectual journey
01:35:04 was very much complimented by my own life.
01:35:08 Having to build these companies on two separate continents
01:35:12 and having to, I had front row seat of the differences.
01:35:17 At first, I thought it was this way just because we’re poor
01:35:20 and therefore we must stop and therefore it’s like this.
01:35:22 But eventually I learned that no,
01:35:24 we’re poor because we lack academic freedom.
01:35:26 And if a country allows its citizens
01:35:28 the academic freedom to enterprise, then they become rich.
01:35:31 So yeah, I had it upside down, you see.
01:35:33 And so it’s important for people to know that.
01:35:35 So number one, know your facts
01:35:38 because your facts will empower you.
01:35:41 In this case, I like to use that word,
01:35:43 facts will empower you and they will even furthermore,
01:35:46 they will power you, empower and power you.
01:35:49 Because empower is like inside
01:35:50 and power is like I push you forward and up.
01:35:53 So that’s what it does to know the facts.
01:35:56 And then go on and look around you.
01:36:00 Where are the best practices of this?
01:36:02 Who is at the cutting edge of a free markets?
01:36:05 Where it’s done in a way there,
01:36:08 people don’t necessarily be left behind
01:36:10 or anything like that.
01:36:11 We’re in 2022 for Christ’s sake.
01:36:13 We don’t have to do entrepreneurship
01:36:15 the same way maybe it was done 50 years ago,
01:36:17 100 years ago when as a community, as a people,
01:36:20 we were maybe less enlightened because of our times, right?
01:36:23 We can update this thing and move forward,
01:36:26 but update is definitely not build back,
01:36:29 what do they call it?
01:36:30 Build back new or whatever they’re calling it at the WF,
01:36:33 whatever nonsense and stuff they’re smoking over there.
01:36:36 It’s not that.
01:36:37 There are some principles that are universal
01:36:39 and that stand the test of time.
01:36:41 Those we have to keep and on top add the new things
01:36:46 we learned from our times and from life.
01:36:49 So that’s what I want them to know.
01:36:51 Learn your facts, be empowered and powered,
01:36:54 and then look around, think about it
01:36:57 and look to see where the best practices are
01:37:00 around the world because the world is yours.
01:37:02 You might be African, but the world is yours.
01:37:04 So stop this nonsense of, oh, well,
01:37:06 it’s done by white people, so we’re not gonna do it.
01:37:09 Get the best that exists in humanity
01:37:12 for what you’re trying to solve.
01:37:15 And on top of that, put your own twist, right?
01:37:19 Bitcoin is all of ours to take.
01:37:22 Bitcoin is not the white man’s thing,
01:37:24 so therefore, oh, come on, you know,
01:37:25 because we have a misguided pride,
01:37:27 we’re not gonna use Bitcoin because it’s white man’s time.
01:37:29 Bitcoin is math, you idiot.
01:37:30 Math is universal, so it belongs to all of us.
01:37:34 There’s no color.
01:37:35 Exactly.
01:37:35 In the space of economics, in the space of ideas.
01:37:40 And there’s a chance to leapfrog too,
01:37:43 which is really, really powerful.
01:37:44 Exactly, because here we will leapfrog,
01:37:47 and let’s, I’m not crazy, this is gonna happen.
01:37:50 You mark my words, but it’s gonna happen
01:37:53 if as many people hear what we’re talking about today,
01:37:56 because at some point, the solution is not gonna come.
01:38:00 It’s not me, it’s not,
01:38:02 it’s gonna come from the wisdom of a crowd.
01:38:04 This is why I love the crowd.
01:38:06 There’s no better wisdom than the crowd,
01:38:08 and that’s also why I believe in the free markets.
01:38:10 This concept of emergent order, there’s no way,
01:38:13 there’s no central planning that is smart enough,
01:38:16 that has the level of intel that street level people have,
01:38:21 trying to create something.
01:38:22 It’s just, we just have to be humble.
01:38:24 There’s just something at the bottom of a pyramid
01:38:27 that just bubbles up and happens.
01:38:29 They’re the best.
01:38:31 I think the cynicism, the idea that people are dumb
01:38:34 is at the core of a lot of things
01:38:37 that prevent the flourishing of society.
01:38:41 You know, this kind of anecdotally,
01:38:42 people are like, ah, everyone is stupid,
01:38:44 and people say that jokingly.
01:38:45 But the reality is, people are incredible.
01:38:49 They have the capacity for kindness, for love,
01:38:53 for innovation, for brilliance, in all kinds of dimensions.
01:38:57 You might suck at math,
01:38:59 but you might be amazing at carpentry.
01:39:02 You have to find that thing,
01:39:03 and there’s something about,
01:39:05 when there’s a freedom to find that thing,
01:39:07 and people interact, they get excited about shit together,
01:39:10 and then they build.
01:39:11 If you look at authoritarian,
01:39:14 at places that limit that freedom,
01:39:18 at the core, I think, is the idea that people are dumb.
01:39:22 Let us take care of everything.
01:39:24 We’ll come up with the rules and the regulations,
01:39:26 because people are too dumb to manage things themselves.
01:39:28 And then that idea builds on top of itself,
01:39:33 where you think that the entire populace
01:39:35 is much lesser than the wise sages sitting at the top.
01:39:39 Then you add violence on top of that,
01:39:41 and that leads to corruption,
01:39:43 to corrupting of just the human mind of the leaders,
01:39:46 and the whole thing becomes a giant mess.
01:39:49 The antidote to that is economic freedom.
01:39:54 For people to have a freedom to enterprise.
01:39:56 And look, Lex, when we allow for that to happen,
01:40:01 have you looked around lately
01:40:02 and looked at the level of niche
01:40:06 that has happened in this country?
01:40:08 I mean, you have clubs where, you have places
01:40:11 where people are into guitar strings,
01:40:13 you know, like some of the,
01:40:14 like it’s all about guitar strings.
01:40:16 And others, it’s all about these best cupcakes.
01:40:19 And others, it’s all about this new crypto thing over here.
01:40:23 And others, like hair, best, you know, weight.
01:40:27 It’s, when you allow us, because seven billion geniuses,
01:40:34 each one of us, I believe,
01:40:35 came to this world with something,
01:40:38 something that only he or her possesses.
01:40:41 And that is the genius,
01:40:43 and it is their contribution to the human problem.
01:40:47 When you think about your identity today,
01:40:49 so it all started in Africa,
01:40:52 just like it did for the entirety of the human species.
01:40:55 There’s a bit of European flavor in there,
01:40:57 a little French, Silicon Valley.
01:41:00 You’re now, in part, a Texan.
01:41:05 There’s, you really are an American,
01:41:08 but you’re also an African.
01:41:11 Who are you, when you look in the mirror,
01:41:13 when you think about yourself,
01:41:15 when you listen, when everything gets quiet
01:41:17 and you listen to your heart, who are you?
01:41:20 Can you figure out that puzzle?
01:41:23 That’s a very interesting question,
01:41:25 because it’s been a long time I haven’t asked myself.
01:41:30 I have before.
01:41:42 What I have found is,
01:41:47 I think who I am today has been, for sure,
01:41:50 shaped by, I call it Dakar, Paris, San Francisco.
01:41:54 Dakar is Senegal, Paris, France,
01:41:59 and San Francisco, primarily.
01:42:01 And now, yeah, I think I might want to ask,
01:42:02 there’s a little bit of Texan in there.
01:42:04 How do you say Texas in French?
01:42:07 Texas.
01:42:07 Texas.
01:42:08 Texas.
01:42:09 Yeah.
01:42:10 Austin, Texas.
01:42:11 Austin, Texas.
01:42:12 Austin.
01:42:13 Austin, Texas.
01:42:14 It’s easy.
01:42:15 Not quite as good as San Francisco.
01:42:16 Austin, Texas.
01:42:17 Yeah, yeah.
01:42:18 Us, Texas.
01:42:19 Us.
01:42:20 Texas, yeah.
01:42:22 So,
01:42:22 you, I was formed by those three.
01:42:30 I have to say that what I enjoy from my Senegalese roots
01:42:35 are our commitment to peace, love, and tolerance very much.
01:42:44 And Taranga, obviously.
01:42:48 And I like that it’s a culture
01:42:50 that’s very much about reverence.
01:42:53 It’s, we’re big on reverence.
01:42:56 I don’t think you could ever hear me tell an older person,
01:43:00 especially not my parents or my grandma or anybody like that,
01:43:04 for us to be able to tell an older person that’s not true
01:43:08 or you’re lying would never cross my mind
01:43:11 because that’s the most disrespectful thing
01:43:12 you can think of,
01:43:13 the most irreverent thing you can think of.
01:43:15 It doesn’t mean that you have to agree
01:43:17 with everything that’s said,
01:43:19 but there is a way to disagree.
01:43:21 There is a way to push back
01:43:23 that doesn’t have to rob this person
01:43:25 who happens to be older than you,
01:43:26 especially from the dignity that older age normally provides.
01:43:31 And there’s wisdom to their words
01:43:33 that you yourself may not see.
01:43:36 So the reverence is for the idea of wisdom, of tradition.
01:43:40 Exactly, exactly.
01:43:42 And again, so that is something that I really enjoy,
01:43:46 especially, and something I’m very attached to,
01:43:49 to this day, and then from France,
01:43:52 what I really came to enjoy, of course,
01:43:56 is all the fineness that one can find
01:44:00 within French culture.
01:44:02 The fineness?
01:44:03 Yeah, the fineness.
01:44:04 Foods.
01:44:05 You mean like the intricacies, like the very…
01:44:08 Yeah, the soft sophistication in there.
01:44:11 I mean, French lingerie, for example.
01:44:14 I mean, la dentelle, the laces, all of that,
01:44:18 it’s super, it’s exquisite.
01:44:22 So the…
01:44:23 The fashion, the food.
01:44:24 The fashion, the food.
01:44:26 I mean, there’s something to be said about all of that,
01:44:27 and it’s very beautiful.
01:44:29 And I love also, even when I talk about fineness,
01:44:32 it’s like a meal is not about this big thing
01:44:34 they put in front of you,
01:44:36 but smaller portions, enjoy what you’re eating
01:44:39 and spend time at a table.
01:44:40 Like the eating time is not necessarily
01:44:42 just this function of feeding yourself,
01:44:44 which I understand it,
01:44:46 but this is something that they share
01:44:49 with Senegalese culture,
01:44:51 is eating is a moment of communion.
01:44:55 It’s a moment of friendship, family.
01:44:57 It’s a precious moment.
01:45:00 To this day, and my husband is American,
01:45:03 we eat our meals together all the time.
01:45:07 I would not have it any other way.
01:45:09 And there’s a prep time, all of that stuff.
01:45:11 It doesn’t matter how busy I am, but we’re doing it.
01:45:13 Actually, to push back a little bit,
01:45:15 it’s interesting, because yeah,
01:45:16 the camaraderie over a meal is a beautiful thing.
01:45:20 I got, I mean, I was in a pretty dark place
01:45:22 because on the way to Ukraine,
01:45:24 I traveled to Paris, I stayed in Paris,
01:45:26 and I wasn’t able to enjoy the fineness
01:45:31 because it was almost a distraction
01:45:33 from the humanity for some reason to me,
01:45:36 because there’s such a focus on the art of it all
01:45:40 that you lose the basic connection to humanity.
01:45:42 Now, that said.
01:45:44 Depends what you’re talking about.
01:45:45 I think some of the lack of connection over humanity
01:45:48 was the fact that while I did know how to speak French
01:45:51 for a long time, I forgot most of the language.
01:45:55 And so part of it, there is a barrier.
01:45:58 You said hospitality.
01:46:00 There is a bit of a barrier in French culture
01:46:03 to where in order to be welcomed in,
01:46:05 you have to hear the music
01:46:09 and be able to play the music of the people.
01:46:12 And if you don’t, there’s a bit of a barrier.
01:46:16 I must admit on that end that it is true.
01:46:19 You would feel less that
01:46:21 if you were with a group of Senegalese people per se,
01:46:24 or I would even say if a group of Spanish people.
01:46:28 And I think this is maybe the other side
01:46:31 of it for the French people.
01:46:32 They can be a little bit uppity up there.
01:46:35 And I think maybe that’s what you’re sensing there.
01:46:38 If you don’t have the codes,
01:46:40 which is what you call if you don’t sing the music,
01:46:42 then it’s hard for you to be part of it.
01:46:45 But I was speaking here from the standpoint of your inn.
01:46:48 Yeah, from the inside.
01:46:51 Also, come on, coming from Texas and also Ukraine,
01:46:54 Ukraine, I should say some of the best steak and meat
01:46:58 I’ve ever had, cheap.
01:47:01 Texas, some of the greatest.
01:47:03 And the size of the meals in France,
01:47:06 it’s like, what are we doing here?
01:47:08 I mean, I get it’s art.
01:47:11 I’d like to look at my art on the wall
01:47:14 and then eat my damn steak.
01:47:16 I just wanna cut the shit.
01:47:17 Did you go, so maybe, okay, no, no, no, no.
01:47:18 Okay, now here I have to defend them,
01:47:20 although sometimes I’m the worst.
01:47:22 Now, did you go to some Michelin star restaurant?
01:47:25 Maybe that’s why.
01:47:26 Yeah, a little bit, a little bit.
01:47:27 That’s why, because next time you go to France,
01:47:29 I’ll take you to the countryside or any French home.
01:47:35 They will serve you multiple times.
01:47:38 I mean, by the time you’re done,
01:47:41 even if the portions are smaller,
01:47:43 they’re smaller if you want to,
01:47:44 but because that way you get a chance
01:47:45 to really feel what you’re eating and then have more
01:47:48 and then all of that stuff, but not be like, ah, like this.
01:47:50 And then, but no, you’ll eat plenty,
01:47:52 but it’s because you went to the Michelin places
01:47:54 where they were like.
01:47:55 I’m sure the warmth of the people is there.
01:47:58 It almost makes me sad that sometimes,
01:48:00 I think to properly be in a place,
01:48:02 you really should spend a long time there.
01:48:05 And also be emotionally ready.
01:48:06 Again, I was emotionally unavailable.
01:48:09 I was just like.
01:48:10 Well, I would imagine on the way to the Ukraine,
01:48:11 I’m like, who can think about food?
01:48:13 But in your identity, a bit of Texas,
01:48:16 a bit of San Francisco, a bit of Africa.
01:48:18 Yeah, San Francisco.
01:48:20 And I guess from the America,
01:48:23 the defining thing for me for America is,
01:48:27 it’s the freedom and the entrepreneurial mindset.
01:48:33 See, very quickly when I moved from France
01:48:35 to the United States,
01:48:37 and I started becoming successful in the United States,
01:48:40 I found myself, me and my husband,
01:48:42 he was French and my first husband who passed away.
01:48:45 We found ourselves at some point,
01:48:47 we stopped talking to our friends in France
01:48:50 who stayed in France,
01:48:53 because we were talking to them about things
01:48:55 that were so outside of their comprehension.
01:49:00 What do you mean you’re in your twenties
01:49:04 and you just raised, I don’t know,
01:49:09 a million dollars or $2 million,
01:49:10 especially from back in those days.
01:49:11 Today, it’s easy here and there.
01:49:13 So even in France,
01:49:14 that entrepreneurial spirit didn’t burn quite as bright.
01:49:16 I mean, don’t take me wrong.
01:49:19 Do you have some entrepreneurial people in France?
01:49:21 Yeah, but to the level that you have it in the US,
01:49:23 absolutely not.
01:49:24 It’s just, I mean, in France, it’s still very much,
01:49:28 you’re born in this area,
01:49:29 you go to school in that area,
01:49:30 your parents live around,
01:49:32 eventually you’ll marry and be where your parents are
01:49:35 or maybe go to where your spouse’s parents are
01:49:38 and you buy your house and you buy it once
01:49:40 and you’re not gonna do like the Americans,
01:49:42 two years later, I sell my house, I go somewhere else.
01:49:44 You don’t have any of anything.
01:49:45 What do you mean, just stopping from nowhere,
01:49:48 you’re gonna do what?
01:49:50 Start a business and you have nothing to back you up
01:49:52 or whatever.
01:49:53 Oh, and even this idea of going and fundraising,
01:49:57 this venture cap, especially back in the days,
01:49:59 venture cap, all of that, it’s very American.
01:50:02 We take it for granted, but it’s very American.
01:50:03 Who would have made a bet on me in France?
01:50:06 The same person.
01:50:07 I would not have found the same people.
01:50:09 I would never in France have been able to raise,
01:50:13 at some point it was $32 million for my first business,
01:50:16 never would have been able to do that in France.
01:50:18 And it doesn’t mean that French people are bad people
01:50:19 or anything like that.
01:50:20 It’s just something that’s just not so in the culture.
01:50:24 Just like this whole concept of philanthropy,
01:50:27 it’s not that the French people don’t do philanthropy,
01:50:29 but philanthropy in America is very different
01:50:31 from the level and also the magnitude
01:50:34 of maybe what the French people do.
01:50:35 And also they have this always like,
01:50:37 oh, let’s do it behind the scene.
01:50:39 Money is suspicious, success is suspicious.
01:50:42 So at some point my husband and I just felt like
01:50:44 our friends actually were maybe thinking
01:50:46 that we’re maybe some drug dealers or something.
01:50:47 So we just stopped because it just was not flowing anymore.
01:50:51 And so yes, in America I found this entrepreneurial spirit,
01:50:56 but then I was able to link it with something
01:50:59 that I’m very familiar with in my country.
01:51:01 See, back home in Senegal, I’m part of this,
01:51:04 you have what we call the Mourid, I’m a Mourid.
01:51:07 So what it is is one of the four brotherhoods in Senegal,
01:51:11 Mouridism is the most influential of them
01:51:13 and the biggest one.
01:51:14 And us, it’s all about entrepreneurship as well.
01:51:17 I mean, of course there’s the whole religious part,
01:51:21 but our mantra is,
01:51:23 pray as if you will die tomorrow
01:51:26 and work as if you will never die.
01:51:28 And the way we say,
01:51:29 the way somebody will say that somebody passed away,
01:51:32 we say, somebody has retired.
01:51:34 Somebody has retired from their work.
01:51:36 Right?
01:51:37 Beautiful.
01:51:38 Right?
01:51:39 So, I think it’s funny because in that community,
01:51:44 we’re very much entrepreneurial,
01:51:46 left to our own devices, we’re entrepreneurial.
01:51:50 But then what happens is the minute that we die,
01:51:52 then what happens is the minute people start going to,
01:51:55 they’re being educated through the education system,
01:51:57 you know, like the French, especially the system,
01:51:59 but tend to breed more like, you know,
01:52:01 the French bureaucrat mindset,
01:52:03 then you can see all the entrepreneurial mindset
01:52:05 kind of starting to dwindle down.
01:52:07 So it’s kind of very interesting.
01:52:09 So in a way, America helped me reunite
01:52:13 with that side of my roots,
01:52:15 where America tells me, reinforces that side of my roots
01:52:20 and also gives me more tools to practice
01:52:22 that side of my roots, if that makes any sense.
01:52:25 Through all of that, that’s what brings out
01:52:29 the heart of a cheetah, which I think is a beautiful,
01:52:31 beautiful thing that encapsulates that whole trajectory,
01:52:36 which I think is the best possible answer
01:52:38 anyone could give.
01:52:39 It makes me want to really think about who I am,
01:52:44 because you really have brought together
01:52:47 so many cultures within yourself
01:52:49 that just talking to you makes you feel like
01:52:52 we are just all one people.
01:52:54 Because at the end we are, at the end we are.
01:52:58 And, you know, when you come from,
01:53:00 at the end we are, and also I think for me,
01:53:03 if people can take anything from my story,
01:53:05 it’s at the end of the day, I am very clear about it.
01:53:07 And I’m all for harmony among people
01:53:11 and among us peoples.
01:53:13 If we can accept that we’re all,
01:53:20 I know this sounds so cliche, but for me it’s so true,
01:53:23 that we’re all humans.
01:53:24 You know, when I left Senegal,
01:53:27 when I was about to leave Senegal for the first time
01:53:30 and to go to Europe to be reunited with my parents,
01:53:33 because now they had emigrated
01:53:35 and things were going to be fine.
01:53:37 And I was going to be, things were stable for them.
01:53:40 Now they’re like, it’s time to be reunited with her.
01:53:43 They brought me over, but before I left Senegal,
01:53:46 my grandma sat me down.
01:53:47 She actually, she lowered herself down to my level
01:53:50 and she said, my god, you’re about to go to this place
01:53:54 where most people will not look like you.
01:53:57 And most people speak a language
01:53:59 that’s going to be different from yours.
01:54:02 And you’re going to realize that all the kids
01:54:03 are going to school and you’ve never been to school
01:54:05 because, you know, I was, like I said, a free range kid
01:54:07 and I was just living my life.
01:54:09 And she said, but I don’t want for any of that,
01:54:13 and she showed her words, she said,
01:54:14 I don’t want for any of that to intimidate you.
01:54:18 She said, you can be impressed by some of it if you want,
01:54:21 but no intimidation.
01:54:23 And she said, because the fact
01:54:24 that they might be different from you,
01:54:26 yeah, they’re going to have a different skin color from you,
01:54:28 but it is still human skin.
01:54:30 You’re human, they’re human.
01:54:32 And she said, this language you’re going to speak,
01:54:35 it’s a different language from yours,
01:54:37 but it is still a language that humans speak.
01:54:41 You’re human, they’re human.
01:54:42 Therefore, you’re going to speak it.
01:54:44 And lastly, they have gone to school.
01:54:47 Going to school is what little humans do.
01:54:49 You’re a little human, so you’ll be just fine.
01:54:52 And I went and grandma was right.
01:54:54 Right, she was right.
01:54:56 And that helped me.
01:54:58 And I think when you internalize that so early on,
01:55:05 it just makes you belong to the human family
01:55:07 that you’re part of.
01:55:08 I am part of a human family.
01:55:10 And I would have no problem going to Russia, for example,
01:55:12 let’s take, and be totally open.
01:55:16 Maybe don’t go right now, but.
01:55:17 No, not now.
01:55:18 Maybe not now, you’re right.
01:55:19 But what I just.
01:55:20 Or at least don’t bring weed if you go on the plane.
01:55:22 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yeah, right.
01:55:25 That girl, I don’t know what she was thinking, but.
01:55:28 No, so, but what I’m trying to say, Lex,
01:55:30 is I feel like I can go anywhere in the world,
01:55:34 including some of the most unfriendly places in the world
01:55:38 to someone like me, because there are places like that.
01:55:41 And yet I know, I know that somehow, somewhere,
01:55:47 someone will take care of me.
01:55:48 Someone will help me.
01:55:50 When I first came to this country,
01:55:54 I came as a tourist, but you had this amazing family
01:56:00 who had a business, a family business in Indiana,
01:56:03 Columbus, Indiana, the Wences, Carolyn Eldon Wence,
01:56:08 I owe them everything that I have in this country,
01:56:10 that I am in this country.
01:56:12 They are Americans in the mid America
01:56:17 from a place that most other Americans
01:56:19 would maybe look down on because,
01:56:22 and some people would be like, oh, you’re going to this place
01:56:23 where they have more churches and cows than people,
01:56:26 that type of behavior, because the elite coastal elites,
01:56:30 but it is in Midwest, in the Midwest that I found,
01:56:35 that I, black young women coming out of nowhere,
01:56:41 found support.
01:56:43 They all rallied around me.
01:56:44 I didn’t even come from the same faith as they are from,
01:56:47 yet their whole church rallied around me
01:56:49 to find me an apartment.
01:56:52 My host family found me, got me a job,
01:56:55 and it was not a pity job.
01:56:57 They were like, we need, we are in serious needs
01:56:59 of getting our accounting under control
01:57:02 and our marketing and all of that.
01:57:03 And I had to catch up years of accounting like to the cent
01:57:07 and come up with marketing, all of that.
01:57:09 And I did it way faster than they thought
01:57:11 I would ever be able to do that.
01:57:13 At some point they look at me and they’re like,
01:57:14 look, there is a future for you.
01:57:17 And we are too small for that future.
01:57:19 And now we could be selfish and keep you here with us.
01:57:23 And we would want nothing more than that
01:57:25 because really they’re like my parents to this day.
01:57:27 I just came back from seeing them.
01:57:29 And they said, but there’s so much more for you
01:57:32 and we don’t have it.
01:57:33 So we want you to go and find out what it is.
01:57:36 And that’s eventually when I,
01:57:37 because something was brewing up in San Francisco
01:57:41 when I say I left my heart in San Francisco
01:57:43 because the man who would become my husband,
01:57:47 we went to the same business school in France,
01:57:48 but then he was older than me.
01:57:50 So he had come to San Francisco and started a business there.
01:57:53 And it just looked like there was something there.
01:57:55 And Scarola was like, you gotta go to San Francisco
01:57:57 and find out with Emmanuel what’s going on.
01:57:59 So I went and I left my heart in San Francisco.
01:58:00 I came back and I’m like, okay, I’m leaving.
01:58:02 Here’s the keys to my apartment.
01:58:03 What, I don’t understand.
01:58:04 But I’m like, I’m out of here.
01:58:06 So no, but Carol, so this is it.
01:58:08 This is what I’m saying, especially in these times
01:58:11 when this country loves to dwell on,
01:58:14 you’re bad because you have this skin color.
01:58:16 Here are people with a completely different skin color
01:58:18 than mine, completely different faith than mine,
01:58:20 yet embraced me, protected me, paid for my visa,
01:58:25 you know, for my lawyer, for my H1B, everything,
01:58:29 and also played emotional support for me.
01:58:33 And no one, no one asked them to do that.
01:58:36 They didn’t have to do it.
01:58:38 They didn’t.
01:58:38 So what I’m saying is,
01:58:39 and this has been the story of my life,
01:58:41 everywhere I go, regardless of the hostility around me,
01:58:46 you betcha that there’s always,
01:58:48 always gonna be somebody who shows up for you.
01:58:51 And somebody who’s at the extremes,
01:58:53 at the antipodes of where you are and who you are.
01:58:56 And that tells me something.
01:58:59 In the end, we are good people.
01:59:01 Most people are good people.
01:59:02 And there’s so much power to that,
01:59:05 the internalizing of this idea that we’re all just human
01:59:10 and there’s human kindness all around us.
01:59:13 I’ve seen it a lot where people internalize that
01:59:17 and they’re able to walk lightly amidst hate
01:59:21 and walk past it and it doesn’t stick to them
01:59:29 in a way that they build resentment and it paralyzes them.
01:59:33 If they internalize the world as human,
01:59:35 they can be in the, just like you said,
01:59:37 in the worst places in the world for them.
01:59:40 And someone, somewhere that human magic and touch is there.
01:59:44 Yeah, it will find them.
01:59:46 It will find, yeah, yeah.
01:59:48 And you know, the other thing too, Lex is,
01:59:50 especially in these times we’re walking in,
01:59:53 it is to remind yourself,
01:59:55 I think this is where we all are called
01:59:58 to practice more courage.
02:00:01 I call it courage.
02:00:03 It’s the courage to show up with curiosity,
02:00:07 with empathy and with love.
02:00:09 To me, those three are the antidote to pretty much anything.
02:00:13 Curiosity and love.
02:00:14 In the face of fear, can you show up with curiosity?
02:00:19 In the face of hate, can you say,
02:00:22 I’m gonna engage with love?
02:00:25 Even if I’m scared to death
02:00:26 and even if I’m pissed off to death by this,
02:00:29 but can you do that?
02:00:30 In the face of just like, you know, judgment or whatever,
02:00:35 can you show up with empathy?
02:00:36 And I had just found that when you try to do that,
02:00:40 you engage very different parts of your brain.
02:00:44 That’s proven by the way, by the brain scientists,
02:00:46 but you also can feel it in your body
02:00:48 that you’re engaging very different parts of your soul.
02:00:51 And so I try myself, I’m not always good at it,
02:00:54 but it’s a practice that I try to honor,
02:00:57 which is curiosity, empathy and love.
02:00:59 As I told you offline,
02:01:01 those, I agree with you 100% on that,
02:01:04 but there is, you know, when you go to Ukraine
02:01:07 and you can say, you can speak about the power of love,
02:01:12 but when you lose your family, when you lose your home,
02:01:16 all you have in your heart is hate.
02:01:18 Even if you know it, you’re not supposed to have it.
02:01:21 You still, all you have is hate.
02:01:22 So sometimes it’s a very human thing
02:01:27 to have resentment, to have hate.
02:01:30 But it is about trying not to stay there.
02:01:33 And it’s okay if it takes you years,
02:01:36 but it is about trying, and I mean the word trying,
02:01:40 it is about trying not to stay there.
02:01:44 Let me ask you about some of the things
02:01:45 you see in this country from your perspective
02:01:48 of everywhere you’ve been in the world.
02:01:50 What do you think about the Black Lives Matter movement
02:01:53 here in America that does struggle
02:01:58 with the role of skin color today
02:02:04 and throughout the history of this country,
02:02:07 maybe even throughout the history of the world?
02:02:10 Well, Black Lives Matter has been a very hard one for me,
02:02:14 because do Black Lives Matter,
02:02:16 those three words together in that order,
02:02:18 what they mean, they mean everything,
02:02:21 because Black Lives do matter,
02:02:23 as any other lives do matter.
02:02:25 But I know in this case why they say Black Lives Matter,
02:02:28 because some of the context we have had.
02:02:31 Now, while I agree with the principles
02:02:34 that Black Lives Matter,
02:02:36 I have a big problem with the organization.
02:02:39 With the organization and what it stands for.
02:02:44 When I have an organization that pretends
02:02:47 to want to stand for Black lives to matter,
02:02:51 yet you are self proclaimed Marxist socialists,
02:02:58 I pause.
02:03:00 Why?
02:03:01 I pause and then I’m like, have we learned nothing?
02:03:05 Have we learned nothing?
02:03:07 And the reason why I say that, Lex,
02:03:09 is because 60 some years ago,
02:03:15 it started before even 60 some years ago,
02:03:22 Black people, in this case,
02:03:24 I’m talking about the African people,
02:03:28 I’m talking about the Black Africans
02:03:32 who would go on to really cement
02:03:37 this concept of African emancipation
02:03:41 and African liberation.
02:03:43 And here I’m taking us back to 1945.
02:03:46 They had four of them before that.
02:03:49 But in 1945, in Manchester, UK,
02:03:54 happened something that would become major
02:03:56 for Africa and its future,
02:04:00 especially subterranean Africa.
02:04:02 In Manchester, UK,
02:04:04 people like Blaise Diagne of my country,
02:04:08 Nyerere, Tanzania, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana,
02:04:14 and others and others from different parts of the continent
02:04:19 got together with Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Dubois.
02:04:25 And I say Dubois because that’s how we say it in French.
02:04:27 He has a French name, French sounding name at least.
02:04:30 And Americans would say, so for Americans listening,
02:04:33 I know you say Duboy, but it’s Dubois.
02:04:36 No, because just in case they’re like,
02:04:38 who is he talking about?
02:04:39 That’s who I’m talking about.
02:04:40 So all of those people got together in the UK
02:04:45 and with W.E.B. Dubois and Marcus Garvey,
02:04:50 big top African American intellectuals of their times.
02:04:55 W.E.B. Dubois had so many things happen to him,
02:04:58 starting from the North,
02:04:59 being more or more or less a liberal type guy.
02:05:01 You know, came to the South just to see at this time,
02:05:06 you know, people, black people being lynched
02:05:08 and some of the body parts been shown in store windows.
02:05:13 I mean, just for a second, we put ourselves in his shoes.
02:05:17 I put myself in his shoes.
02:05:19 And that’s when he started to become radicalized, right?
02:05:22 Because at first it was like, oh, reforms,
02:05:24 and I was like, God darn it.
02:05:25 And I mean, these people, we don’t talk to them.
02:05:27 We force, you know.
02:05:28 And eventually, little by little, things going through.
02:05:32 Yeah, you have these people,
02:05:34 they’re very much on the Marxist socialist train.
02:05:37 So do you think the sort of,
02:05:40 it’s the political movements that are just using?
02:05:44 Yeah, because what happened back in those days, it is true.
02:05:49 But to their credit, communist socialists
02:05:52 were fighting for equal rights.
02:05:55 They were fighting for equal rights.
02:05:56 They were fighting for the rights of black people
02:05:58 to have equal rights.
02:06:00 So of course, I could see why one could say,
02:06:05 especially in this times, you’ve been lynched,
02:06:10 bodies burnt, body parts showcased at window stores.
02:06:15 Meanwhile, in Africa, under colonization,
02:06:22 in your own country, in your own land.
02:06:29 And you have this group that’s saying,
02:06:34 your fight is part of what we fight.
02:06:39 And you have this group that’s saying,
02:06:42 your fight is part of what we fight.
02:06:48 Of course, you’re gonna say I side with you,
02:06:51 especially if this is all happening at a time
02:06:56 where, you know, so 1945, these guys who would be
02:07:01 the liberators of various African nations,
02:07:04 they’re meeting with Garvey, with W. E. B. Du Bois.
02:07:08 And that’s where this meeting is very important.
02:07:11 It’s the fifth Pan African Congress meeting.
02:07:13 It’s very important.
02:07:14 It’s gonna be the last one, but it’s the most important one
02:07:17 because that’s when they formed their plans
02:07:19 and really rallied around this concept
02:07:22 of African emancipation and African liberation.
02:07:26 We’re gonna liberate our countries.
02:07:29 Then later, so that’s how all of these movements
02:07:31 started to happen.
02:07:32 And from there, Gandhi was already making some progress
02:07:35 with India, you know, getting them out of British rule
02:07:39 and all of that.
02:07:40 So all of this was happening and it really like,
02:07:41 this whole thing was bubbling, bubbling, bubbling,
02:07:43 you know, like there’s like a new force going on.
02:07:46 And then we arrive in the late fifties
02:07:48 and, you know, Kuma with, you know,
02:07:52 them with the British as well,
02:07:53 they might manage to become their colonization is over.
02:07:59 They’re the first one to go in, 57.
02:08:02 Then from there, it’s what we call the independences.
02:08:04 That’s what most of Sub Saharan African nation
02:08:06 are getting their independence is different dates.
02:08:08 Mine, April 4th, 1960.
02:08:11 So all over, so this is happening.
02:08:13 And now think about it.
02:08:14 You’re talking 57, you’re talking 60.
02:08:16 We’re like at this time now with the middle of a Cold War.
02:08:21 Because we have to put things in context
02:08:22 if we wanna understand what’s going on.
02:08:24 Because people today ask me, why do you think,
02:08:26 because even now when they understand,
02:08:28 oh, you’re right, it makes sense.
02:08:30 If you have no economic freedom, you’re gonna be poor.
02:08:32 But why, why, why did they go for this?
02:08:35 Why did they go for this?
02:08:35 And then they don’t understand.
02:08:37 So that’s what happened.
02:08:37 So beginning of day of times, pre colonial Africans
02:08:41 were free marketeers, free enterprise.
02:08:44 It’s pretty well recorded by someone like George Aite.
02:08:47 That’s where I got the cheat I think from
02:08:49 and Ghanaian economist.
02:08:50 And then slavery happened, colonialism happened.
02:08:52 And then the independences, late fifties, early sixties
02:08:55 for most sub Saharan African countries.
02:08:58 So there what you have is,
02:09:00 but then what happened there?
02:09:02 So I told you in 45, fifth Pan African Congress in the UK
02:09:05 with the liberators of Africa under the leadership
02:09:11 because he was the wise, you know, eldest man.
02:09:15 Dubois was, he was in his seventies back in the day.
02:09:17 So he’s older than them, you know,
02:09:19 and he’s coming with all of his ideas and everything.
02:09:21 So they’re like, ooh.
02:09:22 So there they are.
02:09:23 Now we’re in the late fifties, early sixties.
02:09:25 We’re starting to make progress with the independences.
02:09:28 You know, India has gone there before.
02:09:29 So all of that is starting to happen.
02:09:32 And at that time, remember,
02:09:35 they already were being introduced
02:09:37 to the concept of socialism, Marxism,
02:09:40 all of that way before by some of these, you know,
02:09:44 black African American intellectuals of their time
02:09:48 who were very socialist Marxist by that time.
02:09:51 So now they’re becoming independent
02:09:54 because I do independent like this
02:09:56 because I reckon that there’s still neocolonism going on.
02:10:00 So now this is happening, they’re becoming free.
02:10:04 But then you look around, what do you see?
02:10:07 That now most of these liberators of their nations
02:10:10 become the president of the nations.
02:10:12 But remember what I told you?
02:10:13 Most of them have dranken the Marxist socialism Koolaid.
02:10:21 So as these African nations become independent
02:10:25 with their first independent governments
02:10:27 and, you know, presidents, most of them,
02:10:31 most of them are socialist,
02:10:34 various forms of statist type of government.
02:10:38 And this is because at that point,
02:10:40 we had made a fatal mistake of going,
02:10:43 of saying we are Marxist socialist
02:10:48 because you guys fight for equal rights.
02:10:51 So in this case, there should be no colonialism
02:10:53 or anything like that.
02:10:54 So not only you have that going on and the people,
02:10:58 so right now you had this battle of ideology going on
02:11:01 because on one end represented by freedom
02:11:04 and the economic, what do you call it?
02:11:06 The economic system they were using is capitalism.
02:11:08 And these are represented by the Western nations
02:11:12 facing off with Eastern block,
02:11:14 practicing various forms of statism,
02:11:16 socialism, communism, various forms of statism.
02:11:19 And these two are fighting for influence.
02:11:21 So, and we also have, it’s also not, so two things there.
02:11:25 One is we’re at a time where,
02:11:27 remember the free market concept was almost dead,
02:11:30 almost dead.
02:11:33 So almost every intellectual at that time
02:11:35 was social Marxist or Marxist socialist,
02:11:40 I put the name, that’s what you were.
02:11:42 So you’re in a world where it was a normal thing,
02:11:45 it was just mainstream acceptance.
02:11:47 So not only you have that force,
02:11:49 but at the same time,
02:11:51 if these two forces are fighting one another,
02:11:53 it turns out that the one representing capitalism
02:11:57 and freedom, well, sorry,
02:11:59 but isn’t it you who enslaved us and colonized us?
02:12:03 And you’re fighting with the people who represent,
02:12:06 supposedly people who are saying that
02:12:09 who had been fighting for equal rights for us,
02:12:11 with us for the longest time, these are our friends.
02:12:15 And that’s when we made a fatal mistake
02:12:17 because while yes, there were maybe good things
02:12:19 to agree on with Marxist socialist of the times,
02:12:23 especially equal rights for all people and all of that,
02:12:28 that’s the only thing we should have,
02:12:29 among the only things we should have agreed upon.
02:12:31 There are violent revolution tendencies, no way.
02:12:35 When it comes to the economic nonsense, no way.
02:12:38 We should not have thrown the baby out with the bathwater,
02:12:41 but that’s what we did.
02:12:42 And that’s when we made a fatal mistake.
02:12:43 So then we became free, all of these nations,
02:12:46 and most of them started with socialist or communist leaders.
02:12:52 My country, socialist, Léopold Sédar Senghor,
02:12:56 he was a socialist.
02:12:58 And they stayed in power for 40 years,
02:13:01 the first 40 years of our freedom years.
02:13:05 And all over the continent, more or less,
02:13:07 that’s what you had.
02:13:09 And on top of that,
02:13:11 something else that the French don’t know,
02:13:12 the people don’t know is France with its colonies said,
02:13:16 you cannot, not do,
02:13:18 you have to keep the French civil law.
02:13:25 So we’re talking about the Napoleonic civil code.
02:13:29 Are you kidding me?
02:13:31 So that’s what happened.
02:13:32 So the reason why I go back to BLM is while I have
02:13:37 all the respect in the world
02:13:40 and all the compassion in the world
02:13:43 for people like Krummer, for people like Nyerere,
02:13:45 for people, all of us people of those times,
02:13:48 the liberators of Africa,
02:13:50 while I have so much love, compassion for them,
02:13:54 I am also able to say,
02:13:57 because I got the benefit of 60 some years time,
02:14:01 and where you get to do a debrief
02:14:05 and see what worked, what didn’t work, what happened.
02:14:08 We have had the 60 years to look back and to reflect.
02:14:13 So yes, I can understand why they did what they did.
02:14:17 I can understand why they sided with these people
02:14:21 who on the surface, or at least some part of a fight
02:14:24 was the same fight as them when it came to equal rights.
02:14:29 I can excuse them,
02:14:32 but I will not excuse the BLM founders
02:14:37 because that mistake was tolerable 60 some years ago.
02:14:43 Today, no.
02:14:45 The blacks of today cannot be serious
02:14:51 about black lives mattering and saying in the same sentence,
02:14:55 and we’re going to be socialist Marx, Marxist socialist.
02:14:58 It just doesn’t work.
02:14:59 So the BLM movement is too deeply integrated
02:15:03 with the ideas of Marxism.
02:15:06 Yeah, they’re anti free market, anti capitalist.
02:15:10 And we do know that you have to have the free markets
02:15:15 in order to build prosperity.
02:15:17 And prosperity means economic power.
02:15:21 If you have economic power, no one messes with you,
02:15:26 or if they’re gonna do it, they’re gonna have to think twice.
02:15:28 And when they do, they’re gonna have to pay consequences.
02:15:32 So if you want for blacks to be respected
02:15:35 anywhere in the world,
02:15:37 you’re gonna have to be serious about black prosperity,
02:15:39 all mass, not just a few people,
02:15:42 Oprah over here and somebody over there, no.
02:15:44 We as a group have to be critical mass of prosperity
02:15:50 across the board.
02:15:52 And because we’re talking critical mass of prosperity
02:15:55 across the board,
02:15:56 it means black people everywhere in the world.
02:15:59 But guess what?
02:16:00 We in Africa happen to represent 90% of our representatives
02:16:04 of a black race.
02:16:06 So you’re gonna be serious about black lives mattering
02:16:08 without being serious for Africa,
02:16:11 the 1 billion people in Africa that are black
02:16:14 and for them to have access to the free markets
02:16:16 and yes, fossil fuels,
02:16:18 so that they can rocket up prosperity wise.
02:16:25 And the resources of the young people, the young minds.
02:16:27 So that all of these young people, young minds
02:16:29 can finally manifest their greatness that I know they have
02:16:33 and that they’re showing us every day
02:16:35 despite the obstacles.
02:16:38 That’s what we need.
02:16:40 Senegal becomes rich and Senegal can become
02:16:42 and will be richer than France.
02:16:45 Singapore did it, we can do it.
02:16:47 Mali rich, Nigeria rich, functioning as well.
02:16:52 Malawi rich, Tanzania rich, Uganda rich,
02:16:56 Zimbabwe rich, Niger rich, everywhere rich prosperous
02:17:01 as prosperous, if not more prosperous than Switzerland
02:17:05 or Singapore or the U.S.
02:17:07 I don’t know, or the Lichtenstein or Luxembourg,
02:17:09 places that have no natural resources.
02:17:15 We become rich and you watch the world
02:17:18 having a very different relationship with us.
02:17:21 That’s the only time we will commend any type of respect.
02:17:26 That’s when people, even our common psyche will change
02:17:32 even about black people.
02:17:34 All of the stereotypes that they have of us
02:17:36 is gonna melt away.
02:17:39 And you may still not like us, but you will still respect us
02:17:44 because we are a force to be dealt with.
02:17:47 And only economic power does that.
02:17:49 It would be nice, of course, for us to respect people
02:17:53 because they’re people.
02:17:54 It would be nice, but let us not kid ourselves.
02:17:58 This is earth.
02:18:00 And someone said, nice people will make it to heaven,
02:18:03 but not to Harvard necessarily.
02:18:05 It’s true.
02:18:06 It’s interesting that pity does not ever turn into respect.
02:18:12 It would be nice if it did.
02:18:14 It would be nice, but it doesn’t.
02:18:16 Prosperity is the only thing.
02:18:17 Prosperity is the only thing.
02:18:19 And the way we do that, there is no,
02:18:21 just like all of us humans have to inhale oxygen
02:18:27 and exhale carbon dioxide.
02:18:30 That’s a human way of breathing.
02:18:32 You bring me on, but you wanna be foolish
02:18:35 and be like, oh, well, sorry.
02:18:36 That’s how white people breathe.
02:18:38 So as black people,
02:18:39 we’re gonna have to do something different.
02:18:40 Well, good luck with that.
02:18:42 Right?
02:18:42 So this is here why I’m saying,
02:18:44 I have no patience for Black Lives Matter.
02:18:46 They’re making a mistake that was made 60 some plus 60.
02:18:51 Years ago, even more than that.
02:18:53 Maybe even a hundred, you know,
02:18:55 when we were siding with the Marxist socialists
02:18:58 because they’re the ones who’ve been fighting
02:19:00 for equal rights.
02:19:03 Let me ask you though, about racism.
02:19:08 Do you, as you travel through this world,
02:19:11 as you travel through America,
02:19:13 feel the burn of hatred?
02:19:18 You’ve spoken about the revolutions
02:19:19 that have been fought throughout the 20th century
02:19:23 against racism.
02:19:25 But today, as people talk about educating,
02:19:29 reminding the world with the,
02:19:31 even with more philosophical ideas
02:19:33 of critical race theory, for example,
02:19:35 do you think this is still a battle
02:19:38 that needs to be fought
02:19:40 at the forefront of culture in the United States?
02:19:43 Um, does racism exist?
02:19:48 Yes, it does.
02:19:52 But all forms of isms exist.
02:19:55 Some people, it’s about various forms of ableism.
02:19:59 Others, it’s about size.
02:20:02 And racism, yes, is one of them.
02:20:05 Does it exist?
02:20:06 Yes, it does.
02:20:08 But is it what’s gonna stop anyone
02:20:11 from manifesting their greatest potential?
02:20:14 I say no.
02:20:16 I say no.
02:20:18 Many people in this country have showed it.
02:20:22 Whether they’re African Americans
02:20:23 or African immigrant, I’m an African immigrant.
02:20:27 You have African Americans like Oprah and others,
02:20:30 and other people even before her,
02:20:32 who despite the nastiness around them,
02:20:36 were able to make it.
02:20:37 So we do know, especially as black people,
02:20:41 but I think it’s humanity as a whole.
02:20:44 And that’s what I love about the human spirit.
02:20:46 It’s resiliency.
02:20:48 But resiliency only can happen
02:20:50 if you don’t allow yourself to be beaten down
02:20:54 and to lose yourself of agency.
02:20:58 It’s, of course, easier said than done.
02:21:01 And some among us need a little bit more help
02:21:05 to not succumb for it than others do.
02:21:09 And I’ve seen it.
02:21:10 It might be harder for you
02:21:12 if you’re somewhere in inner city,
02:21:18 inner city black America.
02:21:19 Maybe the environment might be a little bit tougher
02:21:22 for you to try and get your act together
02:21:24 and all of that stuff.
02:21:25 And it’s okay.
02:21:27 But even in that situation,
02:21:32 we need to, I think it’s important
02:21:34 that we still do not rob you of your agency.
02:21:39 And this is where I am mad as heck
02:21:42 against those who supposedly care
02:21:46 and their idea of how to make sure
02:21:50 that I don’t become or stay a victim of racism
02:21:53 is through all the things we talked about,
02:21:55 the CRT, the anti racism crap of, you know,
02:22:00 Ibrahim X. Kendi and what’s her name, Robin DiAngelo.
02:22:05 I mean her, I’m shocked.
02:22:07 The woman is making all of this money
02:22:09 supposedly fighting a war on our behalf.
02:22:13 I’m like, lady, I hear you loud and clear
02:22:15 that you are a true racist.
02:22:16 I know, but you told me you are.
02:22:19 And for you to think that your anti racism
02:22:20 makes you less racist and it’s, that happens too.
02:22:24 She comes from a racist background.
02:22:26 Fine, she’s saying it, it’s true.
02:22:28 But this idea that every walking person on earth
02:22:33 belongs to one category or the other,
02:22:34 depending on what, you know, which skin color you came with,
02:22:38 it’s problematic at its root.
02:22:41 So my point is, does racism exist?
02:22:44 Yes.
02:22:46 Do you think it’s gonna stop me
02:22:47 from doing anything I have to do?
02:22:49 No.
02:22:50 Might it make it harder, longer?
02:22:53 Maybe, but it will not stop me from doing anything.
02:22:57 But it will not stop me.
02:23:00 But for it not to stop me,
02:23:01 I can’t engage in victimhood mentality.
02:23:04 I can’t lose myself as self.
02:23:05 I got to use all the agency that I have
02:23:09 to fight back and fight beyond.
02:23:12 See, it’s just a bit of fight back.
02:23:14 You fight back and you fight beyond.
02:23:15 Cause at some point, yeah and.
02:23:18 It’s this concept of yes and.
02:23:20 So this is why I have loved the job.
02:23:24 So when I have somebody who is like,
02:23:26 oh, anti racism is a way.
02:23:28 We’re gonna go and tell all the white kids
02:23:31 that, you know, because they will happen to be white,
02:23:32 that they’re really the oppressors and blah, blah, blah.
02:23:35 And the black kids, because they’re black, you know,
02:23:38 you’re not changing anything when you’re doing that.
02:23:41 Nothing except that you’re causing,
02:23:43 you’re putting problems
02:23:43 where there were no problems to start with.
02:23:46 All we had to do was maybe
02:23:48 go for a different route from there.
02:23:50 Kids are kids.
02:23:51 Kids are born kids.
02:23:52 And this, I’m not sure if you want to get me going
02:23:54 onto the whole science of bias,
02:23:57 because that’s something I spent years of my life on.
02:23:59 And my journey on the science of bias
02:24:03 started with the days of Philando Castile,
02:24:08 Eric Garner, that whole summer of 2016,
02:24:12 when we had this horrendous, horrendous situation
02:24:17 of black people being killed by the police,
02:24:20 where they shot before asking,
02:24:22 and people left to die in the most inhumane way
02:24:24 for the rest of us to watch from the social media.
02:24:28 That’s me.
02:24:29 That’s when my George Floyd moment happened.
02:24:31 Not later than four years ago,
02:24:32 and the whole world is like, you know.
02:24:35 So that sent me on a journey
02:24:38 of understanding what discrimination is and bias is.
02:24:43 And in a way, that’s the reason why I started this company
02:24:45 that I even called Skinny Skin.
02:24:47 That’s where it came from.
02:24:49 Again, criticized by creating.
02:24:51 I needed to understand what discrimination was.
02:24:53 How does it work?
02:24:55 Is it true what Kendi is saying?
02:24:56 Is it true what DAngelo is saying?
02:24:58 Is it true that it could be that your race
02:25:03 is just because of the skin color you happen to be born in?
02:25:06 Is it true?
02:25:08 Is it true?
02:25:09 I needed to know, because I was at a time of my life
02:25:12 where at some point, you know,
02:25:14 when those killings were happening,
02:25:16 it was so hard for me being a black person in this country.
02:25:21 And wondering,
02:25:27 I mean, what is this?
02:25:29 And what do we do with this?
02:25:33 Yeah, is it true?
02:25:34 How much discrimination am I operating under in the system?
02:25:38 All of that.
02:25:39 You need to understand the full characteristics of,
02:25:42 if you’re dreaming of making a big change
02:25:45 by building companies, you have to kind of intuit,
02:25:49 how much, what am I up against?
02:25:51 What am I up against, right?
02:25:52 And so this is why, you know,
02:25:53 spend all of this time on some of the work.
02:25:55 And then eventually I understood that discrimination,
02:25:58 if you wanted to understand it beyond,
02:26:01 it’s, you know, beyond the big lines of,
02:26:04 especially the clickbait lines
02:26:06 would make it very black and white.
02:26:08 Then I had to really take a moment and I spent time,
02:26:11 you know, with a world of brain scientists,
02:26:13 with behavioral psychologists,
02:26:16 with evolutionary biologists.
02:26:18 We have all of this ecosystem, but together form
02:26:21 what one might call the science of bias.
02:26:25 And especially I came across the work
02:26:28 of this team of scientists at the University of,
02:26:31 I think it’s Wisconsin,
02:26:33 and they’re the only ones who made sense
02:26:36 in this sea of nonsense back then.
02:26:40 And this article was in Politico,
02:26:43 and it was saying something that I could relate to it.
02:26:47 And eventually what I learned was,
02:26:50 and this part comes from the evolutionary biologist people,
02:26:54 they in a way tell you that right around age three,
02:26:58 can happen sooner or later,
02:26:59 because you know, we’re all different,
02:27:01 but you go from this person who has to rely
02:27:04 on these other people, usually your parents, to stay alive,
02:27:07 to be fed, to be housed, to be in your diaper change,
02:27:10 all of that stuff, right?
02:27:12 To now, something is kicking in.
02:27:15 Where you have to, in order for you to survive,
02:27:21 and this is all wired in,
02:27:23 so you don’t even understand it consciously,
02:27:25 as I’m saying it now,
02:27:27 where in order for you to survive,
02:27:29 in order for you to go from this state of dependency
02:27:32 to the next stage and more and more and more,
02:27:35 you’re gonna have to develop this ability
02:27:37 to make sense of the world.
02:27:39 And what’s making sense of a world
02:27:41 at its most basic level means is,
02:27:43 can you determine if a situation
02:27:46 or a person is good or bad for you?
02:27:49 Failure, and you need to be able to do so ever so quickly,
02:27:54 because failure to be able to do that
02:27:56 means that you might not be alive the next second.
02:28:00 See, it’s so wired in.
02:28:02 So this process is starting to kick in.
02:28:06 And at that point,
02:28:07 your brain is gonna be your best ally for that.
02:28:09 And what the brain is gonna do is it’s gonna help you,
02:28:12 and the way the brain works is through,
02:28:15 it works with, it’s all wired for efficiency.
02:28:19 And the way it goes for efficiency is through automation,
02:28:24 meaning that every time it has computed,
02:28:25 and you probably know these things way better than me,
02:28:27 every time it has computed one algorithm,
02:28:30 it doesn’t want to do it again.
02:28:33 It’s almost like this, okay, got it, stored, stored, right?
02:28:37 And then it adds maybe some little levels of complexity to it,
02:28:40 but it has to be something new,
02:28:41 meaning the new level of complexity
02:28:43 for it to even be willing to reconsider.
02:28:45 Otherwise you have, so then all of a sudden
02:28:47 what you have is these neurons in the back of your head,
02:28:50 and they have created pathways, right?
02:28:53 So, and every time neurons have created pathway
02:28:56 among themselves, because basically they’re attached,
02:29:00 and here is the pathway,
02:29:01 well, this pathway in the world of,
02:29:03 in the world of science of bias, it’s a habit.
02:29:08 In general, it’s a habit when they form two pathways,
02:29:10 when they form a pathway, it’s a habit.
02:29:12 So if we’re willing to talk about unconscious bias,
02:29:16 because of course it’s very different
02:29:18 from somebody who tells me to my face,
02:29:21 there’s no world in which you or I could ever be equal,
02:29:26 because you’re black and I’m white,
02:29:27 you’re a woman, I’m a man, this, this and that,
02:29:30 that people like that, again, 1% of psychopaths in our world,
02:29:35 they’re out there, unfortunately,
02:29:37 by the time they do nasty things, it’s pretty horrible,
02:29:39 and that’s what all we hear about,
02:29:41 but I’m talking mostly about the rest of us.
02:29:42 Remember when I told you that most of us are good people,
02:29:45 bumbling along, making it up as we’re going,
02:29:47 and that’s why I have compassion for human nature.
02:29:50 So, but really, in the morning when I wake up,
02:29:53 do you really think that I’m waking up and thinking,
02:29:55 how am I gonna go kill?
02:29:56 How am I gonna kill?
02:29:57 How am I gonna kill?
02:29:58 And I wake up and thinking, how am I gonna go kill?
02:30:00 How am I gonna go kill Lex?
02:30:01 That Lex guy needs to go down, he’s a man, he’s a,
02:30:04 don’t take me wrong, I’m sure there are some women
02:30:05 who feel like that, but I’m not one of them,
02:30:07 and I do think a majority of us are not, whatever.
02:30:10 But you know, in the morning I’m waking up,
02:30:11 I’m just like, gee, can I get my tea?
02:30:16 Oh, my dog is not looking okay today.
02:30:18 You know, we’ve got, right?
02:30:22 It’s a lot going on, and so you’re using these kind of,
02:30:26 just like you said, brilliantly,
02:30:27 it has a bunch of simplifications that’s built up,
02:30:30 and it uses those simplifications to get through the day.
02:30:32 To get through the day, exactly.
02:30:34 So then here you are, needing to make sense of a world,
02:30:37 and then the brain is your best ally in that.
02:30:39 The way it’s gonna do it is through efficiency,
02:30:41 efficiency done through automation.
02:30:43 So every time it thinks it’s figured something out,
02:30:46 it’s never gonna think about it again,
02:30:47 so that’s how you build all of these habits
02:30:49 of unconscious bias, because everything,
02:30:52 so it’s somewhere along the line,
02:30:54 you come up with the information
02:30:58 that black man walking around with a hoodie equals danger.
02:31:01 So later, what do you see?
02:31:04 Whether it’s Lex or my gut, I’m walking in the dark alley,
02:31:07 I see a black man with a hoodie,
02:31:09 maybe I’m gonna run away
02:31:10 because I’ve been given that information.
02:31:12 So the best way to think about it is the brain is a hardware,
02:31:16 and the software it runs on is, what do you call it?
02:31:21 Is a cultural imprint.
02:31:24 All of this information that we’re getting
02:31:26 from the Disney movies that you’re reading,
02:31:28 telling you that damsels are to be saved by the prince
02:31:30 and all of that stuff, and girls wear pink and all, whatever.
02:31:34 You watch the movies, and all the movies,
02:31:36 whenever you watch images about Africa,
02:31:38 they’re talking to you about the blood diamonds,
02:31:39 or they’re talking to you about slavery,
02:31:40 or they’re talking to you about this,
02:31:41 and then no wonder you walk away
02:31:42 thinking that all the ills of Africa are caused
02:31:44 because of resource extraction, the diamonds,
02:31:47 or they’re always fighting each other,
02:31:49 look at Idi Amin in the movie,
02:31:52 or slavery all the time, you walk away and this is it.
02:31:56 And we all programmed along the same lines,
02:31:58 see that’s the beauty of it.
02:31:59 All of us are, because even some black people
02:32:02 who are gonna claim that they didn’t visit up
02:32:04 when they registered, really?
02:32:06 So the truth, so then when I learned all of this,
02:32:08 I’m like, wow, this concept of if you’ve got the brain,
02:32:11 you’ve got biases, it comes with the territory,
02:32:14 that makes sense.
02:32:16 Now, it doesn’t mean we can’t transcend
02:32:19 that function of a brain and that we should transcend it.
02:32:24 But I think it’s very important
02:32:25 because once you understand that,
02:32:27 a little bit more peace is created among us
02:32:30 because this is not about a black and white,
02:32:32 or a yellow and green issue,
02:32:34 it’s about we are human issue.
02:32:36 And these are part of things we develop to stay around.
02:32:42 Just like we no longer have to rely on this fear of flight,
02:32:47 like ability of a brain because bears over there
02:32:52 start running and running fast, right?
02:32:54 Today, where are the bears?
02:32:55 Show me where they are.
02:32:56 But we have kept this tendency to go for fear of flight.
02:33:02 I don’t know how they say it.
02:33:03 And so we have this courtesan done by the stress,
02:33:07 stress triggers that back in the days,
02:33:09 we have a stress trigger, we run,
02:33:11 and it’s all expelled out.
02:33:14 But today we get triggers
02:33:15 and we don’t know what to do with it
02:33:17 because where do we run to?
02:33:18 What do we do?
02:33:19 The bear is not even here.
02:33:21 So same thing here with that.
02:33:23 And so then you realize there’s this whole thing
02:33:25 that is now what you understand
02:33:28 is that this problem is not about anti racism BS,
02:33:31 but it is about can each one of us
02:33:34 do the work where the work is needed,
02:33:36 which is we look inside.
02:33:38 Can we go for this work of deprogrammation?
02:33:42 This concept of a mindful practice
02:33:45 of undoing the habit of bias.
02:33:49 And that doesn’t necessarily have to do
02:33:52 with a simple categorization of black and white.
02:33:55 It’s all kinds of biases.
02:33:56 It’s about everything.
02:33:57 It’s about everything.
02:33:58 And when I started on that journey
02:34:00 and my friend back then built this practice
02:34:03 of undoing your habit of unconscious bias,
02:34:08 we had all types of people come and say,
02:34:11 wow, I discovered that my bias is against larger people.
02:34:16 And I’m more like, what do you mean?
02:34:17 Well, I think it seems to me like I felt
02:34:21 that larger people maybe are dumb.
02:34:24 No, we heard things and you don’t judge.
02:34:28 Yeah.
02:34:28 You don’t judge.
02:34:29 And you see it’s at every level.
02:34:33 I don’t know, like there’s even this one friend,
02:34:35 she was like, when I looked into the whole dating thing,
02:34:37 I absolutely didn’t want to date the Asian men
02:34:40 because her mind was into some stereotypes
02:34:43 about the size of whatever.
02:34:45 And she was like, no.
02:34:47 But you see, once you start,
02:34:50 because there’s this whole thing of,
02:34:51 it’s the five step thing, bias awareness.
02:34:54 This, basically at this level,
02:34:57 what you’re doing is you’re learning
02:34:59 to spot the biases in our culture,
02:35:02 because that’s where the cultural imprint comes from.
02:35:04 You’re watching this movie and you’re realizing,
02:35:05 just like I said, wow, gee, I realized once again,
02:35:08 the black person is portrayed like the fog of a movie.
02:35:12 Or, you know, the Latina lady,
02:35:15 this is how she’s been portrayed.
02:35:16 And you see it everywhere.
02:35:17 Even the NPR, NPR is happening,
02:35:19 like you’re listening to something like NPR.
02:35:21 It’s gotta be more liberal than that.
02:35:23 And this gentleman is asking these two candidates,
02:35:26 one of them is a woman, political candidates,
02:35:27 the other one is a man.
02:35:29 I’m hearing him asking the lady a question
02:35:31 that I know he’s not gonna ask the man and he didn’t ask her.
02:35:33 He said, how do you balance your race with a family?
02:35:40 Does a man not have a family?
02:35:41 Right there, you see, it’s very subtle.
02:35:46 But you see, but because now my mind is kind of trained
02:35:48 to see things, I’m like, interesting.
02:35:51 Or like when the media just says,
02:35:53 froze climate change issue on something
02:35:57 without even the choice of words.
02:35:59 So it’s pretty much everywhere.
02:36:01 You open a book everywhere.
02:36:03 The interesting thing though,
02:36:05 I mean, even that man, woman example,
02:36:08 is I think it’s really powerful
02:36:11 to bring that bias to the surface,
02:36:13 but not let that lead to kind of fear and paralysis.
02:36:18 You should almost, I mean, that’s where humor is,
02:36:20 make fun of it, bring it to the surface,
02:36:23 like acknowledge the fact that those things
02:36:25 are a part of the conversation.
02:36:27 And a lot of them are, it is, it’s a cultural imprint
02:36:32 because it’s part of culture.
02:36:33 And that might be, there could be,
02:36:34 I grew up in the Soviet Union
02:36:36 where the gender roles were stronger than in other places.
02:36:40 And that’s part of the culture.
02:36:41 We have to acknowledge that this is how,
02:36:44 this is affecting how I think.
02:36:46 We might like how that works, we might not,
02:36:49 but we have to acknowledge it and not get,
02:36:52 make it part of humor, make fun of yourself,
02:36:54 all that kind of stuff.
02:36:55 That’s the thing.
02:36:56 And so that’s why this first step is bias awareness.
02:37:00 So you get, you train yourself, oh yeah, okay,
02:37:02 that was one or it’s, you know, and it’s about,
02:37:05 it’s in you, we’re talking about you, we’re not.
02:37:07 And then from there, you’re like replace the bias,
02:37:11 like bias replacement.
02:37:13 Then it is where you practice the empathy.
02:37:17 You’re like, gee, wow, I wonder how I would feel
02:37:19 every day I walk into a store
02:37:21 and the guy thinks he should be following me
02:37:22 because maybe I might steal something because I’m black.
02:37:25 Because once you try that,
02:37:27 to put yourself in the other person’s shoes,
02:37:28 all of a sudden something else starts to click.
02:37:31 And then from there, you go on to making connection.
02:37:36 Then you’re making a connection
02:37:37 and then things start to change because now you know,
02:37:42 you’re making, then you make cultural immersion.
02:37:45 So this is where we had some people like this one woman,
02:37:47 she was very quite, very feminist oriented.
02:37:51 And she had an issue with women wearing the hijab.
02:37:56 And because for her it was like, how come you,
02:37:58 how come, how come you just lower, you know,
02:38:02 like how come you’re accepting this demeaning of yourself,
02:38:06 not understanding everything else that comes with it.
02:38:09 But through, as she understood that she even had that bias,
02:38:13 then she went on through all the different processes.
02:38:15 And then eventually when comes the next step,
02:38:18 cultural immersion, she started going to the mosque
02:38:21 during Ramadan when the Muslims are doing, you know,
02:38:24 they’re, it’s the holy month of, you know, fasting
02:38:27 and then we break at night.
02:38:29 And she started understanding very different things.
02:38:32 And eventually happens the last step that happens naturally,
02:38:35 making a true, real, genuine connection.
02:38:38 And this is where friendships happen.
02:38:40 This is where that’s it, your bias can go home now
02:38:43 because it has been challenged with reality
02:38:46 and understanding.
02:38:47 And so for me, that is what I was after.
02:38:51 And then, but then the world was just like,
02:38:53 we don’t want to be told we’re part of a problem.
02:38:55 So, but I still reckon that it is the type of mindfulness,
02:38:59 type of practice that’s going to need to happen.
02:39:00 And it’s one that’s very internal to you.
02:39:04 It is not, and it happens, everybody at their own pace.
02:39:08 So all of this, I take it back to the racism,
02:39:13 the question you were asking me.
02:39:16 Does racism exist?
02:39:17 Yes, it does.
02:39:18 Is it going to stop me from doing anything I want to do?
02:39:20 No.
02:39:21 Is it going to make it harder?
02:39:21 No.
02:39:22 But this is where, for anybody who is serious
02:39:27 about making sure, about fighting racism,
02:39:33 I think the only job you have to do is to make sure
02:39:39 that people keep their sense of self agency
02:39:43 and B, can you help provide people with the tools
02:39:47 to stand up?
02:39:48 So this is why I have so much respect for Van Jones.
02:39:52 People like Van Jones,
02:39:54 although I disagree with him on so many things,
02:39:56 but people like Ms. Alice Johnson,
02:40:00 she was pardoned by President Trump
02:40:02 through the work of people like Van Jones
02:40:05 and Kim Kardashian and others.
02:40:08 They all joined forces.
02:40:09 This is a case where people of,
02:40:11 and those folks then went on to combine forces furthermore,
02:40:16 no regard given to their political belongings.
02:40:21 They said, if the issue is criminal justice reform,
02:40:25 then anybody who stands for it has to come together.
02:40:29 And so what they did in this situation
02:40:31 with what they’re doing,
02:40:34 criminal justice reform in my mind
02:40:37 is a valid action to fight racism in my mind.
02:40:43 Because what are you doing there?
02:40:44 You’re trying to get people out of jail
02:40:47 who really have no business being there.
02:40:49 And also when you have people like Bishop Omar
02:40:52 and the people, he passed away, unfortunately,
02:40:55 but today we have Anton Lucky,
02:40:57 who was in jail for having killed his cousin.
02:41:01 He had started,
02:41:04 I think he started the gang in South Dallas.
02:41:08 So we’re talking really tough guy
02:41:10 who was reading the wrong side of the equation.
02:41:13 And then in jail, literally he found Plato,
02:41:16 the cave and all that.
02:41:17 So today these people, I’m like,
02:41:21 why don’t we hear more about them?
02:41:22 The urban specialists.
02:41:23 Because these people,
02:41:25 it’s not about the anti racism crap of Candy O’Donoghue,
02:41:28 I’ll say it again, until the cows come home,
02:41:30 but it is about, we go where help is needed.
02:41:33 We go in urban, inner city,
02:41:37 inner city, black inner city neighborhoods
02:41:40 and block by block we change the culture.
02:41:43 And they say it like that, it’s their words.
02:41:45 These are African American people
02:41:47 who have as many rights as anybody else
02:41:48 to talk about their own culture.
02:41:50 And they will tell you, we have to change the culture.
02:41:53 I have some videos like that on my YouTube
02:41:55 with Bishop Omar.
02:41:57 What these people are doing is what we need to do.
02:41:59 Bishop will explain and say,
02:42:01 sometimes people are their feet and feet
02:42:05 deep down in the mud.
02:42:07 And what we have to do is to try to pull them up.
02:42:11 And you cannot say you didn’t pull them up
02:42:13 because we’re not seeing their head out yet,
02:42:15 but how much progress have they made from the bottom
02:42:18 to where they are now and keep going.
02:42:22 So what I see these people doing,
02:42:24 you see, I have so much,
02:42:26 I love and respect Glen Lowry and company,
02:42:29 and Ian Rove and all of those guys.
02:42:30 I love them.
02:42:31 I love a lot of the things that they say.
02:42:36 This whole concept of personal responsibility,
02:42:37 we don’t know that.
02:42:38 But I’m just like, at some point,
02:42:40 it also needs to be matched up with real actions.
02:42:43 And that’s what the people like Anton Lucky,
02:42:46 urban specialist, Alice Johnson are doing.
02:42:50 They’re going where it’s hard.
02:42:51 Alice Johnson is getting people out of jail
02:42:52 every single day, literally.
02:42:54 And then people like Anton Lucky and his team
02:42:57 are giving them the tools to live the gang life,
02:43:01 to be better people, to go for a life of redemption.
02:43:05 This is happening right now.
02:43:07 But what I find is they’re not getting
02:43:08 the bulk of the attention.
02:43:10 But anybody who’s serious about this is why,
02:43:14 how I would love to see people do anti racism
02:43:17 is help lift people up for real.
02:43:21 Action.
02:43:22 Support school choice.
02:43:26 Support school choice.
02:43:28 Black mamas, they know what’s going on.
02:43:30 And when they tell you we want school choice,
02:43:32 they know what to talk about.
02:43:33 They’re not idiots.
02:43:35 Especially at the local level.
02:43:36 Yes.
02:43:37 Helping them at the local level.
02:43:38 Yes.
02:43:39 So help them make sure that they can take their kids
02:43:42 out of these public schools that are doing
02:43:45 horrendous things to them.
02:43:47 You know, Miss Virginia, watch that movie.
02:43:50 How could you not support black moms in this country
02:43:55 to take the kids to safety when it comes to education?
02:43:57 How come not?
02:43:59 That’s what I want to see happen.
02:44:00 And not like some, yeah, let’s go to some classrooms
02:44:04 and everybody’s white.
02:44:05 You go over here.
02:44:06 Everybody’s a next date.
02:44:07 You go over here.
02:44:08 And kids, let us tell you about this.
02:44:10 No, no, no, no.
02:44:13 As a black person, I don’t want you to do any of that crap.
02:44:17 Let me grow my wings.
02:44:19 Yeah.
02:44:20 If you want, help put some fuel behind them
02:44:22 and let me take my flight.
02:44:23 That’s all I’m asking for.
02:44:24 That’s the only way for you to be part of a racism battle
02:44:30 if that’s what you think is the most important battle
02:44:32 of our life.
02:44:33 That’s it.
02:44:34 That’s what I have to say about that.
02:44:35 And so for me, I’m keeping my head very straight.
02:44:37 It’s about what enables black people to thrive.
02:44:45 I don’t need for you to be an activist on my behalf.
02:44:48 No, because when you’re doing that,
02:44:50 you’re doing exactly what you’ve been doing to us
02:44:52 black people in Africa our whole life.
02:44:55 I don’t need your white savior complex
02:44:56 because that’s what anti racism is.
02:44:58 White savior complex.
02:44:59 That stuff doesn’t work.
02:45:00 It only works to make you feel better
02:45:02 about how superior you are to me.
02:45:04 But it does nothing, absolutely nothing
02:45:06 to change my everyday life.
02:45:08 If it is not, if it is at least in the African side
02:45:11 to actually even change my,
02:45:14 turn me into somebody who’s waiting for handouts.
02:45:17 So I would encourage people to really,
02:45:20 those people who are really serious
02:45:22 about wanting to be part of a solution.
02:45:24 And I know there are many out there
02:45:26 for the love of God and everything that’s out there
02:45:28 and we care about, stop.
02:45:31 It’s about, think about what’s gonna enable people.
02:45:39 Maybe the word is wrongly chosen,
02:45:40 but know what I’m talking about.
02:45:42 Give them the freedom to spread their wings.
02:45:44 Yes, give a person, teach a person how to fish
02:45:49 and don’t give them a fish.
02:45:50 When you’re putting your stupid signs on the lawn
02:45:53 with Black Lives Matter and all that crap,
02:45:55 you’re not helping.
02:45:55 And when you’re buying one more anti racism book
02:45:58 or as a company, financing one more DEI,
02:46:04 if it done along those lines, I think we’ve got a problem.
02:46:06 Yeah.
02:46:07 So you do think that the efforts of diversity,
02:46:11 equity and inclusion are often not effective.
02:46:16 Not only are they not effective,
02:46:17 but they also backfire and there are reports on all of this.
02:46:22 And at the end of the day, it makes sense.
02:46:25 It makes sense.
02:46:26 So for me, I am very, very glad
02:46:29 that people have developed an enlightenment about this.
02:46:35 Very happy about that, very.
02:46:37 But let us not keep going
02:46:39 for the easy perceived solution to problems.
02:46:44 Again, they’ve done this to us, the poor people of Africa.
02:46:47 They thought the solution was to give.
02:46:51 It does not work.
02:46:53 And then they say, oh, we’re gonna do social entrepreneurship
02:46:59 on you, Tom shoes, buy one pair of shoes
02:47:00 and we give one pair of shoes
02:47:01 to some people in poor countries.
02:47:04 Then guess what happened to us?
02:47:07 You know, in the town where we operate in Senegal,
02:47:09 where I have my little manufacturing,
02:47:12 we have 2000 little mom and pop businesses.
02:47:15 And guess what they happen to be in Lex?
02:47:18 Shoemakers, right?
02:47:21 So every shoemakers, each one of them hires
02:47:24 at least five, 15 people.
02:47:26 Do the math, family businesses.
02:47:30 Guess what happens to them the day the Tom shoes truck
02:47:34 shows up with bunch of free shoes.
02:47:39 Yeah.
02:47:39 Who can compete against free?
02:47:42 Now, all of these people,
02:47:43 little by little gonna have to close their shops
02:47:45 because who can compete against free
02:47:46 because Tom shoes dumping all of his shoes on them.
02:47:49 And then they go out of business
02:47:50 and now instead of helping anybody,
02:47:53 you actually sent all the kids
02:47:54 who depended on these adults working in these places.
02:47:59 Now they have to join the rank of kids
02:48:00 who need to be given shoes
02:48:01 because you took their parents ability
02:48:05 to make money through their wages, buy them shoes.
02:48:11 You see?
02:48:12 So first they said, we just have to give.
02:48:14 So that was primarily, you know, the charity business.
02:48:19 And you still have foreign aid business going on.
02:48:22 So we just need to give.
02:48:24 And then the social entrepreneurs came in place,
02:48:27 but I’m like, the only person for this business is good
02:48:29 is for Blake McCarthy, you know, the founder of Tom shoes.
02:48:32 But other than that, I’m not sure really seeing
02:48:34 who else is winning from this.
02:48:36 And then they, and so today my whole thing is
02:48:41 we got a challenge to have a mind for the poor
02:48:46 or to have a mind for the lesser fortunate,
02:48:49 maybe in this country, it is easy.
02:48:52 And lesser fortunate, you know,
02:48:53 for anybody that you feel like is being trampled upon
02:48:57 because of something,
02:48:58 maybe it’s because of economic circumstances,
02:49:00 or maybe it’s race in this case, whatever.
02:49:04 To have a heart for the lesser fortunate among us,
02:49:08 for whatever reason, that’s easy.
02:49:12 But to have a mind for them, that’s the challenge.
02:49:16 Let me ask you a difficult question.
02:49:18 Yeah.
02:49:19 As if we were not already asking difficult questions.
02:49:22 The president of Senegal, Macky Saw,
02:49:26 is also now the chair of the African Union.
02:49:29 He met with the president of Vladimir Putin on June 3rd.
02:49:35 I think primarily was to discuss food security.
02:49:40 Africa seems to be split halfway on their perspective
02:49:45 in the war in Ukraine.
02:49:46 So broadly speaking, what do you think about this?
02:49:51 First of all, the geopolitics of Africa
02:49:54 and the geopolitical relationship of Africa
02:49:58 with the rest of the world and this current conflict
02:50:03 with the war in Ukraine.
02:50:05 What are your thoughts there?
02:50:06 Well, you’ve seen that many countries
02:50:09 when it was time to vote, some of them abstained,
02:50:12 which in a way says something.
02:50:15 I think for the Africans today,
02:50:17 especially as represented by the African Union,
02:50:20 because not all countries fall along the same lines,
02:50:23 I feel like, again, we’re back to way back.
02:50:27 For the longest time, the West tries to tell us what to do.
02:50:30 They decide for us.
02:50:32 And here, there’s trouble,
02:50:37 meaning there’s definitely a rift, major one,
02:50:42 between most of the Western world
02:50:44 as represented by Europe and America primarily,
02:50:48 and you have Australia and all that.
02:50:50 And then they’re saying,
02:50:54 I think this is more or less an attempt
02:50:56 to stand on their own as well.
02:51:03 It’s like, don’t tell us what to do as usual.
02:51:07 You always rope us in with, when it makes sense for you,
02:51:09 you try to rope us in,
02:51:10 and then we’re left hanging on our own.
02:51:13 So this goes back to the sentiment
02:51:15 you were talking about earlier.
02:51:16 It’s been challenging for me to watch this
02:51:22 because remember, I have one foot also,
02:51:26 because there’s what I get to see and hear
02:51:29 from being in the Western world,
02:51:31 but there’s also what I get to see and hear
02:51:34 from when I’m back home.
02:51:37 So I wear all hats.
02:51:39 And I think this is a situation
02:51:41 where the African Union and African nations in general
02:51:47 are saying, this is a case where almost like,
02:51:52 you guys are fighting, you guys are fighting.
02:51:56 Maybe for once, we have to watch out for ourselves.
02:51:59 Yeah, there’s a sense in which this is the embodiment
02:52:04 sort of abstaining from a vote on the war in Ukraine
02:52:09 is a political embodiment of a resistance
02:52:12 to the influence of the West.
02:52:14 It’s not about the war between,
02:52:16 whatever you guys are fighting.
02:52:18 It’s saying, we’re not going to let this particular empire
02:52:24 that seems to be at the top right now,
02:52:26 which is the United States empire in Europe,
02:52:30 to dominate our political discourse,
02:52:33 our geopolitical considerations.
02:52:36 It’s almost like, no, we’re not touching this.
02:52:38 Yeah, especially that given usually.
02:52:40 So when they need us, again, for influence,
02:52:43 which means more power,
02:52:45 oh, you guys vote the same way we do.
02:52:47 And when it’s all over and they go back to spreading,
02:52:52 they go back to, how do you say that?
02:52:54 They go back to exchanging and sharing between themselves
02:52:59 the goodies of their Halloween collection.
02:53:03 We’re no longer, we’re not there
02:53:05 when the goodies are being shared.
02:53:07 So I think it’s definitely one of those situations.
02:53:11 But for me, it still is hard
02:53:14 because I watch everything that’s going on
02:53:18 and it’s going to be complicated,
02:53:23 the ramifications of all of this.
02:53:25 I would like to see our African leaders also,
02:53:28 what they’re doing is clear,
02:53:30 but this is a place where I’m also tempted to say,
02:53:35 yes and.
02:53:39 Yes to the reasons you’re advancing right now,
02:53:44 we don’t want to be always siding because we’re tired.
02:53:47 We’re tired of always being dragged around
02:53:49 and taken for granted and you vote our way.
02:53:53 Come on guys, when you need us,
02:53:55 we’re great and everything is good.
02:53:57 And then when it’s time to go and share the goodies,
02:53:59 we don’t exist anymore.
02:54:01 And you actually go for policies that go against us.
02:54:04 But in this situation though,
02:54:07 I would like to still see us do the right thing.
02:54:09 In my case, I was not very happy to see us going
02:54:15 and more or less begging for,
02:54:20 what do you call it?
02:54:21 Cereals, oh, please let the cereals make it.
02:54:26 So at least we get them and we don’t starve.
02:54:29 I can understand why a president would say something
02:54:32 like that or try to negotiate something like that.
02:54:36 But when it comes to an African president having to do that
02:54:41 with a non African president, I’m sorry,
02:54:45 but for me, it’s too close to begging.
02:54:47 Listen, it’s hard to be a leader,
02:54:49 it’s such a difficult dance because in some sense,
02:54:52 sort of the flip side of that is you’re creating a market,
02:54:59 a geopolitical market of saying,
02:55:01 we’re willing to sit down at the table with America,
02:55:05 with European leaders, with Russian leaders, with China,
02:55:10 and we’re gonna let you guys convince us
02:55:13 who we should collaborate with.
02:55:17 And that’s what sort of great nations
02:55:21 and groups of nations do.
02:55:23 Now, there’s a cynical, of course,
02:55:25 a dark perspective on that because what’s in that game
02:55:29 played by leaders, the people that hurt,
02:55:32 people of Ukraine hurt, people of Africa can hurt.
02:55:36 People of Russia.
02:55:37 People of Russia can hurt, people of China,
02:55:40 people of United States, but it is the way of the world.
02:55:44 And to earn, you have to earn respect
02:55:49 and sometimes earning respect leads to the suffering
02:55:52 of many.
02:55:53 Well, but except in this case, yes to all of that.
02:55:56 And the reason why I’m actually upset
02:55:59 with going and being like, oh, can you let at least
02:56:02 the boats that are supposed to come to Africa
02:56:05 full of cereals come over, the wheat and all that?
02:56:08 It’s just like, look, Africa has the highest land
02:56:11 that you can do agriculture on.
02:56:13 Yes.
02:56:14 You know?
02:56:14 We have a larger surface, such surface in the world.
02:56:19 Why is this not a time for us to try
02:56:21 to win ourselves off of cereals that we don’t necessarily
02:56:24 have on the ground?
02:56:26 But no, let us go and plead.
02:56:30 Don’t beg, create instead.
02:56:31 Create instead, exactly.
02:56:33 This should have been, you know, just like how
02:56:35 the rest of the world when COVID happened
02:56:38 and China had to close off for different reasons
02:56:40 and since then has not, you know, completely reopened
02:56:42 and people have started to realize, wow,
02:56:44 we’ve got too much, we’re too dependent on China
02:56:48 for a lot of what we need.
02:56:50 So we’re gonna have to bring back some production
02:56:53 to the US, the Europeans are doing the same, all of that.
02:56:56 This should have been a time for African leaders
02:56:59 to be like, we need to be serious now
02:57:02 about, you know, food security.
02:57:05 And maybe the stuff that maybe don’t grow
02:57:08 under our climates necessarily,
02:57:10 can we work on coming up with different things?
02:57:12 Now I understand that it can take time,
02:57:14 but if I knew that that was happening at the same time
02:57:17 that we’re saying, oh, well, let the cereals come in,
02:57:20 maybe I would be a little bit easier with it.
02:57:22 But right now I’m just like,
02:57:23 is it gonna be the same business as usual?
02:57:25 And in this case, I’m just like, are we gonna go,
02:57:27 are we gonna keep going from one masa to another masa?
02:57:30 I mean, really?
02:57:32 The interesting aspect of all of this
02:57:35 is if we look at all of human history,
02:57:37 it’s possible that the 21st century is defined by Africa.
02:57:40 It will be.
02:57:41 And the young people, the huge number of young people,
02:57:45 it’s like the trajectory could be,
02:57:47 there’s so much possibility to define
02:57:49 the future of human civilization in Africa.
02:57:52 And I don’t mean sort of in the next 10 years,
02:57:55 I mean in the next 50 years.
02:57:59 So some people are concerned about overpopulation.
02:58:03 Some people are concerned about us dying out
02:58:06 as a human species.
02:58:07 And both of those people live in us.
02:58:12 Talk to me often about that.
02:58:13 I know, I know, I know, I know who they are.
02:58:19 What’s your, in Africa is at the center of this
02:58:22 because there is a vibrant, huge number,
02:58:26 probably over a billion people.
02:58:28 Yeah, we’re 1.3 billion people
02:58:30 and of those, one billion blacks.
02:58:33 I mean that, where do you land on that?
02:58:36 There is a reason why I say I’m haunted,
02:58:41 that I’m obsessed, that I’m monomaniacal
02:58:45 when it comes to the free markets
02:58:47 and that I have such a strong sense of urgency
02:58:50 to the point that literally it is affecting me.
02:58:53 And it has to do with the fact that yes,
02:58:56 you have the youngest region on earth
02:58:58 in terms of the age of its population
02:59:01 and the rate at which it’s growing demographic wise,
02:59:06 I am not willing to stay there and say,
02:59:10 it’s a curse for humanity,
02:59:12 but it will be a curse for humanity
02:59:15 if we don’t make sure that these people,
02:59:20 our youth gets to partake.
02:59:25 And what it takes to partake is not much.
02:59:29 So if the rest of the world thinks that
02:59:31 get to partake means you have to send more foreign aid,
02:59:35 you have to have more charity businesses,
02:59:38 I mean charity organizations sending stuff away,
02:59:42 of course, you’re almost thinking parasites.
02:59:46 I’m sorry to say it this way,
02:59:48 if this is what you’re thinking,
02:59:49 you’re seeing us as no more than parasites.
02:59:52 And if that’s what it’s gonna be,
02:59:55 I could see why some people might be worried about that.
02:59:59 Although humans should never be seen as parasites,
03:00:04 no matter, no matter, no matter.
03:00:07 But some people will go there.
03:00:09 Now, people are here.
03:00:14 What are we gonna do, dispose of them?
03:00:16 That’s not an option.
03:00:18 So the only option we have left
03:00:20 is to make sure that people partake.
03:00:22 And what partaking means is that
03:00:23 people get included in them
03:00:26 and are part of the systems that allow for human flourishing.
03:00:31 And it doesn’t, it’s not much.
03:00:33 In this case, it’s about,
03:00:35 can we be serious about the reforms?
03:00:38 So we have free market zones,
03:00:41 areas where people,
03:00:43 where the flourishing can start to take place.
03:00:48 The wealth that people will need to flourish,
03:00:52 they don’t need you to give it to them.
03:00:55 But it’s all about, can I let you fly?
03:00:58 And you will make it happen for you and also for me.
03:01:02 Every young African I see today,
03:01:05 I realize how stupid the rest of the world is
03:01:07 if they’re not supporting what I’m trying to talk about.
03:01:11 Cause even if you don’t wanna do it
03:01:13 because that’s the right thing to do,
03:01:14 which I think it is the right thing to do,
03:01:17 your selfishness, maybe engage your selfishness.
03:01:20 Cause this person right there,
03:01:21 remember I told you seven billion geniuses,
03:01:24 everybody came to this world
03:01:26 with a piece of solution to the human problem.
03:01:30 This person and that person and that person
03:01:34 hold something for me because I’m part of humanity.
03:01:37 This person might have a cure to a cancer
03:01:41 that might take my wife out, the wife I haven’t met yet.
03:01:44 But this kid right here has it inside.
03:01:48 And if I help this,
03:01:50 if I make sure that this kid gets a chance to flourish
03:01:52 and to manifest his genius or her genius,
03:01:56 that trickle down many years later,
03:01:59 comes straight back to serve me and the love of my life.
03:02:03 If we can’t see it any other way,
03:02:04 maybe let’s try to think about it that way.
03:02:07 Cause it becomes a very good proposition at that point.
03:02:10 So in this case, by 2050,
03:02:13 Lagos, Nigeria will be the largest city in the world.
03:02:16 The future is African, whether we want it or not.
03:02:19 But is it going to be an African future
03:02:22 where you have a youth being a ticking bomb?
03:02:27 Because they have not, there’s no hope.
03:02:30 They stay in poverty
03:02:32 because they belong to nations that don’t even understand
03:02:34 sometimes the importance of common law versus civil law.
03:02:39 Because they’re trapped in countries that don’t understand
03:02:43 that you need to make the legal framework
03:02:46 to provide for better economic freedom.
03:02:49 So you can unleash the genuineness, the awesomeness,
03:02:53 the ingenuity, the industrious side of your young people,
03:02:57 especially of your women,
03:02:59 so that they build all the wealth
03:03:01 that your nation is gonna need you to build.
03:03:03 And with it, the respect that comes from that.
03:03:06 See, we have a choice to make.
03:03:08 And this is why I feel so, so, so restless about this
03:03:12 at this point of my life.
03:03:14 We just lost George Hayite.
03:03:17 George Hayite is one of the few Africans that I knew
03:03:19 who put this out.
03:03:22 That’s who I learned from.
03:03:24 He’s gone.
03:03:25 And I feel a strong sense of urgency
03:03:29 to not only bring back to the table
03:03:32 that which he has been working on,
03:03:35 but to also make sure that it gets seen.
03:03:37 That’s why being here talking with you today,
03:03:40 it’s, you have no idea.
03:03:44 It’s, people ask, if someone like you could say,
03:03:48 what can I do?
03:03:49 You did more than you could ever imagine
03:03:52 by just allowing me to take this message to one more person.
03:03:57 And because if we do this,
03:04:00 the change is gonna happen somewhere down the line.
03:04:03 So.
03:04:04 Yeah, the ripple effects of all of that
03:04:04 on the unlocking the human potential.
03:04:07 It’s unbelievable.
03:04:08 All those people in Africa are building cool stuff,
03:04:12 amazing things.
03:04:13 Yes, yes, yes.
03:04:14 So some are gonna be built stuff,
03:04:15 others are gonna work on the reforms.
03:04:17 So we’re working on reforms, by the way.
03:04:19 I’m the head of the Africa Center for Prosperity
03:04:22 of the Atlas Network,
03:04:23 the largest organization in the world
03:04:26 working on taking down barriers of entry
03:04:27 for entrepreneurs around the world
03:04:29 in their respective countries.
03:04:31 So we’re doing great work there.
03:04:32 I basically, all the, obviously all the think tanks
03:04:36 we have in Africa right now, free market think tanks,
03:04:41 and we wanna promote more of them to come up.
03:04:43 And these are local solutions by local people
03:04:46 for their local problems, always.
03:04:48 That’s where we draw the line.
03:04:50 And so there, so we’re working on reforms primarily
03:04:55 and making people understand the free markets
03:04:57 and the importance of it.
03:05:00 But it is piecemeal legislation.
03:05:03 It takes time.
03:05:04 It is hard.
03:05:05 By the time you accomplish something here,
03:05:07 more crap has happened over here.
03:05:09 More laws have been pounded up
03:05:10 because you know how they fix a bad law most of the time.
03:05:13 Whether it’s in the US or somewhere else.
03:05:14 Put other laws to kind of undo the law from before,
03:05:17 but it keeps stacking up.
03:05:18 And before you know it,
03:05:20 where you should have one thing and it’s clear,
03:05:22 you have a hundred and they go against each other
03:05:24 and then it’s all, it’s worse.
03:05:26 So we have piecemeal legislation that’s happening.
03:05:28 Our teams are doing really amazing, fantastic work,
03:05:31 especially the team in Imani in Ghana.
03:05:33 We have a group in Burundi, in the Great Lakes.
03:05:37 I mean, people are doing amazing work, amazing work,
03:05:40 but we need to run faster.
03:05:42 So while we keep, we help them running faster,
03:05:45 we also have to unlock other things.
03:05:48 And right now I’m working
03:05:49 on one of my most craziest projects.
03:05:53 Something bold, radical, crazy for some people.
03:05:57 But I know we’re not crazy
03:05:58 because before us, Singapore has done it.
03:06:00 You know, Hong Kong has done it.
03:06:03 Latest, the most recent China with the SSEs,
03:06:05 the special economic zones,
03:06:09 some of the most radical free market zones in the world,
03:06:12 they’ve done it.
03:06:13 And oftentimes within a generation,
03:06:16 meaningful change start to happen, right?
03:06:19 So here, what I’m working on is this concept of,
03:06:23 some call it charter cities, Paul Romer,
03:06:27 others call it the free cities.
03:06:32 And I like to call it startup cities.
03:06:35 What these are is for us to think about,
03:06:37 okay, if piecemeal legislation takes forever,
03:06:40 while we have this demographic
03:06:43 that’s growing faster and faster in Africa,
03:06:46 there is a discrepancy here
03:06:47 between the progress we’re making
03:06:51 to set the right environment for business to prop up,
03:06:55 and how many more people are coming to life,
03:06:58 literally every day on the continent.
03:07:01 There’s a discrepancy here.
03:07:02 And so, the ticking bomb is going faster
03:07:05 than the progress we can make.
03:07:08 This is a problem.
03:07:09 So what some of us are working on
03:07:11 is this concept of a startup cities
03:07:12 and to say, piecemeal legislation takes too long.
03:07:17 How about we continue doing that work,
03:07:18 which is essential and critical,
03:07:20 but at the same time, can we think of zones,
03:07:23 and I like to call them also common law zones,
03:07:26 where we basically try to have within the country
03:07:31 an area where for business,
03:07:34 I’m not talking about family law or any of that stuff,
03:07:36 no one is touching your culture or anything like that,
03:07:38 but we’re just saying business wise,
03:07:40 an enclave where you have the best practices
03:07:44 from around the world, including yours,
03:07:46 in terms of what constitute a great business environment
03:07:50 and allow people in,
03:07:53 like you get in freely or nobody’s forcing you to go,
03:07:58 nobody’s forcing you to whatever.
03:08:00 So basically, you’re to think about
03:08:04 this rather unoccupied plot of land within a country,
03:08:09 think Dubai, on 110 acres of land,
03:08:12 Dubai is thinking that in their case,
03:08:16 they’re like, maybe they decided,
03:08:17 maybe Sharia law is not the best for business in their case.
03:08:20 And they said, they looked around and were like,
03:08:22 wow, but common law, especially British common law,
03:08:24 seems like a very good one.
03:08:26 So at that point, they decided for business only,
03:08:29 not family or anything like that,
03:08:31 which is gonna stand to Sharia or whatever.
03:08:33 And so they said, we are gonna bring in,
03:08:38 so they hired retired British common law judges
03:08:40 to educate the law and train the people under there.
03:08:44 And I’m oversimplifying, but at the end of the day,
03:08:47 within a generation,
03:08:49 Dubai became one of the top
03:08:53 international financial centers of the world.
03:08:55 It is what it is today.
03:08:58 And in the case of the African nations,
03:09:00 that zone can then spread.
03:09:02 Yes, it can not only spread, but maybe let’s say Senegal,
03:09:06 if Senegal was to go for this, here you have this one,
03:09:09 and then over there you have another zone.
03:09:11 And then what they start to do
03:09:12 is they’re not all modeled the same way,
03:09:14 because maybe this one is saying,
03:09:15 hey, we wanna attract more, I don’t know,
03:09:18 maybe we wanna attract more medical research, right?
03:09:22 This one is gonna be saying,
03:09:23 maybe we wanna attract more crypto,
03:09:26 or maybe it’s gonna be more like us,
03:09:27 we wanna be more about religious this or whatever.
03:09:29 You know what I mean?
03:09:30 So we wanted to fit more of this or that.
03:09:32 And just kind of give the basics, the grounds,
03:09:36 and then watch the magic happen on it, right?
03:09:40 And so this is what we’re working on.
03:09:43 And the hope there, because some people are like,
03:09:46 I know some people are like, you guys are crazy,
03:09:49 but hey, I’m like, no, it’s more or less the story
03:09:52 of the Asian tigers.
03:09:55 And most recently, most of China’s progress,
03:09:59 economically speaking, because some people might say,
03:10:01 well, you don’t want China, we’re developing, you see.
03:10:05 Even then I say, and it’s okay, you can always do better,
03:10:10 but we cannot deny what the magic
03:10:14 that they have accomplished, what they have accomplished
03:10:16 is nothing short of a miracle.
03:10:18 800 million people getting out of poverty
03:10:20 in such a short amount of time.
03:10:21 Yeah, exactly.
03:10:22 So it’s not, yeah, for the quality of life
03:10:25 and the majority of the Chinese population.
03:10:27 Yes, yes.
03:10:28 Does something like that happen without problems?
03:10:30 Of course not.
03:10:31 And so the next person to do something
03:10:33 just actually gets to learn from lessons,
03:10:36 from lessons, that’s all.
03:10:37 And leapfrog.
03:10:38 And leapfrog, and leapfrog, exactly.
03:10:40 So for me, this is a promise.
03:10:41 And the people are like, oh, but you guys are crazy.
03:10:44 But I’m like, just like with everything,
03:10:46 do you know how many attempts it took
03:10:47 before the first flight, the Wright brothers took off?
03:10:50 Do you know how many?
03:10:52 And that’s important.
03:10:54 You try, you crash, you try, you crash,
03:10:56 but each time you’re going up higher
03:10:59 and you want to get up for once, then you stay up longer.
03:11:04 And before you know it, you’re doing all types of things.
03:11:06 So here’s the same thing.
03:11:07 And I tell people, listen, all I need is one success story.
03:11:14 And then the sea change.
03:11:17 People don’t even wait for us.
03:11:19 Everybody.
03:11:20 But this is hard because it’s the first time.
03:11:24 But the good news is there are many groups
03:11:26 working on the continent.
03:11:28 There are some groups in Zambia.
03:11:31 There’s a zone there.
03:11:32 Folks are doing something like this in Nigeria.
03:11:35 We’re part of a project there in Nigeria.
03:11:37 The one that I’m most excited about,
03:11:39 I cannot disclose the name of the country yet.
03:11:41 But my god, I’m so excited by it.
03:11:44 And I just know, I just know, Lex,
03:11:46 it’s going to happen in our lifetime.
03:11:47 I hope so.
03:11:48 It’s a really powerful vision.
03:11:49 And it’s not being dramatic to say
03:11:52 that the future of humanity depends on your success,
03:11:57 that success in Africa.
03:11:59 It’s such an important continent.
03:12:02 It is.
03:12:02 In this century.
03:12:03 It’s the continent where everything started.
03:12:05 And I think it’s the continent where that continent has
03:12:09 to finally, finally, finally thrive.
03:12:11 We cannot, all of us, call ourselves an enlightened
03:12:16 society as a whole.
03:12:18 When you have such, when you have this,
03:12:21 it’s a humongous continent.
03:12:22 Have you seen the size of it?
03:12:24 You know?
03:12:25 Yeah.
03:12:26 It’s hard to fathom, actually.
03:12:28 Yeah.
03:12:29 Exactly.
03:12:30 And it has such ingenious people.
03:12:33 Sometimes I look at my people.
03:12:35 I have to tell you, I’m so proud of them,
03:12:41 and the young people, especially.
03:12:42 And you know, you would look at them.
03:12:44 And you know, somebody said sometimes one day,
03:12:47 and it was so true, they said, you know,
03:12:49 we’ve seen poverty other places.
03:12:52 But here, it is just, maybe somebody doesn’t have money,
03:12:56 but they have dignity.
03:12:58 And it’s true.
03:13:00 Yeah.
03:13:00 So everything else we can handle,
03:13:02 and we will handle.
03:13:03 You have to mark my word for this.
03:13:05 This is going to happen.
03:13:06 And our youth is amazing.
03:13:09 You should see them.
03:13:11 So full of creativity.
03:13:12 And it doesn’t matter.
03:13:13 You know, you were telling me, what makes you different?
03:13:15 Many things makes us all different.
03:13:16 You know, the Rwandans are very different from the West
03:13:19 Africans that we are.
03:13:21 Rwandans, for example, never dance with their hips.
03:13:24 They dance more like, you know, with this part of the body.
03:13:28 West Africans hips?
03:13:30 Us, it’s hips all over the place, all the time.
03:13:32 And it’s, you know, more jumping, stuff like that.
03:13:34 In Rwanda, you feel it’s more like, you know,
03:13:36 I mean, they remind me more of, you know, the ballet thing.
03:13:40 Rwandans have a sense where, you know,
03:13:42 they don’t eat, you know, so much in public.
03:13:45 It’s not very well.
03:13:46 It’s something you do.
03:13:47 Us, we are, the West Africans, we like to be loud.
03:13:50 We’re almost like the Italians of the continent.
03:13:53 And then the Rwandans are more like, you know, the Swiss stuff.
03:13:56 Actually, the country even looks like Switzerland.
03:13:58 I mean, we’re so different from one group to another.
03:14:00 Then you go to the Congo and you see these guys,
03:14:02 they’re so crazy.
03:14:03 We have a dress, I mean, les sapeurs.
03:14:05 So we are a very different bunch.
03:14:08 But you know what I love about us,
03:14:10 what I love about my people?
03:14:18 We are the manifestation of what resiliency means.
03:14:21 And so everything we need is there.
03:14:26 Everything we need is there.
03:14:29 I will say that there’s nothing wrong with the seed.
03:14:32 Everything that’s wrong with us
03:14:35 is that pot that we put around us.
03:14:39 So we’re tired of being bonsai people.
03:14:43 We need to be the tallest trees in the forest
03:14:45 that we were designed to be.
03:14:47 And so…
03:14:48 And that can be fixed.
03:14:49 And that can be fixed.
03:14:50 And that’s the beauty of it.
03:14:51 And that’s why I am so, I’m almost dizzy with,
03:14:54 I get dizzy with hope.
03:14:57 I know my history.
03:14:59 I know my economics, my fellow humans and all of that.
03:15:03 And we know that there’s an unfailing recipe.
03:15:08 And when it comes to that recipe,
03:15:10 we have the hardest part of it.
03:15:13 The one missing ingredient, which is the free markets.
03:15:18 As we go around and talk and people start to understand
03:15:23 and each country tries to figure out,
03:15:25 okay, where do we go there from here?
03:15:29 I know that I will die with my continent
03:15:35 having taken the right shift for a turn.
03:15:38 I don’t have to see where it ends
03:15:40 because I cannot in my wildest dream
03:15:42 imagine where it’s gonna end.
03:15:44 But I know it’s gonna be, yeah.
03:15:47 So my only job is to get this message out
03:15:53 and then let my people do with it what they wanna do.
03:15:56 That’s all.
03:15:57 Yeah, the scale of impact is just boundless.
03:15:59 It’s kind of cool.
03:16:00 I mean, sometimes we think about individual problems
03:16:02 and how do we solve them?
03:16:03 We look up at certain individuals,
03:16:05 like the, I don’t know, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.
03:16:08 But it’s so much more powerful to just,
03:16:12 without knowing what they will do,
03:16:15 give the freedom to millions,
03:16:19 to hundreds of millions of people
03:16:22 to do whatever the hell they’re gonna do.
03:16:23 Can you imagine?
03:16:25 Can you just imagine?
03:16:26 It’s truly, truly exciting.
03:16:27 So in that sense, the work you’re doing,
03:16:30 it’s unimaginable the kind of impact it would have.
03:16:33 Now, going back to that hard moment,
03:16:36 this dark place you went in your mind
03:16:38 and your personal life story, you lost your husband.
03:16:41 What gave you strength during that time?
03:16:44 What were the places you went to your mind
03:16:49 in terms of personal struggle,
03:16:52 in terms of maybe even depression
03:16:54 or these kinds of struggles?
03:16:57 I think for me, when my person passed away,
03:17:03 I went to,
03:17:08 maybe my friends could see what was going on,
03:17:10 maybe they couldn’t, I don’t know.
03:17:11 But on the surface, I looked like I was fine.
03:17:14 But what happened is the only thing I think
03:17:16 that kept me around as I thought about it
03:17:19 was the job to be done.
03:17:26 These women relied on me and I was no longer free.
03:17:31 I did not own myself.
03:17:32 And they said it in those words,
03:17:33 you don’t own yourself anymore.
03:17:36 And it was true, but it helped me
03:17:39 because I was able to, you know,
03:17:43 sometimes whatever it takes to keep you around,
03:17:45 whatever it takes.
03:17:47 And that’s what I would tell people who feel like
03:17:49 they can’t just push one more push
03:17:51 and they think they need to end it.
03:17:54 At that point, whatever it takes,
03:17:55 just stick around for one more second
03:17:57 because the next second, you know.
03:18:00 So I stuck around because of duty.
03:18:04 I felt a very strong sense of duty.
03:18:06 My duty was in this case, I think,
03:18:08 stronger than my pain.
03:18:10 I don’t know how that was possible, but it was.
03:18:17 And I just pushed my grief under the rug for years.
03:18:20 For years, I worked like a mad lady.
03:18:23 I would travel, I would do three states in three days,
03:18:28 landing at two in the morning,
03:18:29 around five or six going right along with our distributors
03:18:33 because it was beverage and just keep going
03:18:35 and have all of this energy and look like everything is fine.
03:18:38 But what happened was just like,
03:18:39 I was focused on the job to be done.
03:18:41 And sometimes it is okay to do that.
03:18:43 At least for me, it was my safety.
03:18:46 You know, like when you’re in the water
03:18:47 and you’re about to sink and they throw you that,
03:18:50 that round thing, I don’t know how you call it.
03:18:53 You know, that, you know.
03:18:55 I think that keeps you afloat, you mean?
03:18:56 Yes, yes, the floater.
03:18:57 It’s the floater. Yeah, whatever.
03:18:58 Listen, between the two of us, we’re still terrible.
03:19:01 We’re bad.
03:19:02 So I said, you, you, you.
03:19:04 I know exactly what you mean.
03:19:06 Exactly, right?
03:19:07 So you understand me.
03:19:08 So they send you that thing and you just,
03:19:10 I was just hanging onto it.
03:19:12 My life depended on this thing.
03:19:14 So these women, they carried me.
03:19:17 They carried me.
03:19:19 And with time, things are moving forward.
03:19:23 And at some point I went into really, really deep depression
03:19:26 and I went into a very dark place,
03:19:29 even darker than the one I think I came from.
03:19:31 Because by that time I had worked for years
03:19:35 on this company and now some other things was happening.
03:19:37 And around that time, it’s also when I was discovering
03:19:42 a lot of what we talked about today,
03:19:45 about what makes a country rich.
03:19:47 And for me to understand that my network,
03:19:52 I was very much into left oriented network.
03:19:56 And to just start to see all of this,
03:20:02 I tried to address it to realize that many of these people
03:20:05 would prefer go running for the hills
03:20:08 than accept for a moment that maybe capitalism
03:20:11 might be part of a solution,
03:20:13 when many of them were involved in capitalism.
03:20:17 So that was a hard time.
03:20:21 At some point I was, yeah,
03:20:23 so many things were happening around that time
03:20:27 that basically shook up everything for me.
03:20:32 One, it’s hard to talk about because it’s very personal
03:20:34 and the person that I was having a problem with
03:20:38 passed away last year.
03:20:41 And I’m one to always say, leave the dead alone.
03:20:45 So because of that, I won’t speak about it,
03:20:48 but there to having a major fallout
03:20:50 with somebody who was like a father figure for me,
03:20:52 somebody that I completely trusted.
03:20:55 And so at some point you just tell, ask yourself,
03:20:58 was my whole life built on a lie, right?
03:21:04 And then you’re confused and then you become confused.
03:21:09 And then at some point you lose 90% of your friends
03:21:12 because of, ideologically speaking, it doesn’t work anymore.
03:21:18 Then you just wonder, have I,
03:21:22 have I been asleep this whole time?
03:21:25 And then you start to wonder,
03:21:26 remember when you asked me, who am I?
03:21:28 At some point, Lex, I literally was like a candle
03:21:31 in the wind.
03:21:33 I felt like I was a candle in the wind.
03:21:36 And it was very hard to come back from that.
03:21:38 And people have a hard,
03:21:41 the few people I talk to about this,
03:21:43 they have a hardest time understanding
03:21:45 or even believing it because they’re like, you?
03:21:48 I’m like, yes, me.
03:21:49 I used to be a candle in the wind.
03:21:52 What got you out?
03:21:53 What made you overcome that?
03:21:55 My current husband.
03:21:57 My current husband.
03:21:58 Love?
03:21:59 Love.
03:22:00 See, when I tell you love is the answer.
03:22:01 But him, he came with love,
03:22:04 but he also came with really helping me
03:22:08 figure out the world.
03:22:10 So what Michael, because that’s him,
03:22:11 who we’re talking about, Michael Strong.
03:22:15 That must be special.
03:22:16 He’s so special.
03:22:17 He’s so special.
03:22:18 So you have no idea how special he is.
03:22:21 But you know, Michael, the reason why I have such love,
03:22:24 respect and admiration for my husband,
03:22:26 I’ll never say it enough,
03:22:28 is because actually it’s one of those relationships
03:22:32 that got built based on intellect first.
03:22:37 You see, at some point I was in the position
03:22:41 where I could start a foundation
03:22:44 after having built my first business.
03:22:46 And all I wanted was an ability to power
03:22:54 as many, especially women,
03:22:56 African women entrepreneurs like me a few years ago,
03:23:00 before then, to do something like I was able to do.
03:23:04 Bring back to the world
03:23:06 some really cool aspects of our culture
03:23:08 built into a really cool brand, 21st century type.
03:23:11 That’s what I wanted to do.
03:23:12 Because the more I could promote women like that
03:23:15 and put steam behind them,
03:23:17 and the more my dream envisioned
03:23:19 for a respected Africa, prosperous Africa would happen,
03:23:22 back then that’s what I wanted.
03:23:24 And around me,
03:23:26 this was also part of a whole crisis
03:23:28 of ideologies I had back then.
03:23:32 Everybody was like, well, we should be just doing grants.
03:23:37 And I knew that my people didn’t need grants.
03:23:40 They didn’t need like a handout.
03:23:42 They don’t want your charity.
03:23:45 I didn’t want charity.
03:23:46 I wanted someone who could work with me on my accounting.
03:23:50 I wanted somebody who could help me brainstorm
03:23:53 marketing wise.
03:23:55 I wanted somebody, or I needed to raise money
03:23:58 to pay my research and development guy
03:24:02 to help me take the juices from my grandma’s recipe
03:24:07 to something that can be shelf stable.
03:24:10 I needed coaching.
03:24:14 These are all the things that I needed
03:24:16 to make my dream happen.
03:24:18 I didn’t want you to give me some crap for free.
03:24:20 That’s not what I want.
03:24:21 I just want to be able to build my business
03:24:24 with all the things that business building needs.
03:24:26 And so that’s what I wanted to do
03:24:29 and it’s what it was needed.
03:24:31 And so Michael, somebody found out about what I was doing
03:24:35 because back in the days of San Francisco,
03:24:37 they would write a lot about me and everything.
03:24:38 And so Michael, along with John Mackey,
03:24:43 the founder of Whole Foods Market,
03:24:44 they had a nonprofit called Flow.
03:24:47 And it’s all about human flourishing.
03:24:49 They want for people, everybody to get this choice,
03:24:52 this ability to be able to get to a point in their life
03:24:54 where they’re in complete flow.
03:24:56 It’s, Michael, just make high.
03:24:58 Michael is the only one who could say that last name.
03:25:00 But you know, the whole concept of flow,
03:25:01 when you’re in a state of flow,
03:25:02 you’re basically doing what you’re supposed to do,
03:25:05 the way you’re supposed to do it
03:25:06 with the people you’re supposed to, this whole concept of flow.
03:25:09 It’s human flourishing at its highest.
03:25:12 So, you know, so I meet with this man.
03:25:15 Max, you’re so, okay, so we, he finds me, his people find me.
03:25:21 And then there was a program
03:25:22 where it was all about accelerating women entrepreneurs.
03:25:25 So it’s during this times
03:25:27 that I’m starting now to see things.
03:25:29 That’s when actually all of this stuff that I noticed,
03:25:33 how come here it takes me all of this time
03:25:35 to start my business, over there it’s 20 minutes,
03:25:37 here it’s free, over there it’s thousands of dollars,
03:25:39 all of this nonsense that I just took,
03:25:40 oh, maybe it’s just because we’re messed up,
03:25:41 we’re poor, that’s why everything is so messed up.
03:25:44 Whoa, these people are introducing me to concepts.
03:25:47 I’m like, first of all, I’m like, oh, really?
03:25:50 What did you call the doing business in the, what is that?
03:25:56 You know, all of this stuff.
03:25:58 And I’m starting to discover this whole other body of work.
03:26:02 That the free markets, like this thing that I was sensing,
03:26:06 this environment that I was sensing
03:26:08 that it was different around me.
03:26:10 And that they called it the free markets over here.
03:26:13 And over there, that.
03:26:15 And then I started to butt head those ideas
03:26:18 with the ideas that I was fed with before that.
03:26:21 And the evidence won.
03:26:23 And further more than the evidence,
03:26:25 the evidence combined with my lived experience,
03:26:29 it was so powerful.
03:26:30 So I basically started understanding these ideas
03:26:34 from the most visceral part of my body,
03:26:36 you know, of my being.
03:26:38 And it makes sense.
03:26:41 So Michael, Michael helped me find the solution,
03:26:45 the answer to my lifelong little girl’s question
03:26:49 of why do they have this and we don’t?
03:26:52 And how do some countries like mine be poor
03:26:55 while others are rich?
03:26:57 And with understanding all of that,
03:27:02 the greatest, biggest sense of liberation came upon me.
03:27:09 Like, I have no other word to describe that.
03:27:13 True liberation, the liberation that comes from a peer
03:27:16 to finally understand and be vindicated
03:27:21 in your own, you know,
03:27:25 understand in your own deep knowing
03:27:29 or feeling that they’re not,
03:27:32 what they’re saying is not true.
03:27:33 You’re not the problem.
03:27:35 It’s not you.
03:27:36 There’s something else.
03:27:38 And when I discovered that, my whole life changed.
03:27:41 So, and since then I have been very serious
03:27:44 about going deeper and deeper and deeper
03:27:46 into my understanding of all of this,
03:27:49 understanding the subtlety.
03:27:52 At some point I was very angry
03:27:53 about the liberators of Africa,
03:27:55 because I was like, yes, you helped liberate us,
03:27:58 but just to keep us in this mirrorism,
03:28:01 I was angry for longest time.
03:28:03 And then eventually you have to engage empathy and love
03:28:08 to put yourself in their shoes
03:28:10 and try to understand the time at which they were living.
03:28:13 And that got me onto a journey
03:28:14 of trying to understand history more.
03:28:17 That’s how I understood I was able to go beyond
03:28:19 just these liberators and try to understand
03:28:21 and rebuild the world around them
03:28:23 at the macro and also at the macro level.
03:28:29 Just really, you have to try to walk in their shoes.
03:28:33 And from there, finally separate the baby with the bathwater
03:28:36 that they were not able to do back then.
03:28:38 That’s why today, I’m sorry,
03:28:40 but I have no patience for the BLM organizers, founders,
03:28:44 especially the founders.
03:28:45 I don’t know what the organizers think,
03:28:46 but the founders told us what they stand for.
03:28:48 And I say, guys, don’t make that same mistake again.
03:28:51 If you’re serious about this,
03:28:53 you cannot make the same mistake.
03:28:56 The liberals of Africa, they have an excuse.
03:29:00 We didn’t know better.
03:29:01 It was so easy back then to conflate everything.
03:29:04 But today, you, me, anybody alive
03:29:08 cannot with a straight face
03:29:10 embrace Marxist socialist ideas,
03:29:12 especially, especially when they’re claiming
03:29:16 that they wanted people to thrive.
03:29:20 No, you can’t, I’m sorry.
03:29:22 And I will hold your feet up to the fire on that one.
03:29:26 I will, I will.
03:29:27 And that’s what I’m doing.
03:29:28 They will give me a lot of grief for this,
03:29:29 but guess what?
03:29:30 I could care less.
03:29:30 Do you know why I could care less?
03:29:32 Because we have an entire population
03:29:35 to help rise out of poverty into prosperity,
03:29:40 where they become co creators,
03:29:44 global co creators of innovation.
03:29:47 And those ideas give you hope for the place you love,
03:29:52 for Senegal, for Africa.
03:29:54 They do.
03:29:55 They do.
03:29:56 The world I live in,
03:29:59 the new centers of culture and fashion are in Dakar.
03:30:03 The new centers of tech and, you know,
03:30:10 crypto even is somewhere, maybe Nigeria.
03:30:13 So you see that future, you see that future clearly.
03:30:16 I do, I do, I do.
03:30:18 It’s a beautiful thing.
03:30:20 And it’s also beautiful to see that the space
03:30:22 of these really powerful ideas
03:30:24 is where you also found love.
03:30:26 Right?
03:30:27 So at the intersection.
03:30:28 At the intersection, Michael and I would spend hours
03:30:31 talking about all of these ideas.
03:30:33 And I would be like, but what about this?
03:30:34 No, it doesn’t make any sense.
03:30:35 No, no, no, oh no.
03:30:37 And then hours, every single day for months, Lex.
03:30:41 Yeah.
03:30:42 And then from there, our love was born.
03:30:44 Cause I tell people for us,
03:30:47 love is not about looking at each other in the eyes,
03:30:49 like, you know, they all think,
03:30:50 but it’s about, we look in one direction.
03:30:52 And in this case, it’s this vision,
03:30:53 what we know to be possible and true.
03:30:55 If only you liberate people.
03:30:59 What we know to be true and possible.
03:31:01 We, all of us are miracles walking around.
03:31:04 Every time I get on a plane,
03:31:06 it’s a miracle of engineering.
03:31:09 All the things we’re able to do, you know,
03:31:11 now when they do operation on your teeth,
03:31:13 how they’re able to put the pain down away.
03:31:16 All of this is us.
03:31:17 You’re working on these robots.
03:31:20 This, this, this inside here.
03:31:22 Humans are amazing.
03:31:23 I know.
03:31:24 So that’s why, and when it works in great tandem
03:31:27 with this guy, these two working together.
03:31:30 Yeah.
03:31:31 Ooh.
03:31:32 Watch out.
03:31:32 There’s nothing we can’t accomplish.
03:31:33 Nothing, nothing.
03:31:35 Well, God, you’re one of the most incredible people
03:31:37 I’ve ever talked to.
03:31:38 Oh, you say that.
03:31:39 You’re amazing.
03:31:40 You’ve met everybody.
03:31:41 Thank you so much.
03:31:42 This is truly an honor.
03:31:43 Thank you for everything you’re doing.
03:31:44 Thank you for the fire that burns within you.
03:31:46 And there’s just the passion you have
03:31:48 for a place that’s going to, I think,
03:31:50 define the future of humanity.
03:31:52 So thank you for everything you’re doing.
03:31:53 Thank you for talking to me.
03:31:54 Thank you.
03:31:54 Thank you to you.
03:31:55 And sometimes I hope this fire doesn’t consume me.
03:31:57 That’s how much it is.
03:31:59 But I am grateful to you for this.
03:32:02 And yeah, thank you for,
03:32:04 I know you don’t do a lot of these, you know,
03:32:06 I am, it’s this type of interviews.
03:32:09 Maybe I don’t know, but I’m so, so happy.
03:32:11 You mean fun, inspiring, powerful interviews.
03:32:14 Yes, I need to do more of that.
03:32:16 You’re amazing.
03:32:17 I don’t know, because at first I was like,
03:32:18 Lex Friedman, really?
03:32:20 Yeah, really?
03:32:20 How’s this going to go?
03:32:21 I’m like, yeah, I’m going to talk to Lex
03:32:23 and go all crazy.
03:32:24 I think you need to work on your unconscious bias.
03:32:27 Right.
03:32:29 All right, thank you, Magat.
03:32:30 You’re the best.
03:32:31 Thank you.
03:32:32 Thank you.
03:32:33 Thank you so much.
03:32:34 Thanks for listening to this conversation with Magat Wade.
03:32:37 To support this podcast,
03:32:38 please check out our sponsors in the description.
03:32:41 And now, let me leave you with some words
03:32:43 from Nelson Mandela.
03:32:46 Money won’t create success.
03:32:48 The freedom to make it will.
03:32:51 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.