TEDGlobal 2007: Session 11: James Shikwati

This is the 2nd talk on the second last session of TEDGlobal 2007. We need to commercialise enterprises or entrepreneurship in Africa. Chris Anderson, TED curator, described him as a one-man think tank, a libertarian economist.

Address famine as a business opportunity. Lost $200 million due to famine in Kenya. The estimated cost 300 to 500 million people to malaria and costs billions to the GDP of Africa. Young people in a project he is running are cleaning huts and using them as a business to fight mosquitoes. Exploit urban set-up with endless opportunities and offer more variety.

What is missing in Africa is confidence, not money! Africans sometimes think it’s someone else’s problem to fix things in Africa. We need to start using the passion of young people to start businesses. Create an Olympic-style business plan competition to get young people interested and excited about business.

Now, back to the Jeffrey Sacks debate. We need to understand how the world works, how the world thinks. The Aid debate operates under the constrained position, i.e. the African person is in a box, somebody else must free him. We need to focus on releasing the African mind. Everybody talks about corruption. When a foreigner meets an African, the first thing they see is corruption.  One example he quotes, which I’ve heard before, is that in Africa, not even the most corrupt or the poorest people will deny you water. Yet millions of dollars are being spent on buying water, like the very popular bottled water products.

With aid, it’s like foreign countries subsidising their own companies in Africa. So African companies can never compete, being paralysed and never developing to a point where they can be world-class. Keep focusing on entrepreneurship with young people. They are the future and can stop Africa crying.

Chris did a short Q&A with James in which he confronted him on the aid debate.

For more information on James Shikwati, visit the Inter-Regional Economic Network. And read this excellent interview with SPIEGEL, For God’s Sake Please STOP Aid!