Elumelu: Drive Africa growth with local solutions can speed up growth

During the third edition of the Tony Elumelu Foundation Forum (TEF 2017) held in Lagos Nigeria, founder and philanthropist Tony Elumelu spoke about Africa finding local solutions to her own challenges of unemployment and poverty.

Here is an abridged version of his speech.

Poverty surrounds us in Africa. Our youth need jobs, they need economic hope —hope for a better tomorrow. There is a lot of uncertainty about the future.

We have seen extremism, ethnic tension and social discontent on the rise. In Africa we have tried different development approaches/ models, to deal with the issues of poverty eradication, job creation and creating economical for our people.

In fact we know that we have not made much progress and in some areas we can say that we have regrets as a continent. And our development partners have not left us. They too have tried to support us.

Aid in-flow into Africa in the past 10 years for example 2006-2016 is a whooping half a trillion dollars. Up to the tune of $469 billion, that is almost $500 billion.

But we all know that poverty remains unabated in Africa, and the basic human development index has not significantly changed.

At times the future looks so bleak that our young ones are forced into migration. They want to go to places they perceive economic opportunities reside.

And we know they risk their lives as travellers when they cross the Mediterranean or attempt to cross it on canoes. The outcome is that most of them die. They do not even get to their destination.

And not only that. We have seen some of them trust that drug traffickers will take them to the Promised Land –the land of milk and honey.

But when they get there they are subjected to the worst form of human degradation and human evil.. and the so called economic opportunities perceived that drove their action, they don’t ever get to experience it.

Some of them end up selling their organs to survive, we have seen the rise of human trafficking –we can’t just allow this to continue. This is not right. We can’t look on, without doing something.

This is the fundamental reason why we have the Tony Elumelu Foundation doing what we are doing here.

In Africa, we have the most crucial development resource, and that is people –our young people. Young people are talented, hardworking, energetic and extremely enterprising.

Let us remind ourselves about the power of individuals. So if we have young people who are enterprising and hardworking, let us remind ourselves what portend capacity and opportunities lie in this.

Allow me to share three cases about the power of individuals. Sir Steve Jobs as an individual founded Apple and today market cap—the value of the company—close to $900 billion (Sh92.7tr).

And not only that, the cash this company generates, that is, the money just sitting in its account is about $300 billion (Sh30.9tr). To put it in context, Nigeria’s foreign reserves is about $35 billion (Sh3.6tr).

One company founded by an individual has cash balances of over $300 billion.

Bill Gates founded Microsoft and today its market value is close to $600 billion (Sh61.8tr) and cash balances of about $130 billion (Sh13.4tr).
And let’s leave America and go to China.

Jack Ma founded Alibaba, a company whose market value is about $500 billion (Sh51.5 tr). Cash balance, about $30 billion (Sh3.1tr).

The point is, what do this great men and their companies have in common? They have ingenuity, creativity, ideas and most of all they have passion. But there is one more thing that these men succeeded is explained by two factors.

One, the operating environment which is key for the ease of doing business. Two, the ease of translating ideas to action —the transmission mechanism that takes ideas to action. This is tied to the operating environment and to individuals that have ideas.

Do not just dream dreams, but let it translate to action. It should be known that the journey to success is lined up with obstacles and entrepreneurs have to be resilient to be able to bounce back whenever they encounter challenges.

When I interact with the young enterprising people, they tell me they encounter a stifling operating environment, deal with neglect, godfatherism and lack of support. These young people need a hand up, they need a little push.

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We should rid our minds of the mentality that someone else will come solve our problems. Note that no one but us will develop Africa.

And the world should rethink of how to engage with and intervening Africa if despite the funding of 500 billion over the past ten years we still remain perpetually dependent and poverty has not significantly reduced.

Let us not be shy to say to ourselves that Africa remains largely underdeveloped. A new development model is therefore needed. A model that that embraces prosperity, local value addition and long term investment, private sector and entrepreneurship is ultimately needed. Hence Africapitalism.

This is a development model that is all inclusive, bottom-upwards approach and one that empowers our youth, one that creates hope for the future.

Our people have ideas and they want them to work. They want to be given opportunities just like Steve Jobs and Bill gates during their time.

What matters ultimately and in the long run is not what we keep in our bank accounts, but rather the legacy we leave behind.

It is based on this that my family through the Tony Elumelu Foundation committed a sum of $100 million to give hope and opportunities to young Africans.