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