(Repost from /n/)
Magatte Wade Explains Poverty In Africa
https://archive.is/5ORVZ
>I recently spoke with Senegalese-born “serial entrepreneur” Magatte Wade, a leading light in a new effort to raise Africa out of poverty. She said there is only one answer: Africans must lift themselves up by their bootstraps. Indeed, she said, outside help often hurts the cause, not least by reducing the pressure to correct the systemic barricades to economic growth that now exist.
>These days Wade is becoming a familiar face on college campuses. She particularly relishes the opportunity to meet with college students because she knows who her target audience is. “I always try to speak to the leftists – the progressive people who don't get it.”
>“I know your conservative audience will get what I'm trying to say. But I want to say it in a way the left-wing person can hear.”
>A printed copy of the employment laws in Senegal would fill five trucks, she said. In the end, those laws create a system of employment guarantees that are sure to kill any new business. Wade sums up the issue, saying, “If I can't fire you, I can't hire you.”
>In the Congo it takes 18 documents to import goods; another 18 are required for exports. Each of these documents must include a signature, with each signature costing $500. “How do you think any small entrepreneur could do that? Could anyone build a business there?”
>he says American taxpayers are rightly fed up with donating their money and seeing no results. She suggests tying funding to regulatory reform, or simply tying it to improvements in the recipient nation's ranking on the Fraser Economic Freedom Index. “We know if they do better on that index, they're going to do better economically,” she said. That would be a great improvement on “the very silly things” the donor agencies now promote.
>Wade added that much of the aid is simply stolen by those in charge. “On the Stossel show, I said, 'Look no further than the people who make most of that money – Chanel, Dior, Mercedes, people selling real estate on the French Riviera.”
>She added that “there's something surreal” about watching American professors, mostly white and male, and most with no business experience, promising to teach Africans to be more entrepreneurial. “The patronizing that goes on. It's unbelievable.”
https://archive.is/osikQ
>As if poverty weren’t a challenging enough phenomenon unto itself, time has revealed that good intentions by outsiders can in many cases make the problem worse — a cruel irony that serves as the basis of Michael Matheson Miller’s “Poverty Inc.,” an easy-to-understand docu-essay with a tough-to-accept message, especially as it implies that some aid organizations may actually be cashing in on their concern. The idea isn’t to discourage giving, but rather to illustrate how the current paradigm doesn’t work, providing clear examples and practical solutions that serve as a useful conversation-starter flexible enough to enrich discussions everywhere from college campuses to community churches — in addition to activism-oriented film festivals, of course.
>Miller’s point could hardly be more apparent than in the case of a Rwandan egg farmer who was just getting his business started when a well-meaning American church decided to send free eggs to his starving countrymen: Overnight, the local entrepreneur found himself unable to sell his own goods in the market, and though locals benefited for a short time, when the church turned its philanthropic attention elsewhere, it had driven the farmer out of business and inadvertently crippled the local egg economy.
A little on Magatte: https://archive.is/aJrU6
Her Company's Website: http://www.tiossan.com/
Another Youtube Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRFF699nftE