Date 2015-12-07
Category Events
329 million mobile phones is not growth, it is consumption | Chude Jideonwo’s rousing speech at The Future Awards Africa 2015
In 2000, the Economist made a bold declaration about Africa: it called us the hopeless continent.
We screamed. We protested. Oyinbo people are trying to put us down. They are insulting us. It’s time for us to tell our own stories etc.
So by 2011, the foreign media had gotten the message, and the narrative changed: Africa, they declared, is now rising. BRICS, MINTs, N-11… the hopeless continent is now bustling with hope. Hope, change, love, joy. The middle class now had more pot-bellies. And all of us cheered.
Pride restored. Victory secured. Battle won.
But what exactly did we win?
It reminds me of a dear, dear friend of mine whom I asked to come join an effort to battled Ebola last year, and she said to me: “Oh no, I don’t want to be part of any negative narratives of Africa”. And I thought to myself: “beht this is not a narrative something, this is a reality something”.
But there are so many of us – who have venture capital for our businesses or funding for our ideas – who scream the same. No! That’s not the story of Africa. That is poverty P0rn. That is not Africa’s story. There is hope for Africa.
Nobody should preach to me about selling hope. That’s what we do at The Future Awards Africa. That’s been our job for 10 years now – telling Africa’s brightest and best stories to young Africans. But the hope wey we dey sell dey see road, and e tie wrapper.
The fact that many of our over 1,000 nominees over the last ten years have succeeded in spite of broken down systems cannot blind us to the reality – that nations cannot grow based only on outliers.
Yes, we will always have people who make something out of nothing. They exist around the world, even in nations destroyed by war. But we need nations that provide opportunities for everyone, not just outliers.
Overheard recently: Africa cannot entrepreneur its way out of its problems. We can’t entrepreneur around bad leadership; we can’t entrepreneur around bad policy.
There is a point at which resilience becomes a defect and not a virtue. It is not something to be proud of that it takes sweat and blood to register a business in name in Nigeria, to open a bank account for same and to understand its tax laws with no help from the government. It is a problem that needs to be solved.
And until Africa has a network of nations where these foundational imperatives are engaged successfully and uninterrupted, success stories will continue to be a rarity and Africa will simply not grow
As part of the build up to tonight’s event, we toured the North-East of Nigeria. Oh, the things we saw. The tragedy is not the stories you even know, it’s in the ones you don’t. It’s not just the fact that it was day 600 yesterday and Chibok parents still have no news, it is the fact that they have been utterly abandoned by their own government.
Ah. On these trips the strong disconnect between the Africa Rising narrative and the realities on the ground hit you like a ton of bricks.
So instead of simple stories, how about we focus on our reality?
That Africa is not a dark continent, yet it has more blackouts than any other continent. We protest Africa is not a theatre of war, but it has more national coups than any part of the world today. Yes, Africa is not a dark continent of poverty, but we have more poor people with no pathway to rising than any continent existing in 2015.
Yes, Africa is not a continent of disease, but polio was just eradicated in Nigeria this year. And not because we told better stories. But because a foreign donor worked with local change-makers to make it happen. And it did not occur to our government officials, celebrating this news and claiming credit, that the fact that such a simple matter should have this long should become instead a reason for reflection, not backslapping.
Brothers and sisters of Africa, 329 million mobile phone users is not growth, it is consumption. 200 million people when there are no roads for them to move goods and service is not a market. Luxury motor shops opening in Lagos is not development, it is alternative reality.
We must stop, stop! Stop this lowering of the bar, where we declare progress for 6 per cent growth rate over the past 10 years while countries like China have sustained 11 percent growth for most of the last 30 years, pulling millions out of poverty in the process.
Because this rising tide has not lifted all boats. What is rising instead is the number of Africa’s children out of school – 18 million as at last count, the number of young people living below two dollars a day – 72 per cent a last count, the percent of our GDP that goes only to less than 10 per cent, the number of people who have to hold their hands over their heads to pass into the airport in Kenya, and the sheer number of jobless youth – over 75 million between ages 15 and 24 – who have no jobs. It is not a S3xy story.
But it is a true story.
Of course, this story can change. And in some countries, like in my favourite Rwanda, it is in fact changing. And from countries like this come a powerful message of hope, but it is one that does not have to rely on a lie.
That message is simple: Africa CAN rise. But it can rise if only we can urgently scale up the work that governments and then civil society are doing. Government first – because one thousand NGOs cannot take the place of a single functioning government.
It can rise when we, speak truth to power, in government, in civil society, in business. And act on that truth.
That’s the promise that Africa’s youth – these nominees representing the best of them – can deliver on.
Their efforts will not be enough however if they cannot scale, if they can not reach the millions who need them, and reach them consistently and sustainably. Because Africa’s gargantuan problems need scale.
We don’t need more NGOs, as much as we need more support for those already solving these problems. We don’t need more politicians; we need more people forcing governments to do what they must for more young people. We need to move from hashtagging words, to hashtagging action.
And for this, we need active citizens.
We don’t need part-time Africans. We don’t need those who are content to sit in little cocoons and substitute one simple story for another.
We don’t need part-time Africans. We need full time citizens. We need a groundswell of active, engaged, involved citizens – solving problems, at the same time, across our nations.
That’s why The Future Awards Africa is visiting 100 cities over the next one year. That’s why we are finding young people solving problems across these communities and telling their stories, spreading their action. That’s why we are getting them all the support that they need that we can get. We will train them, we will support them, we will help them scale. That’s why we are launching howcanIgetinvolved.com
Because we need full time citizens. We need a linking of arms, people working together, at the same time, with all that they have on the problems we need to solve.
Because The Future Awards Africa doesn’t want to keep celebrating rarities. We want to celebrate a surplus of inspiring stories, of hope, of growth, of impact. And to create that surplus, all of us have so much work left to do. Oh, we have so much work to do.
And that might not be the story we want to hear but that is the story we all need to hear. Our continent needs us. Desperately, critically, urgently.
Africa needs me. Africa needs you. Africa needs us o.
Thank you, and God bless everyone.
*Jideonwo is co-founder or The Future Awards Africa.
About The Future Awards Africa
The Future Awards Africa has been called the ‘Nobel Prize for Young Africans’, and the ‘most important youth awards’ by Forbes. It is a set of prizes given annually to celebrate and accelerate innovation, creativity and enterprise amongst young Africans aged 18 – 31. It has produced over 150 winners and over 1550 nominees since its first edition in 2006.
It is presented in conjunction with The Future Project, which has a mandate to build empowered citizens across Africa, through (inclusive) enterprise and (active) citizenship. This focus on Human Capital Development is informed by our value proposition: Africa’s growth needs a generation of young people who are gainfully employed and able to demand and secure better leadership.
Our projects include Aiki.ng, an employability portal presented with Microsoft; the Nigeria Symposium for Young & Emerging Leaders, #StartupsAfrica, Intern4Jobs, The m-Hub, The Future Enterprise Support Scheme and The Future Africa Awards & Summit, described as ‘The Nobel Prize for Young Africans’.
With a network of funders and partners including the Tony Elumelu Foundation, Ford Foundation, the US Government, First Bank, MTN, The Canadian Embassy, HP, the Nigerian Government and the British Council, our work has spanned Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Uganda, Malawi, Cameroon, Somalia, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast and Kenya.
Founded by the Chude Jideonwo and Adebola Williams, TFP is supervised by a Global Board of Advisors drawn from Africa, Europe, North America and the Middle East, including the Senior Advisor at one of the world’s leading financial advisory and asset management firms, Lazard LTD, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; Senior Economic Advisor with the Open Society Foundations, Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili; co-founder of ONE, Jamie Drummond and the Chief of Cabinet with the Africa Development Bank, Anne Kabagambe.
About Red Communication
Red Communication is a PR & Communication firm under the parent company, RED. An innovative media group focused on Africa, RED’s vision is to excite and empower an evolving generation through the media’s limitless possibilities. Built across tools and platforms, its Communication Division holds Red Communication, Red marketing and Small & Medium, and YouthConnect; and its Content Division holds the Y! brands, including Y! TV, Y! Magazine, YNaija.com, Teen Y!, Y! 2015, the Y! Tech 100 and the Y! Annual Black Ball/Y! 100 Most Influential List. It also anchors a development firm, The Future Project Africa, which co-presents Africa’s leading youth platform, The Future Awards Africa, and other projects including the Nigeria Symposium for Young & Emerging Leaders and The Future Enterprise Support Scheme.
