To write about africa. Hat nine bloodedly good essay, how to read about africa by which he meant of course all of us who write about the continent should stop representing that. Hes down with the following. Broad brush strokes throughout are good. Avoid having the african carrot tears laugh or struggle to educate their kids or just make good mundane circumstances. How could the women except in about europe or america and africa. African characters should be colorful, exotic, larger than life, but empty inside with no dialogue, no complex resolutions in their stories come in no kirks to confuse the cause. Perhaps we could start there since it seems to me that your book is precisely what hes advocating in his essay and that is a portrayal of africans as people with their own agency. And idiosyncrasies and a sense of destiny. So what inspired the project in the first place . Were you fed up at the way africa was being reported on from what you call Poverty Point . Yes. That is the short answer. First and foremost, thank you all for being here and im glad you chose this particular essay, which does have a lot of resonance. He was writing about fiction, but when it comes to nonfiction, my discipline come in the narrative biases replicate ready reference poverty, we been in the most recent weeks where weve been again about the stories that have gotten our attention about africa, it hasnt been it is spending up a kidnapping of nigerian schoolchildren rather than a decade, weeks, months, years as well, unsexy economic development, for example. Its hard to grab our attention on the story is one of generally incremental positive gains. So to that extent, thats a very good example of the way the nonfiction media industry, the reporters community struggles to get the attention of the world at large surrounding issues about and development and ordinary africa. Now back to my book, i am proud that there are no animals in this book. A book with africa without animals. Until i looked at the manuscript when it was finished, i went through like i did it. No safaris, none of that. This book is a users manual for the africa you have not heard about. The very ordinary things. Given that my background is one of someone born in the u. S. , right here in chicago, was in a lot of time and countries in Subsaharan Africa. Its given me make perspective on where we are missing the mark, what we are not understanding and ordinary things like giving directions that here we would say we are coming to 700 pastry. If you were in nairobi where i was coming to be like okay, you will look for that petro station and then if you see a yellow building youve gone too far. So ask someone and then double back. So its all contextual. If these ordinary little differences between different types of societies that i seek to eliminate, which is not as sensational or is scripting us a story of the kidnapping or multimillion dollar spanking transaction, but its really the subs and so the real africa and the one i eliminate in the bright continent. Lets go there and talk about have been a homegrown chicagoan from a nigerian speaking family how that informs the way you approached the story wanted to tell. You know, i spent a lot of time in nigeria and not sort of shuttle he between washington or is working as a reporter covering american politics, covering the state Department Come International Development and home really again illuminated for me where we were missing the mark. Not by the casual conversations and the fortune to go back and forth. Theres a lot of African Diaspora who do not have the opportunity to go home and feel like its another site of relevance for them. But it was when i was covering the United Nations week, which is the General Assembly every september. Ever comes to new york. Traffic is crazy. Every head of state and entourage is very new york. In 2010 was the 10th anniversary of the famous Millennium Development goals, which was the blueprint for solving property in 15 years with these simple steps. As a journalist, as an american journalist for an American Publication, i was watching the presentation and the United Nations had a poster competition to commemorate the 10th anniversary. The winning poster they selected goes to the issue of agency we are mentioning. At the top of the photo, theres a photo of the book because its hard to describe, from the bottom up from the waist up there with the leaders of the g8 in their suit in yucatan because Angela Merkel was the lone woman in the pants to. From the waist down it had what i can only assume were sort of african children in a refugee camp. The mac break, no faces. No fleeces. They were reading online in the tagline read to your world leaders, we are still waiting. That just jolted my sensibilities. It took me out of my role as an american reporter and put me in the role of an irritated african because anyone whos spent time in Subsaharan Africas most people work twice as hard to get how this far. The idea someone could sit around and wait is preposterous. My first trip to nigeria or remember being floored about what you could buy in traffic. I was like 10 years old, nose pressed against the glass in traffic, seen people selling fruit, electronics, art, anything you could think of. Live animals, vcrs and the vhs tapes, which dates a little bit. An enormous amount of dynamism and force innovation. That ended up in the resonant game was necessity is the mother of invention. Africa is the mother of necessity. And we are missing not as the world, including the United Nations, the people who ought to be thinking most critically about what life is a contextually import countries. So that within a month i had liquidated all of my things and moved and started writing this book. As you set off, what were the misconceptions you were carrying yourself into that situation . What were the biggest surprises for you . Great question. I will answer them in two ways. One i think formality bias is a term i coined in the book to talk about the expectation that thinks a book is organized as they look in the United States for another wealth wealthy western country. As the presumption that getting directions means using google maps and you suddenly get where you are going. I think that extends to the role and reach of government by someone who is a good liberal, grew up in hyde park and covert american politics to realize the connection between the citizen and this date all across Subsaharan Africa was bankrupt and it has been a huge part of what i realized was driving all of the innovations i went onto document. And the reason why people were needed to generate systems of production for workers that had nothing to do for the formal sector. People finding ways to provide a safety net without a government support. People finding ways to create Health Solutions and Energy Solutions in the apps and electricity. All of these things driven by fundamental lack of belief in government. For me coming from a place where of course theres garbage collection, of course the lights are going to go out, that was one important difference for me in terms of trying to understand the political economy of what i was writing about. Im sure we can talk much more about that because theres lots of different ways to think about the role of the state of africa and everywhere. The second was agriculture. When i first started eating it and started to talk about it with folks come it was a book about the funds. Cell phones have come into africa and everyone is in no way the democratic moment. People are solving problems. All of that is true, but the very basic two out of every three people was touched by agriculture. Food production, Land Use Committee future of all about in africa is probably the most important thing. That was at the front of your consideration hyde park . That even now. This is so interesting given the essential nature of Food Production for the world is one of the things that should make africa a site of concern and importance for everyone is the idea that we need so much more food. We need more arable land than we have. We have quite damaging monocultures and capital labor intensive Food Production in africa is in natural solution and to hunger at the same time. That to me was the revelation and to realize theres so much to do there and had not occurred to me as something that was as important as it was in Subsaharan Africa. Im wondering what your own identity and background brought to the story in the places they created an obstacle. If i go into a small village in south africa to do my reporting and you go into a village in kenya or nigeria, theres a different reaction to that arrival, right . And curious how you thought about that as you are setting off because in some ways in terms of race and background and maybe some language i dont know you had a point of affiliation. In other ways he were an outsider. A single woman in her 20s living alone as you point out in the. Im curious about deeply into jason where were the trickiest click is a wonderful question. Nigeria is my country in your blood is my tribe. Everywhere else, including chicago through certain extent im traveling. I lived in kenya and i chose kenya for a particular reason. One is a tech explosion. The first story about that ended up being around these themes of the book was about google africa, how did the state offices that were plain hard work tumors in this exploding technology sector. So i went to kenya also in part because it wasnt nigeria and i could move between cultures and professional environments with more ease i thought than in nigeria but the expectations of me culturally. That proved to have been an important dispositive position. I also traveled to 17 countries over the course of the two years and in each place their advantages have been able to not invite people to begin performing. In many places the donor economy comes with white faces and provokes a certain set of behaviors and a certain sort of lack of discretion or lack of disclosure that it might be in the case for someone who looks like someone, even if theyre not the same background. So that was an advantage. My trip to somalia and Marcus Everett of countries with the disadvantage to be a woman. I faced this in washington as well, lets be clear. Knowing your stuff, having the right questions, understanding the informal expert tients i s of youtera you know, and somalia i was very uncomfortable. Ive never been a situation like this. Having reported from israel to turkey. I hadnt had that expense before and i thought not only was it odd someone is very american to be completely covered but also its so hot. It was like 95 degrees and i couldnt believe it. For the most part yes, it cuts both ways but was very enriching and humbling the whole time to travel to all these Different Countries and cultures. So one of the exciting things about this book is that we hear the voices of so many young people, and you point out that 70 of the population in Subsaharan Africa is below the age of 30. Many commentators see that, including african heads of state, see that fact as the president likes to say that ticking time bomb. You see the flipside of that, the situation that creates tremendous potential. Tes tremendous potential. I mean, the demographics are shocking. It really my mind when you go down to the statistics and look at the youthful age. It is worth looking at the sort of charts that matthau, places like india, which is a similar profile, china has quite oddly unfair one p and places like italy, japan, western europe in general where the replacement rate was 2. 1 people for every one couple and that is not enough to sustain the productivity levels that at the Macro Economic level is import for global competitiveness. In Subsaharan Africa you have an enormous Demographic Dividend and a workforce that is maturing as a result of Public Health gains living past childbirth, increasingly following through the educational system and poised to take ownership over both political situations that are 50 years old, adolescent democracies and economy is that i sprinting ahead. Those dynamics are incredibly positive for Subsaharan Africa. What is frustrating and ie is this everywhere, a mozambique anthropologist who talks about wheathood, a space between childhood and adulthood where you are stuck, you did not have Economic Opportunities that match your ambition, when the jagannath gdp growth has not trickled down in the form of the job, when you are working in the informal sector, you are ambitious but dont quite have all the assets weather tangible or skilled space to move on with your life. To get married, start a family, become an adult. A lot of these millions, tens of millions of young people in Subsaharan Africa and when you look at an organization like al shaba shabaab, those are the fruits of idleness with an overlay of religious extremism. That is one end of the spectrum. The other is seeing incredibly dynamic young people i profile throughout the book who are doing important things to solve problems locally and skill them to improve the continents and the world. The frustrating thing for all these folks is not just the economics of weighthood but the political economy where their governments, Subsaharan Africa has the largest gap between the age of leadership and the age of the public in the world. In the United States is 16 years. We are talking about leaders like mugabe, folks who are geriatric, a population that is under 30, concerned and motivated, the gap is 46 years compared to 16 in the United States. I think beyond the wheathood economy you also have is not a ticking time bomb in terms of the population being dangerous but it is about sitting around and waiting for these old leaders to move on and for young people to be able to assert authority within these hierarchical Simple Structures where people are encouraged to defer to elders and await their turn. The book and profiling different people who are taking on that challenge and doing it in a way that is instructive for young people everywhere. One of the things you encourage us to do is to drop archaic language, first world, third world, developed world, developing world and encourage us to replace it with the words fat and lean. I wonder if you are trying to poke us for having really bad diets, or where you are driving us with that distinction. I assume moving away from developed and developing is important because we want to look at the situation from the inside out and the bottom up, not from the top down and if we say developed and developing we are assuming that other people are on the trajectory of where we have been in the u. S. That is quite a dangerous assumption. Yes, it is provocative, meant to tweak i want to say the left was silly given how much Economic Activity was happening in the eastern hemisphere as it were, nothing in general. The book is all about masse. In terms of being a way of thinking of orientation. Family to technology. Orientation has been ridiculous in terms of the way we map that, even borders of states i contend are themselves part of the problem. Likewise a term like developing is very informative, it assumes it is one direction, linear, a start in the stone age and end up in las vegas and that is the way it should be. I disagree with that. There are elements of advanced economy is a wealthy societies that are i documented a few of them. A fat and lean idea, think about oil dependence, overleveraged households, diet and consumption, energy use so to the extent consumption is for wealthy countries, these lean economy is where consumption is constrained and recycling is obvious it is a necessity, there is something behavioral to learn from these lean economy is and innovation is something we talked about so much in the contemporary moment and that has always been to me a little misguided when you think of american innovation, Silicon Valley innovation, where you have supercool eyephone apps, innovation toward trivial issues and i wanted to focus on lean economy is in the book because there innovations for the most important issues of our time. Energy consumption being a very important one. If you are going to see Retail Solutions for of greatest energy, you are seeing some right now because the pain point is there because energy doesnt, energies and constant, because people live in a state where it the lights could go off at any moment. For Public Health, finding ways of decentralizing care, 18 gdp on health care in the United States and is not any better, i covered this debate in washington. You look at tax shifting, because there are so few medical resources on the continent nurses do the work of doctors, Community Health workers, laypeople, Community Health workers, tab shifting is the watchword. You are seeing politics in some communities but is all across Subsaharan Africa and resources scarcity. It is an important way of bringing this bowling alone problem if you are familiar with that where no one knows one another, people dont have as many friends as they used to 25 years ago, communities are fragmented and theres no civic locals village spirit for lack of a better word that you see across Subsaharan Africa in terms of family relationships and extended family relationships are response as i mentioned earlier to state failure but a good example of lean body politics. You used make do or hustle, what are couple of other examples of that in practice . The other thing you append in this book is the expectation that there is only things in africa where there are only things in u. S. Or europe or africans to learn rather than the other way around. The book is literally only about that. The board of necessity, Something Like shifting for Public Health is a good example. Something like Energy Solutions, another good example. The other one is mobile Financial Services. When you are in an environment that really exploded, mobile money which is the ability to use your cellphone as a bank account to send money, 10 i will send it to you, just try it that right now. It is a place where there are 40 Million People in 2500 atms and no checking accounts and a mortgages or access to finance and a cash economy people keeping money in coffee cans, mattresses and pillows and there is no formal hand from the Banking Sector to empower people who do have assets, who are not dirtpoor but able to participate in the Global Financial system let alone the regional Financial System so mobile money was the telecom it began as mobile air time transfers where the telecom has enabled people to send minutes, backing up a little bit, it is all prepaid because there is no credit reporting system and very few formal addresses so how can you have traditional accounts . Because it is all prepaid people change minutes back and forth. Here is ten minutes for that taxi ride. People immediately realize what an incredible ideas this was and use it to use it as a quasi currency. The telecom realize what is happening, 500,000 grant from the u. K. Development agency to pilot a real Banking System using cellphones and a long story short, at 86 of households in can you use this system, it transacts 35 million a day, it is enormous, life changing, it allows people to build assets and have meaningful Financial Lives and what must be blaring on more complicated Financial Services like access to credit and loans, and rudimentary reporting. Without that, without cellphones and no access to finance, the situation would never have invented mobile money. We would never have thought of this. The sort of necessity driven innovation is like the excellent example of something that solved a problem economists have been struggling over forever, how to improve the Financial Lives of the poor. That is a great example and the book is full of other ones like that. We are going to begin to take questions if people want to go to the microphone and while they are doing that i will ask one more. I have tons to dominate the questioning. One of the beautiful examples of a new approach to media in this book is a shoot job, the comic book and radio show, i wondered if you would talk about how these new ways of reaching people with news about everything they need to know about the connection between dying your chicks pinks in order to keep predators from being able to go after them to investigate reporting about fraud and at teaching scheme, how that works. Explain the pink tie too. It is a radio show and comic book published in kenya and it was generated by the realization that use media in africa are mostly music videos and that is about it. We already talked about the demographic, extremely Large Population being engaged in a way that is thoughtful and developing skills and developing capacities people are not getting in school. It is an end run around the defunct Education System. And they tried to offer tips for making money, participating in Civil Society and their reach is remarkable because they have embraced tools of where the young people already are. The graphic novel is so different from a textbook. The textbook is alienating, graphic novel was serialized, cast of characters they used to tell stories about chickens which keeps them from getting stolen, this is a problem in the rural areas where people try to raise livestock, all this attrition. And this tip in the magazine encouraged people to do it and have a radio show, radio is the killer media still all across Subsaharan Africa. It reaches everywhere where http has it. And what is interesting is a completely ignore the educational system and try to reach folks who dropped out of school or are not perfectly well educated but still interested in improving their lives and they reach out to them in a way that is social, in a way that a book is one thing. Magazine, a comic book you can pass around so in terms of their medium as well as their message focusing on african use is a great model. Beyond that i would critique myself for not focusing as much on media. I focus on technology, family, connors, use, agriculture and energy, but we know it is of vital ingredient of Civil Society and democratic culture and something essentials for people to participate. It is as important as water and electricity in my opinion. There is an amazing Media Ventures that can reach people. I didnt cover enough of them but it is clearly an important tool for the development agenda. I mentioned as part of the first question how to write about africa. I wanted to ask about the other sensational thing you did in the last year which was to come out as a gay man. There is not much in this book about the struggle lb gte lgbt people experience under the backdrop of so much coverage of the you gone the legislation and the rest. I wonder how you are thinking about that and what your own experience was in travelling around. I am incredibly proud of him, incredibly courageous, that is also the thing. And watching about the gun bill, and during the time this was taking a run. And one of those classically simple distractions, and people without jobs, without economic growth, president s been there, people who are not concerned with homosexuality per se as much as these other things, something that has been used as a wedge issue, a crude ploy by politicians in that country to distract from other more complicated issues in their political scene. Homophobia in africa is quite real and i think quite dangerous for people to be out. It depends on the country are in, the city are in. Place like nairobi which is very cosmopolitan, those are different than other areas. I did note that you gun that had its first gay pride parade which is remarkable given the danger involved with that. We can quibble about what the nature of the danger is. Whether it is the population that is feeling animosity or the political class. Easy way it is a big problem. I point to my discussion of Community Norms in the book. Family is a very important dynamic in Subsaharan Africa. The thing that is your shoulder against everything and the thing people look to to drive norms and create support systems. The discussion talk about senegal and gambia where it is illegal but it has been practiced for centuries. The norms in the community in senegal where theyre trying to eradicate the practice where it was you had to do it because it was like wearing white on your wedding day, a cultural tradition. Over the course of one generation i would say steady work with in these communities for 15 years. In one generation the norm shifted. No longer a practice. The problem was solved by people standing up and agreeing collectively and publicly to affirm that they would not cut their daughters and once everyone did it, it became a shared public norm that than immediate peoples behavior and to the extent people are interested in legislative solutions and human rights actors want pronouncements from the government and action from the secretary of state i am not sure that is the way to get at solving the problem of homophobia in africa. Maybe a less sexy and more complicated work of working with communities to collectively change norms. Is not a satisfying answer but conforms to my general argument which the government is not where you go for change in africa. Why dont you tell us your name and where you are from. I am from chicago, just down the street. You touch upon in your last comment a question i was going to ask about people not looking to the National Government for help and support and to the extent any reporting in this country about africa typically, that is stereotyped as tribal in nature. You mentioned the importance of family and social smaller social groupings, what is your perception of about the possibility or even how africans themselves perceive governing as a nation . You mentioned the mapping is probably all wrong and that would detract from any possibility of Effective Governance at the national level. How do you see that evolving overtime . And the hope of there being an Effective National governance in the countries of Subsaharan Africa. It is one i have grappled with. Very seriously in the book. You are right that the contours of states themselves dont necessarily define the way people live their lives. The region from the west end in gonna all the way to the nigerian border of cameron and the ivory coast is like an Economic Zone where people are crossing borders, engaging in Economic Activity, tribes cross these borders, their presence in all 17 countries in west africa so to the extent that state borders dont describe where life is lived or experience or economics as experienced, it is a huge problem. Beyond the day today how people negotiate these in authentic borders, there are actual benefits to thinking about the region as not just the sort of nation by nation environment. When you look at a country like nigeria which is the biggest on the continent is 170 Million People in the country neighboring it was under 6 million. When you look at the entire west African Economic community it starts to be something comfortable to Major Economies like brazil and india and china. The East African Community which is kenya, uganda, ethiopia, as that starts a powerful economic bloc, you look at Southern African countries, the same story obtained. The concept as a whole, Subsaharan Africa is 800 Million People. The attraction at least for the investor class on these sort of big exploding commercial zones is more pronounced when you think about africana as interlinked sort of economic communities. From the political level at a granular sort of regional basis i think people are so disappointed in National Government was a story i heard over and over again where like citizens all over the world people asked what have you done for me lately . The answer when looking good so many african states is absolutely nothing whether it is the Education System or the road in front of your house or Public Health outcomes it is really disappointing so people come up with alternative arrangements, they buy generators for their houses and it can be very frustrating. I would say i believe this about american government. Municipal government is much more exciting about the federal government i used to cover in washington and to the extent that it relates to people where they are, it offers regional and local sort of skin in the game it is more exciting and i say the same about Subsaharan Africa, communities are vocal that can actually assess needs on the ground, make decisions about allocation of resources. This has been going on for centuries. We disrupted that with the political overlay of the traditional map of africa to the extent that local is better from political and economic perspective, that is my best hope for african governance at least in the short term. I would hold out hope these National Governments would improve in the long term but right now it is a bit cool to her 8 Million People hostage, their leaders underperformed. In the book you suggest that children and grandchildren of the African Diaspora have a role to play. You mentioned the move back and the rest of it. I wonder if out of your own experience and seeing what other people have gone back have been doing, whether you think there is a generational kind of click of recognition that comes from that process. I would say yes. I think one exciting element of what had been years of export, brain drain they used to call it is what i call brain gain. Folks like i suppose myself, who have an understanding of the incredible dynamism in Subsaharan Africa and the fact, i really believe this is fact, it is one of the most if not the most important story of the 21st century. It might take someone like yourself who has visited or spent time living in africa of little time to get to that realization but it is a slighted vantage in whatever sector if you are working in private equity or Public Health and you want to do Something Interesting in technology or you want to start of another business. Of Family Friends who used to pick me up from school when i was growing up in chicago who is from ethiopia, he generated here after having done an advanced degree in what was then czechoslovakia and was working here at the university of chicago and in 2005 went back to ethiopia. Talk about disobeying your parents. He wanted to become a farmer. The agriculture piece was interesting, you could leave medicine in the United States and work in agriculture, ethiopia and find yourself contributing, doing in some ways better, feeling more alive, more in charge, more influential, is really surprising to some people. He had 400 employees, drives five cars, white and two kids, gained a little weight, doing really well. Running a business, that is a really exciting dynamic for so many people like myself, first, Second Generation immigrants in the United States to realize your home country has opportunities your uniquely positioned to seize. That will be an essentials piece of effort thats story. We are out of time, but that is a fantastic place to leave it for now. This book is full of brilliant stories like that that wraps the anecdotal around the analytical strand. The book is the bright continent breaking rules and making change in modern africa. Dayo olopade, thanks for being here today. It is a brilliant book if you want to understand the continent better, you will buy it. Thank you, great to be here. [applause] [inaudible conversations] visit booktv. Org to watch all the programs you see your online. Tight the author or both title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. You can share anything you see on booktv. Org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. Booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. Booktv. Org. Each month the New York Times compiles a list of the best selling books based on several categories. Heres a look at their best selling political books for june of 2014. At the top of the list is capital in the 21st century, the french economist reports on wealth and income inequality in europe and the United States since the 18thcentury. Second is conform a call for refocus priorities in American Public education by television and radio host glenn beck. A fighting chance by massachusetts senator reid is the war and is no. 3 on the New York Times political books list. We recently covered her and thomas picardy in conversation in boston. Look for it to air on booktv or you can watch it any time online at booktv. Org. Retired neurosurgeon been carson is fourth with his take on several issues facing the country today in his book one nation. Look for dr. Carson as recent talks in the National Press club in washington d. C. To air this weekend on booktv. Laura helen brand is fifth with an unbroken and former treasury secretary Timothy Geithner airs book stress test. Generalist Glynn Greenwald recounts his experiences with ed snowden and the nsa in no place to hide, seventh on the New York Times list of bestselling political blocs. His recent talk is available to view at booktv. Org. Number 8 is catherine boos National Book award winner behind a beautiful forever followed by Lynne Cheneys biography of james madison. Wrapping up the list is 12 years a slave. The book originally published in 1853 was recently adapted into an oscarwinning film. That is look at this months list of best sellers according to the New York Times. Next from the National Press club in washington d. C. D. Michael lindsay, president of Gordon College in massachusetts presents the results of the ten year study on power and leadership in america. He says a few thousand people in
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