To my 15-year-old self...

Last Thursday, October 11th, the UN and the global community celebrated, for the first time, the International Day of the Girl. This was a much needed acknowledgment of the all too common suffering, inequality and abuse imposed on girls worldwide and a tribute to their collective strength and determination. Sadly, this first celebration was marked by the shooting two days prior of Malala Yousufzai, a courageous 14 year-old girl and activist for girl's education and women's rights under the Taliban regime. She remains in intensive care and in our collective thoughts and prayers.


To support this brave girl and others like her, several of inspiring women were asked by CNN to share their response to this question: "Looking back, what one piece of advice would you give to your 15-year-old-self?" Though I was a little disappointed not to have a response from Michelle Obama or Alice Walker, I found that the most insightful advice came from the lesser-known figures. Forget my 15-year-old self, these words have their place in my life today:

"Believe in your dreams and ideals and pursue them with determination and motivation. Always find the time to do something for other people. Indeed, there is nothing more rewarding than making someone else happy." - Fabiola Gionotti, Physicist

"I have bad news for you: You're not clairvoyant. Not even a little. You have no idea how the future will unfold. But it will unfold, slowly and quickly and slowly again, in ways that you cannot now begin to imagine. So stop trying to guess what's coming next. All the effort you put into figuring out what will happen, all the scenarios you play out in your mind - they're useless. And that's a good thing. Relax and let the future arrive on its own time and in its own way. Allow yourself to be astonished." - Robin Bernstein, Historian.

If asked the same question, my advice would be simple: love yourself beyond limits, unconditionally. Looking back, I think that might have solved a few problems, eased a few passages, and assuaged many anxieties. I'm still working on it. Of course my girlhood and those of the CNN interviewees are certainly much different from that of Malala Yousafzai. However don't we all, as girls, women, human beings, need the same fundamental advice, care, support, and encouragement? What advice would you give your 15-year-old self?

Just a little brain and heart food to munch on in honor of the first International Day of the Girl....

Africa's Place in the World: Ruminations on a historic dialogue

My husband just returned home from an evening out with a group of West African friends and to my surprise, he was livid after a heated debate about Africa, its history, its people and its place in the world. Apparently the conversation, which had been cool, calm and collected, had taken a turn for the worse after his friend had, with complete confidence, stated that at a conference when asked what Africa had contributed to the world (a question I already find offensive, because it is never asked of other continents), this friend of my husband's had, with the same confidence, stood up as an African and proclaimed to his fellow conference attendees that the continent had not contributed a thing. 

The conversation that followed was full of dismissive remarks about the continent and its peoples' histories, including slavery and systemic oppression under colonial rule. That was all in the past and it is over now. It's time to move on and stop complaining and making excuses. Why can't black people ever stop complaining, this group asked. My husband said he had yelled to the point of losing his voice; for those who do not know him, he is a relatively quiet and calm guy. My husband's friend, to be fair, is a really nice, well-educated person who is a natural-born entrepreneur and has lived in the US for over a decade, without ever once returning home. 

My husband made two major points in this heated argument, yelling over the many voices of the group who debated just as passionately against him:

1. Making the statement that Africa has not contributed and, even worse, has nothing to contribute is the surest evidence you have of Africa's systemic oppression. You who believe this are the system's worst victims and your rejection of history is a rejection of your own heritage. You have to understand, acknowledge this oppression in its varied forms to be able to move forward in any sustainable, healthy way. 

2. The world as we know it has only been made possible due to Africa's many contributions, the majority of which were taken unwillingly and some of which have been freely shared. Europe's industrialization and America's economic force were built on exploited African ingenuity, labor and natural resources. But that is not all Africa has to offer - it offers a diverse set of cultures, with different values and definitions and priorities. It offers us alternative modes of living, relating to each other and relating to our built and natural environments. To deny this is to blindly accept one occidental way of life that has been spoon fed to you and deny yourself and everyone else the possibilities of countless alternatives. 

While upon his return home, my husband was still unsure of whether his points had been enough or  even heard, we continued to discuss the conversation, one I have personally heard before and know is but a continuation of a historic dialogue. There has always been some level of conflict and resentment between African Americans and other black immigrants to the US, who, upon arrival have often openly questioned why blacks in America haven't seized the opportunities of the American Dream and done more with themselves. Tinges of this historic resentment surfaced in the conversation described to me. Why can't they be more entrepreneurial? 

In our post-debate conversation, my husband and I took his argument a step further. Last week I wrote about the universal and fundamental importance of empathy. Well, it is my contention that to truly aspire to be filthy rich in this society, to make this your singular ambition and your source of happiness as so many people have,  you have to be willing to give up a certain level of empathy for others. Climbing to the top, after all, means possible slowing down, putting down, if not crushing, those beneath you. So once this trade-off has been accepted, people anticipating the imagined rewards of the capitalist system, start shedding their empathy right away. With that empathy goes indignation at mass injustice, along with acknowledged historical oppression and recognized continued systemic inequities. To become a winner, one must accept that capitalism creates winners and losers and, against all odds, maintain the winner's mentality, free from all of the baggage and inconvenience of reality. 

Sadly, I fear this is what many entrepreneurial African immigrants, like my husband's friend, do. What is most disturbing though, is that they are right to do so in order to accomplish their stated goal, because our society rewards this behavior. This reminds me of a favorite quote from the interesting historical figure of Jiddu Krishnamurti, who said that "it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." I couldn't have stated it better myself.

One thing that my very wise husband says often in these types of conversations is that we, as humans, like latching onto one part of something that we deem to be true and then accept the whole thing, though perhaps not wholly examined, as truth. This is true with science, technology, capitalism and so forth. Something about it works, so, regardless of its faults and its known inequities and known unknowns, we launch ourselves into it and forget that this seemingly inevitable and hegemonic system hinged, at one point, on a single choice. 

Another telling quote from Krishnamurti, "You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life." Amen.

Social Venture in Dakar anyone?

Summer is over and we are back to blogging here at WYHWTM! Being an Africa-oriented business and economic development nerd, I recently checked out The McKinsey Quarterly’s new report, “Africa at Work: Job Creation and Inclusive Growth,” which highlights the immense economic potential in the continent’s resources, especially its human capital.  While McKinsey’s announcement that “African economies are on the move” (pg1) may be old news to many, the report provides a glimpse into the endless entrepreneurial opportunities in Africa. 

 

Between 2010 and 2020 McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) estimates that Africa will add 122 million people to its labor force, making it the largest labor force in the world by 2035. Currently many African workers are what McKinsey has delicately termed ‘vulnerably employed’ a concept that includes subsistence living and self-employment in the informal economy without social safety nets. The prescribed solution to this prevalent status is an increase in available ‘stable wage-paying jobs,’ namely from manufacturing, agriculture, and retail & hospitality. MGI’s recommendations to put Africa’s economic growth on a similar trajectory to that of South Korea and other emerging markets include: expansion of large-scale commercial farming on uncultivated land, increase in manufacturing sector’s contribution to GDP via either low-cost manufacturing hubs or higher-value-added manufacturing, and modernization and formalization of the retail and hospitality sector (replace informal markets with shopping malls and remove barriers to travel and tourism). While the recommendations provided in the report make perfect sense for a continent on the traditional and seemingly never-ending ‘development path’, they beg the question – what can African countries learn from the shortcomings of the traditional development path and avert in their own evolutions? I personally believe that the possibilities of alternatives paths to alternative states of ‘development’ or well-being are endless. But that is for another day…

Lest we forget, “Africa’s growth needs to be inclusive if it is to improve human welfare and ensure increasing social and political stability.” (pg1) Yes, thank you McKinsey. In order to make this explosive growth inclusive, policymakers, business and entrepreneurs must address the very salient need for work experience opportunities and more hands-on vocational training programs for high-demand skills. ‘Where are the entrepreneurs in this picture?’ one might ask. Interestingly, MGI draws a distinction between ‘opportunity entrepreneurs,’ those who seek to leverage market opportunity and ‘necessity entrepreneurs,’ those, including street hawkers, who are just trying to survive within current market conditions (pg52). ‘Necessity entrepreneurs,’ of which Africa’s share is high compared to other emerging markets, fall under the ‘vulnerable employment’ category. Again, skills-building initiatives are needed to promote ‘necessity entrepreneurs’ to the ‘opportunity entrepreneur’ level.

This is where my restless, creative and entrepreneurial side kicks in and I start thinking of a million potential ventures that could possibly meet these growing needs, particularly in the metropolitan areas of ‘transition economies’ like Ghana, Tanzania and Senegal that have relatively stable sociopolitical contexts and hoards of unemployed energetic and smart young people. There is clearly a need for more homegrown solutions and job creation. Strategic support of local entrepreneurship (the opportunity kind), social innovation and the creative economy are proven methods being used to stimulate transitioning cities within the U.S. (Pittsburgh anyone?), but are rarely at the forefront of US driven economic development efforts elsewhere. (One theory is that this does not support the true agenda of extracting the most value for the U.S. out of the economic development of emerging markets – cheap labor, cheap goods, natural resources, favorable trade terms, low-barrier investments…but I digress). 

So there are at least two needs clearly identified: closing the gap between smart, energetic youth and jobs, and creating new stable jobs in a less foreign-investment-centric way through local entrepreneurship….hmmm. Since this forum is meant to also serve as a platform for sharing unperfected ideas, let’s have a go:

What: A social enterprise based in Dakar, Senegal addressing the two needs stated above

Mission: To engage local young people in local economic development efforts

Two Strategies:

• Support youth job readiness, training and placement
• Promote local entrepreneurship in social and creative sectors

 Services for youth clients would include:

•  Post-graduate internships and job training
• Career development
• Vocational and other workshops
• Entrepreneurship incubator
• Social innovation support programs

 Services for local and foreign institutional clients would include:

• Job posting and internship/full-time recruiting
• Job training/orientation facilitation
• Venture investment opportunities
• Consulting (marketing, strategic management, economic development…etc)

 Sustainable Business Model: Simply put, income from the institutional clients (companies and government agencies) and higher-income youth clients would subsidize services to lower-income youth clients and more socially-oriented activities without a direct source of revenue. This model may also require supplementary income generation, which could be accomplished in the form of another social enterprise branch also used for vocational training purposes (boutique, restaurant, temp agency….etc).

What do you all think? Granted, this is a very simplistic description, I would love to hear your initial reactions, questions, thoughts, related interests and suggestions! A hearty and challenging dialogue is key to any ideation process. Thanks in advance for participating!

Ambassadors for Africa: Bridging the Gap

by Ebele Ifedigbo

 A version of this post originally appeared on Africa.com under its "My Journey, My Africa" section.



My Journey with Africa started as one of deep confusion and chronic discord. Like most African children born and raised in the United States, I struggled with my Nigerian status. Growing up, I was particularly perplexed as to why my parents chose to curse my life with such a weird name as ‘Ebele’- didn’t they know that people would continually butcher the pronunciation or, worse, give in to the temptation of calling me incredibly stupid nicknames like ‘Belly’?

Being the hybrid product of a Nigerian father and a black American mother only compounded my African identity struggle. It seemed like I never really fit in on either side: Africans saw me as essentially black and they tended to see blacks as lazy and uncultured; blacks saw me as essentially African and they tended to see Africa as a place full of naked tree-swinging tribes and starving babies.

Of course I had my family there to keep me grounded in Nigerian culture and values but, given the fact that I was actually raised in a black American community, I felt a lot further removed from my African identity than from my black American identity. As I got older and the desire to truly know myself set in, I became increasingly curious to learn more about Africa: I got my Nigerian cousins to teach me Igbo, I started listening to music artists like Flavour and 9ice to complement the Bob Marley and 2pac collections that had long flooded my iPod, and I took so many Africa-focused electives in college that I ended up qualifying for a minor in African Studies. But just knowing about Nigeria and Africa wasn’t enough for me. Deep down, I really wanted to understand more about the intersection of the African and black American experiences: How might we learn to find strength in our similarities while still proudly celebrating our differences? And, most importantly, how could I use my inter-sectional positioning to help bridge the deep cultural divide I’ve unfortunately had to navigate my entire life?

My passionate drive to unite my bifurcated communities has led me to create a new organization called Ambassadors for Africa (AFA). Founded in February 2012 by me and my partner Shirley Torho, AFA brings together black American youth ages 7-24 from all walks of life for a program designed to develop their global leadership capacity while preparing them for a life as advocates for meaningful and sustainable African development. At the core of AFA’s program model is our abiding belief that the black American community has been a sorely overlooked ally in the ongoing struggle for lasting African prosperity. Furthermore, we believe that exposure to the African cultural and socioeconomic milieu will empower black youth with a more complete perception of their personal identity and equip them with a more dynamic understanding of the pressing issues facing Africa-descendant communities, both in America and abroad.

After completing a curriculum rooted in responsible volunteerism & cultural exchange, social entrepreneurship, and Black & African Studies, youth participate in service trips to Africa, where they form sustainable relationships with African youth & community partners in key sectors. Upon their return to the United States, participants complete collaborative social action projects to effect change in the areas of African development most meaningful to them. Long term, AFA will serve as a critical facilitating link between AFA alumni and continental African communities and organizations, fueling and facilitating their contributions to the continent over time.

While my personal Journey with Africa has been a decidedly rocky one involving years of inner-conflict, discovery, growth, and self-acceptance, I am forever grateful because the challenging journey has led me to a place of unwavering appreciation and genuine empowerment through my African identity. Best of all, my Journey has led me to what I believe is my true life purpose. Through Ambassadors for Africa, I have the invaluable opportunity to use my bi-cultural life experience as a platform for creating a powerful and mutually-beneficial cross-continental exchange of ideas, resources, and support. The prospect of strengthening and unifying both sides of my Africa-descendant community brings me immense joy and satisfaction and I am quite excited to see where this Journey will take me next.

To learn more about Ambassadors for Africa and to join our nascent movement, please visit and 'like' our Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/Ambassadors4Africa or email us at: ambassadors4africa@gmail.com.

If you would like to help us with funding (and you definitely should!), you can contribute to our Indiegogo campaign at: www.indiegogo.com/AmbassadorsForAfrica.

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Ebele is a budding social entrepreneur whose foremost passion in life is the pursuit of lasting social and economic empowerment for the black community worldwide.
@Ebele_Ifedigbo
@Ambass4Africa