WEBVTT

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I experienced my first coup d'état at the age of four.

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Because of the coup d'état,

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my family had to leave my native home of Ghana

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and move to the Gambia.

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As luck would have it,

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six months after we arrived,

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they too had a military coup.

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I vividly remember being woken
up in the middle of the night

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and gathering the few belongings we could

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and walking for about two hours

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to a safe house.

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For a week, we slept under our beds

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because we were worried that bullets
might fly through the window.

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Then, at the age of eight,

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we moved to Botswana.

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This time, it was different.

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There were no coups.

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Everything worked. Great education.

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They had such good infrastructure
that even at the time they had

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a fiber-optic telephone system,

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long before it had reached Western countries.

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The only thing they didn't have

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is that they didn't have

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their own national television station,

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and so I remember watching

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TV from neighboring South Africa,

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and watching Nelson Mandela in jail

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being offered a chance to come out

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if he would give up the apartheid struggle.

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But he didn't. He refused to do that

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until he actually achieved his objective

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of freeing South Africa from apartheid.

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And I remember feeling how just one good leader

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could make such a big difference in Africa.

NOTE Paragraph

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Then at the age of 12,

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my family sent me to high school in Zimbabwe.

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Initially, this too was amazing:

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growing economy, excellent infrastructure,

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and it seemed like it was a model

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for economic development in Africa.

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I graduated from high school in Zimbabwe

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and I went off to college.

NOTE Paragraph

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Six years later, I returned to the country.

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Everything was different.

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It had shattered into pieces.

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Millions of people had emigrated,

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the economy was in a shambles,

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and it seemed all of a sudden that 30 years

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of development had been wiped out.

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How could a country go so bad so fast?

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Most people would agree

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that it's all because of leadership.

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One man, President Robert Mugabe,

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is almost single-handedly responsible

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for having destroyed this country.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, all these experiences of living in different

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parts of Africa growing up

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did two things to me.

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The first is it made me fall in love with Africa.

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Everywhere I went,

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I experienced the wonderful beauty of our continent

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and saw the resilience and the spirit of our people,

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and at the time, I realized that I wanted to dedicate

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the rest of my life to making this continent great.

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But I also realized that making Africa great

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would require addressing this issue of leadership.

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You see, all these countries I lived in,

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the coups d'état

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and the corruption I'd seen in Ghana and Gambia

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and in Zimbabwe,

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contrasted with the wonderful examples I had seen

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in Botswana and in South 
Africa of good leadership.

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It made me realize that Africa would rise or fall

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because of the quality of our leaders.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, one might think, of course,

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leadership matters everywhere.

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But if there's one thing you take
away from my talk today, it is this:

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In Africa, more than anywhere else in the world,

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the difference that just one good leader can make

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is much greater than anywhere 
else, and here's why.

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It's because in Africa, we have weak institutions,

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like the judiciary, the constitution,

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civil society and so forth.

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So here's a general rule of thumb that I believe in:

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When societies have strong institutions,

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the difference that one good
leader can make is limited,

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but when you have weak institutions,

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then just one good leader

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can make or break that country.

NOTE Paragraph

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Let me make it a bit more concrete.

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You become the president of the United States.

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You think, "Wow, I've arrived.

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I'm the most powerful man in the world."

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So you decide, perhaps let me pass a law.

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All of a sudden, Congress taps you on the shoulder

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and says, "No, no, no, no, no, you can't do that."

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You say, "Let me try this way."

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The Senate comes and says, "Uh-uh,

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we don't think you can do that."

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You say, perhaps, "Let me print some money.

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I think the economy needs a stimulus."

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The central bank governor will think you're crazy.

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You might get impeached for that.

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But if you become the president of Zimbabwe,

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and you say, "You know, I really like this job.

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I think I'd like to stay in it forever."
(Laughter)

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Well, you just can.

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You decide you want to print money.

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You call the central bank governor and you say,

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"Please double the money supply."

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He'll say, "Okay, yes, sir,

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is there anything else I can do for you?"

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This is the power that African leaders have,

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and this is why they make the most difference

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on the continent.

NOTE Paragraph

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The good news is that

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the quality of leadership in Africa has been improving.

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We've had three generations 
of leaders, in my mind.

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Generation one are those who appeared

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in the '50s and '60s.

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These are people like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana

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and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania.

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The legacy they left is that they
brought independence to Africa.

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They freed us from colonialism,

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and let's give them credit for that.

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They were followed by generation two.

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These are people that brought nothing

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but havoc to Africa.

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Think warfare, corruption, human rights abuses.

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This is the stereotype of 
the typical African leader

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that we typically think of:

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Mobutu Sese Seko from Zaire,

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Sani Abacha from Nigeria.

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The good news is that most of
these leaders have moved on,

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and they were replaced by generation three.

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These are people like the late Nelson Mandela

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and most of the leaders that we see in Africa today,

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like Paul Kagame and so forth.

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Now these leaders are by no means perfect,

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but the one thing they have done is that they have

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cleaned up much of the mess of generation two.

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They've stopped the fighting,

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and I call them the stabilizer generation.

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They're much more accountable to their people,

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they've improved macroeconomic policies,

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and we are seeing for the first time

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Africa's growing, and in 
fact it's the second fastest

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growing economic region in the world.

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So these leaders are by no means perfect,

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but they are by and large

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the best leaders we've seen in the last 50 years.

NOTE Paragraph

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So where to from here?

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I believe that the next generation

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to come after this, generation four,

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has a unique opportunity

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to transform the continent.

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Specifically, they can do two things

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that previous generations have not done.

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The first thing they need to do

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is they need to create prosperity for the continent.

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Why is prosperity so important?

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Because none of the previous generations

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have been able to tackle this issue of poverty.

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Africa today

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has the fastest growing population in the world,

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but also is the poorest.

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By 2030, Africa will have a
larger workforce than China,

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and by 2050, it will have the
largest workforce in the world.

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One billion people will need jobs in Africa,

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so if we don't grow our economies fast enough,

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we're sitting on a ticking time bomb,

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not just for Africa but for the entire world.

NOTE Paragraph

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Let me show you an example

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of one person who is living up to this legacy

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of creating prosperity: Laetitia.

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Laetitia's a young woman from Kenya

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who at the age of 13 had to drop out of school

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because her family couldn't 
afford to pay fees for her.

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So she started her own business rearing rabbits,

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which happen to be a delicacy in this part of Kenya

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that she's from.

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This business did so well that within a year,

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she was employing 15 women

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and was able to generate enough income

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that she was able to send herself to school,

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and through these women

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fund another 65 children to go to school.

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The profits that she generated,

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she used that to build a school,

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and today she educates

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400 children in her community.

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And she's just turned 18.

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(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

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Another example is Erick Rajaonary.

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Erick comes from the island of Madagascar.

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Now, Erick realized that agriculture

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would be the key to creating jobs

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in the rural areas of Madagascar,

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but he also realized that fertilizer was a very

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expensive input for most farmers in Madagascar.

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Madagascar has these very special bats

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that produce these droppings

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that are very high in nutrients.

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In 2006, Erick quit his job 
as a chartered accountant

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and started a company to manufacture

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fertilizer from the bat droppings.

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Today, Erick has built a business

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that generates several million dollars of revenue,

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and he employs 70 people full time

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and another 800 people during the season

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when the bats drop their droppings the most.

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Now, what I like about this story

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is that it shows that opportunities 
to create prosperity

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can be found almost anywhere.

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Erick is known as the Batman.

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(Laughter)

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And who would have thought that you would have

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been able to build a multimillion-dollar business

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employing so many people just from bat poo?

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The second thing that this generation needs to do

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is to create our institutions.

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They need to build these institutions such that we

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are never held to ransom again

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by a few individuals like Robert Mugabe.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, all of this sounds great,

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but where are we going to
get this generation four from?

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Do we just sit and hope that they emerge

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by chance, or that God gives them to us?

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No, I don't think so.

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It's too important an issue 
for us to leave it to chance.

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I believe that we need to create African institutions,

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home-grown, that will identify and develop

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these leaders in a systematic, practical way.

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We've been doing this for the last 10 years

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through the African Leadership Academy.

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Laetitia is one of our young leaders.

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Today, we have 700 of them 
that are being groomed

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for the African continent,

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and over the next 50 years,

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we expect to create 6,000 of them.

NOTE Paragraph

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But one thing has been troubling me.

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We would get about 4,000 applications a year

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for 100 young leaders that we could take

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into this academy,

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and so I saw the tremendous hunger that existed

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for this leadership training that we're offering.

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But we couldn't satisfy it.

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So today, I'm announcing for the first time in public

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an extension to this vision for
the African Leadership Academy.

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We're building 25 brand new universities in Africa

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that are going to cultivate this next generation

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of African leaders.

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Each campus will have 10,000 leaders at a time

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so we'll be educating and developing

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250,000 leaders at any given time.

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(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

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Over the next 50 years, this institution

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will create three million transformative leaders

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for the continent.

NOTE Paragraph

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My hope is that half of them

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will become the entrepreneurs that we need,

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who will create these jobs that we need,

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and the other half

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will go into government

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and the nonprofit sector,

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and they will build the institutions that we need.

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But they won't just learn academics.

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They will also learn how to become leaders,

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and they will develop their skills as entrepreneurs.

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So think of this as Africa's Ivy League,

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but instead of getting admitted
because of your SAT scores

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or because of how much money you have

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or which family you come from,

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the main criteria for getting into this university

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will be what is the potential that you have

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for transforming Africa?

NOTE Paragraph

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But what we're doing is 
just one group of institutions.

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We cannot transform Africa by ourselves.

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My hope

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is that many, many other home-grown

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African institutions will blossom,

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and these institutions will all come together

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with a common vision of developing

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this next generation of African leaders,

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generation four,

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and they will teach them this common message:

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create jobs, build our institutions.

NOTE Paragraph

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Nelson Mandela once said,

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"Every now and then,

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a generation is called upon to be great.

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You can be that great generation."

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I believe that if we carefully identify and cultivate

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the next generation of African leaders,

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then this generation four that is coming up

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will be the greatest generation that Africa

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and indeed the entire world has ever seen.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)