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I experienced my first coup d'etat at the age of four.
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Because of the coup d'etat,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 coup d'etats
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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 th equality of our leaders.
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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.
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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."
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Well, you just can.
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You decide you want to print money.
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You called 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.
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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.
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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.
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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: Laticia.
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Laticia'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)
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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 charter 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 multi-million 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 our 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.
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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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Laticia 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 six thousand more.
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But one thing has been troubling me.
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We would get about four thousand applications a year
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for a hundred 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 ten thousand leaders at a time
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so we'll be educating and developing
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250 thousand leaders at any given time.
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(Applause)
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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.
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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 non-profit 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?
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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.
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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)