Africa is NOT Poor Because of Colonialism： Here’s Why. - Magatte Wade
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode of the podcast, we sit down with comedian Dr. Phil to talk about why Africa is still poor, colonialism, and why entrepreneurs are the key to building a better future for all of us. We also talk about how to get a job in Africa, how to hire the right kind of employees, and the best way to start a business in Africa.
Transcript
00:00:11.080
I always have two companies, one in Africa and one in the US.
00:00:14.840
And to see that one almost took two years, the other one barely 20 minutes to put together.
00:00:22.440
Because once upon a time, we drank the fateful, ill-advised, dreadful, deadly ideology of socialism.
00:00:36.940
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00:00:40.800
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00:00:43.800
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00:00:48.760
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00:00:52.760
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00:01:01.840
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00:01:09.120
One of the questions that has been suggested to us to ask,
00:01:12.160
because we obviously ask our fans, etc., what we should talk about, is colonialism and Africa.
00:01:28.620
People like, you know, when you line up, you could line up a hundred people.
00:01:36.120
And you might probably get a hundred different answers.
00:01:38.880
But you can pretty much categorize, I told you, English is only from my fourth language.
00:01:44.980
Some of these words, I don't know how to pronounce.
00:01:46.680
You can put it into categories, let's say that.
00:01:48.360
And some people, anywhere, so the people who are, some people will be like on the IQ thing, lazy thing.
00:01:56.780
You know, that whole racist trend of why Africans are where they are today.
00:02:02.460
You sounded like you've done a lot of research.
00:02:04.160
And so on the other end, you have Africans and their allies, so-called allies.
00:02:14.060
And for them, it's all various forms of victimhood.
00:02:17.660
You know, anywhere from, it's because of racism.
00:02:23.260
It's because they're stealing our natural resources.
00:02:26.640
Yet, I don't hear anyone talking about what's the reason why we're still poor.
00:02:36.600
You asked me the question, is Africa poor today because of colonialism?
00:02:49.500
Like this idea that I should just be happy being a little bit less poor, but it's pathetic.
00:03:01.260
Any nation that you look at, it's entrepreneurs that did it.
00:03:05.020
Well, what do entrepreneurs need in order to thrive?
00:03:12.940
And we find that actually countries that offer their citizens a world-class business environment are rich.
00:03:21.000
Conversely, those who offer a pretty bad, poor business environment don't thrive.
00:03:36.120
You know, when I started my first company back in 2003.
00:03:39.960
So, at that point, when you wanted to start a company, you know, you have to register the business, first of all.
00:03:46.880
It takes almost two years to register the business legally.
00:03:49.760
And you look at that and you thought about the sister company.
00:03:53.420
Because I always have two companies, one in Africa and one in the U.S., they're sister companies.
00:03:58.460
And to see that one almost took two years, the other one barely 20 minutes to put together.
00:04:03.840
In this instance, you're married to your employees for good or for bad.
00:04:14.060
If I want to hire you, if I want to hire you, if I want to hire you, Francis, the deal is simple.
00:04:24.820
You put it in your drawers, I put it in my drawers, we're done.
00:04:36.460
Take myself, physically, to a government office called Inspection du Travail.
00:04:42.940
Where there, we meet with a government official who doesn't know the first thing about my business.
00:04:48.520
Probably never ran a business in his whole darn life.
00:04:50.940
Probably maybe never was in the private sector.
00:04:56.700
But this person gets to decide if Constantin and I get to work together or not.
00:05:01.700
And he says, well, where is his health certificate showing me that he is apt to do the job?
00:05:12.720
When you put all of this together, that's what the economists call economic freedom.
00:05:16.440
And that's also what we call the business environment.
00:05:20.040
Technically, how free or not are you to enterprise?
00:05:27.420
And so when you realize that Africa is the region in the world that's the most over-regulated region in the world, that's the one that offers its entrepreneurs the least freedom to enterprise, then you understand why we're poor.
00:05:40.780
Poverty is solved by prosperity, prosperity built by entrepreneurs.
00:05:45.160
Entrepreneurs need a business class, business environment.
00:05:47.960
It happens to be that in Africa, they have the worst business environment in the world.
00:05:51.060
You haven't looked there and you want to sit there and scream about all of these so-called reasons as to why we're supposedly poor.
00:06:01.520
So this is what we have found and that's what we need to work on.
00:06:03.940
And no one is working on it because there's 100 people I told you about.
00:06:09.840
None of them speaks about the shackles that are around my neck as an entrepreneur trying to do business underground.
00:06:20.060
Because once upon a time we drank the fateful, ill-advised, dreadful, deadly ideology of socialism.
00:06:30.700
And I will try to describe here what socialism means, you know, because our friends, our friends who feel victimized all the time and our young people who think socialism is a good idea.
00:06:42.300
You know, for them, when they think about socialism, it's just like, oh, everybody's provided for what they need and all that.
00:06:47.660
But no, it's, you know, the government owning, you know, the means of production.
00:06:53.440
So, or when the economy is completely planned from the top down.
00:06:57.020
So, what happened, Francis, is when we got out of slavery, we got into colonialism.
00:07:06.540
And towards the end of colonialism, what we had was the liberators of Africa.
00:07:15.580
So, all over the continent, we had various people fighting for, you know, the freedom of their nations.
00:07:21.740
And so, what you had is around, right before the independences in the late 50s, early 60s, what you had was, basically, you were, for people who know their history, we were at the height of this ideological battle.
00:07:38.300
On one end, represented by the Western nations practicing, you know, capitalism, and what they were promoting was freedom, facing off with the Eastern Bloc, you know, promoting various forms of statism.
00:07:50.960
And both blocs were looking for influence, usually looking down south.
00:07:57.820
They were looking for influence with us as well.
00:07:59.620
And so, that's when our people, especially the many of these liberators of Africa, they're thinking, okay, the West is who colonized us.
00:08:09.960
Whatever they're standing for, we cannot before.
00:08:13.500
And they threw the baby out with the bathwater.
00:08:16.460
That's when we made the fateful decision to side with the Marxist socialists of back then.
00:08:22.820
That's how, as most African nations were starting to become free, most of these leaders were also socialist leaders.
00:08:32.680
And as you know, this thing doesn't happen in a vacuum.
00:08:35.100
You just don't be like, oh, I'm a socialist, and it doesn't show anywhere else.
00:08:38.720
So, everything is following, you know, the socialist ideologies.
00:08:43.400
Basically, all of these, what do you call them, these five-year plan a la Soviet style, that's what almost all African nations had.
00:08:52.280
And then some people were like, well, Nigeria was not socialist.
00:08:54.600
Well, Nigeria still was doing a five-year plan a la Soviet style.
00:09:00.580
And we, to this day, have not reconsidered any of this.
00:09:05.940
Because when I go, and this gentleman is telling me, you have to bring me your Constantin's health certificate.
00:09:18.680
And they open it, and I look at the date, and it's from the colonial times.
00:09:29.220
Because what the world sees is, it's so funny, because I talk to people even on the right.
00:09:38.600
So, for most people, there's no law going on in Africa.
00:09:42.400
And my fellow Africans also feel the same way, because they'll be like, what do you mean that Senegal, and in general, Africa, is the region in the world where the employees are the most protected?
00:09:56.060
This is the region of the world where employees are the most protected around the world.
00:10:02.120
Because the Africa I live in, and I'm in every day, I see people who have not been paid for eight months.
00:10:08.960
I see people who are treated like crap at their jobs.
00:10:20.740
Senegal is one of the countries where the employees are the most protected in the world.
00:10:28.360
We're one of the 25 poorest countries in the world.
00:10:30.480
What people need to understand is the law is the law.
00:10:35.820
If you make it super, an employee being super protected means there's tons of labor regulations that stand in the way.
00:10:42.980
That at-will employment that I get in the U.S.?
00:10:46.860
Because remember, the government gets to tell me when we can hire each other, when I need to get rid of you.
00:10:52.680
Even if you're stealing from me, the government has to sanction that decision.
00:10:55.660
So the government makes a decision as to when and how much it's going to cost me to get rid of you.
00:11:03.580
Most people don't want to hire people full-time.
00:11:10.600
They basically hire somebody for two years as a contractor.
00:11:14.100
Right before the two years is over, you need to leave.
00:11:21.920
Because if you try to renew those contracts after two times, it turns into an indefinite contract.
00:11:30.340
And when that happens, it means you're a full-time...
00:11:42.820
And I say to you, Constantin, be very careful because, you know, this person you're about
00:11:47.760
to marry for whatever reason, no matter what happens and you need to divorce, you can't
00:11:55.400
So I tell people, if I can't fire you, I can't hire you.
00:11:58.900
I know it sounds cruel, but it makes sense, right?
00:12:03.080
So what happens is, because the laws are so cumbersome, almost no one wants to set up
00:12:11.720
There's a reason why there's 97% of businesses in Senegal that are in the informal sector.
00:12:17.860
I repeat, 97% of the businesses in Senegal are in the informal sector.
00:12:23.800
It's directly correlated to what I just explained.
00:12:28.640
And the reason I asked about corruption earlier is I know from Russia, for example, where it's
00:12:37.240
But the reason that these restrictions and these apparatchiks and these bureaucrats exist
00:12:43.120
to get involved in your business is because they get to exercise power over a business.
00:12:49.280
And then they can say, well, you know, I could look at this letter now.
00:12:54.500
And that depends on whether you want to leave this envelope on my desk because you walk out
00:13:00.900
But then the reason why I will not accept corruption as the reason why we are poor is because
00:13:10.600
And I am just tired, tired when it comes to Africa, especially that most people are stuck
00:13:20.540
So we have to, I don't know, it's, it's, I know that it is not sexy to look at laws, to
00:13:30.900
But everything around us, if you think about it, oftentimes is ruled by regulations and
00:13:36.960
So, so this is, so when you talk about corruption, the reason why I, I hear many people like,
00:13:43.040
there's a hundred people I told you about being lined up.
00:13:45.120
Corruption is going to be probably way up there.
00:13:47.640
And I say, no, corruption is the sign that there are too many laws and also too many senseless
00:13:53.860
Because every time that gentleman gets a chance to interact with me, this person from the
00:14:00.260
If I did not have to deal with this person like it is in the US, there is no friction.
00:14:06.560
There's no place in, in which this person can exercise the power that the state give them.
00:14:13.080
When the state said to this person, you get to decide if Constantin and Magat can work
00:14:18.140
together, right there, right there, you opened everything up for corruption.
00:14:22.920
Because this person knows now that my fate depends on his decision or her decision.
00:14:28.260
And so what happens is they're just going to sit there, make things last longer than
00:14:34.980
They, they apply every single piece of the law, hoping that at some point you get tired
00:14:39.280
of it and eventually it's just faster, easier for you to pay the bribe and move on with
00:14:44.680
So corruption to me is, is not a good thing, of course, but it's an easy one to fix.
00:14:51.800
Remove the law, remove, you know, the interaction between me and the state official, and you
00:14:57.920
remove that opportunity for corruption and bribe happening.
00:15:03.160
Magat, but the problem is as well with corruption, as someone whose mother comes from one of the
00:15:07.020
most corrupt nations in the world, which is Venezuela, is it's, it becomes part of the
00:15:12.800
And that's really dangerous because I always think corruption is like a cancer.
00:15:17.320
Once it starts to metastasize, you see the, you see the, you see your country fall apart,
00:15:25.760
And exactly what you're talking about, um, Francis is the reason why one of my most radical
00:15:33.140
solutions is basically around this concept of startup cities.
00:15:38.680
Some people call them the, uh, charter cities, but basically these are next generation, um,
00:15:45.020
special economic zones that have their own law, have their own governance, and also have
00:15:51.020
And so the reason why we suggest, because right now I'm involved also in policy, in, um,
00:15:57.740
in policy reforms, um, so we're talking about piecemeal legislation, as you all know, this
00:16:03.460
And by the time you're, by the time you manage to get one law taken out or, you know, uh,
00:16:09.520
cleaned up over here, 20 million popped up over there.
00:16:13.180
Meanwhile, I have hundreds of millions of young people who come to an age of working every
00:16:17.800
single year in Africa and have nowhere to turn.
00:16:20.160
This is literally a ticking bomb, a ticking bomb.
00:16:22.980
Um, maybe the Europeans see it in the form of all the, um, you know, the, uh, migrants,
00:16:30.940
And now we know that some Africans are also using, um, the, um, the, um, Central American
00:16:36.460
routes going to Nicaragua and from there passing over to the U S I, I don't personally blame
00:16:44.000
They have done what humans have done throughout times in my country right now.
00:16:48.620
What they love is to pound on them, you know, be like, you should have more pride.
00:16:54.820
The story of humans is if here doesn't work for you, you go over there.
00:17:11.880
Even today you get up, you watch, you, you check for news every single day.
00:17:20.060
There are news of boats, little fishermen's boats, bless you, leaving my country, trying
00:17:25.540
to make it to Europe with tons of young people in them.
00:17:30.600
And I'd like to say our most entrepreneurial people, because who leaves?
00:17:38.120
And, uh, but right now for most of them, they're laying at the bottom of the ocean, serving
00:17:43.280
And I sit there and I ask myself, is this the best we can do?
00:17:47.220
Uh, when they don't die like that, you find them bodies dropping from the plane, you know,
00:17:51.720
like, uh, because somebody thought it was a good idea to hide in the landing gear and
00:17:55.000
somewhere above England here, where we are, a body drops, or you open the cargo section
00:17:59.760
of a plane and you see a frozen body because no one told them that, you know, when it gets
00:18:03.780
up there, things get really cold and they're going to die.
00:18:06.760
And then when they think that air route is too dangerous, sea route is too dangerous,
00:18:11.260
then they're like, we're going to go land route and land route.
00:18:14.120
So many of them get stuck in Libya and in Libya right now, when you, when you caught someone
00:18:18.380
like me, they sell you as a slave for 300, between 300 and $500.
00:18:26.080
Um, so for me, it's just, um, I, I, um, I look at this and I'm thinking to myself, what
00:18:36.340
So, like I said, I've been working on peace on, uh, reforms, but that takes too long.
00:18:53.640
And because trying to do things at a national level takes forever, we're like, how about
00:18:59.980
on a smaller piece of land, the size of a city there, we basically change, uh, the rules
00:19:07.820
of the game there we bring to the local entrepreneurs, the best business environment that there is
00:19:18.260
And we bring that to people right where they are.
00:19:21.560
And from there, you almost basically building this area where people get to try before they
00:19:27.140
And for me, this is very much, um, the future, this is very much part of a solution because
00:19:32.320
like you said, um, at some point, corruption becomes part of, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's
00:19:44.680
You have all of these entrenched interests fighting from everywhere you go nowhere.
00:19:50.920
And then when it starts to work here, what we have also found is that actually all these
00:19:55.300
other oligarchs who used to benefit from the system and were very, you know, thriving in
00:20:00.500
this corruption, corrupted world, all of a sudden they're finding that, oh, wait, first
00:20:04.480
of all, this is extra business for me because now there is activity going on here.
00:20:08.440
And on top of that, now they're starting to convert slowly to the place where you don't
00:20:14.460
have to, you don't need to know anybody in order to thrive.
00:20:17.960
And they're starting to, to realize, oh, wow, I actually can make money in a manner where
00:20:22.340
I don't have to be, um, bonded to anyone, uh, you know, because a lot of them, they're
00:20:29.640
You might see them with a fancy homes, fancy cars and fancy everything.
00:20:33.140
But I see, I'm not going to say slaves because, you know, out of respect for the real
00:20:39.260
slaves, but I see people that are not free at the very minimum people that owe everything
00:20:46.360
There is a government in West Africa, I won't say the name here, where the president is quite
00:20:52.640
So all of these people who benefit from his largesse, they have these great big businesses,
00:21:02.220
You're sitting right there and he's there touching her, doing all the things he wants
00:21:06.720
And there's not one single damn thing you can do about it because you open your mouth or
00:21:10.580
you even flinch your eyelashes out of, you know, anger.
00:21:15.140
And the next day he'll send you all the people, the auditors that are going to come and tell
00:21:20.380
you how much taxes you actually owe them after all of these years and everything else.
00:21:24.640
Do you really think people like that want to continue like that?
00:21:26.400
So when you create these zones, all of a sudden they start to see and even them eventually
00:21:30.960
So the plan is you do it somewhere where there's actually almost nothing existing.
00:21:38.020
I call it, I call these little islands of excellence.
00:21:40.700
And then from there you, you watch the island of excellence become an inspiration for other
00:21:45.360
And then they try to imitate this, what happened over here.
00:21:48.720
And that's little by little how you get to change everything around you.
00:21:52.180
So that really is a path I've been on and I've been promoting it for the past year on
00:21:57.960
At first it was one country that, you know, was very interested and we had to do all the
00:22:02.960
jump through all the hoops and to interest them.
00:22:05.960
And now I'm happy to say there's four nations that we're talking to.
00:22:09.200
And out of those, one I think is ultra, ultra, ultra promising.
00:22:14.140
And hopefully within the next few months, we'll be now able to announce where we're doing this.
00:22:20.800
It's not even a joke because we know that when you do things like this, it takes within
00:22:25.120
25 years, we're talking about a generation, you can see the change starting to happen.
00:22:29.520
And so that's why my goal is, my stated goal is by 20, 2.5 billion prosperous Africans by
00:22:37.460
2050, because that's how many we will be by then.
00:22:40.320
So, yeah, that's, that's pretty much what the plan is.
00:22:43.520
And I'm really, I'm really inspired by what you said, because one of the things I noticed
00:22:49.880
when I was in Venezuela was, we call it tercer mundista, which means third world, third world
00:22:57.060
And it's, and people, you know, in the West would be like, oh, that's a really horrible
00:23:02.840
You know, and particularly when you look at politics and these politicians, all they care
00:23:06.460
about is reaching the top, not because they want to serve their nation, not because they
00:23:10.200
want to turn what should be one of the richest countries in the world in terms of resources
00:23:14.160
into one of the richest countries of the world.
00:23:16.600
But all they care about is getting to the top and enriching themselves.
00:23:21.580
And you think to yourself, you look at it and you go, well, it doesn't matter how rich
00:23:25.780
It doesn't matter the potentiality a country has.
00:23:33.040
And so that's why for me, you know, it's very much my attitude in life is criticized
00:23:39.360
So it's like when something is wrong, of course, put your finger on what's wrong so that you
00:23:44.420
can, because without a proper diagnosis, you can't really come to a right solution.
00:23:47.880
But beyond that, then get working on the solution.
00:23:52.460
Well, I do think history is very important because people, in order to control the future,
00:24:00.000
And the stories that people are told about their own history and the history of other
00:24:06.060
people and the history of the relations between them are really important, I think, in terms
00:24:13.540
So I imagine if you tell people constantly, well, you are where you are because of colonialism
00:24:18.940
or because of slavery, because of this, it creates a certain mindset.
00:24:22.100
And I just want to come back to that because is it really true that colonialism, you know,
00:24:30.000
isn't really important in the history of Africa, in the history of where Africa is today?
00:24:35.620
And I'm always the first one to say, did it have a big role in it?
00:24:42.900
But my problem is, if you, you know, the thing is, I always like to say, yes, and, right?
00:24:55.420
And not be stuck at, we cannot, what happened, there's nothing we can do about that.
00:25:03.780
And denying what happened also is definitely not where I'm coming from.
00:25:07.780
I'm the first one to say, yes, this stuff happened and it was violent among probably
00:25:11.800
one of the most violent colonizations that there were if we have to measure these things.
00:25:21.720
Just like, you know, if you're born to, I don't know, drug addicted parents, whatever.
00:25:28.160
Of course, it's going to be part of who you are today, but does that control what you can
00:25:34.800
I had this great friend of mine, he passed away, but he said, no matter what happened to
00:25:38.580
you, you're responsible for what you do for you.
00:25:41.700
And I really, really, for me, that's, I'm trying to extract our people from that place of
00:25:48.020
commiseration, of this is what happened to us, of this was so wrong.
00:25:53.440
We got to depart from that place, however defining part of our history thought it was.
00:26:01.480
And someone like me, I like to remind our people, there were Africans on that great continent
00:26:09.120
before the white man ever set foot on the continent.
00:26:16.100
And when you look there and you look at the work of people like Professor George Ayite,
00:26:21.720
great new, also historians that are coming up, and you can, and you see that Africa had
00:26:35.220
I, in fact, I argue that for most people, Africans and non-Africans, the story of Africa
00:26:40.240
starts with slavery, moves on to colonialism to present day.
00:26:43.600
So we are robbed from a very important time of our history.
00:26:48.580
And when you look at that time of our history, Africans were practicing the free enterprise.
00:26:54.620
We were free marketeers, trade routes, among some of them most vibrant in the world.
00:27:17.720
I guess some people would like it to be that way.
00:27:20.340
What about the way we have these conversations in the West?
00:27:23.580
Because obviously you're someone who's come from Senegal and you live in the US some of
00:27:29.680
And I imagine because you have a certain skin color, people assume certain things about
00:27:34.780
you and want to sort of bring you into a certain conversation.
00:27:40.400
How do you see the way we talk about these issues in the West?
00:27:48.440
By the way, I love the French pronunciation of my name.
00:28:05.100
When we were in Austin, that's all anybody said to me.
00:28:10.520
And I keep telling them, you are the one with the weird accent.
00:28:15.160
It's funny because when I first moved to America, that's when I learned that actually
00:28:21.880
And yes, that's what we learned and the accent, everything.
00:28:33.780
We spent half an hour talking about slavery and colonialism.
00:28:38.980
Well, you know, that part of the language, but...
00:28:44.900
No, but you know, when I came to visa, when I came to understand everything that I understand
00:28:48.920
today that I'm sharing with you, I literally lost 90% of my friends.
00:28:56.420
I was borderline commie, if you can believe that.
00:29:14.580
I don't know what the right word is, but maybe not the little people, but you know what I
00:29:18.680
But I've always cared about those among us who are disadvantaged, you know?
00:29:23.560
And so for the longest time, I really believed what that side was saying, what the socialists
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I believe that maybe it was the best chance for, you know, disadvantaged people.
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So I believe, and especially, you know, and yes, back then, I used to think all the things
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that I push back on today, I used to think that, yeah, colonialism is the reason why we
00:29:49.780
The fact that our national, our natural resources are being, you know, literally stolen is why
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Or maybe racism, maybe, you know, they just didn't, they, the white people just didn't
00:30:02.760
So I believed, I believed all of this for a long time.
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And, but what I discovered is once I started running this business of mine, the first time,
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that's when I started to really, I saw the discrepancy between running a business back
00:30:20.080
And at first I thought to myself, well, of course, we're poor, that's why it's so hard.
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And conversely, they're rich, that's why it's so easy.
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Just to come to understand that relationship that I told you about, we're poor because we
00:30:31.420
don't have enough money, at least not enough money to take care of our basic needs.
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And so once you understand that, and then you realize that, yeah, and for companies to be,
00:30:46.660
they need a good business environment, and you realize, and here I am seeing that it's
00:30:59.760
And so from that moment on, everything started to collide in my head because I was like, the
00:31:04.720
people that I have been with this whole time who were very good at, you know, comforting
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me in those thoughts of victimhood in a way, they don't like business.
00:31:27.200
They, you know, on TV, people talk constantly about, oh, the 1% this and the 1% that.
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And I'm going, they pay like a shit ton of tax for all the public services that we enjoy.
00:31:39.760
And most of them, look, there's crony capitalism.
00:31:43.160
But most of those people got to where they got to by providing a service to other people
00:32:00.440
But at some point I came to realize that there's probably nothing to understand.
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You know, when I listened to these people, I saw something.
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And I saw, because when I started to confront them, why, why, why?
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Once upon a time, I believed in these ideas and I believed in your good heart.
00:32:23.000
I believed that you two were into it because of, because you believed like me, that was
00:32:32.200
The global poor has always been my concern because I come from a continent that's known
00:32:42.800
And now that I'm confronting you, all I hear from you is something rather ugly.
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All I could hear and all I could sense was envy.
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And then I realized, oh, so I was a cover up for your disgusting, most vile sentiment.
00:33:13.600
You were using me and my likes to promote your stupid ideology that in the end just goes to
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That's when, for me, the left lost their moral high ground.
00:33:30.020
And yeah, and I guess they were done with me as well.
00:33:34.160
Magat, there has been quite a number of criticisms against France and its relationship with the French-speaking
00:33:45.080
And they say that there have been a lot of criticisms that France has quite a parasitic relationship to these countries.
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Most of our economy seems to be controlled by the French.
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But that's not how we correct this, the way we correct the situation.
00:34:11.540
Sorry to interrupt you there, because you said most of our economy is being controlled by the French.
00:34:16.060
Can you tell people, people like me, who have just heard this and go, well, what do you mean by this?
00:34:21.520
So, basically, in my country, Senegal, for example, you look at the telecommunications company, it's called Orange.
00:34:42.100
And basically, we're talking about our cell phones, all of that.
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I mean, these people are making billions of dollars every single year.
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And for the longest time, they were the only game in town.
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And you should see the crappy service that we have had.
00:34:55.940
But that's what happens, I guess, when you have a monopoly, right?
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So, there, then, a lot of our gas stations owned by the French as well.
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Even today, the largest grocery store chain is called Auchan.
00:35:15.040
So, yes, many Senegalese people are, you know, they own these franchises.
00:35:20.040
And there are a lot of people who are being employed.
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So, my point is not that business is happening or not happening.
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But I think the reason why people have such a big problem is in looking at it, and it seems like everything is controlled by France.
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And I am sure that France is probably playing its power, its hand in that.
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Even before, even before the euro was there, our currency was not printed in my country.
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And they keep a big reserve back there for, you know, guarantees.
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Even this language that we're speaking, I have a problem with.
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Why is it that French should be our official language?
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And then what you see there is, because I'm like, if we're going to have to speak another language, an international language.
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Because I understand, you know, it's good to have an international language because you can belong then to the global scene of business.
00:36:38.400
Is French really going to be, is it really a language of, international language of business?
00:36:46.300
But I feel like we're trapped in that thing just because of their ego.
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When I hear someone like Jacques Attali telling me a few years ago, he's like, well, by 2050, you know, French is going to be the third most spoken language in the world.
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I'm like, oh yeah, because I know you're relying on us Africans for that to happen.
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Because we're the youngest continent in the world, 19 years of age on average.
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And by 2050, one out of four people walking this earth will be African.
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So I know where is it that France thinks they're going to get their language to not die.
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I'm like, but if I have anything to do with that, that's not going to happen.
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Because, so right now, so anywhere from the language to all our economy, like some of the biggest companies making the most money are French.
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And it's pretty much the same up and down the francophone, you know, corridor.
00:37:34.140
But there again, you ask me and I say, you know what?
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The French are doing exactly what they should be.
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They're doing exactly what they get away, what they can get away with.
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So I'm not going to say they're doing what they should be doing.
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I don't think actually what they're doing is smart.
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So I wouldn't even call it what they should be doing.
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And as long as the rest of us are locked out, our country remains poor.
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It means it needs to answer to the people who bail it out, which is usually going to be France for the most part, you know, the European nations and some of the U.S. as well.
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So as long as you keep your entrepreneurs down and they can't produce the wealth that all nations that are prosperous rely on, then you are going to remain a poor nation, which means you have no sovereignty, which means you're entering to a foreign entity, a foreign government in this case, because foreign aid.
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So this is also the part that my fellow Africans, I feel, don't really understand.
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And then our solution to this is we're going to do a coup.
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I'm sure you've been hearing about the, you know, resurgences of coups in West Africa.
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And so the plan there is we're going to kick these people out who are responding to who are basically the valets of France.
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And then we're going to have people in here who are not going to be the valets of France anymore.
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Well, they're going to be the valets of Russia and China now.
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Because what we don't understand is that the only way to be truly, truly, truly sovereign is to make your own money.
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And until we get there, we are always, always going to be under someone's rule.
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The sooner we understand that, the sooner we get to work, and we know what to do when it comes to get to work, and the sooner this gets corrected.
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And like I said, within 25 years, it can be a very different story.
00:40:00.980
How do you stop your currency being pegged against the euro?
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And we talk about, you know, modern-day colonialism.
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In a way, isn't that sort of modern-day colonialism?
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Um, first of all, I want to put a caveat in this.
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Every time it's possible, I say, be in control of your own currency.
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In this situation, though, I would like to say, when you see what happens to some of these nations that have their own currency and what they do...
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I mean, look, again, remember the hundred people that you line up and you ask them, why are we where we are?
00:41:01.360
These are the same people that I've been hearing on TV when, you know, we had the risk, when we have inflation, all of that stuff.
00:41:09.960
Oh, well, during COVID, they were watching what the West was doing, you know, the printing machine.
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And they said, you see, we should have the right, we should have the ability to do the same thing.
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Except that us, it would not have happened just for COVID.
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It would have been something that happens all the time.
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I mean, you come from Venezuela, you know how that thing works.
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I mean, we're not talking about, you know, 20% inflation or things like that.
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So that's what, you know, when you have irresponsible people, you know, in charge of currency, that's what they do.
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That doesn't mean that I'm saying we should be under somebody else's rule when it comes to our monetary, you know, tools.
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But I also would like for our people to remember that as well.
00:42:01.240
Because right now, I wouldn't be surprised that a lot of the Francophone African nations, if they had their own currencies,
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they would be crying probably more than the Nigerians are crying in Nigeria with the Naira, right?
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And everybody's looking for dollars under the cover.
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Now, it doesn't mean that this should be the way.
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What I advocate for, forget being pegged to anything.
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This is why I'm big time on Bitcoin, something like Bitcoin.
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Because fiat currencies don't have the qualities that a good currency has, especially when it comes to sound money.
00:42:43.260
We don't have sound money anywhere around the world, you look at it.
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So for me, this is a place where, again, Africans are going to need to leapfrog.
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Forget jumping on some type of fiat currency just so later to exactly have the same problem we're having all over the world with fiat currencies.
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And then be thinking about, you know, cryptos or some.
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So for me, it's like today, if we want to get rid of that, make it that Bitcoin is legal tender, along with anything else that people might want.
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And this is really something that our country, it's a matter of, it's a political will.
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Sign, sign somewhere that you want to get rid of that.
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But our people, instead of understanding and putting the pressure where it needs to be put, it's all about, we're just going to destroy everything.
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Put in place some people who, you know, like these military people through a coup and let's watch things happen.
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Mali has been, they had their coup more than, I think, two years ago.
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And their big plan was, oh, yeah, you know, without us, France can't make it because, you know, they rely on our uranium.
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Yeah, we're going to sit on this and you're seeing what happens.
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The French are like now making multibillion dollar deals with some other nations.
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Some people are just keeping it in their ground because they don't need to have access to it yet.
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But if you want to mess with them over here, they go somewhere else and they do that.
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And I think Africans have not understood that yet.
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What kills me the most is this African belief that, oh, if we just sit on our natural resources.
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I'm like, aren't you the same people who are always complaining about the leaders?
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And now you're telling me that the whole fate of the whole continent is going to be into the hands of one of these people?
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At least now when the Chinese want to buy us or the Russians want to buy us, they have to go and negotiate country by country by country.
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And out of those 54 nations, some are like, no, thank you very much.
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Others are like, yeah, here is my newborn on top of that as a, you know, as a bonus.
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But now you're going to make it that one person gets to sell all of us at once because that's what's going to happen.
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Unless you're telling me that maybe you will be the leader of this.
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And because you're so good, you're so saintly, it's all going to run properly.
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And even if that was the case, you forgot that power corrupts.
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So this idea of one Africa speaking with one voice is going to make us stronger.
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And then when we get to that one Africa, then we sit on our natural resources.
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We tell people, you cannot touch our natural resources.
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This is a price we command and or you have to produce here and think that the world is going to follow on that.
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And so these are the same people that have an issue with me when I say Africa is not poor because of colonialism.
00:45:55.320
But Maga, is there not a contradiction in what you're saying?
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Because on the one hand, you say Africa is not poor because of colonialism.
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But on the other hand, when Francis asked you about French influence.
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Isn't that what people mean by the legacy of colonialism?
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Because my point is, any time we could have done this, any time we could have done this, Constantin, any time, any time over the past 60 years, we could have without even touching Orange.
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For me, it's not about you destroy Orange, you kick Total out, you kick all of this ocean out.
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When you look at Burkina Faso, more or less, they have kicked the French out.
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What do they have to show for themselves right now?
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The Malians have done more or less the same thing.
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I guarantee you that unless anything changes, six years from now, it's going to be the same.
00:47:01.900
But except, like you said, the Russians are the ones coming in right now.
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All the Russians are going to nuclear and nuclear.
00:47:08.820
So my point is, yes, the French control a lot of the economy, but that's not the reason why we're poor.
00:47:25.580
You are not allowing your entrepreneurs to create.
00:47:28.820
When the French show up, what you're doing for them is, here is the red carpet.
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The nonsense laws that my God has to deal with, you don't have to deal with it.
00:47:39.200
The nonsense laws that my God has to contend with, or all of these terrorists when she brings up her product.
00:47:46.180
You, we made a negotiation with you that you're not going to have to put up with that.
00:47:50.040
They give you all types of exoneration, but to me, they don't.
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But we are excluded from the forces that allow us to release our magic of building something out of nothing, which is what I call entrepreneurs.
00:48:07.920
Entrepreneurs are those who criticize by creating and those who create something out of nothing.
00:48:16.720
And so if I'm not creating, we as a nation state war, when the big corporation shows up, which is what Total is, Orange is, all of these companies are, Coca-Cola, whatever.
00:48:26.120
When they show up, you deploy the red carpet for them because like, oh, my God, we needed you.
00:48:31.620
We want you to come and create these jobs over here when you have completely overlooked me over here.
00:48:37.160
So what you're talking about is essentially people are having the wrong conversation.
00:48:45.760
It's that talking about it is not actually changing anything.
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It's actually making them victims in the future.
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Because you're not creating the wealth yourself.
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And then, as you say, when the big corporations come in, you need their money because you've been brainwashed into being a victim this entire time.
00:49:04.920
Because you're focusing on the past instead of the future.
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And it's just people are just stuck where they are.
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Because it only takes one to five percent of the world to one to five percent of people to change the world for good or for bad.
00:49:30.540
So while the masses are all busy crying out loud all day that God makes, I am out there.
00:49:37.540
The reason why I'm even doing this podcast with you guys and I have this book.
00:49:49.600
No, but you know, the reason why I'm doing this, I'm putting myself out there.
00:49:56.580
The reason why I'm doing all of this is because I'm putting myself out there with this message.
00:50:01.820
And the idea is to light the beacon of light and for like-minded people to see the message.
00:50:17.880
And as we congregate and we form the coalition, that's how a pack of cheetahs is called, then we go and we now go for the run of our lives.
00:50:27.720
And to me, those are the people that are going to change Africa.
00:50:31.520
And the reason why we call it the cheetah, we have this reference to the cheetah is because of Professor Aite, George Aite, who is one of my intellectual fathers.
00:50:39.080
And he's the one who saw that Africa was going to get where she needs to get to, thanks to the cheetahs.
00:50:52.260
We are the ones who are going to get it done for ourselves.
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It might sound very elitist, but that's who I'm looking for.
00:50:59.120
Because we know the rest of the world is followers.
00:51:01.420
And they will, at first, make fun of us like they have.
00:51:04.280
You know, first, they've been making fun of me.
00:51:07.960
Now, some people are also, no, first, they ignored me.
00:51:16.120
I'm right now in this phase where they're making fun.
00:51:37.420
We're going to run in leaps and bounds the way a cheetah runs.
00:51:40.480
Because like I like to say, the time for catching up is over.
00:51:47.780
But I'm so glad, Constantin, you made that clarification.
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Because that's really, I think, one of the tensions we're having out there.
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You know, because they're like, we're still colonized.
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And I'm like, whatever is going on now has nothing to do with the fact that you're still poor.
00:52:06.420
Well, I'm glad we had the right conversation, Magat.
00:52:10.300
Head on over to Locals, where we continue the conversation with your questions for Magat.
00:52:14.120
Does the CCP Belt and Road Initiatives in African countries improve wealth prospects
00:52:21.780
or reduce them for those countries where they're implemented?