Explainer: Why Africa Is Still Poor Despite Its Wealth | Brian Kagoro

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:03]Now, Africa holds nearly a third of the world's mineral reserves. It has the youngest population on Earth. It has some of the fastest growing cities, vast agricultural land, enormous renewable energy potential, and one of the most influential cultural exports globally.

[00:00:28]cultural exports globally. And yet many African countries continue to struggle with poverty, unemployment, debt, food insecurity, and dependence. The list goes on. So here is the uncomfortable question. Is a if Africa has so much, why do so many Africans still have so little? Is Africa truly poor? Or have we been measuring wealth the wrong way? For decades, the dominant explanation has focused on governance, corruption, institution, aid, trade, and global markets. But what if the deeper question is not what Africa lacks? What if the real question is who defined wealth for Africa?

[00:01:26]who defined development. And what if Africa's greatest loss was never its minerals, but its confidence, imagination, ownership, and ability to define value on its own terms.

[00:01:43]Today's conversation is not a debate about whether Africa is rich. I mean, that part is obvious. This conversation goes deeper. Now joining the UNDP podcast is Brian Kagaro. He's a Panaffrican Reno and Panaffrican thinker and one of the continent's sharpest voice on governance, identity, economic transformation and African futures. He's also the founder of Open Society and what he is about to argue may challenge assumptions from both critics and believers of Africa's rise. Now he argues that Africa is not poor. Africa was disconnected. Disconnected from ownership, disconnected from production, disconnected from imagination, and disconnected from defining prosperity for itself. Now whether you agree with him or not, this conversation will force you to rethink what wealth actually means. Watch until the end because somewhere in the discussion lies the question Africa has been avoiding for generation. Without further ado, I let you to hear his interview.

[00:03:06]>> Father anecdot actually a true story. Um when I was younger I was left-handed and left footed. So, but during those days, school was always about you had to use your right hand. The teachers didn't concentrate on what I could possibly do.

[00:03:23]They just wanted me to do it right.

[00:03:27]>> Uh so this idea of build different to me is about accepting that we have as Africans certain unique advantages. We have as Africans certain unique ways of doing things that if we invest all our time in learning to do things the way other people do them, >> we may miss the strengths, the resilience, the genius that comes from doing things our own way. So build different for me is about innovating to solve your issues using your methods without necessarily excluding what you learn from other people. Tools that may come from elsewhere that are useful but it has to be done differently because to do things the same way as everyone else when the context are different essentially means that you >> you are not wise.

[00:04:20]>> Yeah, absolutely. And I'm just now thinking about this ongoing paradox of Africa. Uh you know we hear about Africa has great potential. Our minerals are are you know are funding the world. Um we've got what they say the youth dividend will power the next you know the next level part of the world and all but yet we're still looked at as poor.

[00:04:48]The reality is that you know Africa is still grappling with some of the uh development challenges of poverty, unemployment.

[00:04:57]How do we solve that? How do we reconcile both of this? What is even broken? Which is actually making me think about one thing I've read uh or listened to that you you've said to uh to say Africa is not broke but broken.

[00:05:11]>> Let me give you another anecdote and then I >> we like anecdotes. Yes. I have a friend who didn't take time to obtain a driver's license, >> but came into wealth and then went and bought one of the most uh expensive but wonderful cars for himself. Here was the tragedy.

[00:05:34]He had the asset.

[00:05:37]He had the status but he didn't have the license or the skill that would enable him to drive that car. That means he didn't have knowhow.

[00:05:47]>> Yeah.

[00:05:48]>> Uh so he could afford it but he couldn't use it or benefit from it without having to get a third party that bring it to the continent >> first. It's always in useful to say the philosophy from of Ubuntu in its original form wasn't I am because you are.

[00:06:15]>> Ah >> it was we are therefore I am. Ah >> right and I will and explain to you why we started always with the community as a source a place a space of shared identity shared vision shared values and shared value. So this idea that later on others referred to as a common wealth not just of culture but a common wealth of mutuality >> uh reciprocity that means whether you're talking taking the inquant which means a king is only >> such if he has people.

[00:07:03]>> Yeah. That means your individuality or your individualism >> derived its true meaning within community.

[00:07:12]>> Yes.

[00:07:12]>> Now that that's a very important thing.

[00:07:14]So Africa never valued right this idea that the immovable assets let me explain that in our traditional society a person could have wealth which means movable things cows cattle said >> but the idea of immovable assets that >> the land and the things under it was my personal property and my personal wealth didn't quite uh exist in our culture.

[00:07:51]>> Right?

[00:07:52]>> So the definition of modern wealth brings wealth that's movable >> and wealth that's immovable and also wealth that's untouchable. uh in other societies someone will go and write things that they had heard in Africa and then we quote it as plat >> what do we mean by that plat >> so let me say Africans give you wise things wise saying ideas we call them proverbs >> ah >> nobody how come you don't say grandfather uh is the one who said it we say our elders >> elders yeah >> that means that saying was owned by the fools, the wise, the rich and the poor in our community.

[00:08:42]>> When someone comes and writes it down, we now think it's valuable because it comes from. So that's why we caught we sight a basic thing such as governance, right?

[00:08:56]>> Yeah.

[00:08:57]>> Right.

[00:08:58]>> Yes.

[00:09:00]>> Yes. This idea that we do collective decision making >> worried about the benefit to the strongest and the weakest in society >> is what informed Ubuntu. Now let me circle back to why this attaches to wealth.

[00:09:16]>> Yeah.

[00:09:18]>> Others came and that process the first beat was called enslavement. Chhatel enslavement.

[00:09:26]What is chartel enslavement? You turn a human being who was free into private property >> that can be owned, that can be sold, that can be inherited. Then you had the second phase. We call it colonization.

[00:09:40]>> In the colonization, that means people came to take over first your land or the land you were on. They then say according to their law which they have imposed on you, and we're sitting in South Africa, it's Roman Dutch law.

[00:09:56]>> Yeah. that everything belongs to the state. So what happens to the rest of the people who were originally here theong people or Kisan people whichever way you want to call them and the bantus >> well they became labeled natives. So what was the belief of the colonial system with respect to the native? I like to site a judgment of the British preview council in a case about a country to the north of here called Zimbabwe. It was called southern Rhdesia at the time. That judgment says the question as to whoever owns the land. Uh it was the British Privy Council 1918 in southern Rhdesia. The one thing that is certain it cannot be the native because the native and by native read black person >> Yeah. has no sense of ownership or civilization >> like ourselves.

[00:10:55]So let's go back to your name built differently.

[00:10:58]>> Built different. Yeah.

[00:10:59]>> The fact that you had a different way of conceptualizing ownership as shared.

[00:11:04]>> Yeah.

[00:11:06]>> Is meant to the other that you don't have a sense of ownership.

[00:11:09]>> Ah yes. And so because you don't have a sense of ownership, the discussion regarding the wealth of your country, the land of your country, agriculture and tragically the cattle of your country and that's what happened to the people, the quisan people, right? Is that that their cattle were taken by the Dutch >> ah >> then the land was taken uh from the rest of society. Now it essentially means there is control first of territory then control of human bodies because you they impose a pole tax and a heart tax.

[00:11:53]>> Now because you can't pay it you were leaving food self-sufficient and secure in your communities. They then impose this tax system. You're forced to go and work in the mines and in homesteads and plantations and etc. in the capitalist system. Now being forced to go and work essentially means you leave your own system of wealth generation.

[00:12:18]>> Your entire life is then reordered so that you exist to serve. You are alienated from the one source of production of modern wealth which is land. You are alienated from your own culture and community.

[00:12:36]>> Yeah.

[00:12:36]>> We take you from Eastern Cape. We bring you to Ken to work in the mines. You can't bring your wife. You live in a hostel. We create a a redefinition of your social cultural. And then we say, okay, you cannot continue to be communing with your ancestors. It's demonic.

[00:12:55]>> Yeah. You have to worship a god that we the enlightened have brought to you. So if as a black person you have no spirituality, you have no land or place to control and you have no culture that you can assert, >> you're basically an empty vessel.

[00:13:14]>> Yes. And you have no knowledge. So the idea of an ignorant uncivilized native or black person who has no sense of ownership has been inculcated >> into so that even our people accept now you have to function under white supervision to get anything to work >> decision making conflict resolution and etc. So the paradox of Africa's uh uh poverty must not be seen not only in terms of the control of material assets.

[00:13:48]>> It's the control of the self, >> the right to be, the right to become and the right to belong on your own terms to build differently, >> you know. And I like that you took that because if we are talking about transformation, we really need to know where you know we come from and where it was broken.

[00:14:08]>> But if we are going to take it to like a second level right now, does that perception change? But how do we then start confronting the existing systems that are still blocking Africa from um leveraging on this great potential on all this minerals that we have?

[00:14:28]>> First I think you need to walk back a little.

[00:14:30]>> Uhhuh.

[00:14:30]>> So I gave you all that so that you come out of a a a Euroamerican myth.

[00:14:36]>> Yes.

[00:14:37]>> The Euroamerican myth is that the potential lies in things that they have described as critical minerals. ah >> that is based on their needs. Those things are only critical to their development where they are.

[00:14:51]>> So let's actually segue into what is our need. What do we need as Africa today to really um come out of all the challenges? So we know from science that nutrition security and food security determines the ability of a child to be cognitively sound and be able to function mechanically. So we have no doubt that black children are highly talented. That's why we can take a child who's taken out of the worst conditions >> and give them a slight opportunity they'll get distinctions.

[00:15:26]>> Right? So what we need to do is first determine what we eat, right? Yeah. That thing about we spend a lot more time buying food, not buying factories, not buying machines, buying food.

[00:15:42]>> What who is producing this food? Who is selling this food?

[00:15:45]>> A >> who is making wealth from growing food?

[00:15:50]>> Who owns the supermarkets here in South Africa that you go to to buy food? Who owns the shopping malls? other than map.

[00:15:57]So that gives you it's at a very basic level that you all can say we're developed, we have shopping malls, we have institutions, we have who owns that stuff.

[00:16:07]>> This very primate you you need to build certain liberated zones of existence, >> right? If you don't produce what you eat and eat what you produce, then what happens is you are a slave to those who produce what you eat because they determine the price >> of the food you eat and you need food.

[00:16:33]Once they do that, they also determine the cost of living for you. And the same people have the power because they own the factories where you work and the businesses, they determine the value of your labor. Yeah, >> remember I said under chatel enslavement and under colonialism your labor was worth nothing that you were forced to work and you got a minial wage >> and you are not treated as a thinker you treated as a machine.

[00:17:00]>> Yes.

[00:17:00]>> But now that we have most superior machines you are now disposable. So the current moment for Africa and what is critical is not only Africa catching up in terms of technology is how do we create and broaden the skills base of Africans not to service the needs of the external. We still have to do this big money big trade things but we need to do the basics. If you come into areas where black people live right you will see the infrastructure is poor.

[00:17:31]>> Yeah. security poor.

[00:17:34]>> Yeah, >> you will see that the quality of services, education, water, electricity.

[00:17:42]>> But those same societies, communities have produced engineers, >> doctors and etc. The starting point is to give dignity to where we live.

[00:17:56]>> Ah >> create dignity in how we produce and eat. just our basic things. Then the second, we are a numerical majority not only continentally but globally, not only nationally and often those who understand the power of numbers will tell you.

[00:18:17]>> Let's take a mobile phone company >> that wishes to make money. How does it make money?

[00:18:24]>> It makes sure that the thousands or millions of Africans buy airtime regularly. Yes, sir.

[00:18:30]>> Those small coins add up. It makes sure that those same thousands buy petrol or fuel >> or diesel. Those numbers add up. Then make sure you buy electricity.

[00:18:42]>> Brian, allow me to come back here. You know, I really >> align with a lot of what you're saying, right? That >> you know, we should not be looking at what the world has defined as critical for us. um that needs to be defined domestically, locally or in the continent.

[00:19:00]>> Um and then you do provide right as to we need to create kind of a dignified environment uh even with the nutrition and all for us to prosper. But that requires some sort of transformation, right? What is it that we need to transform? Who needs to transform?

[00:19:21]>> So the first thing is attitude.

[00:19:23]>> Yeah. Let let me tell you I I haven't gone to government.

[00:19:26]>> Yes.

[00:19:27]>> I'm still talking at the people area.

[00:19:28]>> Yes.

[00:19:29]>> And I'm suggesting to you the colonial system made us like crabs in a jar >> to compete against each other.

[00:19:37]>> So unity. So it then atomized us so that we think first as as tribes then as clans then we go even lower. M >> that very fact that it becomes impossible for you and I to get to do great business things together because our skills are not determined by our tribe.

[00:19:59]>> For you guys to build this great company, you didn't sit and say what village did you come from.

[00:20:04]>> You said we're looking for the best photographer for the best. This idea of building from the ground up and bringing skills.

[00:20:14]>> If you don't break the social barriers, >> you are unable to see through the lens of history, >> the pain of history. So you are unable to relate to certain people you need to relate to in order to make the wealth you need to make. That's number one.

[00:20:30]>> The skills that our people hold because they can they are currently being incentivized by others. Others are the only ones who are able to pay premium for those skills. The loyalty is to those who pay for those skills.

[00:20:44]>> For us to be able to bring those skills together for our collective benefits are setting themselves. the amount of money from the public uh sp purse that we make available for entrepreneurship, we make available for innovation that we make available for education within the TV system.

[00:21:06]>> Let me let me let me give you a sense.

[00:21:07]>> Yeah, >> there are so many buildings coming up in Johannesburg.

[00:21:11]>> Yes.

[00:21:11]>> Shopping malls.

[00:21:12]>> Yes.

[00:21:13]>> Ask yourself this. How are we contributing to the skills to do things from uh ceilings to electrification to plumbing to what are we emphasizing in our education system?

[00:21:29]>> Well spoken English or French or >> why is that a problem? If you have a native who's highly literate, conversent of a foreign language, and able to fix light bulbs, that native is always going to have to hire a company that's owned by people that that same person accuses of having benefited from history to come and fix his lights. When they want a new uh carpet, who do they go to? Somebody else. So, our existence from basics to big things.

[00:22:01]>> Let me give you another sense.

[00:22:03]agricultural output. When the Ukraine Russia war happened, >> yeah, >> many African countries went into crisis.

[00:22:09]What was the crisis? They were importing wheat.

[00:22:12]>> Yes.

[00:22:13]>> From Ukraine, bread.

[00:22:15]>> Yes.

[00:22:16]>> Right. So, how does this link to industrialization? We have lots of land, lots of sunshine, >> reasonably good rain, ideal conditions to grow our own wheat, right?

[00:22:28]Why are we spending as Africa $50 billion US per anom importing food?

[00:22:35]>> Yeah.

[00:22:36]>> Right. Just tell me. Right. So we could have irrigated where irrigation is required.

[00:22:42]>> We could have used other forms greenhouse other forms that are sustainable to grow our food. So the idea that we chase the most shiny thing and we are told the most shiny thing is gold. Everyone is chasing gold. The most shiny thing. And I want to suggest to you that some of those are like Let me give you something you know and have never maybe paid attention. This is a bottle of water.

[00:23:03]>> Mhm.

[00:23:04]>> It most probably cost more than beer.

[00:23:06]>> Yes. Yeah.

[00:23:09]>> H Yeah.

[00:23:11]>> How much how much effort is being invested in both the public and the private sector here by our by black people to turn gray water into drinkable water? This is a critical mineral because Johannesburg is importing importing water from and I can move from water to to to other things.

[00:23:30]>> Brian, you are preaching you really >> from other things. So in essence, wealth begins with the mindset of wealth.

[00:23:40]>> Once you accept you poor, you will accept the second proposition that you're in need of help. And you accept the third proposition that you can't help yourself. and you accept the fourth proposition that you are cursed, you will never get out of it. However, because I build it differently, you cannot make wealth without the institutional framework.

[00:24:05]>> Yes, >> that ensures that it's not dependent on individual brilliance. What is that framework for making wealth for Africans? We need first the software, the policies, >> right? And we also need the leadership.

[00:24:19]Yes, >> it's one thing to be a leader who helps your people resist colonial occupation, chhatel enslavement, >> and it requires a different type of leadership to create and preempt the future because this is not just about resistance. This is not just about managing and responding to grievance.

[00:24:43]This is imagination.

[00:24:45]I grew up at a time when uh they we used to watch something called Night Rider and Star Wars. So on TV. So you'd have this young guy who would called Michael and he had a car called Kit, self-driven car. And he would speak into his phone uh and call his car and the car would come.

[00:25:02]>> That was so fantasy.

[00:25:05]>> But white children who were watching the same thing began to imagine how to bring kids to life.

[00:25:10]>> Yeah.

[00:25:11]>> Right. So today you and I have phones on which we receive phone calls. We have driverless cars, >> right? It's not our imagination. It's the imagination of others who use their arts and culture to begin to send codes from the future to the current generation. If you watch how we use our arts and culture, right? We focus on hypersexualization.

[00:25:38]>> We focus on how to drink some more.

[00:25:41]We're focused. Yes, we need entertainment. But unless there's an alignment between the intellectuals in classrooms and boardrooms and the intellectuals who hold microphones, uh, do blogs and etc. Those people in the cultural side have to see themselves as the freedom fighters and liberators.

[00:26:00]>> Yes.

[00:26:00]>> That that contain because of their ancestry codes of the past, who we are, codes of the future, what we should be.

[00:26:09]I mean while you're on that sorry to if I'm disturbing your train of thought it's actually even making me think the part around culture right because uh back in the upper days if you study what a lot of artists uh stood for was using the art to tell that story but like to fight which then is quite different today if you look at the the art industry it's a sometimes you miss that connection as to how arts and culture should influence how we see ourselves and how we navigate the world. So yeah, I thought I should just >> it's a 48 billion rand per anam industry.

[00:26:45]>> Yeah, >> the arts and culture in this in South Africa >> globally. It's a huge one.

[00:26:51]>> We have a comparative advantage over everyone at this particular moment.

[00:26:55]>> If you go to Japan, you'll hear Amayaniano playing in the you'll hear uh Afro beat >> in the US. African artists can now feel stadier in America that American artists can't feel. could come back home.

[00:27:10]>> What is the extent of development of that as an industry?

[00:27:14]>> Yeah.

[00:27:14]>> The protection of people in that industry, the incentives of people in that industry, who controls the revenue, who controls the distribution, who control. So whether it's film, poetry, books, or it's singing or dancing, we have left our people to the wolves.

[00:27:38]We as those who are responsible for African private sector and the state and financial services do not as yet appreciate that the first few black billionaires where Oprah Winfrey Jay-Z and we're coming from arts and culture >> right of course we now have Dangote we have Mipe we have Masiwa and others the real issue is we have billionaires wallowing in poverty because we have not built the discipline to build the in infrastructure, the policies and the framework to make sure that our people's talent is not exploited. And I'm saying that wealth and being a global player, it's not just about how we sell things hidden in the ground that are controlled by Australian, Canadian and other corporations. It's how the human African I'm always outraged when we are marketing uh country. We say come to Africa, see the big five, >> right?

[00:28:34]>> Yes. It's as though they are no human beings. They are just these nice elephants and buffaloos.

[00:28:41]>> We need to be saying come to Africa >> and the credle of humanity, the center of civilization, the epitome of future transformative energy, future transformative cultural thinking. We should be on the cutting edge. This is not going to happen until we make the small decisions. Of course, then there's the broader justice of the global system, >> right? Let's not kid ourselves that small money alone and mobilizing the resources we'll send. But without mobilizing resources domestically, no one will allow you to borrow so that you are independent and you kick them out.

[00:29:21]Africa approaches the world markets like a sleigh queen. Right? I have these things to offer, nothing else.

[00:29:31]>> Ah, yes.

[00:29:31]>> Right. I and that is a problem.

[00:29:35]>> I suspect I've said leadership institutions. I've said policies with respect to this issue of critical minerals. I talked about agriculture.

[00:29:44]Very few Africans are interested in mining phosphates, nitrates and etc. But you know how much we're importing in terms of fertilizer in excess of 13 billion. It used to be almost 192 billion.

[00:29:58]>> We're impossing seed.

[00:30:00]And if you look at the figures, how much are we getting by way of diaspora remittances, which is the highest inflow, 90 billion. If you put together the amount of money we spend importing these basic necessities, >> and you added what we are receiving from our own people, the diaspora, we could easily be sitting at 200 billion. If you look at estimates of what people think it will take to develop like for South Africa to migrate from uh carbon based energies to new energies the estimates are $45 billion >> for that. So in essence the continent in its daily consumption habit in its negligence in its wastage and in its inattention to certain things that appear small is forfeiting the potential to have that head start. So even if you come with Africa continental free trade agreement you then have a second problem. Yeah, >> the wickedness of history has made you >> even sitting in South Africa, you don't need to get people from the north >> and from else >> people will start saying look you you've come from free state. What are you doing here?

[00:31:15]>> Yeah, >> you've come from so and so. This idea that you create in the mind of our people that the greatest threat they have is a threat to a place >> and that their caution notion of space is what you know the aparted state and the Rhodesian calaba state define two things one called tribal trust lens then you had the bantustan system so you create this impression you say to the African the only thing you really deserve is not the globe is the Bustan is the tribal trust land. So what essentially then happens white kids in London come here.

[00:32:00]This exactly explains what we were discussing yesterday live here with David Hundin. How South Africans now has have moved from you know being afrophobic to also uh the it's like they have found their own enemy now which is us versus themselves within South Africa. And that's exactly now he's telling us the root of it. How we are told you know that the globe do not belong to us as if we are not living it.

[00:32:32]It's just the place where you live. Uh and this is really interesting. Uh yeah let's continue to listen. I mean Brian is a preacher >> freely move across Africa >> which is never >> one called tribal trust lands. Then you had the Bantustan system. So you create this impression. You say to the African the only thing you really deserve is not the globe is the Bantan is the tribal trust land. So what essentially then happens white kids in London come here freely move across Africa >> which just never makes sense >> right. No, but it's it's that you have to link the two things.

[00:33:15]>> That native immobility defined by law and a false sense of pride that says Africa, you are not Panaffrican.

[00:33:25]>> You are from Bambbees.

[00:33:28]>> You are from you are from you from Ducha. You are from >> Yes. Yeah.

[00:33:38]>> Once you tell me that then I'm not a member of the global village.

[00:33:44]>> I am a member of the location that you have reduced me to.

[00:33:47]>> Me too. Yeah.

[00:33:48]>> Unless I have a way of globalizing that location.

[00:33:51]>> Oh my god.

[00:33:52]>> And saying I have as much as an African.

[00:33:55]I have as much right to make wealth out of Nigeria, out of Ghana, out of allow me to freely move >> and connect with kindred spirits.

[00:34:04]>> Yeah. I may not find everyone I need for the things I want done in the location I'm in. Free movement of human bodies is also free movement of intellectual collaboration.

[00:34:17]>> True.

[00:34:17]>> It is the one force that then unleashes innovation.

[00:34:21]>> You can move capital freely but the greatest innovations that come and even liberation. Think of Nelson Mandela living here going to Ethiopia then going coming back to do what? to liberate a place. What is the place? South Africa.

[00:34:35]>> South Africa.

[00:34:36]>> Think of Robert Mungab coming here to uh uh University of Fort to do what? Right.

[00:34:42]Yeah.

[00:34:42]>> And this is how Africans have to adopt a panaffrican approach not just to politics but to wealth creations.

[00:34:50]>> But how do we combat Brian? I mean you've said really a lot of great things, right? And I'm just thinking to myself, I'm like, >> should we engage more young people into some of this insights because, you know, you made that um you mentioned that story about like Night Rider and all and I'm that child as well, right? All the things were just beautiful to watch on TV, but my brain just never expanded to >> I can do it.

[00:35:16]>> I can do this. And and you know we speak about the youth dividend um which which which I think in my opinion that's where this conversations this uh coming back from you know dependency to to to independence.

[00:35:35]>> Um how do we catalyze this conversation?

[00:35:38]>> The greatest sellouts are old people who hold liberation ideology but leave lives like slaves. beholden to the patronage of white power, white capital. Now I don't mean it in a racial way.

[00:35:52]>> I'm saying they are so ashamed of their own people when if they are not ashamed they don't invest sufficiently to develop their own people. take the schools where they went to go and look at the state of the schools, right? Just one tire of their Mercedes-Benz vehicle could actually refurbish or provide laptops for kids. But that consciousness >> is not there and that's where you start, right? We have created toxic uh economies of self-importance. So how you know the African has come is that it is the size of what I'm driving.

[00:36:34]>> It is also the size of my ego.

[00:36:37]>> It is the number of titles I'm carrying.

[00:36:39]So we have created distance between those who are eating the fruit of independence or eating the tree of independence and the young people who actually have solutions. So those in government with the power to execute don't have access to or meaningful conversation with young people who have the imagination which is the power to transform.

[00:36:59]>> So this intergenerational conversations are important but conversations alone can become rituals.

[00:37:06]>> Yes.

[00:37:06]>> You need to create the spaces where these young people can put their ideas to work.

[00:37:12]>> Right. A young American came went across the continent. It's called speed high speed or something.

[00:37:18]went across the continent.

[00:37:20]>> Huge sensation. He's only 20.

[00:37:22]>> What is he doing?

[00:37:24]>> Cultural.

[00:37:24]>> No.

[00:37:25]>> Diplomacy.

[00:37:27]>> How many young South Africans are able to do that? Many.

[00:37:30]>> Yeah.

[00:37:31]>> Do they have the opportunity, the support? No.

[00:37:34]>> No.

[00:37:35]>> Do we even remotely view young South Africans who want to get us to understand the continent, the power of the continent in relations to other as the people we role model? No.

[00:37:46]>> Yeah. And this is not a problem of youth. It is a problem of the generation that has with limited numbers replaced the small minority status of the apaththeaded regime with a minority status of elderly people who neither deploy wisdom, common sense or empathy in how they live their daily lives.

[00:38:10]Right?

[00:38:10]>> So which then brings me to certain things practical. So it seems to me that we need to invest in both formal and informal education.

[00:38:19]We need to invest when when the Chinese and the French come to us and the British. There are three things they do that no one notices in every country.

[00:38:27]There's the British Council.

[00:38:28]>> Mhm.

[00:38:29]>> Yes. There's embassy, >> but there's the British council. What is the British council? The cultural army.

[00:38:34]>> Yeah. They do a lot of cultural uh activities.

[00:38:36]>> There's uh uh the French embassy, but there is Alian France. What is Alian France? the cultural arm >> when the Chinese come right there is what the Confucious Institute nor what is the Confucious >> German institute as well that yeah >> the the the cabal said every revolution >> is first a cultural revolution we embibed the colonial separation that says you are a scientist >> you are a lawyer an engineer then you you are doing sociology or cultural studies so we lawyers, scientists, accountants with no cultural consciousness >> and they become perfect technicists, world's leading technicists, but they are not conscious of themselves, of who they are. So they gravitate towards belonging to a tribe called accountants or lawyers, >> right? Unlike the rest of the people at the upper echelons of those professions with them, the other people have a a club to which these guys are not invited.

[00:39:44]>> Yeah.

[00:39:44]>> Right. They have they go to the masjid, they go to the the temple, they go where these guys are not invited. all these other wealthy people whether they're Jewish, they Africana, they they have whether it's secret society, faith society, social society where wealth and culture reinforced to build a unity, shared purpose, right >> for sustenance that goes beyond the individual.

[00:40:12]>> So I mean now I'm just think thinking about two scenarios, right, Brian? We spoke a lot about this domestic definition of what actually this continent needs and it's making me think about more around that AI needs to take lead into this continent technology because that's what will take this continent to the next level. Are we if we are getting into that are we buying into this global ideals or there is a way to align you know this perception change you've been talking about right of this understanding of who we are as Africa and how we built differently and how then we could bridge into um you know this other global ideals such as AI technology >> AI conversation must go concurrently with the preservation of environment conversations H >> because for us to run some of the AI we need we will get to use a lot more water four to five times more water.

[00:41:12]>> Mhm.

[00:41:13]>> Johannesburg imports water from Lutu.

[00:41:17]Uh Captown ran out of water.

[00:41:21]>> So we have to be thinking very carefully.

[00:41:23]>> Okay what will this mean for water security for citizens for residents? But at the same time instead of just using AI for entertainment we should be deliberately saying how does this AI >> help us to do the prevention the mitigation but also the creation how do we create solutions to new advances >> right whether it's pollution environmental >> and we're best what is that AI you know AI gives you what you feed in >> so I I use AI for making music for making. So the one thing that's so clear try and do it. It can't pronounce toa and what do you know why do you know why you have that material has not been put in >> it's advance based on algorithmic biases of those who dominate it.

[00:42:19]>> So in essence we can't dominate it by getting just three people. Mhm.

[00:42:24]>> You the massification >> this be a huge revolution.

[00:42:28]>> A huge revolution. Right >> now sometimes we forget basic things and let me go back something I said before.

[00:42:35]The most expensive food in Woolworth or any of the supermarket is it's written organic food.

[00:42:42]>> Do you want to know who grows organic food naturally?

[00:42:48]>> Yeah.

[00:42:48]>> Who is it? Um, >> is the is the people in your village >> in the villages? Yes.

[00:42:54]>> But are the people in your village reaping the biggest dividend of organic food? Now, so that means you, the black person in town >> by eating organic food that's now grown by people who historically didn't grow organic food, >> you are making them wealthier because you are paying premium.

[00:43:11]>> Yeah.

[00:43:11]>> But you are not paying attention to building the capacity to do at scale organic food production. But let me jump quickly to trade. Africa as a collective economy at whether 2.8 trillion is smaller than maybe three states in the United States. All right. Why is that so?

[00:43:33]Our connectivity is poor.

[00:43:36]>> From flights to roads to trains to internet and other forms of connectivity. So if we want to take advantage of this AI that means not only freedom of movement of people of goods we need to address the connectivity issue right it's very expensive to use air travel in Africa >> and also because of our history of suspicion with each other we actually want more to have foreign airlines than we want domestic I accept that other there were other issues in some airlines of mismanagement but by and large the airline business is not as lucrative for a lot of black people >> right but if we don't get into that and black people are flying everywhere >> but they are not flying enough to the rest of the continent so their sense of holidays pari Dubai and etc >> they don't even know how beautiful it is to be in northern Mosmbique how wonderful to be in Malindi Markesh etc but if it's going to take me two days or having to fly to Europe in order to fly back to why not just take a 4hour So connectivity is these are barriers that could unlock the potential. So domestic resource mobilization helps you to crowd in domestic and regional capital. That means you create sovereign wealth funds not just to address the wicked problems of today, illiteracy, inequality, but you need something that has a intergenerational focus >> that will enable our own people who create uh self-driven cars or whatever future technology is from their imaginations. We don't have anything left in our budgets or we don't have sufficient left in our budget to invest in innovation. Yeah. In research, in development because we're spending everything on misery, >> on addressing poverty and addressing the excesses we have. The biggest companies are publicly listed.

[00:45:33]>> Uh the concept is this aggregation of small value to build big value. So you say I'm buying shares in a company, right?

[00:45:41]That means it's not one person.

[00:45:43]>> It's these different shareholders that have come >> our whole system of ordering life from the village that we only look at the negative aspect. That's why we call it black text >> and none of the Africans who have received university education who have received health care who have received support with business from the so-called black economy collective economy are actually talking enough about that. So we create to the rest of the world the impression that uh black economics >> uh is only about black tax. No, >> it's also about collective empowerment, >> right? And we need to take it a notch further. What does it mean when a person, a sister, a brother sets up a business, we support them. What does it mean? We help them market because they don't have a marketing budget. We are the marketing budget.

[00:46:34]>> You heard me on sovereign wealth funds, Brian. How how do we leverage on on on that in Africa?

[00:46:41]>> Okay. Uh there is the Royal Mafang uh collective.

[00:46:46]>> Uhhuh.

[00:46:47]>> As a as a as a as a as a local royal authority, >> they have a sovereign wealth >> uh platform of sorts, right? So they had control over the wealth >> in in that. What happens with most of Africa is we're borrowing money not to address the fiscal possibilities but to address a money challenge so that we shore up our foreign currency reserves.

[00:47:14]>> Mhm.

[00:47:14]>> Right. We're not So we are borrowing for consumption >> but we are also borrowing this money from short using short-term borrowing instruments in in for many people who are working.

[00:47:28]You could go to Edgars go and you could buy something on what was called higher purchase. That means you pay small small over time >> and then when you are paying is there's something called interest.

[00:47:43]Uh it's it compounds over time. So you end up paying maybe three times >> four times more for the same thing because you borrowed and paid over time, >> right? But a higher purchase was a long-term instrument.

[00:47:56]Then you have some things they were calling personal loans.

[00:48:00]You go and borrow and it's wanted.

[00:48:02]>> Yeah.

[00:48:03]>> So you get that loan, you it's punitive.

[00:48:07]You don't pay the deco something, right?

[00:48:09]Or mortgage even longer term.

[00:48:12]>> We are borrowing to build infrastructure using short-term instruments.

[00:48:16]>> Infrastructure does not give you a a a return on investment right now. It's over time. Yeah.

[00:48:22]>> So all these nice will get the return. If you go to people and say we want people over >> you have to figure out how do I get the the dividend back from this money that was put in here right >> but when Africa goes to borrow there's something else the cost of capital >> is assessed on the basis of perceived risk. So Africa's risk profile has always been high. M >> so Africa ends up eating into the purse into its own money that it could invest in education in healthcare and structure and so on.

[00:49:02]>> Why? Because you are borrowing at 14%.

[00:49:07]Someone else from Japan or elsewhere borrowing the same amount of money because of their risk profile will borrow at 3% at 4%. Right? So your risk profile will >> never close this gap atre. So you are borrowing at a higher percentage rate.

[00:49:20]The return on what you're investing in is low. So you are perpetually going to be in debt.

[00:49:25]>> So you'll have both a fiscal crisis and you will have a monetary liquidity crisis for many countries.

[00:49:32]>> Not only that, then what is the solution?

[00:49:35]Uh you saw that that the Americans are changing who they are funding the Europeans and etc. >> So money coming from the so-called donors is limited. M >> so you have to think about how do I create my own wealth all the things that we said how do I avoid wastage how do I increase regional value chains and etc and we have we are saying we have critical minerals that others need >> yes >> and then we have critical minerals that we need >> how do we leverage both our resources our regional advantages our domestic to build wealth funds so that national development banks uh regional development banks are no longer just being used to pay for humanitarian emergencies and etc. We now start planning.

[00:50:23]>> We want to have uh engineers of this sort in X number of engineers of this sort in South Africa and it will cost us X amount over the next 10 years.

[00:50:35]>> We invest today we want to have doctors, healthcare workers uh for this type of we invest in that. We want to have electrician, we invest. So the ability to do intergenerational investment.

[00:50:49]Why is this important? Most of our countries are being approached by Europe and uh uh America and others for healthare workers. I need you to understand why this is important. When you are hearing government, you are hearing NOS's talk about where to invest. No one is talking about healthare workers. Why are healthare workers and care workers important? The population in Asia in Europe in Eastern in East Asia and Europe and also the developed countries is declining >> and it's aging. Many people are now going to become older. Now they were not having many children. You know the same children were complaining about as black texts are the same children that are now needed to take care of those. But we don't have a system of bilateral cooperation where our people can go and do care work under dignified circumstances.

[00:51:42]>> So they are going as individuals getting exploited but our countries are not getting as much as they could if the people who went there were protected by our laws. So that it's real economic migration that's bilateral. But worse still these people are being taken from our healthare systems. That means we are depleting the expertise in our healthare systems because our countries can't compete with the other countries in terms of >> and we're still we are borrowing money in order to train additional healthare workers and so that will be taken.

[00:52:14]>> It just feels like a vicious cycle.

[00:52:16]>> So in essence what I'm saying to you sovereign wealth fund is that leeway that says we want to build connectivity continentally.

[00:52:23]>> We want to build infrastructure. We want to build factories. We want it says you as the diaspora, you as local business invest in this. We can use sovereign wealth fund to open up opportunities in things that we think are important >> and when we do it enables you as an investor because that first loss capital. You know for many businesses people think it's glamorous to be in business. When you go into business your the possibility of your first investment not giving a return is always very high.

[00:52:55]We call it the first loss, >> the risk. So you need money, capital, significant capital to derisk.

[00:53:03]>> But when the de-risking has happened, it enables the local entrepreneur who wants to do to benefit because the risk has been carried >> has been minimized has been minimized >> because we don't drisk people don't go.

[00:53:16]It's cheaper for people to go and import the same goods from China than to make them because the cost of energy, cost of water, the cost of rentals is very high.

[00:53:25]So that dealing capital enables you to crowd in domestic capital. And I'm saying this sovereign wealth fund also enables you to say okay we need solar energy at scale for agriculture in the eastern cape. We need solar energy at scale for why in KZN or in the free state the cost of putting alternative energy are always much higher. Yes. up front. No individual entrepreneur can carry it otherwise they have to transfer it to the consumer.

[00:53:57]>> So we need kind of a coordinated system that understands that context and willate and invest >> in those priorities. Right? Once your sovereign wealth fund takes does the intergenerational investment can handle some of the infrastructure investment can invest in innovation >> then you're not constantly looking for for solutions. You start offering solutions. Yeah, >> you have intellectual property over over what you are doing. You now can monetize it and sell it.

[00:54:26]>> You are basically set up for success.

[00:54:28]>> You put it at the continental level.

[00:54:30]Different countries that are now competing with each other racing to the bottom can now come together and say this is a Panaffrican sovereign wealth fund.

[00:54:39]>> We know governance is a challenge. So we're going to have independent governance. We're going to have rules by which they are withdrawers. We're going to ask the manage the development banks whether regional or continental national to leverage so that there is enough capital. There may be external investors as well. We're not borrowers in that instance.

[00:54:57]>> Yeah.

[00:54:58]>> We are actually makers and creators of wealth for ourselves and for future generations. And this thing we always say that black people never leave a an inheritance for their children is always ahistorical because the people who were able to leave an inheritance from their children had free black labor, >> had slave labor, had colonies.

[00:55:18]>> Unfortunately, we don't have colonies.

[00:55:21]What we need are these innovative solutions to generate domestic capital to generate intergenerational uh investment capacities through sovereign wealth funds so that we can leverage how we borrow and lastly >> yeah risk reducing the assessment the politics of risk assessment is what keeps others having an upper hand over us.

[00:55:46]>> Yeah.

[00:55:47]>> Right. We need to address that. But we need a Marshall plan for Africa. We need a Marshall plan for South Africa.

[00:55:54]>> It all comes back to the source of identity and doing things our own way and just really reconciling um with our identity. I'd like for some parting words and you've said so much.

[00:56:07]I'm even wondering if there's any more that you know you could just hit.

[00:56:13]Execution is the gap between success and mediocrity. Ah >> excellence of execution. If you talk to Africans, there are many more articulate than any of us could ever be about what is the problem.

[00:56:27]>> Yes.

[00:56:27]>> In fact, they are more even more articulate on what is the solution.

[00:56:32]I tell people a real story that I met a guy and I wanted to learn how to use AI to do as I said music and stuff. The guy gave me a whole lecture. Then I went on the basis of the lecture and started doing it. Then I came stuck and I went back to him and said, "Look, I'm stuck."

[00:56:47]And it occurred to me he had never done it himself. He had read the books. So we used to say, "If you want to hide anything from an African, write it in a book."

[00:56:57]>> There's a new saying I want us to have.

[00:57:00]If you want to hide wealth from Africans, keep them in the books so that they don't come into the field to plow using the knowledge they learned in school. The engineerings that they have created themselves. They don't come to mine to value a to value add to their natural resources using their own cleverness. So that's why I say we need courses in national wisdom and national cleverness. Just a basic thing that anything that you dream about that you wish for but you never execute remains a dream.

[00:57:38]>> Right? And Africa has been dreaming long enough. In fact, some have been sleepwalking. We need to stop sleepwalking and just wake up and do basic things. Right? We dream of doing big things but the baby steps are necessary.

[00:57:57]>> South African youth are not all going to be employed in South Africa.

[00:58:01]>> Yes.

[00:58:02]>> I went to Beijing and in the universities in China they had schools that were learning Zulu HSA Bi to speak to understand and the cultures. There are no African schools where people are not just learning the language but they are learning the culture not as a means of subordinating themselves to it or being agents of that culture but as a means of understanding how do we gain advantage >> and negotiate better.

[00:58:34]>> How do we position? So this idea of producing knowledge by Africans for Africans about others does not exist.

[00:58:42]Our people once they go to London or America for a visit, they hang around the streets of New York, they come back with an accent. Hey, >> they don't bring anything else. So a liberation mindset says yes, if you want, come back with your accent. But the most important thing is unless you think yourself to be a king, you always behave like the subject.

[00:59:06]>> Yeah. If you think yourself to be an owner, you won't ever behave like the beggar. If you think of yourself as powerful people. So Shaga's contribution, the contribution of Zulu people of different South African ethnic groups and etc. was not simply spears and fighting. The fact that there's a narrative that makes you whether you are a Zulu or to imagine yourself only as a warrior >> is the tragedy. These kingdoms traded.

[00:59:38]>> Yeah.

[00:59:39]>> These kingdoms wore clothes, made beads, made inventions.

[00:59:44]>> These kingdoms had deep systems of knowledge and governance. These kingdoms were very future focused, intergenerational in thinking. If we are reduced to only imagining ourselves as muscle that fights and dominates the other, we will never understand the genius of our ancestors.

[01:00:03]>> It is high time we discovered the Africanness and the power. The Africans that built the pyramid that built Timbact >> built Mapong built great Zimbabwe. They were not only warriors.

[01:00:17]>> Yeah.

[01:00:18]>> They were traders.

[01:00:19]>> They were strategists.

[01:00:20]>> They were brains.

[01:00:21]>> They were brains.

[01:00:22]>> Yes. So bring back the brains into the imaginaries of historical Africa, the present Africa and future Africa. So that when we refer to Africa, we don't say come and see the big five. We say go to the land of ideas.

[01:00:37]>> Wow.

[01:00:37]>> The land of innovation. That's why the Greek philosophers would say if you want to learn about invention and new knowledge, go to Africa. Let's return to that place. Ah, >> right. So that even whether you are singing or dancing everything is not about approximating trying to be like a European >> or it's just about entertainment.

[01:00:58]>> Yes. It's about how do we create meaning and value >> in ways that will inspire young Africans, Africans not yet born. The same ways that Mandela and Cisulu Embe inspired Africans to fight for this non-racial society liberation.

[01:01:19]>> May your generation, my generation, inspire Africans to say we're not consumers of technology.

[01:01:26]>> Yeah. We are makers of technology. We are not consumers of science. We are makers of science. We're not consumers of innovations. We are makers of innovation. That's it. That's my message.

[01:01:38]>> Ah, Brian, thank you. Thank you. So, >> wow. So, I mean, I prefer not say anything after this. Let's just that sink in. I mean, uh, Brian Kagoro here, he's a bread panist and, uh, yeah, he's like a preacher. You want to listen to him all day long. Well, now in concluding, um, so the conversation is ultimately a call for Africa to reclaim its identity, its imagination, its ownership, its confidence, its production. So basically Bran Kagoro is arguing that Africa's future will not be built by waiting for aid, copying foreign models or exporting raw materials. So it will be built by rebuilding African consciousness and executing African solutions.

[01:02:48]Let us know in the comment section what made you feel uh you know uh yeah uh for me it was a very enlightening conversation.

[01:02:58]Thank you very much for tuning in and that was it and I will see you on the next one. Bye-bye.