 I'm Dan Rundy. I hold the Shrier chair here at CSIS and run the project on Prosperian Development. It's a real privilege and pleasure to have Jonathan Berman to talk about his new book called Success in Africa which I've read and I commend to all of you to actually read. I hope you buy it retail on Amazon or go to your local bookstore like Politics and Pros where I know they're selling it and go out and buy it. It's been endorsed by a slew of very impressive and thoughtful people that are friends of CSIS as well as their household names. President Clinton endorsed the book and actually read the book. We were having this discussion earlier and we know he you know read it cover-to-cover and I know he did. And folks like Neville Isdell who's on our board here at CSIS who's a very serious Africanist and was an Africanist before Africa was cool is who's on the CSIS board is also read it and is also someone who's interviewed here in the in the book as well. I want to recognize my friend Jennifer Cook who's here who runs our Africa program as well as my friend Tony Carroll who's also affiliated with Jennifer Cook's program and want to just recognize them and I know there are other folks here as well who are very thoughtful people and know a lot about Africa as well but want to just give you a quick biographical sketch about Jonathan, my quick thoughts about the book and then I've got a couple questions for Jonathan then we can open it up because I know this is a very thoughtful audience and Jonathan had a graduate of Yale grew up in Brooklyn the Bronx sorry sorry grew up in New York City and went to Yale and then has had a career in strategy consulting did a detour into development consulting for a while and has merged the two with Dahlberg which is a well-known development strategy consulting firm that has an office here in Washington and has also has an affiliation with the with the Valle Center at Columbia University is a senior fellow there and retains an affiliation with Dahlberg but took a year off to write the book. I found the book very interesting I found the chapter in particular about China interesting I know this is a topic of great energy here in Washington and generates a lot of interest and for folks in the policy community like myself I'm particularly energized as an American about the China-Africa relationship there are a couple surprises I found in here about the China-Africa relationship for those of you that follow this more carefully than I do they won't be as surprising but I thought there were some particularly interesting factoids that that come up in the book about the China-Africa relationship one was that there are if you go on Google they say there's two billion hits if you Google Africa and China and there are 2.2 million scholarly articles on Africa and China 2.2 million articles scholarly articles in Africa and China which I find shocking and I think Jonathan's point in the book is you know I don't he doesn't think they're probably that many scholarly articles about African success in Africa and I think he's absolutely right so I think perhaps there's a little bit of a hyperventilation or some energy around sort of that that specific topic I know we're going to get into it later and I hope there'll be other folks here as well who will who will have thoughts about this but that was that was one thing I also thought there were some very other interesting insights about the relationship between China and Africa Jonathan interviewed a series of very interesting current and former CEOs African CEOs African leaders American leaders who've been serious players in in Africa some who I didn't know anything about Jeff Imelt it comes up often in the book and GE has been really a series gone very big into Africa we have a relationship here at CSIS with GE and it's quite clear from our interactions with them but also Cummins the the industrial company out of Indiana has made a major thoughtful effort in Africa over the last 10 years I know Jonathan will talk about it but they're just a couple things that they came about the about this in particular about the China-Africa relationship and then I will pop some questions over to Jonathan but one was that Moe Ibrahim who's the legendary founder of CellTel the cell phone company said okay US friends talked to us of Africa has been an unfaithful business partner that now is trading with China and that we are at risk from it but Moe again goes on to say but the number one trading partner of China is the United States so why is it so good for the United States to trade with China and why is it bad for Africa which I think is a a pretty good point so I thought that was I thought that was particularly interesting there are many insights like this I use the China-Africa example in particular just to pull some things out let me just draw out one other thing he has a very interesting chapter and what does this mean for the United States and then I and one of the things I took away from the conversation was the issue of training American business training and that the American companies multinational companies commitment to training it's investing in people and investing in local communities is something that's a unique distinguisher of the United States in Africa but I won't reveal all the interesting nuggets that are in the book but those were several that I'm particularly enthused about and so Jonathan it's really a privilege to have you thanks for coming and thanks for being here I congratulate you on the book thanks tell me talk about what prompted you to to do the book sure sure I so first before I do let me just thank thank Dan formally Dan is someone who I've known who's been at the intersection of business and development politics for a long time and not just at that intersection but driving it forward in the right place so I'm very glad to be in his company to be here at CSIS pardon me you know the I think it's a reasonable question why I would write this book I think it's also a reasonable question to ask how could I possibly be the right guy to write this book as as Dan almost mentioned I'm from the Bronx with talk talk about you know major faux pas talk about subnational conflict but that's a long way from Africa and originally I'm not an Africa specialist I began my career as an Asia specialist my Chinese coming out of school was pretty good much better than now and I bounced around greater China for about 10 years working on a variety of strategy and strategy consulting projects along the way got a really good sense for what an emerging fast-growth economy looks like and what the political economy and economic dynamics of of that change are and not just looks like but sort of feels like you get a feel for the vibrancy of a market that's exploding the first time I landed in Lagos I could tell that that was what was happening in Africa and you could feel it again you can feel it in Nairobi you can feel it in a crotch today you know this sort of home of activity that really does if you if you felt it before you know you know that that's where you are several years into working in and so I began to work a little more in Africa with some of the companies that I had developed relationships with in Asia and a few years in I realized I was living sort of a parallel life that that when I was working in Africa or with people who were investing in Africa everybody knew the story it was a foregone conclusion that Africa was growing growing all around us right because they could all feel the same thing I couldn't a lot of people were made or were in our making good money as soon as I stepped off that plane or went through a transfer in Geneva or Frankfurt or came down to the US and talked to somebody here it was like I was in another world no one knew that Africa was growing at that point there was just this this impression that's reinforced by our media and our entertainment of sort of happy animals and miserable people but that's the story of Africa so so there were these two parallel worlds and at the same time I found that I was talking in Africa engaging with some of the most dynamic thoughtful charismatic executives I had ever met in my life anywhere here in Asia in Africa anywhere and I thought ah that's how I'll actually that's how it actually resolved the sort of this parallel universes is by talking about these people a new narrative of Africa with the characters who are inhabiting it today not the characters you find like in the Lion King and so that's who that's who the book is about really and that's what the but that's the books contents is getting those people to talk about the issues that most Americans certainly and I think generally most business readers are interested in interested in about Africa who would I work with there what is the like work with the government what about the Chinese what are the opportunities for Americans those are the questions that I took forward from from the people that I knew here and brought to the executives I knew there great well talk about some of your some of your bigger takeaways or findings I mean you certainly talk to the right people I would I was fascinated by the cast of characters that you present in the book various expat entrepreneurs and Irish men who sets up an oil company nothing about the oil industry a series of one charismatic African CEO after another phenomenally successful talk about talk about what what some of your in your mind some of the key takeaways were in your mind about this yeah well you know maybe I'll start by talking about who who they are yeah writ large and then we can go into specifics that you want you know maybe you want to direct so first of all I'm gonna say that generalizing about Africa is always done at your peril right there's 54 or maybe 55 countries depending who's who you're asking and even within that there's a lot of subnational divisions as furious as that between the Bronx and Brooklyn so you do it at your peril having said that I do do it and if I have a whole chapter describing why I think Africa as a whole makes sense and we can talk a little more about that but I think it isn't valuable and important to talk about Africa as a whole and so I'll I'll dare take that risk on of generalizing and then you guys can push back on me one thing I'll point out is that the men and women driving Africa's growth let's start with this they're Africa right we tend to think of Western aid or Chinese demand or this commodity supercycle as driving the growth in Africa they're all inputs but if you talk to the CEOs who are succeeding in Africa they're not the core inputs the core inputs are education connectivity better governance all being driven by Africans themselves so let's let's start with that and in the Africa and then the men the men and women leading the most productive enterprises on the continent are themselves also Africans whether expage whether they went abroad and came back with education like Petuman Aleco the chairman of MTN which is now the the 7th largest phone company in the world Lord right or whether they're someone like Tony Alumelo the chairman of Transcorpionaires holding who's building the largest power plant in Nigeria born bred and educated in in Nigeria James Mawangi of Equity Bank the same in Kenya right so whether they're coming back whether the returnees or have stayed there throughout you know these are the people at the heart of the story and let's not it's easy I think sitting here and I imagine sitting in Beijing to lose track of that though I submit we we might lose track of it a little more easily than they second the model that the modern African CEO is not the past model of African business leadership I think it's fair to say that there is a very large cadre of African business leaders of the past whose principal stock in trade or political relationships and their ability essentially to extract rents from the countries around from their from their native land that is not what you see today and doesn't describe any of the men I just I just mentioned in order to describe Fenke Fenke Opeke a woman who's the CEO of main one cable in Nigeria these are to a man and woman business executives who are leading productive competitive enterprises and you can see it because in many cases they are transnational enterprises most of these companies do not suffice to stay within one market even a large market like Nigeria because of the nature of their enterprise because they are productive and competitive they have the opportunity to jump those boundaries that's a big difference over over earlier earlier generations of African business leadership that the one of the things I took away was this issue of regionalization and sort of looking at and you talk about I actually do agree that you can I think you can take a risk of making some generalities and you quote Moe Ibrahim and talking about that as well and use the example the World Cup and Ghana and various African friends and colleagues sort of solid is demonstrating solidarity with Ghana in their quest in in the World Cup is sort of an example of this but but talk a little bit about the in terms of some of the additional changes that have happened in Africa you have in the beginning of in the chapter some of the reforms that have happened to sort of make make this make this and you talked about governance you talked about some other things that were sort of laid the groundwork if you will for sort of this if you can reemergence isn't the word and you and you talk about that or sort of a reemergence or a reconnectivity and sort of a a an African Renaissance if we can call it that how's that yeah so you know what some some of the drivers of some of the drivers that yes sure so briefly on each of the I mentioned three areas that I've the I view is most core to a very complex and nuanced decades long process and their education governance and connectivity so briefly in each one in education Africa doesn't under invest in education there are challenges with how well it's how well the education is delivered but Africa delivers education at twice the annual portion at twice a portion of their budget as we do of ours right 22% versus 11% of budget and and that has yielded results that are uneven across the continent but are significant at the same time there's a cadre sort of a commercial class of rising managers and chief executives that have returned from expatriate education whether in the in in Europe or particularly in this country you know James Milwaukee the Forbes Africa man of the year said to me said you know you when you're dealing with a chief executive of a of a Kenyan company today he typically will have had multiple advanced degrees from overseas that basically the same education that you've had but you're treating him as if he's his father with his mission education and that's the mistake that Americans are often making so that's a big revolution even if it's in a small class it's a small but critical class of movers on the continent just on this issue talk about governance yeah so in governance I think they're that first of all that same process has happened on the government side it's a better educated class of people governing but also much of much of Africa especially southern Africa has moved through a generation of colonial and then post-colonial management and governance and move and sort of had that had that post-colonial government fail and decided that it's had and it's had enough with it and replaced it with a more technocratic generation of leaders I dare say that we that's what we're seeing in South Africa right now in this regard South Africa is a laggared decades behind exactly is a is a is a is a lot is lagging behind much of the rest of Africa in the evolution from the post-colonial champion to whatever will emerge that I'm sure is gonna be more technocratic and you talked about infrastructure I think you mean by that things like telephony or connectivity in particular so that's the connectivity part that's right now what's the cell phone how many cell phones are there in Africa today yeah that's right I if I recall the numbers correctly there's 780 pushing towards 800 million in Africa today yeah connect connections in Africa and the set some subset of that have the ability to make e-payments on empeza and those sorts of things I'm assuming it's in the tens of millions in fact all of in fact all of them do because one of it one of the well all of them have that capacity not all not all countries in Africa have that ability system like empeza but empeza like most of the innovations in Africa on mobile are designed to work on a feature phone on what we call a dumb phone only right now I think only 3 million of those phones are smartphones today I think they're expected to be 15 million or 15% of total so that would be 150 wow in a by 2015 so even then 85% of that market is going to be feature phones and what what you can do in Nairobi with a feature phone run circles around what I can do with the iPhone I just turned off and put in my pocket I still have trouble using my city bank pop money account I don't even know if any of you have this we have some pale imitation of mobile money here today but you know it takes me 10 minutes and a mountain of frustration to make it move compared to what what one can do in Nairobi we're really you're just really just texting a few numbers there were a see as I said earlier are there are seriously that surprised me there must be several insights that surprised you as you did the book that you took away so I didn't expect that what were those yeah you know there were many almost maybe too many to count but you know there were three or four that really stood out one is that Africa isn't quite as configured in quite the way we typically think of it the region that the relationship between different regions is changing and so for example South Africa today is much less part of the rest of Africa Southern Africa that we think of it as and North Africa is more we I don't think I know an international organization that doesn't divide North Africa whole cloth from the rest from the rest of the continent except companies in Africa companies like a Tijara Wafa Bank the largest bank in in North Africa Moroccan Bank whose growth strategy is entirely Southern driven Sevatal the largest company in Algeria entirely Southern driven in their growth strategy you'll find companies like that throughout the Maghreb pushing south and we just you know our organizations are just not caught up with that similarly from the south to the north I think that that there's a common conception that South Africa is the entrepo for the rest of Africa I don't know many people outside I don't know many African CEOs outside of South Africa who actually think that way so that you know that was amongst the more surprising the the the other thing I took away was one of the interviews you had with Sonny Vargas say who runs Olam which is a big one of the bigger agribusiness players and in the world and in Africa talking about that there's the potential for Africa to be self-sufficient in rice and it's the one-third of all rice inputs in the world imports in the world come into Africa today but he believes that over time that's going to change so things like a green revolution through things like food security investments through things like private sector investments in agriculture that that shocked me yeah you know I think probably there's people in the room who have heard of you know that that that Africa could feed the world that Africa has 60% of uncultivated arable land in the world but when you hear it from Sonny Vargas who runs one of the largest commodity firms in the world and moves more rice than anybody in the world right this is the man who knows the global rice market and he says that we can eliminate that that that rice important to Africa in its entirety you know it adds a new it adds a new layer of force you know one of the other things I wanted to cover with you was the issue well okay what is this book you're in Washington what does this book mean for a Washington audience it's you were in New York yesterday there's sort of a different kind of a conversation in New York it's related but it's slightly different you know one of one thing I would propose that I think we ought to take away from after reading this book is okay and I go back to what I was saying earlier about China which is like I said is a little bit of catnip here in Washington the China-Afric relationship I certainly gravitate towards that I want to understand that my take on the China-Afric relationship isn't for the United States to complain about it my view is okay how do we combine the Great Work Opic does and Mimi Alamayu is the EVP she's here I want to recognize her the great work that AID does and I think one of the things that's not in the book or at least as well I think well described is I think there's been a massive set of investments and you know you're not focused on foreign assistance at all in the book but I think there been a series of significant contributions that the US government have made whether it's to training of Africans or feed the future here in this administration but also PEPFAR and the Bush administration a GOA under the Clinton administration been a series of things that have helped I think undergird some of the success in Africa I don't think we can we are a small supporting actor but I do think we need to do a far better job to the extent we are supporting Africa and the African drama of linking up at OPIC, AID, MCC, XM, TDA and my friend Thelma Aske who is an affiliation here with CSIS who's the former head of TDAs with us as well that we need to we need to we're gonna be talking about that a little bit on Friday with Gail Smith who's gonna be with us and we're gonna be talking about the partnership for growth work but I that was one of my takeaways because I it seems to me that we can't just complain and say oh why are they doing this and this is quote-unquote bad it just behooves us to sort of up our game as Americans and sort of the American policy community that was my take away yeah so let's start with that we can talk about some other specific policies before we get to those policies let's let's talk about the China-African relationship and the US-African relationship so I you're quite right Dan I think we do ourselves a pretty significant competitive disservice when we portray the Chinese relationship in Africa as either bad for Africa or a wholesale due to corruption and there's a story I relate in the book in which I was sitting at an event that that was celebrating US-Africa trade there are sometimes more events celebrating US-Africa trade than US-Africa trade but this was this was one such and and at this event where the keynote keynote speaker was a statesman of global reputation in the US statesman that shall go unnamed he will or she or she everyone here would know this person's name and as as the as the statesman was speaking he paused from his own from his prepared remarks and said you know I know that you all have a relationship you know I know that China has been active newly active in in Africa I just want you to know that we're not like them they're there only for the money and the resources not like us not like us not like us leaving aside for a moment the veracity of the statement what I found that statement that what I found that statesman was really missing is how much that is exactly what Africans and African executives want how much appetite they have for exactly a relationship that is about trade there's about equals and how much dignity they tell me that confers upon them I can't tell you how many times I heard that in the course of writing the book exactly that from some of the people who were there in that in that very room so I think that that sort of masks what what we could be doing in terms of in terms of our competitiveness there by the way we are extremely competitive in Africa both in terms of the kinds of skills we bring particularly our ability to rate to do to deliver human capital improvements training and education we're world beaters at that and there's few things the African governments and frankly African African business partners want more than human capital improvement programs we're great at that we're great at all kinds of technologies that are that need to be deployed in Africa but probably more importantly there's a certain soft power advantage there I wrote about this recently in Harvard Business Review the American brand is is is resonant and with African particularly with African entrepreneurs at least the ones I spoke with it's remarkable how familiar they are with sort of the mythology of rugged individualism of entrepreneurialism of the story of building this continent which is part of why I think it resonates there because they're building a continent it was it was remarkable to me how often they would bring it up without my discussing it that's a big advantage you know you don't you it's hard to quantify you can see it in polling data for sure but from a commercial perspective it's an opening that that Americans could take advantage of you know let me let me just cover one last question then I want to open up there's some very thoughtful people and I have half a mind a call on on some very some some people I'm looking at them and making sure I want to make sure we get get to some some very thoughtful resources here in the audience okay we're it's 9-11 we talked about this we said okay are we gonna do an event on 9-11 and as I said to you on the phone I said I got into the development business and I got into the cause of development because of 9-11 talk a little bit about the this is a hopeful story this is a story about hope this is a story about the future is there some is there something is there something that that that when you think about 9-11 and you think about the book what what what comes to mind for you yeah so we did talk about this 9-11 is an important date for for everybody I'm sure yes for me I think about it every year you know I yesterday I was telling Dan just just before we came in yesterday I had my first interview for the book on the Mike Huckabee radio show so you know that that audience a different one than the one we find out when we find in the room today there's some overlap yeah that's right you said you read bipartisan right yeah that's right that's right but it's also a broad audience of general a widespread American audience I was very interested in how Governor Huckabee a pretty terrific communicator would communicate this story to them and it was in the midst of a lot of what was being discussed around the Syrian crisis and what he said is you know if you're interested all he all he introduced it very simply by saying if you're interested in a good news story about the world here's one here's one that may surprise you and that was his lead in success in Africa it's odd that you know having worked on this for a year I never thought of it quite that way but you know for all the unevenness of African development it is a good news story and it's a good news story that mostly reinforces the things that I think that I personally find our core to the American value around entrepreneurialism and opportunity and the liberty to explore it now we don't always get that right I might argue we never get it exactly right but those are aspirations that I think we're celebrated in the wake of 9-11 rather than focusing on the tragedy I'd rather focus on you know what what what's uplifting coming out of it those are things that were I think properly celebrated by us and by people around the world in the wake of 9-11 that I find resident in Africa today yeah okay I want to I want to open this up I'm I want to just I want to first as a privilege ask ask my friend and colleague Jen cook if you either wanted to make a comment or ask a question I wanted to ask you if you would you'd you put the first question so thank you for investing your time thanks for being here let me also say that I recognize Jen from her work and Tony I've known for for many years I know there's a lot of expertise in this room that matches surpasses my own so I encourage you to make your own points and certainly take issue with mine yeah the softball questions are now ending right go ahead Jen together and I'm really eager to read the book I mean I think a lot of what you're saying resonates kind of with what I'm thinking particularly on the China on the the I was just at a congressional retreat in Ethiopia with a number of Congress people and immediately China and I gave a talk on China immediately the question of China and the suspicion of China's motives and what how are they undercutting all the good work we've done in Africa was kind of a subtext to some of that and you know I think I think you're absolutely right the US has tremendous advantages in some ways and I think the the advance of China in some of the big lucrative industries is very much overplayed in some ways they've made huge advances from where they were but the US has a tremendous base of investment in the extractive industries and the oil industry in the mining industry and so forth that and so when we talk about China gobbling up the resources and undercutting all the good we've done we're we're actually there doing a lot of that and selling eventually to China even if our need for oil goes down so I'd love to read that maybe you can say a bit more about China and kind of attitudes for China and where you see the trajectory going one of the fears for some of the growth stories not that China will do more and more in Africa but what happens when China slows down slows down and you know the big opportunities for the United States why don't we bunch a couple questions together we'll do this World Bank style Tony Carol and I'm hoping Mimi will also make you know I'll take a few notes as people are talking yeah yep I look forward to reading your book thanks Jonathan and Dan thank you for organizing this thoughtful session I'm reading I look forward to reading this book because I just finished the book how nations fail which is you know great reading and I'm just wondering if this new cadre of business leadership is starting to have its impact on political leadership you know I think one of the constraints certainly pointed out in that book and I don't know how novel thought that really is is that you might find dynamic business leadership but when you get to political leadership it pretty much looks like the same it did 25 30 years ago and are you getting a sense that the business agenda and the business visionaries are starting to have a greater impact in creating what I think are the remaining institutional constraints on African development then the last thing and it's my big boo on on this whole area of an American engagement in Africa is this whole social capital crowd you know it you know to me it drives me almost nuts at times because the implication is we're going to do this because if it's a social capital investment means there's something inherently bad about Africa and why are we you know treating Africa differently than we would elsewhere and I'm sorry John Simon will probably knock me in the head next time he sees me if he's in the room but I just really wonder whether or not our engagement in Africa still hasn't really changed as an investment lens it's still sort of seen as a development game and I'm a little worried about that Mimi never behind you thank you Dan and thank you for for doing this I haven't read you books so I will not comment on that but I would just sort of add maybe perhaps to the good story what your book talks about in terms of opportunities and where Africa is today OPEC I don't know how many of you know about OPEC it's the US government's development finance institution and was started by Nixon over 40 years ago and it's actually been active in Africa for the 40 years and for the first time in OPEC's 40 year history Africa became our largest portfolio it's fantastic overtaking Latin America which is always kind of been around 30 30 percent of our portfolio we have about 16 billion in our exposure and four billion of it is now in sub-Saharan Africa and like most other institutions we also separate North Africa from unfortunately the the rest of Africa so what that says really is you know we're very much demand driven we go where our clients want us to go the fact that Africa's our largest portfolio say something about where the continent is is going and it's not your usual and we have the G's of the world as our clients but we also have really SMEs that are going into the continent for the first time that have done business in Latin America that are done business in Asia and that are you know don't want to miss this boat but also I think another point that I think Dan sort of alluded to is the diaspora that some of them you met the James and James Wangi actually I know him well he's I think has been in Kenya for a long time in Tony Alumolo but there's also other diasporas that were trained in New York or in Washington that were educated here that have gone back and that are including my brother who moved back like you know about seven years ago who I never imagined in my lifetime my brother would pack up a move to Ethiopia and start a business and now almost employs the same number of people as OPEC but you know so there's a lot of good stories and even at OPEC we're seeing that increasingly our clients are becoming some of the diaspora investors those that are not necessarily moving back but that are making really sophisticated long-term complex investments they're not just wiring money to their grandmother as a lot of people think of the diaspora so I think that's that's a really important element that's taking place this brain drain the opposite of the brain the brain gain I mean the opposite of the brain drain that Africa faced for decades so that's taking place so I think it's you know it's all around it's I could say it's a really good story thank you could I just ask I'm terribly sorry I have a bad head cold I wonder if someone might bring me a tissue is that possible the question was for me no no by the way today is September 11 and it's Ethiopian New Year okay so that's also a positive thing to think about and instead of a the other side of the coin yeah okay we're gonna there's I want to do a second round after Jonathan answers this this first round of questions I would I'm gonna I'm gonna call on Michael and Thelma and I'm gonna ask Bob Berg as well to comment and we'll do also do another round after that so I'll make sure we get to a lot of different folks but Jonathan yeah so I do I thought those were all three great points I'm not surprised given who the speakers were maybe I actually think there's a bit of a linkage to a Tony and Mimi were saying and then maybe I'd just come back and reflect a little bit on your question so Tony yeah I agree with you that there's still we're still playing a lot of a development game and I more more than I there is an element so I think there's a place in the world for humanitarian aid and philanthropic aid and impact investing but I think that the balance of those to straightforward trade investment Africa still lags behind the not only the optimal but the opportunity for America and that's what I'm focused on really is the American opportunity there pardon me you know the president's trip was was to be focused on trade and aid that and I think it was largely but I for example had a friend in Senegal who said you know what I would like the president to come and not visit the the you know the the exit point for slave trades for a change just so he clearly signals that that's not what we're doing I would like him to not visit the Mandela prison on Robin Island because that's not what that's not what Africa's future is about and then send a very clear signal the same way he does when he goes to ASEAN for example that resonated with me and I think that so I think that's right I think we are saying the right things but the message is still not perfectly clear and I think that's reflected you know I'm I'm I'm not a Washington bureaucratic structures yeah they merit attention I'm not the I'm not the expert on them but I will say that it seemed to me that as I looked at the structure for how the president's major initiatives were being delivered were to be delivered coming out of his trip in late June early July a lot of it rested with USAID the Agency for International Development and I found myself wondering well why isn't it a little more in OPIC and EXIM frankly you know I'm not a that was not a paid spot was this a TF right exactly exactly you know and I listen I have a lot of respect for colleagues who are at USAID but if we're really shifting to a trade in a trade and investment focus it seems to me those are the engines by which we do trade and investment and by the way I guess I kind of don't understand where the Department of Commerce is in this we seem not to have an entity that really is responsible for driving a trade and investment agenda really divorced from from development it seems to me like we could all of that actually is a little bit more one might say like the Chinese model I think we have what frankly I think we have what to learn from how the Chinese engage with Africa not only in the soft area of imparting dignity in the relationship which I'm sure there's many people who have had different different experiences that's the experience I've encountered but also in the degree to which so much of their relationship is premised on commercial transaction including loans most of the most that what's called a development assistance from Africa for the purposes of comparison is really much more like what Mimi's organization does or XM Bank or XM Bank then then then what USAID does now I'm not saying we should take on the Chinese model whole cloth you know I think we have our we there are good reasons we do the things we do and they have strengths to them but I think it could be a little bit a little bit more that way you know that my one reflection on China that another is just I do find it a little ironic that we found ourselves decrying the upswing of Chinese investment in Africa and now we're decrying with terror that there might be a downswing of investment of China Chinese investment in Africa the clearly is the clearly is sort of an absence of clear-cut thinking on it. Okay so let me see I'd like to hear from Thelma Aske first please. Thelma you're the you're having affiliation here with CSIS but you also were the former head of TDA and then you had a stint on the Hill as well as that you were a senior official at OECD in Paris. I want to kind of approach China in a different way but also overall in Africa set aside the development side sorry which we which the U.S. kind of focuses on what kind of assistance can we give to U.S. business to make them interested in Africa and I was particularly interested in what you said about Nogra I mean the Nogra excuse me the northern Africa part and how they're expanding into Africa central and sub-Saharan Africa. What is it that they see that's a plus for them and what is South Africa not see the difference the primary difference between China and the U.S. the U.S. is only going to help U.S. business so much and then they're gonna have to be business people. China perhaps has other goals in Africa and will support I mean Chinese business state-owned enterprises early so if the U.S. business person is looking at Africa what is it that North Africa is seeing about expanding are they being supported by the government to or do they see some kind of real business opportunity. I'm not so impressed by the cell phone thing although I think it's very important connectivity but you know cell phones expanded in Europe first primarily because telecommunication was so bad there and that I think can be Africa's story too you know it's for you know it's a good thing but it's not necessarily reflective of vibrancy within the economy it's more of a reflection of necessity you could correct me if I'm wrong but you know they they jump to cell phones because they have no underlying you know telecommunication it's a good thing but it's not necessarily reflective of a vibrant economy that's there but I'm the most interested in what is it from an entrepreneurial standpoint the lone U.S. business person without government assistance without US TVA without exam even without OPEC what what should they see in Africa besides they love us they love her under my girl spirit and and we should Bob please if you pass the microphone mic from Bob Berg back there hi Bob Berg former senior advisor of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa quick comment and a quick question comment is this reinforces my view that the work there and that you did on post-aid relationships really needs to keep at it and maybe you know we ought to think about what it take a case in point and recommend to the government what is what is what what are the implications of a change relationship with Ghana given its oil yeah what kind of relationship should we be having it question is and I'll I'll be happy to work with you yes exactly question is this the U.N. post 2015 Millennium Development Goals are recommending two big areas one is more broad-based growth livelihoods it's sort of within that involving the poorest and so forth and the second is a reductions in violence and in Nash and putting in national institutions and other ways to kind of reduce violence I must say in our own country it's we'd be hard-pressed to say you know what are we doing on these scores so I'm just wondering whether these topics came up in conversations with the entrepreneurs that you dealt with whether they have ideas about how to address those topics in their own societies repeat the topics again the topics are reduction in violence and more broad-based growth wider employment dealing with poverty all that yeah thank you thank you and I agree with you Bob we'll follow up on that and Michael Leavitt who's got an affiliation here with CSIS and the former presidency of CDC development solutions I apologize both are not having read the book and for coming in a little late just two points one I work on both the private sector side and with with development and our office in Ghana the business card our business card says across the street from the dynasty restaurant it's not just the big Chinese companies that are affecting perceptions of Chinese in large living working there building their own businesses that has a huge impact I think second competitive advantage I think often in some of the infrastructure work I've been involved on the American side and Chinese side is we have a quality I think we send out a quality message that wins and then I think has an effect on government leaders and then the last thing and this is the question I've been working there since 1973 and I don't see much difference in corruption and that's my biggest thing in lack of change whether businesses grow or we've done a wonderful thing with PEPFAR which we have and all this other stuff it's you're killed by corruption and I I'm hoping you're gonna say I found massive change please okay why don't we take those three okay good so why don't we take them kind of in sequence because I think I think concluding with corruption is on this round anyway it's not not not a reasonable thing to do it's pretty pretty pretty central in terms of what the North Africans see as they expand South right so first of all I think you're right that at least the companies that I engaged with are doing so with no government support other than other than acquiescence other than when saying yes we'd like to see you South without further further support than that what what they see is growth is growth opportunities so the companies in particular that I'm talking about are agribusiness the investments they're making are in agribusiness and in financial services particularly financial services to the to the unbanked or marginally banked those are growth opportunities in Africa and to me they speak to a dynamic that's a little different than the one you described I thought that you you know and I may be misinterpreting you but what I understand you to be saying is you know phone phone the the rise of cell phones came as a function of necessity rather than vibrancy to me those two things are are part and parcel of one another necessity drives vibrancy and this is one of the great misconceptions about opportunity in Africa you know Chris Carube one of the one of the richest men in east Africa said you know you go you go where the markets you know the market the markets that have nothing are very important they're the ones that buy everything you know and I think that you see that dynamic all over Africa foreign firms aren't always the first to jump on it I mean I think there's a reason that equity banks sort of stole the thunder from global banks even even South African banks in reaching out to the unbanked they just didn't see that they weren't able to capture that opportunity so and I think to the extent I think that to the extent that there is widespread opportunity in Africa that is the opportunity and I think that relates a little bit to what Mr. Burton was saying about inclusive growth there are opportunities to serve elites in Africa and to serve only international firms that are coming in I in fact one the CEO of a global bank who is not named in the book but this I think the story is in there I said it is in the in the book good well it's memorable it's memorable but I didn't name him right that I uh uh uh so this bank this leader yeah yeah a US global banking leader when he said you know oh yeah we have an Africa you know I was asked to speak with him because they are moving strongly to Africa and he said and so I met with him and he said we are moving strongly into Africa our client or our global clients are demanding it and I said that's great you know while you're there are you thinking of banking anybody else and he sort of blinked it means that well who else is there right I think I actually think that that that prevails you know of course a large number of companies the companies that I spoke with for the book and this is was a certain extent self-selective are not that way they they they to a company are in one way or another uh focused on building what one of them called social wealth in the country that's not social capital I mean like broad broad based inclusive growth each of their activities is in in one form or another delivering productivity or life enhancing products and services to millions right be a broadband or privatized health or education or power I mean nothing could be more empowering to millions than broad based power on and off grid I they're not doing that in order to in order to help society though I think that's very they're very conscious of it I find that there's a very easy flow amongst African executives between the core of their business and what we typically would think of as the social mission of the business they're not as distinguished perhaps because poverty is so widespread but there's a much more holistic interaction between the two again I don't want to be too polyannish about it there are plenty of people making money serving only the elites in Africa there are plenty of people making money doing nefarious things but there is a but from from from what I gauge neither of those is where the largest opportunity lies the largest opportunity lies in in delivering productive goods and services to millions of people who are just coming up to the productivity chain on the way there there is a lot of corruption so before I speak about corruption in any other country I like to just take a pause to say that I I'm pretty conscious and painfully painfully conscious of the corruption in our own system there's I find it a little difficult to hear Americans bring up corruption again and again in Africa when our own campaign campaign finance system is so clearly rotting so with that with that in mind there is corruption everywhere and there is corruption in Africa my experience of this Michael and you've been you know I you've been at this a long time in many different parts of the continent so I have a lot of respect for your opinion my experience of this is that there has always been a channel through which transparent uh good transparent clean operations can can thrive the transparent companies can clean can compete and win and that that channel is widening and it's widening for two reasons one is because more companies are going through it I think you'll find you know companies I think GE operates cleanly I think that uh ECP Tom Gibbons firm the private equity firm based here in in Washington operates cleanly and is and you know all over the continent on private equity pre you know pre-ipo placements all over the continent those are two of the companies they're interviewed in the country in in in the book Moe Ibrahim clearly has sort of made this enormous stand and built a billion dollar enterprise in cell tell by operating cleanly and then went on to establish a foundation to promote it I you know if you you could probably find incidences with each of those companies that would challenge what I've just said but I think the overall I think you'd find the overall theme of all three is along those lines and I think the more I find anyway the more companies that move through the channel the wider it gets it's it's the opposite of zero sum right it's win-win I also heard in this book and maybe this was a bit of a surprising finding that uh they heard a lot of pull from the government from governments governments that surprised me uh for for clean government for clean transparent business I'll give two examples they both have to do with Nigeria right sort of the what many people think of as the poster child for corruption so Ken and Drogo runs a mobile company in Kenya called Cellulence that delivers mobile solutions for a variety of companies and he was asked to come bid on delivering a mobile solution for the fertilizer subsidy in Nigeria the government subsidy that is passed to farmers nothing could be more rife with corruption than that story he described a process of go bring coming into country delivering a presentation to Governor Sinusi the head of the central bank I mean if we want to talk about you know the quality of governance going up in Africa I think we ought you ought to look at Governor Sinusi of the central bank of Nigeria and to uh and to and goes into the finance minister and to the minister of agriculture and a process that was uh uh as as uninterrupted by by corruption as you could hope for it was just it was just a technocratic process similarly the head of GE Africa who does business overwhelmingly with with government selling large infrastructure power projects to government said that he is finding that government at least at the top levels are demanding more transparency from him they want a more transparent bid that's submitted they want more transparency in who his in in who is going to be in his consortium how they're going to be paid right the it's actually a poll for more transparency now I suspect that that is happening much more at the top of bureaucracies and it's a little harder as it gets further down but I also think that just as the fish rots from the head it also purifies from the head so the those are my experiences with it but there's a lot of experience here in the room so I certainly hoping to push back so let me just I'm the member of the title is success in Africa by Jonathan Berman I hope you're going to buy copies of the book retail and go to politics I want to take one last question and Jonathan you've got a few minutes to stick around to chat so let's I'm looking over here on this side of the the room I've been focused over here so I want to show a little room equity if you will and make sure I've covered everybody on this side anybody have a comment or question on this side yes sir thanks wondering if you might especially given your your last response refine the critique offered originally by the gentleman over there but of US engagement in Africa as being too development oriented is it is it simply a matter of the mechanism we use to conduct transactions that that we're doing things through us aid who I think is increasingly becoming more more focused on private sector and business strictly anyway but what exactly are we suggesting as you responded yourself that that businesses in Africa and CEOs see both development and their core missions in their core their bottom line is being very intertwined what are we suggesting might be a different approach do you want to accept or do we just take that one on when we take one more of her bonus here anybody else got a last comment or question yes sir hi my name is Pierre Tontra I'm here CSIS Africa program I just wanted to I wanted us to expand not expand but I think we when we think about competition in Africa we tend to focus a little too much on just China I think that the US needs also to recognize that within the West the France and the UK are still relevant on the continent and maybe that's something that we need to look at when we're talking about the US being having a unique approach to human capacity building that's something that's also done by those other Western powers so I do agree that the US has a soft power that is maybe greater than those other Western powers but what else differentiates the US from those Western powers why do African countries why would they look to the US as a partner over those other Western powers yeah yeah good it's a good way to end it actually that question in particular so why don't we take it in in that order that's the toughest one to me I know I know it's a good question we'll get we get set up on it so I like your question about is it an issue of the mechanism it caused me to reflect I don't think it's primarily an issue of the mechanism I think it's a mindset so in terms of mechanism you know Russia is a very very capable private sector experience with driving private sector capabilities into USAID I can perfectly believe that AID would be a good mechanism through which to deliver our our relationship though fundamentally I think our relationship should be more about New York and Silicon Valley than about Washington right I think I think the day in which African executives are not meeting here but meeting in one of those places is the day is that you know change has happened right so fundamentally there's the whole the whole the whole paradigm ought to be shifting but in terms of US policy itself let me give you two examples of the mindset that I think is a little wrong still still these are both very recent and I and they're both about the Obama administration though I don't think they're alone in this regard so when in the run up to the Kenyan election earlier this year President Obama sent a message to the people of Kenya right wishing them well and cautioning them not to resort to violence the Kenyan people didn't need to be cautioned not to resort to violence and I knew a number of Kenyans I asked them afterward what you what you feel about our president's message and they they found it a little bit yeah condescending sounding to be to be instructed not to not to slaughter one another now I don't know if the president was watching too much of CNN's hype about how much slaughter there would be but it just I didn't feel the president was well served in in delivering the message that way second is a program that came out of the recent the recent presidential visit the young Africa actually it precedes it but they're going to heighten it up the young african leadership initiative this is an initiative I think very well well well-conceived initiative to bring african leadership with public and private sector here to receive you know to receive training and education but it's framed in exactly that way they're going to come here and learn so that they can bring our lessons back home well you know the truth is we pretty badly need to learn how to do business in fast growth markets and they know a lot about it it wouldn't have been great if that same program would have been framed in that way and and executed in that way I didn't see it so to me there those are those are two opportunities very well intentioned and I think and I think it was right to be initiating both of those both a message to kenya on the eve of its election and this and a program to trade to trade young leadership but they were executed in a way that tells me we still have a ways to go in terms of the right mindset talk about other actors on the continent you actually talk a little bit about it in the book talk a little just briefly about that we do we should wrap it up but okay I will so it did occur to me when I finished writing the book that I had written a chapter what about China what about America and I had not written a chapter what about Europe one thing perhaps we'll wait for the the French language edition for me to add another chapter but I will say this about that I the relationship of the U.S. to our European allies in in all matters but and particularly in development is a powerful and a useful tool and one we should deepen and continue having said that I actually believe that the U.S. sometimes suffers from association with the European approach to development I think that that that approach is rooted in a lot of history it trucks it it care it trucks a lot of connotations some good some bad from both the African side and the European side and that America the American approach to Africa often falls within it and I'll just say one example of that I can I can tell you did not one but several CEOs mentioned to me in when talking about the U.S. Africa relationship an incident in which a an ambassador really denigrated the Kenyan presidents the Kenyan president his cabinet by saying they were quote vomiting on the shoes of their donors in the way in which they were executing the donor aid the problem is that ambassador was on American that ambassador was British he was a British High Commissioner but but that was lost entirely on on the executives I was talking to so it was we were conflated we were sort of guilt by association yeah that's right in that in that particular case now as I say that really the I do not want to go so far as to put daylight between us and our close collaborators and allies on development but I would say that the U.S. has a unique opportunity to sort of define and purpose uniquely positioned to define an interaction that is fundamentally different from that one well on that point thank you very much Jonathan and please join me in thanking Jonathan Berman thank you thank you guys