Africans can save Africa: Arnold Ekpe at TEDxEuston

first of all I must say that I was rather surprised to be invited because given what the press and the media and some of the people camping out at st. Paul's and Wall Street think about banks and bankers I think it was took a lot of courage to to to ask me to show up today for me also has been quite exciting because I've listened very carefully to previous presentations I must congratulate the organizers for an excellent show I mean I assume because many of the speakers have been absolutely brilliant pretty much all of them from sex to art technology I've enjoyed every single one of them you know we talk about Africa and some of us in Africa from my fast movers live in Africa some of us work in Africa and I think as hadeel said my free cash may be 54 55 countries give or take one or two small islands most of these countries are in sub-saharan Africa many of them are landlocked many of them very small chaga which is the country where I live in five million people six billion dollars GDP it's clear to us that over the last 50 years or so since we had political independence Africa seems to have drifted away to the rest of the world and it's only recently trying to catch up I'll not bore you with the statistics most of you know more about it than I do but in 1960 Ghana was way ahead of South Korea so that his suggestion is significantly reversed and fat Ghana which is the poster child of Africa is a hippie country that is a highly indebted poor country but that is all history now the question for me and the question I want to share with you today is what should we be doing going forward for those of you are old enough and I think this cloud bridge is quite a wide age group we grew up in the era of World Bank economies and advices coming through traffic and talking about import substitution and the lack of investment capital in Africa see a lot of African governments invested in state-owned companies and the rest of them in the late 70s and 80s we moved on to what was called structural adjustment programs which significantly impoverished a lot of people including my dad who was a retired civil servant lived on a very good pension and found that his pension more than how within a very short period of time but the advantage of that was very put Africa in a very strong position the significant institutional reforms fiscal prudence and now we have the reverse Africa is doing very well and what do we have highly indebted developed countries Greece Ireland Spain Portugal the program for them I think is slightly different from the one that was prescribed for Ghana and the rest of them but we've moved on from that and now over the last few years we've had Africa looking east so we have the Africa China summit and we all headed off to Shanghai all the heads of states all the ministers and then we had the Africa India summit and we all headed off to India and what's interesting about all of this ladies gentlemen is that we seem to be looking for salvation from outside of Africa now the reality of it is the empirical evidence is that no foreigners ever developed a country the Nationals developed their own countries and the foreigners helped so I asked the question why have we not had an Africa Africa summit the room goes silent this leads me on to the second point which I want to share with you today which is Africa cannot develop without integration without having a larger market without breaking down the barriers we must create bigger markets to go where live five million people six billion GDP is going nowhere without being part of a larger market and you go back to history and you ask yourself some very blunt questions why can we not for example allow for the free movement of people across Africa it's happening currently in in West Africa across the 14 countries of the ECOWAS there's free movement of people and that's been on for over 20 years and it worked so it has been done so why haven't the rest of Africa tonic why can we not remove barriers to the free movement of capital anybody here from francophone West Africa francophone Central Africa they've been doing it for over 50 years since being done in Africa as we speak now why can we not have rail and air transportation that's integrated some of you probably not old enough they used to have what I call the worst West African Airways corporation and it covered a number of countries and it worked and we had air freak and it worked for some time and then they stopped working the fact is when African nations became independent they not only became independent from their colonial masters they became independent from themselves so every single African country set up its own central bank it's an airline with one plane and I'm not kidding it they exist to the active and in fact this one worse than that the three countries sharing one plane so that's terrible which we change the first time that you go along I know because I fly it from time to time I'm going to be very careful here because I have to go back to Africa but I think I think the point is the reason why we have not done so is because we have chosen not to the question is why are we chose not if you have the political will you can ask from tomorrow bring down all the barriers to the movement of people in Africa it doesn't require an act of Parliament it's really an administrative process you can make African currencies fully convertible doesn't require an act of parliament it's a purely administrative process you can try to work together to pool your resources doesn't require an act of Parliament requires a volition to want to do that so why have African governments why have African nations not done that the answer is probably politically incorrect so I will not go down that path but if I'm invited again I might do that because I may be retired by then sir but let me talk a little bit about what we have tried to do under the circumstances echo Bank but information everyone here is not an engine and bank contrary to what in Nigerian see echo Bank is a pan-african Bank we're headquartered in to go now to bursts that little country between Ghana and been in for those of you don't know it used to be three times the size it is today the against upon third the be denied upon third and what we have today is one-third which is what is left so it's only about fifty sixty miles across as I've said is five million people six billion dollars GDP we created a bank there in 1985 and the bank was created by African Businesses an African businessmen who at that time encountered significant problems in dealing with banks in West Africa because those banks were either state-owned or foreign owned so they said why don't we create our own bank and they did and that Bank is headquartered in Togo and over the last 25 years or so the bank has grown to 32 countries in Africa we have the largest network of banks across all of Africa and we have three offices abroad in Dubai in Paris and in London now most of you say why happened we had a vertical bank why isn't a good bank making so much noise if they have a larger presence because the next Bank to us is present in only 17 African countries the reason is that if you're working you don't have much time to talk so what we try to do what we try to do is the following we said to ourselves that if the government we're not going to do it we're going to try and do it ourselves in the private sector and we started that process it's been extremely difficult but believe me it's been a lot of fun if you have a sense of adventure if you have a sense of humor you can wait for four hours to see a minister fantastic but the reason why we have been able to do it more than anything else it's the reason why I say reception is different from reality the reality of Africa is that it's not as risky as it's made out to be the perception of Africa is a very risky continent we say that with some sense because we love difficult countries we run the biggest bank in Chad we run the biggest bank in Central African Republic we run the biggest bank in Liberia and we've done that based on a simple principle countries cannot be at war perpetually eventually they'll settle down because eventually people will have to step back they have families they have kids they have a future to look forward we also believed in Africa so we said to ourselves we don't have an African strategy we never had an African strategy Africa is our strategy so we will stay in a country and the only way you'll get us out of any single country in Africa is to kick us out and then if you kick us out we'll be back at the door waiting to be Latin we have a Board of Directors that's made up of nine nationalities we run a bank that's made up of 23 people from 38 African nationalities across a thousand one hundred and twenty or thirty branches so the message I bring is a message of hope a message of turning talk into action a message of saying why not why can't we do it the only reason ladies and gentlemen country because we don't want to do it I have been attending conferences and with all due respect this is the different conference the the variety here is quite different I'm not used to this I mean I you can draw energy from this crowd which is not what typical is boring bankers each one of them trying to sound off here you have you know I I was I was actually learning a lot and mixing with people who are sort of like peeking a lot good energy from but most of the conferences are attended well I still have been on Africa Africa rising Africa D new destination Africa this and and right from great from the mid-80s there now that's exactly what is good same theme you know different graphics and every time you change and I spoke at one of the conferences I said gentlemen you know I really don't have much to say but when are we going to act okay you know you talk about privatization Africa is still privatizing Russia and Eastern Europe have finished they finished 20 years ago we take a lot of time to do things and we congratulate ourselves for doing those things of them the reality is that we do have the capacity we do have the people we do have the capital I am not persuaded that Africa doesn't have the capital to develop the country that invests the most in Africa right now after that the oil sector is an African country South Africa one of the biggest investors in Africa today it's an engine and businessman called a liquid enmity he has committed to invest three billion dollars in Africa and I remember when I spoke to him once and I said to him mr. Dongo che what is your competitive advantage why do you think you can succeed you know what he said said you tell me wit Board of Directors anywhere outside of Africa we put three billion dollars for investing in Africa they probably fire the whole body let's say they're crazy but he has built the six or seven largest cement company in the world on the back of that philosophy he also happens to be the richest man on the Forbes list so maybe I'm in the wrong business I should be in the cement business so what I'd like to do ladies and gentlemen is to conclude on a positive note the future for Africa is bright the future of Africa is in the hands of Africans don't kid yourself it can be done it has been done empty and has built the eighth largest telecoms company out of Africa out of for Africa so let us continue with the TEDx approach let's not just talk about boring Finance boring future of Africa let's talk about the exciting things the art the culture the literature the future because for me and I hope every one of you the future is Africa thank you very much you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 99,304

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Keywords: english, england, ted x, tedx talks, tedxeuston, 'africans can save africa', ted talk, politics, 'arnold ekpe', tedx, 'global issues', tedx talk, ted, ted talks

Id: D70ZybuB-rE

Length: 17min 57sec (1077 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 10 2012