that free trade leads to economic growth.
The newly prescribed
silver bullet is microcredit.
We seem to be fixated
on this romanticized idea
that every poor peasant in Africa
is an entrepreneur.
(Laughter)
Yet my work and travel
in 40-plus countries across Africa
have taught me that most people
want jobs instead.
My solution: Forget micro-entrepreneurs.
Let's invest in building
pan-African titans
like Sudanese businessman Mo Ibrahim.
Mo took a contrarian bet on Africa when
he founded Celtel International in '98
and built it into a mobile
cellular provider
with 24 million subscribers
across 14 African countries by 2004.
The Mo model might be better
than the everyman entrepreneur model,
which prevents an effective means
of diffusion and knowledge-sharing.
Perhaps we are not at a stage in Africa
where many actors and small enterprises
leads to growth through competition.
Consider these two alternative scenarios.
One: You loan 200 dollars
to each of 500 banana farmers
allowing them to dry
their surplus bananas
and fetch 15 percent more revenue
at the local market.