Translator: Jago Di Piro Reviewer: Robert Tucker
(Music: "Diaspora" by Tiken Jah Fakoly and Alpha Blondy)
Good evening everyone.
(End of music)
Do any of you know this song by Tiken Jah Fakoly that was just playing?
Please raise your hand, I want to see you.
Perfect, there are some reggae lovers, I think we are going to have a good time,
since we will be talking about reggae.
In Tiken Jah Fakoly's song,
he explains the extent to which, today more than ever,
Africa is in need of its exiled children,
the Africans of the diaspora.
In this very song, Tiken Jah Fakoly sings in two languages:
in English and in Bambara.
In English, as a way of comforting them in their decision to leave,
to embrace the world.
God knows that these people left for several reasons.
Too often for political reasons,
too often for economic reasons,
sometimes for social reasons,
and sometimes even for cultural reasons.
He sings in Bambara,
a local West African dialect, spoken in several countries:
Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Gambia, Mauritania, and so on,
as a way of encouraging them to remember where they came from.
He does this by using an African saying:
No matter how long a log stays in the water,
it will never become a crocodile.
Tiken Jah Fakoly, for those who don't know him,
is an artist very committed to Africa's development.
Someone I truly admire,
even if I haven't always agreed with everything he stands for,
but someone I share a vision with:
that of a new and emerging Africa,
driven by its children from here and elsewhere.
When I was asked to do this talk about the diaspora,
I found it a bit difficult to come up with the talk's title,
or rather, to punctuate it.
When one speaks of the role of the African diaspora today,
the meaning is clear to all Africans:
they will, of course, say
that it is people who are there to develop the continent.
They even shout loud and clear about it.
At the same time, when you dig a bit deeper
to try and get more precise information about how they are going to do it,
what their exact role is,
moreover, who they really are, where they come from, how they live,
then the answers become less clear.
Hence my use of a question mark.
I am going to talk to you about a small West African country,
196,000 square kilometres,
barely three times bigger than Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes,
15 million inhabitants:
Senegal.
Imagine that in this little West African country,
Senegalese people of the diaspora alone
send more than two million dollars a year to family members.
That's equivalent to a quarter of the state budget.
It's more than international aid.
Yes, the World Bank, the IMF, all the ones you hear about,
they are no match compared to the funds sent by the Senegalese of the diaspora,
in terms of how much these people contribute to the local economy.
I am talking about the economy, but we can also extend this to politics.
This little country has experienced two democratic revolutions,
but it was all orchestrated from the diaspora.
Or rather, it was greatly driven by the political leaders of the diaspora.
In fact, this is nothing new.
Let's take a look at history.
The first African independence movement against colonisation
was led by Africans of the diaspora.
The Négritude movement with famous writers
like Aimé Césaire,
Léopold Sédar Senghor, who, in time, was elected a member the French Academy,
these people, through literature, fought against colonisation
and were involved in the liberation of their people.
I am talking about politics, but we can also extend this to the field of science.
Someone like the teacher Cheikh Anta Diop,
an internationally recognised scientist,
with many works to his name,
like "Nations nègres et culture", "Antériorité des civilisations nègres".
A man who, through science,
found evidence of the black man
in one of the first most evolved civilisations,
ancient Egypt,
and in many other fields
where we see indications of this African diaspora -
in the political, economic, social, cultural and scientific fields.
However, when you ask African states,
when you ask Africans in general,
precisely what they know about these people,
it gets a bit more complicated
because we know very little about these people.
This has even created a certain frustration among some.
In any case, a frustration I experienced as an African of the diaspora.
That's why I am going to tell you my story as a frustrated African of the diaspora.
I was born in Senegal,
where I spent much of my childhood.
And I was lucky enough to have exceptional parents
who ensured that school was one of the most important things in my life.
To such an extent that, during my teenage years,
I had a teenage rebellion like everyone:
I wanted to become a professional footballer.
I was not bad at it.
I had passed tests and everything.
But I still have my mother's voice echoing in my head.
She used to say to me,
"Malick, you will never hear someone say,
'I am going to work in football.'
You say, 'I am going to play football.'"
A response my mum used to try and make me understand
that football was not in fact a job.
It was for recreation or play.
Nowadays, we agree that's debatable.
But it really helped me a lot, and I cannot thank her enough for that.
It gave me the chance to go to great schools.
Nowadays, I am a telecom engineer, a graduate of INSA.
For those who don't know,
it's one of the biggest university networks in France,
training between 20 and 25 percent of French engineers.
I was also lucky enough to do a management degree at ESC Grenoble.
All these qualifications allowed me to start my career in major businesses,
such as at a subsidiary of the HighCo group listed in the CAC 40,
or at EADS, the parent company of Airbus,
or even in a subsidiary of the National Centre for Space Studies.
And all the while,
like many Senegalese people of the diaspora,
I also sent money to my family.
I sent loads of money.
But paradoxically -
and what I tell you now is very personal to me,
only my opinion, not necessarily what others think -
the more I sent, the less useful I felt.
Because I realised the money I was sending
wasn't necessarily solving the economic and social problems
I would have liked to tackle.
And that created a new frustration.
School has been very important to me, my economics classes in particular,
and I still thank my teachers for that.
It often isn't said enough,
but my economics teachers managed to make me understand
the extent to which business and entrepreneurs were important
in the development of a society.
It seems very obvious,
but businesses put money into the state treasury
for the greater good.
Businesses create wealth for society,
and better still,
they are the vectors of employment.
At home, we say that a person who works provides for 10 other people around them.
In other words, if you give jobs to 10 people,
you are involved in the social development of 100 other people.
From that, it had become evident to me
that if we needed to impact society differently,
one of the best ways to do this would perhaps be through entrepreneurship.
From that arose the idea of LAfricaMobile,
which is a Senegalese start-up that has been around for three years,
with a belief that befits our two previous frustrations.
This belief is to make digital tools available,
allowing you to discover more about the diaspora,
but which also include it more often in local, social problems.
Specifically, at the moment, we're working with the local African media,
radio, and TV companies,
on ideas for programs where we invite politicians to come,
mayors, ministers,
and we give people of the diaspora the opportunity, live,
to ask their questions in real time via mobile and social media.
Another example:
we also work with charities
involved in local, and often socio-humanitarian, problems,
such as, for example, the fight against cancer,
educating children from disadvantaged families,
or even building orphanages.
We assist these charities with digital communication,
but above all, we give them digital tools
for them to collect money easily via their mobile
with people of the African diaspora.
Another example:
we also work with international agencies on entrepreneurship contests
with the aim of allowing Africans of the diaspora
to have a voice, to be able to vote,
in order to choose the projects that may ultimately best benefit
from coaching, and if necessary, funding.
There are so many other examples I cannot unfortunately give
with the time I have been allocated.
But this little experiment has allowed us to see opportunities present in Africa.
Even though I am originally from Africa,
I had never had the opportunity to work there before this experiment,
this small experiment, this wonderful experiment,
that has only just, finally, begun,
but that has also allowed us to see
the opportunities currently present in Africa.
You're just considering West Africa,
people who mainly speak French, like all of us.
In fact, for those who don't know,
currently 50 percent of French-speaking people in the world
live in Africa.
And this figure will reach 80 percent in a few years.
An enormous opportunity for us all here.
For those in the digital world,
imagine countries like Senegal,
where the mobile penetration rate exceeds 100 percent.
In other words, you are in a country where there are more mobiles than people.
What does this mean?
It simply means that, for those who have services requiring the use of a mobile,
it's an enormous opportunity -
but this is down to usage because people have two, three, four,
sometimes even five phones at the same time.
It's incredible.
I am talking about digital technology, which is my line of work,
but in other fields, like renewable energy,
solar energy, agribusiness, biogas, and so on, and so on,
today, African start-ups cover all that.
Believe it or not, in the year 2016 alone,
African start-ups, from Dakar to Nairobi,
from Casablanca to the Cape,
raised 360 million dollars in 2016.
That's a growth of 33 percent compared to 2015.
It seems a lot, but in my opinion, it is not enough.
With everything I've seen that is innovative,
it's absolutely not enough.
There are still lots of things still to be done.
And that's why I am calling on the African diaspora
watching me today,
saying to them
that even if they don't have the opportunity to create businesses,
they can no longer sneak off
as they have the opportunity to invest in gems of Africa,
which is all they are hoping for nowadays.
And I'll finish with where I began,
by rejoining Tiken Jah Fakoly with what he was saying at the start:
"Nowadays, more than ever, Africa is in need of its exiled children."
Thank you for your attention.
(Applause)
(Music: "Diaspora" by Tiken Jah Fakoly and Alpha Blondy)