AN APPEAL TO ELON MUSK AND PETER THIEL TO ''DISRUPT'' AFRICA

‘’In the eyes of a disruptor no one company is so essential that it can’t be replaced and no single business model too perfect to upend’’

Caroline Howard/Forbes

With Elon Musk in My Dream was the title of an article I wrote on my Facebook page on the 19^th of February, 2017 (before I started out here). I wrote, in the article, that were it not for the shortness of the dream’s duration which barely afforded me ample time to talk with Elon I would have tabled a set of requests before my most admired entrepreneur on planet earth. With that set of requests still in force, here, I move even further to formally make an appeal to Elon Musk and Peter Thiel ( a man also known for his own level of entrepreneurial super performance) to literarily ‘’disrupt’’ 2017-Africa.

 By this I simply mean this chosen duo can creatively re-do, better do, and replace whatever the state of human-progress- laden activities, in Africa, with competitively superior performance. That Africa, in 2017, by all known globally acceptable standards is a global laggard is not in question. Equally true is that all the various forms of assistance (financial, technological, educational etc) from international agencies and individual donors (outside of Africa) have yet to significantly bring about a northward-shift. Worse still is whether African leaders and their people even understand what 2017- Africa should look like or objectively is, when compared with the rest of the world.

EdwinsThink is not in the business of defining collective human progress from the perspective of the actions of political leaders (and one is not insinuating that its of zero value but simply that it is comparatively of lower value when placed side-by-side with those of entrepreneurial-minded humans outside of government), but that of the actions of men and women who understand their God-deposited creativity and energetically run unstoppably with it. For instance, I do not know that there was one government policy in 2003/2004 skewed in favour of Mark Zuckerberg and team to cause the birth of Facebook. It is also not known that  Martin Eberhard and Marc Tanneping (the original founders of Tesla Motors)  were favourably empowered  against auto making giants like Ford Motors and General Motors by any government policy on ‘’going green’’.  

Accordingly one expects the people of Africa, especially those rich, and the presently poor who have continued to enjoy the title of entrepreneurs/businessmen and women, to address Africa’s existential problems. Unfortunately that is not what it is in Africa. There are individuals and organisations who/which make money yearly and in fact may continue to make more money without addressing basic problems of human existence. I am not talking about philanthropy and altruism. I know that solutions to the numerous problems of existence in Africa can be created and monetized. And as I have always repeated, it is so doing that is business, and he/she who so does an entrepreneur.

Going by an interview report on ENTREPRENEUR.COM, titled Entrepreneurship Is About Solving Problems, Not Getting Fixated on Them by editorial director, DAN BOVA, one is moved to asking the question, what are African business people and entrepreneurs truly doing? To me the entire talk and noise-making around African Entrepreneurs or Entrepreneurship, for the most part, exists to further an existing culturally accepted entitlement mentality---that of, ‘’We are Africans, Africa is our continent and we know it better than foreigners, and that makes us the best persons to do business in Africa’’.

 When asked the logical follow-up question of, ‘’Yes you are Africans and you know the living conditions of your people truly well, but what have you been doing to address these problems qualitatively well to make them look like the human beings of 2017?, you can only get a plethora of excuses for an answer. These excuses, will not only come from these ‘’African Entrepreneurs’’ but from the majority of Africans in Africa, and this is even the bigger problem.

 And it is on the basis of the need to solve this bigger problem so as to better prepare the very innocent and unborn African to properly assume the responsibility of creating and sustaining an environment worthy of human existence that I am compelled to making this appeal to Elon Musk and Peter Thiel to mentally visit and function in Africa. It is my belief that the gap between 2017-Africa and where Africa in 2017 should be, in terms of how Africans live in Africa---one that is left significantly unattended to (going by what is readily observable) by every manner of African in Africa can become better bridged by these two super performing entrepreneurial minds.

Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel are entrepreneurs all right, but they are in the class of the very few highly creative humans who are well beyond the average person known with that adjective. Elon Musk, I have described many times as the most ambitious entrepreneur on earth; he is bold, brave, courageous, ‘’high intensity’’ with and at work and wonderfully brilliant. Peter Thiel is of no less a personality but adds a wonderful trait of contrarian streak, which appears to be his ‘’competitive edge’’. Both have impressive resumes to original creativity; Thiel has gone from ‘’Zero to One’’ previously and is only pursuing such engagements while Elon can take creativity to planet Mars. And both men are principally driven to action by an individual and collective sense of making human lives significantly better.

Both men have the discipline as to a choice of the right thing to do; they do not come short of the drive to execute; they can assemble the right men and women to get the job done; Musk and Thiel will not hire 50% of American college professors if they have to establish their own universities today; where technology becomes the problem they can either create one or ride straight  into the world’s most innovative community (Silicon Valley) even with eyes closed to fetch the needed guys;  and both men can attract needed financing for projects that bear their names; and all of these they can do or get done relatively better than not less than 90% of entrepreneurs on the face of planet earth.

It is for all of the above that I write, here, to plead with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel to take a deep look at Africa, the continent with a large chunk of global population, and figure out what they can do to  improve  the ‘’hows’’ of living in Africa. To Musk and Thiel, I know you guys have your plates really full with the “hows’’ of developing the developed world, but the number of persons in Africa, in their current frame,  will constitute a drag on your efforts to move the world forward. Whatever you guys decide to do to improve Africa, I know, will far be better for its people and for the world than what its people, with more than ample time and resources, have so far done.

SHARE

Edwin A. Ngeri

Edwin Ngeri strongly believes that God created man in his image for man to be able to create like him (God).

• 
• 
• 
• 
•