Africa’s Greatest Entrepreneurs

"Yes, this book looks at some of the successful African entrepreneurs. They are often known as the “cheetah generation”. This is the new and angry generation of young African graduates and professionals, who look at African issues and problems from a totally different and unique perspective. They are dynamic, intellectually agile and entrepreneurial. They may be the “restless generation” but they are Africa’s new hope. They brook no nonsense about corruption, inefficiency, ineptitude, incompetence or buffoonery. They understand and stress transparency, accountability, human rights and good governance. They also know that many of their current leaders are hopelessly corrupt, and that their governments are contumaciously dysfunctional and commit flagrant human rights violations. The cheetahs do not look for excuses for government failure by wailing over the legacies of the slave trade, Western colonialism, imperialism, the World Bank or an unjust international economic system. The outlook and perspectives of the cheetahs are refreshingly different from those of many African leaders, intellectuals or elites, whom I call the “hippo generation” – intellectually astigmatic and stuck in their muddy colonialist pedagogical patch. They are of the 1960s-era mentality – stodgy, pudgy and wedded to the old colonialism-imperialism paradigm with an abiding faith in the potency of the state. They lack vision – hippos are near-sighted – and sit tight in their air-conditioned government offices, comfortable in their belief that the state can solve all of Africa’s problems. All the state needs is more power and more foreign aid. Clearly, Africa’s salvation rests on the back of the cheetah generation. I have been trying to rally the cheetahs to venture into the informal and traditional sectors, and take back Africa one village at a time. If you search Google for “cheetah generation” you will get more than three million hits. The response has exceeded my wildest expectations. I dare say that the upheavals in North Africa which caught the West flat-footed and completely by surprise were started by the cheetah generation, or the youth movement. They are vigorously shaking coconut trees in Africa and the Middle East. On January 14 2011, a loud thud was heard in Tunisia. A coconut dropped and smashed! Then another in Egypt on February 11. Asia has its tigers; Africa has its cheetahs."