Great talent, enthusiasm and optimism for African development

On December the 1st 2018 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation hosted its first Goalkeepers in Africa soil, in Johannesburg, South Africa. The event was attended by Africans from across various sectors who came to share ideas, network and listen to some keynote discussions on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Goalkeepers is an initiative aimed at being a “catalyst for actions toward” the 17 SDGs agreed upon by world leaders in 2015.

Africans, many of them part of the youth; engaged in a workshop to deliberate on innovative solutions for achieving the SDGs and influencing key stakeholders such as the government to abide by their commitments. Attendees were also part of the audience to panel sessions with names such as Graca Machel, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, President of Global Policy and Advocacy at the Gates Foundation Mark Suzman, Dr Precious Moloi-Motsepe and David Sengeh the Chief Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation in Sierra Leone.

The participants or “Goalkeepers” are individuals involved in sterling projects aimed at addressing development challenges and reaching SDG goals such as SDG 1: Ending Poverty, SDG 4: Quality Education; SDG 5: Gender Equality, and SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure. They included entrepreneurs, health workers, academics, NGO founders and workers. While Africa has often been depicted as a continent of troubles and challenges, the people attending the Goalkeepers, mostly youth; showed a depth of talent, tremendous insight on the issues on the continent and innovative homegrown solutions.

The energy within the Goalkeepers event, including the panel discussion and workshops, was exceedingly positive, in the face of the immense challenges the continent faces. This optimism was as a result of the confidence in the ability to overcome these significant obstacles through the use of the proper resources, especially having accurate data about the countries people operate.

While sentiment about the African continent has shifted towards an optimistic view; there remains a massive knowledge gap. This 'knowledge gap', a result of ignorance about data or outdated information; was a core theme of the discussions which revealed that many experts, whether in business, media, government and academia tend to have misconceptions about the trajectory of development around the world. There is a strong tendency to believe we are living in the worst of times when conversely the data shows that the world that is getting better. For Africa, there has been tremendous progress such as lower child mortality, longer lifespans and more girl children completing school.

Inspired by the book by the late Hans Rosling, ‘Factfullness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world– and why things are better than you think’; presentations from the Goalkeepers Data Report show how poverty is not an inevitable state for Africa or the world. Worldwide, the percentage of people living below the extreme poverty line of US$2 per day has gone from 36% in 1990 to 9% in 2017. For sub-Saharan Africa, the progress has gone from 59% in 1990 to 38% in 2017, a 21% decrease.

One stubborn characteristic of the knowledge gap described by Rosling is the division of the world into the 'developed' and the 'developing' world. He believes this dichotomy "doesn't help us understand the world in a practical way. It doesn't help business find opportunities, and it doesn't help aid money find the poorest people". Instead of a dichotomy, Rosling poses dividing the world into four income levels.

The critical lesson in the data produced by the Goalkeepers Data Report and in Rosling's book, is that we need to check our preconceptions about what we know; and that when given multiple choices in a question about progress in a specific area of development; you'll likely be correct when choosing the most optimistic answer.

This progress over the past couple of decades should boost our confidence in the present and the future. This confidence should not be based on emotions but must be a logical way to look at the data. It's vital to have a 'possibilist' view of the world, seeing things as they are, which is more constructive and useful. The lesson to be taken by stakeholders in Africa, investors, government and donors alike, is to appreciate the complexity of the continent and avoid the single-story or even dichotomy. It is imperative to understand that there is a lot of grey areas and that things are a lot better than the prism of the 24-hour sensationalist news cycle may show.

Africa’s stakeholders should through closing the knowledge gap know that Africa needs trade not aid, investments not donations; and relations that are a form of partnerships rather than paternalism. More value is gained from this approach.

Test your own Assumptions (or can you do better than a chimpanzee)

Hans Rosling's book, Factfullness is a major challenge to the assumptions I have previously had. The book has a number of interesting multiple choice questions about the world that test your know-how. These are questions Rosling and his team have asked various stakeholders around the world, many of who come from the global elites of governance, academia, journalism and public policy. What was fascinating was how many of these smart, well educated and informed people got questions about the state of the world wrong.

In his book Rosling suggests that if he were to put the same questions to a group of chimpanzees, by placing them on bananas that would be chosen at random by the chimps, through pure luck they would "score 33% on each three answer question, or 4 out of the first 12 in the whole test." Humans that were tested on the other hand got "on average just 2 out of 12 on the same test"

Below is a Survey with the questions from Rosling''s book to test your own assumptions. Please take part and see how well you do.

Survey questions from Factfullness: Ten reasons we're wrong about the world - and why things are better than you think by Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund