Far from being hopeless, Africa is full of hope and potential, maybe more so than any other continent. The challenge is to ensure that its potential is utilised.
If economic progress is not translated into better quality of life and respect for citizens' rights, we will witness more Tahrir Squares in Africa.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Economic growth should lead to improved living conditions and rights; otherwise, unrest will arise.
Mo Ibrahim's quote highlights the crucial connection between economic progress and the enhancement of citizens' quality of life and their rights. It warns that if the benefits of economic growth do not reach the populace in terms of better living standards and respect for individual rights, it could lead to social unrest and protests, akin to the uprisings seen in Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring. Ibrahim underscores the importance of using economic advancements to foster social justice and civic rights.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a conference on sustainable development, this quote could emphasize the importance of equitable economic policies.
More from Mo Ibrahim
All quotes βIn the final analysis, finding a way to do clean business and not to pay bribes actually improves your bottom line.
A narrative that branded Africa as little more than an economic, political and social basket case was not likely to provide the investment needed to drive development.
Experience shows that when political governance and economic management diverge, overall development becomes unsustainable.
There is a crisis of leadership and governance in Africa, and we must face it.
Africa is rich, and why are we poor then if our continent is rich. It is not right.
Similar quotes
The politician's promises of yesterday are the taxes of today.
We live in very volatile times. And it is super necessary that all of us resist this move toward the militarization and establishment of a more and more authoritarian regime, not just in the United States but in Europe and elsewhere.
Voting is merely a labor-saving device for ascertaining on which side force lies and bowing to the inevitable... It is neither more nor less than a paper representative of the bayonet, the bully, and the bullet.
All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.
The public affairs of the union are spread throughout a very extensive region, and are extremely diversified by the local affairs connected with them, and can with difficulty be learnt in any other place, than in the central councils, to which a knowledge of them will be brought by the representatives of every part of the empire. Yet some knowledge of the affairs, and even of the laws of all the states, ought to be possessed by the members from each of the states.
But as the arms-control scholar Thomas Schelling once noted, two things are very expensive in international life: promises when they succeed and threats when they fail.