QuoteProject
You cannot blame the mismanagement of the economy or the fact that we have not invested adequately in education in order to give our people the knowledge, the skills and the technology that they need in order to be able to use the resources that Africa has to gain wealth
Wangari Maathai
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Effective education and investment in knowledge are essential for utilizing Africa's resources for wealth creation.

Wangari Maathai emphasizes the importance of proper management and investment in education as a means for empowering individuals in Africa. By improving knowledge, skills, and technological access, people can better utilize their continent's rich resources, ultimately leading to economic growth and wealth generation. The quote highlights the responsibility for economic mismanagement and the foundations necessary for sustainable development.

Themes

EducationInvestmentKnowledgeSkillsTechnologyResourcesWealthAfrica

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech addressing young entrepreneurs, you might say, 'As Wangari Maathai noted, we cannot blame our situations without investing in our education and skills.'

More from Wangari Maathai

Every person who has ever achieved anything has been knocked down many times. But all of them picked themselves up and kept going, and that is what I have always tried to do.
Wangari MaathaiRead
It was easy to persecute me without people feeling ashamed. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a 'good African woman' and as a highly educated elitist who was trying to show innocent African women ways of doing things that were not acceptable to African men.
Wangari MaathaiRead
I know there is pain when sawmills close and people lose jobs, but we have to make a choice. We need water and we need these forests.
Wangari MaathaiRead
We’re constantly being bombarded by problems that we face and sometimes we can get completely overwhelmed. [But] we should always feel like a hummingbird. I may feel insignificant, but I don’t want to be like the other animals watching the planet go down the drain. I’ll be a hummingbird, I’ll do the best I can.
Wangari MaathaiRead
As long as there is no trust and confidence that there will be justice and fairness in resource distribution, political positioning will remain more important than service
Wangari MaathaiRead
It gradually became clear that the Green Belt Movement's work with communities to repair the degraded environment could not be done effectively without participants embracing a set of core spiritual values.
Wangari MaathaiRead

Similar quotes

Eighty percent of the cases used in the typical MBA program are about successful companies. Students graduate with this notion that 'If I do everything that the people in those cases did, then my organization will grow and be successful, too.'
Clayton M. ChristensenRead
We say women have made great strides: in biology, in many areas of chemistry, in many places, women are now the majority of medical students. But when I began my career, that wasn't the case. There were very strong stereotypes in biology and medicine.
Carol S. DweckRead
I tend to be a subscriber to the idea that you have everything you need by the time you're 12 years old to do interesting writing for most of the rest of your life - certainly by the time you're 18.
Bruce SpringsteenRead
Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier.
John DeweyRead
It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry.
John Taylor GattoRead
And books, they offer one hope -- that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.
Anne RiceRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.