The best way to help Africans today is to help them to stand on their own feet. And the best way to do that is by helping create jobs.
Interpretation
Empowering Africans through job creation fosters self-reliance and progress.
In this quote, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala emphasizes the importance of empowering individuals and communities in Africa by facilitating job creation. She advocates for a sustainable approach to aid that enables people to become self-sufficient, rather than relying on external assistance, highlighting the dignity and capability of Africans to build their futures.
In practice
In a speech about economic development, one might say, 'As Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala wisely noted, the best way to help Africans today is to help them stand on their own feet through job creation.'
When I became finance minister, they called me Okonjo-Wahala - or 'Trouble Woman.' It means 'I give you hell.' But I don't care what names they call me. I'm a fighter; I'm very focused on what I'm doing, and relentless in what I want to achieve, almost to a fault. If you get in my way, you get kicked.
I'm trying to tell you that there's a new wave on the continent. A new wave of openness and democratization in which, since 2000, more than two-thirds of African countries have had multi-party democratic elections. Not all of them have been perfect, or will be, but the trend is very clear.
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I know what it means to go to the stream to fetch water... what it means when people are poor and don't have enough to eat. It's not enough to say you know about poverty. You have to live it.
You don't have to be one of those people that accepts things as they are. Every day, take responsibility for changing them right where you are.
The western model of growth that India and China wish to emulate is intrinsically toxic. It uses huge resources - energy and materials - and generates enormous waste... it remains many steps behind the problems it creates. India and China have no choice but to reinvent the development trajectory
In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.
Even the simplest choice can make a jaw-dropping difference in our world.
When you're really trying to make serious change, you don't want people to get caught up in emotion because change isn't emotion. Because change isn't emotion. Its real work and organization and strategy - that's just the truth of it. I mean, you pull people in with inspiration, but then you have to roll up your sleeves and you've got to make sacrifices and you have got to have structure.
I think when you work on fossils, and you realize that a species is there, and it's abundant for quite a long period of time, and then at some point it's no longer there - and so, when you look at that bigger picture, yes, you realize that either you change and adapt, or, as a species, you go extinct.
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