Investing in women is smart economics, and investing in girls, catching them upstream, is even smarter economics.
Interpretation
Investing in women and girls is not only beneficial for them personally but also advantageous for the economy as a whole.
The quote by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala emphasizes the importance of investing in women and girls, suggesting that such investments bring considerable economic returns. By focusing on girls and enabling their potential early, society can harness a smarter economic strategy that leads to sustainable development and improved outcomes for communities.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about budget allocations for educational programs targeting girls.
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.
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.
When you save the life of anyone, a farmer, a teacher, a mother, they are contributing productively into the economy.
I felt Nigeria didn't have to succumb to the image of being a corrupt country; we didn't have to let the economy stagnate.
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.
The tendency of a national bank is to increase public and private credit. The former gives power to the state, for the protection of its rights and interests: and the latter facilitates and extends the operations of commerce among individuals. Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state.
Although we work through financial markets, our goal is to help Main Street, not Wall Street.
Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.
I'm quite worried about the fiscal imbalances that we've got and what that might mean in terms of financial crisis ahead.
Can we please agree that in the real world, corporations exist for one purpose and one purpose only - to make as much money as possible, which means cutting costs as much as possible?
The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.
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