Everything I do, and everything I do professionally – my life -- has been shaped  by seven years of work as a young man in Africa. From 1971 to 1977 – I look  young, but I'm not — I worked in Zambia, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Somalia,  in projects of technical cooperation with African countries. 

I worked for an Italian NGO, and every single project that we set up in Africa  failed. And I was distraught. I thought, age 21, that we Italians were good  people and we were doing good work in Africa. Instead, everything we touched  we killed. 

Our first project, the one that has inspired my first book, "Ripples from the  Zambezi," was a project where we Italians decided to teach Zambian people  how to grow food. So we arrived there with Italian seeds in southern Zambia  in this absolutely magnificent valley going down to the Zambezi River, and we  taught the local people how to grow Italian tomatoes and zucchini and … And of course the local people had absolutely no interest in doing that, so we paid  them to come and work, and sometimes they would show up. And we were  amazed that the local people, in such a fertile valley, would not have any  agriculture. But instead of asking them how come they were not growing  anything, we simply said, "Thank God we're here." "Just in the nick of time to  save the Zambian people from starvation." 

And of course, everything in Africa grew beautifully. We had these magnificent  tomatoes. In Italy, a tomato would grow to this size. In Zambia, to this size.  And we could not believe, and we were telling the Zambians, "Look how easy  agriculture is." When the tomatoes were nice and ripe and red, overnight, some  200 hippos came out from the river and they ate everything.  

And we said to the Zambians, "My God, the hippos!" 

And the Zambians said, "Yes, that's why we have no agriculture here."  "Why didn't you tell us?""You never asked." 

I thought it was only us Italians blundering around Africa, but then I saw what  the Americans were doing, what the English were doing, what the French were  doing, and after seeing what they were doing, I became quite proud of our  project in Zambia. Because, you see, at least we fed the hippos. 

You should see the rubbish. You should see the rubbish that we have bestowed  on unsuspecting African people. You want to read the book, read "Dead Aid," by

Dambisa Moyo, Zambian woman economist. The book was published in 2009.  We Western donor countries have given the African continent two trillion  American dollars in the last 50 years. I'm not going to tell you the damage that  that money has done. Just go and read her book. Read it from an African  woman, the damage that we have done. 

We Western people are imperialist, colonialist missionaries, and there are only  two ways we deal with people: We either patronize them, or we are  paternalistic. The two words come from the Latin root "pater," which means  "father." But they mean two different things. Paternalistic, I treat anybody from a different culture as if they were my children. "I love you so much." Patronizing, I  treat everybody from another culture as if they were my servants. That's why  the white people in Africa are called "bwana," boss. 

I was given a slap in the face reading a book, "Small is Beautiful," written by  Schumacher, who said, above all in economic development, if people do not  wish to be helped, leave them alone. This should be the first principle of aid.  The first principle of aid is respect. This morning, the gentleman who opened  

this conference lay a stick on the floor, and said, "Can we -- can you imagine a  city that is not neocolonial?" 

I decided when I was 27 years old to only respond to people, and I invented a  system called Enterprise Facilitation, where you never initiate anything, you  never motivate anybody, but you become a servant of the local passion, the  servant of local people who have a dream to become a better person. So what  you do -- you shut up. You never arrive in a community with any ideas, and you  sit with the local people. We don't work from offices. We meet at the cafe. We  meet at the pub. We have zero infrastructure. And what we do, we become  friends, and we find out what that person wants to do. 

The most important thing is passion. You can give somebody an idea. If that  person doesn't want to do it, what are you going to do? The passion that the  person has for her own growth is the most important thing. The passion that that man has for his own personal growth is the most important thing. And then we  help them to go and find the knowledge, because nobody in the world can  succeed alone. The person with the idea may not have the knowledge, but the  knowledge is available. 

So years and years ago, I had this idea: Why don't we, for once, instead of  arriving in the community to tell people what to do, why don't, for once, listen to  them? But not in community meetings.

Let me tell you a secret. There is a problem with community meetings.  Entrepreneurs never come, and they never tell you, in a public meeting, what  they want to do with their own money, what opportunity they have identified. So  planning has this blind spot. The smartest people in your community you don't  even know, because they don't come to your public meetings. 

What we do, we work one-on-one, and to work one-on-one, you have to create  a social infrastructure that doesn't exist. You have to create a new profession. The profession is the family doctor of enterprise, the family doctor of business,  who sits with you in your house, at your kitchen table, at the cafe, and helps you find the resources to transform your passion into a way to make a living. 

I started this as a tryout in Esperance, in Western Australia. I was a doing a  Ph.D. at the time, trying to go away from this patronizing bullshit that we arrive  and tell you what to do. And so what I did in Esperance that first year was to just walk the streets, and in three days I had my first client, and I helped this first  guy who was smoking fish from a garage, was a Maori guy, and I helped him to  sell to the restaurant in Perth, to get organized, and then the fishermen came to  me to say, "You the guy who helped Maori? Can you help us?" And I helped  these five fishermen to work together and get this beautiful tuna not to the  cannery in Albany for 60 cents a kilo, but we found a way to take the fish for  sushi to Japan for 15 dollars a kilo, and the farmers came to talk to me, said,  "Hey, you helped them. Can you help us?" In a year, I had 27 projects going on, and the government came to see me to say, "How can you do that? How can  you do — ?" And I said, "I do something very, very, very difficult. I shut up, and  listen to them."  

So — So the government says, "Do it again." We've done it in 300 communities  around the world. We have helped to start 40,000 businesses. There is a new  generation of entrepreneurs who are dying of solitude. 

Peter Drucker, one of the greatest management consultants in history, died age  96, a few years ago. Peter Drucker was a professor of philosophy before  becoming involved in business, and this is what Peter Drucker says: "Planning  is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy." Planning  is the kiss of death of entrepreneurship. 

So now you're rebuilding Christchurch without knowing what the smartest  people in Christchurch want to do with their own money and their own energy. You have to learn how to get these people to come and talk to you. You have to 

offer them confidentiality, privacy, you have to be fantastic at helping them, and  then they will come, and they will come in droves. In a community of 10,000  people, we get 200 clients. Can you imagine a community of 400,000 people,  the intelligence and the passion? Which presentation have you applauded the  most this morning? Local, passionate people. That's who you have applauded. 

So what I'm saying is that entrepreneurship is where it's at. We are at the end of the first industrial revolution – nonrenewable fossil fuels, manufacturing – and  all of a sudden, we have systems which are not sustainable. The internal  combustion engine is not sustainable. Freon way of maintaining things is not  sustainable. What we have to look at is at how we feed, cure, educate,  transport, communicate for seven billion people in a sustainable way. The  technologies do not exist to do that. Who is going to invent the technology for  the green revolution? Universities? Forget about it! Government? Forget about  it! It will be entrepreneurs, and they're doing it now. 

There's a lovely story that I read in a futurist magazine many, many years ago.  There was a group of experts who were invited to discuss the future of the city  of New York in 1860. And in 1860, this group of people came together, and they  all speculated about what would happen to the city of New York in 100 years, and the conclusion was unanimous: The city of New York would not exist in 100  years. Why? Because they looked at the curve and said, if the population keeps growing at this rate, to move the population of New York around, they would  have needed six million horses, and the manure created by six million horses  would be impossible to deal with. They were already drowning in manure. So  1860, they are seeing this dirty technology that is going to choke the life out of  New York. 

So what happens? In 40 years' time, in the year 1900, in the United States of  America, there were 1,001 car manufacturing companies – 1,001. The idea of  finding a different technology had absolutely taken over, and there were tiny,  tiny little factories in backwaters. Dearborn, Michigan. Henry Ford. 

However, there is a secret to work with entrepreneurs. First, you have to offer  them confidentiality. Otherwise they don't come and talk to you. Then you have  to offer them absolute, dedicated, passionate service to them. And then you  have to tell them the truth about entrepreneurship. The smallest company, the  biggest company, has to be capable of doing three things beautifully: The  product that you want to sell has to be fantastic, you have to have fantastic  marketing, and you have to have tremendous financial management. Guess  what? We have never met a single human being in the world who can make it, 

sell it and look after the money. It doesn't exist. This person has never been  born. We've done the research, and we have looked at the 100 iconic  companies of the world – Carnegie, Westinghouse, Edison, Ford, all the new  companies, Google, Yahoo. There's only one thing that all the successful  companies in the world have in common, only one: None were started by one  person. Now we teach entrepreneurship to 16-year-olds in Northumberland, and we start the class by giving them the first two pages of Richard Branson's  autobiography, and the task of the 16-year-olds is to underline, in the first two  pages of Richard Branson's autobiography how many times Richard uses the  word "I" and how many times he uses the word "we." Never the word "I," and  the word "we" 32 times. He wasn't alone when he started. Nobody started a  company alone. No one. So we can create the community where we have  facilitators who come from a small business background sitting in cafes, in bars, and your dedicated buddies who will do to you, what somebody did for this  gentleman who talks about this epic, somebody who will say to you, "What do  you need? What can you do? Can you make it? Okay, can you sell it? Can you  look after the money?" "Oh, no, I cannot do this.""Would you like me to find you  somebody?" We activate communities. We have groups of volunteers  supporting the Enterprise Facilitator to help you to find resources and people  and we have discovered that the miracle of the intelligence of local people is  such that you can change the culture and the economy of this community just  by capturing the passion, the energy and imagination of your own people. 

Thank you. 



Last modified: Tuesday, January 14, 2025, 8:35 AM