Latest / Doug Reads With Friends / Ep 5: Inherited Systems, Long Arcs & Disrupting Africa (with Opeyemi Awe)
Transcript
- speaker-0: Hello friends and welcome to a special one of a kind pre-introduction part of today's podcast. This podcast, which is a great episode with my friend Opa Yama Awe, I recorded several months ago and a couple of things have delayed the release of today's podcast. Those of you who are loyal loyal listeners, you know who you are. Both of you will recognize that this podcast is coming out. about a week, actually more than a week later than I intended it to. And so first of all, I want to apologize to Opiyeme for the delay in the podcast and thank her for her patience. There's a couple of things that went into the delay. Number one, you may have noticed if you've been paying attention to the news that here in Abu Dhabi, life has been a little chaotic. I am recording. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see not from my normal home studio, but from a hotel apartment. where we have been moved for safety reasons. And then second of all, I'm hoping that you will not actually be able to hear this in the final recording, but we had some big time audio problems on OPM's end when we record this and it is taking me a lot of time with my very limited technical skills to figure out exactly why that is and how to deal with that. My hope is that when I finally get to release this, that I will have erased those problems and that you will largely not notice them. I do think there may be two things that, that I'm not able to fix. One is that there are little dropouts here and there where you may miss just half a word of what she's saying from time to time. And second of all, if you're watching this on YouTube, there were times when the program that I use to generate the captions automatically just was not picking up what she was saying. Unfortunately. It is nonetheless, I'm really selling this, right? It is nonetheless a fantastic episode, a terrific conversation about a really interesting book. And I hope that you listen to the entire episode and with no further ado then let's get into, out of the pre-introduction and into the actual introduction for today's episode in which I discuss Disrupting Africa with Opwe Awe. Hello friends and welcome back to Doug Reads with Friends. This is a podcast in which I call up my friends and we have a conversation about a book that they've chosen. Along the way, we also talk about who they are, our friendship, how we know one another, and I get to ask them a little bit about their lives. Really, I get to introduce you, most of whom are my friends, to other people I know and my other friends. It is a really wonderful excuse that I have to get to call up people that I miss and have a fun conversation. On today's podcast, we have Opweeme Awe and we are discussing the book Disrupting Africa by Professor Arewa. I say Professor Arewa because I don't know how to pronounce her first name. And I was having a little bit of a thought right before I started recording. Is it better for me to try to pronounce her first name? and get it really, really wrong? Or is it better just to call her Professor Arewa? The right answer, of course, is for me to learn how to pronounce her first name. But my apologies to Professor Arewa for not knowing how to pronounce her first name. This is a really fun conversation. Opwe is an astonishingly accomplished young person. She is one of the best students I've ever worked with. She's won multiple awards. She has gone on to... the beginnings of a great career. And I think she's going to go on in the coming decades to do even more in Africa, particularly, and which is one of the reasons that she chose this book. This was a book that was quite unlike any of the others that we've read so far on this podcast, a book that challenged me, a book that pushed me, but also a book that changed how I think about a lot of different issues. So thanks for tuning in and enjoy this conversation with Opoyeme Awe about disrupting Africa. So a few episodes ago, I had a conversation with Alicia Hayes at the University of California at Berkeley, in which I talked a little bit about my work and my job and what I do. And I said then that I work with really outstanding students to help them apply for international opportunities and awards. And today we have a member of the Hall of Fame. We have one of the all time greats. I'm going to embarrass you now, Oplay, because it is... rare that a student wins one of these awards. For a student to win two of these awards and then go on to earn a JD MBA is extraordinary. So I am thrilled today to welcome to the podcast, Ope Awe, who I have known since she was a student at Cornell. And then she went on to be a Watson fellow. She went on to be a Schwarzman scholar in China. She went on to get her JD and MBA. She just got married. Everything's coming up au plait. Look at that. Congratulations. How are you? speaker-1: I really appreciate that and what a generous intro. I'm great. Life is great. Kind of the things that you mentioned on the personal front, on the professional front, feeling very restored and kind of like as it has been for the last few years, the world has little disorientate, but to sort of narrow down my world into the people that I care about doing the things that I care about. Really good. So that's how I'm doing. speaker-0: That's great. That's wonderful. So there's a lot here to talk about. want to make, can we maybe start with the Watson Fellowship? Because first of all, it impacts directly what you chose, or I feel like it impacts directly what you chose for us to read together. And it was a really interesting Watson. And it's about us because you came to Abu Dhabi during your Watson year to come visit. I don't think we, I've talked at all about what the Watson is on this podcast so far. Can you kind of explain the Watson a little bit? I'm sure you've had to do it a million times. and then talk a little bit about what your project was. Sure. speaker-1: So the Watson Fellowship Foundation provides sort of one year fully funded opportunities for self-exploit. And so scholars from across liberal arts schools are given a step in eventually and encouraged to grow answer questions that they are curious about and travel the world to explore people, explore themselves in a way that can help them critically about something that sort of works them about the world. And so you talk about the and being the catalyst for a lot of the things I'm interested in, but it was actually while I was at Grinette, right? Like I think that I really started to think about the power of entrepreneurship, about development, about what it takes to build strong country. So what my fellowship allowed me to do was to look at countries at different phases in their development journey. I started in South Korea, which in the sixties was poor. It was poorer than Ejira in the sixties. They were like... Their primary export was like wood. And just to think about from the sixties to the global powerhouse that they are now in fashion and electronics and the sciences. I'm like, what happened? How do they do that? Right. And I think that was a question that was like really interesting to me. Then I went on to Brazil and Indonesia, which are two countries that like they ping in and out of. is Brazil in? Is Indonesia if? Are they developing? Are they still struggling? And so these two nations that are still always right on the cusp of change, of economic revival, that they just haven't really crossed that threshold. And then I went to Rwanda, and secretly, not secretly, Rwanda was my favorite country, secretly, not secretly, because I think I was so impressed by what they were doing economically and politically. So to transform a country, to have people from outside of the country want to come back, to have young people. to invest in the development of a country, crazy fascinating to me. And so that's what my walk in to do was sort of entrepreneurship, the legal development, business environments, infrastructure, all things that I think are really important to building basis for an entrepreneurially dynamic country. speaker-0: Where does the entrepreneurship come from? I think about entrepreneurship primarily in a business sense. I certainly think of you as a leader. You are a two-time president of student government. You are someone who exudes leadership and charisma. But do you think about entrepreneurship primarily in terms of money or are you thinking about it in other ways? And where does that interest come from? speaker-1: When I think about entrepreneurship and leadership, you're right, that they are sort of complimentary. But I think that entrepreneurship, business development, job creation are really important ways to help give people a foundation that allows them to take autonomy over their lives. Right? So I think about most of Africa, entrepreneurs, right? There just aren't fortune five, having companies across most of South Sahara Africa, right? Like not yet, they're not there. So when I think about entrepreneurship, in addition to thinking about the big company, I'm thinking about like micro entrepreneurs. I'm thinking about people who just kind of want to get their stuff off the ground. And what does it take to succeed? And I think that when I was thinking about entrepreneurship, it's a deep reconnected with governance, right? Something that I say all the time is you can't entrepreneurial way out of bad governance, right? If you have the government. is crap, if they don't support you, then I think that can be really detrimental to a nation's foundation. And then the other thing I think a lot about is there is a lot of issues with dividends that I think will take time and activity to address. so, think about entrepreneurship in some ways as like an immediate wing, if you will, for people to sort of take to put their own resident. And I also think about ⁓ China, I think about economic shift away from traditional communism and doing this higher-grade capitalism, I mean, it's under there. Now, it was entrepreneurs. It was small farmers who were like, let's sort of see what this, know, cat was a bit, and of course they weren't top-comming at that, but it was a small sort of farmer effort. I think it was like a hundred problems, and they started to cut together and sort of trade and then like. like give each other capital and then that helped them develop and the better man smile they were when it happened in a small scale then when they started to see the ongoing benefits then it was how do we create infrastructure that will support this speaker-0: That leads a little bit into your Schwarzman year, which is a one-year study in China at Tsinghua University, studying really China's role in the world. What made you want to go to Schwarzman and how did that impact you, that experience? speaker-1: But yeah, so I beat one of the things in 100%. My walks in really led me to Mashwoods because I'm traveling to all these countries. I'm in the Brazilian, hopping over to Singapore and Malaysia and I see what's going on in Peru and across all of these markets, China was there. Whether doing development products, in their market selling products, whether in the infrastructure that they had built. What is China doing in Peru? What business does China have in Brazil? Make it make sense to me. And I think that started to get really curious about like, what is China's goal across the world, right? And that's when I got introduced to concepts around the wine, but one road. That's when I started understanding what like China's old strategic and soft power, right? That ⁓ China's trying to use to expand itself in the world stage where I have summer in Ghana. And it was USAID projects that I think that had grown accustomed to seeing in emerging markets, USAID and US government sort of extending its arm of stock. But to see China do it, or to say really? I mean, deprecating. But wouldn't a sun get, right? It's sort of what my initial role would be. And then once I opened my eyes to that, I was like, oh no, China is everywhere, especially in West Africa. Now they're taking 10, 20, 30 years down the line. speaker-0: So you come back from Schwarzman and you go into consulting. speaker-1: Yes, I do. Yes, I do. From the rich and I'm guessing. speaker-0: I've mixed feelings about that move into consulting. speaker-1: I needed money. I needed money. You know, the Social Justice Warrior, need dollars. And so there was that part. And then the other part is that I went to government consulting. So consulting allowed me to see what does working in government look like? I talked a good game about government, entrepreneur, sheriff, this and that. was like, how does it work? Entrepreneurship business is one element. but also apologizers and policies and legal support. speaker-0: So now, so you go from consulting into law and business, which is a different world. What inspired that move and did you get out of it what you thought you would get out of it? speaker-1: Mo- Entrepreneurship, it's exclusively just like starting businesses. is the economic development as a catalyst to change. And I think entrepreneurship is a key part of that. And so another key part of that is the legal infrastructure, which is subpart in a lot of the places that I'm interested in think that economic development could be supported by strong legal infrastructure. And so that's what I went to law school for. to a new line of the language to understand and how people think about legal infrastructure, if you will. And then the other, so that was their law side, right? Like we, how do you build a strong legal infrastructure? What it look like? And so that was what the law school part has helped me do. And the law school, it helped me break down big ideas and gave me a toolkit. And that's something that I had talked about a lot before going to law school. Some of the smartest people doing the most of each thing, thanks to me. Well, always, right. And I think it was in some ways the training that they thought. And that's a bit true. have found that to be true. I think I'm much better equipped to a lot of big problems because I went to law school. And then to be my Watson and my short, like I said, it was, yeah, you can talk with a game about, you know, law and people reform, but if you don't know how to run a business, what are you going to talk about? You know what I'm trying to say? so like, a certain level of, there's a reason I didn't do a PhD, right? didn't want to intellectualize this process for myself. I really want to be like, how do do this? Like, how does one create a business? Create, sustain, fund, market a business. And so that I did my JDMBA. And maybe you can talk about this further on, but it, I think it's already, it's give you what I wanted it to give, you know. game, right, so far. when I think about my interest in Nigeria, it's not exclusively theoretical. I was born there, I go back often, I did internships, so building a hospital, it's a business, right? You have to charge patients with things and think about, well, if you're not running it as a nonprofit and you're running it as a business, what infrastructure do you have to set in place? How do you work a strategy? What does it look like to trail strategic relationships with vendors or other community partners. What does it look like when you're with human capital and people and your, yeah, and, and, and, uh, employment issues and employment law. What is employment law in Nigeria? What is, what is the regulatory landscape for a business? Is there a regulatory landscape? And so I think that that has interwoven for me the interest of what does it look like to start a business? And the other thing that I will say is. The, when I think about the trade between entrepreneurship and governance and what might you run a hospital, but the road to a hospital tragic. It's tragic. The road bike show you want the waiter go after it. But if I'm an entrepreneur, is that it? Is that my job? I job to putting electricity that can run to buy. Is it my job that I have to speaker-0: alleged to keep people from getting sick. Right. speaker-1: is I'm like out as an individual person. And sometimes I think about the read of some of the very wealthy in Nigeria, especially entrepreneurs. I don't want to get too deep into that, but there's a certain level of greed of like self protection that emerges if you're an entrepreneur and you have to be your own sanitation worker, where you gonna put your trash. You have to be your own ⁓ electricity provider. You have to be your own water works. And so if I'm doing all of that to run my business, I'd be done. If I was like, ⁓ you're here. Come and like the best, the best job of that remains. That's the job of government and do we do both job of creating that? I'm talking physical infrastructure. I'm not even talking about redoing. I'm just like, please. Right. And it'd be one thing, but like, even if I had it, even if I had 40, which is roughly like $4 and a half dollars to build broke, is that my job? Is that sustainable? Is that how we want people to thrive as business people? I would argue the answer isn't from many other successful companies. So, it's going to. That's right. speaker-0: What's the vision from here? You've spent more than a decade now building an absolutely phenomenal world-class resume. Watson fellow, Schwarzman scholar, consultant, JD, MBA. What are you going to do with it? Where does it take you from here? What's it all leading to? speaker-1: I it's funny, I had some trying to be more starting because this is like when I was in undergrad, they were like, how are we? Yeah, well, it's you. We would never do that. So, so I was like, yeah. And then my passion- didn't do it. No, but I hope about that. But I actually do think that working in business in the market like I do here, like I love to kind of work with startups that pay me. But you see, I'm trying to see that pay me. So I kind of hope that not a day like, what does it mean if we want to operate in 10, 15 markets across that? How do we bring it all together? And I think about, and so I did an interview at a law firm at Temple Arts in Manjaro in summer, it's going to be, and the like, they're just, the creativity that has to go behind supporting your clients to help them do anything that they want to do. But there's a lot of wiggle room. There's a lot of wiggle room, especially because I was working in a, in a firm that focuses on oil and gas. And so just the entry layer, the multiple layer, is it this law that we're working on? it this one? So I just have it to be like deeply interesting and creative to me. so now there is a universe that I would work for a law firm that does international, like internationally focused business development for companies. Work directly with them. There's a universe in which I start my own venture. There's a universe that I sort of work to build this sort of hospital and healthcare infrastructure, because we could talk healthcare. That's a whole other bucket that we could talk about. ⁓ So yeah, and I was candidly, I am in a place of exploration, just gathering information and developing the toolkit and being curious and building a network. And so now it was like, okay, so what do you even do about it? Is a question that actually I'm deeply about right now. speaker-0: instinct that that's going to keep you in the US or do you think it leads you back to Nigeria? speaker-1: trying to be on planes all the time, Doug. I'm trying to be here, there, and everywhere. It's ha ha ha, but no, my ideal is that I'm able to split my time between, not just Nigeria, just the South continent. The questions that I'm asking about China and Africa, entrepreneurs, South and Africa governors, it's like how it's faced in a lot of these other countries, getting perspective and understanding how other people across the continent, how entrepreneurs across the constant are dealing with these prosaicid issues. I think I like to be an active part. Well, this is speaker-0: leading us very directly into the book that you chose. I want to talk a little bit first just about you as a reader. So what is your relationship with reading like? What is your relationship with books like either growing up or today? You are shaking your head already. speaker-1: So I knew you were gonna ask a question. going up, I was an avid reader. I would read nonfiction, read fiction. I just really enjoyed reading. And then I would have these phases of my reading journey, like reading about sci-fi novels about black women. So was reading a lot of Dr. Butler. And then I was really into African authors as well. So I read lot of Chenowai Che-Bae. and there's one Kenyan author who I just being mispronouncing the name so I don't. And so I read a lot growing up and then I'm gonna hit my collegiate experience. I've forced, I was forced to start reading. And so it was funny because I, once I finished law school and like sort of was wrapping up the bar, I sat down and I picked up a fiction book. done. I read it in 48 hours. was just like, I, I before I was, like, love to read. I love books. I just, that's what I've been reading, like dance. Anyway, con law, creative law. I was just reading such a dancing. I was like, I love to read. I mean, I'm talking like staying up to finish the book. Like what's next? was, I mean, when I finished, I think I would five books in a week. I was just like, ravenous, ravenous. I was just. could not get enough of books. And so this book is a little bit of a departure from what I read for like funds. speaker-0: So what book did you choose and what is maybe the back cover blurb for the book? How would you describe this book in a paragraph to somebody who's never heard of it before? speaker-1: Disrupting. And it's by Uluswami Laya Ariyawai who is ⁓ a scholar. I mean, very well accomplished. Top notches. ⁓ I. And so it's a book that sort of talks about, takes a historical, cultural, political, legal lens on the infrastructure that colonialism had on Africa and what those implications were on in terms of the internal and external dynamics that shaped the continent and talks a lot about how that foundation, that colonialism. across the subcontinent, but her focus was primarily on Nigeria, has been established threads that you see now in terms of how our economic set up, how our legal infrastructure is or is not set up, political politics and things like that. So I think it's a very robust and dynamic book, very academic, very well researched, very, very well researched. I think it provided a really, really in-depth study about... I am also curious about the life from like a historical perspective. And I think it also tightening a lot of like how happening colonial times, pre-colonial times set the foundations for a lot of these that are challenging, right? Like the fact that the customary law, the, you know, British colonial law in Nigeria, the post independence like constitution, it's created this very complicated web of like whose rules are we using here? But I think that the legal struggle, the struggle about accountability with governance, the issues ⁓ surrounding not just government accountability, but also effectiveness, right? I think was something that I think the board touched on in an interesting way. And the other thing is, I was listening to a podcast and I think one the things that they talked about was post-colonialism, right? was there, or not just was there, but this sort of lack of intellectual disengagement from the British. like, there was still a lot, so there was and is in many ways this like, our minds never left. A lot of people's minds never left the like British way. And I think there is a sentiment of like, things were just better when the British were here. At least we had schools, at least they built the road, at least, at least, at least, right? And so I think that podcast talks a lot about his very unique role in help decolonize people's minds about what does it look like to not de-understand the fun of Kuonia Towers. If I, like, I think what I'm saying is if I were to get a PhD, would likely be on a book, simple like this, ⁓ bringing together a lot of those threads, but also helping to think about what can be in the future. Somebody wrote a review about the book and they said, it makes a powerful case for fundamentally disrupting colonialism's enduring institutional legacies. It shows how the leveraging of disruptive technologies in Africa is being severely limited by the continuity of colonial legal framework, tuitions and standards under unequal and exploitative distributional pattern. speaker-0: Yep. That's it. And I think also it gives you a sense of the tone of the book as well, right? This is a very serious, deeply researched, deeply academic book. We get all the way to page 10 before we get our first Foucault reference, right? It's not here to mess around and you got to bring your A game when you're reading this book because she goes dense and she goes deep. again, that's not meant as a criticism in any way. She knows her stuff. but this is not a book you can lightly skim. speaker-1: Not at all. Yeah. And I think that one of the themes that I enjoyed about the book, I do think in some ways it was helping me, helping me know like what's next, right? Like we can talk about colonialism, we can talk about bad governance, we can talk about a lot of the things, but it is sort of helping me, you know, going back to the question you asked earlier, think about how does this all come together? Like, what does it like bring it all together and make it tight? Like, what does this mean? And so I think the book is helping me think and has taught me think critically about like... What does that mean? Especially because I know she spoke a lot about some of the enduring issues. Like one, one thing that stepped out to me, what she was saying, a lot of the numbers and data that we have about Nigeria Africa comes from like outside of Africa, right? Right. They're out doing censuses. Right. And I'm like, can you imagine making policy decisions about data that's not your own? Like, could you actually imagine? And I think what she did also quite effectively was even though the book primarily focused on Nigeria or went back to Nigeria, her steady of light, Ana, Malawi, Namibia, like I'm saying, she really did know where she did everything on this book. speaker-0: She is Nigerian, her focus is Nigeria, her expertise is in Nigeria, but it's not limited to Nigeria. The word in the title is Africa. It's not disrupting Nigeria, it's disrupting Africa. It feels to me like a majority of the book is about Nigeria, but then the examples, as you said, she brings in quite broadly, and then also talks about how was French colonialism different and how did different of Africa experience colonialism. They're thinking about it today. There's a quote. from the book that was surprised by, and I thought, want to get Opwe's opinion on this. And it's relatively early on, it's page 77. She writes, speaker-1: So I, in a number of ways, I do think that corruption is the largest hindrance to economic development, to people's livelihoods, and just a whole host of things. And I think that there's a couple of words you can think about. Corruption is that it happens at the highest levels. You're talking residents, you're talking about senators, you're talking about people in power. So the road that I gave you, for example, if you were to look on paper somewhere, in the records of the course in Nigeria. Unsure somebody has built this road. Third, that somebody was given a contract to build this road. Unsure the person took the money, put sandbags on the road, and take a little road. It's not the money, does. Nigeria is a top 10 oil producer. We have the money. It's where it's being directed to. It's who has access to it. It's the fact that the money is not being used to develop a sewage system. sewage infrastructure or education or really being funneled into these parts of the country or parts of the society that we need it, that it's sitting in the hands and the pockets of a very, very limited few. So that's sort of corruption at, I think, the highest level. And then there's a certain sort of like, especially around election times where the people become pawns, if you will. in the stand of corruption where people are so desperate that I mean, if you give them a t-shirt and a bag of rice, people being like, oh yeah, I'll go for them. The way it seeped into every day of life as well and how people treat one another in, mean, I'm only looking to get from you what I can get, right? That sort of like lack of individual care and concern about being like, well, part of the same country. We're kind of all going through the same struggle right now. ⁓ And so the corruption that we see at the highest levels has become endemic in daily life, right? And I think the book at some point mentioned that they think like $586 billion has been taken out of pension. It's probably more. It's probably more. speaker-0: I thought was really interesting about her argument was, I mean, what you just said was that since independence, we draw the argument back of corruption and stealing of resources right through colonialism, right? Her, it is essentially, where do you think people learned this from? The whole system was set up, the whole system was set up as an extractive industry to come in, take Nigeria's wealth and put that in the... pockets of private individuals rather than. speaker-1: Yes, he was for the public. speaker-0: And that the system today is not a new system. It's not a system that Nigerians invented. It's a system that they inherited from the British and that they've just used to continue enriching themselves rather than putting in the reforms and disrupting the systems that in the ways that she thinks needs to be disrupted. speaker-1: And, you know, if we want to be honest, I think that is my own sort of internalized default. Like, ⁓ this darned I, or, you know, we have this great opportunity to fix this with an I independence. No, no, this came from somewhere. Right. And I think, and I think that's the other part about like infrastructure. It's not that it doesn't exist. There is infrastructure. There is, it's just bad. It's just not effective. It's just exploitative. Right. So. Yeah, you could, you could build a house of wood. It's a house. There's infrastructure, but one might argue a house builds of concrete or, know, would be better. You can make it better. And we didn't even talk about the bridge in particular. Sneaky, sneaky bridge. ⁓ Sneaky, sneaky bridge. Let me show you. And I think what she talked about that I found was interesting was the people who were deputized, the Nigerians who were deputized, to facilitate this exploitation and how. Though, I mean, who was put in power, who was not? I mean, we're still dealing with the reverberating effects of that. Fades in hundreds of years later. I don't think that, I don't even, I don't think that country could, quote unquote, recover. Not to go back to where it was, right? But I think to get creative about what does this mean, right? Because I do think people are just allowing it to be because it's going to be. I don't think at the highest level. as a sort of creativity or even desire. Let's talk about like people just don't want to, right? The people at the tippy-top because if you're benefiting this, why would you change? People try to make emotional appeals. People try to make emotional appeals to leading... ⁓ you all traveled to Germany. You traveled to the U.S. and you see how well they are. Why did you come back and do that? Because they don't want to. They don't want to. Because they can get on the plane and go to Germany. They don't care. And so, and so I think about... at sort of just like the lack of desire from those in power. And again, how I find that it's seeping through into the, into the, into just everyday society. When I think about money and infrastructure as well, the things that I think of a lot is two, two examples happen that relate to both infrastructure and development is Anthony Joshua, who's like a well-known boxer. He's a Nigerian, British. boxer. He recently went to Nigeria and was in a car accident that killed two of his like, they're close friends, right? And why were they in a car accident? Bad rooms, bad rooms. But your money can't save you from that. Chivamanda Ngozi Adichie, who everybody knows, she has twins. And one of her twins died while at a hospital in Nigeria. One can argue that both of these people have money. They have money. They have the resource. Your money can't save you. Your money cannot save you. The system is messed up. It doesn't care. It doesn't care. Right? And that's from the healthcare system. When I think about the educational system and how it's failed at this point, multiple generations of people, how can they be creative when the way that they're being taught hasn't evolved? I think about this woman in Northwestern, Gregg. She started a business. In Nigeria, it was like a juicing business. One day, she wakes up and is on Twitter, or somebody's calling her one of the two. Your business is being raised to the ground. There is a bulldoze being down your business right now. Why? Because of a land dispute that the Senate bearer the police had with, she didn't pay the taxes, if she did. If she did, you have to. Right, so it's stories like this one, like you're actively, he creates a worse future. speaker-0: What I appreciate about this book is the context of that. I've spent a little bit of time in Africa. did a semester in Zimbabwe in college. I've visited Southern Africa a fair amount, but I am by no means an expert. But it's not hard to enumerate, as you just did, the challenges with infrastructure, with healthcare, with education, with corruption, et cetera. What I appreciate about this book is tracing that backwards. And maybe it's the history major in me. of saying this didn't come from nowhere, right? These challenges are not the inventions of Africans. This was all planned by the colonizer states that came in and said, we're going to invest enough here to be able to extract from you, but we're using this for our benefit and we're gonna set up systems that are not beneficial to the Africans who have to live under them. speaker-1: require a little bit of a understanding of like exactly what you're saying that the way that Nigerians are experiencing the country, the nation right now, it's on purpose. Nigerians didn't just wake up wondering, still hundreds of millions of from my country. That's also a good idea. No, it was a system that said, yes, do this, do this, right? It's good. It's good for you. But it was good for you because it was good for that, right? And empowering individual people. So. I actually do think that I think that what I was looking for was a bit more sensitivity, a bit more like cultural, historic sensitivity to the fact that it runs deep, the issues that we're facing. But that I think then is if the issues are running so deep, then the creativity, right? And it's like, then you can't look at China, then you can't look at America, can't. You have to get really creative because it's like, what does it mean for us, I too. move beyond this really deep, really, really challenging foundation that we have been given. And I think it's the creativity. And the one thing that Africans are, Nigerians are, we are creative as hell. I'm telling you, when our minds, when our minds are set to something, we, and I always joke about like that a lot of people make stew, that's in Nigeria, and pepper, because everybody needs peppers and tomatoes and stuff. So there was a time where there was like a massive infestation of peppers, right? So you make your stews. So instead of being like, what do you mean our agricultural system can't fix that? What do you mean? An entire country is crippled by a pepper shortage. Instead of asking those questions, they said, we just gonna make soup without peppers. We're just gonna figure it out. So they made pepperless stews. I know, it was just like, creative, y'all be thinking. speaker-0: Well, I'm very glad that you are putting your enormous brain and your great talents and your charisma and your smarts and your caring. This is a topic you care a lot about and you have every chance. I knew you when you were 20 years old to go and work on these problems in Nigeria and get on a plane all the time. I don't know where it's going to take you, but I am super excited to see where the coming decades take you and what you end up doing. speaker-1: Hey, Doug, I really...sick, but... speaker-0: One thing I ask all my guests to do, a little bit about, all right, I wanna see you again, I wanna meet up with you again somewhere. We've met in Iowa, we've met in Abu... We've met in D.C. When and how might we meet up next, maybe inspired by this book? speaker-1: So I know everybody would think I would say, let's meet in IJ. But alas, I won't. I would love for us to meet in Rwanda. I would love for us to meet in Rwanda because they have gorillas and they have incredible wildlife. And I know that's up your alley and it's incredibly good-iful. And it's been well over a decade since I've been there. It's like, my heart has never left. My heart has never left. So I would love to go like look at some... in beautiful gorillas in Rwanda with you. speaker-0: I would love to do that. will tell you that gorilla trekking in Rwanda or Uganda is way, way, way, way up on my list of things. That's a top five bucket list. speaker-1: There we go, let's do it. My family at this point, they're like, yeah dang girl, you've been talking about Rwanda for a decade. Let's all, let's all go. Everybody go to Rwanda. Bring your new friend, I can meet him for the first time. speaker-0: Yeah. Grilled to meet him. Yes. We'll go to Africa, we'll go to Rwanda, and we'll go gorilla trucking together. speaker-1: amazing. Thank you. speaker-0: But this book without you, I learned a lot from this book. It's a delight to connect with you again. Thanks, ⁓ Kest. And thank you for being my friend. Okay, friends, there you have it. What a great conversation with Opwe. An absolutely astonishing person. One of my favorite students I've ever worked with. Obvious reason. And someone who I think is just on a rocket ship from here. I'm really, really excited to see in the coming decades the work that she does and the difference that she makes and perhaps the role that this book plays in helping her think about the changes that she wants to make. So thank you, Opwe, again, for being my friend. and for coming on the podcast. For the next episode, I will be talking with Hazel Raja, my former boss, about the book, This American Woman by Izarna Garb. That will be out later this month on March 20th. Thank you for listening to this podcast. If you have any questions or comments or critiques, please email me at dougreedswithfriends at gmail.com. Doug Reads with Friends is now available on Instagram, on TikTok, on Facebook, and of course on YouTube. I hope that you will follow those channels for clips from these programs and to connect with other people who are listening. I know you've heard this on every podcast you've ever listened to, but it really does make a difference if you take a moment to like this podcast, to rate it, to review it, maybe leave a comment on it as well. Thank you so much for doing so. Music for Doug Greets With Friends provided by my friend, Erin Caffell. Erin is a deeply talented musician and someone who I've known for a very long time. Thank you to Erin for providing her music and please check out Erin's other music on Spotify. Friends, thank you for listening to Doug Greets With Friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode and thank you for being my friend.