Africa's informal economy is one of the most innovative and inventive environments in the world. Yet it is an environment with little regulation in which workers are often exposed to hard conditions and live without a safety net.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Africa is not for the weak-hearted: infrastructure issues are there. The middle class is absent in most of the countries. We have to cater to the low end of the market to grow.
For African societies, no issue looms larger than employment. Only vibrant entrepreneurship and thriving small businesses can hope to provide the millions of jobs that are needed.
Africa was perceived - it still is to some extent - as a place which is very difficult to do business in. I don't share that view.
Like its agriculture, Africa's markets are highly under-capitalized and inefficient. We know from our work around the continent that transaction costs of reaching the market, and the risks of transacting in rural, agriculture markets, are extremely high. In fact, only one third of agricultural output produced in Africa even reaches the market.
In terms of competitiveness of new global environment, Kenya will have absolutely no choice but to tackle the most important constraint to its development: it has been corruption.
We cannot do everything in Africa, but doing nothing is not an option.
In Africa today, we recognise that trade and investment, and not aid, are pillars of development.
I don't think Africa gets as much credit as it should have on the world stage. People tend to think of us as coming from The Dark Continent, where nothing good goes on. That's not true. A huge amount of, as I say, entrepreneurship goes on.
Africa is a very dangerous place.
Without in any way minimising the economic and psychological blow that people experience when they lose their jobs, the unemployed in affluent countries still have a safety net, in the form of social security payments, and usually free healthcare and free education for their children. They also have sanitation and safe drinking water.