African Development Quotes

When I started Giants of Africa, I envisioned providing African youth access to the game and empowering them to achieve their greatest potential.

Africa does not need more exhortations. She needs support in strengthening her structures. She needs concrete resources with which to pursue her course of action.

To be frank, I don't think President Obama gives much thought to Africa - or gives much to Africa.

The biggest opportunity in 2013 is in Africa. It has seven out of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world. In Nigeria alone there are 100 million people with mobile phones. In total, 300 million Africans - five times the population of Britain - are in the middle class.

Wherever I've been, and I've been to over 20, maybe 25, countries in Africa, I've noticed how their backbone is broken. They don't have any confidence in themselves. They always think a white man will solve their problems from outside for them.

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.

Developing good investments in Africa is by and large the best for the people of Africa that have a job, that have electricity, that might have clean water, that might have those things that we in the West take horribly for granted.

We have a problem in Africa with our education system. It is a relic from the past. The education system was meant to create clerks to help the administrative role of the colonial power. So the emphasis was on neat handwriting and how to write good reports and things like that, and if you move further, then you study Shakespeare and Molière. But we don’t have enough engineers and scientists. Two percent of African university graduates study agriculture, when 70 percent of our people are living off the land. Obviously, we have a problem.

Football is a personal interest which has been turned into a philanthropic initiative directed at encouraging social cohesion during the difficult process of African modernisation.

We're very excited about Africa - it can be the breadbasket of the world.

You cannot rub off the effect of that conference from modern Africa today

When most people in the West think about Africa, is their first thought about the game reserves and who's chasing gazelles, or are they looking at Africans as people who are equally equipped to do great things, as in the West?

I am on my way to Ghana tomorrow morning and you just need to know that this Administration is very focused on doing all we can to promote economic development in this part of the world, in Africa, throughout Africa, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.

In the disposition of these unfortunate people, there are two rational objects to be distinctly kept in view. First. The establishment of a colony on the coast of Africa, which may introduce among the aborigines the arts of cultivated life, and the blessings of civilization and science. By doing this, we may make to them some retribution for the long course of injuries we have been committing on their population.

Across Africa there is what I call a colonialist mentality or orthodoxy. Orthodoxy in the sense that a lot of things have gone wrong in Africa in the post-colonial period. And time and time again, any time something went wrong, the leadership claims that it was never their fault.

There are powerful forces undermining progress in Africa. But one must never underestimate the power of the people to bring about change.

Niger is not an isolated island of desperation. It lies within a sea of problems across Africa - particularly the 'forgotten emergencies' in poor countries or regions with little strategic or material appeal.

Sudan has been an experiment that resonated across Africa: if we, the largest country on the continent, reaching from the Sahara to the Congo, bridging religions, cultures and a multitude of ethnicities, were able to construct a prosperous and peaceful state from our diverse citizenry, so too could the rest of Africa.

South Africa's increasingly, for example, the largest foreign investor in various other parts of Africa.

You know, we're missing so much as African-Americans and we should be concerned about what's going on in Africa.

Mobile phone technology can help to bring financial services to the 80 percent of African women who do not have a bank account and bolster the growth of the world's poorest continent. It's not just about empowering women, it's about economic growth. Unless we can make access to finance easier for women in their businesses, we will be missing out on a significant portion of growth within our economies

The more we can encourage entrepreneurship, particularly for young people, the more they have hope. That requires some reforms in these [African] governments: rooting out corruption, increased transparency and how government operates, making sure that regulations are not designed just to advantage elites, but are allowing people who have a good idea to get out there and get things done.

China has established friendship with many African countries, and is opening itself up to Africa and providing assistance. It is cooperating with African countries on an equal basis and has no desire to colonize Africa.

A new generation of leaders is emerging in Africa who does not want to approach the world with a begging bowl. Leaders who want to engage the world as partners; leaders who are prepared to take responsibilities for the problems of their countries and continent; leaders who recognize the enormous opportunities that abound in the world and are eager to connect Africa to the centers of those opportunities; leaders who want to harness the huge resources of Africa to play on the global stage; leaders who are not content to ask, ‘what can the rest of the world do for us', but rather ‘what can we do with the rest of the world.'

Ethiopia did not have the same problem [of corruption]. African leaders looked at us with envy.