Magatte Wade

If your plan for fighting poverty makes it harder to create wealth, you owe poor people an explanation and an apology.

About 1.5 billion people escaped extreme poverty between 1990 and 2022. 

Economic growth was a major part of that progress. 

For Africa, making it easier to build businesses and trade is about giving more people a way to earn enough to live well.

“If it is almost impossible to do business in a place like Africa, how are we supposed to create companies, hire employees, and grow?”

The heart of a Cheetah / Magatte Wade

Not good but also not surprising…

I'm so excited to be joining @petersonacademy to teach “How to Avoid the Trap of National Victimhood”!

There is something comforting about being told that all your problems are someone else’s fault. But what happens when people build their whole identity around being victims?

I will draw on my own experience to explain who benefits from keeping that story alive and how entrepreneurship offers a way out.

We are filming in Phoenix, Arizona, and I’d love to see you there! 👇🏾

Another great clip from our school in Senegal 😊

5 activities to help your child become independent:

Apparently, an African who disagrees with a Marxist must have been influenced by white people. Are we not allowed to think for ourselves? (the irony is that Marx was… *cough cough* white).

A pharmacist in Tanzania made electricity the first requirement in her business plan.

Not funding.

Not customers.

@magattew's argument: reliable power is the infrastructure entrepreneurs need before opportunity can grow.

To learn more about the work of Prosperity Not Poverty, visit: prosperitynotpoverty.org

These children give me so much hope for Africa! 🥹

This is @tiossanacademy, the school I founded in Meckhé, a small town in Senegal.

Our younger children learn by exploring and making things with their hands, using a Montessori-inspired approach that gives them room to follow their curiosity.

The teenagers learn through Socratic dialogue. They discuss ideas and question each other, learning to explain why they believe something instead of simply repeating an answer.

They also learn AI, coding, digital marketing, etc.

We have had teens start making money with their new skills within just a few weeks!

I am so proud of these kids.

Seeing them discover what they can do is one of the most rewarding parts of our work, and I would love for more children to have the chance to learn this way! ❤️

Air conditioning saves thousands of lives, and somehow even that gets a “but.” (Just look at this headline!)

This is what bothers me about the degrowth mentality: people staying alive and comfortable becomes something to apologize for because it uses energy.

The problem worth solving is how to make cooling affordable and power it reliably.

An environmental movement that loses sight of human well-being has lost its purpose.

This shouldn’t be controversial:

Getting rich by making other people’s lives better is nothing to apologize for.

Why is Switzerland 🇨🇭 so rich?

Its GDP per person was about 27% higher than America’s in 2025 (measured in US dollars).

Switzerland has a president, but the job comes with far less power than the title suggests.

Its national government is run by seven members of the Federal Council, each responsible for a department. One serves as president for a year, but does not become the boss of the other six.

And much of the power stays closer to home.

The country has 26 cantons (think of them as states), each with its own constitution, parliament and courts. Within the national constitution, they have substantial authority over things like schools and policing, and set their own tax rates.

So people and businesses can compare what different cantons offer. They can move to another canton without leaving Switzerland. That gives officials a reason to care about whether taxes and public services are worth what people pay.

It also lets cantons try different approaches and learn from each other, instead of making the whole country wait for one national plan.

Citizens can challenge federal laws through referendums, too. Winning an election does not give politicians the final word on everything.

Switzerland has ranked near the top for economic freedom year after year. It placed 4th worldwide in @FraserInstitute’s latest report (2025, using 2023 data), after placing 3rd in both the 2023 and 2024 editions.

There is a lesson here for Africa.

We spend so much time hoping the next leader will save us.

It would be far healthier to have systems where people have more choices, and fewer decisions about their future depend on whoever holds the highest office.

In these times of “AI consciousness” nonsense, I am grateful for voices like yours, @lukeburgis

@PageauJonathan does a great job too, and I am glad you will be hosting him soon. Would have loved to be there for the one with our dear friend @AndreasWidmer

Some serious work about consciousness is on its way… Will text you.

Economic growth for the win! 🥳

I came across this “Workers Deserve More” graphic in the Democratic Socialists of America’s program.

Here’s the hard truth:

If you care about improving workers’ pay and working conditions, it’s pointless to do more marching and slogan-shouting while supporting rules that leave workers with fewer jobs to choose from.

Workers need employers competing to hire them.

Getting there means doing something many labor activists oppose: make it easier to start businesses and to hire and fire employees.

When firing becomes a legal nightmare, hiring becomes a risk many employers won’t take.

Others decide not to open a business at all.

Reducing those risks encourage more businesses to open and recruit. With more employers competing for workers, better pay and conditions become ways to attract people and keep them.

The best way to help workers is to make it easier to start businesses and to hire and fire employees.

Giving workers more protections on paper means little if those rules leave them with fewer jobs to choose from.

Whether a policy helps poor people matters more than whether supporting it makes you feel like a good person.

It’s strange how often people who say they hate monopolies support rules that make it harder for anyone new to compete… if you catch my drift.

Pity is a terrible marketing strategy.

I don't want Africa's future to depend on foreign aid. Our people have far more to offer than stories that make donors feel sorry for us.

We can build businesses that make things the world needs. When customers buy because the product is good, they come back. Those sales help businesses grow and create jobs.

That is the relationship I want with the world: respect for what we contribute, and the ability to pay our own way.

We have become so used to abundance that we barely see it anymore.

You order something online at night, and a box is at your door the next morning. You don't know who packed it, built the software or drove the truck.

You just take it inside.

Then you get coffee, made exactly the way you like it, with beans grown thousands of miles away.

And we call this normal.

A king in 1700 could own a palace and still couldn't call his family across an ocean or take antibiotics for an infection.

None of this happened by itself. People took risks, built businesses and spent years solving problems most of us never think about.

They don't need to know you to make your life better. The coffee shop owner earns a living by making something you want. If the coffee is terrible, you can go elsewhere. That gives the owner a reason to care.

That's what people miss when they talk about markets as if they are cold.

I grew up in Senegal, where I have watched talented people struggle just to get permission to run a business. I know what we lose when people aren't free to try.

The abundance around us was built by people. They deserve more of our gratitude, and more freedom to keep building.

This lady is absolutely right. 

The Black community needs to stop defending destructive behavior as “our culture” and attacking the people who speak against it.