The age-old sharing economies of Africa -- and why we should scale them | Robert Neuwirth

48,578 views ・ 2018-06-07

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

Translator: Reviewer: Daban Q. Jaff
00:12
So what I'm doing
0
12954
1307
00:15
is a thought experiment.
1
15006
3568
00:19
Now you may know of or have read
2
19558
3020
00:22
this book by this guy.
3
22602
1414
00:24
It's probably the first and maybe the only bestseller
4
24040
3878
00:27
ever written about economics.
5
27942
1605
00:30
And you probably know a bit about what it says.
6
30092
3000
00:33
It talks about how nations all over the world will prosper
7
33550
6087
00:39
through the individual pursuit of individual profit.
8
39661
3986
00:44
Individual profit will be the mechanism for the prosperity of the world.
9
44153
4661
00:49
But the funny thing about Adam Smith
10
49717
2393
00:52
is that he was a stay-at-home kind of guy.
11
52134
2498
00:55
He actually never went further from Edinburgh
12
55073
3235
00:58
than France and Switzerland.
13
58332
2178
01:01
So my thought experiment is to imagine
14
61685
4158
01:05
what would have happened if Adam Smith had visited Africa.
15
65867
3442
01:10
And fortunately, there's actually an easy answer,
16
70917
3945
01:15
because the Arab lawyer and traveler Ibn Battuta
17
75868
5057
01:21
traveled down the east coast of Africa in the 14th century,
18
81902
3863
01:26
and what he found when he got to Mogadishu was a market,
19
86701
2719
01:29
and he wrote about it.
20
89444
1503
01:30
And basically, merchant ships came to the harbor,
21
90971
3969
01:34
and they weren't even allowed to land.
22
94964
1859
01:36
They had to drop anchor in the harbor,
23
96847
1877
01:38
and boats came out to them,
24
98748
1638
01:40
and locals picked them and said, "You are my guest, I am now your broker."
25
100410
4814
01:45
And they had to do business through the local broker,
26
105984
3780
01:49
and if they went around that and didn't do business through the broker,
27
109788
3485
01:53
they could go to court, and the deal would be canceled,
28
113297
4367
01:57
and they would be thrown out of town.
29
117688
1838
01:59
And through this mechanism, everyone prospered.
30
119550
2754
02:03
And so if that was Adam Smith, he might look like this guy
31
123502
2855
02:06
and say, "Ah! That's a mutual aid society.
32
126381
3560
02:09
That's a share-the-wealth free market."
33
129965
2631
02:12
And when I put this question to Christian [Benimana],
34
132620
2642
02:15
who had the stage at the beginning of this session,
35
135286
3472
02:18
he responded that if Adam Smith had come to Africa,
36
138782
2873
02:21
there would have been a sharing economy long before Airbnb and Uber.
37
141679
4196
02:25
And that's true.
38
145899
1300
02:27
So if we put this to work today,
39
147714
2795
02:31
it would be very interesting.
40
151358
1422
02:32
There would be a lot of money flowing into the countries.
41
152804
2680
02:35
These are just figures of 10 percent of exports in these countries.
42
155508
5460
02:41
So the interesting thing is that this mutual aid economy still exists,
43
161633
6336
02:47
and we can find examples of it in the strangest places.
44
167993
3834
02:51
So, this is Alaba International Market.
45
171851
2454
02:54
It's the largest electronics market in West Africa.
46
174329
4607
02:58
It's 10,000 merchants,
47
178960
1378
03:00
they do about four billion dollars of turnover every year.
48
180362
3066
03:03
And they say they are ardent apostles of Adam Smith:
49
183452
2634
03:06
competition is great, we're all in it individually,
50
186110
2708
03:08
government doesn't help us.
51
188842
1612
03:10
But the interesting reality is that when I asked further,
52
190808
3296
03:14
that's not what grew the market at all.
53
194128
2950
03:17
There's a behind-the-scenes principle
54
197777
2904
03:20
that enables this market to grow.
55
200705
3825
03:25
And they do claim -- you know, this is an interesting juxtaposition
56
205194
3335
03:28
of the King James Bible and "How To Sell Yourself."
57
208553
3387
03:31
That's what they say is their message.
58
211964
2664
03:34
But in reality, this market is governed by a sharing principle.
59
214652
4117
03:39
Every merchant, when you ask them, "How did you get started in global trade?"
60
219705
4778
03:44
they say, "Well, when my master settled me."
61
224507
3171
03:48
And when I finally got it into my head to ask, "What is this 'settling?'"
62
228262
4201
03:52
it turns out that when you've done your apprenticeship
63
232487
2674
03:55
with someone you work for,
64
235185
1519
03:56
they are required -- required -- to set you up in business.
65
236728
3994
04:00
That means paying your rent for two or three years
66
240746
2551
04:03
and giving you a cash infusion
67
243321
2028
04:05
so you can go out in the world and start trading.
68
245373
2867
04:09
That's locally generated venture capital. Right?
69
249018
3098
04:12
And I can say with almost certainty
70
252140
2378
04:14
that the Igbo apprenticeship system that governs Alaba International Market
71
254542
5893
04:20
is the largest business incubator platform in the world.
72
260459
5414
04:26
And there are other sharing economies that we look for --
73
266634
3831
04:30
merry-go-rounds, which are found in almost every shantytown.
74
270489
3371
04:33
They have different names in other cultures; this is the Kenyan name.
75
273884
3294
04:37
It's a way of generating cash.
76
277202
1583
04:38
It's a kitty -- people throw money into a pot once a week,
77
278809
2735
04:41
and once a week, one member of the group gets the money,
78
281568
2641
04:44
and they can spend it on whatever they need to.
79
284233
2194
04:46
And there's also something called "acequias,"
80
286451
2587
04:49
and that is a Spanish word, but it comes from the North African Arabic;
81
289062
4342
04:53
"saqiya" means "water wheel."
82
293428
1628
04:55
And what the acequia is is a sharing system for scarce water.
83
295420
4276
04:59
It's migrated from North Africa to Spain,
84
299720
3342
05:03
and from Spain to the west of the United States,
85
303086
2612
05:05
where it still is used.
86
305722
1428
05:07
And it shares water by need
87
307862
3784
05:11
rather than by who was there first.
88
311670
2148
05:15
And contrary, with all due respect, to what Llew [Claasen] said
89
315338
3795
05:19
when he talked about blockchains and cryptocurrencies yesterday,
90
319158
4762
05:23
there is no tragedy of the commons.
91
323944
2991
05:26
People in acequias have been commonly managing scarce water resources
92
326959
4735
05:31
for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.
93
331718
3225
05:36
So taking this thought experiment, I wanted to go a little bit further
94
336717
4644
05:41
and suggest that these things are managed communally,
95
341385
6775
05:48
and they are taking care of scarce capital, scarce cash
96
348184
6117
05:54
and scarce resources.
97
354325
1486
05:57
And it seems to me that we have actually two kinds of capitalism.
98
357383
5008
06:03
We have the capitalism of the top up.
99
363430
3086
06:06
And these are really interesting statistics,
100
366907
2438
06:09
because three one-thousandths of one percent of the Nigerian population
101
369369
6228
06:15
controls wealth equal to one-fourth of the GDP of the country.
102
375621
5281
06:21
One one-hundredth of one percent of the Kenyan population
103
381910
3187
06:25
controls wealth equal to 75 percent of the GDP of the country.
104
385121
5620
06:31
That's the capitalism of top up.
105
391412
2897
06:35
And everyone else is with this guy,
106
395069
2858
06:37
selling board games and bodybuilding equipment
107
397951
2523
06:40
in a go-slow on the highway in Lagos.
108
400498
2887
06:43
And when you're selling board games and bodybuilding equipment in a go-slow,
109
403409
3689
06:47
that traffic jam is really, really, really bad, right?
110
407122
4543
06:51
Those of us in this sphere of the economy
111
411689
2522
06:54
are caught in what I call "the capitalism of decay,"
112
414235
3391
06:58
because there's no way to rise up and get out of it,
113
418320
3303
07:02
because they're lacking the resources that we talked about
114
422352
2744
07:05
in those sharing economies.
115
425120
1561
07:06
And they're tripped up
116
426705
1978
07:08
by the thesis of cassava and capitalism,
117
428707
5038
07:13
that cassava has to be processed in order not to be poisonous,
118
433769
3758
07:18
and I would argue that, similarly,
119
438130
3145
07:21
the market economy needs to be processed in order to be fair to everyone.
120
441299
5039
07:28
So we have to look at what I call the "bottom down economy."
121
448747
4655
07:33
These are these sharing models that exist out there
122
453426
3840
07:37
that need to be propagated and used and scaled.
123
457290
4345
07:41
OK?
124
461659
1271
07:42
And if we propagate these things,
125
462954
2102
07:45
we can begin to bring infrastructure to everyone,
126
465080
2984
07:48
and that will ensure that communities
127
468850
2783
07:51
are leading their own development,
128
471657
2827
07:55
which is, I believe, what we need in the world,
129
475595
2669
07:58
and, I would suggest, what we need in Africa.
130
478288
2187
08:01
I wanted to quote Steve Biko,
131
481903
3298
08:05
and I thought it was really important to quote Steve Biko,
132
485225
2777
08:08
because next month, September 12 to be exact,
133
488026
4319
08:12
is the 40th anniversary of his murder by the South African state.
134
492369
4930
08:18
And you can read the quote.
135
498097
2042
08:20
He basically said that we're not here to compete.
136
500163
3045
08:24
And I love this quote: "... to make us a community of brothers and sisters
137
504064
3919
08:28
jointly involved in the quest for a composite answer
138
508007
3089
08:31
to the varied problems of life."
139
511120
1840
08:33
And he also said that "the great powers of the world
140
513848
3168
08:37
have done wonders in giving us an industrial and military look, ..."
141
517040
3830
08:40
and we don't have to copy that military-industrialist complex,
142
520894
3699
08:44
because Africa can do things differently
143
524617
2446
08:47
and restore the humanity of the world.
144
527087
3697
08:51
And so what I want to suggest here
145
531825
2226
08:55
is that we have an opportunity,
146
535305
1620
08:58
that we are all here in the mutual landscape
147
538314
3502
09:02
to be able to do things,
148
542592
1851
09:05
and that the journey starts now.
149
545618
2866
09:09
Thank you very much.
150
549318
1158
09:10
(Applause)
151
550500
2488
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7