I Can't Believe This!
Magatte Wade, 2024 Julian L. Simon Memorial Award Winner!
I still can’t believe that The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is awarding me with the Julian L. Simon Memorial Award this year.
To be one of the 23 winners of this award, among them a couple of Nobel Prize winners and many of other outstanding economists and social thinkers, is WILD and feels SURREAL! 🥹
My intellectual journey started when I was a little girl, who had just arrived in Germany and could not believe her eyes at the abundance I saw there compared to my native land I had just left for the first time.
My question then was “how come they have THIS and we don’t?” and quickly became “how come countries like mine and many others in Africa are poor, while other nations are prosperous?”.
My obsession with that question, and the subsequent relentless pursuit for answers, led me to my current conclusions of why is Africa is still the poorest region in the world today and most importantly how we can LEAPFROG from being the economic laggers to become the leading global co-creators in Prosperity and Innovation in the foreseeable future.
In 1980, Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich bet on the future of natural resource prices as a vehicle for their public debate about mankind's future. Simon ultimately won, and his victory has been used as evidence that innovation can offset material scarcity induced by human economic activity.
Today, my bet against the many naysayers and doom-and-gloomers about Africa is that we will see African nations as prosperous as Singapore, if not more, within the next 50 years.
You read it here first… 😎
Read my book, The Heart of the Cheetah for the blueprint I propose.
The more economic freedom a country has, the more people's incomes tend to rise.
- Magatte Wade
Congrats, Magatte
Congratulations!!