Why Africa Needs Startup Cities

The Path to Prosperity: Building the Foundations for a New African Dream

In the future, millions of Americans will want to immigrate to Africa. 

And I don’t just mean retirees looking to stretch their dollars, or perverts looking for sex tourist thrills. 

I mean all kinds of Americans will want to permanently move to Africa. 

Image created by Ryan Rhoades.

Young Americans, looking to build tech empires. 

Older Americans, looking for their next solid investment opportunities. 

Africa is going to become a magnet for the world’s best and brightest. 

They will come to Africa in droves—not because they’ve seen some images of poor, pitiful Africa that they need to save, or because they want to pillage our resources—but because they want some of our incredible business magic to rub off on their wallets. 

Africa is going to become the next global hub for innovation, and African entrepreneurs will be at the helm. 

Why do I say this? Because as the Director for the Center for African Prosperity for the Atlas Network, I have the inside scoop on an initiative that gives me incredible hope for Africa’s future prosperity. We’ve set our sights on founding a Startup City.

What is a Startup City? 

Picture a bustling metropolis full of ambitious entrepreneurs. Everyone you meet is involved in growing local startups. Every person on the corner has a fresh idea, or they’re working with an innovative team that’s playing on a global stage. 

Image created by Ryan Rhoades.

Everywhere you look, people look happy, fulfilled, and successful. They’re getting on with their businesses and their jobs, free from the regulatory headaches they’ve experienced in other countries in Africa. 

Useless restrictions? Endless paperwork? Constant delays? They’ve all vanished.

Instead, you have a city teeming with wealthy, prosperous, inspired, and energetic people. No one will wonder where their next paycheck’s coming from. Instead, they’ll wonder how they can create more jobs and deliver more paychecks to others.  

This is the future we envision, and it’s what we are working toward. 

My life’s mission is prosperity in Africa.

So, let me tell you a hard truth you’ve never heard before:

Africa isn’t poor because our countries are full of pitiful fools who are malnourished—even if the media likes to play up those lies. (Quite the contrary: many of our street sellers are better educated than college grads in the United States.)

Africa is poor because our business system keeps us poor.

It shackles us with red tape and unnecessary business regulations, making it almost impossible to start a business, much less run day-to-day operations efficiently. 

Trust me, I know from firsthand experience. Don’t even get me started talking about taxes or how hard it was to find the right supply of cardboard boxes for one of my businesses. 

Reformers have worked on changing these burdensome regulations bit by bit, but they are wrong. This approach has failed, and will always fail, because it takes forever. By the time they’re done cleaning up one bad set of business laws, another set pops up. Not to mention how many vested interests they run into. These arcane regulations put money into the pockets of notaries, unions, and politicians, who refuse to concede one inch of power.

That’s the reality for African entrepreneurs, but thankfully, we have a choice. 

We can either fight that uphill battle, or we can start fresh. We can find an uninhabited piece of land and create a new city—a Startup City, with business laws friendly to African entrepreneurs. We can provide a best-in-class business climate, let business owners escape the hellish obstacles that have been holding them back, and let Africa flourish. 

That’s the promise of Startup Cities. We’ve even found a spot in West Africa that’s perfect for the first city. And we are going to initiate a massive shift. 

When that city succeeds, other places will finally start to pay attention. Our startup city will be a beacon of prosperity, and I believe that if we can get one place to thrive then the rest of Africa will follow their lead. 

These new cities will be optimized for African entrepreneurs, and 90 percent of the workforce will come from our homeland. 

Our startups won’t be built for European or Asian investors. They won’t be the Utopia of libertarians around the world. They won’t be cut-and-pasted from someone else’s textbook. They’ll be guided by the best practices of our African ancestors, who embraced free-market values before slavery and colonization brought socialism to our shores. These cities will be zones designed by Africans, for Africans. 

History has shown that talent and capital tends to follow the most favorable environment. For too long, our best talent has fled to Europe or America in search of better opportunities. Startup Cities promise us a complete 180. They will empower Black Africans to be global co-creators of wealth and prosperity—and to do it on our own soil. 

There is a bright future for Africa, and it’s waiting for us to create it. I know that that future will arrive in my lifetime. This continent is on its way. But in order to get there, we need to start with a clean slate. We need to get rid of the rules that keep us in chains and let African entrepreneurs take the lead. 

That’s the future I’m fighting for and the one that I know will win.  

Will you join me? 

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