I experienced my first coup d'état at the age of four. Because of the coup d'état, my family had to leave my native home of Ghana and move to the Gambia. As luck would have it, six months after we arrived, they too had a military coup. I vividly remember being woken up in the middle of the night and gathering the few belongings we could and walking for about two hours to a safe house. For a week, we slept under our beds because we were worried that bullets might fly through the window.
4岁的时候,我经历了人生第一场政变。 因为那场政变 我们被迫举家从祖国加纳 搬到了冈比亚。 可不巧的是, 就在我们抵达6个月后, 冈比亚也发生了军事政变。 我清楚的记得被半夜叫醒, 拿上我们能拿的几件随身物品 步行大约2个小时, 来到一个安全藏身处。 我们在床下面睡了一个星期, 因为担心子弹会从窗户飞进来。
Then, at the age of eight, we moved to Botswana. This time, it was different. There were no coups. Everything worked. Great education. They had such good infrastructure that even at the time they had a fiber-optic telephone system, long before it had reached Western countries.
后来,在我8岁的时候, 我们搬到了博茨瓦纳。 这一次情况大不相同。 没有政变, 所有事情井井有条,还有良好的教育体系。 他们的基础设施非常好,那时候就已经有了 西方国家很久以后才有的, 光纤电话系统。
The only thing they didn't have is that they didn't have their own national television station, and so I remember watching TV from neighboring South Africa, and watching Nelson Mandela in jail being offered a chance to come out if he would give up the apartheid struggle. But he didn't. He refused to do that until he actually achieved his objective of freeing South Africa from apartheid. And I remember feeling how just one good leader could make such a big difference in Africa.
他们唯一缺乏的是, 他们没有 自己的国家电视台, 所以我还记得 收看邻国南非的电视节目, 看到狱中的 纳尔逊·曼德拉 被告知,如果放弃种族主义斗争 就可以出狱。 但他拒绝这么做, 直到有一天,他真正实现了 把南非从种族隔离中解放出来的目标。 我至今记得那种激动的感受:一个优秀的领导者 竟能让非洲产生了如此巨大的变化。
Then at the age of 12, my family sent me to high school in Zimbabwe. Initially, this too was amazing: growing economy, excellent infrastructure, and it seemed like it was a model for economic development in Africa. I graduated from high school in Zimbabwe and I went off to college.
在我12岁那年, 家人把我送到津巴布韦上中学。 起初,这里情况也非常不错: 经济持续增长,基础设施完备, 看上去像是一个 非洲经济大发展的典范。 我从津巴布韦中学毕业后 去国外读了大学。
Six years later, I returned to the country. Everything was different. It had shattered into pieces. Millions of people had emigrated, the economy was in a shambles, and it seemed all of a sudden that 30 years of development had been wiped out. How could a country go so bad so fast? Most people would agree that it's all because of leadership. One man, President Robert Mugabe, is almost single-handedly responsible for having destroyed this country.
6年后,我再次回到这个国家。 情况完全变了, 整个社会支离破碎, 上百万人移民他乡, 经济土崩瓦解。 就好像30年的发展成果 突然间烟消云散了一样。 一个国家怎么会如此迅速的急剧滑坡? 大多数人都会认同, 所有这一切都是领导人的问题。 整个国家几乎毁在了 总统罗伯特·穆加贝 一个人手上。
Now, all these experiences of living in different parts of Africa growing up did two things to me. The first is it made me fall in love with Africa. Everywhere I went, I experienced the wonderful beauty of our continent and saw the resilience and the spirit of our people, and at the time, I realized that I wanted to dedicate the rest of my life to making this continent great. But I also realized that making Africa great would require addressing this issue of leadership. You see, all these countries I lived in, the coups d'état and the corruption I'd seen in Ghana and Gambia and in Zimbabwe, contrasted with the wonderful examples I had seen in Botswana and in South Africa of good leadership. It made me realize that Africa would rise or fall because of the quality of our leaders.
现在,这些在非洲 不同国家的成长经历, 对我产生了两个影响。 一是让我爱上了非洲。 不管在非洲哪里, 我都能感受到这片大陆美丽动人的地方, 看到人们不屈不挠的精神。 那时我就意识到,我想用毕生精力 把这片大陆建设得更加美好。 但我也意识到要想把非洲变得更加美好, 绕不开领导力的问题。 你们看,所有我生活过的国家, 有政变, 有在加纳、冈比亚还有津巴布韦 看到的腐败, 跟我在博茨瓦纳和南非所见到的 卓越领导力的典范形成鲜明对比。 这让我意识到我们领导人的素质, 决定了非洲的兴衰成败。
Now, one might think, of course, leadership matters everywhere. But if there's one thing you take away from my talk today, it is this: In Africa, more than anywhere else in the world, the difference that just one good leader can make is much greater than anywhere else, and here's why. It's because in Africa, we have weak institutions, like the judiciary, the constitution, civil society and so forth. So here's a general rule of thumb that I believe in: When societies have strong institutions, the difference that one good leader can make is limited, but when you have weak institutions, then just one good leader can make or break that country.
可能有人会说,当然, 领导力放在哪里都重要。 但如果我今天的演讲能让你有一点收获,那就是: 在非洲,一个好的领导者 能带来的巨大改变, 要远比其他区域更为显著。原因如下: 在非洲,我们的制度还不健全, 比如司法、宪法、 公民社会,等等。 所以我相信这条一般规律: 如果一个社会制度健全, 好的领导人所带来的改变也是有限的。 但如果一个社会制度不健全, 一个好的领导人 就能成就或(坏的领导人)毁掉一个国家。
Let me make it a bit more concrete. You become the president of the United States. You think, "Wow, I've arrived. I'm the most powerful man in the world." So you decide, perhaps let me pass a law. All of a sudden, Congress taps you on the shoulder and says, "No, no, no, no, no, you can't do that." You say, "Let me try this way." The Senate comes and says, "Uh-uh, we don't think you can do that." You say, perhaps, "Let me print some money. I think the economy needs a stimulus." The central bank governor will think you're crazy. You might get impeached for that. But if you become the president of Zimbabwe, and you say, "You know, I really like this job. I think I'd like to stay in it forever." (Laughter) Well, you just can. You decide you want to print money. You call the central bank governor and you say, "Please double the money supply." He'll say, "Okay, yes, sir, is there anything else I can do for you?" This is the power that African leaders have, and this is why they make the most difference on the continent.
让我说的再具体一点。 假设你成了美国总统, 你会想:「哇,这一天终于到了。 我成了世界上最有权势的人。」 然后你决定,要签署一项法案。 但突然,国会会拍拍你的肩膀, 对你说「不,不,不,不,不行,你不能那么干。」 你说,「就让我试试嘛。」 参议院却说, 「额,我们觉得你不能这么做。」 你或许会想,「印点钞票吧。 我觉得需要刺激一下经济。」 美联储主席会觉得你疯了。 你可能会因此被弹劾。 但如果你成了津巴布韦的总统, 你说,「你看,我非常喜欢这份工作。 我想我要在这个位置上永远干下去。」(笑声) 而你真的可以做到。 你决定了要印钞票, 就给央行行长打电话说: 「请多印一倍的钞票。」 他会说:「没问题,总统先生, 还需要其他服务吗?」 这就是非洲领导者拥有的巨大权力, 这也是为什么领导者的好坏能在这片土地上 产生迥异影响的原因。
The good news is that the quality of leadership in Africa has been improving. We've had three generations of leaders, in my mind. Generation one are those who appeared in the '50s and '60s. These are people like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. The legacy they left is that they brought independence to Africa. They freed us from colonialism, and let's give them credit for that. They were followed by generation two. These are people that brought nothing but havoc to Africa. Think warfare, corruption, human rights abuses. This is the stereotype of the typical African leader that we typically think of: Mobutu Sese Seko from Zaire, Sani Abacha from Nigeria. The good news is that most of these leaders have moved on, and they were replaced by generation three. These are people like the late Nelson Mandela and most of the leaders that we see in Africa today, like Paul Kagame and so forth. Now these leaders are by no means perfect, but the one thing they have done is that they have cleaned up much of the mess of generation two. They've stopped the fighting, and I call them the stabilizer generation. They're much more accountable to their people, they've improved macroeconomic policies, and we are seeing for the first time Africa's growing, and in fact it's the second fastest growing economic region in the world. So these leaders are by no means perfect, but they are by and large the best leaders we've seen in the last 50 years.
好消息是, 非洲领导者的素质在逐步提升。 在我看来,我们经历了三代领导人。 第一代是出现在 50和60年代的, 比如像加纳总统夸梅·恩克鲁玛, 坦桑尼亚总统朱利叶斯·尼雷尔, 他们的贡献是实现了非洲的独立。 他们把我们从殖民主义中解放出来, 这些应该归功于他们。 他们之后是第二代领导人。 这些人只给非洲 带来了浩劫。 比如战争、腐败、践踏人权。 我们一想到非洲国家领导人就会联想到这种典型形象, 他们是这种形象的原型。 像扎伊尔的蒙博托·塞塞·塞科, 尼日利亚的萨尼·阿巴查。 好消息是这些领导人大多已下台了, 他们被第三代领导人接替。 比如像已故的纳尔逊·曼德拉, 以及现在我们看到的非洲大部分国家的领导人, 像保罗·卡加梅等等。 当然这些领导人并不完美, 但他们都做了一件事,那就是 清理上两代领导人遗留下来的很多问题。 他们停止了战争, 我把他们称为安定的一代。 他们对人民更加负责, 他们改善了宏观经济政策。 我们头一次看到 非洲的经济增长已事实上使其成为 世界第二快速增长的经济区域。 这些领导人虽不完美, 但他们总体上来说 是过去50年来我们见过的最好的领导者。
So where to from here? I believe that the next generation to come after this, generation four, has a unique opportunity to transform the continent. Specifically, they can do two things that previous generations have not done. The first thing they need to do is they need to create prosperity for the continent. Why is prosperity so important? Because none of the previous generations have been able to tackle this issue of poverty. Africa today has the fastest growing population in the world, but also is the poorest. By 2030, Africa will have a larger workforce than China, and by 2050, it will have the largest workforce in the world. One billion people will need jobs in Africa, so if we don't grow our economies fast enough, we're sitting on a ticking time bomb, not just for Africa but for the entire world.
那么下一代领导人会如何? 我认为在此之后的下一代, 也就是第四代领导者, 对非洲的转型来说, 有着独一无二的机会。 具体来说,他们可以做两件 前任领导人没有做到的事情。 第一件, 他们需要给非洲带来经济繁荣。 为什么经济繁荣这么重要? 因为之前没有任何一代领导人成功 解决了贫困问题。 今天的非洲, 有着世界上增速最快的人口, 但同时也是最穷的人口。 到2030年,非洲的劳动人口将超过中国。 到2050年,非洲将拥有世界上最多的劳动人口。 将有10亿人在非洲有工作需求, 所以,如果我们不能高速发展经济, 我们就相当于坐在一个定时炸弹上面, 不仅是针对非洲,对全世界也是如此。
Let me show you an example of one person who is living up to this legacy of creating prosperity: Laetitia. Laetitia's a young woman from Kenya who at the age of 13 had to drop out of school because her family couldn't afford to pay fees for her. So she started her own business rearing rabbits, which happen to be a delicacy in this part of Kenya that she's from. This business did so well that within a year, she was employing 15 women and was able to generate enough income that she was able to send herself to school, and through these women fund another 65 children to go to school. The profits that she generated, she used that to build a school, and today she educates 400 children in her community. And she's just turned 18. (Applause)
下面我给大家分享一个案例 看看她是怎么在给促进经济繁荣上贡献自己力量的。 她叫莱提纱, 莱提纱是肯尼亚的一个年轻女孩。 因为家里供不起她的学费, 13岁她就退学了。 于是她自己做起了养兔子的生意, 在肯尼亚她所处的区域, 兔肉是当地的一道美食。 她的生意风生水起,不到一年的时间, 她就雇用了15个女工。 带来的收入也足够 供她自己去学校读书。 她给女工们发放的工资 让另外65个孩子上了学。 她还用收入所得 建了一所学校。 到现在为止,她已经 为社区的400名儿童提供了教育, 而她只不过刚过18岁而已。 (掌声)
Another example is Erick Rajaonary. Erick comes from the island of Madagascar. Now, Erick realized that agriculture would be the key to creating jobs in the rural areas of Madagascar, but he also realized that fertilizer was a very expensive input for most farmers in Madagascar. Madagascar has these very special bats that produce these droppings that are very high in nutrients. In 2006, Erick quit his job as a chartered accountant and started a company to manufacture fertilizer from the bat droppings. Today, Erick has built a business that generates several million dollars of revenue, and he employs 70 people full time and another 800 people during the season when the bats drop their droppings the most. Now, what I like about this story is that it shows that opportunities to create prosperity can be found almost anywhere. Erick is known as the Batman. (Laughter) And who would have thought that you would have been able to build a multimillion-dollar business employing so many people just from bat poo? The second thing that this generation needs to do is to create our institutions. They need to build these institutions such that we are never held to ransom again by a few individuals like Robert Mugabe.
另一个例子是埃里克.拉加拉里。 埃里克来自马达加斯加岛。 他现在发现农业 是给马达加斯加农村地区 带来工作机会的关键。 但是他也意识到对于马达加斯加的 大部分农民来说,化肥是一笔非常昂贵的支出。 马达加斯加有一类特殊的蝙蝠, 他们的排泄物 富含养分。 在2006年,埃里克辞去了注册会计师的职务, 成立了一个公司 从这种蝙蝠的排泄物生产化肥。 到今天,埃里克的生意已经是 年收入数百万美元的大买卖了。 他有70名全职员工, 在蝙蝠排泄物最多的季节 还要额外雇800人。 我之所以喜欢这些故事, 在于他们展示了能够创造繁荣的机会 无所不在。 埃里克现在被戏称为蝙蝠侠。 (笑声) 谁会想到你能 用蝙蝠大便做成百万美元级别的生意 并雇佣这么多人? 这一代领导人要做的第二件事是, 建立我们的制度。 他们需要建立各种制度,确保我们的国家 不再被罗伯特·穆加贝(津巴布韦总统) 这样的少数人所劫持、操控。
Now, all of this sounds great, but where are we going to get this generation four from? Do we just sit and hope that they emerge by chance, or that God gives them to us? No, I don't think so. It's too important an issue for us to leave it to chance. I believe that we need to create African institutions, home-grown, that will identify and develop these leaders in a systematic, practical way. We've been doing this for the last 10 years through the African Leadership Academy. Laetitia is one of our young leaders. Today, we have 700 of them that are being groomed for the African continent, and over the next 50 years, we expect to create 6,000 of them.
现在所有这些听起来都很美好, 但我们从哪里寻找第四代领导者们呢? 我们是不是坐等他们偶然出现, 或是上帝把他们恩赐给我们? 我觉得这恐怕不行。 对于如此重要的问题,我们绝不能干等着撞大运。 我们需要创立非洲本土化的教育机构, 系统地、切合实际地 识别和培养这些领导者。 过去的10年里,我们已经通过 非洲领导力学院付诸了实践。 莱提纱就是我们的年轻领导者中的一员。 如今,他们中的700名学员 是为非洲大陆进行培养的。 在未来50年, 我们期望能为非洲大陆培养6000名领导者。
But one thing has been troubling me. We would get about 4,000 applications a year for 100 young leaders that we could take into this academy, and so I saw the tremendous hunger that existed for this leadership training that we're offering. But we couldn't satisfy it. So today, I'm announcing for the first time in public an extension to this vision for the African Leadership Academy. We're building 25 brand new universities in Africa that are going to cultivate this next generation of African leaders. Each campus will have 10,000 leaders at a time so we'll be educating and developing 250,000 leaders at any given time. (Applause)
但有一件事一直困扰着我, 我们每年能收到4000份入学申请, 却只能从中挑选出100名年轻领导者 进入我们的学院。 所以我发现目前提供的 领导力培训有着巨大的需求, 而我们却无法全部满足。 所以今天,我第一次公开宣布 非洲领导力学院的扩招计划。 我们正在非洲建设 25 所全新的校园, 来培养下一代 非洲的领导人。 每所校园每次将招收10000名学员, 所以我们在任何时候都会在教育和培养着 25万名未来的领导者。 (掌声)
Over the next 50 years, this institution will create three million transformative leaders for the continent.
在未来50年里,这个学院 将会为非洲大陆培养300万名 具有变革能力的领导者。
My hope is that half of them will become the entrepreneurs that we need, who will create these jobs that we need, and the other half will go into government and the nonprofit sector, and they will build the institutions that we need. But they won't just learn academics. They will also learn how to become leaders, and they will develop their skills as entrepreneurs. So think of this as Africa's Ivy League, but instead of getting admitted because of your SAT scores or because of how much money you have or which family you come from, the main criteria for getting into this university will be what is the potential that you have for transforming Africa?
我希望他们中的一半 能成为我们需要的企业家, 为我们创造工作机会。 另一半 会进入政府部门 以及非盈利机构, 他们会创建我们需要的各种制度。 当然,他们不仅学习专业知识, 他们也学习如何成为领导者, 并培养企业家的能力。 可以把它想象成 非洲的常青藤盟校, 但是我们不会根据你的 SAT 分数确定你是否入学, 也不会看你有多少钱, 也不会看你的家庭出身, 入学的主要条件是, 你有哪些潜力 能给非洲带来改变。
But what we're doing is just one group of institutions. We cannot transform Africa by ourselves. My hope is that many, many other home-grown African institutions will blossom, and these institutions will all come together with a common vision of developing this next generation of African leaders, generation four, and they will teach them this common message: create jobs, build our institutions.
但是我们正在做的只是一小部分学院, 光靠我们还不足以改变非洲。 我希望 更多非洲本土的 教育机构能够开花结果, 这些学院将同舟共济, 把培养非洲下一代, 也就是第四代领导者, 作为共同的奋斗目标。 学院将教授他们共同的使命: 创造就业机会,建立完善各种社会制度。
Nelson Mandela once said, "Every now and then, a generation is called upon to be great. You can be that great generation." I believe that if we carefully identify and cultivate the next generation of African leaders, then this generation four that is coming up will be the greatest generation that Africa and indeed the entire world has ever seen.
纳尔逊 曼德拉曾说过: 「有时候, 时势使一代人变的伟大, 你们可以成就这伟大的一代。」 我相信,如果我们能细致的识别和培养 下一代非洲领导人, 那么这即将到来的第四代非洲领导人, 将会成为非洲以致全世界都前所未见的 最伟大的一代。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)