Episode 33 - The Prosperity Paradox with Efosa Ojomo
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How do you remove corruption from a society? How do you create lasting, sustainable prosperity in developing nations?
Neither of these questions has an easy or obvious answer, but today’s guest is a leading thinker in how we can make positive investments in developing countries. Efosa Ojomo is co-author of Prosperity Paradox, and he’s here to help us think about how to create prosperity.
He was such a great podcast guest that we asked him to speak at the FDI event in a few weeks, so you’ll want to tune in today and then at the conference to hear everything he has to share.
Episode Transcript
Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDI movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.
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Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the failure of an investor podcast. I'm here with William, my co-host. William, how are you?
William Norvell: I'm doing fantastic. Gets a little hot out here in California, which is rare for an Alabama guy to say, but we're hanging in there.
Henry Kaestner: Well, I know that you're in a house that doesn't have air conditioning and you'd ordinarily open the windows. But we've got wildfires and that's thrown a little bit of a wrench into things.
William Norvell: You've got you've got ash raining down end times, ash over there. Right.
Henry Kaestner: It's crazy. It really is crazy. So today we've got an amazing guest. And this is a big deal for me. For those who you know a little bit about my background coming out of bandwidth as we start up Sovereign's capital, we wanted to focus on Southeast Asia. We had some good relationships in Indonesia and Singapore. And through the grace of God, we've made about a dozen investments have gone really, really well in investing in Faith driven entrepreneurs in Indonesia and Singapore. But increasingly, God has put Africa on my heart. And I went with my family this month. Last year I'm recording this right now in August 20, 20, August to 2019. I went back to East Africa for the first time since 1984. I've been in South Africa a number of times in that time. But I went back to East Africa for the first time and obviously a long, long time, you know, so incredibly impressed by the amount of advancement and just how the marketplace was just thriving. And I guess anywhere around the world, there isn't a lot of change over the course of 35 or 40 years. But definitely in East Africa. And as we have had this ministry of Faith Driven Entrepreneur, which preceded Fater of an investor, I thought, gosh, was it look like to bring together faith driven entrepreneurs and faith driven investors to understand what's going on the marketplace? So we had a couple of Faith Driven Entrepreneur events. One was just this kind of impromptu meet up where we had 200 faith driven entrepreneurs getting together. Nairobi went back in February to try to understand where were investors, local Kenyan Christians investing and just met? No, really just motivating great godly people in government and in industry and then again in church and then among the entrepreneurial class and just felt completely drawn into their stories, just really encouraged and just really encouraged by the way that these astronauts were able to minister to me about how they had this heartfelt mission about loving on their communities in a way that was just it was just awesome. So I'm on an Africa kick and I've been on one. I don't think I'm ever going to get off it. And I came across a book, I guess it just bought in the airport. And I'm reading through this new book called The Prosperity Paradox by Clayton Christensen, and Efosa Ojomo. And I'm reading through it and just amazed by it. And it's making the case for investing in Africa. And as I'm reading it, I knew a little bit about Clayton Christensen's faith background. And it comes from a Mormon faith and just very vocal about how faith influences the way that he thinks about his work and unfortunate and also known that he had just passed away. And I'm reading this and seeing the contributions from his coauthor, Efosa Ojomo. I wonder if Efosa has a faith foundation as well. Wouldn't it be incredible if he has also committed Christ Fowler and that informed his work? And so then I'm like, OK, I'm going to look for this guy. I'm going to find this author because I wonder if he is. And if he is, he might help us unlock as a group of faith driven investors, how to go about investing. And so we track him down. And as it turns out, he is a committed Christ father. He did coauthor the book. And he is also on today's episode of Faith Driven Investor. You can't make this stuff up. Efosa, welcome to the program.
Efosa Ojomo: Thank you. Thank you so much, Henry and William. It's really an honor to be here. Wow. Thank you.
Henry Kaestner: Super cool to have you. So we start every episode by, we're going to get into the book, but we get to the things that guy has taught you in your life and the hopes that you've got for Africa. And together, mostly you. To be clear, that burns mostly on you. We're gonna make this case for investing in Africa that you can actually do well, that you can help involved in lifting a continent out. And there's some big deals to be done and there's some really compelling opportunities. But before we do that, we'd like to interview each one of our guests and understand a little bit of their background. Who are you? Where do you come from?
Efosa Ojomo: Yeah. Thank you. So I'm originally from Nigeria and I was born and raised there till I was 16, where I moved to the States for college. I was born into a really loving family. I've got three siblings. We're all thankfully Christ followers. There was one of those things where at an early age can't really describe it. But I just had this awareness of God's love for me and for all of us.
And so, you know, I would say my parents were what you would call a good people. They were nice people. They taught us to be kind, humble, caring, generous.
But, you know, they didn't quite introduce the gospel to us, like we weren't going to attend a Sunday school, that kind of thing. But I was nine years old and went to boarding school. Somehow I just was aware that there was a God that loved me, and that was when I decided to commit my life to him.
Now, since then, it's been a journey, as any Christ follow would tell you. Ups and downs. But I would say that's when the journey started for me. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that sort of explains my background upbringing. The connection to the US, though, is quite interesting because it also connects to the work I do today. When I was 16, I was fortunate to get a scholarship to come to college in the U.S. I bought a one way ticket. No intentions of ever going back to Nigeria. Sort of typical immigrant story. You know, you're gonna come to America, embraced the American dream, and life was going to be good. And I got to tell you, I was there. I mean, I got a job as an engineer. I was working and bought a house, bought a car, even bought an SUV, you know, big gas guzzling SUV. And I was I was all about America. But then my life changed after I began reading about poverty, development and economics. And we can go into details as we talk.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah. Yeah. So Nigeria's this country. And maybe I'll just talk about the elephant in the room. Many of our listeners have been in contact with people from Nigeria before that have invited them to participate in different things. And your family, too was brought into some of the challenges that are part of Nigerian. We're going to be clear. This is episode about talking about the very good things going on in Nigeria and Africa. And yet many of us have this experience of interacting with people in Nigeria and there's some amount of corruption. And that impacted your family, I think, with your sister.
Efosa Ojomo: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So the thing about, you know, growing up in Nigeria and Nigeria, especially perhaps, I mean, other emerging economies, but Nigeria is this idea of poverty, which is connected to corruption, very connected to corruption, becomes normalized. All right. And that's a big difference between, say, growing up in Nigeria and the US, you know, poverty and corruption and normalized. And so the experience you're talking about is one that I talked about in my TED talk where my sister got her office broken into. Someone stole some stuff. She went to the police station and they essentially the folks at a police station essentially asking her for a bribe to pay a little something for them to be able to do their jobs. And for her, she was just confused, like I just got robbed. You are the police. You're supposed to help and you're asking me to commit another crime. And it just didn't make sense. But that is not an anomaly. Right. That's just one example of how corruption shows itself in the country. The problem is that gets normalized. And the idea that we can never develop until we fix everything was really ingrained in me. It was ingrained in my sister, in many people in Africa, which I think is one of the biggest issues in terms of thinking about how the country and the continent can develop.
Henry Kaestner: OK, so let's tackle that corruption a little bit, just even at the outset. Let's get right into it. How do you remove corruption from a society? How do you deal normalize that as a way of life? What's that look like?
Efosa Ojomo: Yeah. So, I mean, there are a couple of ways to tackle this, right? One is we tackle this as a moral cultural problem. Right. So corruption is bad. We all know it's bad. You need to stop it. If you don't stop it, nothing can happen. And that, I think, is the dominant way. Corruption is often discussed and it's often handled. You know, we have the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. We have ease of doing business indices. We have, you know, world governance indices. These are, you know, these indices that show us how does a country rank in governance and corruption and so on. Right. That's one way to handle it. If you country moves up, you know, the idea is you can get some extra investment. But then the other approach, which is the approach we take in our research, which is the approach that has worked for many prosperous countries today, is to handle it more scientifically and to do that. What we have to do is to lean into this idea of corruption and ask the question, why are people engaged in corruption? Right. Why do people engage in corruption, seem to engage in corruption in this country? Maybe not so much in this other country. Did people in rich countries today ever engage in corruption at a similar scale or level? What types of corruption are there? Right.
Are all corruption or forms of corruption created equal? And when you lean into those questions with some humility, with the understanding that you know. Maybe the folks engaging in this kind of corruption are not just all evil and terrible and there's no hope. Maybe I need to understand the circumstance better. You begin to uncover some truly amazing insights. And that's the approach we've taken. And in doing that, what we find is the vast majority of people who engage in corruption are doing that to solve a problem.
They're doing that to typically increase incomes so they can afford a place to live so they can pay for health care so they can get justice. Like my sister. Imagine if she paid that bribe. She didn't. Just to be clear. But if she did, it wasn't like she wanted to choke up on whatever day she was robbed and said, I want to pay this. I want to just go be corrupt.
You know, it would be that she had to engage in it so she could get justice. And when we begin to unpack why people engage in it and the different forms, we begin to see the role, the critical role, innovation, entrepreneurship and increase in investment can actually play in helping people and communities mitigate incidences of corruption.
Henry Kaestner: So if I'm following you're talking about the concept that development and wealth creation has this inverse relationship with corruption. So as an economy gets stronger and there's more innovation, it feels a little bit like a chicken and egg thing. Right? Some people say, well, but I get that. But I'm I can invest any money until I see corruption go down. Are you asking people in are their stories of success in investing in places like Nigeria where investors have gone in and said, you know what? I know there's corruption. And yet I still see opportunities and that type of investment and development has paid off for the investor while decreasing corruption? Or do I have it backwards?
Efosa Ojomo: Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. It is this notion of chicken and egg. In fact, one of the things that I said in the TED talk I gave was societies don't develop because they've reduced corruption. They're able to reduce corruption because they've developed. And then when you just think about how we fight, corruption requires a lot of resources and many low and middle income countries don't have the mechanisms, the money to actually fight corruption. But to your question about other opportunities and so on. Absolutely. There are so many opportunities. The minute we begin to see things differently. Right. So one quick example is, is one that we highlight. I highlight this. A lot of my research in our book and even in the TED talk is the story of Mo Ibrahim. You know, so about 20 years ago, 22, to be more precise. He looks at the continent of Africa. No joke. And he says, I want to go and build mobile telecommunications infrastructure on the continent and get cell phones to the average African. Now, for many of your listeners who know when they hear the word Africa, the continent, I mean, what comes to mind? Poverty, corruption, malaria, destitution. I mean, it's often bad words that are associated with the continent. Twenty two years ago, it was a lot worse. And that was you know, The Economist wrote an article, The Dark Continent essentially is saying where Africa is a hopeless continent. And the idea of mobile phones was still new. It was still new even in rich countries. So it wasn't like it was widespread and every single person had it. Right. But he looks and says, I think I can create value if we give the average person access to this phone. Talk to a lot of his colleagues at the time, they thought he was crazy. There's no way this continent would absorb this technology. There's no way that people can't eat. How could they possibly afford this? Well, it turns out that he sets up cell tell mobile telecommunications company in the midst of an Africa that poor, you know, corrupt and so on. And he is able to, in the span of seven years, create a market for mobile telecommunication services. Right. Inexpensive cell phones, mobile minutes for more than five million customers generates revenues of more than half a billion dollars a year, net income of a little over one hundred million a year and sells his company right, sells his company in seven years, 1998 to 2000 and five, four three point four billion dollars. Now, Mo Ibrahim is sitting on the list of one of the world's richest men today. But, you know, the question is, how did he mitigate corruption? How did he fight this? Well, you have to have a strategy to deal with whatever obstacles come your way when you decide to invest somewhere. And so for him, he said we're going to have a zero tolerance policy on corruption. And so when they went into a country, they made sure they began building relationships with top. Level government officials that were not corrupt. I mean, there's this idea that every single person on the continent is corrupt. That's really not the case. So he built relationships there. Then he set policies within his organization that if you're going to cut a check for anything over thirty thousand dollars, you have to get board approval. We have to make sure we understand why we're cutting the check and so on. Now, at the onset, this is inefficient. This is no way to run a business. But it's important to understand some of these policies will not last forever. Right. These are ways that you can mitigate some of the issues and obstacles in doing business in emerging economies. Once he was able to do this and built a business model that made the cell phone affordable and accessible.
I mean, millions of people flooded into the markets. And today what we have is a continent with close to a billion mobile phone subscriptions, over 100 telecommunications companies all across the continent generating taxes of 15 to 20 billion dollars a year for African governments. So that, again, they can improve their governance, build infrastructure and so on. And that industry is now worth close to 200 billion dollars on the continent. If he waited for Africa to root out corruption and build out its infrastructure. Have a governance structure similar to, you know, richer countries. He'd still be waiting today. But it's this beautiful evolutionary process of the role of innovation and how it helps develop society that we really want to share in the work we do.
William Norvell: Efosa, William here. Thank you for going into that. I might get to the book. Next, I want to ask one question, though, while you're going down this path of corruption. So it sounds like they put a very tolerant policy. But as a Christ follower, I remember a conversation business go around this. And I was all high and mighty saying how great I was and how morally superior I was to people. And one of my friends from the Middle East in a really winsome way said, you know, if you want to do business like that is what it is. And that's just the way the economy works. And he said, hey, if you call it a facilitating payment, maybe you'll sleep better at night. And he had a really, like, core thesis that, you know, this is just part of bottom line net income. And this is the way you get a building permit. And it is what it is. And to be fair, I have another experience in life where I built a building in Chicago where I noticed some line items missing. And I asked a senior executive and he said some version of the same thing is that if you're going to build a building in Chicago, you're gonna have a line item there. I don't know if you want to know what's in it or not. And he was dead serious. And so my question is, as a Christ-follower, how do you think about that? Are there places where, you know, corruption is a big word? Facilitating payments a smaller word, bribe is a bigger word, means some version of the same thing. Is that business? I mean, do you think he really and I'm not saying he didn't build a three point four billion dollar company without ever paying anything that was not, you know, right down the middle of the fairway. And how have you seen that play out in other investments there?
Efosa Ojomo: Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know I don't know the answer to that question. I believe him when he says, look, this is how we built this and I haven't heard otherwise. Right. And if you're going to build something that big. I think people would say, oh, you're a hypocrite. Look at what you did. Look what you did. The question, though, is critical. So one of the things that I think Christ following investors. Right. Investors who just are not about I want to make as much money as I can, but really want to be a force for good and a force for God in the world. Should understand is this notion that C.S. Lewis talks about in his book where he says, Christ, little Christians all over the place should be like good infection. It's like we should go to a place. And because of the way we are, we should infect the place as sort of like little Christ's running around. And over time, we'll see how that place changes. One of the best ways you can do this is through business. Now, what this means is we need to lean into places that seem overtly corrupt and figure out how to do business there. But in terms of how you navigate around it, I would recommend another book, which, by the way, everyone I am. She's a professor out of University of Michigan. The name of the book is called China's Gilded Age The Paradox of Economic Boom. And I think it's vast corruption. And what she describes is this idea that not all corruption is created equal. This notion that there are really four types of corruption. Right. That's petty theft. So the stuff that my sister was experiencing and as grand theft and embezzlement. Right. So when you hear Senator has embezzled 10 million dollars or Westminister, that's grand theft. And then there's. Access, money and access. Money is a lot of times and no different from, you know, what we lobbying. Right now, we might have good justification for it and say, I want to help the lawmakers write the law. I know more about the issues. But, you know, typically access money. It's sort of, you know, lobbying. We just call it lobbying. And it's not corruption. It's transparent and so on. And the last one is speed. Money, right. So you want a new driver's license. So you want something new permit or something. And then you pay money and it speed things up when you begin to categorize corruption that way. What you find is we have all seen them falling short of the glory of God. Right. And so it's really hard for me to think of a society where there isn't one or more forms of this corruption going on. It doesn't condone it. And I think as Christ followers, we have to lead lives of utmost integrity and then we have to also make decisions on where we go. So Mo Ibrahim, for instance. Right. He did not set up shop in Nigeria.
I mean, most populous country in Africa that would have given him a lot of, you know, economic prosperity. Now, I don't know why he didn't, but my guess is he tried and he's like, I can't play ball the way these guys want me to play ball. And so he didn't set up shop there, set up shop in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Uganda, much smaller economies still did really well. And so I think as a Christ follower, we will be convicted in one way or another and we will have to make decisions on where we go, how we invest. But sort of the high level broad. Oh, I can't go here because there's corruption and I'm a Christian. I'm not even gonna lean into it. I don't think that's the way we should think about it.
William Norvell: Oh, it's fantastic. Thank you for taking us down the detour. I love that for framework of kind of thinking through it. And I think that's super helpful. OK. We're gonna shift back to this ownership back of the book Prosperity Paradox. We talked about a little bit. I want to give you a chance. Give us the core thesis of the book and what you're really trying to draw out and writing it.
Efosa Ojomo: Yeah. Quick, quick story on that. In 2008, I read a book about poverty and economic development. The author of the book, William Easterly a professor out of NYU. He dedicated the book to a 10 year old Ethiopian girl who had to wake up every morning at three a.m., fetch firewood, walk miles and sell so she could take care of a family. Right. I'm in my room. February Wisconsin crying. I'm crying uncontrollably. I'm not really a big crier, but I couldn't help myself because I thought there are hundreds of millions of people, young children in the world that are struggling like this. And I could not connect, sort of reconcile my faith, the story I was reading and how I was lead in my life. I remember earlier I talked about I embrace the American dream wholeheartedly and I just wanted a lot of nice things. There's nothing wrong with that. But I think I was just really convicted. And that year I started going back home to Nigeria every year to do some poverty alleviation work. Now, in the process, I started an organization called Poverty Stops Here. We built a bunch of wells in different communities and virtually all the wells broke down and hit me that something is wrong with this process. Right? Because what we did was we looked at poverty as a lack of resource problem. And the solution, therefore, is you provide the resource. You go to a community, you don't have water, schools, wells, hospitals, you provide the resource and you fix the problem. Unfortunately, that way of solving the problem is not sustainable. So that's a big lesson that I learned. And that's the paradigm shift we want to happen for people that read the book. The core thesis is you don't fix poverty by trying to fix poverty. Instead, you fix poverty by trying to create prosperity. Right. And when you try to create prosperity, you realize that you can't do it without focusing on entrepreneurship, innovation, and more specifically, what we describe as market creating innovations. And these are innovations like the one more Ibraheem built where you make a product that's really expensive, complicated, you make it simple and affordable. So many more people can afford it. And when you do that, what ultimately happens is you generate a lot of wealth. So Mo Ibrahim and a lot of wealth, you create a lot of jobs that can help people earn much more income. You generate tax revenues, like I described earlier, about the mobile telecommunications industry and the tax revenues that they're now generating. And perhaps the most important thing is you begin to foster a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship so other people see this new market you're creating. They want to take part in it. Investors come in, entrepreneur. Nurse come in and you begin to innovate and develop newer and newer products. And that's what we realized and that's the core thesis in the book. The more market creating innovations we develop, the more societies can prosper.
William Norvell: Efosa, we've talked a little bit and I think this is common. You end up talking a little bit, unfortunately, when you talk about an investing in Africa, some of the negative connotations that come along with it. But obviously, there are just incredible assets that are unique and only to Africa. And even that Sennett's I'm one of those people that, you know, when you say Africa, I can't even name all the countries. Right. And I know they're there. But in my mind, it's like one big place and I can't get out of it just to confess that and ask for forgiveness that I have not done my research. But so tell me and our listeners a little more about the uniqueness of investing in that continent.
Efosa Ojomo: Yeah. So, I mean, I could talk for an hour. I will focus on three things here. Number one, it's the youngest continent. And when we talk about that in economic development talk, we talk about this idea of a demographic dividend. Right. It's essentially when the people working outnumber people in retirement. And so this a nation or a region has this demographic dividend. Many other parts of the world are growing much older. Africa is very young and the median age is about 18 or 19 years old. Now, what that does or what that means is if an investor can create a market on the continent, you're going to have customers for a very, very long time. Right. So that's one thing that's unique to the continent. The second thing is, at this stage, the continent, not only is it young, but it's very susceptible to technology. Right. So when you look at the proliferation of technology on the continent, what you find is the continent can actually leapfrog a lot of traditional technologies. And so just look at the way mobile telephony spread all across the continent. Internet and data is next. And that also is going to spread. And so begin to think about new business models and how to attract this growing customer base. So that's the second thing. The third, which is often seen as a negative, is actually a positive. It's this idea that there is vast nonconsumption on the continent. And, you know, we define nonconsumption in our book, in our writing. It's essentially when a vast majority of people in a region cannot access a product or service that would benefit them. And so when you look at Africa, just vast nonconsumption of many of the most basic things. I mean, from housing to even food to health care to education. It's just vast right now. You can look at that and say that there's no opportunity there. These folks are too poor. If Mo Ibrahim did that 22 years ago, he wouldn't have created this vast market. But when you look at nonconsumption and say, oh, my gosh, if I go into this market, to this region, create a market, I will not have a lot of competition because right now people are not consuming. You can actually turn that around and see there's a ton of opportunity. I think the challenge is many entrepreneurs and investors look at Africa and compare it to wealthier countries. From the governance side and even from the market side, you see the continent is in what I call the market creation phase, which means when you go to Africa to create a new market, we'll stick with Mo Ibrahim example. He talked about how if you wanted to do a mobile telecommunications company in London or the U.S., he would have just signed papers in a conference room.
And the deal would have been done on the continent in the several countries he started. He had to build the cell towers here to educate a workforce. He had to build some clinics in some communities where his workers would live. He had to engage in community development projects. That's not an anomaly in the market creation phase as long as an investor knows. These are the things that have to do. Then the returns that are waiting for them are going to be significant. When we look at what Henry Ford did when he was building the US, when we look at what Kodak did, Eastman Kodak, you go to Rochester, New York and see all the stuff that's there named after him. Amadio, Giannini, Bank of America. We see similar activities. Right. And so what we really want to share with investors is this is not an anomaly when you have to build some of these things. But if you do it in a theory driven way, in a predictable way, you can actually reap a lot of rewards and help communities develop.
Henry Kaestner: So I'm fascinated by this concept to nonconsumption. I get the sense and maybe it's accurate, maybe it's not, that there are opportunities that are akin to what we saw in the United States, maybe back at the turn of. Last century, when Vanderbilt and Rockefeller and Stanford and all these people were going ahead and investing in places that things didn't exist and they were able to shape culture, create culture by investing in the marketplace in profound ways. And I think that what strikes me is I listened to you talk is that there are similar opportunities here. What a compelling not only is there a market to be developed, but as you said, as a young content, you know, average age 18, 19 years. You've got consumers for life. That's really profound. I'm also influenced and impacted by the fact that turning back again to go back in history about how committed Christ followers developed schools and hospitals that are all throughout Africa. And had that very focused in terms of bringing Christ and the gospel to an entire continent. They did that by investing early when other people wouldn't have done that might take away from this is that there's a sense for us to do that again and that we can invest in culture, in the marketplace in a way that points to God. And maybe it's going to be easier to influence an economy for God than it might be for a more developed nation when things are more entrenched. I'd love for you to riff on that. Am I going down the right path on that? Is this that opportunity for us to go in instead of the schools and hospitals as we did one hundred years ago? Now's the time for us to invest in a marketplace.
Efosa Ojomo: I mean, I think so. I mean, when you think about what work means for a lot of people, I know Tim Keller was on this show. I did a talk. And, you know, his book, Every Good Endeavor, talks about the importance of work in the life of a Christ-follower. When you think about the importance of work, just the average person, Crossville or not, we spend a majority of our waking life at work. So when you talk about influence, how do you influence a society? What better way to influence a society for good and for God than figuring out ways to create businesses and organizations where you have integrity, honesty, truth, goodness as core principles and core values? What better way to do that, especially when that organization is in a system where that's really not the norm? Right. And so, in a way, I see it as a huge opportunity if more faith driven investors go to Africa, invest in a certain way. Right. We have to figure out how to shape culture, not the other way around, but invest in a certain way. I think that's going to give us so much more bang for our buck than maybe going into a poor community, you know, donating a school or some T-shirts. I mean, I think investing is what we should be thinking more about.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah. I want to be careful that you don't harsh on T-shirts. That's how I get my entrepreneurial start selling T-shirts.
Efosa Ojomo: Yeah, I heard that podcast, too. And that's why I talked about T-shirts, because I know I'm kidding. I did.
Henry Kaestner: I love the fact you pander to your host. Thank you for that. I love you for it. It's awesome. Okay. So if you're a listener out there, this is where we're going to do a little bit of crowd participation. We at faith driven investor in Faith Driven Entrepreneur had been super encouraged by the development of two different things. And I want to ask you first, if he knows of other things, we might be missing out. But one is this focus on investing in the ecosystem of Faith Driven Entrepreneur ownership. And I think about organizations like Hope International. I think about a Gorai in Snapp's and TBN and others that are creating this kind of following Christ driven enterprise in the marketplace by doing training and many MBA A's in matching up mentors with entrepreneurs, et cetera. So there's a philanthropic opportunity that's there. And yet, as investors, there are also a whole bunch of new funds to develop over the last 12 or 15 months that we're tracking. I think about Sard and Tree of Life in South Africa and talent in and Sierra v.C and NovaStar. Can you go kinfolk in others? And I'm just really encouraged by the advent of professional management, both on their capacity building side, but then also in the fund management side, because otherwise it's hard for the average listener to say, what do I get started? I mean, do I go online and just kind of go on Angeles or we fund? But there's some other ways, and I'm loving the way that the market for faith driven investor is developing. Anything I'm missing there?
Efosa Ojomo: No, I mean, I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's one of the things that we have to begin thinking about, creating a better infrastructure that enables people who get this message and want to get involved to be able to get involved. There's a fund called Future Africa, a young Christ follower who is figuring out ways to get people to essentially crowd fund investments. That's why he calls it golden palm. Investment is another one. Good friend of mine went to Harvard Law School Business School, and he's investing in key sectors in the economy, health care, technology, Verrat, Capital Management and other HBF alarm seem to be biased to the HBF alarms reason?
William Norvell: No, not at all. I don't hear that at all.
Efosa Ojomo: Yes, health capital is another one focused on agriculture, really figuring out how Africa can become a breadbasket for the world. And so what's interesting is you don't have to go too far to find faith driven investors on the continent. Everybody I've mentioned is a faith driven investor, which to me was fascinating because I thought, oh, who's doing this in Africa? Not necessarily who's a Christian doing this in Africa? And I was like, oh, wow. Faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, you know.
Henry Kaestner: So I tell you, though, you know, HBS definitely has it up on the Stanford Graduate School of Business. William, how do you respond?
William Norvell: No comment.
Henry Kaestner: All right. Well, thank you for not shifting it back to how the University of Delaware alumni base is doing in investing and faith driven opportunities in Africa. And that's the crowd participation part. As you hear, as you, the listener, understand new players that are in the capacity building space or in the investment space. Share it with us. Superimportant that we as a community can understand more ways that we can get involved in Africa. William brings to close, please.
William Norvell: Yeah, I will. And the only thing I'll say before that is as you were listing of names and if you listen to this podcast you may hear me say this a bunch of my favorite quotes, but African investing in Africa just totally reminds me of that famous Bill Gates quote that most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in 10. And when you list all those names, my mind just went to this like, what is this conversation going to be in 10 years? It's going to be so much more. And it's hard to see that and to start investing in those people now. For our audience to start learning now to listen to those names, obviously email us if you want to learn more. We're not hard to find. I just had this vision of this conversation in 10 years. And you say. And who knew? Well, it could have happened when we actually had this conversation. And only God knows. Right. And my other favorite quote I've heard from God is, you know, now tell you what I was up to, but you wouldn't believe me even if I told you. And that's our God if we are faithful and walk with him. And on that note, we are running close to time. So we love to figure out where our guests are in God's word and where he may be pushing them. So if you have a moment, maybe just share with us where you might be, where he might be taking you today or the season. And let our audience into your life and your walk with God's word.
Henry Kaestner: And I'll interject here for folks who need time and think I love the fact he's got this chalkboard behind him and he's got the great quote from Jeremiah, 29, that's up there. It's written down. That's true. I don't know if that was in preparation for today's call. I don't know if his next calls with the World Bank. Tell us about that.
Efosa Ojomo: Well, that's just called my wife and I have up here to encourage us. You know, any Christ follower will tell you the journey is not linear. It's not straightforward. And so we need reminders that we are on God's team. He is here for us. He loves us. And that's just one of the ways we remind ourselves that he has good plans for us, plans for welfare and not for evil. And so, anyways, I think, you know, to your question, William, where my wife and I are now in our faith, we just celebrated our one year anniversary. Is this Matthew six, 33 to 34. Those two verses. Right. You first. A Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. And then the verse 34 says, therefore, do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow, worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. It's just this idea of putting God first. It sounds really simple, but we've been asking ourselves, what does it mean to put God first? To be proactive about our faith, to anchor our lives on our faith. And then everything else flows from there.
And so every year we've decided now that we would figure out an issue that we know God cares about and we would lean into that issue, that issue of injustice. That issue of poverty, whatever the issue is, would lean into that issue. And then whatever extra time we have, whatever extra money, whatever extra whatever goes to everything else. But first God issue and then everything else. And so that's where we are right now. And we're we're pretty excited about that.
Henry Kaestner: It should be. That's awesome. We are, too. Thank you very much for your life's work. Thank you for your time. And just excited about our partnership and your faithfulness and where God's got you.
Efosa Ojomo: Thank you. Thank you.