Another lesson white faces like ours needed to learn was to avoid the kind of framing in which the poor of the world are symbolized by Black faces. Often emaciated. Often “African.” It’s not accurate, as well as not fair. It’s the opposite of justice. The youthful energy, the entrepreneurial activity, the artistic creativity in Africa’s dynamic capital cities is ‘still rarely storied elsewhere in the world. Take a five minute Walk down the two-step streets of Dakar, Durban, or-Lagos and you’ll feel like you’re sprinting. Just standing on a street
corner is a double—espresso shot.

Nollywood in Nigeria makes more movies than Hollywood. More Africans—650 million—have mobile phones than Americans or Europeans. African tech leads the world in mobile money. The Democratic Republic of the Congo holds over 70 percent of the planet’s cobalt used in batteries, while South Africa has 90 percent of the platinum reserves we need for fuel cells and electronics. The world’s oldest continent has the world’s youngest population, and before COVID-19, it was home to six of the world’s ten fastest-growing economies. You don’t have to ask the Chinese where they think the future is. You’ll meet them in pretty much any African market or stock market they can enter.