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Speaker 3: Before we start the show, we have somebody that is
Speaker 3: very knowledgeable here, and I thought it'd be a good
Speaker 3: idea for him to just have a few minutes to
Speaker 3: kind of educate that's what's going on. Can we bring
Speaker 3: Can we bring the gentleman up?
Speaker 2: Come on over man, we're gonna we're gonna ship you
Speaker 2: never know, you never know who you're gonna see.
Speaker 1: Get over there.
Speaker 3: I think we gotta moved the other way. There you go.
Speaker 3: There you go, Shock up, boss, ladies, Shock up?
Speaker 1: Yeah, mind everything day you need to be in gun
Speaker 1: and you know, you know how the weather is, you
Speaker 1: know how everything is. So I know your cold over there.
Speaker 1: I see what you were I promise you.
Speaker 3: So all right, So Shaka, like I said, I just
Speaker 3: wanted to get a couple of minutes to kind of
Speaker 3: talk about some economic issues that's been going on in
Speaker 3: the continent. And you kind of an expert on this
Speaker 3: because you've been on the on the ground level. So
Speaker 3: this is market mondays and we do talk about finances,
Speaker 3: so I think it's appropriate to talk about what's going
Speaker 3: on in Congo. So can you can you kind of
Speaker 3: just educate our audience for people that might not be
Speaker 3: fully educated on what's going on in Congo right now
Speaker 3: and why why it's important.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that you know, we realize in the
Speaker 1: last ten fifteen years that now oil has been surpassed
Speaker 1: in value by data. Data is more for the most part,
Speaker 1: data is more valuable than oil. Oil used to be
Speaker 1: the metric, used to be gold. Then it was oil.
Speaker 1: Now it's data. And people want as many data points
Speaker 1: as they can on people to sell them products, right,
Speaker 1: and data servers, crypto and all of these things are
Speaker 1: being created by African minerals and we've been sold this
Speaker 1: very poetic story about Wakanda and how you know there's
Speaker 1: this place in Central Africa which is full of vibranium
Speaker 1: and it's Congo. And right now what we have is
Speaker 1: we have in Africa that should really be a United
Speaker 1: States of Africa a USA, but it's very disparate and
Speaker 1: very separate in the way that it does business and
Speaker 1: it just trade. So like, for instance, if you want
Speaker 1: to go and speak to the USA, you got to
Speaker 1: speak to the whole of the USA. That's nearly four
Speaker 1: hundred million people or how many people as there. If
Speaker 1: you want to go and speak to Africa, you can
Speaker 1: speak to a country as small as Lusutu or a
Speaker 1: country as small as Ghana, which is thirty million people,
Speaker 1: right and you'll be having a China speak to them.
Speaker 1: That's one point four billion people speaking to a country
Speaker 1: of thirty million people. So obviously they have a lot
Speaker 1: easier way of being able to bargain. And what happened
Speaker 1: is with Congo in particular, is that when the smartphone
Speaker 1: was invented, the minerals that were needed for the smartphone
Speaker 1: came from Congo, and so that was what happened in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight when Congo was invaded and between nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight and two thousand and three, six million people
Speaker 1: died as a result of that grab for minerals. And
Speaker 1: you have a country like Rwanda which has been historically
Speaker 1: the agents for their clients in your Europe who under
Speaker 1: the guise of and you know, you see people like
Speaker 1: John Legend who clearly don't care about genocide, going and
Speaker 1: performing a few days ago Global Citizen in Rwanda. But
Speaker 1: then you have people like you have sisters like Thames
Speaker 1: who were canceling their concerts because they understand that the geopolitical,
Speaker 1: geostrategic battle that's going on in Africa right now is
Speaker 1: based on African resources. And I give you an example.
Speaker 1: When I was in Congo in twenty twenty two, so
Speaker 1: I've been going to Congo for nearly ten years now.
Speaker 1: When I was in Congo in twenty twenty two, Rwanda
Speaker 1: was exporting five hundred and forty million dollars worth of gold,
Speaker 1: bearing in mind they don't have no gold right but
Speaker 1: now Rwanda's exporting one point six trillion dollars of gold
Speaker 1: and they're projected to export annually, sorry one point six
Speaker 1: billion dollars of gold and they're projected to export annually
Speaker 1: three billion dollars worth of gold. Congo produces one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty thousand tons of cooltan and of cobo each year.
Speaker 1: Right the rest of the world combined is doing about
Speaker 1: forty thousand tons. So it coltan is what is used
Speaker 1: for mobile phones and CPU process in units. Cobot is
Speaker 1: what is used for batteries for evs. So now you
Speaker 1: have all of these countries in Europe who are basically saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we want to catch up with China and we want
Speaker 1: to produce a bunch of electric vehicles. So they're building
Speaker 1: these gigafactories. They need all these minerals from Congo. So
Speaker 1: Rwanda signed an MoU agreement to provide those minerals for
Speaker 1: the rest of Europe to be able to do this.
Speaker 1: And then at the same time, they don't have these mines.
Speaker 1: So what do they do. They invade and they occupy
Speaker 1: a mine called Rubaya, which is the biggest cobot producing
Speaker 1: mine in the world. And all of a sudden, they've
Speaker 1: got record exports of this mineral. So whereas being touted
Speaker 1: as this is being touted as an African civil war
Speaker 1: because you know, when it's like a black on black crime.
Speaker 1: They created this racist term. We never say white on
Speaker 1: white crime. Right, They created this black on black crime
Speaker 1: in America to try and dehumanize black Americans. They created
Speaker 1: tribalism and tribes in Africa to dehumanize Africa. So if
Speaker 1: it's a tribal war, it's like, well, you know, they're
Speaker 1: killing each other, so it doesn't really matter where. I'm
Speaker 1: looking on my phone this morning and I'm seeing twenty
Speaker 1: young guys being executed in Congo by these twenty three
Speaker 1: soldiers who are being portrayed almost as liberators of ethnic
Speaker 1: Banya Malenge Tutsis in Congo. But the reality is they're
Speaker 1: there for minerals. It's all follow the money game. And
Speaker 1: Congo has been destabilized for all of this time just
Speaker 1: for the specific reason of me minerals. No, there's no
Speaker 1: other reason to kill that many people indiscriminately. And where
Speaker 1: we saw a few weeks ago, three thousand people killed
Speaker 1: in like three days or four days, like my village
Speaker 1: in Congo, that they came into the village in Congo.
Speaker 1: Everybody had to get out of the village in Congo.
Speaker 1: Thank god, all the kids are back and everybody safe,
Speaker 1: but they also had emptied a prison of five four
Speaker 1: thousand people and one hundred and sixty women were raped
Speaker 1: and burned to death. So these things that are happening
Speaker 1: are happening in almost silence and secrecy. But really the
Speaker 1: whole thing is just a minerals game. In Europe and
Speaker 1: China and everybody else is Tascit complicit because they know
Speaker 1: if the situation stays the way the situation is, then
Speaker 1: they'll be able to keep getting a free stream of
Speaker 1: African minerals.
Speaker 2: So this is when you talk about foul the money,
Speaker 2: and we talk about investments in the Magnificent seven and
Speaker 2: all these these tech companies, whether it's from a GPU standpoint,
Speaker 2: a CPU standpoint, data centers, that's on the surface. But
Speaker 2: in order for them to have those products, it's kind
Speaker 2: of goes down the line to the place on the
Speaker 2: planet that has probably every mineral on the planet Earth
Speaker 2: exists in Congo.
Speaker 1: Correct, it's only two that doesn't have a Californium and moscovium.
Speaker 1: So every mineral on the period periodic table apart from
Speaker 1: those two, Congo has in abundance.
Speaker 2: So this is one of these humanitarian situations and I
Speaker 2: want to get into that, because we've been around each
Speaker 2: other a lot, but I've never heard the root of it. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the work that you're doing in Congo. We're here in Ghana,
Speaker 2: you have a school here, You're working in Ethiopia. When
Speaker 2: did the humanitarian efforts start for you?
Speaker 1: You know? I never I had this idea before. A
Speaker 1: Black Panther movie of Africa was Wakanda. That was my
Speaker 1: I was like, I was raised Rasta and I was
Speaker 1: raised with this back to Africa and Marcus Garvey mentality.
Speaker 1: So I always believed that Africa was our motherland. Like
Speaker 1: I thought that was when I get there, you know,
Speaker 1: it's going to be the Promised Land and people are
Speaker 1: rich and everything is cool. And I only started doing
Speaker 1: this work in Congo in particular because I heard a
Speaker 1: story of a woman called Mama Masika who she was
Speaker 1: raped by twenty two guys before she passed out, and
Speaker 1: her husband was chopped up and killed in front of her,
Speaker 1: and then she was raped on top of her husband.
Speaker 1: I'd never heard anything that crazy in my life. I
Speaker 1: was like, hang on, this happens on earth, Like how
Speaker 1: can this happen? Like how can you even be aroused
Speaker 1: by like that type of destruction of a woman. And
Speaker 1: when I heard that story, and I googled which is
Speaker 1: the richest country in the world, and Congo came up.
Speaker 1: And then I googled which is the poorest country in
Speaker 1: the world. Congo came up as well. So like GDP,
Speaker 1: Congo's annual GDP per capita is five hundred and fifty dollars,
Speaker 1: but there's twenty four. Oh well, I say, forget twenty four.
Speaker 1: Twenty four trillion is the old number. It's like forty
Speaker 1: trillion dollars worth of mineral resources in the ground. Because
Speaker 1: of the way that you know that the resources, especially
Speaker 1: resources that are sought after, appreciate over time. Now these
Speaker 1: resources are becoming more and more valuable, and so how
Speaker 1: can the richest country in the world be the poorest
Speaker 1: country in the world at the same time. And this
Speaker 1: continues in and along the lines of the rhetoric of
Speaker 1: Africa is a bread basket for the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: but can't feed itself. So I just was like, all right, cool,
Speaker 1: how can I go and help this woman and her
Speaker 1: family because I've saw what happened to her. And I
Speaker 1: did a boxing match. I used to boxing. I was
Speaker 1: a military I did a boxing match and I took
Speaker 1: the money to go and give to her family to
Speaker 1: just That was the beginning of my journey in Africa.
Speaker 1: I'd always done things in the hood in Leads where
Speaker 1: I grew up in. I did various things in London
Speaker 1: as well. So I did stuff in my own community,
Speaker 1: first fitness, health, wellness, those type of things. But then
Speaker 1: I was like, I need to go over to Africa
Speaker 1: and see how I can be of use. But when
Speaker 1: I got here to Africa, I realized how many people
Speaker 1: are exploiting in Africa, whether it's the politicians, whether it's
Speaker 1: the NGOs, neocolonialism. I've never seen anything like the amount
Speaker 1: of exploitation here as anywhere else in the world. So
Speaker 1: it started for me with that. But where I'm at
Speaker 1: now it's like sustainable business, I think is the only
Speaker 1: way to do things.
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