Africa is a Continent

The motivation to pick up this book was to learn more about Africa - a continent that the media usually refers only to highlight the negatives and stereotypes - famine, hunger and child poverty. 

• The Berlin Conference was where 14 European countries and the U.S met to decide upon the regulation of Africa. The borders and boundaries drawn then still exist today. Historically, it is looked at as a necessary evil with no resulting conflicts among European Powers.

• 14 European countries = Britain, France, Portugal, Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Hungary, Russia, Sweden-Norway, Ottoman Empire and Germany.

• King Leopold of Belgium ruled Democratic Republic of Congo, a country 5x the size of Belgium. And remarkably he never visited DRC. His reign is known as the most ruthless rule.
  
  

• The book has some common figures as mentioned in the book Cobalt Red like Henry Stanley, Cecil Rhodes.
  
  

• I learned through this that Nigeria and Cameroon have a border conflict (in Bakassi peninsula) whose roots can be traced back to how arbitrarily the Europeans divided the countries.
  
  

• 60% of all territorial disputes that make it to the International Court of Justice come from the continent. But only 30% of all borders in the world are in Africa. Another stat that highlights how badly the boundaries of the countries were configured. The colonizers set the boundaries without any regard of natural features like rivers, mountains, race, language and ethnicity. Considering Africa is 4x the size of the U.S.
  
  

• A big problem newly independent African countries faced was that after their borders and boundaries were drawn recklessly - their population was not bound in any common thread or trust or understanding. There was no strong bond that instilled patriotism.

• There is a chapter dedicated to the song Kony 2012 and the movement surrounding it and the whole irony about the “white saviour imagery.”
  
  

• I also learned about Consequentialism (end justify the means) v/s Deontology (means justify the ends). It can be viewed as the basis of all debates. In the context of Kony 2012 - the author is on the side of deontology i.e it is not okay to raise money by any means necessary. He makes a good point that the current model of charity does not involve understanding the problem but instead just impulsive donations. And that’s because proper due-diligence takes time and it doesn’t have the same emotional pull as photos.
  
  

• Another bad thing is that Africa has become a mecca of 1000s of young people who treat the continent as the official volunteering leg of their gap year.
  

  • Beautiful sentence -

    When we are at our hungriest, we are left with no other option than to fully reveal our true selves and bare for all to see the madness we normally do so well at hiding.

  • Many African countries have the same problem as many mature democracies i.e of gerontocracy. The average age of the population is way lower than the average age of the ruler. And often the ruler wants to hold on to power at all costs. 

  • Botswana is doing the best among all countries economically.

  • OXFAM: Amount of CO2 a citizen in U.K emits in 2 weeks = Amount of CO2 a citizen emits in 1 year in Africa(Burkina Faso) - touches upon the debate where some people in the developed countries want others to sacrifice more to reduce carbon emissions. Seems unfair?

  Museums and Artifacts from Africa

• The author presents a strong case about how the Western museums are holding on to the symbols and artifacts looted by the British army and brought to the UK. On top of that, they use empty platitudes about how by holding it in London - people of the world can see them. When in fact, many people find it hard to secure a visa to travel to the UK. Many museums like the Louvre, Guggenheim and MOMA are guilty of that. 

• Surprisingly, the British PM Gladstone wanted to return all the artifacts from Maqdala, Ethiopia back but couldn’t.
  
  

• Belgium in 2020 announced that they would be returning artifacts to African countries like D.R of Congo. U.K’s museums released what were perfunctory statements supporting the cause of racial equality without addressing the issue of stolen artifacts.

• In 2017, French President Macron acknowledged that France had in its possession artifacts that should be returned to Africa. He pledged to return them and appointed a French art historian and a Senegalese economist. The museums in France were thrilled initially until the report came out and said at least half of the artifacts in the museums’ possession were acquired through plunder and theft. And the report also rejected any idea of any long term loans in favor of restitution.

• I also learned that French Presidents like to build museums (cultural museums) as remembrance of their time in office. In contrast, the U.S Presidents like to build Presidential libraries.
  
  

• Also, the British TV show - The British Tribe Next Door was in a very poor taste. Not sure how it got the green light.
  
  

  
  
  

P.S : This excellent satirical piece by Kenyan writer Wainaina, titled "How to Write About Africa"
https://www.bu.edu/africa/files/2013/10/How-to-Write-about-Africa.pdf

Ahead of the Curve

Ahead of the Curve is a book that is about the author’s experience at HBS. He left a stable, prestigious job of a foreign correspondent in Paris for a British newspaper to do a MBA and understand how the business world works and operates. The idea behind picking up this book was to read and know about the experience of going to such a prestigious school - a sharp contrast than the sugary, dreamy vlogs put out by Youtubers. 

The book did provide me good insights into how students feel, experience and evolve over their time at HBS.

A few standouts - 

• Most students start with different viewpoints i.e detest investment banking and consulting jobs but by the end of the course most of them are trying to snag the jobs with the highest pay package.
  
  
• This is in spite of almost every other dignitary/personality visiting the school and commenting how grueling their schedule is/how little time they have to spend with their spouse and kids. The book is based in 2006-08 and the author mentioned at a few points that, at least then, the consulting job required traveling i.e fly out on Sunday and come back home on Thursday.
  
  The author references a 2006 New Yorker article by Calvin Trillin that says bluntly - in life there cannot be multiple centers. Centers as in areas of focus. Either kids/family is the center of your life or not. That is an interesting viewpoint to think about it!
  
  
• It was interesting to read the author's anecdotes of interactions in the classroom combined with personality descriptions and spot the undertones of tension between European and American students on topics of work-life balance and worldviews.
  
  
• HBS claimed to give students a fresh start in their careers but very few people were actually able to succeed. The path of least resistance was to do banking and consulting. But to get out of those fields was very hard. If you didn’t have experience in an industry, then they didn’t want you. So you ended up going back to the industries they had experience in.
  
  
• The author refers to a profile HBS did of its 1985 class : 65 graduates were prosecuted for SEC violations. Even ENRON CEO was a HBS alumni proving that the school produced its share of crooks even after a rigorous entrance process.
  Similarly, in the class of 1976 - every 10 years a profile was done for 6 students. 5 out of 6 admitted to having wretched personal lives but successful from a societal perspective. Only one of them reported to be content and that was because he chose to stay with the same firm and his main career objective in his own words was “making it through the day”.
  
  

The author remarked that for Harvard MBAs who are so used to being applauded, the idea of a private discreet life of fulfillment was nearly impossible to grasp.

In the book, the author stops and highlights the major things he learned during his courses. Like, -

• Serious investors place a greater importance on risk than an average investor. Sophisticated investors place way more weight to tail risks i.e small chance of disaster = moderate risk of something quite bad.
  
  
• Accounting gimmicks!
  
  Ads can be an asset or an expense. When the benefit of the ad is uncertain, it can be an expense. But when the revenue from the ad is measurable - it can be treated as an asset and then depreciate the cost over time.
  
  
• Strategy != Operating Efficiency. You can run the best laundry in the world, but if what I was doing was quite simple and 1000s could do it - no money was to be made. Good products alone won’t get you there!
  
  
• In a career - Be a principal or decision maker. Not a service provider.
  
  
• It was interesting to find out that prior to 2008 there was a loophole in the HBS admission process for granting financial aid. Students used to report their savings/bank statements but not report the type of the car they had. So, what a lot of them did was they used to buy an expensive car and then report their drawn-down/near-empty accounts only to be awarded financial aid. HBS was buying students a car! Future CEOs/administrators supposed to be stewards of right business practices were exploiting the loophole.
  
  
  Ultimately, the author was one of a handful of the 900 students who were without job offers come graduation time. For him, since he placed importance on work-life balance and didn’t want to do a stereotypical job at investment banking/consulting - his options were limited. And in addition he said it aptly that he “seeked out the frailest shred of evidence to support my assumptions”.
  
  
  Good book that gives us an insight into the psyche of supposedly the smartest and most business savvy cohort of overachievers and their doubts and insecurities.