Bring more and more people into, at least contact with some of these issues. That doesnt mean they will learn the right things but it opens doors. I think back all to what moved the needle. What changed the course of Human History here in our country and its always been popular movements. The civil rights movement, the womens movement, lgbt. Thats just national. Americans linked with people in west africa and even angola during the blood diamond years to help bring about change there. Popular movements are where things are rooted. I think thats where those folks that have a high profile that have sandwiched themselves in their artistic endevours. The light is coming at us and people like akon have taken the mirror and shifted it at this issue and listen to these people. I think thats what ive seen in most effective is when a celebrity goes into a country that offer very little. Lets let lets have this person tell the story from that country. Giving a platform to africans to tell their story. They have a voice. Its just amplified now. You spent six years as editor of the Financial Times. You got to decide whats in and whats out. Hold up d how did you make your decisions . Granted its a business newspaper but how did you make your decisions of what stories you wanted to tell. For an audience of policy makers and businessmen essentially, your, theres a need to cover a real breadth of stories from all over the world. You cant ignore the politics and the Security Issues and you cant ignore the economy. In a way the Financial Times is modelled to cover different parts of the world in a fairly similar way. The problem with africa has been in the past, at least, that the Financial Times scale. You want billions. You dont want a million. In terms of the actual money thats moving you want marking moving stories. In the past, a lot of our business coverage was focused on oil. More recently the key has been to identify trends. Because not every deal is huge although youre getting some really big deals now happening. You need to identify the trends in order to cover the business on the continent. I think one of the big challenges is, and i think this applies to all the media is how few journalists we have on this enormous continent. You have 55 states. A lot of it, were working with four bureaus if you include cairo and it simply isnt possible to cover the ground. Theres a flip side to that too, which is in the age of the internet you have a huge array of different sources of information potentially on the web and sites. Actually, its very deceptive because there are so few journalists theres a homogenization of news. It can really set the news agenda. He may be one of two foreign corresponden correspondents. This is changing because the African Media has developed so much but its still an issue. The news can be set by so few journalists. In terms of deciding what we cover, if there are big crisis its hard to ignore in strategic states. That tends to soak up resources. I think weve had a blend of stories. I think a lot of the western media is still kind of hard wired to cover conflict on the continent and crisis. How do we get to where the positive story, i guess, sells . Isnt that what it comes down to whats going to sell newspapers . What it boils down to is conflict is what sells. Thats right. Its partly that. This is what were trying to push back against. If thats what sells that becomes the image. I disagree. Its also an issue of which voice is the loudest. If you take this country and its fairly similar in britain as well, the voices that are loudest have tended to be the faithbased groups and ngos and the very effective and noisy character on my left, john. Because their focus has tended to be conflict resolution then youve got a lot of focus on that in the media as well. Equally, i dont think theres a voice yet in this country thats really effectively pushing the business story in africa thats talking about the real transformation in the continents relations with the outside world has taken place over the last 15 years. One of my perceptions of the summit, the african leader summit is that trade and investment will move to the forefront of the u. S. Africa agenda. Obama had that meeting in tanzania last year. Hes doing it for a daylong event tomorrow. Its going with be one of three times on the agenda. It seems to me that the dynamic is shifting. Is this something that can really get reported about and written about . Up to a point, yes. I think the trade story has been for more than a decade now the only other story that there is outside of conflict in africa and lets face it, its not just africa. The news media we cover conflict. Thats what we do. Its not news if its like we dont like good stories. People call me up and say why are you focusing on the negative. I dont even hear them. Its just noise. Thats the definition of news. Were always going to flock to the conflict story and in a lot of ways we should because its not just what sells but oftentimes this is whats important and theres usually some underlying cause that needs to be reported. I used to work for the wall street journal and trade was my beat. I was always constantly looking for because they said you have the entire world, just go out there and write about trade stories. I would go to cambodia and china and you name it. I was writing about trade spats in this place and that place and i really wanted to do an africa trade story and there was nothing. I couldnt see anything. Every time i came up with a proposal they were like its too small. Its not the china agreement. They didnt like the fact that the money was so small flipped us into writing about it as a qui quirky little off beat story. You end up times relegating these stories. I think its still going to be a long time before you see the type of robust coverage of trade and Economic Development in africa that you see of trade in say china or asia because africa does not have that kind of money. You dont have the number of people. Its viewed in a different way. First its yes. News you dont need marketing for that. The second thing is indeed if you only base this on numbers, you know, you dont have a story necessarily. The continent is about 1. 4, 1. 5 trillion gdp. The numbers do not necessarily comparing. Theres an underlying story which is worse. Its all the human story which is there. People need to realize more and more that its not the perfect mirror. You look at the mirror and sometimes you see things there which are not true. Sometimes you see things that are ugly and maybe its because if youre ugly then it gives you that picture too. Its not a perfect mirror. At the end of the day i think we cannot change anything as long as we africans do not frame our narrative. Thats really what it would boil down to ultimately. Youve got to frame this. Im not happy about the fact that our head of states didnt frame this story. The second thing is weve got to get the chance to all the people out there who are on social media and who are doing lot of working. When you really think about it, africa africans, many of them in the United States and the head of many theres also a lot of stereotypes. At the end of the day this is also human nature. Weve got to give a chance for this movement which just started to grow and that everywhere and the media has its role. The citizens have their role t but let me ask akon about african culture and in your work and the Media Outlets that you see, do you see an increasingly accurate regul reflection of african perception . With the human eye i do. I can clearly see the advantages and the inspiration that inspires the rest of the world. Getting back to the media aspect you cant blame them. They report what they see. Us as humans we have to evaluate that information and work with it. How does it benefit us . How does it not benefit us . We as a human race will never go forward if we put business and corporate gain before the fact of that youre human first. Its period. People will sell any and everybody out for a dollars. Theres no human value anymore. As much money as the corporations and the media even what they report, Corporation Reports they do foundations. They try to give back but even in that game its more funneling funds back on how they can gain more money. One of the things were seeing in africa with some of our major corporations invest there is they are creating jobs and skill. Thats what they say. Where are the jobs . Procter gamble created 2,000 jobs there. Theres almost a billion people in africa. 2,000 isnt doing nothing. Got to start somewhere. Say every year we say we have to start somewhere. When i can literally employ tens of thousands, i employ a couple hundred. Can you imagine i dont even blame them because as africans we shouldnt have to reach out to build our own country. Theres enough money in africa itself. Let me give you an example. You can check the statistics. Every six months theres a new billionaire coming out of africa. If we just bank in africa. Lets not even help nobody in africa again. All rich billionaires and millionaires from afterin africa just bank there, that alone will help build our own economy. You follow . We dont even go that far. Thats what hurts me more than anything. Its like were so dependent on our neighbors to help us when all we need is just each other. Do you see that changing at all . Its going to happen with youth. I think the youth is the only thing that can do it. I dont think this generation and the generation before can do it. We have to teach them moving forward on how not to allow the history to hold you done. If we continue to do what were doing and follow our leaders, in so many words, were going to be right back here. Its like a 360 never ending cycle. Someone has to take the stand and do whats necessary. More for the fact of you being human first. It goes right back to, this is not quite related to africa but the scenarios dont really change. The conflict in gaza. Its clear that palestine, they cant afford a military to fight back. They dont have the resources that israel have. From the human nature, like the human part of it, you cant sit here and literally kill women and children and think its okay because you think one rocket is going to kill or dissent out to avoid two or three people dying youre killing thousands of people. Theres no human rationale to that to me. As people we have to think us first. Everything will come naturally if we do the right thing amongst each other. You follow what im saying . Fair point. Let me pivot to john. You wanted to get involved in this. Maybe on two points on in ongoing discussion. From our side of the equation this idea of generating more development through keeping retaining that money in africa is a compelling one and part of the equation, perhaps, is all of the work that is being done on the continent of africa and corruption being a two way street with so much of the money thats come in and corrupted certain elites in african governments have been as a result of huge investments, very untransparent investments from the United States and from europe and certain asian countries. The move now increasingly towards more transparency and more accountability for money thats been diverted away from state budgets that could go into health and education and all forms of social welfare, Capital Development and infrastructure. I think thats one piece of the puzzle as well that we need to talk about. Secondly on the media stuff, everybodys correct. Were going to keep the world is going to keep focusing on if it bleeds, it leads. No matter where you are. If youre in st. Louis they will cover who got shot that day and the world news will cover where the bang is blowing up the loudest. You can cover these stories in a way that changes peoples perceptions. Usually when we see a nightly news version of an african conflict they will run straight to the one white aid worker and interview them because well, the audience has to be able to identify with this sort. Whereas the truth of every Crisis Response in africa is its led an staffed and organized by africans. 99 of the people that are working in these crisis and difficult situations are africans, putting their lives on the line. When you look at the park rangers protecting the wildlife from being poached its africans. When you look at who is on the front lines of human right struggles and prodemocracy struggles, its the africans in the streets saying we want to see change and the Health Care Workers in west africa, if you can see who is bearing the brunt. I think covering a story theyre going to cover the stories but cover in a way that values and demonstrate that africans are at the core of the solution and not just the problem. That would be very helpful. The nightly news in nairobi is it reported in the same way . Does it lead with who was shot today or what bank was robbed or is it different . Different. If you live here within the United States, the anchor is reporting for him. Thats where the empathy is done. There are hundreds of lives and who ended up dying. Thats just the plain reality. Everybody knows that you also competing. It enables africans to tell their own story. If youre in the United States of america and youre entwisted in what will going on, you can get it. I think thats taken too much away from what the people in the western media can be doing. I dont see it looking for the american angle when people are writing about china and write about pakistan and afghanistan and write about anywhere else except for africa. I agree with you. We tend to do it with africa. We got to find an american angle. I dont see us doing it with anywhere else. Why is that so . Weve got to ask yourselves why is that so. I think the answer is we still see this is not we, americans, we africans. Youre moving around a lot in that chair. We Americans Still see wee africans as very foreign and different. We dont understand africa. If youre a historian in 100 years time looking at trying to figure out what happened since the me lynn yum, you would miss the story. You would think the continent was wracked by conflict. You wouldnt realize theres been this extraordinary transformation going on. You get a much broader picture of what happened. You tell us in your book that when youre working for wall street and you came to washington that you were going to go on ron browns ship to china and you gave your lyberian passport to the woman and she said is this real. You said this encouraged you to get your American Ship and passport. Do you think we know africa at all . Would that happen again today . Yes and no. Its definitely gotten better. This was in the 90s when liberia was in the middle of the civil war. Liberia is 50,000 times better now than it was in of the 90s. The carnage was unbelievable. That said, its still a very rare thing. I was traveling with my sister a few years ago. We were on a train, overnight train going from england we were going from paris to florence, italy. Dont ask me why me took the train. I had my american passport and my sister had her passport. They stopped the train in the middle of the night and dragged her out there with her liberian passport. They were like examining the passport as if it was some exotic thing they never seen before. I remember krcracking up when s came into the compartment an hour later. She was furious but that was par for the course. I think that was still even that was still right around the end of the civil war. I think things are very different now. Id like to believe its become a lot more sort of normal and usual to see people from all Different Countries in africa moving about far more freely. One of the reasons i became an american citizen was i departments want the visa hassle anymore. Theres not a single country i could go to where i didnt spend two weeks at various embassies. Thats a really horrible reason to become an american citizen. Reasons in the reasons. Good outcome. One last question before i open to the floor. Does anybody think that the Africa Leader summit will change american perceptions of africa . No. Its been insufficient framing of the story by the leadership. I also think its a real mark up that the summit is taking place. Great its happening. The change happens all of us do on a daily basis not because of the summit, which is a great m summit by the way. Does this change . I think it marginally improves things. Enhancing a different type of relationship between africa and the United States more equal. More of partnership. Its one very small step on a long road that needs to be taken. Akon, what do you think . Absolutely. I agree with shaun. Its a way to pretty much make up for what could be done. Thats how it feels. This is not the only place that a summit like this was held for africa. Its six times a year everywhere. Ghana, ethiopia. We can have a million summits, if africans themselves dont build their own country, there will be a million more summits. Let me open up to some questions here. I met last week a fellow youth leader too. I come from the united republic of tanzania. Ive been doing business and i was lucky to receive the usdf grant. In so many ways my story is the story of so many other young people in africa. Not just in the struggle of trying to reshape the image of a continent but also push for growth and prosperity. Just a hint a few is where all the people, all the generations say that this is how its done with say it can be better. We start our own businesses with the new energy and focus. We optimistic than the pessimism that exist. We make 75 of the population. We wake up to the realization of how much we can actually change the politics, the businesses and actually drive tangible change. The question, i want to throw back to the panel has to do with the u. S. Africa relations. Basically, United States and africa has a reputation of permanent interest and not personal innocent friends. For some of us who are attending the summit, weve been receiving warnings that what are you doing there . What are those americans trying to put in your head . They think that you pick stories, you pick angles that work best for the american and International Interests than the local we think we have a lot of good stories. Were the first generation to access hightech now. We dont just download akon music. By the way im honored to meet you. We also share our stories. We tell our american friends that africans is not all a jungle and diseases and wars. We have happiness in c