By Thomas Gilchrist

Written Oct. 19, 2008

There are two “main” sides to the debate about the economy in Senegal.

Side One: “I just feel like Senegal is an organic entity, ripe for economic growth and full of potential. I’m excited to see what the people can do over the next 200 years or so.”

Side Two: “Change must, MUST come from within, but, more importantly, one needs capital to create this internal infrastructure to beget change. Senegal had capital under French rule, but now they have nothing. It’s going to take capital for Senegal to significantly change for the economically better at anytime over the next 200 years or so.”

In visiting a agricultural product distribution center in The Middle of Nowhere, Senegal, we encountered a Frenchman, Jean-Francois, the proprietor of the center, who could say few good things about the ease and viability of running a business in Senegal. “It’s frustrating,” he said, “and I feel like I am the only one here, that I am all alone, and I hope you’ll forgive me for venting a little bit here, but it’s just so difficult.

“It’s difficult dealing within all the bureaucracies. You have you Chief, and your Sub-Chief, and your Financial Secretary, and your Treasurer, and your Lead Councilman, and your Lead Councilwoman, and your District Head, and the Department Chair, and, in order to do business, you have to go through all of them. I am an employer. I employ Senegalese from nearby villages. That should be enough, but no, the Lead Councilman and the Lead Councilwoman and the District Head all say that I need to build the Village a school in order to do business here. So I build them a school, but they say, no, this isn’t enough, it is also necessary for you to build us a medical center for you to do business here, so I build them a medical center…. but they will come back for more.

“The Villagers, they think that because my business is close to their town that they are entitled to some of the spoils I earn. I employ them. That should be enough! But I can’t just employ from the closest town like I should, because they would organize and strike against me, and then I could do no business, so I have to bring in people from all different Villages, and this is difficult to do.

“And each tribe is different. The Maccai. the Maccai are lazy, it is hard to get them to do work. and the Baccai. The Baccai are indignant. They constantly tell me that they should be paid more, when I KNOW I am paying them a fair wage. A FAIR wage. It is too difficult to do business here, for a Westerner to do a Western business in Senegal. It should be easy. Very easy. They should be BEGGING me to do business in Senegal. I don’t HAVE to do business in Senegal. I could go somewhere else.

“It is easier to do business in the Ivory Coast and Morocco. I do business there, and it is less trouble. But I WANT to do business in Senegal. There is business TO BE DONE here, so that is why I am here, not because it is easy, but because there is business. I am growing. We are building new buildings every month. More facilities for distribution, but I FIGHT to grow, when I should be ENCOURAGED to grow. It is difficult for a Westerner to do business in Senegal. But it is a beautiful country.”

For a country to grow, they must have something to offer to the world, a good or service, or else they are isolated and stagnant, for now, business is no longer conducted domestically alone. But in order for this growth to occur, there must be the infrastructure already in place. If their good or service is sugar cane, they must have sugar cane farms, farmers to farm them, and machines and tools to help the farmers. They must have irrigation systems, and processing plants, and packaging plants. They must have marketing people to alert the world to their product, and why it is superior, and, they must have transportation for their product to get out into the world. The good news is that each of these steps creates jobs. The bad news is that each of these steps also costs money, capital, to establish.

You must BUY the farmland. You must BUY the means by which you irrigate. You must BUY… etc. …

Of course, it takes money to buy these things so that you can make more money–capital–mone
y that Senegal doesn’t have. Investing! That’s how people find money that doesn’t exist yet. Investing! But for someone to invest, they must think that in the long run, giving you money will actually result in them having more money, meaning, they think Senegal has something to offer.

Senegal needs SOMEONE, ANYONE to invest in it, to give it the capital it needs to set up the infrastructure it needs to make money, for itself, and for its investors. Well, Senegal had an entire country invest in it for a couple of hundred years, called Colonialism. France invested in Senegal, it’s resources, it’s people, because the French thought that if they put money into Senegal, that in the long run, they would in fact come out in the black. But in 1968, the Senegalese rejected their biggest investor, and told them they could no longer invest in Senegal in the way the had been, that it was time for Senegal to start investing in itself.

The split wasn’t total, of course, as Senegal and France still do business, but, as a college kid becomes financially independent from their parents with the unspoken option of always coming home, Senegal was, in affect, out in the modern world for the first time. And like most kids when they move out of their parent’s houses, they’re bound to live in a few shitty apartments.

Well, 40 years later, Senegal, the babe, the infant, is still rooming in the one-room flat, and the Senegalese are the first to acknowledge it. “There is so much poverty here,” they say. “It is so hard to find a job. You work hard, but at the end of the month, you have no money. Can you get me a Visa to the United States? Life is so wonderful there. You work, and you get paid. It is a good country.”

What Senegal needs is investing. They need the Capital. They need the money to cultivate the land, and establish the irrigation, and build the facilities, and buy the trucks and pay for the gas. Infrastructure, colonial infrastructure, without the colonial bondage. They need people like Jean-Francois.

They need people who are willing to come to Senegal, and do business, WITH the Senegalese, not FOR the Senegalese. They need people, like Jean-Francois, who are willing to put up the cash for the facilities to produce the good or the service, to employ the Senegalese and give them work, knowing that, in the end, the Senegalese work and make money, and the investor makes money. Everybody wins.

Senegal needs an economic identity, something to pitch to investors. For Gambia, it’s peanuts. Little Gambia has a healthy peanut industry. But they have a healthy peanut industry because England was willing to INVEST in the Gambian peanut industry.

Senegal needs to find their peanut, or peanuts, but most importantly, Senegal needs to find its England, its investor. They need to be courting–prostituting themselves–investors like a prom queen without a date–there’s no shame in establishing an economy.

This however, assumes one very important thing: that Senegal is growing, that they are not stagnant. Of course the Senegalese like money, just like everyone else. They want to live healthy, comfortable lives, without needing to stretch from paycheck to paycheck.

There are elements in Senegalese culture, interestingly, that allow stagnant economic waters to be… possible. The family unit, for one, allows any jobless, poor individuals to be absorbed into the providing and protecting family entity, eliminating the need for everyone in the family to have a job. Sons without jobs live with their wives and children in their father’s house. The sons contribute to the family where they can, but it is the father who provides for not only their family, but his son’s as well, for in Senegal, you are all one big family.

The value of materialism is also not regarded as highly in Senegal as it is in most Western countries, although it remains unknown is this is simply due to a lack of spending money. Certainly, wealthy Senegalese can be seen eating in restaurants, wearing fine suits, and driving nice cars, the same as Westerners with ample means. The downside of this value, is, of course, that materialism creates jobs, because people “need” stuff. Supply and demand.

But Jean-Francois said it is difficult to run a WESTERN business in Senegal. What did he mean? Africa is not a Western culture, nor it is an Eastern. It is African. Only the anomaly is that Africa was invaded by Westerners who, had an extremely brief, but extremely intense impact on African Culture.

Africa has only been partly “Western” for a few hundred years out of their several THOUSAND year history. For a blink, they were subjected to a Wes
tern-styled economy, with a Western aristocracy, and then the Westerners got up and left. Well, the Africans kicked them out/negotiated a revised contract… but you know.

So you have this African culture requiring Western investors to return it to a more Western economy, meaning, a healthy one that makes money for both the country and its investors, and provides people with jobs. It’s almost as if they were accidentally occidentalized, or so it would seem. But, in telling the European colonizers that Africa wants its independence, but that Africa still likes this whole european world-economy connections thing, in affect what they said was “thanks for showing us how Europe is. Now we’ll take it from here.”

Only that in “taking it from here,” they told Europe, their biggest investor, to essentially shove it, that they could handle everything themselves, with some help, of course. And the help Senegal needs is investments. Someone to say, “There’s business to be done in Senegal, and if I help them do business, I could make some money myself.”

Let the bidding begin.

By Thomas Gilchrist

Written: Oct. 13, 2008

The Talibes, whose parents abandoned them when they were but three or four years of age so that they could learn the ways of Allah and His Word.

The Talibes–street children, but don’t call them that, with their baggy rags and the rusty cans hanging from string, if they could find any.

Who go home at night to the dirt of a Marabout, for they are provided no bed. They are the least of these who shall inherit the earth, if they survive, for the Talibe is the most American of Senegalese.

“Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses longing to be free…” Give us your Talibe, who are not seen as at a disadvantage in life, but who have nothing other than the Grace and Spirit of God. They are the most American, who have to scratch in the dirt for their bed and walk a hundred miles for a coin. They go home, tired, hurt, hungry, to work some more, and then to go to sleep, only to start it again the next day.

They put on their shirt and their tie, and button their top button though they know today will not be easy. They drink their coffee, and kiss their wives on the cheek and rustle the hair of their children. They grab their briefcase, and walk out the door saying that they are running late to catch the bus. If you are a Talibe, you can make it. Beg for your coins, for a time in your life, and you will be rewarded.

It’s hard to know who was a Talibe. No one knows for sure. But they don’t hide it. They say, “When I was a Talibe.” But they are always skinny, for they have trained their bodies to require little food.

Those who have made it, and there are many who have not, have worked themselves up from nothing but dirt and rags. They slept in the dirt through long cold nights on the floor, only to pick themselves up to walk the streets and beg, so they may return at night with a few coins with which their wives will prepare a meal before putting the kids to bed.

Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, America! Give us your Talibes, but ask for no coins. For this is America!