My experience from 20 years of Africa is that the seemingly impossible is possible.
My interest is not data, it’s the world. And part of world development you can see in numbers. Others, like human rights, empowerment of women, it’s very difficult to measure in numbers.
I have a motto: it’s never too late to give up. It’s never too late to give up what you are doing, and start doing what you realise you love.
I have a suggestion for a new name for the developing world. Let’s call it the world.
To get away from poverty, you need several things at the same time: school, health, and infrastructure – those are the public investments. And on the other side, you need market opportunities, information, employment, and human rights.
Let the dataset change your mindset.
There are two billion fellow human beings who live on less than $2 a day.
Health cannot be bought at the supermarket. You have to invest in health. You have to get kids into schooling. You have to train health staff. You have to educate the population.
If you have democracy, people will vote for washing machines. They love them!
Avoid war, because that always pushes human beings backward.
Good analysis is very useful when you want to convert a political decision into an investment. It can also go the other way and drive policy.
Half of the energy is used by one seventh of the world’s population.
What I’m really worried about is war. Will the former rich countries really accept a completely changed world economy, and a shift of power away from where it has been the last 50 to 100 to 150 years, back to Asia?
Eighteen fifty-eight was a year of great technological advancement in the West. That was the year when Queen Victoria was able, for the first time, to communicate with President Buchanan, through the Transatlantic Telegraphic Cable. And they were the first to ‘Twitter’ transatlantically.
My husband is my most valuable resource.
The number of children is not growing any longer in the world. We are still debating peak oil, but we have definitely reached peak child.
I have shown that Swedish top students know statistically significantly less about the world than the chimpanzees.
Beyond 2050 the world population may start to decrease if women across the world will have, on average, less than 2 children. But that decrease will be slow.
Thank you industrialization. Thank you steel mill. Thank you power station. And thank you chemical processing industry that gave us time to read books.
The database hugging in public institutions is hampering innovation.