The American Dream of a Cheetah

A review of The Heart of a Cheetah by Magatte Wade

One of the most enlightening exchanges in a TV interview in recent years happened when a BBC reporter interviewed Guyana’s president and tried to school him on how Guyana shouldn’t explore and develop its recently discovered oil fields. The president of Guyana retorted back that how dare the BBC reporter make that case, when developed countries are mostly responsible for all the current and historical pollution that might be creating the issues the reporter complained about. This could have passed as a one-time fiery exchange if it weren’t part of a trend of Western journalists and political leaders lecturing developing nations on how they should become prosperous and not rely on the same formula or mechanism that their own countries used to achieve their status: developing cheap and abundant energy and free-market capitalism.

Such is the case of Africa, where countries are constantly asked to give up on exploring their own resources because of the threat of climate change at a time when those resources would help the continent and her people flourish. This point was made in an op-ed a few years ago by my friend Magatte Wade. The first time I heard Magatte deliver a speech a little over ten years ago, I was brought to tears. I would lie if I said that was the only time. After that I heard her deliver speeches at various events, and I always found myself tearing up. My wife would say I cry too much as I bawl at Disney kids movies, inspirational commercials, or just special family occasions. But I think it’s just that I respond deeply to inspiration and authenticity.

That combination of inspiration and authenticity is the lasting impression I have of Magatte. I didn’t talk to her at the time; it wasn’t until three years later that we had our first conversation. But what I saw on stage that day is what I saw in person in our first conversation, and what I still see now after being blessed with her friendship for the past nine years. If a dictionary had to define authenticity with a picture, you would find Magatte’s face prominently displayed. She is as real as they come. And she brings that authenticity to everything that she does—to relationships with friends and her husband, Michael, to her work as an entrepreneur (putting her money and time where her mouth is by creating businesses in Africa), and also in her passion and life’s mission to help the continent of Africa reach its fullest potential. She believes in and is committed to a bright future for her African brothers and sisters— “Cheetahs” as she affectionally calls them and herself.

And that exact authenticity and fighting spirit is what you get with her book, The Heart of a Cheetah.

The book details her life’s story and how it connects to her mission in a beautiful and inspirational way. It is not all roses and sunshine as she opens up about some of the worst moments she has experienced on this earth and some of her own personal struggles. But that is what makes this book so beautiful and authentic. It’s a masterpiece combining a personal journey, a personal mission, and sense of purpose and destiny.  She highlights the path for Africa out of poverty, and declares her faith in a people and a continent that most of the world has dismissed, forgotten, or relegated to the lower rungs of priority as liabilities to manage instead of assets to develop.

One of the best things about the book is that you don’t have someone who just talks in hypotheticals but someone who has walked the path to success and taken action to improve the world around her. As she always aptly puts it, she “criticizes by creating.” Magatte has been relentless in highlighting the important role that entrepreneurship and business creation have in Africa’s future development, while at the same time she has built businesses based on African culture, employing hard-working people in her native Senegal.

So why does the message of The Heart of a Cheetah matter besides the sheer inspiration and amazing personal story Magatte brings to the table?

First, it matters because she reveals why Africa has been the last continent to develop. She reveals the steps needed for Africa to leave the past behind and become the fastest growing and most dynamic region in the world, where people can flourish, experience the human dignity they deserve, and fulfill their human potential.

Second, there are a myriad of negative outcomes that currently plague the continent because of its lack of development. There are still hundreds of thousands of people dying every year in Africa because of indoor pollution as people are cooking indoors with materials like firewood that are health hazards. Child mortality rates are highest in African countries. Average life expectancy continues to be the lowest in the world at 61.7 years, which is 10 years lower than the world average, and almost 20 years lower than places like Europe and Oceania. Poverty levels continue to be the highest in the world. And the burden of disease is highest in countries across the continent.

Another issue is the loss of young and energetic workers emigrating out of Africa, mostly to European countries, as people flee poverty and unemployment in search of opportunity. Some countries in Europe are feeling the burden of that immigration and have started closing their borders. But even more than Africans simply leaving the continent, as Magatte details in her book, one of the key issues that has motivated her journey has been seeing her fellow Africans dying, drowning at sea while desperately trying to reach Europe. People are trying to escape not because they think Europe is heaven on earth or they want to leave their families but because of the lack of opportunity and development that continues to plague Africa.

But not all is bad news. Africa is home to one of the youngest populations in the world and with the highest fertility rates—3.8 in 2024 compared to 2.27 worldwide and 1.67 in the United States—at a time that many are starting to worry about the dangers of underpopulation instead of overpopulation. In this regard, Africa has a bright future ahead of it and can be key to solving the world’s underpopulation problems, but it needs to do so with vibrant economies and societies, which is still the main task ahead.

Every indicator across all of the aforementioned issues improves with more development, economic growth, and economic freedom as history and countless case studies and research have shown. And that is one of the main lessons from The Heart of a Cheetah: revealing a path forward for the continent by removing barriers to business creation and economic freedom. This book shows that even though other countries can help by removing barriers to trade and stopping the flow of international aid—which creates dependency and corruptionؙ—it is ultimately up to Africans themselves to remove barriers to business creation and embrace economic freedom and capitalism as the path forward for the continent.

Magatte is clear in her book that the historic embrace of socialist ideas in the continent in recent decades will not lead to prosperity, and it is past time to blame colonialism for the continent’s woes. Economic development requires more access to energy as Africa is the continent with the least access to energy, but it also has the opportunity to develop its own vast natural resources. Concerns about climate change continue blocking that development, but we should be encouraged by historical facts that show that countries that have more economic freedom—having used cheaper and abundant energy sources in the short run—become more prosperous in the medium and long run and have better environmental outcomes.

In the next few days Magatte will receive the Julian Simon Award from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. She is one of the most deserving people I know because of her belief in the resource of human ingenuity that Julian Simon treasured so much as well—belief in the power of entrepreneurship and ingenuity to push us all forward and, specifically, her continent of Africa. In Africa, human ingenuity has been depressed because of decades of misleading policies, like the embrace of socialistic ideas and too much international aid that hasn’t been effective because it ultimately destroys human ingenuity and dignity as people rely on the international donor community and other countries, instead of fostering more localism and bottom-up solutions based on entrepreneurial job creation.

Julian Simon’s famous bet with Paul Elrich was about resource scarcity around the world and how much the price of certain commodities wouldn’t go up in the next few decades, because of the power of human ingenuity. For her side, Magatte is also betting on human ingenuity, she’s betting, with whoever wants to take that bet, that Africa can and will be a prosperous continent where people will be able to pursue and find their fullest human potential. Magatte is betting that Africa will flourish. As she has been living in the United States now for about half of her life, I dare to say that seeing Africa flourish is her own American Dream.

Magatte is in a fight to get international organizations and countries off Africa’s back and let them use their own natural resources to develop, just like any other country has done, but she clearly knows that the ultimate resource for Africa, as has been true for the rest of the world, is its people, and she’s betting on Africans to get themselves out of poverty and thrive by removing barriers to entrepreneurship and job creation, which is the only long-term solution for Africa’s development.

The best way for Africa to prosper and for its citizens to have more flourishing is to have more economic freedom, economic growth through entrepreneurship. Magatte provides a guide for that in her book by showing how you can have both a heart and mind for the poor and for her African brethren. The rest of us can both admire and help her achieve her mission and that of millions of Africans to become prosperous, independent, and live to their fullest human potential. 

My hope for this book is that will inspire millions of people to see the continent of Africa how Magatte sees it, not without its faults and challenges, but with a hopeful and aspirational vision of a bright future for the continent where it all started for us as a species.