Magatte Wade: The Power of Free Markets for Africa

“Eventually, I had an emotional crisis because I could no longer reconcile the life of abundance that the U.S. afforded me. I made a pact with myself that from here on, I’m really going to try to see what needs to happen for [Africa] to thrive.”

On December 27, entrepreneur and motivational speaker Magatte Wade sat down with Merion West and Andrew Scott to discuss her brand Skin Is Skin. Ms. Wade’s goal with the business is to lead Africa to prosperity through the free market. She believes the rejection of these ideas brought the majority of the continent to its current state of poverty. Ms. Wade speaks publicly about this to spread awareness and also works at the Atlas Network, a global network of free-market think tanks. This discussion chronicles Ms. Wade’s path to entrepreneurship, while also examining concrete ways people can help lift Africa out of poverty and how she’s working toward that future now.

Ms. Wade, thank you for joining me. What is a day in the life like for you with your work right now?

Today, I was working on two things. Payroll is coming up for the end of the month, so we always try to pay everyone a little earlier, especially when there are holidays. And then also on the school side, because we have a little school for the children of the workers, Montessori-type, and it just turned out that our kids right now are still going on both sides. They’re coming to our schools full-time when they don’t have school with the Senegalese system, and when the Senegalese school is in session, we have them full-time but on a different schedule. So we’re just making sure that we advance them. One of the kids, basically he’s top of his class, so we’re organizing to prepare a special gift for him, so today was all the fun stuff. But when you’re on two continents, sometimes you lose track of time.