Shingai & Karen Mutasa: The Truth About Africa, Wealth & the Diaspora | NXT Chapter with T.D. Jakes

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. The challenge that we have to form a United Africa is that nobody wants to see a United Africa. Yeah. And the resources that are applied to keep us separate are real. Welcome, welcome, welcome. You're listening to my next chapter and we are grateful for our distribution of this product as we have a glorious opportunity to engage some very, very important subjects at this time. We're dealing with the global exchange and how we can throughout the diaspora come together more as a family and interchange ideas, customs, products, insights and creativity for the betterment of us as a whole. We started as a whole. We are gradually coming back to that place and I am delighted. We are here in Martha's Vineyard, which is a historical site where many former slaves, African slaves came and bought property and owned property for the first time and we are here in Oak's Bluff where they begin to break the presidents of the 1800s by owning their own property and taking up residence in this place. So now every year in August it has become a mecca for us where we come and we have all types of events all over the island commemorating those slaves who own and still own through their descendants much of the property that you see in Oak's Bluff. And so we're glad to have you here and our special guest is Shinghai and Karen Matasa who are here, who I met in Zimbabwe in Harare and had a beautiful, beautiful time with them and I want to welcome them to be a part of this. I want to tell you a little bit about that my rosin things down is so much because they're both polymaths. He is a business magnet, a visionary investor and the force behind some of Zimbabwe's most ambitious developments. Shinghai Matasa is the mastermind behind Joyner City, one of the tallest buildings in the capital and sits on boards of leading companies across the continent. He is accompanied by his lovely wife, she's an entrepreneur in her own rights, investor, philanthropist with a special emphasis on the mark of beauty and beauty care. One more time would you clap your hands and welcome them to be here with us today. I am so excited, I don't know what the world will do. I couldn't believe it when I got word that you both were coming and you are what we would call a power couple in America because you have done so much and you have accomplished so much. Chapter one, power couple. So I'm going to take you back for a moment and tell us how you met and how you came to be a couple. I'm going to let you do it Shinghai. I think you're younger than me Shinghai. So I was saying to my son this morning, first of all thank you so much that we're here from that seed that you planted maybe eight months ago and you said we want you to come to Martha's vineyard and here we are today so thank you very much. I think that I always say that how we met was it was by divine appointment. I just never knew it at the time and I probably knew for sure that this was my soulmate and my partner maybe ten years after actually meeting him and when that moment happened, here we are, thirty three years later. And he's still smiling. He's still smiling, that's a good sign. Together you have built quite an empire and you have done some of the most amazing accomplishments and it would seem to me with both of you having so many different lanes that you function in, companies that you run, real estate initiatives that you're engaged in, buildings that you have built. I met you at your restaurant and they came and sat down at the table with me and then invited me to their home and I went to their home and it almost blinded my eyes. It was so beautiful, it was so opulent, it was so classy, it was so dim that I was just amazed and just taken in by the hospitality, the food, the fun, yeah you fed me real good. We had a great time together and it was a wonderful experience. I'm wondering though, I could really ask each one of you how do you manage so many diverse, completely diverse things, that's why I called you a polymath. And then how do you manage that and still manage each other? I'm lucky, I'm really blessed because I've married somebody who fits into me incredibly well. I'm able to do so many things because she's really the pillar of our home. Everybody around us just does not know how she manages to keep that grantedness of the home but still run the business and do so many charitable things. So I'm the blessed one because I'm allowed to do what I want to do, how I do it, when I want to do it and I'm at home with a very, very strong, strong pillar. The question is how does she cope? So you know they have a saying that behind every successful man is a woman and the women say behind every successful woman is a man who tried to stop her. Now in my case, behind my success is my Red Bull. So he gives me wings to fly. And I think that it's a true partnership in that we complement each other. He is the most incredible visionary and I have learned and so do many people learn from him and his patience and his guidance. I've never had any issues with my role as a woman. I've embraced it from my mother who always said, you know, make sure that you don't embarrass us by not knowing how to, how to, what is your role and embrace that role. And he has, when I say allowed, it's not allowed, he has made sure to enable me to be authentically me and guide and help for him to then be able to do what he does. So I say to people, he is my king because I am his queen and there's no conflict there. I'm wondering, I'm wondering when you talk about your role as a woman, there's so much controversy in our country about what that means, the role of a woman and it's the cultural dynamic tied to that. From your perspective being raised in Malawi, how do you define the role of a woman? Yeah, I had this discussion this morning with my son Isheh who's here. And I was, so I was saying that, you know, God in his wisdom, God is the one who is the made us different. A man and a woman. Yes. And, you know, there's simple, very simple ways to put it. He is the head of our home. He's the provider. He's the protector. He's, he's the hunter. The hunter. I love that. If we go to the animal kingdom and I'm the neck. Very concerning. And without each other, nobody will go anywhere. Without each other, none of us will go anywhere. So when I say I don't have a conflict, the woman is there as the carer, the nurturer. The woman is there to, in the Bible, when it speaks about women submit to your man, to your husband. I never look at that as a degrading or degenerating thing. I know that God gave us our load to bear. And what that means is that when you're submitting, you're not submitting because he's supposed to be this male dictator, exactly. It is that he's got his role. And while he's doing that, you are his helper. But at the same time, if he didn't respect the role that I play and what I do, just like he's supposed to, which is to love the church and the church is the community. The church is his wife and his family. So he plays his part. I play my part. I'm not, I don't, even the way I brought up my daughter, we have a daughter as well, who's, you know, and I say to her that if you don't fight who you are, what God meant for us to do. If you don't fight it, you will have joy, you will have peace, you will have happiness because there's respect. So all the values that we are taught from the Bible to our parents, that is what we bring into our marriage and into our relationship and into how we parent as well. Chapter two, beauty. Let me ask you this. One of the businesses that you have centers on beauty, beauty care as a woman. There's so much plastic surgery going on over here. Some of it to imitate features of African women, thicker lips, broader hips. I guess it's not really plastic, but we call it plastic surgery. And then on the other hand, there are some people that are using whitening creams to brighten themselves from your perspective. How do you feel about that? It's, it's been a huge challenge. I've spoken about it over the last probably 15 years. I've been in the cosmetic distribution industry for about 30 years. And it stems from colonization. And that's how colorism was born. And there's this, it's systemic. It's where there, you know, are women and men were made to believe that the fairer, the lighter complexion you are, the more beautiful you might be. And it's, it's you even have a higher bridal price in many nations, even in India, in Japan, in the, in it's all stems from the colonial mind. So we need to, you know, address it because it's, it's actually killing people. The, the whitening, brightening in Nigeria, for example, almost 80% of people. And that's from Hollywood, Nollywood, Bollywood. They take pills to lighten themselves and to decrease the amount of melanin. And melanin is a hormone. Melanin is what protects us from, from bacteria, from it's, it's, it's, it's something that we should make sure that we preserve and we protect. So it's, it's a very important subject to talk about, but we can't really, we shouldn't really be dealing with how to, to, to avoid it or how to talk against it. We should be going back to the root. And the root, like I said, just about five minutes ago is that we need to go back to the books and recreate the curriculum. The curriculum education for our children and generations to come is not about just decolonizing the mind. It is about emancipation of the mind. And then once you've done that, you now need to feed the mind to uplift the people for true transformation to happen. You know, there's been some interesting articles that have come out recently about a lot of hair care products for women, black women, particularly in this country being toxic, leading to cancer, leading to diseases and that sort of thing. How do you, you make your products more holistic and more healthy for women? So I think that going back to basics in the sense that God gave us every plant and every flower naturally, and you can find almost every cure. In what we have, we just have wanted to fast track. So we go to the synthetic and the artificial when really going back to basics and back to nature in herbal and natural and plants and so forth. So that for me is very important. And using the technology wisely, we have a new brand that we're distributing and we have the master distribution for the Middle East and for Africa that my daughter is. We can't get it in America? Yes, you can. It's called QMS, but it's a medicosmetic. So it's the first 100% collagen that is vegan because it's derived from starch and their use technology to be able to reduce the size of the molecule by one trillion in order to have penetration. So you've got technology and vegan and plant. So it's environmentally clean. Technology is involved in it as well. We're learning more and more in America that all businesses are tech businesses in some way or another. When you start talking about Viana Fente, you start talking about these opportunities to connect and the more we connect, whether it's through arts or through music or whatever idiom of thought that we connect through, it helps to tear down the wall. And because there are people like this gentleman here who are trying to scale the wall to make things better. What do you think about it? So I'll go to your question on Fente. As we know, I'm sure you all know that Fente is Rihanna, but it's also LVMH. So we did have it. It took five years to get it into Africa. So she launched in 2017, but we only got it in 2022. And it was a challenge. It was a huge challenge because there were loads of reasons on why it was not yet in Africa, which I saw as excuses to just keep us out. And she actually spoke up about it. And when we did get it, we celebrated it and we were very excited. We had a very successful launch and they were very strict on which retail markets it will go into. So it was a lot of lobbying that needed to be done because it was not up to her. She still had to go through the very strict guidance and the strict guidelines and structures and walls that the LVMH is big cosmetic companies have. And so, but once it was there, the beauty industry, for example, is massive. But it is a very difficult industry because you need deep pockets because of marketing. And, you know, having people getting paid to to influences, for example. So it is very difficult to you need deep, deep pockets to compete with the big cosmetic companies. That's why for somebody like me, I decided a long time ago that instead of doing my own brand, which I'm going to now have to put and compete with the big five, for example, I would rather be the master distributor of brands that I align with that have the right values. And then they are happy for us to represent them and distribute. And we make the profits just like they make profits. We probably make more than the actual manufacturer does as the distributors. So that's the model that I've used in terms of cosmetic distribution and not really encouraged people to go ahead and make your own brand because it takes a lot of money. Chapter three colonization. When you talk about colonization, I don't want it to slip over the head of our listeners because whereas that is a common term in the continent of Africa, it is not as well known or as well taught over here as it would be over there. Can you spend a little time talking to us about the road you all traveled while we traveled through slavery, you traveled through colonization? And can you talk a little bit about the dynamics of that? Hi, can you hear me? You know, the African race, the African race. Was interrupted about 500 years ago. Now, part of it is slavery. And you, African Americans, are the product of slavery. But what happened and it took real hold in the 18th century when the concept of slavery became abhorrent. And they started to look at how do we still maintain control of this continent. And they did it through colonization. Through colonization, they started to work on the minds of the African. No disrespect. But the biggest tool that was used was religion. Through religion, they began to disrupt how we as Africans began to think. How we thought about God. How we related to God. It then went into the corruption of our cultures. So you'll find over the last 200 years, especially from my part of the world, we have ceased to see ourselves as Africans, but we continually try to become westernized. And that mindset is really what colonization is about. There's a friend of mine who put it really succinctly. Our problem as Africans is not that we want to modernize, but we want to westernize. And we have to get back to modernizing ourselves, being comfortable with the cultures that we originally were given. So you, as African Americans, are continually fighting the vestiges of slavery. We are fighting the vestiges of colonization, but it's a job. It's not an easy job. It's not a one-generational game. We're talking about half a millennia of subjugation. You're not going to change it in one generation. And our belief is that colonization is something that has to be dealt with, has to be understood, has to be restructured. One of the most amazing things that I read about you is that you are a strategic thinker. And you made a statement, or at least the article said that you did, that the change that you hoped for, for Zimbabwe and Malawi and the surrounding area of South Africa, may take a hundred years. And you said, wow, that seems like a long time. That's really not that long. It's the length of time between your grandfather and your grandchild. Did you say that? Okay, I got you right. I got you right. Okay, good. Wow, that is amazing. Yeah, so the distance between your grandfather and your grandchild is what you expect it takes to really write the course of what is going on over there and perhaps over here. Are there steps along the way that become metrics that we can see the laying aside of the bruises and scars of colonization or slavery or low self-esteem that you think that we need to use? As mal markers along that hundred years? You know, 100 years is not a long time. To our challenge as Africans is our mindsets because colonization is about decomposing or deconstructing the mind and reimposing something else into that mind. That process of reengineering your mind takes a long time. So the beginnings is how do we change the mindsets of Africans? And when I say Africans, you know, no disrespect. When you move out of America and you are traveling anywhere else in the world outside of America, you guys are Africans. So the decomposition of that mind is a journey. But first of all, we have to want to change. And I think that's part of the problem that a lot of us now have because it's nice. We already are able to wear good clothes to eat. Well, why should we have to change the way we are? You hit on a very strong point when you said the rest of the world looks at African Americans and they see us as Africans. I think that we have been we have been Negroes. We have been colored. We have been darkies. We have been African Americans. We have been so many things that that we don't really always know how to categorize ourselves. And I think coming into a fuller awareness that we are Africans, separated by waters, but not by genetics. I found out who I was, who my ancestors were by DNA testing to be sure. And the percentage was about 80, almost 90 percent. Ebo. And I learned that, did not know that. Don't have a last name. Don't have any clue what my name is. One of the things you fought for was language and names and bringing back to life names that were true to your ancestry. Can you talk about the importance of language and names? You know, I would start with names because language is a tough one, especially in my country, where the British settled in my country. In most parts of the continent, they administered, they did not settle. But in my country, they settled. And therefore, the impact of that was to try and to destroy not only the language, but the culture. So the first thing is you find that in my country, most people have an English name and a Zimbabwean last name. And that is the beginning of the destruction of the mind. So you find that if I go to West Africa, where the administrators, the English administered, you find that on the whole, the West Africans still have pride in their names. And I love it. In South Africa, finally, because of apartheid and because of segregation, you have this situation where a lot of the South Africans still have their names. Unfortunately, in Zimbabwe, we love being called John. And we actually throw away our natural names, Shingai. That's my name. So the first thing I say to myself is how do we change the mindset to love ourselves? And part of that is being called Shingai, not being called John. You understand. And there's something that I always say is, you know, in the 1700s, there was a guy called John Smith. And he left England and he put his sons in Australia, in New Zealand, in South Africa, in America. And they truly became citizens of those countries. And today, if you watch rugby, you'll find that the Australian team or the New Zealand team does the haka, which is like the ethnic dance of the Maoris. Which tells people globally that I'm a New Zealander. The funny thing is, he's still called John Smith. It doesn't change his name because identity matters. We, on the other hand, have a problem that we now accept and are comfortable using somebody else's identity. And that is the biggest challenge I think we have. When it comes to language, it's even more pervasive. Yes. Yes, it's a very interesting thing. I was in Nigeria in Abuja and the pastor leaned over and told me, this is what your language sounds like. And he started talking in that language. And I think you are Bento. Am I pronouncing it right? Bantu. Bantu. Okay. Yeah. And we're just learning all of that because when we studied African American history, it started with the Ships Landy. So when I went to Africa, I felt like Columbus discovered America. I found my roots. I found my history. I found out why I moved the way I move. Why I dance the way I dance. But I feel the way I feel. It was quite healing to understand that it was not wrong to be soulful. And that it was appropriate that our foods are related. Our spices, our styles of cooking and taste and all of that are interrelated. And some of our language and colloquialisms come from different parts of Africa. And learning all of that, I started putting all this African art all over my house. So you have to come see all my African art and artifacts and different stone carvings out of Zimbabwe. And other places that I bought in South Africa and brought home to so that my children would, while they're proudly embraced being American, they would also recognize their DNA, their roots, where they came from and not be ashamed of who they are. Because most of the time we see images of Africans on the news and the public on television. We don't see anything about Nollywood. We're starting to now. We're starting through hip hop and different music. Our artists are starting to break down birds and tear down walls. But on the news, most of the time we see big belly children with flies all around them starving to death. We don't see Shinga. We don't see what you showed me in your home. We don't see pictures like that on the news. So the average African-American doesn't know that there is wealth in Africa. And they don't realize that it is one of the most emerging countries in the world. That it has the fastest growing GDP in the world. That it is a place that, well, America has been somewhat reluctant to get engaged in China and everybody else has been reaching, trying to get a foothold into Africa. And now the term has emerged. Now I want to hear what you think about this term, the United States of Africa. Chapter four, a united Africa. What is the likelihood of the continent coming together in a concerted way to raise the GDP, to increase trade, and to begin to trade with other Africans around the world, including African Americans, Caribbean and elsewhere? You know, in 1963, I think, a few of our African leaders got together and created what they call the African Union. So that has been ongoing since then. We now have, what, 54 countries. I think some call it 55, but it's 54 countries that form Africa. The point I always make is that 54 countries is about 1.2 billion people. India has 1.5 billion people and China has 1.5 billion people. What is interesting is there's only one US ambassador in China. And there's only one US ambassador in India, but there's 40 US ambassadors in Africa. So the challenge that we have to form a united Africa is that nobody wants to see a united Africa. And the resources that are applied to keep us separate are real. And you know when you are poor, or when there's poverty and somebody gives you a million dollars, it's easy to maintain your status. I want to remain Zimbabwe. I do not want to be Africa. I do not want to be SADAC. I do not want to be ECOWAS. I want to, because I will maintain the power that I have. So I think the challenge for a united Africa, if I was anywhere close, I think I would insist that there's only one place where international countries reside in one. So we have one US ambassador for Africa, one UK ambassador for Africa, one Indian ambassador, one Chinese ambassador, as opposed to the proliferation which separates us and continues to separate us, because it's economically correct for them. Yes. When you look at that from a GDP perspective, and you're the fastest growing GDP in the world, incidentally, how does this decision impact the GDP of the various countries in Africa? And an addendum to that is most African Americans and Americans in general do not realize that those 58 countries, you said, are mage. They're young countries. They are a result of colonization themselves and the fight to be free and to establish themselves as a country. My understanding is the colonizers divided the land, even at the expense of dividing families at the expense of dividing people. So the land is divided, so Nigeria is a fairly young country, Ghana and I are almost the same age, about 60s and 68, something like that. A friend of mine helped write the constitution for Nigeria, and a lot of us don't really realize in the United States that all of these divisions were first done to divide the gold and the silver and the diamonds, because the real value of Africa was not seen in its people, it was seen in its resources. How do you get back that value within the context of states, and how do you continue to emerge to be the GDP that you are emerging? All eyes in the world are looking at Africa right now. Chapter five, invest in Africa. You know, if you take a look at Africa today as a combined economy, it's about a three trillion dollar economy, which in comparison to America is marginal, but it's a significant economy. If you take a look at the region that I belong to, it's called SADAC. We have Congo, we have South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique and a few others. Through that combination of countries, every cell phone that you have uses the resources of that region, everything. So we could actually be saying to ourselves as a region, let's build our own cell phones. But unfortunately, it pays to us to continue to be exporters of the raw material. I was going to ask you about that. And through that, we are exploited because we have no choice at this point in time. So that's not just lithium, it's coffee, it's tea, it's diamonds. Every aspect they have not been manufactured there, just delivered in the raw form, paid very little for the initial form and then sent around the world where the money is added to it and the price. What is being done to change that, if anything? Not much. Not enough anyway. I mean, they try. The most expensive resource in Africa is capital. In Zimbabwe, if I want to raise money, it's going to cost me 15% to 20%. Percent. Here, that same money is between two and five percent. So we always say to ourselves, how can we convince our brothers and sisters in America to come and invest in our part of the world because their money is cheaper and could have a lot more impact on the continent. The challenge we have on the continent is capital. So it becomes easier to just keep on selling the raw materials, the lithium, the gas, the cobalt, the coltan. Oil. Oil. Absolutely. Rather than producing it. I mean, we've now had this amazing African, Dungote, who now finally, they said, why is Nigeria exporting crude oil and importing refined product? Right. Absolutely. You're buying your own oil back. It had twice the price. But amazing, man. And I think if the African-American brothers and sisters invested in Africa, for example, in those particular arenas, the return on your investment will be much greater than the return and investment that you have here in America. That's a very interesting thing because two of the companies that you started hit the stock exchange in Zimbabwe and in the UK. So it is possible to invest in those companies. From here, you don't necessarily have to get on a plane and go over to Africa to invest in Africa. Talk to us a little bit about how that can be done because what this is really all about is a global conversation about how we can strengthen each other economically and bypass middlemen and create opportunities for the transference of wealth. You know, the big problem is there is a silent war to keep us apart. A silent war. And the issue is not about money. It's about the mindset. So that's where the real challenge becomes. And actions like this that you're taking begin to thaw and begins to create the opportunity for us to talk together. One of the ladies I was talking to says she does tours, bringing African-Americans into Africa. Unfortunately, until we get more and more and more and more of us doing that, it will not happen. Go ahead. Sorry, I was going to say I also think that there's a lot, there's trust that needs to be built because you'll hear many people say, oh, I'm not going to be going down to Africa because I'm afraid of all of the scams and so forth that happen. So it's really important when you have a platform like you've given us today, that when you're going to try to play in Africa, make sure that you identify brothers and sisters who have got a track record and who are going to be able to give you an authentic business opportunity where you're not going to have the scams. So, you know, it's about partnering and collaborating and speaking and coming together to build. There's a lot of conversation going on, not just amongst Black Americans, but White Americans as well, about investing into Africa and finding a clear path to do that with people who are reputable and have the integrity. What do you suggest as a litmus test to find out when it's safe and when it's not? He's a good bit. I invest throughout the continent and therefore I'm just like you. I'm going to a country and I'm looking for opportunities. My strategy is to find somebody. I will never go into a country and think that I can do it by myself. I spend more energy looking for that special individual or those special individuals and invest with them. I have something to offer, they have something to offer as a combined, we'll make good music together. So I would say the travel, it really is critical. You have to go and you have to be participating with people in that economy, wherever it is. Whenever it is. When you talk about that, explain to them the difference between whereas we can go to a bank and borrow money, the banks there, the interest rate is pretty high. So you're really looking for investors, equity investors, people, public private funds coming in that direction and direct funds from people who are looking for opportunities rather than going to the bank. Am I right and can you elaborate on it? I think there's a combination, equity as opposed to debt. My view is that you want to bring in capital as equity partners rather than just do it as debt participants. The more you can bring in that kind of capital, I think the more opportunities that you will explore in all over the continent, wherever it is, whether it's Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Ghana, capital is what I think is missing more than anything else, but also skill, technology, which you do have access to. And if you bring it onto the continent, I think the value that you'll bring is very, very significant. It's starting to happen. Google and Microsoft and different people are starting to set up locations over there. How do you secure your investment in such a way that you're not fearful of it? Because the laws are different from country to country. Over here, you can write a contract that's enforceable. It's not necessarily enforceable over there. Is it just gut instinct? How do you get to, because trust is an emotion, but when it comes to money, money has no emotion. So how do you secure that economic growth? I'll give you an example. I went to London in 2010 to look for capital. And I found a US fund which was based in London that was interested in investing in my organization. At the time, my president was very topical. His name was Robert Mugabe. So most people did not want to invest in Zimbabwe. But this particular investor said, you know, Shingai, what you're doing, we want to be part of. But we can't invest in you as a Zimbabwean business. If you list in London, then we can invest in a London business. And I need a capital. So I said, sure, I'll invest, I'll create a public company. Now, these are structures that are very feasible here. We can actually create those structures which give more comfort to US investors, but still operate on the continent. So it's about building the structures that remove trust and focus on delivery. How have you seen changes since the removal of President Mugabe and unfortunately later his death? How have you seen changes in how Zimbabwe is perceived and received now that it is ushering in new leadership? You know, for me, what we saw with the exiting of Mugabe was the creation of a new mandate. And the mandate that now drives Zimbabwe is economic. Whereas for President Mugabe, it was the restoration of historical wrongs. The new president and the future presidents of Zimbabwe, their focus will be on the economics of the country. That's a challenge because it's a process. So we have a new president who's been there now for seven years. He's got until 2028. We have next generation of leaders that are going to be coming through sooner or later. And for me, the mandate will still be the same. It will be an economic mandate. I think Zimbabwe has transitioned well. When I look at our agriculture, where we were prior to 2000 to where we are today, it's been a market improvement in the performance of our agricultural performance. What I think still is lacking from a Zimbabwe, from a SADAC perspective, is that entrepreneurial zeal with financial capabilities. We have a lot of people who want to be entrepreneurs but do not have access to capital. This is where I think if we can find that solution, we'll see the speeding up of evolution for Zimbabwe. This is precisely why I wanted you here. Because we have the same problems here. Access to capital is the biggest problem that prohibits African Americans from sustainability. African American women are going into business more readily than any other people group, but it's not sustainable because it's very difficult to get access to enough capital to get above the really big towering 1% to really get in the game on any grand scale, which brings to bear the question, what prohibits us from connecting across the waters in a way that develops a sustainable process? What you brought to mind about incorporating in the UK or in the US gives us a middleman in a conflict zone while we grow together. Closing that gap over that next hundred years or so. It's a very interesting idea indeed because those countries do have contracts that enable both sides to feel secure in what they're doing. I know that your background, your education is in business. It took you a minute, by the way, he is a person of faith, comes out of the Methodist tradition. It took you a minute to find your way. You weren't an overnight success. You had some setbacks and some set ups and some turnarounds. For the entrepreneurs that are listening out there, as they begin to understand that we have similar problems, not just similar skin, not just similar hair, we have similar problems. We also have similar struggles in getting our businesses up off the ground that often our African counterparts think that it's much easier for us over here than it is over there. But we face some of the same things here that you do over there. Can you speak to us a little bit about how we can take these common problems and find common solutions? I've listened to several speakers from over there and you could have picked them up and dropped them off over here and the same issues apply over here that apply over there. You know, the way I perceive it, you guys have easier access to capital than I do. Don't you watch too much TV? What we have is a continent filled with opportunity. What we look for are partners that we can work with to build structure that access capital. You may think you don't have capital as a community, but when I look at the economic size of the African American, this is what, one and a half, two trillion dollars. That's almost the size of the African economy. In terms of spending power. I don't think you don't have money. I think maybe it's how do we harness that capital? How do we harness it and how do we recognize that we have larger amounts of money but we have larger amounts of inflation? Sure. The inflation is so high that what sounds large from the pay scale over there, it depletes in value over here. Then when you look at the fact that the tariffs that are starting to impact globally around the world are coming home to Roos bringing the inflation even higher. There's less distance. The average African American makes 10% of what white Americans make. That means a dollar for every 10. Now the price level is based on the general populace, not on the minorities. We have to take that dollar and make it work like 10. Even though it might be several dollars by your standards, by the time we pay a house note that's $5,000 and for daycare that's $2,500 and pay all of those things, we don't feel as well off as you all see us. These kinds of conversations where we can begin to understand each other are important because they gender strike, create jealousy and anger between us because you say, why don't you come? Why don't you care? Why don't you see about it? We can't afford to come. We're just now starting to get passports. We're just now starting to recognize that we're welcome to come. One of the smartest things I've seen is several presidents over there extending an invitation for African Americans to come home and bypassing visas was huge. By the hundreds of thousands, African Americans are moving in that direction. The sustainability of that and giving them the lifestyle that they're accustomed to and the history that they have never experienced in their life is going to be the balance that's necessary, I think, in order to maintain it. But having you here and having these kinds of conversations and creating pathways to success through entrepreneurship, through business, through Nollywood, doing deals with Netflix, a lot of people don't realize that the power of Nollywood, a lot of Nigerian music is becoming quite popular over here. A lot of Kenyan music. Kenya has a lot of emphasis on technology that is underplayed over here. There's not much articles written about it. Talk to us a little bit about what Africa has to offer. Chapter number seven, moving back to Africa. Yes, so we have a Zimbabwean dynamic woman called Arikana, Dr. Arikana Chamborekwau. And she was the ambassador for the African Union to the United States. And she's got an organization that is facilitating the pathway to citizenship for African Americans in Africa. And what that organization is attempting to do, and I was speaking to the head of your, she said it was going to be passed by the United Nations soon. You're creating a new agency for the TDJX Foundation. That's exactly right. And I explained to her that that is such a powerful way for basically come back home is what we're trying to do. And that it doesn't have to be that your genealogy happens to be in X country, whether it's Nigeria or Ghana or wherever it be, you can choose where you want to be. You don't have to have necessarily, you know, roots that are embedded in one of those countries. And there are several presidents that have signed into the pact, into the agreement, that if you've come and you're going to go into business with other Africans, you'll be able to have access to citizenship in that country. And so we definitely was supposed to have the, what did you call it, the eighth? The eighth summit of African Union. And it hasn't, it didn't happen when it was supposed to, but it's still going to come up. And when that happens, we really would love to partner with the TDJX Foundation to be able to also offer your congregants as well as the people involved that the ability to also have the pathway and access to citizenship for the previously enslaved. I think it's a very interesting subject. The Congressional Black Caucus went to Ghana. I've made several trips to Ghana myself, went to Elmina, began where the slave ships first set sail and had an opportunity to see it, understand more fully how religion played a part in it as well in the transaction of slavery and how religion is wonderful as it is, has also been corrupted by many people to become an excuse for abuse and that sort of thing down through our history. The invitation alone sparked huge interest in this country that we were welcome and invited back home and then understanding how to get there and become accustomed to it because we've been raised American. So like Moses being raised Egyptian and then going to the Hebrews, there's an identity crisis. We are so Americanized in our thinking and in our Netflix, in our the way we do things that we have to learn the rich beauty of traditional dance and move and lights and action and I think it comes through relationships like this, conversations like this. Investors who invest in the various businesses and there may be a different scales. What kind of return do you offer the investors that would motivate them to come out of the stock market and perhaps go into another direction in terms of investing just in the companies that you own? What kind of percentage? You know when we are pitching our companies to private equity funds they would ordinarily look at returns of northwards of 20-25 percent. Which is not easy. That's respectable. Which is not easy but you know to attract money you've got to pay. Well we have had an amazing time talking to you today. We want to thank you. Can you give our guests a round of applause? Thank you. You have been listening to my next chapter. It should spur your ideas and creativity to think beyond your zip code. Perhaps your customers across the water and not across the street and the more we come together and forge ways that we can do business with each other and invest in each other it creates sustainability for us all. I want to thank my very special guest for being with us today and I want to thank you for listening to my next chapter. I hope you find yours and find it soon and that it is profitable to bless you and many generations to come. Thank you Shinga. Thank you. Thank you Karen. It's been wonderful to have you. Thank you sir. Thank you for your hospitality. Hey everybody I want to take this time to thank you for watching the next chapter podcast. If this conversation inspired you helped you reflect on an idea or spark something new inside of you make sure to like comment and subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Remember life isn't about how you begin. It's about how you finish strong. So start your next chapter with us right here every week. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.