Reducing Africa's dependence on aid requires building the foundation of a functional private sector.

Travelling in Nigeria or Mozambique, it is striking how much raw entrepreneurial capacity Africans have. In environments that would prove too challenging for most MBAs, Africans, many with poor education, have figured out how to create distribution channels for millions of dollars worth of pharmaceuticals, how to import machines from India to create small-scale manufacturing facilities for local markets and how to build processing plants to add value to agricultural exports.