Gerald Grant

@SizweLo Maponga is correct about the need for local creativity and entrepreneurship. However, individual effort need to be harnessed through well governed institutions and mutually beneficial networks that promote community prosperity and well-being. Individual effort is not sufficient.

Joshua Maponga claims that African countries can fix their job crises by getting educated and then “going back to the village” and “starting up stuff”. What Maponga doesn’t seem to understand is that individuals fail because their country’s industrial policy is not geared towards sustaining such. No amount of individual effort is going to move the needle. The idea of a mass of individuals all doing their own thing is intuitive and motivational, but history does not support it. No country ever uplifted itself through individual enterprise without deliberate state policy. That’s where everything starts, no exceptions. Maponga’s message resonates because it speaks to agency and self-reliance. It’s basically a philosophy of individual and community upliftment in the absence of a functional state. But the thing is, individuals and communities don’t operate in a vacuum. Their success is shaped by the enabling environment, or lack thereof, created by the state. An educated person can start an agri-business, but if there are no reliable roads to get goods to market and no energy grid for cold storage, the venture is hamstrung. This kind of infrastructure is a public good that requires state planning and investment. Where does capital come from? Without a functioning national financial system, development banks, or policies that de-risk lending to SMEs, entrepreneurs rely on personal savings or predatory loans. This severely limits scale. You might as well get a job. When the local population is poor, and regional trade is hampered by poor logistics and tariffs, the market is too small, so who will you sell to? State-led industrial policy must nurture industries, protect developing ones and negotiate regional/international trade agreements to create larger markets for you. Maponga’s motivated individuals would be the engine of the economy, but without the state to lay the tracks, the train of national development goes nowhere. History shows that the tracks must come first. You’re not going to “start” and hope state policy finds you along the way. Even if 100 individuals start successful small ventures, how do they become a competitive industry? A lone tomato farmer, a lone processor, and a lone trucker all fail without coordinated investment in inputs, processing facilities, and supply chains. This is where state industrial policy comes in. Getting an engineering degree means nothing when your country has no industrial policy. As I keep saying, no successful developmental state has relied on individual enterprise. There are numerous examples of this. Sure, Maponga is offering an individual survival manual within a broken system, but for individual efforts to sum to national development, you need a functioning state that provides the structure. This is where the focus should be. But he is misdirecting public consciousness. At the exact moment when Africans should be demanding the developmental state capacity of infrastructure, industrial policy and coordinated investment, he’s telling them the solution lies in individual initiative and “going back to the village.” This is politically demobilising by shifting the blame and responsibility away from where it belongs, in state failure and elite capture, onto individuals and communities. Then when hen people internalise that their poverty is due to not being entrepreneurial enough, they stop making rightful claims on the state. Instead of selling the people false hope, entertainers like Maponga should be creating political demand for industrial policy. They should be building public understanding that South Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan, and every Western nation had active developmental states. They should be making it common knowledge that “free market” development is a myth, and that Africans deserve the same state-led development that worked everywhere else. In the end, when you strip away all the self-motivation, the fact remains: development is a state-mediated process and the Maponga message is just a relic of the neoliberal moment when we pretended the state didn’t matter and individuals could bootstrap their way to development.

We had a great time last week bringing together students and researchers at @Carleton_U for our seminar! It was exciting to be part of @SprottSchool's research seminar series and introduce students to the diverse approaches we’re taking in #BlackEntrepreneurship research.

@lisa_rapport @JGrantNeuro @OhioState @lisa_rapport thanks again for welcoming him to your fold.

@JGrantNeuro @OhioState It has been a pleasure and a privilege to be part of your journey this far, Dr. Grant. I’m so happy to welcome you as a colleague in doctoral training. Now it’s your turn to show your good taste and acumen in selecting outstanding applicants like you :).

Excited to share that I’ll be joining the faculty in the Department of Psychology at @OhioState this fall! Looking forward to pursuing community-engaged research to address health inequities in Alzheimer’s disease and promote brain health in Central Ohio. #EndAlz #BuckeyeBound

@JGrantNeuro @OhioState Congratulations @JGrantNeuro!!

Entrepreneurs noirs du Canada📣, marquez l’histoire avec nous ! Participez au sondage national sur l’entrepreneuriat noir au Canada. Cliquez sur le lien suivant pour participer : carletonu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_7Q… #MoisdehistoiredesNoirs✊🏿

.@BekhCanada is celebrating Black History Month by launching a historic survey on Black entrepreneurship in Canada. Take part in this 20-minute survey to help identify the critical gaps, challenges and opportunities for Black entrepreneurs. bit.ly/4bu23VV

Often, Black entrepreneurs are treated as if they fit a one-size-fits-all model, when in reality, theirexperiences can vary greatly based on their region, culture, and background. @DrJaredWesley #BEKHCanada

1/3 Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with other Black business owners and add your business to our ecosystem map! If you’re a BEP funded organization, you won’t want to miss day two because we’ll will be hosting our next convening meeting then.

@rechievaldez @BekhCanada @KayabagaArielle @rechievaldez it was great having you and @KayabagaArielle visit us today at @BekhCanada. Thanks for your interest and support.

With the support of our government’s Black Entrepreneurship Program, @BekhCanada is helping break down barriers for Black entrepreneurs across 🇨🇦 to start up their businesses. Thank you @KayabagaArielle for joining Dr. Grant, the rest of the team and I at BEKH today!

@HoCChamber @mgeist @GregFergus @HoCSpeaker Congratulations Greg.

The Hon. Greg Fergus @GregFergus was elected as the new @HoCSpeaker. #cdnpoli

@tobi Guardrails are not needed if builders build ethical and trustworthy systems. The past suggests we cannot leave it to builders only. AI can create much good. However, many of the systems already deployed are flawed, lack transparency, and are ethically challenged. Promoting EFRAID

Canadian government is announcing a code of conduct on AI today, another case of EFRAID. I won’t support it. We don’t need more referees in Canada. We need more builders. Let other countries regulate while we take the more courageous path and say “come build here.”

@CarAdrianH Relentless digitalization of the customer interface is creating significant challenges for groups such as seniors, people with disabilities, and less digitally savvy people. I should also note that companies such as Wal-Mart are capturing digital images of shoppers at checkouts.

Very proud of @JGrantNeuro, winner of the ECP Poster Award.

Great work Gunjan and team.

@CarAdrianH RIP Ewart! You will be missed.

#EwartWalters, a formidable civic leader in #Ottawa, trailblazing founder/publisher of Ottawa's Black community newspaper The Spectrum died this morning. Ewart was a mentor & moral compass to generations, and a tireless advocate for Black communities. He was respected & beloved.

Join us in Cairo.

It is such a pleasure spending my time as Professor in Residence at the University of the Commonwealth Caribbean, Kingston, Jamaica. I enjoyed sharing and learning with UCC Faculty at their annual Faculty Writing Retreat. #researchwriting #researchmetho…lnkd.in/eyFxkGZ9

In our recent Op-Ed in the Ottawa Citizen, Rob Collins and I encouraged the City of Ottawa's proposed service review committee to look beyond costs to measure value delivery. lnkd.in/etpEi2gm

It was such an awesome privilege today to host the Honourable Mary Ng, her colleagues Greg Fergus, Arielle Kayabaga, and Emmanuel Dubourg, and participants representing partner organizations involved in the Black Entrepreneurship Program at the Black Entr…lnkd.in/eHysszzY

We are very proud to have another Dr. Grant in the family. Congratulations again @JGrantNeuro