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Summary: Delightful reading for anyone/required for entrepreneurs
Review:
Anyone interested in biographies, history, entrepreneurship, or international development will find this book instructive and enjoyable. I happen to be interested in all these areas and for me the book was sheer delight. Particularly concerning entrepreneurship, it provides a very detailed and enlightening illustration of the challenges faced by a start up. After finishing the book I felt I had gained new perspectives as well as admiration for all the initiatives and attributes of the author.
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Summary: Laputa Inc.(Aid Agencies)- It's time to take a hard look!
Review: "Learning to love Africa" inspired me to keep going with the start-up I'm involved with. Despite the huge obstacles that plagued her start-up, Monique Maddy kept following her dream of starting a company in Africa - despite warnings from everyone that it was not possible. This story of persistence and perseverance will inspire anyone involved in a start-up organization. Maddy's style of writing is really personal and informative. She takes you on both her physical, as well as emotional journeys. So much so, that you feel like you're reading her journal, or are a good friend of hers. She is refreshingly frank and honest when talking about her experience with the UN, and she doesn't mince her words when giving her opinion of organizations such as the UN, the World Bank or the IMF. Her book helped me gain rare insights into these global policy-making institutions. I also felt like I learnt a lot about the history of Liberia and Tanzania. Although she really educates the reader in detail about the history of the different countries, organizations, and situations she comes into contact with, you never feel like she's being patronizing. Or even that you're being educated. I found myself just wanting to know more. This is a book I couldn't put down, because I really really wanted to find out what happened at the end. By the end I felt like I'd been on a long, challenging, but gratifying journey to and from Africa, and was more savvy as a result. "Learning to love Africa" shows how much one person can do if they not only set their mind to it, but persist in the long-run.
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Summary: Laputa Inc.(Aid Agencies)- It's time to take a hard look!
Review: Amazing , Must Read for not only Africans but many affiliated with the Laputa Inc. As an African in the daispora,I have deeply agonised about the ails of my beloved continent. Back then, I was allured by Laputa Inc, but after four years the story is seemlingly less noble,as Maddy so accurately describes "They will reinvent themselves to say in the business". The problem are huge, but because of the ever increasing need, change will come slowly. Maddy's memiors will inspire, and certainly ignite the soul searching. It's time to take a hard look!
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Summary: A Treatise--A Treat!
Review: Having travelled to Africa first in my twenties...an ingenue to developing countries, the African continent and then, an idealistic young student, I regret to say I also experienced much of what Monique Maddy experienced and journaled in "Learning to Love Africa..." Had this book been written then, it should have been required reading for all scholars of contemporary Africa.
I travelled back on her words...remembering. The images were vivid. It is an honest description of what happens all too often in developing countries. That Ms. Maddy was more than equipped with enthusiasm, and entourage and wonderful KNwledge and expertise and still found her ventures wrought with frustration is a sad statement on contemporary African life.It is what must be overcome for urban Africa to find and steady itself.
Only through going back and making an attempt, an another, an another and with the intervention of young bright folk like Ms. Maddy, will Africa eventually get it right. Only when right...is defined by a country's indigenous folk who are able integrate the wisdom of both worlds...that of the first world---Africa --with the modern world and technology, will the future of Africa become brighter and better. The book is wonderful. Buy it!
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Summary: Fresh perspective on international development
Review: Learning to love Africa is a great read for anyone interested in entrepreneurship, Africa, and international development. On the one hand, the book is a fascinating and moving personal story of a woman born in Liberia who, helped by the great sacrifices of her entrepreneurial family, gets educated in England and the US, and sets out to contribute to African development. The story of her childhood, her experiences as an African child in an English boarding school and later American high school and college, and especially the story of her entrepreneurial venture in telecommunications is highly engaging and told with wit and humor.
But Maddy is interested in more than telling her own story. She wants to contribute to the international development debate. Based on her personal experience growing up in a company town built by an international corporation, her stint at the UN and her experience with international development agencies that provided funding for her entrepreneurial venture she argues that Africa would have been better off without foreign aid, and that the development of the continent should be left to local entrepreneurs and international corporations.
The chapter that blasts the UN and other international development bureaucracies appears to have been written largely from the gut. It doesn't quite fit into the rest of the book and breaks up the flow of the story. Other books have been more effective than this chapter in pointing out the weaknesses of international aid, because they've been more thoroughly researched and provide specific evidence. Surely for the many failures of the UN one could cite many contrary examples of achievements. And surely, for every LAMCO that was a model of taking care of its employees there are other multinational corporations that have violated human rights and damaged the environment in the interest of short-term profits.
Aside from this one chapter,the story of Maddy's own experience at the UN and her description of Africa's entrepreneurial and trading cultures do make a compelling case for market-based development in Africa.
Maddy's book is provocative and adds a fresh perspective to the debate on international development and the future of Africa. I plan to assign the book in my international development class this fall.
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Summary: A beautiful childhood inspires a determined woman
Review: Learning to Love Africa, My Journey From Africa to Harvard Business School, is an inspiring story of the life of a dynamic Liberian woman. We read of her culture, family, education and travel, which influence her in the decisions and choices she makes. Her family believes in giving her a good eduation, though at a great sacrific to themselves.
From her family and education Ms. Maddy learned to be open and willing to accept all people. We read of Liberia during colonial times and after and learn of the United Nations' failure to take action in Sierra Leone and Liberia, when rebels destroyed to the countries. We read of the United Nations represtatives, who go to developing countries, yet live among themselves in elite communites and never learn of the real problems they were sent to investigate.
The story is poignant, insightful, hopeful and despairing and yet though a personal story, it reminds us all of our innocent and beautiful youth, which ends when we become members of the world's community.
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Summary: Excellent Book
Review: This book is for the many Africans living in the diaspora, longing to return home and make a difference/dent toward many of the problems that face us. As one who feels torn between economic self-preservation and answering the call to return home and make a difference, this book has inspired me to no end.
Thank you.
This book will also touch anyone and everyone who feels socially responsible no matter where they are from.
Read it!
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Summary: All it takes is heart.. And this 2:48 marathoner has plenty
Review: This is the story of a woman who had an impossible dream: To effect a change in an environment that would allow its people to experience some economic independence for the first time in history through providing economic opportunities. A clear, simple, and specific goal, born of the heart of one woman; A goal that international agencies organized many decades ago, and subsidized by millions of dollars, could not accomplish. Ms Maddy's plight takes the reader through her warm and loving childhood in her native Liberia, governed by parents that placed education in high priority. After realizing her first dream to work for the United Nations, Maddy discovers the hard way that the major failures that have plauged her beloved continent, including a corrupt government, dire poverty, and a lack of any modernization, have all been virtually ignored by the same agencies that she thought were working to dissolve them. Bitterly disappointed, she was determined more than ever to continue with her goals on her own by completing her business education and starting a business of her own in Africa. The obstacles she faced on the way, such as finding investors to believe in her ideas, and simply to keep on after receiving much opposition, were never-ending, and it was so uplifting when her business finally started to experience success, that I wanted to put the book down and jump up and applaud.
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