The Last Place to Start a Company  

Monique Maddy tried and failed to launch a telephone service in Africa.
She's moving on. Africa isn't. 

By Ian Mount, October 2001 Issue 
Copyright © 2001 Business 2.0 Inc. 

Three short years ago, Monique Maddy was boasting that her company was going
to "change people's lives" and "revolutionize things." Adesemi, the wireless
pay-phone company she founded in 1993, had raised $37 million dollars, built
a network in Tanzania, and moved into Ghana, and was planning to expand its
service to the Ivory Coast. Maddy was the new face of African business. A
Wall Street Journal article in September 1998 even proclaimed, "If the
disenfranchised of Africa ever join the global economy, it won't be
diplomats, politicians, or church people leading the way. It will be
entrepreneurs like Monique Maddy." 

It hasn't turned out that way. Maddy walked away from her company in disgust
in the fall of '99. Her story is a familiar one, full of the government
corruption that has become an African cliché, but the 39-year-old Maddy
doesn't blame her company's demise on the bribery requests or Kafkaesque red
tape. For the Liberian native, who's writing a book about third-world
entrepreneurship to be published by HarperCollins next year, the real reason
for Adesemi's failure and Africa's continental mire can be traced to the
international development agencies that are designed to help the region.
"Africa is worse off today -- in many countries -- than it was at
independence, even though billions and billions have been spent," says
Maddy, who herself served for five years as a United Nations Development
Program officer. "As long as you have these kinds of institutions, you won't
have any change." 

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