Aly-Khan has been an active Investor at the Nairobi Stock Exchange, The USE and various other African Stock markets. He arrived in Nairobi in August 2006 and published his book "Anyone Can Be Rich" based on the NSE and the Kenyan Economy.
This week past, a lady called Angel Jones came by my office. She has set up a web site for the diaspora called the 'Homecoming Revolution' and she asked me;
"So Aly-Khan why did you come back home?"
And I said, "You know Angel, people often ask me that question. And the question is sometimes constructed this way."
"Aly-Khan, If you had such a good job in London, Why did you come back?"
And I said I probably find that the most annoying question of any question I am ever asked.
And I then quoted Nasim Taleb to Angel.
They are born, then put in a box; they go home to live in a box; they study by ticking boxes; they go to what is called "work" in a box, where they sit in their cubicle box; they drive to the grocery store in a box to buy food in a box; they go to the gym in a box to sit in a box; they talk about thinking "outside the box"; and when they die they are put in a box. All boxes, euclidian, geometrically smooth boxes.
I said to Angel, you see I lived in a beautiful gilded box. And it was something that I had always wanted from the time I was a young boy in Mombasa. The City of London was a place or an arena that did not exist anywhere in Africa. Its a meritocratic place because if you cannot make money for the bank, There will not be a place for you in the City of London. And I had been trading against myself for eternity and so it was a destination that pulled me to it. I traded all the markets in the world from my desk in London.
You see more than a century ago, both sides of my family came to East Africa from India. And I suppose my antennae started to kick in. I was sure that Africa would converge with the c21st and take off. I had traded Brazil in the 90s and watched it morph from a basket case into the poster child. Does anyone recall India twenty years ago?
And I began to think to myself, I do not want to be sitting at my desk in London, when the continent lifts off. Africa remains very asymmetric. You cannot sit in New York or London and appreciate the contours of the landscape. You have to have your feet on the continent. It takes time to build your desk to plug yourself into the continent and to understand the narrative within the narrative.
And I could see that information revolution was on its way and that I could also reconstruct my trading desk in London, wherever I chose to. I came back seven years ago and had to build a 170 foot tower then to get connected to the world of prices. However, today I can get all the prices (from the price of gold which has come crashing down to the price of the 10 Year Japanese JGB) on my phone.
Today, There is not a single day I do not meet someone like myself. There is growth and opportunity. The lift off I saw coming is predicted and predictable. Sure it will be bumpy but where once I was in a box, today the opportunities in my humble opinion are blue sky. Its like America was a century ago, when the rail roads were built, when JP Morgan created his bank.
Why on earth would I want to be anywhere else but under the cerulean African sky?
No comments:
Post a Comment