Now is the time for Afro-realism: for sound policies based on honest data, aimed at delivering results.
Celtel established a mobile phone network in Africa at a time when investors told me that there was no market for mobile phones there.
It's time Africa started listening to our young people instead of always telling them what to do.
Mobile communications had been around for a long time, but always as a limited market, constrained by the radio spectrum.
Remember, 2000 was the year of the dot-com bust. The telecom industry lost about $2 trillion in market capital at that time.