


P</span>eople </span>don\u2019t want to leave their homes. Magatte Wade understands this well. Born in Senegal, she grew up in France with her parents. When her grandmother died, she wasn\u2019t able to go back to Senegal for her funeral. Like countless immigrants around the world, she left her native culture, her native language, and her family \u2014 the closest ties that bind humans to one another \u2014 because her native country did not provide opportunities to prosper.</p>\n
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Wade has prospered. An entrepreneur, she has started multiple companies that make products in Africa and sell them in the United States. And she wants more Africans to prosper. She wants more Africans to be able to say, as she says, \u201cFree enterprise is my birthright as an African.\u201d</p>\n
Today Wade is being awarded the Julian L. Simon Memorial Award from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a free-market think tank in Washington, D.C. The award is named for the economist who wrote The Ultimate Resource</em>, a book about human ingenuity, and who won a famous wager with Paul Ehrlich by betting that natural resources would become more abundant, not scarcer.</p>\n
\u201cTo me, it\u2019s a tremendous honor, especially given what Julian Simon stood for,\u201d said Wade in an interview with National Review</span>. \u201cHe believed human beings are not a minus but are a plus.\u201d</p>\n
Wade stresses that according to demographic trends, by 2050, one-quarter of the world\u2019s human beings will be Africans. \u201cMy continent is still the poorest in the world,\u201d she says.</p>\n
Wade says this is largely the consequence of overregulation. She gave a TED talk</a> in 2017 about tariffs, laws, and regulations that make it nearly impossible for African entrepreneurs to start businesses. Because there are no businesses, there are no jobs, and because there are no jobs, Africans risk their lives to flee to Europe or the U.S., she said.</p>\n
\u201cMy goal is for George\u2019s name to enter the history books,\u201d Wade says. While many Western academics as well as activists such as Bono</a> are only now coming around to the fact that markets and trade are the solution to Africa\u2019s poverty, Ayittey was there decades ago.</p>\n
Dominic Pino is the Thomas L. 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