Pod Insights What Now? with Trevor Noah Prime Minister Mia Mottley: Climate, Immigration, and the Power of Small Nations About this episode In this very special bonus episode that’s as smart as it is fun, Trevor goes one-on-one with Barbados' Prime Minister, Mia Mottley. Between lessons on Bajan slang, "road tennis" Olympic dreams, and big ideas on global finance, climate change, and managed migration, Mottley proves she’s a force of nature—though even she can’t score Trevor an invite to Rihanna’s next birthday bash.
Transcript 18,114 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Trevor Noah? I've always noticed it, but I've never, I've never thought to myself, it seems so obvious now, but I've never thought to myself, oh yeah, you, you can't tell Rihanna's story without talking about Barbados.
0:15 Speaker 01 Exactly.
0:15 Trevor Noah? The music, the way she sees the world, the way she interacts with the world, the fact that she's still, you know, a citizen of Barbados, like all of these things inform how she goes.
0:25 Speaker 01 And that she still has a Belgian accent.
0:28 Trevor Noah? That's true.
0:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
0:29 Trevor Noah? So if I said that phrase to her, she'd know what it means?
0:31 Speaker 01 Of course.
0:32 Trevor Noah? So wait, how do I say it?
0:33 Speaker 01 You still have a.
0:34 Trevor Noah? No, the fair, the fair, how do you say the phrase?
0:36 Speaker 01 Oh, die in fair.
0:37 Trevor Noah? Die in fair.
0:38 Speaker 01 You've got to treat people fairly.
0:39 Trevor Noah? But you said die in fair.
0:40 Speaker 01 Die in fair.
0:41 Trevor Noah? Die in fair. I'm gonna, I'm gonna work on.
0:43 Speaker 01 You have a good Belgian accent already.
0:44 Trevor Noah? I'm, I'm working with yours, die in fair. I'm gonna learn it. I'm just gonna say it to people, die in fair, and I'm, I'm gonna get there. Rihanna, you didn't invite me to your party, die in fair.
0:52 Speaker 01 Exactly.
0:53 Trevor Noah? Yeah, now we're on, now we're on.
1:00 Trevor Noah? This is What Now? with Trevor Noah.
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3:50 Trevor Noah? Prime Minister Mia Motley, welcome to the podcast.
3:54 Speaker 01 Thank you very much, Trevor.
3:56 Trevor Noah? I was thinking of every possible question I could ask you because you're one of the most brilliant thinkers I know. You're also one of the most original human beings I've ever met. And as I was going through everything I could think of, I went, there's one pressing question I've always wondered and I've always wanted to ask you. And that is... Does it ever bother you that most people think Rihanna is the prime minister of your country?
4:24 Speaker 01 I wish it was. Then I'd be able to spend more time on the beach.
4:31 Speaker 01 No, Rihanna is phenomenal. I mean, look, Rihanna has made Barbados known in places and with people that would not otherwise have known. I mean, we like to think that everybody knows about Barbados. That's what happens when you come from a small nation.
4:44 Trevor Noah? I know what it's like.
4:45 Speaker 01 But the truth is that she really has extended the boundaries for us and she has defined excellence and and I wanna speak to it because people don't appreciate that I genuinely feel that she is the businesswoman and artist that she is because of how she was raised.
5:05 Trevor Noah? Huh.
5:06 Speaker 01 Barbados is a place Barbados is a place that social justice matters. If you go to Beijing, the first thing they tell you, man, you can't unfair that body. That's unfair. Everything is about fairness, justice. And Rihanna, when she decided to go into business, said, look, I'm gonna do a makeup company. Because guess what? Everybody's been doing makeup for certain colors and certain hues. I'm gonna do it for everybody because everybody matters. Everybody must be seen. I keep talking about seeing, hearing and feeling people. She did it. Then she wasn't satisfied with that. She says, I'm gonna do a lingerie company. And then you look at the shows and the lingerie is for every shape and size.
5:51 Speaker 01 Those who are fit, those who have been maimed, those who are disfigured, for everybody. And that sense of inclusion, that sense of social justice that was instilled in her from birth, that was reinforced in her in school, is what she's living. So when people ask, why is she successful? Because she's authentic, because she's real, because she's living out what really matters. And that sense of fairness and inclusion, the world buys into with her.
6:21 Trevor Noah? I think that's beautiful.
6:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, man.
6:23 Trevor Noah? I've I've always noticed it, but I've I've never I've never thought to myself. It it seems so obvious now, but I've never thought to myself, oh, yeah, you you can't tell Rihanna's story without talking about Barbados.
6:34 Speaker 01 Exactly.
6:34 Trevor Noah? The music, the way she sees the world, the way she interacts with the world, the fact that she's still, you know, a citizen of Barbados, like, all of these things inform how she goes.
6:44 Speaker 01 And that she still has a Beijan accent.
6:47 Trevor Noah? That's true.
6:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:49 Trevor Noah? So if I said that phrase to her, she'd know what it means?
6:51 Speaker 01 Of course.
6:51 Trevor Noah? So, wait, how do I say it?
6:52 Speaker 01 You you can't. You still have a.
6:54 Trevor Noah? No, the fair, the fair, how do you say the phrase?
6:55 Speaker 01 Oh, die in fear.
6:57 Trevor Noah? Die in fear.
6:57 Speaker 01 You've got to treat people fairly.
6:58 Trevor Noah? But you said die in fear.
7:00 Speaker 01 Die in fear.
7:00 Trevor Noah? Die in fear. I'm gonna, I'm gonna work on.
7:02 Speaker 01 But you have a good Beijan accent already.
7:03 Trevor Noah? I'm I'm working with yours, die in fear. I'm gonna learn it. I'm just gonna say to people, die in fear, and I'm I'm gonna get there. I'm gonna, Rihanna, you didn't invite me to your party, die in fear.
7:11 Speaker 01 Exactly.
7:12 Trevor Noah? Yeah, now we're on, now we're on, um.
7:15 Speaker 01 And tell her next time, you see, when you invite me, then I can eventually say we as we.
7:20 Trevor Noah? We as we?
7:20 Speaker 01 We as we.
7:21 Trevor Noah? We as we, I like this.
7:22 Speaker 01 That's the most powerful three words.
7:23 Trevor Noah? That's the most powerful, okay, we as we, die in fear. I I almost feel like that's, that's a perfect place to to start a conversation because
7:33 Trevor Noah? i- if we think of Rihanna as a as a concept and as an idea, you have a single human who has had an outsized impact on the world. They came from a place that many would have considered insignificant. They started in a place that many people would have considered uh unremarkable, and yet there's no denying that music, fashion, beauty has now been shaped by this person.
7:56 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
7:58 Trevor Noah? I feel like your journey and the journey of Barbados has been very similar.
8:02 Speaker 01 Truth is that the journey of Barbados before has been there for good and bad reasons, and let's start with the bad.
8:08 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
8:10 Speaker 01 Barbados was settled, in fact, this is four hundred years this year that the British first landed. But then history was written that they were the first, although we now know that people were probably there who came from um Europe, but the story that nobody told was the Amerindians, who lived there for centuries and who, at the time when the British came, there was evidence of settlements and life, but nobody had been living on the island at the time. I start there, really to carry you to the fact that the modern story of Barbados then is shaped by the British conquest. And they started a parliament in sixteen thirty nine. It's the third oldest in the Commonwealth.
8:51 Speaker 01 And they passed a law, which really is something that we are not proud of at all. And it became the structure for modern racism and institutional racism, as we know. And it was the bedrock for slavery. It was the sixteen sixty one slave code passed by the Barbados Parliament. It was followed in Jamaica, it was followed in South Carolina, it was followed in Georgia, it was followed in Antigua. Almost all of the countries in the Americas used that sixteen sixty one slave code, which denied the humanity of black people as the basis for their thing. The British treated Barbados as the jewel in the crown. It was the producer of sugar.
9:33 Speaker 01 Um, it was for them the earner of great wealth.
9:37 Trevor Noah? Yeah, yeah.
9:38 Speaker 01 And it was also the place by which they understood how to control and denigrate black people um as slaves. So that we feel as modern, independent Barbadians that we have a duty to pay forward. And that duty to pay forward is as a result of that history. Now, there were other things that happened at the time because of how important the colony was to the British. So after King Charles took back over from Cromwell, ironically, King Charles, he, he gave some of the planters in Barbados land in the Carolinas. And therefore, there is a huge impact of Belgians and Belgian slaves moving into the Carolinas.
10:23 Speaker 01 And the linkages between Charleston and Spightstone in the north of Barbados go back um three hundred and seventy, seventy five years. Yeah, and, and, and there is also a belief that we need to do more research with the Gullah people and to really see the linkages between the Carolinas and Barbados. Um, in addition, prior to that, when the Royalists um tried to
10:49 Speaker 01 Fight against Cromwell.
10:51 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
10:51 Speaker 01 They had the Charter of Barbados in sixteen fifty one, which they say one hundred and twenty five years before independence, the Declaration of Independence in the USA, really spoke to a lot of the same things in terms of no taxation without representation and a lot of the same things that came to be discussed here. So that you see Barbados popping up in a supersized way throughout history. And in a sense, therefore, I don't try to claim it for Rihanna or myself or others today as the country, because it really has always had that tradition. Yesterday on my social media, a picture came up of the father of independence, Errol Barrow, and
11:32 Speaker 01 his wife, meeting President Lyndon Johnson here in DC. And the story goes at that time that President Johnson said to this prime minister of a newly independent country, um, the organization of American states, the US will pay your Jews to join. And Mr. Barrow said, um, sir, with all due respect, where I come from, if you can't afford the Jews, you don't join the club. I give you that story, as well as in his first speech to the United Nations, he declared that we would be friends of all satellites of none. So there's a strong sense of dignity, a strong sense of we have a responsibility to do
12:15 Speaker 01 things and to to give, um, especially because of what we went through. And that does not mean that we are more powerful than we are, because at the end of the day, size still does matter. But on things of thought, leadership and dignity, count us.
12:34 Trevor Noah? Because you you you, I mean, when you talk about size, I think it is important to understand the size of Barbados. What's the current population?
12:43 Speaker 01 It's probably about two hundred and seventy thousand.
12:46 Trevor Noah? Okay, yeah, that was three hundred thousand was what I thought. Just under three hundred thousand.
12:50 Speaker 01 We actually regrettably have declined, and we're right now going through a whole conversation about building back up the population.
12:57 Trevor Noah? Is that because people have been leaving?
12:59 Speaker 01 Part of it is that, but part of it is that we've done a damn good job at family planning. Family planning has been strong in the country from the nineteen fifties.
13:06 Trevor Noah? You know, this is, this is one of the things that like feels like one of the greatest conundrums that the world is facing.
13:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:11 Trevor Noah? Right, is, I was actually, I was having a conversation with my mom about this.
13:15 Speaker 01 Okay.
13:16 Trevor Noah? So my mom was asking me um what I think about marriage, when I'm gonna get married, you know, all, all of these questions, but not pressing, but pressing. And.
13:25 Speaker 01 As moms do.
13:26 Trevor Noah? As moms do, yeah, as moms do. And then I, I said to her, one of the things I've been pondering is how much of our um advancement has limited the natural progression of what it is to be human, because now you have to like choose to make a family.
13:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:46 Trevor Noah? Back in the day, you know, if we think about, this is only in this, in this century.
13:51 Speaker 01 People didn't think, they just did.
13:52 Trevor Noah? You just did, and you couldn't, you know, I mean, obviously, there's like old, you know, I've seen like ancient prophylactics and things, but for the most part, people just had kids because they had kids. Like, how do you, how do you begin to think about this idea? You know, we, we see people saying, oh, populations are declining here, populations are declining there. Is it the threat that, that some people say it is to nations?
14:12 Speaker 01 Well, it is. I mean, look, in the Caribbean, um the first thing I did when we won government in twenty eighteen was to create a national population commission. Because having served as Minister of Education.
14:24 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
14:24 Speaker 01 Many years ago, I realized just from the numbers going into schools that we had a problem. I had, in those days, I had about forty two, forty three hundred kids every year.
14:33 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
14:35 Speaker 01 When I came into office it in twenty eighteen, it was down to about twenty five hundred, twenty six hundred, twenty seven hundred, something like that at the beginning. And now the ones going in in infants A are like twenty two hundred. So that you can clearly see the sharp decline in thirty years. And if I go to other countries in the region, let me give you context, Guyana, that is the fastest growing country in the world. Ghana is.
15:02 Trevor Noah? Guyana is?
15:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, because of the oil.
15:05 Trevor Noah? Okay, okay, got it.
15:06 Speaker 01 Yeah. And, but Ghana's population.
15:11 Speaker 01 In spite of it being the same size as the United Kingdom, United Kingdom is sixty five million.
15:15 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
15:16 Speaker 01 Guyanese struggling to be a million. Um, let's go to Belize. Belize is the same size as Israel. Israel is eight million. Belize is four hundred and something thousand. Um, Suriname is just larger than the Netherlands.
15:31 Trevor Noah? Mm hmm.
15:32 Speaker 01 The Netherlands is seventeen million, Suriname is five hundred and eighty thousand. And if I take Barbados, um, Singapore grew itself literally by reclamation of land. Um, I think they've gone up by thirty or forty percent.
15:44 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
15:45 Speaker 01 Um, they're more or less a little bigger than Barbados, they're five million, I'm struggling to be at three hundred thousand. So you have this predicament that other than Haiti,
15:58 Speaker 01 almost every country in the Caribbean community is underpopulated. Um, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, all of us.
16:07 Trevor Noah? Do you think it's it's because people are able to choose to have kids or is it because people are choosing to have fewer kids as their standard of living goes up?
16:16 Speaker 01 Combination of reasons. I think it's a combination of reasons. I think some of it was emigration.
16:20 Trevor Noah? Mm hmm.
16:21 Speaker 01 I think some of it is more people choosing not to have children or not having children for whatever reasons.
16:27 Trevor Noah? And then what do you say to them if it if that's the, you know, as a as a leader? Because now you have the predicament and it's a confusing one. You need more people. Do you tell people to have people or do you?
16:36 Speaker 01 Well, I'd like them to, but the reality is that I still need people before they do it the pleasurable way.
16:44 Speaker 01 So while while they have pleasure in doing it, we're gonna need that. I still need skills now. And when you start to see the shortage of skills, then you begin to realize this is a real, real constraint on stability and growth.
17:02 Trevor Noah? I would love for you to help us get an insight into thinking about the world like a leader should versus how we think about the world as the passive participants of what's happening. What you just said, we often read about, like everyone reads about it, they go, oh, I was reading that there's not enough workers coming into this country, there's not enough people, you know, Japan is experiencing a decline, Germany, et cetera, et cetera. When you're with world leaders or when you're working on these problems, is there a light that is shining in one direction? Is it immigration? Is it something that we're not thinking about? Like, where are the possible solutions? And how do you think of it?
17:40 Speaker 01 I fear that the conversation about immigration and migration is rooted in racism.
17:44 Trevor Noah? In what way?
17:45 Speaker 01 Rather than rooted in the needs of a country. I think that people are fearful of becoming a minority in their own country, and that's natural, you can't think that. But at the same time, without the influx of people, you're not going to be able to stabilize or get the growth that you need as a country. And one of the problems is that in the world, we have worked out how to move money. Nobody worries about how to move money globally, but as soon as you start talking about moving people, everybody gets nervous. And in twenty, was it December twenty eighteen, I think, at the O A C P, Organization of African
18:26 Speaker 01 Caribbean and Pacific States in Nairobi, I made the point, and I continue to make it, that we need a proper deal for migrants. And this notion of people having to drown just because they want a better life, when countries elsewhere actually need them and can provide opportunity and dignity to them, something is fundamentally wrong. And regrettably, that's one of the things I can say we are fearing people.
18:54 Trevor Noah? We definitely are.
18:56 Speaker 01 We are fearing people, and we are seeing people die unnecessarily when we can have a structured program. And part of it comes back then to the Sustainable Development Goals, the S D Gs, because most people don't want to leave their own countries. They leave because there's a reason.
19:12 Trevor Noah? Because they have to.
19:13 Speaker 01 They have to. They're either running from something or running to something.
19:19 Speaker 01 And if we could get a basic agreement globally, that there's certain things that we must provide people. Basic education, which means from pre-primary to secondary. I mean, I'd love to say post-secondary and tertiary, but let's.
19:34 Trevor Noah? Just starting up a base level, everyone in the world.
19:37 Speaker 01 Must have a basic education that allows them to learn at any stage of their life again. That basic healthcare for the the very basic things.
19:47 Trevor Noah? Right.
19:47 Speaker 01 Um, the opportunity to play football or cricket or whatever sport you like or road tennis, which I hear people talk about pickleball. I want you to come to Barbados and help me promote.
19:57 Trevor Noah? Oh, yeah.
19:58 Speaker 01 Cause road tennis can play.
19:59 Trevor Noah? Wait, wait, wait, wait, what's it called?
20:01 Speaker 01 Road tennis.
20:02 Trevor Noah? Road tennis.
20:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:04 Trevor Noah? And what was, what is road tennis?
20:06 Speaker 01 The guys at home made these rackets out of plywood.
20:09 Trevor Noah? Okay.
20:10 Speaker 01 The net is effectively about what, six, nine inches off the ground?
20:15 Trevor Noah? So it's like knee height.
20:16 Speaker 01 So if you're not fit, you can't play it. So even I got a little trouble sometimes.
20:22 Speaker 01 And then a tape ball. And you can play it. It's like the size of a table tennis board, but it's played on the on the road.
20:28 Trevor Noah? On the road.
20:29 Speaker 01 And that's it. So it's the most perfect sport for inner city, um, areas and ghettos.
20:37 Trevor Noah? Where there's no cars.
20:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, even when the cars, no, no.
20:40 Trevor Noah? Well, how are we playing road tennis?
20:42 Speaker 01 So the you stop, you pull up the the net, the car passes. And you move, swear to God. When you come to Barbados, you'll see.
20:52 Trevor Noah? I'm actually gonna come and see. You know, so it's funny, in in South Africa, we used to, I mean, most places in the world, I, you know, friends of mine who grew up in like Harlem have the same stories that I have growing up in South Africa in the townships where you would just close the road, you would play the game, and then when a car needed to come through, it would come through. But I think as a, if I'm pitching this as like an Olympic sport, it's gonna be tough to pitch this idea that we're closing, closing main. But okay, we'll get it. I'll come to Barbados and we'll.
21:17 Speaker 01 For the Olympics, we leave out the cars, but.
21:19 Trevor Noah? I think that's what'll make it interesting. If you wanna get viewers, you leave the cars. That's a real gold medal.
21:25 Speaker 01 We could do that too.
21:26 Trevor Noah? If you, if you finish the match, you get a medal. Um. Yeah, like, I I love that you bring up the idea of thinking of new ways to to think, cause that's, that's probably what inspires me most about you is whenever I see you speak, and whenever I've even, I've, I've been lucky enough to have like two conversations, I think, with you. Every time I've left our conversation thinking, oh, wow, no, nothing is fixed. There's, there's new ideas in and around everything, you know, like immigration.
21:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:54 Trevor Noah? We all think of immigration as this fixed idea. It was people going somewhere and then that was it. Do you think there's ever a world where, like you say with money, do you think there's ever a world where we find a way for people to go work and then go back to their countries?
22:08 Speaker 01 We need to, look, people used to do that in a more structured way. But because the world hasn't created, governments haven't created the opportunities. We, we create movement, we create treaties that allow for movement of money. We create opportunities for people to invest. But we just don't see people and feel as important enough for us to create a virtual community where you need these skills. I mean, look, in a very small way, you've had the farm labor program out of the, out of Canada, the Caribbean people have gone to for years. They go, they work, they come back, it's a structured thing.
22:48 Trevor Noah? And that, do you see that that benefits both sides?
22:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, it works well because it helps the farmers in Canada.
22:53 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
22:53 Speaker 01 And it helps the persons at home who don't have work at the time.
22:56 Trevor Noah? Right, right, right.
22:57 Speaker 01 Who have an opportunity.
22:58 Trevor Noah? So get, get the labor where the labor is needed and then get the money where the money is needed. And so you're just bridging the gap, basically.
23:05 Speaker 01 And technology actually allows us to do it in a very seamless way now. So that to my mind, if we just rolled up our sleeves a little bit and gave it a little effort, we could do a lot more. Let's take Africa, every time I go to Africa, the amount of young men you see on the roads just waiting for work, working for opportunities. And I'm saying, but there are other parts of the world that are in serious need of people. And I'm not talking basic menial labor, I'm talking skills at all levels.
23:36 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
23:37 Speaker 01 And I genuinely feel that if we can create the right framework for the movement of skills and labor, that the world would be a far better place than it is today.
23:49 Trevor Noah? When you share these ideas with other world leaders, do they see the possibility? Or like I've always wondered, when you're having these conversations internally, are world leaders being pushed by the people? Or are they the ones pushing the people? Which which which way does it really go?
24:07 Speaker 01 You have the ability to push them, and I don't mean that facetiously. World leaders are politicians. Most of them who operate in democracies rely on people's votes. And the people have the ability to shape the work of their leaders, as well as leaders have the ability to nudge their population.
24:31 Speaker 01 I genuinely feel that there are things that we are going to have to do at a popular level globally in order to be able to see the status quo of power move.
24:43 Trevor Noah? In what way?
24:44 Speaker 01 Why would they change what they're doing if it's working for them?
24:47 Trevor Noah? Okay, yeah.
24:48 Speaker 01 You understand? And what we're asking in fact is a change in the power relationships and the status quo of how people are treated when they move beyond borders. And that is going to require a little more effort.
25:03 Speaker 01 Look at the conversations that are happening across North America, across Europe.
25:09 Speaker 01 Look at them. And regrettably, in some other countries, it's becoming par for the course. But could the USA be the USA if it was not for migrants? It's immigrant labor.
25:20 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
25:20 Speaker 01 It's the dream of the US.
25:22 Trevor Noah? The fundamental story, yeah.
25:23 Speaker 01 That's right, that anybody can come and be whoever they want to be in this country. That was the seed of its greatness. And then let's look at biology. I didn't do much biology in school, but any instrument, any organism that closes in and that doesn't open up dies, atrophies. So I really, really feel that the problem that we're facing is the browning of the world.
25:46 Trevor Noah? The browning of the world?
25:48 Speaker 01 Ralph Gonzalez, who was Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, says it all the time, and he's absolutely correct. It's the browning of the world. So that, you see, when you let too many people come in and people start to mix, in a sense, everybody's beginning to get the same color and the same type of thing. And that frightens people. Because love knows no boundaries, does it?
26:10 Trevor Noah? That's true. That's true. I mean, I'm sitting here.
26:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:13 Trevor Noah? So.
26:15 Trevor Noah? But I, you know what I sometimes think it is?
26:19 Trevor Noah? I think us seeing the browning of the world as one of the factors is completely correct. But I often wonder if this is not a natural byproduct of people experiencing a standard of living that declines over time and then they start to point somewhere.
26:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:37 Trevor Noah? You know, because, because like if you look at Europe itself, some of the biggest wars that have ever been fought only involved white people.
26:43 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
26:44 Trevor Noah? You know, they were just fighting with themselves about themselves. And, and so whenever I, I read these stories throughout history, I go, oh, wow, it, it doesn't matter. Brown is almost the easy thing for somebody to pick on now. But when you get rid of that, someone will find something else and somebody will find something else. And, and so I, I almost wonder.
27:03 Speaker 01 It's a combination.
27:03 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
27:04 Speaker 01 Um, I think that there is definite, um, a definite contribution with respect to inequity.
27:11 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
27:11 Speaker 01 And the fact that people who could have believed that this was the type of life that they could aspire to now realize that that is now beyond them. I mean, in this country, you have it with the industrialization.
27:22 Trevor Noah? Yeah, yeah.
27:23 Speaker 01 That left and therefore, um, strong, credible, dignified jobs were all of a sudden taken from people and those jobs sustained families. Um, but let us not forget as well that there's still regrettably um, an eye for differences in the world.
27:42 Trevor Noah? Oh, definitely, yeah.
27:43 Speaker 01 And, and I think the combination of all of those things has helped to create that sense of almost despair. And the despair has led then to anger and the anger has led to shutting out people and focusing in. But tell me when in history, any civilization has conquered or survived by shutting in? And any living organism survives by shutting in. It doesn't work. And regrettably, we have to get worse before we get better, before we realize that it is a crisis and that the survival of all depends on the well being and welfare of all, as happened in Covid.
28:27 Trevor Noah? Yeah, that's the, those are the only times when people start to think differently about the world that they're in.
28:32 Speaker 01 Yep.
28:34 Trevor Noah? We'll be right back after this.
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31:57 Trevor Noah? Let's look at Barbados in isolation because I think it's the same problem that many countries are going to face. Thinking about their populations, how they replenish them, how they keep skills, how they keep growing sustainably. What do you, have you seen any countries that have gotten it right? And have you seen, you know, an example where you go, that is the way that I would hope we can bring people in. We can sustainably grow.
32:22 Speaker 01 Canada has probably done a better job than most of the developed countries. I think that they found a way of recognizing that they need to bring in people. But at the same time, they treat them as Canadians. The US had it right before too. I mean, for whatever reason, the US is in a schism as it relates to migration. And I'm not passing judgment on them. I'm just noticing that, you know, you do grow and you do succeed if you create those opportunities. I think you were absolutely correct in also making the point that in those parts of the country where people were denied or didn't have the ability to move at the same level and to increase their quality of life at the same level.
33:06 Speaker 01 They then assume that it's because of a foreigner. It's because of an outsider. You're seeing it in France, you're seeing it in. Um other place, but remember when Angela Merkel brought in a million people.
33:16 Trevor Noah? Right.
33:16 Speaker 01 From uh.
33:17 Trevor Noah? Syria when it was, yeah.
33:19 Speaker 01 And it was like a shot of adrenaline because she understood that Germany was facing the worst possible future, a declining and aging population. The irony is that's what we're facing in most Caribbean countries. The ECLAT um agency predicts that in Barbados, that one in every two people could be over the age of sixty five by the year twenty fifty.
33:45 Trevor Noah? One in every two.
33:46 Speaker 01 That's crazy.
33:46 Trevor Noah? Oh, that's not a great ratio.
33:48 Speaker 01 Exactly, and in the case of Jamaica and Trinidad, thirty nine, forty percent, somewhere around there. So this is a real issue that we have to solve now, because we're twenty five years away from that point in time. Um, at the same time, the Caribbean is a microcosm of almost most of the largest civilizations of the world.
34:09 Trevor Noah? It really is.
34:09 Speaker 01 Not all, but most of them. So you have African, you have European, you have Asian in every sense, um Indian, Chinese, um you have Middle Eastern, uh and you have the traditional Indians, most of whom were taken out, but in Saint Vincent and in Belize, you still have the Garafuna, in Dominica, you have the Caribs, so you still have a few remaining.
34:33 Speaker 01 And I like to believe that the Caribbean, because of our history, has a story to tell to the rest of the world and an example to share with the rest of the world. We've not been perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but for the most part, we have been able to bring about development to our people in the post-colonial environment that sees people, that feels people, that hears people, that recognizes that, look, okay, we need to provide education, shelter, housing, et cetera.
35:05 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
35:06 Speaker 01 We haven't done it for all yet, but we're on that pathway. Not everybody's gotten on the train yet, but a lot have. And when you start to compare it to other countries and other regions in the world, you begin to see that. The difficulty has come in that in many instances, small states have had rules imposed on them that don't make any sense. I mean, for years, the last thirty years, we've been arguing to the WTO. That we need special and differential treatment as small states. And that my percentage share of global trade in goods is zero point zero zero zero percent. And my percentage share of global trade in services is zero point zero zero one percent.
35:51 Speaker 01 So we have no capacity to distort global trade. But if you treat me as if I am equal to a large nation, then you will kill me before I can even start. You destroy anything that I can do to keep my population alive in terms of manufacturing or in terms of whatever.
36:12 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
36:13 Speaker 01 So that there is the old Aristotle in principle. Equality for equals and proportionality for unequals. And if we were simply to use that and to recognize that you can't have the same one size fits all prescription. You can't do it in a family, far less a country, far less a global community. And if we can get that, so many things that we've been trying to solve will find themselves in place. And part of the difficulty is, is that the new world post nineteen forty five was still remade in an imperial order. So that all they talk about sovereignty and independent countries, you're independent so long as you do, as I say.
36:56 Speaker 01 Not even as I do, because when they told us, don't do quantitative easing and don't print money. The truth is, when Covid hit, what did the developed world do?
37:05 Trevor Noah? Oh, they printed money.
37:06 Speaker 01 Printed and printed and printed in quantitative easing. And, you know, so we have to find a way of letting some air, some oxygen, some transparency, some light. And to begin to see that the one size fits all rule will not work. And that you have to be able to give a little elbow room. Not a lot, but a little elbow room for us to do the things that we need to do to keep our people alive, to keep our people prospering. To not cause our people to want to get into the things that you complain about globally in terms of migration or crime.
37:43 Trevor Noah? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
37:44 Speaker 01 Other things.
37:45 Trevor Noah? Yeah, I've always been. I've always been fascinated by the, like, sometimes what I think is very short term thinking from some of the bigger nations, in that they'll often think about mass migration, but they don't seem to wonder why people are leaving the place that they're in. I, I, the first part of me goes like, maybe it's just an arrogance.
38:04 Speaker 01 I'll give you an example.
38:05 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
38:08 Speaker 01 They do things that literally shoot themselves in the foot sometimes.
38:11 Trevor Noah? In what, in what way?
38:14 Speaker 01 In two thousand and six and seven, there was a big debate about the International Criminal Court and the fact that the ICC, that US heads of state and army military people did not want to be subject to prosecution.
38:33 Trevor Noah? Right.
38:33 Speaker 01 And they went around the world trying to get countries to agree that they should be exempted.
38:40 Speaker 01 And we in the Caribbean said, eh, we hear you, but one, it don't make sense because this is intended for all people.
38:47 Trevor Noah? Yep.
38:47 Speaker 01 But two, even if it wasn't, this is the idea of the former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, A N R Robinson. And as a matter of solidarity, as well as principle, we can't do it. They said, well, if you don't do it, we're going to withdraw all military aid from your countries.
39:03 Trevor Noah? Wow.
39:04 Speaker 01 I said, okay, that's not a wise thing to do, but.
39:08 Trevor Noah? I mean, that's also not a.
39:09 Speaker 01 For a year, eighteen months, and eventually they said, we're gonna do it anyhow. What happens? Nature abhors a vacuum. China, who never had any relationship with any of the militaries in the region, really, then stepped in and developed a relationship and provided training and equipment and things thereafter. Does that make sense to a country that is so frightened for China?
39:33 Trevor Noah? See, when you're saying that, I wish more people understood, especially Western nations, you know, quote unquote. I wish they understood how many of the problems they're experiencing are created in a cycle.
39:48 Speaker 01 Yep.
39:49 Trevor Noah? You know, so. Friends and I were talking the other day. You can't talk about nine eleven without talking about Osama bin Laden. You can't talk about it without talking about Al Qaeda. You can't, but then you can't talk about it without talking about the CIA, which you then can't talk about without talking about the US and what it was trying to do about communism. And now, many of those people go, oh, we did the wrong thing. But the effects are felt so many years later. And, and what you're saying is the same. If you watch the news in America, if you watch the news in the UK, let's say the BBC, they'll very quickly say China's expanding. Uh, Chi, we've seen China here and China's in Africa and China's in the Caribbean. China's doing this, China's. But I, I don't think I've seen any news reports that say, well, the US opened the door for China and the US reneged.
40:32 Speaker 01 The North Atlantic countries have not necessarily treated to the issue of development in the post-colonial era as well as they could have. We talk about official um development assistance being zero point seven percent of GDP. Most countries don't even observe that. But for countries.
40:51 Trevor Noah? As in that's a portion that they're supposed to contribute.
40:53 Speaker 01 Exactly.
40:54 Trevor Noah? To developing nation.
40:55 Speaker 01 Exactly.
40:55 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
40:56 Speaker 01 But countries like my own have been said, oh, you're middle income. You don't need money from us. So we effectively don't get any aid from the USA or from Britain or whatever, other than in part of a regional study or a regional thing that is done. And that's one of the things that we've been arguing, and I'll come to that in a bit, because that's at the core of a lot of the development issues, that we are asked to be able to access capital from the official financial institution, international financial institutions, on the basis of historic GDP per capita.
41:32 Trevor Noah? Mm hmm.
41:33 Speaker 01 Which really doesn't, I tell people, that is like taking my blood pressure two years ago to determine if I'm gonna have a stroke today. It's completely irrelevant. You understand?
41:42 Trevor Noah? That's a creative energy.
41:44 Speaker 01 So that what matters, because in seventy two hours, a hurricane can hit me.
41:50 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
41:50 Speaker 01 And I can have wipeout risk. Now, hurricane can hit in Florida. You don't have wipeout risk. Hurricane hits in the Bahamas or Dominica, it's gone.
42:01 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
42:01 Speaker 01 And instead of dealing with qualitative issues in education, you're now dealing with basic access to schools again. So we make the point that.
42:12 Speaker 01 The North Atlantic countries, for whatever reason, had the Caribbean and a lot of the other small island developing states in the Pacific, et cetera, in a certain prism. This is how they view you. This is how they're going to relate to you. And China and India and others come along and say, oh, these are some of your real development needs. Or you need a gymnasium, or you need help in building a port.
42:35 Trevor Noah? Yeah, you need a road.
42:36 Speaker 01 Help in doing roads. Um, we're gonna lend you the money at three percent. Or two percent. Or four percent. Who else is lending you that money? Nobody. So I think that. Remember what I said, we wanna be friends of all, satellites of none. So we're not looking to be anybody's pawn. But at the same time, we're not looking to be disadvantaged or unfair. Because you don't believe I should talk to my neighbor. Um, when in truth and fact, the neighbor's done me nothing.
43:07 Trevor Noah? Hmm.
43:07 Speaker 01 And then secondly, when I look at your circumstances, you have greater exposure with your treasuries to them than I have. The Chinese hold four percent of my debt.
43:18 Speaker 01 It can't do me, it can do me less than a hurricane can do me. There are others who hold a far greater percentage of my debt. And the Chinese hold far greater percentages of debt in the developed world.
43:28 Trevor Noah? Right.
43:28 Speaker 01 In the G seven countries.
43:30 Trevor Noah? It almost feels like a contradiction then, in some ways. It's almost like some of the larger countries are basically restricting smaller countries from engaging in the best way, or even in an autonomous way. In the way that they feel is best for them.
43:43 Speaker 01 But you see, you get it. So why do you get it? Because you've been exposed now to the facts. Tell me where in large developed countries are you exposing your population to the facts? Or is it purely an opiate diet that you give them? With respect to entertainment and dulling down the senses and no real discussion. You look at the news at night and it's the same five stories being done on every channel when you look at this country or Britain or wherever. And the.
44:16 Speaker 01 Jewish Rabbi, who I really truly respected, Jonathan Sacks, his be chief Rabbi in London, wrote a series of books and I'd encourage you to read them all. But one is the dignity of difference, which where he talks about moving from narrow, from broadcasting to narrow casting. And of course, we all know it, I saw your last podcast on, on the impact of these devices on children.
44:41 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
44:42 Speaker 01 And if you ask me one of the things that worries me at night, this is it. And I think left up to me, how, how can, we came back into office to find that everybody had these things in schools. But we need to have a national and an international conversation as to how do we balance people's access to a world that is not there, that is in the hands of a child whose brain and whose maturity is not yet fully developed. You're gonna tell them they can't smoke. Remember with children, you were told you can't drink coffee when you're young, it's not good for young children. But yet you give them this most powerful weapon.
45:21 Trevor Noah? Yeah, it shapes them, it molds them, it influences them, yeah.
45:24 Speaker 01 And at the same time, I've been arguing that you need to expose our kids to risk. Because what do children want to play adults? They start at young and they can get away with it, because they go and take their mother's makeup and their mother's shoes and whatever. And they're playing house. By the time they become teenagers, it gets a little more dangerous. They wanna smoke, they wanna ride a bike, they wanna have sex, they wanna do other things. You know, God, and I'm saying to them, we teach children how to cross the road. As little kids, safely. How do we prepare them to manage other risk as they get older? And therefore, the educational transformation that we need is not to give people knowledge,
46:08 Speaker 01 because facts for the most part, although you have to be discerning, are found there in technology. What we need are the values and attitudes, the skills, the commitment to excellence in whatever you do, and empathy. Because you have to care about people, if not, you're gonna be in trouble. And you have to do the best that you can do in everything that you do, however little, however small, however large. And you have to show them how they develop and mature, which is what we don't talk enough about, the social and emotional learning targets. What do you expect a child to say or do?
46:46 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
46:46 Speaker 01 At seven, at ten, at twelve, at fourteen, at sixteen? When the hormones start to get in the way, how do you deal with that? Recognizing that relationships with parents are not always the easiest during that period of time. So how do you create a pressure cooker type thing where the steam can be taken off and the child just doesn't explode into some kind of, you know, awful situation? So these are the things that matter. So I'm seeing more and more a world that is not allowing us to have the conversation sufficiently that we need to have. And regrettably, um, it means that at the level of international policy,
47:28 Speaker 01 where we were talking about international diplomacy and power relationships, that some of the things that ought to make common sense are ignored. And then we only get to it when it becomes a crisis, you know? So there's so many things that we can do better. And let's take climate. Okay, they say that there's no climate crisis. I think this weekend you guys are gonna have ninety degree weather in the end of September, when you really should be looking at moving to fall. The reality is that whether we say it or not, the temperatures and the climate is not changing.
48:11 Speaker 01 There's a clear difference of opinion between those now who say there's no crisis and those who are frightened as hell that this is the greatest existential crisis that the planet will face.
48:22 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
48:24 Speaker 01 So how do you bridge this moment in time?
48:28 Speaker 01 You've got to find a common love language. What do I mean?
48:34 Speaker 01 Methane?
48:36 Speaker 01 Is eighty times more dangerous than carbon. We talk about carbon all the time. But carbon stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Methane stays in the atmosphere for twelve to fifteen years.
48:52 Speaker 01 But it's eighty times more dangerous. Methane is generated from gas leaks. And the flaring of gas is generated from how we raise our livestock.
49:06 Trevor Noah? Mm hmm.
49:07 Speaker 01 Farm rice is generated from landfills.
49:12 Speaker 01 If we were simply to fix the pipes that are leaking.
49:17 Speaker 01 And stop flaring the gas, because when you flare gas, you can't make money from it.
49:22 Trevor Noah? Hmm.
49:23 Speaker 01 If you were to capture the gas and if you were to fix the leaks, what would happen to the oil and gas companies? They make more money. That's their love language. What would happen to the planet? It would stop the destruction of it. That's our love language. And the scientists actually tell me that if we get this right in the next fifteen years, we can actually reverse the temperature by half a degree. So what does that also do for the oil and gas companies? Oil and gas companies are not the villains. The emissions are. So if they can invest at scale for decarbonizing technology, then they can continue to have a longer route to run.
50:08 Speaker 01 And the controlling of the methane gives them the time to do the research.
50:16 Trevor Noah? To get to the decarbonization.
50:17 Speaker 01 President Trump did with the Covid vaccines, remember the warp, warps?
50:21 Trevor Noah? Operation Warp Speed, yeah, we've talked about them, yeah.
50:23 Speaker 01 You need Operation Warp Speed for methane. And that's what, I mean, I'd love to tell President Trump that. Because he gets what he wants. And the world gets what it needs.
50:34 Trevor Noah? How, how is this miss, I mean, you, you're saying this to me now.
50:38 Speaker 01 I said it a few times publicly.
50:40 Trevor Noah? Yeah, but it's logical. It's what you're saying to me doesn't, I'm, I'm trying to think of it in my head and I'm going, I don't understand why this.
50:47 Speaker 01 It's, it's, it's common sense.
50:50 Trevor Noah? So what's falling where is it, is it companies that are trying to cut costs?
50:53 Speaker 01 I've been trying, I've been talking to President Macron, I've been talking to a number of other leaders and I'm saying, look, we need to have a face to face meeting with the oil and gas CEOs. Because I actually believe that there is a win win for us all. They have, remember Sting's song, I hope the Russians love their children too.
51:11 Trevor Noah? Yeah, yeah.
51:12 Speaker 01 Uh, I believe that the oil and gas companies love their grandchildren.
51:17 Trevor Noah? Hmm.
51:19 Speaker 01 And unless they have a plan to live on Mars that they haven't shared with us yet, they gotta get this act right on earth. I feel that if we can reach a legal agreement, just as we did with the Montreal protocols to cover, um, the, I think it's called HFCs, I keep fixing it up in my head, but the air conditioners and everything.
51:40 Trevor Noah? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, HFCs, yes, yeah.
51:42 Speaker 01 Right. And we've been successful in doing that. If we took the same approach to methane and had a global methane agreement. Now, the Europeans might get a little antsy on the livestock farming, but there are ways to deal with that as well. That will not stop the farmers from making money. The farmers in Asia who do the rice, they may also get a little nervous. But I know that President Banga at the World Bank has already been working on how we can do things in terms of change in how we farm there.
52:16 Trevor Noah? We, we seem to come up.
52:17 Speaker 01 This thing is so simple, Trevor.
52:18 Trevor Noah? Yeah, but we, we seem.
52:19 Speaker 01 That it boggles the mind.
52:20 Trevor Noah? We seem to, it's, it is simple, but it's.
52:23 Speaker 01 Complex because you can't get people to change.
52:26 Trevor Noah? Yeah, but we, we come up with these solutions, or rather, we find solutions when it's war.
52:31 Speaker 01 Hmm.
52:31 Trevor Noah? I, I've never seen a single war and I've never watched a documentary, I've never read a book about any major war, where people said, we can't.
52:40 Speaker 01 Yep.
52:41 Trevor Noah? You get what I'm saying?
52:41 Speaker 01 Yep.
52:42 Trevor Noah? The atom bomb is an impossible idea. It is truly impossible.
52:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
52:45 Trevor Noah? But nobody said, we can't. They said, find more scientists. They said, find more brilliant people. They said, find more pieces of land. They said, they made it happen. You know, there's a trillion dollar jet that America never got right.
52:57 Speaker 01 When I'm being facetious, I say, if we can find a way to cure men's baldness, we can find a way to save the planet.
53:06 Trevor Noah? But is that the problem, maybe? Is that the problem? Is that it's, is it, is it that we haven't found the right?
53:10 Speaker 01 Has the command of priority.
53:11 Trevor Noah? Is, yeah, isn't that, is it that maybe we haven't found the right lever? You know, because when you talk to most people about climate change,
53:18 Trevor Noah? I, I, I don't think I'm being mean when I say most people don't necessarily care, care, care about it, or don't feel like they can afford to care about it on a daily basis, because it doesn't seem like the thing that impacts them now.
53:29 Speaker 01 So let me.
53:30 Trevor Noah? Like, we're so bad at seeing slow problems, you know what I mean?
53:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, so, but let me tell you, it's happening faster than we think, though.
53:36 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
53:37 Speaker 01 Look at California this year. Look at the fires. I mean, it was apocalyptic.
53:43 Trevor Noah? Right.
53:44 Speaker 01 Look at the fact that from as far back as probably two, three years ago, insurance companies start, started to say, we're no longer insuring for fire risk.
53:54 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
53:55 Speaker 01 Then let's look at southeastern, south, southwestern US, sorry.
54:02 Speaker 01 Florida, Texas, Louisiana, all of those countries, um, states, especially in Florida, you're getting insurance companies and in the northern Caribbean starting to say, hey, I don't know if I want to insure you for flood. I don't know if I want to insure you for hurricanes. Now, what, and I've been saying for a while, what becomes uninsurable, eventually becomes uninvestable, whether it's a country, a sector, or a region. The financial system globally is premised upon insurance in many ways. You go to a bank, you want to borrow money for a car, insure the car. You want to borrow money for a house, a mortgage, insure the house.
54:44 Speaker 01 You want to borrow money for a company, these are the covenants that we require, and we require you to cover insurance, blah, blah, blah.
54:50 Trevor Noah? I mean, it goes back to shipping days, like back, you know, yeah.
54:53 Speaker 01 So when uninsurable becomes uninvestable, then the world is going to listen, because the financial markets and the financial companies and the finance people of the world are going to say, hey, what's happening here? Now, Barbados.
55:11 Speaker 01 We were not the first, but we are the largest with respect to the issuance of commercial paper debt with natural disaster clauses. I could make this joke here because you know, you would get it. We call it natural disaster clauses and then the World Bank and the British and everybody came and gave it new names, just as they gave us new names when they brought us across the Atlantic. But we're accustomed to that. But these natural disaster clauses simply say this and understand the internal logic. If I get hit by a hurricane tomorrow of a certain category, not any and everyone. Your first thing you're going to worry about if you lend me money, are they going to pay?
55:54 Trevor Noah? Can they pay me back?
55:55 Speaker 01 Can they pay me back? And you price that risk into the cost of the paper that you're charging me. So I come along and say, hey, you don't have to worry. I'm going to give you a legal commitment that if you allow me not to pay for two years, well, I get my body strong again. My country strong again. Because I have a lot of uninsured people, which you know about. So the state has to step in.
56:23 Trevor Noah? Right.
56:24 Speaker 01 If you give me that two-year break, I'm going to back it up at the end of the payments. You remain whole. I'm not even asking you to take a haircut, which really and truly you should, but I'm not asking you for the haircut. And you don't have to worry about whether I'm going to default or not. You're just giving me the ability to fix my stuff and move again. So let me knock some wood hard, because if we get hit, these clauses now allow me to get just under 20% of GDP released over a two-year period for me to fix up.
57:04 Trevor Noah? For you to get back to the place where you can pay people back.
57:07 Speaker 01 Exactly.
57:08 Trevor Noah? Yeah, it becomes a more sustainable model essentially.
57:10 Speaker 01 Exactly.
57:11 Trevor Noah? Like, I'm listening to you saying this and I'm going, I can't help but draw parallels between what's broken in many societies. Forget on a geopolitical level. I think about the United States. You look at what's happening in France right now, and then we can go to African countries, South Africa, South Africa being one of them. The amount of people who are one car accident away from completely being destitute. The amount of people who are one medical procedure away from being completely wiped out. The amount of people who have one moment where.
57:45 Speaker 01 Forbearance is called.
57:46 Trevor Noah? And but what's what's what's mind blowing to me. What's mind blowing is if these, I always wonder, why can't these companies who are in charge of this? Why can't these companies see that the person being given an opportunity to get back to whole becomes better for them long term than by squeezing them when they have the very little that's left.
58:09 Speaker 01 I I. I gave a speech in Algeria last week, Thursday, Thursday, Friday. Where I quoted Derek Walcott, who is Nobel Laureate for Literature from St Lucia. And there's a poem that he has that talks about the reassembling of the broken vase. And that the love that it takes to reassemble makes it stronger.
58:35 Trevor Noah? Oh, yeah, it's similar to the Japanese technique.
58:37 Speaker 01 I'll send you the quotation when when we finish here. And that's exactly the point that you're making. And that the country becomes stronger, the individual becomes stronger. And what does it really require? An understanding of the circumstances or maybe the practice of the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
59:00 Trevor Noah? But do you think that's become broken because corporations have an outsized power in all of these conversations? Like, like, if you if you think if you're a CEO and you're only working towards that quarterly quarterly report.
59:12 Speaker 01 You don't see or hear anything else.
59:13 Trevor Noah? Yeah, and and and all they're thinking about is I need to make sure that this number in the next three months is bigger than the next number, is bigger than the next number, is bigger than the. And so what that then means is you can't think long term. You can't think in a beautiful, soft curve. You can't think in a way that's sustainable, I feel.
59:30 Speaker 01 Which brings us back to the conversation about narrow casting and echo chambers. It brings us back to there's some kids in the region that I met recently and their parents said, I make my child watch something that is an hour long every day. Because they are so consumed
59:50 Trevor Noah? By quick.
59:51 Speaker 01 One minute and two minute that their capacity
59:54 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
59:55 Speaker 01 To sustain attention and to think and to reason is compromised.
1:00:00 Trevor Noah? Yeah, I think I think it's I think it's more than that as well. I I I I always find myself bristling when people say no one has an attention span. And I go, that's not true. I really don't believe it. And the reason I don't believe it is because somebody can stay on TikTok for four hours.
1:00:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:00:15 Trevor Noah? So they do have an attention span.
1:00:17 Speaker 01 But they just rotate it.
1:00:18 Trevor Noah? Yeah, I think what they've done is we've created a system, we've monetized the world. We're keeping you addicted to the drip drip.
1:00:27 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:00:27 Trevor Noah? Means that you don't realize the long term reward of exploring, understanding, misunderstanding, rereading, digging deeper, and then getting to the end of something where you go, oh, wow. I there's a moment where I knew nothing about this. There's another moment where I thought then I lost the like, and at the end of it, what a beautiful expanse of information I now have.
1:00:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, and and it's a discipline that people had before. But I think that we need to get people to understand that you need to be able to discern and to explain and to understand. You don't have to agree with everything you read, but you need to understand what it is you're doing and why you disagree.
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1:04:49 Trevor Noah? You talk a lot about global debt.
1:04:54 Trevor Noah? And I think you've had one of the most outsized influences in helping people understand why so many countries in the world are stuck in the positions that they're stuck in. You know, I grew up in a country where people, until this day, will say, ah, well, I mean, look at South Africa. They haven't, you know, and look at, and then I've seen them say that about African countries. Well, you know, Africa, they haven't done well for themselves. I mean, you can blame the European, but Africa hasn't done well for itself. And you talk about this, this
1:05:23 Speaker 01 Hypocrisy.
1:05:23 Trevor Noah? Global hypocrisy and inequity in a way that I think most people have never heard. And it made me wonder like, what do you think? What is one practice that you think is the most globally, you know, indefensible way in how larger companies or countries are treating smaller countries?
1:05:44 Speaker 01 You were right in saying larger companies too, because I think it's a form of bullying and a failure to put yourself in the position of the others and to craft rules that work for you, but not for everybody. So let's look at, everybody knows the story of Greece.
1:06:05 Speaker 01 With their economy. Greece and Ghana, and I'm not talking about Ghana in the last post-COVID years, but just before COVID. Greece and Ghana had basically the same credit rating. But Greece was accessing money in the international capital markets at a fraction of what Ghana would access it. Part of it has to do with the safe assets and part of it has to do with a lot of underlying assumptions that were made as you created these institutions. And if I want to get it as basic as I can, why should Europe determine who's the head of the IMF? And why should the USA determine who's the head of the World Bank? Doesn't South Africa have somebody who can head the World Bank?
1:06:48 Speaker 01 Doesn't India have somebody who can head the IMF? So a lot of these assumptions were made and the rules were crafted in the image of a few, not of the many. And as a result, we've been paying the price of those rules that have not been touched, have not been deconstructed and reconstructed. And we have been paying the price as well that just doesn't matter enough. You know, okay, South Africa is having problems. Okay. That's a conversation piece. Okay. Maybe there's too much corruption in Africa. What's happening in Europe and North America? The same corruption out there? It takes two hands to clap. More often than not, it's a European or a North American investor in Africa.
1:07:33 Trevor Noah? I always say.
1:07:34 Speaker 01 That's driving the corruption.
1:07:35 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:07:35 Speaker 01 And it takes two hands to clap. This makes no noise. So I think that bringing these things to light matters in terms of those who have a conscience immediately say, you're right. That's true. And those who don't have a conscience will find it more difficult to sustain the error of their ways.
1:07:56 Trevor Noah? You've said things that have made me think of how we convince people differently because. I remember one day you said, and you'll you'll you'll correct me because I might paraphrase you incorrectly, you essentially said, we'll listen to people fighting about like migration and who's going where and who's going, we never think to ourselves, how can we pay somebody to stay in their country? And I I I saw you saying this, yeah, I saw you say that, and some people were like, oh, no, you should never, how could you say such a thing? Because because I realized there's this, there's this, there's this idea around immigration that has been romanticized, you know? And I think maybe because I've, I'm an immigrant and because I've been an immigrant in another country, I think sometimes people don't realize that for the most part, no, I'm not saying for everyone, but for the most part, people do not wish to leave their home.
1:08:40 Speaker 01 They don't.
1:08:41 Trevor Noah? You know what I mean? Some people want to explore, some people, but for the most part, people want to stay home. What chases them out is a war.
1:08:48 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:08:49 Trevor Noah? What pushes them out is a famine. What pulls them somewhere is an opportunity that they don't have where they're from. But if they had those things in the place that they were.
1:08:59 Speaker 01 And discrimination.
1:08:59 Trevor Noah? Yeah, you find that that would stay their home forever. And when you said that, I remember thinking, this is wild that a world leader would say that, pay people to stay in their country.
1:09:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, look, and and it may not be as crude as that, it may be in terms of the development package and the investment opportunities.
1:09:15 Trevor Noah? But it broke through when you said that, I think.
1:09:16 Speaker 01 But that's the point. And and the thing is to get people's attention to start to think differently.
1:09:21 Trevor Noah? Yes.
1:09:21 Speaker 01 Because what I find is that there are too many assumptions that we accept as rigid positions, rather than, and and the thing I say to my government, to to my ministers all the time, to the country all the time, let us deconstruct and reconstruct. What is the public policy we're trying to serve? What is the public mischief we need to avoid? Has technology made it more possible or easier for us to do things in a way that we weren't doing it before? And if so, who are the winners and who are the losers? Because if you don't see people, you're doing nothing. There will always be somebody who will suffer as a result of the change in the status quo,
1:10:04 Speaker 01 and there will always be somebody potentially who can benefit. But sometimes you need to go in, just like a a sculptor, and you need to just smooth it out. Because even though you're going in one direction, you may find that that's an outlier that you really need to bring back, and if not down the line, it'll lead to X, Y, Z.
1:10:22 Trevor Noah? How do you, how do you maintain your hope being such a small nation? Because. I always think to myself, Barbados to me is the perfect analogy for what many humans feel in life. They feel small, they feel insignificant, they feel like an afterthought. And yet every day you'll go out and you'll meet with other world leaders who will give you the time. You will speak at the United Nations, knowing full well that many of the nations that you're speaking to see you as an insignificant part of the conversations that they're having. So I guess it's two questions really. One is, where did that hope come from and what keeps it going?
1:11:06 Trevor Noah? And the second part of it is, how have you found, or what have you found, enables you to make an outsized impact relative to where you're coming from?
1:11:17 Speaker 01 Let me say that hope is human.
1:11:21 Speaker 01 Without hope, you lose your humanity ultimately, I feel so strongly. You have to believe that the next minute, the next moment, the next month, the next year can in fact be better, even if you're going through the hardest of times.
1:11:37 Speaker 01 At the same time, I've always relied on the fact that God and time and circumstances can be allies. God for faith, time because we have a saying in Barbados, we ain't catch ya in pass ya.
1:11:55 Trevor Noah? We ain't catch ya in pass ya?
1:11:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:11:57 Trevor Noah? We ain't catch ya in pass ya. I like that.
1:11:59 Speaker 01 Just because it hasn't caught you yet, it hasn't passed you either.
1:12:02 Trevor Noah? Oh, I like that.
1:12:03 Speaker 01 And in terms of circumstances, things happen. And we don't, it's maybe part of the divine if you're a person of faith, or things just happen if you don't have that. And why is my voice on climate resonating more today? Because of the floods in Pakistan? Because of countries in Africa that are going through famine and locusts? Because of wildfires in Greece and California? Those are the circumstances. Time, because twenty, thirty years ago, when Al Gore was telling us about an inconvenient truth, nobody wanted to listen.
1:12:46 Speaker 01 So circumstances and time and faith have a way of conspiring to create that opportunity, even regardless of how small you are. And as you learn in the stories with David and Goliath, regardless of how large you are.
1:13:04 Trevor Noah? Do you think?
1:13:05 Speaker 01 And and the fact that, let me give you a small example, because South Africa plays cricket. And Nelson Mandela made the point that when he was in prison, learning about the conquests of the West Indies cricketers, beating the British, beating the Australians in the nineteen sixties.
1:13:24 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:13:25 Speaker 01 That this gave him such a sense of warmth and hope and you understand? And that's what it does for ordinary people. So Barbados, as small as we are, before Rihanna, there was Sir Garfield Sobers, Gary Sobers, the greatest cricketer of all time. You go to Australia, they'll tell you who's the greatest cricketer of all time, all around the, Gary Sobers. You go to England, Gary Sobers. You go to India, Gary Sobers. He's still living. He is our first living national hero. Rihanna joined him a few years ago. And for me, you know what's special? Both of them grew up within a mile of Bridgetown in humble circumstances.
1:14:07 Trevor Noah? Hmm.
1:14:08 Speaker 01 And both of them came to be the greatest of all in the field that they have been practicing in. So smallness and poverty and circumstances of birth or geography do not define us. And that must always, always, always be kept ever most in our minds. And as we raise our children, nobody's better than us, and we're not better than anybody. But we have the capacity to be the best that we can be. And sometimes our best will actually be better than everyone else.
1:14:41 Trevor Noah? Talk to me about the Bridgetown Initiative.
1:14:44 Speaker 01 Yeah. So that's just a way of us being able to encapsulate a lot of what we've been discussing.
1:14:50 Trevor Noah? Yeah, but but it's so it's so fascinating. Please just just talk us through it because I think regardless of where you're from, it's great to hear, you know, amazing ideas that could shape any corner of of the globe. Talk to me about the idea, its inception and what you hope it achieves.
1:15:04 Speaker 01 So we realized that.
1:15:08 Speaker 01 The things that we've been speaking about aren't unique to us. And a few years ago, I said, look, let me bring together a number of the people globally that have been meeting, that have been agreeing with us, that fundamentally believe that things must change. And some of them came from mainstream within the financial institutions and the UN, some of them from outside, some of them from NGOs. And we brought them all to Barbados a few years ago. And we started the discussion to frame out, how can we bring greater transparency and equity and opportunity to countries? So that we can achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and at the same time, we could save the planet.
1:15:49 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:15:49 Speaker 01 Um, we are on the front line of the climate crisis. There's no two ways about it. I mean, for six months of the year, you worry about a hurricane. For the other few months of the year, Barbados is one of the 15 most water scarce countries in the world.
1:16:02 Trevor Noah? Wow.
1:16:03 Speaker 01 Two years ago, we actually had 50% of our 30-year rainfall for the first few months of the year.
1:16:09 Trevor Noah? True.
1:16:09 Speaker 01 So it's real. When we brought everybody together, we realized that, look, we need to make a major statement and to go after a set of reforms globally. You heard me speak about the fact about the need for inclusion. Why should the head of the IMF be a European and the head of the World Bank be an American? That's a deal that was done by a few boys in a club decades ago.
1:16:35 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:16:36 Speaker 01 But it doesn't apply to the world that you and I live in today.
1:16:39 Trevor Noah? It also doesn't necessarily mean that the best mind is doing the job.
1:16:42 Speaker 01 Exactly. You may have the best mind, but you may not equally.
1:16:45 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:16:46 Speaker 01 What we want is opportunity. Let's deal with the Security Council. You have five countries that are the permanent five. But then you have other countries outside it, like India, that has over, what, 1.4 billion people? Out of 8 billion people in the world, and they don't sit on the permanent five?
1:17:02 Trevor Noah? Hmm.
1:17:02 Speaker 01 You have Africa, and I'm not talking about individual countries in Africa, because I keep making the point that the day that Africa gets is act together and becomes the United States of Africa. Then you have Africa, India and China.
1:17:15 Trevor Noah? Hmm.
1:17:16 Speaker 01 And, and, and don't tell me about ethnicities or boundaries drawn, because India has as many ethnicities. Um, or Africa has more than, than India, but India has hundreds of ethnicities and languages, same in China.
1:17:29 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:17:30 Speaker 01 But they've found a way to hold, to stay whole as a nation-state. So that, why shouldn't Africa be represented on a security council as a permanent member? Why should they have to go and fight for an election for a different country every other year to get on? Um, let us look at, we talked about the per capita GDP as the basis. Why should I have to pay more money to borrow money for development? When I am more vulnerable and you're not taking into account my vulnerability? In terms of the cost of capital, the interest rates that you'll charge me. But you're asking me to use the notion that, oh, you've come out of poverty. So what do you do? You put me back on an escalator to be properized again because you're charging me now too much money?
1:18:14 Speaker 01 And I'm spending more money in interest than I'm spending in health and education? That make sense to you? Hmm. No. So these things all started to come together. And as we went, we realized that there are issues pertaining to trade, the issues pertaining to recently the, the credit rating agencies, because they have a, a, a significant and some argue disproportionate impact. Yeah, I mean, they determine where money goes. And, and the cost of it. Exactly. So all of these things, we're saying, look, let's pause. New York is a lovely place to be, London is a lovely place to be, Zurich is a lovely place to be. But guess what? It's a closed club. And the closed club is not necessarily working for us because it doesn't make sense.
1:18:58 Speaker 01 In COVID, I was told as a country that, oh, you can't benefit from, um,
1:19:06 Speaker 01 things that we would like to give you therapeutics, um, vaccines, et cetera, because your per capita income is too high. You're upper middle income as a country. I said, but that ain't got nothing to do with people getting COVID here? Yeah. Or the fact that I don't have ventilators or the fact that I don't have vaccines? And when it really mattered, who was it that helped us? It wasn't the North Atlantic countries. We asked, we had export restrictions put on us for equipment coming out of US. We had the UK refuse to give us even ten thousand vaccines, far less whatever. Prime Minister of India stood up and he gave us a hundred thousand vaccines.
1:19:47 Speaker 01 I could have kept them all for Barbados, but when you live in a small community in a neighborhood. Dying fair. It's a dying fair. So we keep stuff and we gave to our brothers and sisters in the rest of the region, however small it was. Then.
1:20:02 Speaker 01 Dr Tedros at WHO said, and Uhuru Kenyatta said to me, I want you to meet Strive Masewa because the African countries have asked him to put together the African Medical Supplies Platform.
1:20:14 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:20:15 Speaker 01 And we believe, I was chairing the Caribbean community at the time, and we believe that there may be some opportunities there. I caused Strive. Next thing, we got the Caribbean countries on that platform. So a country as small as Senkitz and Nevis with thirty eight, forty thousand people could access goods at the same price as a country of Nigeria with over two hundred and something million people.
1:20:36 Trevor Noah? Mm hmm, mm hmm.
1:20:37 Speaker 01 And it meant that therapeutics, vaccines, equipment, all of that started to come together. And that the financing would be provided by the Afreeca Bank, um, out of Africa. Good things happened. That made a huge difference to us. Since then, Afreeca Bank decided to come into the region. They've now signed partnership agreements with all the member states. They've now opened their first office outside of Africa in Barbados. And the whole African renaissance in the Caribbean in the last few years has been growing. I mean, when we came to office, I said to the population, we want a project called reclaiming our Atlantic destiny.
1:21:18 Speaker 01 We were defined by Middle Passage coming across. Well, we're going to reclaim it now. I told you about the sixteen sixty one slave trade. We have a duty now to shape the world in a way that makes sense for us. And the Caribbean is part of the diaspora, which is the sixth region of Africa. And we are proud of it, but we also have to do some serious repair. There is no direct link by boat or by plane that is scheduled between Africa and the Caribbean. And yet, between Barbados and Africa, there is no landfall. Explain that. Make that make sense to me.
1:22:02 Trevor Noah? So you know what this makes me think of? And I want, I wonder if there's, there's anything similar in, in your history, but in, um, in South Africa, there was a thing that my grandmother introduced me to because she was part of it. I just watched her. They called it a society.
1:22:19 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
1:22:19 Trevor Noah? And what it was, was a collection of all the old grannies.
1:22:25 Trevor Noah? And they would put money into a collection pot, right? Just their own money, a small amount of money. They would put together, you know, so let's just say dollars, because everyone, you know, do. So you put in your ten dollars.
1:22:38 Speaker 01 Hmm.
1:22:39 Trevor Noah? And this group of twenty, thirty women would put their ten dollars in every month. And every month.
1:22:45 Speaker 01 Hmm.
1:22:45 Trevor Noah? That fund, that little kitty.
1:22:47 Speaker 01 Hmm.
1:22:47 Trevor Noah? Would then give one of the grannies a lump sum of money.
1:22:52 Speaker 01 You know why I'm laughing?
1:22:53 Trevor Noah? Why?
1:22:54 Speaker 01 That's a susu.
1:22:55 Trevor Noah? That's what it's called?
1:22:56 Speaker 01 A susu.
1:22:56 Trevor Noah? Susu?
1:22:57 Speaker 01 And I then learned, actually only a couple of weeks ago, that in Nigeria, they call, I think, isusu or something very similar.
1:23:04 Trevor Noah? It's very similar in the, yeah.
1:23:05 Speaker 01 In Barbados, we call it either susu or a meeting turn.
1:23:08 Trevor Noah? Yes, I love that.
1:23:09 Speaker 01 You take your turn out of the meeting money.
1:23:12 Trevor Noah? And.
1:23:12 Speaker 01 And everybody puts in the piece, and that is where, that is how families were sustained.
1:23:18 Trevor Noah? Exactly, but when you look at what it's trying to do, it it built the system where people realized on the smallest level.
1:23:26 Speaker 01 Hmm.
1:23:26 Trevor Noah? As black South Africans, they were unbanked.
1:23:28 Speaker 01 Hmm.
1:23:29 Trevor Noah? They couldn't get loans, they couldn't get access to any funds that would enable them to do something that required more money than they had at that moment. But if they all put in a little bit, each person every month was getting a lump sum, and then some of it was kept aside in case there was a tragedy, like a. A funeral, a death that was unexpected, etc. And then over time, and I've seen this happen in like some parts of Africa, some intrepid business people have realized that a market exists where people told them it didn't, and they've gone in and said, hey.
1:24:01 Speaker 01 Hmm.
1:24:01 Trevor Noah? We will bank you even though you are unbanked, we will connect you to the financial systems, you know, even the things you're talking about now.
1:24:07 Speaker 01 Kenya is a perfect example.
1:24:08 Trevor Noah? Yeah, with M-Pesa, yeah, M-Pesa.
1:24:10 Speaker 01 Yep, and remember, all the European banks pulled out of Kenya.
1:24:13 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:24:14 Speaker 01 And risk that the European banks would never have taken.
1:24:18 Trevor Noah? But what is it?
1:24:18 Speaker 01 The Kenyan banks took.
1:24:19 Trevor Noah? Yeah, but this is the thing I found, I find fascinating.
1:24:22 Speaker 01 Poor people pay back.
1:24:23 Trevor Noah? But this is what I find fascinating, there's like, they say risk, right?
1:24:26 Speaker 01 Hmm.
1:24:26 Trevor Noah? But Mark Zuckerberg will wake up tomorrow and tell us he's lost a hundred billion dollars on a virtual reality world that never happened.
1:24:33 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:24:34 Trevor Noah? Straight faced, he'll go, it's gone.
1:24:36 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:24:36 Trevor Noah? You know, we'll talk about risk, you know, there's major companies that were invested in partially by these same countries, they lost all the money and it's just gone.
1:24:45 Speaker 01 And you've just hit what the Bridgestone Initiative is about, it's about fairness. We started the conversation with Rihanna about that. It's about fairness. That's why Bridgetown's name is put to it. It's about decolonization. It's about creating opportunities and bringing light in. And and we're not asking for any special favor. We're asking just for transparency and fairness. And remember what I said, equality for equals, proportionality for unequal. And that's what the Bridgetown Initiative is about fundamentally.
1:25:18 Trevor Noah? Let me ask you this before before I let you go.
1:25:20 Speaker 01 It gets technical for the economists and the financiers in terms of the capital adequacy framework and the ratios and all that. But fundamentally, this is what is about fairness.
1:25:32 Trevor Noah? When you speak to people who are from larger countries, when you speak to somebody who's in England, in the United States, in France, wherever they may be.
1:25:45 Trevor Noah? How do you make them see or what do you say to them that helps them understand why their fate is tied to yours when it doesn't seem apparent?
1:25:55 Speaker 01 Well, I think climate, as I said, has done a great, great job circumstances in proving that point for us. Because they begin to see similarities in what's happening. The difference is that because we're small, we have wipeout risk. They don't. They can live to see another day. They can live to find the way to build resilience.
1:26:15 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:26:16 Speaker 01 So that that works. And the truth is that when you get in front of most people,
1:26:22 Speaker 01 people get it.
1:26:23 Trevor Noah? Yeah, it's actually true.
1:26:24 Speaker 01 What happens is the lack of audience, the lack of voice. And that's why I genuinely believe that if I were to sit in front of President Trump tomorrow and say, look, let's do this thing with with methane.
1:26:38 Trevor Noah? So you've never you've never sat with him?
1:26:40 Speaker 01 Not not since he's back this time.
1:26:42 Trevor Noah? Okay, okay.
1:26:43 Speaker 01 You guys can drill, baby, drill. And we can save the planet. You understand? And and and and it's a perfect love language. But what it does require is leadership from the G seven or G eight or whatever you want to call them. And that's why I've said to President Macron, Emmanuel is a good friend. We've worked together on a number of things. Um, President Ruto himself and Barveris, we're working on how do we finance? I actually feel that if the World Bank was created today.
1:27:15 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:27:16 Speaker 01 It would be created with a different purpose. Eighty years ago, you created a bank that needed to help with reconstruction because of World War Two.
1:27:24 Trevor Noah? World War Two, yeah.
1:27:25 Speaker 01 Okay, and I can give you all the examples of the discriminatory treatment, including the fact that you, you, you, you, you allowed Germany to cap its debt service payments on the basis of its exports, percentage of its exports, or that UK took a hundred years to repay for World War One. Um, but yet you want me to be borrow and pay back for schooling fifteen years or a hospital. Makes no sense. We need longer term, cheaper capital in order for the developing world to get where it needs to get. And to stop the migration that you're complaining about and to have structured arrangements for labour movement and labour shortages.
1:28:07 Speaker 01 But if we go back to all of this, we find that, look,
1:28:14 Speaker 01 the absence of that capacity to have cheaper money and cheaper capital is actually making the world unfair. Transpose it as you did to populations. The rich get access to loans on a phone call and the poor have to depend on a susu or a meeting turn if they're lucky. And it is that absence of fairness that I believe that if we get in the same room, most human beings do have empathy. Most human beings do care about fairness. But when you're in a large corporation, as you said, and you're pushing for quarterly returns and all of these things, you can hide behind all of that.
1:28:56 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:28:57 Speaker 01 But if I confront you face to face, you're actually gonna say, you know, you're right. You know that I'm fair. And we start to begin, even if it is going to be complex for you to deconstruct, we start the process and we at least agree on the destination. And then we start to discuss the modalities for reaching that destination. And.
1:29:22 Speaker 01 Climate has come at a time that maybe if I was leading fifteen, twenty years ago, I'd just remain a voice in the wilderness. But the global circumstances, and in fact, the democratization of voice. Yeah. Because of technology, has created the capacity for a movement to start to build globally. And I'm not the one who started it, I'm not the one who's gonna finish it. I just happen to be one of the travelers along the way. And I will do my best. Um, there's a part of the Talmud that says that we are not expected to complete the task, but we neither are we at liberty from resisting from it. Hmm.
1:30:04 Speaker 01 And I use the metaphor of the relay all the time. And that is why I say to you that we have to do our part. And while I'm doing my part where I am, and I'm not, I'm, I'm not a prime minister. I do the work of a prime minister, that's not who I am, I'm here. So for as long as I'm here, I'll do that part of it. But there's gonna be a time when I'll be like Trevor. And I will choose other modalities to be able to bring about and influence people. And a conversation at its smallest in a block, on a, on a, in a, in a community, is exchange and persuasion. It's no different at the international level.
1:30:47 Speaker 01 The problem is that at the international level, you're not given access to the room. Shirley Chisholm, who, as you know, in this country, was the first black American congresswoman, Beijing roots, was actually schooled in Barbados, gave credit to her Barbadian schooling and grandmother for defining who she was as a person. She was the first woman to dare of black origin, to dare to run for president in a established political party in this country. You go back and listen to her speeches, they are as relevant today as they were then. But she said one major thing that continues to, to, to, to remind me. Well, a few things actually, but one I share.
1:31:30 Speaker 01 If they don't have a chair at the table for you, bring your folding chair. And that's what we've had to do.
1:31:36 Trevor Noah? I like that.
1:31:37 Speaker 01 Bring our folding chair to the table.
1:31:39 Trevor Noah? That's sort of what, um, that's sort of what Ethiopia has just done. I mean, we, you know, what we're just speaking about is Ethiopia has been trying for a long time to build a dam. And I know it hasn't come without its political, you know, sensitivities with Egypt and other countries that are downstream from the Nile. But it, it, it's really revolutionary what they've done because Ethiopia wanted to build a dam that they needed to generate electricity for a region that covers how many millions of people?
1:32:09 Speaker 01 Well, the population of Ethiopia is over a hundred million.
1:32:12 Trevor Noah? You're right.
1:32:12 Speaker 01 And only, I think, just over fifty percent of their population have access to electricity.
1:32:17 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:32:17 Speaker 01 And if you talk to anyone about the story of Africa, the biggest problem in Africa is that when the world is talking about technology.
1:32:24 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:32:25 Speaker 01 Six hundred million people out of one point four billion do not have electricity.
1:32:30 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:32:30 Speaker 01 And the World Bank is committed to doing three hundred million, and I thank Ajay for that. But what's happening to the other three hundred million?
1:32:37 Trevor Noah? Mm hmm.
1:32:37 Speaker 01 The world has more than enough money to finance it. And the fact that they're using a dam means that they're using renewable energy that is not becoming a drag on the planet as well.
1:32:48 Trevor Noah? But how they funded it was fascinating.
1:32:50 Speaker 01 That's the story of resilience.
1:32:51 Trevor Noah? I mean, that's, that's the most fascinating story. They asked for a loan from the international bank.
1:32:55 Speaker 01 And the banks, international community refused to fund it for whatever reasons. And the Ethiopians turned inward and between the central bank and, and the banks in Ethiopia and the ordinary citizens.
1:33:07 Trevor Noah? That's, it's a mind blowing story.
1:33:09 Speaker 01 Bonds, citizens giving donations. And I said to the prime minister, um, two days ago, when we opened it, um, to Abiy, I said, look, you know that this is the twenty first century Adwa. And, and for those who don't know about Adwa, Adwa is the battle where Ethiopia beat Italy in eighteen ninety six. Nobody believed it would have happened. And, and Ethiopia came together and it took them, I think, almost two years in the long trek. And they rose majestically. Adwa is what led to the beginning of the Pan-African movement. The New York Times, when you go to the museum in Addis Ababa that commemorates Adwa,
1:33:51 Speaker 01 you see the New York Times articles showing that this little African country, that's their mind, oh my, it's much bigger than Italy, beat the great Italians. And out of this then came the entire movement that guess what, black people can achieve something after centuries of domination and subjugation. And out of that came the glory of the Pan-African movement, the conferences, ultimately the nineteen forty-five Manchester Conference, which really was the last major one before the independence movement and Kruma and all of the others coming out.
1:34:27 Speaker 01 So for me, this engineering, it's the biggest dam in Africa, it's like two kilometers wide, five hundred and fifty feet high. I mean, you have to see it to believe it. I've never seen water move at that speed. And even after they take the water that they need for the dam to generate the electricity, the overspill is coming down with a ferocity that I've never, I've never seen it. And that they could do it when the world said no. It took them fourteen years, but they did it.
1:35:02 Trevor Noah? So do you think there's a future where smaller countries and countries that have been cast aside start to think like this? Or will, but do you think there's a possibility that the larger countries who are being pushed by corporations will put their thumb on the scale to block that from happening? Because if, if, if Barbados, South Africa, random countries come together and say, you know what, let's do our own little projects. Let's, let's get our susus going, let's get our societies together. Maybe I'm a little paranoid. I feel like there are companies and countries who have been benefiting this for a long time who would go, no, we don't want you to do that, even though we're not gonna help you do it for yourself.
1:35:38 Speaker 01 Because the status quo changes. And most people don't want, those who are in control of the livers of power don't want the status quo to change. By the same token, I've also been around long enough to know, and I think you've seen it in South Africa, that some of the very same people who were opponents eventually become converts.
1:35:57 Trevor Noah? Yeah, that's true.
1:35:58 Speaker 01 And, and, and I think that that is why I believe first always in dialogue. And that's why even what happened with Charlie Kirk, I think is regrettable and horrific, because violence is never the answer. Violence is the mechanism by which a few retain instant gratification or instant power, but it doesn't sustain you in the long run. And I think that the ability to have conversation must always, always be our first option. So I'm more than prepared to be able to say, look, let us look and see how we can free up the movement of capital to be able to help those who really need it. And quite frankly, I can lose weight in terms of even debt sustainability.
1:36:41 Speaker 01 I use the metaphor of losing weight, partly because it's a personal challenge. You know what I'm saying? But you can lose weight at two pounds a month, three pounds a month, six pounds a month, ten pounds a month. There comes a point at which the rate at which you lose it is unsustainable.
1:36:57 Trevor Noah? Yeah, it's unsustainable now.
1:36:58 Speaker 01 And we've said simply to the international community in the Bridgetown Initiative that the rate at which you want us to achieve debt sustainability as developing countries in the world is too stark.
1:37:10 Trevor Noah? Hmm.
1:37:11 Speaker 01 A rate too, too rapid. And that if you do that, I can bring back down debt overnight because I can negotiate new terms.
1:37:19 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:37:19 Speaker 01 But I cannot replace a generation of persons in under fifteen to twenty years.
1:37:26 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:37:26 Speaker 01 So let us understand what is immutable and what can change. And quite frankly, what you think is immutable is immediately renegotiated in a compromise agreement.
1:37:39 Trevor Noah? Yeah.
1:37:39 Speaker 01 Between lawyers and financiers. What I'm telling you cannot be changed is a lost generation.
1:37:46 Trevor Noah? And hearing you say this, I, I think back to some of the points in our conversation. Populations declining.
1:37:53 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:37:53 Trevor Noah? Skills in short supply in many places in the world, people not feeling like there's upward mobility. All of these, I feel like we can, we can sort of draw a circle around and the Venn diagram of all of them becomes the singular idea of.
1:38:11 Trevor Noah? Giving people a a chance and and what I mean by that is, you know, when you're talking now about a population, I go. I often wonder why so many governments and corporations can't see the direct link between their actions and why people wouldn't want to have a child. They're very quick. I've seen, you know, the Elon Musk who ever go, this is the greatest challenge we're facing. Uh, people are not having enough children. And I go, yeah, but why would you want to have a child in a world where you cannot pay for that child schooling, where there is no healthcare for that child, where you don't know where the next meal for that child is gonna come from. You you don't need to bribe people. Yeah, you you don't create the environment that is necessary for them to want to expand.
1:38:52 Speaker 01 And if your state is not going to catch the ball for you.
1:38:55 Trevor Noah? Exactly.
1:38:56 Speaker 01 Then why do it?
1:38:57 Trevor Noah? Exactly.
1:38:57 Speaker 01 That's why, and you asked me why, because in Bharatis, we believe that we have a responsibility to provide for every child education. From pre-primary to tertiary. The last government removed tertiary education, free tertiary education. The first thing we did when elected, even as we were entering an IMF program, was to reintroduce free tertiary education for Belgians at the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill Campus. Because without education, the opportunities are simply not going to be there. And the capacity to reason with people will not equally not be there.
1:39:37 Speaker 01 By the same token, we provide access to healthcare. I'd like to do even more, but we do more than most countries of the world, quite frankly. And I think that in understanding that, you then begin to say to the finances, that's why I need thirty years or forty years to pay back for the construction of a school or a hospital. Because I need to make sure that the people in whom I'm investing are now earning to help me pay back that debt at that point in time. But if you give me ten or fifteen years to do it, everything bunches up and I'm not yet at the stage where I have the capacity to repay, given the investment that I've made in people.
1:40:20 Trevor Noah? Yeah, my mom always used to say, you need to give the tree long enough time to bear fruit.
1:40:24 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
1:40:25 Trevor Noah? And if you let it grow long enough, you can keep plucking fruit forever.
1:40:28 Speaker 01 That's the point. And it's so basic that if we can, and that's why I say to you.
1:40:35 Speaker 01 That you have the ability, you and others, you and Eva Duvernay and others who are storytellers, who are communicators, more than anything else, we need the world to hear the message. And as a prime minister or as a political figure, they'll immediately devalue what I say by seventy percent because politicians don't carry this way. That you will carry as a comedian, as an entertainer, um, that she will carry as a producer and a director,
1:41:09 Speaker 01 that uh, Usain Bolt or Gary Sobers will carry as a sportsman, or Rihanna will carry as, as an artist. You have the ability to reach people when they are vulnerable and willing to hear.
1:41:24 Speaker 01 And it'll stick.
1:41:26 Trevor Noah? Well, we, we start like this.
1:41:28 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:41:29 Trevor Noah? We start like this. And then our next conversation on a road, playing.
1:41:33 Speaker 01 In Barbados.
1:41:34 Trevor Noah? In Barbados.
1:41:34 Speaker 01 But I'm not gonna be playing road tennis with you. I'm gonna get some of my constituents to do it.
1:41:39 Trevor Noah? As any good leader does, know when you are not the best person for the job.
1:41:43 Speaker 01 Ah, boy.
1:41:44 Trevor Noah? That's the mark of a good leader.
1:41:45 Speaker 01 I, I will arrange it. I'll manage it. I'll even commentate for you.
1:41:50 Trevor Noah? It's, it's, it's on. It's on. Um, Prime Minister Motley, thank you so much for joining us. And uh, yeah, I mean, you know, one of, as I say, one of my favorite things about listening to you is.
1:42:00 Speaker 01 My name is Mia, by the way.
1:42:01 Trevor Noah? Oh, no, I mean.
1:42:02 Speaker 01 Please.
1:42:02 Trevor Noah? Yes, but in my culture, ha ha. Let, let me call you that and see what my people will say to me. Yeah, I acknowledge that, but um, no, I, I think, I think, I hope you don't take for granted. We live in a world where so many world leaders either can't or don't feel the need to break down some of the most complicated issues that people are experiencing in the world. And then they turn around and are shocked by people protesting in the streets, burning things down, or even just losing complete faith in the system that exists. They go, why won't people vote? And you go, yes, but why won't you listen to them when the voting isn't what's the most important thing at that time? And I think what I've always appreciated about you is, um, you take the time to break down the concept.
1:42:46 Trevor Noah? You take the time to see what someone you don't agree with is seeing. And you, you, you put a concerted effort into doing what I think all great leaders should do, which is educating us about the world that we live in. So thank you so much for joining me.
1:42:59 Speaker 01 Thank you. And you know, we are last rebellion in nineteen thirty seven. The theme was educate, don't agitate.
1:43:07 Trevor Noah? Hmm.
1:43:09 Trevor Noah? I like that.
1:43:10 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:43:11 Trevor Noah? Educate, don't agitate.
1:43:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, you mean sometimes need to, but at that time, that was what they said.
1:43:17 Trevor Noah? Every revolution has a different theme.
1:43:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, and I want to thank you for the opportunity for this conversation. And I want to thank you for making us laugh. You know, there's a great Trinidadian calypsoonian, the mighty Chalkus, and he says, "You either have to learn to laugh, or you go mad and write your epitaph."
1:43:36 Trevor Noah? Hmm.
1:43:36 Speaker 01 So keep us laughing.
1:43:38 Trevor Noah? Thank you so much.
1:43:38 Speaker 01 Thank you.
1:43:45 Trevor Noah? What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius XM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin, and Jess Hackel. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiu. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Random other stuff by Ryan Harduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of What Now.
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