Tidiani (Jeff) Tall

Last updated
Tidiani "Jeff" Tall
Tidiani (Jeff) Tall.jpg
Born
Tidiani Tall

(1969-05-25) May 25, 1969 (age 54)
Other names
  • Jeff Tall
  • Tidjane Tall
  • Tidjani Tall
  • Tijani Tall
  • T. Jeff Tall
Education Rochambeau French International School
Prytanée national militaire
Alma mater French Institute of Petroleum
École polytechnique
Notable workFixing Africa: Once and for All
Relatives Umar Tall (great-great grandfather)

Tidiani Tall (born May 25, 1969), commonly known as Jeff Tall, is a West African business leader, public speaker, entrepreneur, and the author of Fixing Africa: Once and for All.

Contents

Early life, family, and education

Tall is the great-great grandson of West African Emperor Umar Tall and the great grandson of West African King Agibu Tall. Stretching across much of what is now Senegal, Guinea and Mali, they were leaders of the Tukulor empire in the nineteenth century.[ citation needed ]

Tall grew up in Bamako, Mali, from birth to age 7 when his father, Maki Tall, became Ambassador of Mali to Saudi Arabia. Maki was subsequently Ambassador to the United States, which required moving his family to Washington, D.C., where Tidiani studied at the Rochambeau French International School in Bethesda, Maryland from 1982. It was here that he gained a taste for American football and became a Washington Redskins fan. The post of Ambassador afforded Tidiani Tall the opportunity to meet President Jimmy Carter and attend White House events such as Ronald and Nancy Reagan's annual Christmas party to which his father and family were invited. Returning to Mali, Maki Tall became the Director of International Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Bamako). He later served as Ambassador of Mali to Germany and to the United Arab Emirates, and is currently the traditional ruler of Bandiagara in Mali.[ citation needed ]

In 1985, Tall was enrolled at Prytanée national militaire, a cadet school in La Flèche, France. In 1990, Tall was admitted to the elite Ecole Polytechnique of Paris where he stayed for three years before studying for one year at the French Institute of Petroleum, also in Paris.[ citation needed ]

Tall holds a Masters in Economics & Management from the French Institute of Petroleum in Paris, France and a Masters in Engineering in applied mathematics from Ecole Polytechnique also in Paris, France.[ citation needed ]

Career

In 1994, Tall was hired to join the Analyst program in the Fixed Income division at Morgan Stanley in London as 1 of 10 high potential graduates from across Europe. After 18 months at Morgan Stanley, driven by a desire to "contribute to his native home of Mali through entrepreneurial endeavours", Tall returned to Mali to create and run a road transport company. Timbuktu Trading & Transport ("3T") became the first trucking company in Mali that met international standards in safety and employment practices. [1]

Subsequent to running 3T for three years, Tall moved on to found a dot-com startup based in New York City called eSpirituality. The website won acclaim from New Age magazine, was named a Yahoo site of the day and was featured on MSN. Of memorable note was an interactive dream analysis section held by the resident "Dr. Dream". At the end of 2000, eSpirituality became a casualty of the dot-com bubble. [1]

In January 2001, Tall began another extended foray into professional services, first by joining Roland Berger Strategy Consultants to work in their Paris and New York offices as a Senior Consultant. Two years later, he left to co-found a New York-based consulting boutique called Expansion USA, which developed a reputation by assisting European companies and institutions in establishing and expanding their presence in the united States marketplace. Four years later, he moved to Dubai and created the marketing and communications agency A+ Marketing. [1]

Tall has worked with international organizations including ExxonMobil, Total, Shell, MasterCard, Lycos and Daimler Chrysler. In April 2010, he joined Lafarge as Vice President Supply Chain & Distribution, Sub-Saharan Africa. He is also a member of the African Leadership Network [2] and of Africa 2.0. [3]

Currently, Tall is the CEO of Lidera Green Power, a renewable energy independent power producer (IPP) in Madagascar. [4] [5]

Fixing Africa: Once and for all

Fixing Africa: Once and for all is a 2009 book focused on "improving Africa and moving it forward from the hardships that have plagued the continent's past." A child of Pan-Africanism, the premise surrounds a conglomeration of Africa's 54 countries currently represented into 3 "Super Federations" by the year 2030.[ citation needed ]

Tall believes the hope for change lies within and must be "led by the youth and enabled by [effective use of] information technology." [6]

Inspiration

Tall's inspiration for Fixing Africa came from the "hypocrisy" of the 2007-2010 50th anniversary independence celebrations held in many African nations. Multimillion-dollar celebrations were occurring in spite of what Tall saw as decades of lost progress and a population largely living in misery and humiliation. His goal was to "inform a new generation of Africans and set high expectations within them to ensure that, with the ascension of a new breed of leaders might Africa's people be delivered out of poverty, diseases, wars, famine, economic meltdown, political paralysis, and 360-degree insecurity." [7]

Key messages

Summarized, Fixing Africa is based on three key ideals:

Alternative viewpoints

Dambisa Moyo, author and economist, [8] discusses the counterintuitive negative impact associated with African Aid in the book Dead Aid. [9] Moyo "describes the state of postwar development policy in Africa today and unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth." [10]

Martin Meredith, [11] historian and journalist, provides a controversial Western viewpoint on fifty years of African independence, and the many failures that have accompanied it, in the book The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence. [12]

Personal life

Tall currently travels the world but splits the majority of his time between Paris, France, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.[ citation needed ]

Works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bamako</span> Capital of Mali

Bamako is the capital and largest city of Mali, with a 2009 population of 1,810,366 and an estimated 2023 population of 2,929,000. It is located on the Niger River, near the rapids that divide the upper and middle Niger valleys in the southwestern part of the country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salif Keita</span> African singer-songwriter from Mali (born 1949)

Salif Keïta is a Malian singer-songwriter, referred to as the "Golden Voice of Africa". He is a member of the Keita royal family of Mali.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ségou</span> Commune and town in Ségou, Mali

Ségou is a town and an urban commune in south-central Mali that lies 235 kilometres (146 mi) northeast of Bamako on the right bank of the River Niger. The town is the capital of the Ségou Cercle and the Ségou Region. With 130,690 inhabitants in 2009, it is the fifth-largest town in Mali.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta</span> President of Mali from 2013 to 2020

Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, often known by his initials IBK, was a Malian politician who served as the president of Mali from September 2013 to August 2020, when he was forced to resign in the 2020 Malian coup d'état. He served as Mali's prime minister from February 1994 to February 2000 and as president of the National Assembly of Mali from September 2002 to September 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">One Campaign</span> Non-profit organisation fighting extreme poverty and preventable disease

ONE Campaign is an international, non-partisan, non-profit advocacy and campaigning organization that fights extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa, by raising public awareness and pressuring political leaders to support policies and programs that save lives and improve futures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amadou & Mariam</span> Malian musical duo

Amadou & Mariam are a musical duo from Mali, composed of the Bamako-born couple Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia (vocals).

Seydou Keïta was a Malian photographer known for his portraits of people and families he took at his portrait photography studio in Mali's capital, Bamako, in the 1950s. His photographs are widely acknowledged not only as a record of Malian society but also as pieces of art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Budapest-Bamako</span> Charity rally raid event

The Budapest-Bamako or Great African Run is a charity car race in Africa, and the largest amateur rally in the world. It is a low-budget version of the Dakar Rally, and goes from Budapest, Hungary to Bamako, Mali through the Sahara. It passes through Hungary, Austria or Slovenia, Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania and Mali. The Budapest-Bamako was inspired by the Paris-Dakar Rally. There are few entry restrictions: as long as a vehicle is street legal, it can join the event.

Malick Sidibé was a Malian photographer noted for his black-and-white studies of popular culture in the 1960s in Bamako. Sidibé had a long and fruitful career as a photographer in Bamako, Mali, and was a well-known figure in his community. In 1994 he had his first exhibition outside of Mali and received much critical praise for his carefully composed portraits. Sidibé's work has since become well known and renowned on a global scale. His work was the subject of a number of publications and exhibited throughout Europe and the United States. In 2007, he received a Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale, becoming both the first photographer and the first African so recognized. Other awards he has received include a Hasselblad Award for photography, an International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement, and a World Press Photo award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Education in Mali</span> Overview of education in Mali

Education in Mali is considered a fundamental right of Malians. For most of Mali's history, the government split primary education into two cycles which allowed Malian students to take examinations to gain admission to secondary, tertiary, or higher education. Mali has recently seen large increases in school enrollment due to educational reforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mali–Russia relations</span> Bilateral relations

Mali–Russia relations are the bilateral relations between Mali and Russia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dambisa Moyo, Baroness Moyo</span> Zambian-born economist

Dambisa Felicia Moyo, Baroness Moyo is a Zambian-born economist and author, known for her analysis of macroeconomics and global affairs. She has written five books, including four New York Times bestsellers: Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (2009), How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly – And the Stark Choices that Lie Ahead (2011), Winner Take All: China's Race for Resources and What It Means for the World (2012), Edge of Chaos: Why Democracy Is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth – and How to Fix It (2018), and How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World (2021).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2012 Malian coup d'état</span> Coup détat against the Tuareg rebellion of 2012

The 2012 Malian coup d'état began on 21 March that year, when mutinying Malian soldiers, displeased with the management of the Tuareg rebellion, attacked several locations in the capital Bamako, including the presidential palace, state television, and military barracks. The soldiers, who said they had formed the National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy and State, declared the following day that they had overthrown the government of Amadou Toumani Touré, forcing him into hiding. The coup was followed by "unanimous" international condemnation, harsh sanctions by Mali's neighbors, and the swift loss of northern Mali to Tuareg forces, leading Reuters to describe the coup as "a spectacular own-goal". On 6 April, the junta agreed with Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) negotiators that they would step down from power in return for the end of sanctions, giving power to a transitional government led by parliament speaker Dioncounda Traoré. In the following days, both Touré and coup leader Amadou Sanogo formally resigned; however, as of 16 May, the junta was still "widely thought to have maintained overall control". On 3 December 2013, a mass grave was discovered in Diago holding the remains of 21 soldiers that went missing the year before, loyal to the ousted president.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">France–Mali relations</span> Bilateral relations

France–Mali relations are the current and historical relations between France and Mali.

<i>Edge of Chaos</i> (book) 2018 economics book

The Edge of Chaos is a 2018 non-fiction book by Zambian writer Dambisa Moyo. The book explains economies on the edge of economic overhauls.

Fatoumata Diabaté is a Malian photographer from Bamako.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mali–Turkey relations</span> Bilateral relations

Mali–Turkey relations are the foreign relations between Mali and Turkey. Turkey has an embassy in Mali since February 1, 2010 and Mali opened an embassy in Ankara on June 27, 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Germany–Mali relations</span> Bilateral relations

Germany–Mali relations gained depth and intensity in the 2010s as the German government stepped up its efforts to stabilize the Sahel region, and there were an increasing number of bilateral state visits. Germany is also increasingly engaged in security policy in Mali.

References

  1. 1 2 3 DOTconnectAfrica
  2. "Home". African Leadership Network. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  3. "We are the ones we have been waiting for". Africa 2.0. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  4. Tidiani Jeff Tall at Green Energy Africa Summit
  5. Tall, Tidiani (21 July 2022). "Fuelling Africa's green transition". Energy Voice. Retrieved 12 August 2023.
  6. 1 2 "Welcome to Fixing Africa". www.fixingafrica.com. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  7. THE MONFORT PLAN
  8. "Dambisa Moyo". Dambisa Moyo. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  9. Moyo, Dambisa; Ferguson, Niall (2009). Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa . New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN   978-0-37413-956-8. OCLC   436838606.
  10. "Books". Dambisa Moyo. Retrieved 2018-11-13.
  11. "Author Martin Meredith and 'The Fate of Africa'". NPR.org. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  12. Meredith, Martin (2006). The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence (1st ed.). New York: PublicAffairs. ISBN   978-1-58648-398-2. OCLC   908768066.