Tidiani (Jeff) Tall

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.

Tidiani "Jeff" Tall
Born
Tidiani Tall

(1969-05-25) May 25, 1969
Bamako, Mali
Other names
  • Jeff Tall
  • Tidjane Tall
  • Tidjani Tall
  • Tijani Tall
  • T. Jeff Tall
EducationRochambeau French International School
Prytanée national militaire
Alma materFrench Institute of Petroleum
École polytechnique
Notable workFixing Africa: Once and for All
RelativesUmar Tall (great-great grandfather)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

  • All 54 African countries are struggling. The denial must end so the recovery can start.
  • Individually African men and women have shown that they can perform at a global level in any field, anytime and anywhere.
  • New ideas and bold actions are required to translate individual achievements into collective progress.[6]

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.

Works
  • Tall, Tidiani (2009). Fixing Africa: Once and for All. Self-published.

References
  1. 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. "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.
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