A Quote by Mo Ibrahim

After the sale of Celtel, I really wanted to give the money back, and I had a number of choices - to go and buy masses of blankets and baby milk or to go into Darfur or Congo. That would have been very nice actually, but it's just like an aspirin: it doesn't deal with the problem.
I actually had a small kangaroo - and I'm not kidding this time. I was holding a small kangaroo, baby kangaroo ... it was very nice to me this time. Do you know what it did afterward? I gave it some milk, and it just spit it all over me. I was like, Is this a thank-you for just being nice and petting the kangaroo? I got milk all over myself. I guess I deserved that from the story last year.
I would like to get out to the region in the Caspian sea. I would like to go there. I would like to get to Darfur. I would like to get to Khartoum in Northern Sudan. I would like to get to Zimbabwe. I would like to go back to North Korea, if I could. I would like to go to Yemen. I would like to get to Kashmir. Most of those destinations I will get to.
Go-go is so drum and Congo based. It's almost like music from Africa. The drums like on 'Planet Paradise' are deeply African-rooted. It's really bouncy and the same speed as go-go music. That's an example of the influence go-go had on me.
When there's an ache, you want to be like aspirin, not vitamins. Aspirin solves a very particular problem someone has, whereas vitamins are a general "nice to have" market.
London has become really boring. I mean, years ago, London was really happening - there was swinging London and then punk. It was really different from other cities, and so I'd always wanted to go there and see what was actually going on. After that, hip-hop was the next thing happening, so to get the records or the proper clothing, you really had to actually go to New York. But now you don't really need to go.
You can only do three things with your money. You can spend it. You can invest it. Or you can give it away. And if you invest it, you're really just getting more money to give away or buy something. How many things can you buy? So I don't really think there's a lot of choices.
Well, number one I like dancing. Number two I knew it would be challenging because I had never done this type of dance before. I always wanted to and I happened to have the courage to go out there and give it my best shot.
I like to go on really nice dates. I've made some money, but I don't spend it on anything besides my rent. But I go to nice dinners. And I like to go with a girl.
Do I have a problem with Larry Ellison buying Sun? No, that's part of the capitalist system. As soon as we go public we're for sale, that's part of the deal. And do I have a problem with him exercising his intellectual property rights? No, I don't have a problem with that. Would it be how we necessarily ran and operated? Obviously not.
I made money. I wanted to give it back to Africa but I wanted to give it back in a meaningful way. So I really want to do something which deals with the root of the problem of hunger, of disease, of ills we have in our society.
I wanted to be a pharmacist. I liked the way our local pharmacist was always dressed in a nice white coat; he looked very calm, you'd give him money, and he'd give you something that you wanted to buy.
If you really think that houses prices are going to go up next year and the year after, you feel if I don't buy it this year, I'm going to have to buy it next year. [...] And when somebody makes it very easy for you to do it by saying you don't really have to put up my money, you can lie about your income a little, or we'll give you 100 percent mortgage, you're going to do it, because everybody that's done it has been proven right. You have what they call social tools, and, you know, you're going to feel like an idiot if you didn't do it, because the house cost more.
When you go to club racing in Denmark, people spend money to buy a race car and go and race, and many don't actually really have the money, but they spend it anyway because they love it and that's why I like those kind of things.
I've been to Tokyo-slash-Japan - we actually went to Yokohama in 2015 and 2013 for international competitions. I think that it would be really nice to go back and do a little Olympic thing there.
I always wanted to do good work, but not in order to buy big houses and big cars. I just wanted to be 'alright', to have enough money to be able to live on, to go to the cinema when I wanted to, and buy the books I wanted to read.
And that's the one thing that people do not understand is that we have very low interest rates and if those go back to historical levels or even go back to scary thoughts that they're back in the late '70s, early '80s, then that's going to really be hard to actually pay off those debts. It's going to be a - it's going to be a very big problem.
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