I will, and I'm hoping that you would have some comment on that.
For the benefit of the committee, the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship was founded on the belief that economic progress and good governance in low-income countries emerged from entrepreneurship and innovations that empower ordinary citizens. They have an agreement through MIT, where MIT students are creating enterprises in low-income countries. And this is a quote: “Our current and future Fellows seek to implement for-profit businesses that empower ordinary citizens and virally spread prosperity and development.”
You've made the comment here this morning, specifically, that 40% of Africans plan to start a new business in the next 12 months. I've been in Africa, and there are an extraordinary number of small stalls where people are selling their goods and wares, and that's how they're providing for their families.
We had Hernando de Soto here a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure you're familiar with him. His fundamental philosophy or theory is that so many of these people are extra-legal because they don't have access to real capital, first of all, because they are not on owned property and they don't have property rights.
It's a whole lot of things mixed up in here. But coming from that perspective, how do we help, as Canadians, to build that opportunity for this 40% of Africans who want to initiate a business and be prosperous, and yet they struggle with the problems within their own countries of getting property rights; of access to capital; of the tax system; of the judiciary; and all of those things? Can you shed a little bit of light on that?