She credits her parents with not only giving her confidence but also instilling in her a sense of being able to aim high. She shrugs off labels of any sort. 'People say to me, “What’s it like being an African woman?” I am also an economist. Nobody should be bogged down by how other people define them. People have said I’m not really African. Yes, I am. Those people are wrong and it’s not my business to correct them if they can’t be bothered to go to Africa and look around and see that there really are African doctors and lawyers. People have a penchant for horror stories, but that’s not the way people live [in Africa]. Of course there are wars and disease but in a population of a billion you could argue it’s relatively isolated cases. It’s not the case that the whole continent is in civil war and people are dying of HIV/Aids.’