We Are Taught How to Work, Not How to Understand Money

For a long time, money has been present in our lives without ever being explained.
It was always there, in the background. In our parents’ sacrifices. In silences. In prohibitions. But rarely in conversations.

In Africa — and more broadly within African and diasporic societies — we are taught very early how to work, how to endure, how to hold on. But we are taught very late, far too late, how to understand money: how it circulates, how it disappears, how it can grow, or turn against us.

It is from this observation that a conversation emerged between Teddy, founder of Paykko, and Walid Sultan Midani, a Tunisian entrepreneur and pioneer in technology and video games in the region. A conversation with no staging, no prepared speech. A rare kind of discussion, because it touches on something deeply personal: our relationship with money.

Money as a Survival Reflex

Walid’s first memory of money is nothing extraordinary — and that is precisely what makes it revealing. As a child, his father always gave him a small amount of cash before he went out. Not to spend, but “just in case.”
Just in case he got lost.
Just in case he got hungry.
Just in case he needed to get home on his own.

At a time when mobile phones did not exist, money played a simple and fundamental role: a minimal form of insurance against the unexpected. It was neither a symbol of success nor a tool for social advancement. It was a safety net.

This almost instinctive relationship with money — as protection rather than ambition — would durably shape the way he perceived it later in life.

When Money Stops Being Abstract

At twelve years old, Walid experienced something many people would only discover as adults: he earned money on his own. He built an HTML presentation for a bank, received what was then a substantial payment, and had a quiet but decisive realization.

The event itself matters less than what it revealed: money is not only what you receive in exchange for constrained time. It can also be the direct result of the value you create.

This shift is crucial. It marks the end of a passive relationship with money and the beginning of an active, almost experimental one.

Learning the Market Outside the Classroom

A few years later, in high school, this intuition became practice. Walid began reselling jeans bought in local souks. Nothing spectacular — but enough to grasp mechanisms that very few teenagers are taught:

• buying at one price
• reselling at another
• managing cash
• taking on risk

What mattered was not the amount earned, but the feeling that came with it: no longer being fully dependent on parental money. A quiet form of freedom, but a formative one.

Understanding Money… Too Late

Against this background, Teddy contrasts his own experience. A more traditional path. Studies. A stable job. Employee profit-sharing. Money arriving regularly, almost mechanically.

But without understanding the underlying system.

Each year, the money was spent without strategy or long-term thinking — until the comparison became unavoidable. A colleague who had joined at the same time had left that money invested. The result: tens of thousands of euros.

The realization was brutal, but clear-eyed. The issue was not a lack of income. It was a lack of understanding. Without comprehension, money moves through life without leaving a trace.

When Prudence Becomes a Trap

The discussion then drifts toward a widespread confusion: the one between saving and security. In an inflationary context, leaving money idle creates the illusion of caution while in reality producing a gradual loss of value.

Investment, here, is not framed as speculation or something reserved for a financial elite. It can be local, tangible, almost ordinary: a taxi, a shop, a service business, an agricultural project.

Investing is not gambling. It is accepting that money must circulate in order to create something real.

The Weight of Social Symbols

At this point, another issue inevitably arises: social pressure. Buying a house. A car. Displaying visible markers of success. Expectations deeply rooted in African societies.

But these models inherited from previous decades are no longer always suited to today’s economic realities. Buying too early, taking on long-term debt, anchoring oneself geographically too soon can limit trajectories far more than they secure them.

This is not about breaking with family — but about questioning the narratives of success that were passed down to us.

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