John Taylor's opening argument is one that applies as directly to Nigeria as to the United States: economic performance is driven by the quality of the rules governing economic activity, not by natural resources, geography, or the wisdom of any particular leader. Countries where property rights are secure, contracts are enforced, and monetary policy is predictable tend to grow. Countries where rules are arbitrary, contracts are unreliable, and monetary policy is unpredictable tend to stagnate — regardless of their natural resources. This is important for African builders to understand clearly: the constraint on growth in most African economies is not the absence of entrepreneurial energy or raw materials. It is the institutional infrastructure that makes economic risk-taking reliably rewarding. Understanding what that infrastructure is — and what its absence costs — is foundational economic literacy.