Jambolife News Forum

22/01/2024

Happy new Year 2024
Let’s get creative

15/07/2019

The skills of the future (Part 2)

__"The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create!"

Over the next few weeks I want to trigger your imagination to possibilities that exist today (to position you for tomorrow). That is one key reason why we launched Muzinda Hub, which today reaches about 40,000 students online in 20+ African countries. Muzinda Hub is an exciting “coding” school designed by young people at Econet back in 2014 to help tackle youth unemployment and the huge digital skills gap across Africa.

In its very first year Muzinda Hub was named “the most disruptive incubator in Africa”. Our goal… skill up our people for jobs of the future!

Some of you might be aware that in the 1980s, countries like India and the Philippines noticed a future trend where IT skills could be sold to other countries so they made a massive investment, and to this day continue the drive to equip their citizens with IT skills. Back then just at the dawn of the digital era, some key policymakers had a vision to become one of the top IT outsourcing destinations in the world. Now companies in America and Europe (including here in Africa) are outsourcing their IT departments to India and other countries…

So what are we on the African continent doing to equip our own citizens? Let's talk.

For our part, since it launched five years ago, Muzinda Hub has offered digital skills training to about 1,000 unemployed graduates per year in Zimbabwe alone, many who are now playing a critical role to help small businesses to digitize in line with future trends. For instance, we offer high quality web design, web application and mobile app development services to thousands of business customers, some which didn’t yet have their business online… and now they do! Muzinda Hub even helps place the most successful and promising graduates from our training program in the local and regional job market.

One reason we first started Muzinda Hub was simply to help businesses to equip their staff to manage and run business on the Internet. As many of you have learned, running an online business is different from running a traditional business. Customers are acquired differently, payments are made differently, and products are delivered differently. Most of you here know this but not everyone does.

This year Muzinda Hub also partnered with UNICEF to set-up Muzinda hubs in 50 schools. These students will make use of walk-in hubs equipped with computers and internet access.

Our youngest graduate so far is Tavonga Lewis. At the age of 10 he completed a Muzinda track on web design, learning fundamentals in HTML, CSS and Javascript! He says he wants to be like Bill Gates... This is how we are preparing Africa for the digital future. You can watch his inspiring video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmQgZj7msCA

What about you? Why not go to your old school and start a Muzinda Hub? You can find out more at www.muzindahub.com

Muzinda has already scaled to Tanzania, Nigeria and South Africa with local and international partners like Hewlett Packard and TheirWorld and has plans to expand across Africa to several new countries this year. I’m also excited to announce that this month Muzinda Hub has launched in Botswana, keeping the promise I made to President Masisi at our town hall in Gabarone in April.

When our team began its research in Botswana a few months ago, we learned of an inspirational young professional called Captain Kgomotso Phatsima, one of the first female pilots in Botswana. Captain Phatsima had decided to retire at a very young age to follow her passion to get young people, especially girls, into science and engineering professions! When we heard her story we sent our team to meet her. She now runs our Muzinda Botswana as a franchise.

Application deadline for Botswana’s inaugural five-month program in coding, project development, project management and business skills training is 24 July! If you are in Botswana, you can apply here: https://muzindahub.com/botswana

Let me close with a quick quiz: Who can tell me who is considered the world’s first computer programmer… the person who wrote the first official computer program? When you find out, I think it might surprise you.

"The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create!”

To be continued. . .

05/07/2019

The skills of the future (Part 1)

__Training coders at Muzinda Hub.

A few years ago I wrote a Facebook Post on what I called the seven most important skills you need to learn now for the future. Do you remember? Here is my original list: 1) prepare a financial ledger; 2) HTML and basic coding; 3) backing up to the cloud; 4) writing a business plan; 5) setting up a website and domain; 6) selling online; and 7) learning a basic craft skill, such as in agriculture or plumbing.

As I said back then, these seven skills will either turn you into the next Jack Ma, or they will help you get a better job, or earn you more money at whatever you do. This is what you should be learning, and teaching, if you want to build Africa's prosperity.

When you hear me begin to talk about something, it means that I’m actively trying to do something to help Africa. But before I delve into the subject of Muzinda Hub, our venture to train coders, let me take you back a little…

Bill Gates started Microsoft, the company that would make him the richest man in the world, in 1975. I was 14 years old at the time. I did not hear about him until about 1982, when I was a student of engineering and our professor started talking about the “Coming Age of Microcomputers.”

“What do you mean by “microcomputers!?” we asked, totally amazed at the idea that these large computers that filled whole rooms back then, and where only engineers had access, could be made available to ordinary people.

“What will they do with these computers? They don’t have engineering degrees to enable them to understand ‘machine code’ and other high level engineering languages!”

“It will never work; those American guys are nuts!” someone shouted from the back of the class.

“These guys are designing new types of computer programming,” the professor explained. “It’s no longer about HARDware but SOFTware (the computer programming).

“It’s not electronic engineers that are needed now, but you guys need to think about using your skills in maths to switch to Computer Programming in these new languages!”

Fast Forward: The new age of “software” gave birth to amazing new companies that transformed everything in society.

Fast Forward: This is 2019 (about 37 years since I first heard the word “microcomputer”). As I look back I see the other extraordinary tech revolutions that followed, such as computers getting smaller and smaller until they’ve become the Smart phone. Their software is unrecognizable now, driven from the “cloud” and on “the edge”.

Writing programs no longer needs a PhD in computer science, although those are the best paid guys on the planet right now (instead of investment bankers)! We now talk of kids as young as five years old “coding”! What is going on?!

If I were in an engineering class at a university today, I know they’d be discussing “Artificial Intelligence” (AI).

A new generation of entrepreneurs will now emerge just like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Steve Jobs did back in the 1980s. And like Jeff Bezos, Tony Ma and Jack Ma they will create amazing businesses to take advantage of the emergence of the mobile Internet.

AI will eventually lead to robots that walk and do amazing things, certainly in most of your lifetimes. But even before then, today, there are going to be amazing companies that emerge.

AI is here!

And you are probably already using it without really stopping to understand why your mobile phone Apps can do such clever things!

I want you to start getting to understand everything you can about AI. It will create an opening for you, but it will not just happen because you have a nice face! You cannot win in a game you don’t even know exists, let alone its rules!

Now to Muzinda Hub:

As I reflected on AI one day, I thought of my time in that university class discussing Bill Gates and “microcomputers”. Back then it all seemed like science fiction! Computers so small they could fit on a desk?! If they had said even a computer for your pocket, I would have fainted!

Don’t listen to all this nonsense about AI taking people’s jobs! Hundreds of millions of new types of jobs will be created, just like with every other technology before. AI is the biggest technology we have ever had; it’s bigger than all those other technologies put together.

Muzinda Hub?

Yeah, it’s about preparing young Africans for the rise of AI (well, my own small contribution):

Let’s talk. I want to introduce “Mass Coding” skills to equip us for AI industry.

To be continued. . .

Image caption: In February 2019 Muzinda Hub launched a Code Club initiative, in partnership with Theirworld with an aim to teach 120 young Zimbabwean girls (10-18 years of age) how to code and technology skills!

29/06/2018

Let's learn..Tujifunze kitu hapa

Pause:

__Not having enough, does not mean we have nothing!

In Africa we don’t have enough of most things: We don’t have enough food. We don’t have enough electricity. We don’t have enough clean water. We don’t have enough schools. We don’t have enough foreign exchange. We don’t have enough houses, teachers, doctors, or nurses. We don’t have enough of almost anything you can think of!

Most people looking for solutions, including governments, donors and entrepreneurs (for profit and not-for-profit), are mostly focused on trying to get us more of what we don’t have, but there is something else we can "do," and always need to remember...

# Not having enough, does not mean we have nothing!

One of the first questions I posed when I started blogging five years ago was this: “What do you have in your hand?”

I posed this question at the time also as a statement of my faith. God asked Moses: “What is in your hand?”

And when he answered that all he had was a shepherd’s rod, God essentially said to him: “That is enough for what I need to do!”

And we all know that with the rod, Moses was empowered to even open the Red Sea!

# Not having enough, does not mean we have nothing!

When we have little, we must not only try to do what we can, we must also never waste the little we have!

__Extending the capacity of the little we have is !

Now the new pathway to entrepreneurial success lies in the “shared economy" business model. By now you have heard stories of young people from around the world who are busy launching amazing businesses with extraordinarily little to start with, compared to what was traditionally expected.

# Not having enough, does not mean we have nothing!

You might live in a country where it is virtually impossible to get a loan to start a business, particularly if you are a woman. It might also be that you live in a place where the elite appear to have basically cornered every opportunity for themselves and their families. This is particularly the case when it comes to natural resources-related businesses.

__Getting a job may also be almost impossible, simply because they are not there...

Do not despair!

“What is that in your hand?” ...is enough to get you and your friends going!

I know one thing that is in your hand: You now have a smartphone or access to the Internet, otherwise you and I would not be talking to each other on Facebook! A smartphone (even a cheap Android one) is enough to launch you into business. (Senior class, you know this).

Now who can tell me what I mean by the “shared economy” business model? (Senior class, it is now your turn).

# Not having enough, does not mean we have nothing!

As we have discussed here before: Businesses like Uber, AirBnB and Tencent are all created and built around the concept of the “shared economy" business model.

The next millionaires and billionaires in Africa are those who master the business models of the “shared economy” and use them to leverage efficiencies in the use of our continent's meager resources.

Consider this: Over 40% of farm produce in Africa is lost long before ever getting to consumers. This is called “post-harvest losses.” If we eliminated just half this waste, the impact would be phenomenal, beyond imagination.

# Imagine as an entrepreneur, if you study this problem (as some are doing right now) you can have amazing opportunities. Some of the most exciting African entrepreneurs today are working in this area: “Ways to reduce post-harvest waste.”

Consider this: In some countries, nearly 40% of the children are stunted due to poor nutrition. An egg a day will cut stunting by a whopping 47%!

# Imagine if we could develop business models (as entrepreneurs) to get eggs, or the benefits of egg protein, into every school! In India they have programs to try and get a glass of milk and an egg to young children.

I recently visited a business in Rwanda which produces food for babies specifically to tackle this problem. I love this business! There are hundreds of amazing businesses emerging around the area of agriculture using the “shared economy" model.

During a meeting of an organization called the Giving Pledge a few years ago, I ran into a young man called Brian Chesky who co-founded a business called AirBnB. He is now worth more than $5bn. He was in his early 30’s when I met him, even though he looked much younger!

What an amazing business model!

__But here is the thing: A smart young entrepreneur like you can use that same concept to solve other types of problems right here in Africa! And if you don’t do it, someone will come from America, India or China and do it right on your doorstep...

My fastest growing and most exciting businesses are all based on the “shared economy" business model—they are disruptors of traditional business models.

How can you as an African entrepreneur take this principle, and use it to tackle some of our challenges?

I want us to focus our attention on businesses that use the “shared economy" business model. This is one of the most important new pathways to entrepreneurial success!

Say to yourself: “I’m on it!”

. Now get rolling!

To be continued. . .

16/04/2018

Reflection: Don’t look for someone else to act

__You yourself can do more than you know, right where you are.

Sometimes when we wait for someone else to act, including governments, it can become an excuse for doing nothing ourselves. Perhaps it is a fault I have, I don’t know, but whenever I see a problem, the first thing I think of is: “How can I (personally) do something, no matter how small, to help on this issue?”

In my own mind, I am really the small boy in the Bible story who offered Jesus Christ his lunch of five loaves and two fishes to feed 5,000 people! To those looking on, it may have seemed hopeless or even silly, but it opened the door to a miracle.

What about you? I myself find it very difficult to rail at someone else to do something about a problem that I see, unless I’m ready to offer a solution myself, or be part of the solution

I remember arriving at my grandparents' village after returning from nearly 20 years of exile. The road to their homestead was difficult to navigate.

“Why is this little road so bad?” I asked my uncle who drove that way regularly himself.

He then railed at the local MP, saying he was lazy and never raised issues in parliament.

“But it is less than a kilometer long, and you and I are the only people who drive this way," I said.

The next weekend I returned, hired a few guys and fixed it, maybe because I did not want my car damaged!

There are so many problems in Africa that it can be really overwhelming sometimes, but I will never forget the words of my grandmother, also when I returned to my homeland from exile:

“Our problems are over, because those whom we sent to school are back!”

We are not educated simply to be like football fans in a stadium (or, shall I say, “coaches from the stands") or as the Americans say "armchair quarterbacks."

Since this is one of my “reflections,” let me share another of my favorite spiritual dictums:

“If you cannot be faithful with solving just a small problem, why should you be given a bigger challenge?”

All too often, we dream of being given a bigger challenge when we will not be counted in the crafting of small solutions for problems we face every day.

By now you will have noticed that I rarely respond to someone on this platform who identifies a problem, and then suggests that I be the one to solve it.

__I will only join people who are solving problems themselves.

Not long ago, a young Zambian lady wrote here about how she was helping a young disabled boy. She never asked me for help, but I was amazed by her approach. I quietly reached out to her, and formed a small partnership with her.

Another person came to me to say there were no vaccines in a village because they could not store them properly.

“What is your solution?” I asked.

“Can we put a fridge at a nearby base station, since it has power all the time?”

“Great idea!”

We've now done it for more than 10 years, and that's not the only place.

The miracle comes when we approach problems like the boy with the lunch who thought he could help feed 5,000.

There is a reason you keep thinking about that problem that no one else seems to notice, or care about like you do:

__It is because it is you who is marked to solve it, if only you will believe in yourself, instead of waiting for others.

Today is the day to begin to solve some problems. If you can get others to join you, even better, but be prepared to go it alone, because you can.

Sometimes the solution starts by redefining what the problem really is...

Let's talk.

End.

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13/03/2018

- ITAKUSAIDIA SANA MAISHANI MWAKO K**A UKIISOMA HII -

🚶🏻JITATHMINI 💥

✨ BABU alimkabidhi mjukuu wake jiwe, kisha akamwambia: "Jiwe hili nimekupa, ni la kwako. Nenda ukaulizie thamani yake, lakini usiliuze kwa gharama yoyote."
Kijana akalichukua jiwe lake hadi kwa muuza machungwa mmoja, akamuuliza thamani ya jiwe lile. Baada ya kulitazama na kulitathmini, muuza machungwa alisema: "Lina thamani ya machungwa k**a kumi na tatu tu, ila k**a utakubali tubadilishane nitakupa machungwa kumi na saba."

Kijana alikataa kuliuza kwa kurejea maelekezo ya babu yake. Baada ya hapo, aliondoka hadi kwa muuza mbogamboga, ambapo baada ya kumuonesha jiwe lake, alimuuliza swali k**a alilomuuliza muuza machungwa. Baada ya kulithaminisha, muuza mbogamboga alijibu: "Thamani yake ni sawa na mafungu kumi ya mchicha. K**a uko tayari tubadilishane."
Kijana alilichukua jiwe lake na kuondoka hadi kwa sonara. Alimkabidhi huku akifuatisha swali la kutaka kuthaminishiwa. Baada ya sonara kulitazama jiwe lile kwa msada wa lenzi, alisema: "Nitakupa shilingi milioni moja k**a utakubali kuniuzia." kijana alijishika kichwa kwa mshangao na msh*tuko, papo hapo sonara aliongezea, "Basi sikia, k**a hujaridhika, tubadilishane kwa dhahabu."

Baada ya kijana kumkatalia sonara kwa kumwambia kuwa, amekatazwa na babu yake kuiuza, alimtaka radhi na kuondoka hadi kwenye duka la 'mawe ya thamani'. Baada ya kusalimiana na muuzaji, kijana aliulizia thamani ya jiwe lake. Baada ya muuzaji kulitazama kwa makini, na kugundua kuwa jiwe lile ni YAKUTI (Jiwe lenye thamani kubwa), alijikuta akiruka huku na kule akiwa amepagawa: "Mungu wangu! Jiwe hili halitathminiki, hata nikiiuza dunia nzima pamoja na mke wangu, sitaweza kununua jiwe hili."

Kwa haraka na mashaka, kijana alirudi kwa babu yake na kumsimulia yote yaliyojiri. Babu alisema: "Mjukuu wangu, k**a ambavyo majibu uliyoyapata kwa muuza machungwa, kwa muuza mbogamboga, kwa sonara na kwa muuza mawe ya thamani, yanavyotofautiana, yote yanaelezea maana ya thamani ya maisha. Maisha yako yana thamani kubwa, lakini, watu watakuthaminisha kwa kadiri ya mitazamo yao, maarifa yao, viwango vyao vya ufahamu, ushawishi utokanao na mahitaji yao kwako, ulaghai, nk. Wekeza katika maisha yako.

- NIKUTAKIE SIKU NJEMA -

08/11/2017

The Lion and the Ranger (Part 3)
__Future entrepreneurial opportunities that are now...

A few months ago the British government announced that it will ban “combustion engine vehicles” from the UK roads in 2040. That means they will not allow vehicles which use petrol or diesel on the roads!

# All cars will either have to be electric, or use some other type of fuel!

Ever since that announcement, several other governments around the world have done the same. It turns out that the British were not even the first. Who can tell me which other countries?

As an engineer, I have been expecting the end of the combustion engine for quite a while, to be honest. It's been around for over 100 years. Too long! As I reflected on this, my thoughts went back to when the “horseless carriage” first emerged...

In the advanced economy nations of Europe and America, horses had been there for thousands of years. America alone had a population of 26 million horses. Horses supported millions of jobs in the cities and on the farms, and famously powered the wagon trains rushing towards America's "Wild West" in search of gold and silver.

__Can you imagine the fear and trepidation from those who stood to lose their jobs?!

There were also entrepreneurs who saw an opportunity... I once asked someone whose grandfather set up one of the first South African “garages” (service centers) for cars, in the 1920s, how he got into the business.

“My grandfather was very entrepreneurial. As soon as he heard about cars, he said to himself: “How can I make money from this new invention that is going to sweep the world?”

He did not have much money but he decided first to simply offer a cleaning service, washing cars for the rich. And it went on from there. Next he started to sell petrol, and learnt to repair cars, and so on. Before long he was one of the richest people around.

What has changed since those heady days of the 1920s? Actually, nothing! The reaction will be the same as it was when the car challenged the horse for supremacy:

will dismiss it as a passing fad that cannot challenge something so well established;

# Some will shrug their shoulders in fear;

# Others will be excited by new products, as consumers;

# Others will demand action from politicians to stop the “threat”;

# Others will see conspiracies by unseen forces to make them poor;

# Others will start looking for opportunities that could turn them into millionaires and billionaires...

__These are the entrepreneurs, just like that guy’s grandfather!

So what do YOU “see”? As I asked last week: Are you following tracks or creating new ones? The changing seasons call for both trackers and trail blazers.

Did you know that in the 1890s, the best-selling car in America was... an electric car, manufactured by a transportation pioneer called Colonel Albert Augustus Pope? (He was considered father of the American bicycle industry before the turn of that century).

"Who would willingly sit atop an explosion?" Pope reportedly asked about the internal combustion engine, at first... Meanwhile Henry Ford read the opportunity and market differently. The rest, as they say, is history. Or is it?

Now more than 100 year later, it's the oil-powered motor car that will soon fade into the sunset. Yes, it will be gone inside 25 years!

Every single car manufacturer is rushing to introduce its own electric versions. Others are joining in, too. It’s like an arms race out there. Tesla, a company founded by an African, is leading the charge and making Elon Musk insanely rich!

__The electric car will come to Africa and I am ready for it. I have found my little niche in that game, and I’m not telling anyone... not even you my friend!

The “young-old” like me are seeing breathtaking opportunities. What about you? Are you carefully studying the changing environment, as all good rangers must? What by-products do you see?

There has never been a time such as now for entrepreneurs! (But as I said last week, success sometimes takes a lot of patience)...

"My project was re****ed by laws of nature. The world was not prepared for it," said Nikola Tesla in 1919. "It was too far ahead of time. But the same laws will prevail in the end and make it a triumphal success."

Wow. Ever heard the expression "Hitch your wagon to a star..." ? Let's talk.

To be continued. . .

08/11/2017

The Lion and the Ranger (Part 2)
__Are you following tracks or creating new ones?

When I was in the US recently, I decided to drop in and visit one of our key partners, a company called Roku. This company supplies the specialized decoder for Kwesé Play that allows us to digitally "stream" all our Kwesé TV channels, plus services like Netflix and 100 others so far. It can only be used with a fibre optic cable in the house and is better than a satellite decoder.

Roku is one of the revolutionary companies coming out of Silicon Valley. (Roku itself came out of Netflix). Small by U.S. standards, Roku dominates the likes of Apple in this market segment. It has over 38m users in the U.S. alone. (It recently listed in the US and is now worth over $2bn!)

One of the challenges when you approach new companies that have new products is that they'll often tell you they aren't ready for global expansion. (And when they do begin to expand, Africa is generally not high on the agenda because there are bigger markets like China and Europe).

Africa is highly fragmented and difficult for those who don’t know how to navigate in it. This is a normal business reaction and I don’t get mad about it. Even Chinese, European or Japanese companies do the same. Those that do come to Africa generally go to South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya and Ethiopia first because they are the big markets.

(Don't launch into a tirade over the unfairness you see. This is not the platform... read on and learn from the ranger!)

In launching Kwesé Play (https://www.kwese.com/play) we wanted to get access to the Roku device, because it's the best in the world. We knew they hadn't yet started their global expansion, and thought it highly unlikely that they'd accept to make a push into Africa at this stage in their growth.

__We decided to try anyway because we wanted the best for our customers!

We were thrilled when they agreed to come and work with us in Africa, without a hesitation.

“We think Africa has huge potential," they said, "and we are prepared to work with you guys. We know Africa!"

Wow!

The other day I learnt why, and it's the reason I included this story in the Lion and the Ranger series.

As I sat there with one of Roku's key executives, and the one who had led our initiative in their company, he told me that after his graduate studies in the United States, he wanted to spend a year working in Africa so he went to live and teach in rural Tanzania. He could even speak fluent Swahili.

That was the connection!

We had a champion for Africa in the c-suite of one of the most important future companies in the media industry!

Wow, wow, wow!

He said he even follows me on Facebook. (I told you we have some very interesting of good will reading your comments!)

# Flashback: In 2014 I launched a program to invite young American graduates who had just completed their graduate studies to spend up to six months working for companies in Africa. We called it the Africa Business Fellowship (ABF). (http://www.africabusinessfellowship.com/)

As I explained to President Obama at the time: “When these guys return home, they will one day do business with us in Africa. If I walk into the c-suite of a major company in the US and the person running it has worked in Africa, you can be assured they'll have a totally different mindset compared to someone who just visited as a tourist. We want business partners that take Africa seriously. I want to invest in that future.”

__In my long journey as an entrepreneur, I'd learned from experience that the people who give you an open door are those who have spent time on our continent. Even in China and Europe I had seen this.

After listening to me, President Obama heartily endorsed the program.

I then got in touch with some companies in Africa, and also identified two partners who now drive our ABF program: In the US, a group called Management Leadership for Tomorrow helps recruit our Fellows (https://ml4t.org/) and in Africa, the African Leadership Network helps identify companies where the Fellows are placed (http://africanleadershipnetwork.com/)

We've been receiving American graduates for the last two years. As I write today, several are working for companies throughout Africa!

Our Fellows will go on in their careers to join companies like Facebook, ROKU, IBM, and Disney. When YOU pitch up to do business in the years to come, some of them will probably be running these giant companies! They will receive you with understanding and a deep knowledge of the challenges you face. They will be your partners... provided, of course, we treated them with true African hospitality!

Now the guy at Roku was not one of the graduates of our ABF program, but it shows exactly what I had in mind.

# What is your leadership lesson from this story?

Remember to write: “My leadership lesson is... (one paragraph max).

Think back to how the ranger approached the problem of the lion eating cattle in the village in Part One. Are you following the same old tracks or creating new ones?

There are many problems out there and we need to approach them like that ranger. Some solutions will take some time to bear results, but we must be patient.

To be continued. . .

Image credit: Some of the ABF Fellows from the USA who worked in Africa this year (and attended the NBA-Africa game). Next time you see them they will be senior executives or even CEO of a giant American company. You will appreciate them even more then!