Discover the catalysts of technological growth and innovation in Africa with Kissi, a trailblazer who's steering multiple tech ventures and a non-profit aimed at reshaping the continent's economic narrative. This episode promises to unveil the intricacies of integrating local talent and knowledge into business strategies that thrive amidst Africa's unique market dynamics. Kissi's journey from problem-solving engineer to an influential thought leader unfolds, revealing his methods for enhancing local business efficiencies and his relentless pursuit of accessible data for budding entrepreneurs.
As we recount the wisdom shared at Peduasa Lodge, we grasp the profound significance of involving the African diaspora in fueling the continent's prosperity. The dialogue shifts to the financial sphere, dissecting the trials faced by local banking institutions and my own evolution in conducting business within Africa. Understanding the importance of building influence rather than imposing change, we dissect strategies for leveraging the wealth of African talent and adapting to the economic landscape to cultivate lasting success.
Closing the conversation, we celebrate the transformative power of learning and problem-solving, as shared through my academic pursuits from engineering to software development. Kevin, a former Principal Engineer Manager at Microsoft, joins us to underscore the impact of unwavering determination and continuous learning on career progression. This episode is more than a discussion—it's a testament to the enduring influence of education and strategic thinking on personal growth and professional excellence within the tech industry.
Watch the video episode of this on YouTube - https://linktr.ee/konnectedminds
Discover the catalysts of technological growth and innovation in Africa with Kissi, a trailblazer who's steering multiple tech ventures and a non-profit aimed at reshaping the continent's economic narrative. This episode promises to unveil the intricacies of integrating local talent and knowledge into business strategies that thrive amidst Africa's unique market dynamics. Kissi's journey from problem-solving engineer to an influential thought leader unfolds, revealing his methods for enhancing local business efficiencies and his relentless pursuit of accessible data for budding entrepreneurs.
As we recount the wisdom shared at Peduasa Lodge, we grasp the profound significance of involving the African diaspora in fueling the continent's prosperity. The dialogue shifts to the financial sphere, dissecting the trials faced by local banking institutions and my own evolution in conducting business within Africa. Understanding the importance of building influence rather than imposing change, we dissect strategies for leveraging the wealth of African talent and adapting to the economic landscape to cultivate lasting success.
Closing the conversation, we celebrate the transformative power of learning and problem-solving, as shared through my academic pursuits from engineering to software development. Kevin, a former Principal Engineer Manager at Microsoft, joins us to underscore the impact of unwavering determination and continuous learning on career progression. This episode is more than a discussion—it's a testament to the enduring influence of education and strategic thinking on personal growth and professional excellence within the tech industry.
Watch the video episode of this on YouTube - https://linktr.ee/konnectedminds
Talent is the biggest asset for anyone coming together to operate a business. It seems like we have enough capital in Africa to actually finance. Of course, of course, but I think the delta here is the gap in knowledge. Data in Africa is extremely expensive and it shuts out people out of the economy of business. So if you need to access data about starting a business and resources on how to start a business, I mean each time you're online looking for those resources, it's costing you.
Speaker 1:Affordability of data is very, very important to the growth of an economy In Ghana. If you have certain efficiencies that I've seen here right, if you have log files and you're doing manual tasks inside your company, how are you going to compete with the Google and the Microsoft of the world? You? Just can't. I'm African, not because I live in Africa. I'm African because African was born in me.
Speaker 3:Hey, you're welcome once again to Connective Minds podcast, and it's me again, derek. Today, I'm in a conversation with Kisi, who owns Kisi Co technology and consulting group. Now, this company is based in San Francisco and in Accra. He's also a leader in his field and he runs another company called Zoey AI and engineering Africa. Now, that's what Connective Minds is about. We're here to have conversations that empower you wherever you are. Stay connected and be with us. You're welcome. How are you doing, man?
Speaker 1:Wonderful. It's a pleasure to be here and share my insights and experience with the audience. Yeah amazing.
Speaker 3:You do a lot of speaking. So when I went onto your site, I saw quite a few events that you've spoken at Bintu Tanzane, a lot of events in Ghana, some in the US. So, wow, that's fantastic. That's fantastic. You said you want to foster tech innovation, advance impactful initiatives and contribute to the ever-evolving business landscape. How do you hope to do that?
Speaker 1:First of all, let me address I don't actually speak a lot. It's just more recently that I realized that, in order to have the impact that I desire to have, influence has to be part of that. Before, I just wanted to focus on just the projects that are impactful, but in order to be able to get the opportunity to carry out those projects, you need to engage people who can actually add value to the projects. In order to be able to engage those individuals, you need to have some degree of influence for them to see that you're worth the while or whatever. So I started coming out of the shell and going out there. I got so many speaking, engagement requests and whatnot when I was at Microsoft. I was an engineer manager there at the time and I rejected all of them because I didn't feel like it's really worth my time. I wanted to focus on actually engineering and actually solving problems. So I'm a very traditional engineer. I just want to go hide somewhere, get all the work done and just do an announcement big splash disappear. Come back, do an announcement big splash disappear. But I think it's way more than that. If you want to have actual sustainable impact, you need to be strategic a whole lot more strategic than I thought I needed to be and, like I said, like you were asking, the way I want to do that is think about the whole bottom line things that can actually move everybody forward when it comes to the business landscape. Here there is a whole lot of efficiency that people operate in and they're used to it, and I think that's the way things should be, or things are, and they can't get any better. I want to expose them to the wall of enterprise software and how it enables businesses to function more efficiently and quite fast. You can't be a global company in Ghana if you have certain efficiencies that I've seen here. If you have log files and you're doing manual tasks inside your company, how are you going to compete with the Google and Microsoft of the world? You just can't. They are highly optimized to get as much work done. It's all about production, getting more and more and more stuff out there and refining the strategy and getting things done better. So Kisienko's fundamental mission and motive is to actually engage local businesses and engage local governments to actually adapt different technologies and different processes that can actually make them much more efficient and actually execute much more faster and be a lot more strategic through technology to some degree, and so aligning myself to that and my business is to that is the direction I'm going in.
Speaker 1:The nonprofit side, with the engineer Africa, is more targeted towards things that businesses don't necessarily want to engage in. So I mean businesses can engage in like upskilling the population, but I think nonprofit has a more unique approach to do that for the benefit of society and not just for the benefit of the bottom line. Right, because if you're influenced by the bottom line, you could probably just try to just ingest students into whatever operation you have and, you know, be more superficial in the things that can attract them, whereas with a nonprofit approach you want to actually engage them and actually teach them core skills that can actually pretty much help them be good contributing citizens in the engineering area. So part of our aim is capacity development, that's the workshops and training and stuff, and then the other aspect is projects that we think can actually enable people.
Speaker 1:So I spoke to you earlier about the public wifi. Right, data in Africa is extremely expensive. Right, and it shuts out people out of the economy of business. Right, if you want to start a business and you don't have, if you're not connected or your connectivity is extremely expensive. You don't have enough access to data in the world, within the web, right? So if you need to access data about starting a business and resources on how to start a business, I mean each time you're online looking for those resources, it's costing you yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, Aluminum and the lake.
Speaker 1:Exactly right.
Speaker 1:So, by design, you are far behind than someone who's operating in the US, who's also starting a similar business as you. Are right, you have this unique idea of solving a global issue. If someone else is in the US starting that same issue, starting a business to solve that same problem, you are at a disadvantage. Right, you are a huge disadvantage. This individual can just go to any local coffee shop and have access to data for free. Right, they can go. There are so many different places they can go for free and access data for free. You don't have that option here in Ghana right and even if you do.
Speaker 1:it's very limited Very very limited, it's very, very limited, very limited, and eventually they'll tell you to leave if you're not buying any of the services A cup of coffee.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, if you're not so and you also like certain things that you wanna do, like if you're in technology and you're building, like you know, something like a game or whatever, right, you need to have an online game or whatever. You need to have enough connectivity to the inner world to actually test the game that you're developing. And if your connectivity is quite limited, I mean, you don't stand a chance compared to someone else outside. Right, absolutely so the key thing here is those students. They don't have enough money to buy data all the time. Right, if they're just in a crowd, they can just have access to data. All they have to do is just watch some ad for some time and then, boom, they are connected. Right, I've had experiences where people will tell me oh, I'm out of data.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:They have to keep buying data all the time, whereas data outside isn't a continuum. You're constantly connected right, and that's the way it should be, and I wanted to get to the point where it's normalized for people to be constantly connected.
Speaker 3:Be connected. Right. Have you had the situation where you were back in the US and you're trying to contact someone in Ghana and you can't reach them? And then they contacted you, like my data had been switched off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, because they're trying to conserve data. Because of how expensive it is how expensive it is right, and so these are challenges that we need to solve in collaboration with the local government and local municipalities here, and local telecoms that are here, because affordability of data is very, very important to the growth of an economy If we want to be honest about ourselves, right.
Speaker 3:Especially now, kevin. Yeah, especially now, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:A lot of businesses need to be started to solve unique problems that we have in our economy. In our current environment, there's so many inefficiencies in how we do things, and people have ideas on how to solve those problems, and I think we need to play a role in enabling them, and so one key thing is data connectivity. And another thing that we thought about also doing is housing right. Housing needs to be cheaper. You need to have a place where you could have sanctuary right. If you happen to be born in a family where your parents were living in a kiosk right, that can actually make you extremely disadvantaged towards being as successful as someone who was born living in a more stable home or whatever right. So the more accessible and the more cheaper homes are, the more we include more people into the economy, and so we need to move in that direction, and the government needs to be engaged in that, and so our goal is to prove, with engineering, that we can actually use extremely low cost materials to produce housing units that are under $10,000, right.
Speaker 3:That's fantastic.
Speaker 1:And that's the benchmark we're trying to hit using clay. I don't know if we familiar with that Taqwami.
Speaker 3:I am Hold that thought there. Recently I got a message from one of my older friends that the UK are developing clay homes that are going to be revolutionary for the housing industry in the UK. And then the man was basically trying to say well, this is something that we've known in Africa for years. I was born in one of those homes and we haven't capitalized on that. And we've taken that their system of building and then now they're going back. Yeah, so it's interesting you say that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we got to go back to core. I mean, there's a reason why when you go far outskirts of Ghana, you see these homes that are built with clay and they've been there for probably like 50 years or 100 years and they're still in great integrity right. That says a lot about the strength and says a lot about you know.
Speaker 3:And it's so cool in there. Yeah, it's so cool you know, these days the homes are very hot. Yeah. But those clay houses, those mud houses are very cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's a reason why they chose to use clay. Yes, why. Ancient knowledge, man 100%. And it's highly available materials. Yeah, and it requires low-skilled labor to actually execute a project of building with clay, right yeah, let's talk about the African prosperity dialogues 2024.
Speaker 3:You were there, I was there. Yes, the president was there. Yes, and that was done at Pediasa Lodge. That's correct. Yes, presidential Lodge yeah, how was it? How was it?
Speaker 1:You know, it's a breath of fresh air to see all these leaders come together and pretty much unite on one message that we have to take our own prosperity into our own hands. That was the unifying message from all the leaders, and I think one person that really stood out to me and was quite vocal about some of the inefficiencies in how we operate was the president of Guyana.
Speaker 1:It was quite shocking to see someone whose country is not even on the content be so passionate about how we can actually revolutionize Africa and make things a whole lot better and build a connection with the Caribbean populace as well, and actually it was also like a message that says that Africa is not only for those who are on the continent of Africa, also the diaspora that is not currently in the continent, but they have Africa in them. It's kind of echoing what Kormi Krumas said, again, not because I live in Africa, but because African was born in me. So those who are in Guyana, if Africa is born in them, they are Africans by design and they should contribute in the development of Africa and we need to actually facilitate and enable that to occur. So I was quite impressed by a message from him and others as well.
Speaker 1:There were leaders from different banks African Development Bank, the African Bank and them trying to actually, you know, talking about how they finance, like big infrastructure projects gave me a great deal of insight, because I didn't know a whole lot of how all of that comes together and there are some key inefficiencies that were exposed while they were talking. Right, even the local banks can actually do a whole lot in financing these local infrastructures, but they don't know how to do that and navigate the risk behind doing that right. And I think these larger banks that are dedicated their resources towards these developments, they have figured out how to do that in efficient way, like, for example, if you're building a road, thinking about how you're going to finance it and you know, recruit the money bag. They use toes to kind of help do that. You know things like that right, yeah.
Speaker 1:So these vehicles for financing, it seems like they are all there. It seems like we have enough capital in Africa to actually finance. But I think the delta here is the gap in knowledge, right, and so these leaders coming together and hopefully the smaller banks are there, listening in and actually making connections with these larger banks and figuring out how they can, you know, work together to finance things, yeah, and make sure that impact is filled.
Speaker 3:It's filled right, absolutely, absolutely. My question to you is that now you've come in and, like I said, I've seen your billboards everywhere, you're staying, and what is making you say, now, I'm going to do business now Like what are you doing differently from the last time you came?
Speaker 1:in yeah, what's the shift in mindset? Yeah, so the shift in mindset is very, very simple. Right, I'm not going to force. I'm not going to force like local governments to adopt more efficient processes. I'm going to focus on building enough influence that they seek out help from my organization to solve the key problem.
Speaker 1:Right Before is more on the offensive, going after this, going after that right Now is more about, you know, proving myself and my companies to be, you know, a huge asset to them. And one key thing that I'm really going to activate and take advantage of is, if I can play ball in Ghana, no problem, I'll play ball in Ethiopia, I'll play ball in Tanzania. And eventually, you know, local government in Ghana is going to realize, hey, this guy is operating in Ghana, this other country is benefiting huge from this, you know, efficiency and this thing that you've built for them, and we're suffering here. Why are we doing this? We're not being very smart here, right, eventually, it's pretty much, you know, it's like a joke to them. I'm making mockery of them eventually, right, but not directly. And so that's one strategy I'm willing to, you know, employ.
Speaker 1:And I think, unfortunately, I think there's a saying I don't remember the saying. But another thing, too that I'm more focused on is the talent right. We have a huge amount of talent available and they're not put to good use right Within my organization. My goal is to utilize that talent as efficiently as I can and also to also help upscale that talent. And if most of our businesses from outside, I'm okay with that right. That's the key shift in mindset. I'm completely okay with most of our businesses being from outside of Africa, but I want to make sure that I'm using as much local talent as possible to execute projects, so then we can actually still have a business right Before if we're focused on just having you know.
Speaker 3:Government contracts.
Speaker 1:Government contracts and local projects. You know projects from local, like companies and whatnot, I think we'll go bankrupt. You know it won't work. It's a little bit different and I think we're also in our infancy, right, we're still building relationships, we're still getting to know the different key people in play that can actually open the doors for us, and so until we get to that point, this is how we're operating our business. So you know that's, I think, a main shift there.
Speaker 1:I would say talent is the biggest asset for anyone coming together to operate a business. You know there is huge unemployment rates, which means that you're going to get cheap talent right. When there's unlimited supply or a huge amount of supply, then that means you actually get to dictate. You know how much you pay employees, Pay your employees fairly and well, but you do know that you are not going to be paying. You know San Francisco level of salaries for your developers here, right, and that is encouraging, and you can still have pretty close skill sets. You know here, If you don't have that, you need to embark on a journey to actually train folks and bring them to that level right.
Speaker 1:If you're from the outside trying to operate here, you probably have that exposure. You can bring that exposure to these local talents to bring them to that level of expertise that you already have. And that's what I'm trying to do. I spent a lot of time at, you know, these corporations 4,500 corporations in the US like Boston Scientific, US Bank, Wanzik, and then Microsoft, right, what I've been exposed to and how things are operated and some of the efficiencies of how things get done. I want to instill it on my employees here. I want them to understand, hey, we're not just trying to just scratch the surface here, we're trying to go world-class level, right, and the people that I try to attract to my organization and my company is people who have a thirst for knowledge, right, and then instilling them the reality about what it takes to be the best.
Speaker 3:So the average, you know the average guy in him go to school, get a job, get a house, start a family. You know, that's it. Now we're struggling from that. The jobs are not there. They've all been to the school. The jobs are not there. We've heard a lot of things about the great things that tech can do and a lot of the great people dropping out With all these tech apps that we use.
Speaker 1:The Melanes and Belanes most of them dropped out started from their garages.
Speaker 3:What would be your how to get into tech For a young Ghanaian who probably doesn't even like university but needs to create something? Start a life out of it? It's got the desire and the interest.
Speaker 1:First of all, I want to say that there's nothing against universities about what I'm going to say. I think universities play a very, very key role in people's development. It's a social space, an artificial environment that is dedicated to learning. It's dedicated to building connections and learning how to learn. I think, for me, I learned how to learn in the university. All the challenges that our teachers gave us of doing homework, assignments and what not encouraged us to learn how to learn. You need that skill of learning how to learn. If you haven't already learned how to learn in high school, then you're not ready to go on your own to build a business or to start venturing into tech to create something. The whole process of building anything is learning and learning how to learn efficiently. I think in college I learned how my brain works. It's a very, very intimate process of spending a lot of time learning and trying to refine and optimize your learning process. You're being challenged to capture a whole lot of information and then being able to perform and demonstrate your absorption of that amount of information. You need to figure out how to absorb that information as fast as you can and personalize to you.
Speaker 1:I remember back in the day I was majoring in mechanical engineering. I think it's statistics, statics no, I think I was taking statics at the time, or maybe dynamics. This is like a mechanical engineering you measure the forces in a member and all of that stuff. It's pretty basic stuff for mechanical engineering or civil engineering. You actually have to calculate all components of a machine or all components of a building to see how forces or tensions are distributed, and all of that. They'll give you two big problems on the test. This is not like you can't do memory stuff on this. You need to know and you're giving about 45 minutes to complete those two problems. It takes a lot of calculations to solve each problem. You don't have enough time Because you know you're going to have to take that test. You need to spend time trying to figure out how to position your mind to read problems, understand them really quickly and figure out how to solve this, how to solve that, figure out what equation you need to use, how to operate the calculator. Pretty fast I can tell you this I got to a point where I can operate a calculator without looking at the calculator keyboard.
Speaker 1:I got to a point where I was doing integrals in my head. That's calculus, by the way, for those who are not familiar, integrals that will take a long time on a whiteboard to solve Because I don't have much time on the test. I can do all that stuff in my head. I got to a point where I spent a lot of time trying to train myself that. I got to a point where I was doing like the say, let me do a simple calculation like 3 to the 24th, I think it's in the billions, the number is in the billions. I was doing that in my head. That's an intimate process that got me there. Integrals that would take like, let me just say you have, like, let me say, 20 foot whiteboard, right, and you fill it up with calculations, right, three times you wipe it, you do it three times that level of calculation. I was able to do it to my head At that time.
Speaker 1:I spent a lot of time training myself and trying to get speed, you know. And then you have other people, other engineers, who are sort of we have these conversations after our tests like hey, how did you do, how did the test go? And then we tell each other our test scores and it was like a competition, right? So that's the environment that university creates right. And that pushed me to that point where I realized, holy shit, you know I could be, I'm good, and my colleagues were also at the point where they can actually quickly you know tabulate numbers really fast on the calculator and be able to write you know the solution on the paper really quick and move on to the next problem, right, it forced us to that point, right. So you do need that environment to actually create this kind of like conditioning, create this kind of skill set, right. You know, if I was to do that outside of, people would think like a magician. You asked me this and I'm able to just think about it and just give you a solution right away. But that was just a whole like environment that created that. But if you can create that in yourself at home, then you don't need the university. If you're self motivated right, and you're self challenged right, and say you are going to spend your time going to conferences and whatnot, so then you get like you get to build connections and whatnot, because universities give you connections right by default, then I think you can get to a point where you can say, yeah, I can skip college, I can skip university and focus on actually solving a problem or focus on actually, like you know, learning. I'll tell you this I actually never major in software engineering or computer science.
Speaker 1:I majored in mechanical. I was four years, did two internships in mechanical and then I switched to mathematics and then I started a company and that's what moved me out of university arena and I had to learn software on my own. I learned everything on my own. Mathematics forced me to take two courses in computer science. That was just basic courses. At that time I thought it was a waste of my time because I was madly in love with mathematics, right. So, and one thing I wanna say too is, mathematics forced me to challenge myself constantly, constantly.
Speaker 1:Because by design, it's like you solve this problem. How do we make this problem more complex? So you solve it Quick. What if we change the scenarios? What does it imply? And then it just gets more and more complex, right, it's like it doesn't stop. So it helps with your problem solving skills. It helps with the problem solving skills, right.
Speaker 1:And so when I ventured into software engineering, everything was so easy. It was just like baby stuff for me. Because that's problem solving, yes, because like mathematics is at that point where it's like intense solving problems all the time. And then computer science and engineering was like there is a limit on how complex it gets, right, whereas in math there was like no limit on how complex it can get. You just get it more and more complex and complex, whereas in computer science it felt like there was some sort of a cap to it. Right, how hard could it be? Right? And so that gives you confidence to approach problems. And if you build that kind of confidence right, this is a confidence I built in college right, if you can build that confidence at home, right, that's gonna engage you in solving very, very hard and technical problems and by so doing, you're going to learn the skills necessary to solve that problem.
Speaker 1:Now let me bring it down to earth. Let's just say you want to be a software engineer, right? Some people have taken the direction of bootcams. And what have you? Right? Go to a place they teach you HTML, css, javascript, python, python, what have you? And you come out of that and you think you're a software engineer or you're not. If I give you a problem, you can't solve it right, unless their bootcamp will solely focus on problem solving. Right, they give you a project. So I would advise anyone who wants to venture into tech to pick a problem right and examine themselves that, hey, am I willing to be committed to making sure that this problem is solved? If you answer yes to that, then you're committed to doing whatever it takes to solve that problem.
Speaker 1:Because it is damn hard to learn computer science and software development Because, look, everything is going to fail. You're going to have a lot of things not working the way it should in the process If you are dedicated to solving that problem. Once you solve that problem, you learn all the skills that you need to learn to become an engineer. So that implies that if you have to learn algorithms to solve a certain problems, right, this is stuff that you take in college. You take an algorithms course in college. Right, if you were to solve a problem that requires you to have algorithms knowledge, what would you do? You go and fetch the source of information for that and then you learn it so you can come back and continue solving your problem. So by then you've taken the course by design. Ok, just because you're trying to solve a problem, you'll be taking multiple courses. Just because you are solving that problem and you're not taking an official course. You're learning to the extent that you absorb enough information as if you were taking a course in college.
Speaker 3:And that also means that you may not even have to take any course. It may all be available on the internet for you.
Speaker 1:It will be all available for you on the internet Searching and I encourage people to start using Gemini and chat, gpt and what have you that are out there Query it? How would you approach this? How would you solve this problem? What are the things I need to learn to be able to solve this problem? Yes, you might not give you answers, because it's not capable of giving you answers to solve a certain unique problem, right. But it's important to know that you need to seek out the information that's going to enable you, that's going to empower you, and you need to align yourself to learning. Align yourself to be passionate about learning and absorbing as much information as you possibly can, so you can become that person that solves that problem.
Speaker 3:I met a few guys from a renowned tech school. I think they were at level, I think it's 300, whatever they call it and I asked them what have you guys done? And they could improve it. And these were students, supposedly in their third year, and I was like, look, just show me what you've done. In the end, it took them about two weeks to produce something and, look, this is something that I could have done when I was 17 years Terrible. So I understand what you're saying. Even if you don't go through the school system and you decide to adopt the mindset of problem solving, you can become a tech genius in your own way and I'm going to inspire your audience a little bit.
Speaker 1:I actually don't have a bachelor's. Yes, I don't, but I was a principal engineer manager at Microsoft. I was managing engineers that had master's degrees. I was managing engineers that had everything principal engineers and what have you why? What made it possible Problem solving Exactly, I focused on solving problems and there was evidence of me solving problems and when I worked at US Bank, I solved problems very high visibility, important problems that I could talk about in interviews. So you can never underestimate solving problems. The degree didn't matter.
Speaker 1:I remember back in the day, man, microsoft was this organization that all they cared about was credentials and it grew out of that realizing that, wow, there are people who didn't actually go through university system and learn and get these master's and PhDs and whatnot, and there are highly-performance individuals. They get a lot of stuff done. One thing I focused on is getting stuff done. I do everything possible to actually make sure that this particular thing I'm doing it gets to the point where it's done, and I will spend hours. I have times when I've done three days with no sleep or four days with no sleep because I was so motivated in making sure that I solved this problem one way or the other.
Speaker 1:And when you solve problems at quality not just solving the problems at quality make sure they are high-quality solutions. People are going to see that and when you're talking to someone, look, I tell people this too. There are people who have these degrees and PhD. When they put me side to side to them and we're talking about something, they'll tell them to because they see a clear difference. I'm sure when I've done interviews, they've had someone else who did the interview for the same role, but they were more impressed with me because what they're hearing and what I'm talking about shows a whole lot more expertise than that person who's walking hours with so much credentials. That problem-solving piece does all the magic Wow.
Speaker 3:Wow, kevin, I had a guest here.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I'm not advocating for doing four days of no sleep and three days of no sleep, by the way, Don't do that.
Speaker 3:I would never do that again. Whatever works with individual people.
Speaker 1:No, don't do it Be healthy and efficient, that's right.
Speaker 3:I've had a guest here, an awesome lady, Gloria, who's a multi-melaner, and I can't wait for people to hear her interview. She came all the way from the US as well, and she had a question for my next guest and it happened to be you. I didn't know it was going to be you. And then the question is if you were to rewind 20 years, what will you do differently?
Speaker 1:Man. Honestly, that time I wasn't so confident about my capabilities. My confidence came at age 20. At age 20, 19, thereabouts I spent a lot of time asking myself what's the best way to live. I spent a lot of time reading everything I read like philosophy papers. I read the Bible cover to cover. I read the Quran and other things. Religious books.
Speaker 1:Yeah, religious books. I really wanted to answer that question in a very concrete and convincing way, and I wanted to be analytical. I really believe that we're giving brains to think. I really believe that we're not giving brains to just simply not use it. I think we should use our brains, and so I think we should use our brains.
Speaker 1:One thing that I came to conclusion was we are here to help people, right. Once I realized that I started aligning myself, I asked my how can I help people? I need to have skills and I need to be bold, I need to be very, very convicted and I need to be honest. Right, if I had the opportunity to go back in time, I would have done that work at 20, you know, not really my age at 14 instead, that would have made a huge difference in my trajectory. That would have meant I would have wasted less time, you know, trying this, trying that, you know, and just saying this is what I need to solve, and I would have started solving the problem that I'm solving today much earlier.
Speaker 1:I gained an extra what? Six years of expertise, and so if I, in that confidence that I'm talking about, also around 20, remember, I talked about how we pushed ourselves to the limit and everything In 1920, we're doing that. I would have loved to have done that at 14, right, I think around that time I didn't know. Like I just thought these people were just as good and yeah, that's what they do. But around 20, you know, I learned that, oh, what all those people are doing, I can do that too. I mean, if I choose to do it, I can do it. So if I had the opportunity, challenge myself and then learn about the best way to live earlier and would have, you know, aligned myself much earlier and built skills much earlier, Fantastic, that's good.
Speaker 3:That's really nice to hear. So it leads on to our two questions Very brief Motivation or discipline?
Speaker 1:Discipline- Okay, um, discipline. Look, anything you do in, anything you want to accomplish in life, you're going to need consistency. You know, when motivation is not high, discipline is what's going to take over.
Speaker 3:I like that, Kevin. What's the best advice you've ever received from anyone?
Speaker 1:I'll tell you one thing, that two things that motivated me. Back in the day One, when I was really young, my grandfather said when so when I was really young, right, my, my sister, who was younger than me, was better at reading than I was. So it was usually against me and I felt like bad and all of that right. But my grandfather at the time was telling people to leave me alone. When he grows you'll get better. And then fast forward.
Speaker 1:You know, before mid school I was in Ghana, around, like you know, or class six class, class four, I think around. Class four is when I was literally like the best mathematician in my class. You know, I was like the math guy. All of a sudden, this guy who was not really, you know, at the top, all of a sudden he's at the top for math. Right, I look back at that and it's encouraging that to say that you might not be good today, You're going to be better tomorrow.
Speaker 1:And coupled with this I think this one is 14 when I came across Kofi Annan I don't know him personally, but I saw his one, his quote he said I'm miscoding this, but knowledge is power, Education is the premises of progress in every society and every something, something like that. So I was focused on knowledge, trying to have as much knowledge as possible. Gosh, I spent lots and lots and lots of times on Wikipedia just reading stuff, randomly reading papers. I just wanted to know, and education is the premises of progress. Education you need to educate yourself. You know, if you don't educate yourself, you're not progressing.
Speaker 1:And so I saw him as my idol, even though I was not going to go to political routes. And so those words I held onto it. Knowledge is power. It's kept holding onto it Every time. I just tell myself, even though I was forcing, I was not really, like you know, advanced, but I just know that I just need to focus on knowledge, I just need to focus on my studies. And so in high school, I was trying to perform the best that I can, you know, treating my teachers with utmost respect. They were like God's to me. I was just like listening. I was sitting in front of the class.
Speaker 3:You know a good student, a good student. I wanted to learn everything.
Speaker 1:I wanted to know everything because I knew education was important. So I think those things you will be better, right and education and knowledge is power, Fantastic.
Speaker 3:Now this leads us on to the question One less guest.
Speaker 1:Oh well, I think, in the current times we are in, I think it's appropriate to ask our next guest how can AI machine learning solve your current problems and how can they solve problems for your community, your country and Africa at large?
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