It used to be that “a wise man once said nothing.” But in today’s world, a wise man tweets almost everything on his mind, makes a video, gives an interview, and hops on trending topics to hopefully make more money. We talk often about how tech has disrupted industries like banking, communications, healthcare, transportation, housing, […]
Blog
Interviews / Technology
Cote d’Ivoire Drone’s Marouane Jebbar on Africa’s Aerospace Sector
Originally published on the MEST Africa Blog. On November 8, 2018, MEST Africa and Innocircle organized an Airbus Bizlab Aerospace Challenge Meetup in Abidjan to spotlight the budding aerospace industry in Francophone Africa, answer questions about launching a startup in the space, and introduce the Africa4Future initiative by Airbus to aspiring entrepreneurs. We were lucky to have Marouane Jebbar, Founder […]
Sponsored / Technology
How AI Can Enhance Agriculture In Africa
Published on iAfrikan, TechNova and Top Farmer Kenya. I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no organic food. Do you? Listen, We will need to produce 70% more food than we do today to feed 2.3 billion people that will be added to the world’s population by 2050. And we will have to […]
Technology
Innovation and the future of Africa: A tale of two countries
Published on Techpoint and Tech Nova. Too many times, when we speak about the future of Africa or the future of technology in Africa, we do so with an air of ignorant homogeneity. We speak of Africa like we speak of one country, and in so doing we [sometimes] forget that there are 54 countries […]
Career
Are African Business Leaders Doing Enough To Prepare Employees For Future Work?
Published on TechNova, iAfrikan, Business2Community. While population growth determines the socio-economic prospects of a country, the age structure of the nation is just as crucial. By 2025, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) will be home to almost a quarter of the global population aged 24 and below. And by 2035, SSA’s population will become the youngest in […]
Career / Interviews
Working With Girlfriends: Tress App
Originally published on True Africa. Tress is a hair inspiration app targeted at black women. It was created by Priscilla Hazel, Esther Olatunde and Cassandra Sarfo in Accra where they came together due to their shared love for dreaming, learning, building, traveling and innovating. This June Tress, which was founded at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), was accepted to the Y-Combinator fellowship, […]
Career
Social Capital’s Way Better Than Money
Originally published on Bella Naija. I recently read a story on James Altucher’s blog where he shared how a friend of his made $2million in one morning, without any physical effort on his part. See a short excerpt from their dialogue below: Dave: “Oh! I forgot to tell you. I accidentally made 2 million dollars […]
Career
Crash Course: How To Get A Job Without Connections
Originally published on Bella Naija. Things are hard in Nigeria, no doubt about that. Our industries and government work suboptimally, and we’re used to it. New and old graduates face the anxiety of trying to fend for themselves with limited options. An advantage of living in a country like ours, however, is that we learn […]
Career / Musings
Diving in is the best way to learn
Some of us see things a bit differently – whilst others unwind and let loose, endings stress us more than beginnings do. Each year, when December comes around, we become shut-ins and work harder than we did all year. It’s our attempt to make up for the stolen days, catch up with unfinished business, and […]
Technology
3 Easy, Free Online Form Builders For Non-Tech Savvy Users
Originally published on Business2Community. It’s a known fact that online form builders can make your life as a web user a lot easier. Whether you own or manage a website, organize events, run surveys or even collect payments; online forms are easy, quick and ideal, especially for people who aren’t overly tech-savvy or neck-deep into […]
Interviews / Technology
How Andela Plans to Build more Female Technologists in Africa
Originally published on AfricaBusiness2020 via Skrife. Mercy Orangi is the Technology Evangelist at Andela. Here, she talks about Andela’s pan-African expansion plans and platforms they’re building to support more female technologists on the continent. Earlier this year, Andela held its Women In Technology (WIT) Summit in Nigeria. What was the motivation behind that event? This was the first WIT […]
Guest Post
The Rich Uncle Network
“Nigerian (tech) entrepreneurs need to show traction”…. I hear this all the time and whilst it is true, it still irks me when I hear it. They compare Nigeria to America and forget the myriad of problems that exist here. This diagram below shows a little bit of how tech entrepreneurship works in America. The […]
Sponsored / Technology
How AI and social media are defining new means of payments
Published on iAfrikan, Business2Community and TechNova. Meet Kiah. Kiah is a 25-year-old freelance writer and graphic designer who spends most of her time on her smartphone. She, like the average digital consumer, spends up to 3 hours in the day on social networking and instant messaging. Kiah loves watching videos on YouTube and scrolling through […]
Sponsored / Technology
The 3 C’s: Industries That Will Survive Automation
Published on Business2Community. Care, Computers and Clean Energy If you’re thinking 2026 is still far away, stop and think again. It really is less than 10 years away, which means we are as close to 2010 as we are to 2026. Let this sink in; it will be useful as you read through this forecast. […]
Guest Post
Startup Branding Guide: How To Build Your Startup’s Brand Identity From Scratch
If you’re in an early stage startup, as a founder or a key member of the team, one of your biggest obstacles at the beginning is always going to be the lack of brand awareness and identity. You know the awkward pause. Maybe a little too well. On dates. At networking events. At job interviews. At reunions […]
Guest Post / Uncategorized
Your Nigerian degree is useless but there is hope!
Anyone who has tried recruiting Nigerian graduates would have dealt with immense frustrations only similar in severity to using slow internet to watch pornographic material — Yes I said it.But no… this is not a “bash young Nigerians” post. This is a collective problem that needs solving by us being brave and unorthodox. The terrible […]
Technology
What’s True About What We Know About the Future?
Originally published on iAfrikan & B2C. What’s real and what’s hype in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning? As with all new technology, emotions run wild and our excitement gets the better of us. The hype is everywhere — projections of an AI-ruled planet akin to something out of a science fiction movie and computers that can […]
Technology
How To Get In The Battle for AI Talent
Originally published on B2C. The AI talent pool is shallow. But, just how shallow is it? According to this article on Bloomberg, in December 2017, Tencent Holdings Ltd., the Chinese internet conglomerate, published its findings that put the estimate of global AI talent at 200,000 to 300,000 people who were either AI researchers or industry […]
Guest Post
Toxic masculinity and what it means for the burgeoning digital economy in Nigeria
I wrote this piece (in quotes below) a while ago and didn’t have the guts to share it. It was an expansion of a social media conversation I was having and I must say it was undoubtedly a difficult conversation to have. However, after recently being the only male on CNN’s #MeToo panel at social […]
Guest Post
The Electricity Situation in Nigeria
Bowing Out It is not a secret that I spent most of my entrepreneurial life within Nigeria at the front end of the electricity industry. However, Nigeria’s power problems are complex. The solutions appear simple to me; but re-engineering our “system” to address the solutions is where most of the problems lie. I am not […]
Career / Sponsored / Technology
Dear Millennials, This Is How We Can Beat AI And Keep Our Jobs
Published on EzineArticles. Warpath Strategy On The Workplace of the Future In 2013, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, Faculty at the University of Oxford, published a report titled ‘The Future of Employment’. The study presented in the report examined the susceptibility of 702 varied occupations to computerisation. According to their estimates, about 47% of […]
Musings
In 2017 I exchanged a life of hedonistic pursuits for the Crown of Life
Hi there! Thanks for clicking to read. Before you go any further, let me clarify that I am a Christian and I am talking about “giving my life to Christ” and giving up on pleasing myself every chance I get. Still here? Cool! I want to tell you about this journey of faith. Before 2017, […]
Technology
SendPilot Really Is Perfect For Content Marketers
I am interested in intelligent automation and I’ve worked in the technology space for 4+ years. It amazes me how much change has occurred in this time. From 2014, when the only apps I used on my phone daily were BBM, Email, Browser, and YouVersion until now when I literally organize and transact my entire life […]
Interviews / Technology
How to Launch and Sustain a Boutique Hotel in Africa
Originally published on AfricaBusiness2020 via Skrife. Introducing… Frieda Demor Nwokolo, owner of Eastgate Hotel Ghana and a hospitality guru who has spent the past decade honing her craft, exploring her passions and making herself a force to be reckoned with in Africa’s boutique hotel industry. In this interview, she shares her experience of setting up a boutique hotel […]
Career
Want to get into Africa tech?
A summary of my notes from the recent Women Techmakers Leads and Google Developers Groups (GDG) Summit held in Lagos, Nigeria. I woke up on Monday morning to an invite to the Summit from my friend, Aniedi Udo-Ubong, Developer Ecosystem Manager at Google (Sub-Saharan Africa). It was to a two-day gathering of Women Techmakers Leads and […]
Interviews / Technology
Meet the Entrepreneur Who’s Built an Offline Addressing App for Africa
Originally published on AfricaBusiness2020 via Skrife. He is referred to as an ‘accidental entrepreneur’, one with no intention of starting a business who saw a problem and set out to fix it. Introducing… Sesinam Dagadu, the founder of a Solutions Company called tinyDAVID. tinyDavid was set up to develop solutions for the developing world, and SnooCODE, their first […]
Career / Technology
Video + List: Equity-free Funding For Your Business Idea
In this video, I share info on how to get equity-free seed funding for your business idea or startup. I also share a list of accelerators around the world to help you get started on your journey. https://youtu.be/1jnqvbZDgdU < p style=”text-align: left;”>List of Equity-free Accelerators Around The World Ready to take a bold step into […]
Interviews / Technology
The Rise – and Challenges – of Ghana’s Real Estate Leader MeQasa
Originally published on AfricaBusiness2020 via Skrife. Introducing… Kelvin Nyame, one of three Ghanaian entrepreneurs, (including Rashad Seini and Kofi Amuasi), who founded MeQasa after receiving US$90,000 seed-funding from Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) in 2013. MeQasa went on to raise US$800,000 from Frontiers Digital Ventures, a global VC firm in 2015, and is rising to be the […]
Interviews / Technology
Paystack: The Nigerian Success Story Helping Businesses Get Paid
Originally published on AfricaBusiness2020 via Skrife. Introducing… One of the stars of Nigeria’s recent startup success stories – fintech startup Paystack. Paystack was admitted into Y Combinator’s (YC) accelerator programme in winter 2016, making them one of the first Nigerian startups to join the programme. This was no small feat and it ushered in an era of international exposure […]
Uncategorized
Two Fulfilling Events in One Weekend!
Two speaking engagements in one weekend! I really am growing and sticking with my resolutions – doing good that benefits more people. At the beginning of this year, my mantra was “do the work and fall in love with the work.” And five months down the line, I’m still on it. 2017 plan: Fall in […]
Career / Technology
For Women Entrepreneurs: We Are Hosting A Screening To Encourage More Women in Tech and Business
Published on MEST Africa Blog. Popcorn, big screens, and good conversation afterwards! On Friday, 21 April, join us for a special one-time screening of this new empowering documentary on female entrepreneurship titled: She Started It. She Started It aims gives a new face to the popular image of the tech entrepreneur: a female face. This documentary / film follows […]
Interviews / Technology
Asoriba: The Mobile App Revolutionising African Churches
Originally published on AfricaBusiness2020 via Skrife. Introducing… Nana Agyemang Prempeh, one of four co-founders of Asoriba, a startup on a mission to revolutionise churches in Africa. Asoriba has been voted Best Startup in Ghana twice by Seedstars and Ringier/Pulse, Best Startup in Africa by Seedstars, and were participants in Techstars’ first cohort in Africa. How would you describe […]
Interviews / Technology
Meet the new MEST Accra Incubator General Manager – Ashwin Ravichandran
Originally published on the MEST Africa Blog. Starting in January this year, Ashwin Ravichandran resumes his new role as the new MEST Accra-Incubator General Manager. Ashwin joined the MEST team in July 2015 as a Technology Teaching Fellow niched in design, scale/strategy and innovative technologies. Fast-forward to 2017, and he joins the MEST management team […]
