Impact Masters Podcast
A podcast for entrepreneurs and professionals seeking actionable strategies to grow their business, enhance leadership skills, and maximize personal impact.
The Impact Masters Podcast explores the forces shaping Africa’s technology and innovation ecosystem while connecting them to global tech trends and best practices. Hosted by Michael Kimathi, we feature authentic conversations with founders, developers, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders who are building the future of Africa and influencing the global digital economy.
Each episode dives deep into how technology is transforming the way we live, work, create, and govern: from engineering and digital transformation to software development, developer experience, DevRel, product design, AI, and startup growth. While we are deeply rooted in Africa’s tech journey, we also explore global innovations, global movers and shakers, lessons, and collaborations that inspire local impact and worldwide relevance.
We tell authentic stories, preserve Africa’s tech history, share actionable insights, and challenge the status quo: Body, Mind, and Spirit.
If you’re a tech founder, developer, investor, or innovator looking to understand Africa’s digital future while staying connected to global technology trends, this podcast is your guide.
Impact Masters Podcast
#42 - Victor Abedi
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Victor Abedi, a seasoned Site Reliability Engineer, shares his journey from the bustling streets of Umoja and Kibera to leading teams at major tech companies like Disney. How did his disciplined upbringing in Nairobi shape his career and instill resilience? Victor’s story is a testament to the power of personal narratives in the tech world and the untapped potential in African cities like Kigali and Nairobi.
As we navigate through Victor's academic and professional milestones, you'll gain insights into the African education system and the challenges of pursuing a career in tech. From the strict routines of Kenyan boarding schools to discovering a passion for computing and programming, Victor highlights the importance of practical knowledge and self-initiative. His experiences underscore the value of creating systems tailored to unique contexts and the progress being driven by young innovators across Africa.
Join us as Victor recounts his career transitions from working on financial systems at Bring, to his role at Wiseline, and ultimately becoming a Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Disney. Learn about the intricacies of managing major platforms like Hulu and HBO, and the significance of community and giving back. This episode is a celebration of the resilience and determination that adversity breeds, with a promise of more captivating stories from influential tech figures across Africa. Don’t miss out—subscribe, share, and let’s celebrate the movers and shakers in the African tech scene!
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Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, it's another beautiful evening, Welcome, welcome, welcome, it's a good day. Still in Rwanda, the land of a thousand hills. It's yours truly Michael Kemadi or MKV Warrant, still covering Africa Tech Ecosystem. Still covering Africa tech ecosystem all the way. This Africa Stalking podcast, well known as Retort Podcast, in collaboration with Impact Masters Podcast, africa Stalking. We provide users D airtime, sms and voice, and you can find all these products at africastalkingcom. Providing developer APIs across 54 countries in Africa and beyond, running top 1% community of developers across the world. You can find our community at communityileriancom slash Africa Stalking. You can find our community at communityileriancom slash Africa's Talking, and it's open for everyone to join. Our hackathons are going on in eight countries and every Thursday of the month you'll find us in Nairobi hosting these hackathons Ghana, nigeria, south Africa, rwanda, uganda, tanzania In partnership with TADAC, our close partner, tadac Global, working closely with Mozilla, among as many other companies, to reach the next mile of developers when you talk about developer impact across Africa. We mean business.
Speaker 2And welcome again telling the stories that matter of movers and shakers in tech, without leaving anyone behind. We welcome you to join in our conversation through Twitter Space Live and you get this podcast in all channels Google Podcasts, itunes Podcasts, spotify Podcasts, among any other podcasts out there. Look for Africa's Talking Retour Podcasts or Impact Masters Media Podcasts On YouTube. It's YouTube Africa's Talking or Impact Masters Media Podcasts On YouTube. It's YouTube Africa Stalking or Impact Masters Media. Like, subscribe, share and comment. Listen to the stories that matter. That will improve your life. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2Beautiful day, and today we are joined by one and only the man himself Victor Abedi. Victor Abedi has been my longtime friend, a guy I've known for some time, since the days he was starting up until today, and today we are going to tell a story as a movement shaker in tech across Africa and what really matters and how can we really change Africa through tech. But before then, abedi is experienced site reliability engineer with seven plus years of experience and demonstrated history of working and building resiliency in production systems, distributed systems and building at scale with security and optimization in mind. He practices DevOps and building backend applications using Spring Boot, java and Motocloud services, azure, aws and GCP, and he helps architects on cloud and come up with slo and sli to ensure systems are always running optimally releasing, engineering and designing system. Abedi, how are you chief?
Speaker 4yes, yes, yes hi mike, how are you that? That was a long description, but Santisana happy to be here. Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 2You know, for us we just keep it raw. It's more of raw conversation, telling our own stories, trying to make sure that everyone who is listening they know who we are, why we are. And you know we can't tell an African man's story without knowing who they are right, and mostly we find most of the people telling you know their story in brief, and also even other media come in and tell stories in brief. You and I know most of these funk companies, tech companies Now, most of the serious engineers are based in Africa, but this is not told. You know well enough or enough times to make any impact. So for us, this podcast was started by showcasing some of these stories, because I myself have been in the ecosystem, I've seen the transition and I know we can do more. Kenya is one of the examples. Today we're in Kigali, rwanda, and this is also one of the examples of like it can be done.
Speaker 2So, ensuring that we're telling these stories is one step towards the right direction. So, chief, you have worked for so many uh amazing, impactful uh companies across the world disneyland you know yeah but before we go there, I would like to hear who is abed from day zero. Before the abed we know, before the Victor senior engineer. Yeah, yes, please tell us about Abedi. Where did you grow up? Yeah?
Speaker 4I grew up in Umoja in Nairobi, so I grew up in the sub, not really suburbs. Yeah, they call it mid-level class ghetto of Nairobi yeah in Umo Umoja, actually, no, no, I can't remember. So, growing up, I grew up in Kibera and then my parents moved us to Umoja, where I think I lived, I think, most of my teenage life, before having to go into, before having to go into into boarding school. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so, yeah, so yeah, all right, all right For sure?
Speaker 2Yeah, the chief director here is interrupting our session, Please go on, yeah, mike.
Speaker 4So, like I mentioned, I grew up in. I grew up. Yeah, I grew up in Umoja. Later on moved to Ongwaro and then back in Umoja. Later on moved to Ongwaro and then back to Umoja but, yeah, I basically grew up in the beautiful city of Nairobi and, yeah, that's pretty much the city that defines who I am right now.
Speaker 2Kaka Victor Abedi. So, and this actually something I've realized with so many. Kaka Victor Abedi. Yes, so, and this is actually something I've realized with so many people that they like brushing off. Yeah. You know, I grew up in Umoja. I went to Nguaro, went back to Umoja and that's where I grew up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2Sometimes most of these experiences of growing up in these places makes us who we are Definitely. And if you think about Umoja, Umoja was one of the posh estates, until you know, lately yeah. Same as Buruburu Actually, yes, but so many people who move there, they don't know these things, and it's always good to share some of these things. I don't know if you used to live in Umoja when it was Umoja.
Speaker 4I actually lived in Umoja when it was Umoja. That time it was in Mtindwa.
Speaker 2Oh, there was Mtindwa there, there was.
Speaker 4Mtindwa, and I think Mtindwa is no longer there anymore. Yeah, and it was Umoja inner core and life was all about living for survival. Honestly, I did not have to struggle. Growing up I feel like my parents removed the stress of having to do that. But yeah, honestly I think that humble background also kind of humbled me, even where I am right now, because getting to know where you're from ideally gives you that definition of who you are right now.
Speaker 2So what was the experience of growing in Umoja back in the day?
Speaker 4Growing up in Umoja was, I'll say, simple, honestly. There was nothing much. All you could do is wake up, go to school back home over the weekends, catch up with your friends, play in the neighborhood those brick mortar games, swings you will tie up ropes in the stairway and use that to swing. I remember I even used to climb the stairway anytime. My dad used to be very strict when we were growing up, so playing was never part of his sort of entertainment.
Speaker 4So, if you hear when your friend is like I've seen your father, Vicky Babayako, the first thing you think of is to run away, get to the house and, you know, behave like you never left the house.
Speaker 2So that was really great for us. So was it strict that you should be more focusing on books or more focusing on house chores, chores? Or why was it strict Just staying in the house, or Not really.
Navigating Childhood Expectations and Realities
Speaker 4I mean there was time to play for sure. I mean you know the way they say work without play makes you dull. So my dad was open for playing, but then there were limits for how long you could play being a kid.
Speaker 4Kid, you know. To other people, guys were let out to play until late in the night, but for us it was. You know, if you're gonna play, you step out for two hours and just ensure you're back before curfew, because if you meet him in the house after, cuff is gonna be another story. But I feel like for him it was. You can have fun but have limits, and I think, even growing up, now that I'm not even staying at home, I can actually go out and do things, but I still have that reservation of okay, I have to do it, but I love to do it up to a particular limit. So, yeah, that was really about it.
Speaker 2So that's one of the things that you learned when you were young and it helped you in the whole, the whole uh, years or later years, exactly, exactly in your life. But at that age did you really think that you know, uh, or did you find your dad strict, as you said, and you could not understand? Why does he require you to have certain shedding?
Speaker 4well again, being a boy. Yeah, um, it was more like you know also, I feel like there's this thing people talk about acting your age. So at that particular time it was more like, yeah, my dad is strict, I'm living under his roof, I have to be obedient, otherwise, if you want to create chaos or mayhem in the house, just do the opposite. But yeah, I mean just growing up in that particular environment. Honestly, I did feel like he was kind of stepping into my environment as a kid, but then now, looking back, I feel like this was actually maybe meant to culture me to become a particular way or actually act in a particular manner.
Speaker 2Oh, very nice, Very nice. So you did your primary school in Umoja and Kawangware.
Speaker 4Yes, I went to in Umoja. I schooled in what's that school called again Busara. I went to Busara primary school and I used to have those guys for first border. The guys, the big guys of the class. So ideally, if you're a first border, people will respect you. But I think, due to adolescence and many other things, other traditional factors, we had to move from Umoja and move into Kawangware and at that particular time I had to shift classes.
Speaker 4yeah, Because, even parents, again, I think anybody who grew up in Nairobi around that time anything between 2004 all the way to 2006 our parents used to move a lot. Actually, I'll find it weird if you stayed in one neighborhood. If you're living in nairobi throughout the primary school time. Yes, so we we did move from umoja, we, we went to Kawangware, and at this particular time I had to shift schools too. My dad took me to one of the good schools. Actually, I went to Milimani Primary School in Kilimani.
Speaker 4Actually, right now it's a suburb by itself by then, it wasn't, it was, it was coming up, I do remember my escapades in Milimani primary school for sure, and yeah, that was fun, until we had to come back again to Umoja, which meant now again changing schools. So I did move to what's that school called Dunham primary. This? Is still primary right. This is still in primary right.
Speaker 2This is still primary, yeah.
Speaker 4So there are things like class six and then my adolescence kicked in and I think my class teacher did report this to my dad and my dad was like it's about time we need to move you to a boarding school.
Speaker 2So when you talk about adolescence, you start becoming big-headed. You can't be taught anything.
Speaker 4Of course, and then growing up in Umoja. You know, now you're becoming we call it kuwa mrui like you want to take charge of Hardcore, hardcore, exactly.
Speaker 2Nowadays they call I don't know if it's Shembeteng or something Umawuru.
Speaker 4Yeah, there were. Know if it's shemberting or something? Yeah, there are others definitely. And I will tell you for sure, at that particular time, if, if I wasn't moved with my parents to a boarding school, I would probably end up being one of those street kids not really street kids, but those street gangsters because that's what the environment that we were in was actually pushing, that's what the environment that we were in was actually pushing us into. So the fact that my parents, our parents, saw that way in advance and they chose to move us to to boarding school honestly, that was that was a blessing to myself yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah and uh.
Speaker 2Then did you realize they're doing something to help you? Or you still feeling like, ah, you know, my parents are a bit strict. They don't care about me that much, you know well, it did happen.
Speaker 4Uh, the funny thing, my, my, my brother actually went to boarding school way in advance. Okay, yeah a year, a year before me. Yeah and uh, at this point in time my dad is is preparing me. He's telling me you know, from next year you're going to a boarding school. Yeah, I think my bro also kind of lied to me again. The boarding school that we were going to was not in Nairobi. Oh, so this boarding school was in was in Homa Bay in a place called Oyugis.
Speaker 2Oyugis. Yeah, yes, I know Ogis. I think we have a pastor Ogis. Yes, yeah we have actually Agorosare yes on your way to.
Speaker 4Kisii. So I went to a boarding school called Ober Boys Boarding School and at that particular time, before I even joined the boarding school, my bro had lied to me that they have a swimming pool in school.
Speaker 1Yeah. So me, I knew ah, this is your big bro, or small bro, my big bro.
Speaker 4Yeah, so I'm like, ah, wait a minute, what am I even doing in Nairobi? Because Nairobi, you know, it's just about acting gangster and going to school and adolescence. And I mean, he did sell that vision to me. Honestly, I knew I was going to heaven, yeah, when there's no dad, there's no mom to control me. Kunna swimming pool I can swim all I want, I can go to class when I want. And I think this time there's this popular magazine that actually came out Insider.
Speaker 2The.
Speaker 4Insider had just come out, and also, what's this other one called? There used to be this magazine called Shujaz and they had partnered with a show called Club Kiboko, so I was featured and my bro took the magazine to the boarding school so you are, you already a celeb? There. Yes, when I'm going to school, by the time I'm arriving in the school, everybody is expecting a celebrity this guy's been seen in tv.
Speaker 4Yeah, so this is a big man coming to school and honestly, I will tell you for sure it was hard settling in boarding school.
Speaker 2Because there's expectation that people have.
Speaker 4Yes.
Speaker 2There's what you had expected from this environment.
Speaker 4Remember, I'm still expecting the same thing and those expectations never met. Yeah, so yeah, I did my primary. I actually finished my primary in Obero Boys Boarding. I joined high school now that was the Rero Boys Boarding. I joined high school. Now that was Orero Boys Boarding School. Shout out, I know it's a national school. Nowadays they call it Orero High School, so shout out to my boys who are listening to this podcast. That's what I actually did in my high school and actually that's where my passion for computing did develop.
Speaker 2Don't brush off up. We are here like, take it one step at a time. Yeah, so you finish uh primary school. How did you manage to meet these two? And you know you might assume it, but there are a lot of people who actually this is their reality as you speak 100, for sure, yeah, around africa their reality as you speak, 100 for sure, yeah, around africa, because, you see, africa is a dream.
Speaker 2For sure, not yet. We have not woken up, we're in a dream. So there's what you want to see. There's what is happening on the ground. There's what we are promised is what our leaders tell us. So it's a one big dream in every, in every angle, in every age, because we've given kenya has come from. It's just one year after the election. It's what people actually expected from the new government. People are like this is worse than the dream that we're in, so they're in another dream, expecting for the better.
Speaker 2So, what I'm trying to say is that that reality actually sets different knowledge sets for people to grasp something out of it. So how did you match the two, the expectation from the students and your expectation from the school? And now even your real brother has lied to you.
Speaker 4Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2Did you overcome it over time?
Speaker 4Definitely One thing for sure I have learned in this life there's nothing permanent in this life. Yeah, yeah, definitely one thing for sure I have learned in this life there's nothing permanent, yeah, in this life. Yeah, yeah. So, uh, I definitely did overcome the the overwhelming situation that was there at that particular time. Yeah, um, I think, at most for sure, having my brother also in that school did help a lot. Yeah, yeah, because you know, we used to be like two. My brother used to be like my sidekick, so anytime we needed help, I need a help with something. You always gonna show up for me. So life wasn't that bad at that particular time and, yeah, definitely, I mean, yes, there's the expectation that I did hard yeah but over time I did have to accept the reality of what life gives you.
Speaker 4Yeah, and use it. What you are dreaming, oh okay. Go ahead. Yeah and yeah, it was just reality by itself. So I did settle in, I think, three months in. Yeah. I just settled into the system and honestly, looking back, it was actually a good experience. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2So how did you perform in primary school?
Speaker 4Well, here's the thing I'm not a bookworm, I'm more a logical person. I'm one person who likes using knowledge and putting it in practice. Yeah, yeah and for sure, the African system. Brother, when you go to school you are kind of set to do certain subjects, so for sure, for sure. I did not get an A, I think. No, we didn't have grades in we did we did.
Speaker 4Oh, yeah, I think. Yeah, we did. Actually, we did. Yes, so I wasn't an a student, I was an average student. Yes, yes, yeah, but for sure, if you're listening to this and you are finding yourself in that level, don't pressure yourself it's gonna be okay don't pressure yourself.
Speaker 2It's not about the a, b, c, d, o and up to e.
Speaker 4It's about this about you it's about the skill that you get when you're in class.
Speaker 2But just straight to it. I did score enough to take me to high school and this means maybe you did not drop your adolescence approach to life.
Speaker 4Well, I mean, you see, for sure, just never skip anything that comes through your life. If you're meant to be an adolescent at that particular time, just act it, of course, for sure. There's going to come a time when it's going to be past you. You don't want to be 30 and you're acting as an adolescent. Okay, yeah, for sure. So I did take it in the way it came. I did play the role as it came Very nice.
Speaker 2So you joined Orero Orero One, and only yes. Oh, that's the motto.
Speaker 4Yeah, that's the motto.
Speaker 2So Orero is a Italian name, right.
Speaker 4Honestly, I do not know. I think, yeah, I honestly don't, because I think when I used to go to Fankies at some point I used to put swag in the name.
Speaker 4Yeah, so I will be. I will be like um in Orero high school I think that time also the Oreo biscuit I just came out, so it'll be like I'm in Orero, like when you say in Orero sounds like Lenana or the big schools. Yeah, but at that time when I joined, it was actually a secondary school, struggling, but for sure, for sure, the guys were living who are in that school right now. They're living the life.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, I've seen it. So you guys really set out.
Speaker 4You know some good we built up the foundation for where the school is right now. Oh, very nice, very nice.
Speaker 2So you joined the school. What was you during?
Speaker 4the, the, the school. What was that? Did you get moralization? You got moralized? Yeah, I mean, no, I did not. I wasn't bullied in high school and I feel also, coming from a boarding school, uh, into another boarding school you know, of course, almost high schools in kenya usually go through the boarding system. The fact that I did have the experience first no one would bully me and then the way the school was actually known for discipline we did have one. A guy called William Oluchi was the deputy principal at that particular time. He speaks less and, trust me for sure, you going out on expulsion suspension was something that could happen in a second when you're in his office, actually when you're somewhere in his office. Two things either.
Speaker 4Bad news yeah, or good news, which means you can be expelled anytime, and good news is and goodness could be like your father sent you money for transport they used to send to the principal, of course, guys from nairobi, you know oh guys, because you know it's another six hour drive from the school back to home. Yeah, yeah um.
Speaker 2So how was this school set up? Like, um, you said it was secondary school. Right now, people are living large, yeah, yeah. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 4uh, okay, so by that for sure, the infrastructure that I got when I joined the school was way, way different, okay, to how things are right now. Yeah, I think the the in my in my early for I think the form one, our structures were actually built out of clay yeah that was not even stone.
Speaker 2So it was more of a community.
Speaker 4Yeah, actually the school was more like a community-based school in a center. Even the kind of meals they would prefer us, you know the normal gideri. That's what gideri and uji would be our staple diet.
Speaker 2That is, mace and beans mixed together.
Speaker 4Together, yeah, and then they'll sift the mace and add sugar with water and cook something called porridge. So that was that. But yeah, honestly, I mean the school. You know again, school is all about knowledge.
Speaker 4Yeah, the rest is by the way yeah but for sure we did have enough room to sleep. The dormitories were fine. Uh, our bathrooms were not that fancy, it was just an open air market. Just go take your trough, fetch some water and pour it on yourself. The rest, uh, yeah, you just figured out the way it was. But I know right now the infrastructure is amazing, the kind of facilities that they have, what they are served. I mean, all you just need to worry about is books so what really made you perform really well, right?
Speaker 4now, the infrastructure is amazing, the kind of facilities that they have, what they are served, I mean, all you just need to worry about is books so what really made you perform really well, well, for sure, again mike, again my background I, I didn't come from a fancy, uh, family. We were not that rich. I think we were middle, mid, uh, mid-size, middle class, middle class, exactly. This is okay. You know it's cutting the country we're in here I guess the hardy and they told me.
Speaker 2He told me that they by 2027 or something yeah they want to be middle income country and you can see you can see what we already have here, but they're not already middle income? Yeah, by 2050 they want to be high income country. Yes, so middle class is okay, but of course I know what you mean.
Speaker 4Like um, it's not like too fancy, or you know, in between, yeah, and the problem about in between is you can fall either way yeah, so you can just one one salary away from poverty, yes, and you're also one salary away from being rich. Yes, yes, yeah, yes, yeah. So there was that, and also like my background growing up. Yeah, I feel like that also like shaped me for who I am in life. Even like even me going through school. Yeah.
Speaker 4I feel like if I went to how do you call them? The group of schools or something, I probably would have turned out differently. Yeah, makini. Broca, ospaone and the rest, because where I went in school, it was all about survival for the fittest, so you fight for your own. It's like literally what you call the what do you call it? The jungle.
Speaker 2The animal kingdom, the man for himself and God for us all. Exactly yeah, the animal kingdom. So you fight for your own. Shamba Lawanyama. So that was high school for me, so did you ever miss lunch because maybe you got late, or something?
Speaker 4happened? Oh for sure, 100%. It's not even being late. Yeah, we'll actually queue. You know, at this time the school, I think, had a population of about 2,000 people, zero grazing, I think in about if that was a lot, probably seven hectares of land but 2k students, so it was taking in again. Discipline and performance made it reputable for people to come from different parts of the country and come study there. Yeah, but yeah, uh, you will actually go queue and they will tell you the food is over. So you, until next time, either wait for tomorrow, there was talk they will cook something little for you guys and you'll put that, you summon that, into your stomach. Yeah, but yeah, there were days, we for sure. I mean I can't think of any, but if there was at least one thing for sure, like I said it survival for the fittest. So if you miss out food, I mean you have the right to go and complain because you paid fees.
Speaker 2You paid fees.
Speaker 4There's no way you can sleep hungry.
Speaker 2And at least you'll get bread and what.
Speaker 4Yeah, Actually, at that particular time you go to the canteen. You buy your quarter, your ten bob. Oh, you buy. Yeah, you go to the canteen, will get your quota the school will not cater for that. No again.
Speaker 4Even the school was part of the system they are made to make you train more resources and people are not paying school fees in time yeah, and actually those people there are guys who we used to call them. You know, the guys who actually will come to school and they live nearby school. Yeah, and you know, people did come from different backgrounds and you know, I know of students who actually paid their fees because their parents used to cultivate maize and sell that maize to the school for us to eat it. Yeah, yeah, so it was.
Speaker 2They paid using cereals.
Speaker 4Yeah, you pay using cereals. Yeah, but that's it. But I tried for sure. What did you call those guys? I don't know, but for sure we didn't put out any names to the students. It was more like peer respect. Okay, so again, no one will tag you but for sure you know this, you know the school yes, because again the principal will be like these guys have not paid school fee. You, your father, he brought to you know you know two sets of mace and your school fees, about 40 sacks.
Speaker 4So you know, and guys will be expelled, actually, but they're not because this guy will be sent home oh, okay, yeah because you know the school also needs to feed people.
Speaker 4And if they don't have enough resources to feed everyone because someone didn't pay fee people and if they don't have enough resources to feed everyone because someone didn't pay fee to offset the liability of the guys who paid fees not eating, you are let out to go home. So you will figure it out to get by but those guys turned out well well, they did yeah, really well they did, and I will tell you guys did.
Speaker 4And again I feel like I thought what one thing that that taught me was. Regardless of where you come from, or rather where you come from and the struggles that you've been in through life, those lessons do actually define who you become.
Speaker 2Exactly that's what I said because, for me, we would start from where you are, what you do, you know your skill base and everything. What? Needs to be done, but I feel like you know, when you skip that formation, the foundation of, everything and. I think also, I feel like even Africa is an ecosystem in terms of economic, socio political and everything. The reason why most of our structures collapse yeah is because we build them from other structures which we pick up from either stem or branches, or you know, yeah, copy and paste and yes copy and paste and we don't ask ourselves.
Speaker 2By the time these people decided maybe a president should serve for two years, they had their own experience.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 2What is our experience? We always say this works For sure.
Speaker 4We don't go beyond that, yeah.
Speaker 2Let's use it and see. Then it doesn't work. You're like these other one works. I don't know if you have seen that meme of you know something walking, and then, when they see something, I don't know what it's called animation or something yeah so when I see a cricket walking this way in most of the countries in africa that's the way it is, but I think um give the credit to deal for sure. I love, love how things are turning out. Step by step.
Speaker 2Young people have more voice. Young people are doing amazing stuff and people are realizing. Even if I had 100,000 acres of land, I'm just one person. But it would be if I had this knowledge and shared it and I think we'll get there and see how see how what you have been doing had impact in the shortest time possible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's that part of high school. So where did you start? Now getting into computing? You know programming and whatnot.
Speaker 4Yeah, yeah for sure. So I think in probably yeah, let me take it back though. So I think in probably yeah, let me take it back though. So this is before high school. Yeah, in class eight, one fine morning my dad comes home. He's loaded, he's definitely carrying some cartons. Yeah.
Speaker 4And it seems like it has goodies for sure. So my dad had just acquired some computers for us to use at home. Growing also with the diversity and things changing how people work, we did have our first compact, that CRT based monitor with your system unit and your mouse and keyboard. Yeah, that was what we had and I remember the first time I touched that device, I mean the first time, it was more like you know, let me play those cards, game Solitaire, I think I get it.
Speaker 4And then I used to tell my mom I will go and sleep and then I will think about something and I will come and do that thing in the computer and it will actually work. And my mom used to be fascinated about that and I was like, yeah, mom, this is actually. It's weird that I go and dream about it. I do not know how to use the computer at that particular point, but then now, based on the interest and the intriguing things that this thing is able to do, I just start thinking about something the next day.
Speaker 4I want to be like let me go and check out my computer and probably find this file no and I'll go and do it and you know I'll actually find it there and I will be like interesting yeah and then later on.
Speaker 4So the high school that I joined, they're actually offering computers a subject yeah, from from one, and of course the they have to introduce to the basics and I can tell you, of all the many subjects that I took in high school, my best performing subject was actually computer studies. So at this particular point, this is where now the interest is actually coming, and the beauty about this is the way the syllabus is curated, I think, is introduction parts of a computer and then later on they'll introduce you to the basics of programming. And, to be honest, I just did pull the plug until the last bit from four where I even did my you know examination around computing yeah and that's actually where the magic started yeah, what fascinated you to be really that interested?
Speaker 4well, it's the fact that you, that the world of computing does open up opportunities for you, because you are allowed to build something and actually see it work. Yeah, yeah. And honestly, you know, with computing there are two sides, there is hardware and there is software. Yeah.
Speaker 4Software is basically you giving instructions to a hardware to perform a particular task, and you know you being able to do that using a programming language or even just interacting with the ui yeah do ui. Yeah, and you know the computer being able to do what you want to do. Yeah, that to me was like. I mean, you have the world with you already yeah, yeah you want to instruct your computer to okay, I mean everything of the worst.
Speaker 2Bomb a place, yeah, I mean we've seen it in military no, I mean even, they say right now the next world war will not be about people bombing each other.
Speaker 4Yeah, cyber war.
Speaker 2It will be cyber war, for sure and remember the other day, most of the government website in. Kenya were hacked yes, that tells you that this thing is more real than ever.
Speaker 4Yeah, it's coming up, and that's why for me.
Speaker 2I'm passionate about software engineering, for one is that it will put us in a place. I'm not saying that we should be fighting each other or something For sure, but we can create so many solutions that actually will take us to the next level, for sure. So you start programming.
Speaker 4Which language did you start with? So my first language was actually html that is in high school. After I said this is in high school. Still, yeah, so I think in form three, that's when they now start introducing programming. Yeah, um, I think there was cobble in our cobble and pascal was actually in our syllabus oh really yes, it was which year year was this In high school?
Speaker 4this is in between 2010 and 2014. Okay, yeah, so I actually. Yeah, we were actually taught those languages, the basics, yeah, but then also, time had moved on and also, I think, where the world was going. I think HTML5 was just being introduced in the market. Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 4yeah, yes, so yeah, I just started. You know, the fancy thing was, I think, in HTML there's this thing, there's this stuff called McHugh where if you put text inside a McHugh, it moves, like you know when you watch news and those two headlines are moving down there yeah. The fancy thing. Yeah.
Speaker 4So that used to fascinate me a lot, fascinate me a lot. You know, I was like wait, I could actually write a long as paragraph, and you know that will move across my screen, yeah, so yeah, html was actually my first programming language, but things have changed yeah now, and do you know who drove the html5 to be the standard?
Speaker 2uh, you know, interface language uh, no, the reason I mentioned and I remember it is Apple, or Apple as people call it, and the reason was people used to use something with Adobe. It was Adobe, something that was a standard for video viewing.
Speaker 4Yes, how Adobe Flash something?
Speaker 2Flash media.
Speaker 4Yeah, flash, flash Media, something, something.
Speaker 2But the argument of Steve was that this thing is eating memory. Memory is what makes things load or display. Well, the quality determines the quality. But HMFI was really straight because it just crunched some digits, which is zeros and ones, and displayed them really fast. Scrunch some digits, which is zeros and ones, yeah, and display them really fast. So steve actually gave them. Uh, give the adobe people for flash.
Speaker 4Um, uh, now I don't know you say flash something, but I do remember the extension that you needed to put on if you wanted to stream anything.
Speaker 2Absolutely, it's like a java running machine Before for you. Okay, this now sounds fascinating.
Speaker 4Now it sounds dirty.
Speaker 2So before people used to install these even users, for their videos to play, and especially on Windows or PCs, it was really really slow and you know, steve was always for optimum performance and design, so Flash did not really allow the room and given that it was the background of flashes Adobe, it was so furious and I give these guys a notice yeah then I used to do blackberry and stuff so you get.
Speaker 2These guys are notice, I think of one year the same way you see things discordant, like they tell you, your iPhone 7 will not have any updates.
Speaker 4The same thing.
Speaker 2By this date yes, and people thought this guy is nuts. How can you stop the only thing that makes video play?
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 2Guess what that's? When now YouTube was catching up YouTube thing.
Speaker 4Now. People are going to the web.
Speaker 2Now this guy was a proper visionary.
Speaker 4Yeah, yeah, down the line he stopped supporting Flash.
Speaker 2He will not be building Flash because another thing also that made him discouraged with Flash is that every time you build this version of Flash, another version of Flash is out and it's all the best to use the resources you have.
Speaker 4Yes, because that means you guys need to go and re-engineer it when he stopped it that was the end of Flash everyone else you know we supported one year, but eventually it was not really.
Speaker 2I don't know which people who are listening on our Twitter space can chime in. You can come in and speak and chime in around this topic and it will make it more interactive. So I don't know if there are still companies supporting it, but eventually that's how Flash ended up becoming obsolete.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 2And this also tells you about other technologies. But eventually that's how Flash ended up becoming obsolete, and this also tells you about other technologies. I know right now the biggest thing is AI machine learning and we'll get there. But now you start doing HTML, HTML5, and then, which other language fascinated you?
Speaker 4Well, not even languages. I think they did introduce us to how hardware works, because you know for a hardware component to behave the way it behaves. There's now that machine language. What you introduce, the binaries and all that kind of stuff and I think at that particular point it was one class that I did enjoy a lot was actually that binary class. Yeah, so the zeros and ones.
Speaker 2And how to write hexadecimal, hexadecimal.
Speaker 4You know, and we actually tested it.
Speaker 2This is high school, yeah it was there, it's still there in the syllabus that is Orero. Yes, maybe guys should be going to Orero.
Speaker 4Guys, no, just do computer. If it's offered in your school as a subject, just do it.
Speaker 2You'll Understand the basics Exactly.
Speaker 4Rather than studying mountains in geography and different types of stones. So again, don't forget, we need pilots.
Speaker 2Kaka, that's how we got here, so don't discourage people. If you feel like you should do geography and you want to be a pilot, please go for it Again and that's why there's always a selection, I think by Form 3, you already know what you want to study. Yeah.
Speaker 4But for me that was part of the curriculum and I did enjoy that part of you know how the CPU and ALU works and how those you know zeros are converted into instructions that the computer can actually understand Because, as I say, there's the high-level language and the low-level language.
Speaker 4So, when you speak about binary, you're talking about the low-level languages. But yeah, that was in our syllabus, it was good. It was good when it came and yeah, I think for me just having a concept and an idea and actualizing that concept and idea through, uh, software yeah did make me stay in the software world.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, that's very fascinating because, to be honest, my first computer interaction was in university first year. This is not just about programming or anything and you know I, I. Is there something to okay? It's something to be proud of because, uh, for me, just you know these computers, I was I was still fascinated with the computers, but of course, to where I went to school and the computers that are available were just to play game using a floppy disk.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, they will come and put it inside and there are so many other like facets or things that are moving around, so when I went to the investors like no, no, no, no, I need to learn this stuff, I need to catch up, because everyone who was coming there they're either from Pioneer or Alliance or Mangu. People have just done all this stuff cool stuff Already. Yeah, but I'm there how do you switch all these things? Can you imagine that?
Speaker 4Well, it was a problem for many people Without using the switch.
Speaker 2Yes, because for me, I was like there's something you can do, because I will see someone. He switches off. Yeah. How do, you do that, so for me it was like playing catch up, and very fast, because by the first month there's a cut. Yeah. Right, and you have done all the math in high school. You have gotten good grades. And then you realize there is another math that you have never heard of, that is still waiting for you and.
Academic Path to Computing and Programming
Speaker 2I understand also, guys learn some of this math in high school. So whoever has that chance, take it really at this point and maximize on it, because it helps you a lot and also it helps you understand things faster and it's good that you have shared Abedi. Yeah, so you finish. By the time you were doing KCSE you had already made up your mind I'm doing anything to do with computing.
Speaker 4For sure, for sure, for sure. I knew the moment I am leaving that gate if I was to get you know. But this time you're not even done your KCSE and I think, like I said, I was an average student.
Speaker 3And, I think, the best grade that I ever scored in between form 2 and form 3 was a C+.
Speaker 4C++ is university entry grade. And you're not sure by that time, and you're not sure if you're going to get in, but still I knew for sure that, even if I needed to work, pull myself up from my C grade and come to a B, which will give me a good landing. But will give me a good level still average, but will give me a good learning. In uni I knew for sure I was gonna do software engineering yeah I think something else okay, yeah, something that I didn't miss out.
Speaker 4Um, there's this um coding school actually it's called the mobiles.
Speaker 4Yes, yes it's like I know guys talk about Moringa School now. Yeah, but Immobilize had integrated their curriculum also. They used to come to high schools. Mobile development, yes, yes. So they will target guys who are like Form 3, form 4. And then they will give you a test. If you pass the test, once you're done with your KCSE, they will pick you up for a partial scholarship, and I think this program was sponsored by Google at that particular time. I think also the mobile software market was also quite new.
Speaker 2It was like the big thing Nokia, MacBerry, Symbian you guys were actually building on Symbian at that time.
Speaker 4So at this point I had two options Like if I fail, fail, fail. And I know you need a grade. I had two options Like if I fail, fail, fail at a no uni grade. I know I'm definitely landing into immobility Because by the time I just did the test before KCSE they already sent me an admission letter for the partial scholarship. So I knew for sure if I'm not getting into the university to pursue computer science, I will definitely land in Immobilis. So you already set but I didn't know software was going to be it.
Speaker 2So what did you do to get the? I was asking did you do the research? What is required for you to get into a proper computing university?
Speaker 4Well, I did.
Speaker 2And when you found physics, chemistry, biology, that was the catch.
Speaker 4Those were your things.
Speaker 2Well, honestly, maths was something else, math was not mathing as we say nowadays.
Speaker 4Well, I don't know, I don't know if it was what happens in high school. Is it adolescence, or it's you being a teenager, or something else?
Speaker 2I don't know I feel like, also, there is a lot of noise in high school. Yeah, there was that. I was a backbencher.
Speaker 4I was a backbencher yeah we used to call ourselves guys from nairobi. You know, when people, those guys whose their father are paying school for using maze, I switch. Our dads are paid school for using money. We had back benching, making noise and writing letters. But yeah, maths was not mathing for me at that particular point in time. I think the best, which was actually quite crazy, and I think my dad had to step in Because computer, a Worst grade, worst percentage, was 70. Best, most of the time I'll get a 90. Come to maths. The best I'll get in maths was a 20 out of a 100.
Speaker 2It was that serious.
Speaker 4I used to have a very supportive maths teacher. He was my class teacher. He used to be called Ofumwali, some lawyer guy, and the guy would come to class and say, babu, you passed. And mind you, let me tell you was he not ironical at that point?
Speaker 4I did not know, this guy has been teaching me maths from form 1. He's been our class teacher all through form 4 and you know I'll actually get worried, even me, and go to his office and tell him teacher me this math. I don't know, maybe I should come for remedial classes or something. He'll be like don't worry, you have passed so anytime. And you know it became a norm for our class actually because you know, in every year you went into we had streams, so like from east, west, south, so I was south and south had the highest number of students, so we were like 90 of us in a class.
Speaker 2Why is that? Was there a reason? I think?
Speaker 4it was also like the infrastructure was also kind of building up and the integrate was also bigger. So for the modern classrooms they will build them slightly bigger than the others and then that will be the south streams. Okay, so because us, when we entered, I think, that class, you were like a hundred.
Speaker 4By the time we're finishing in form four, we were like 80 something yeah so it meant that if if there was a form three south before we went in form two, they had to build a bigger form three south for us to move into. Yeah, yeah, but for sure, in math I can tell you. Uh, we used to have one student, gondy steven, who will get a and his a was an 80, 96, 97, 98.
Speaker 2so that means you even getting close to him was unimaginable, Him he was in his own world.
Speaker 4Extreme Him. He was in his own world Because now in our world, where we were with the other people, from Gondi to the next person that would be the next person has a 50. Now, from the 50, they are now us, the rest of the class, now the bigger percentile of the class, which I think like 60 of us. That's where now you meet me. So you guys were the key factor in studies. Yes, now you meet me.
Speaker 2Exactly.
Speaker 4Me. I'm there with my 21, 19. You know, my best I think was at, I think, 25.
Speaker 2Yeah, the best you've ever gotten.
Speaker 4you know, my best, I think, was at I think 25, yeah, because yeah, in math I'm like I'm number three. What do you mean? I'm number three? Oh, the group, yeah. And then you know like you'll be. You, of course, you know when you they give you your papers, you'll be like you ask your neighbor, you, what have you gotten? You have a 17. You're fine, and and you, you have a 14.
Speaker 2you're fine and you, you have a 14. I've done better than you guys. Yeah, but was it?
Speaker 4was it how mother was taught? Was it the teacher? Was it? Well, it was the attitude for sure, I can tell you for sure, when the math was being taught in class we will understand, yeah, but now, when it comes to exams, you're all lost, I think. I think maybe that knowledge was just supposed to be retained as it was taught or wherever it was landing into, I do not know, but I had to train my mind Because in Form 3, things are getting serious.
Speaker 4You're now about to do your KCSE, and if you're going to get a 20, for sure computer science is not going to be on your radar at all.
Speaker 2Did you research this and found out, or someone?
Speaker 4told you. Of course, now in form three, you start hearing things about cutoff points yeah uh, subject requirements to do a particular course. So and this actually brings me to another catch yeah, because maths and physics, uh I think, are the main main yeah in our school, I think in form 3. Yeah, we're just not resisting. So before you choose that you're going to do physics, the physics child said that if he did not get above 40, forget about the forget about the shit.
Speaker 2I don't want we do not want people jokers in my class.
Speaker 4Apparently me I was the highest percentile, so me I'd qualify to do it At that particular time. I think my physics I got a 51. So I think in that class apparently, from the 86 of us who were supposed to choose subjects to do physics, only five qualified to do physics and five qualified to do physics. And I can tell you the guy was a damn serious the entire school term. Only five of us did physics. Now when we came back for the second term this guy was teaching practice. He disappeared on us.
Speaker 4You didn't have a physics teacher. And then this is a community school, so the school has to figure out to get another one, the BOG Manenos but do I have time? I have computer studies here that I'm doing yeah then I'm like you know what, if they're not going to give us a physics teacher in time, I will not do the subject. So I did not do physics, which later on, I think, I'll come and explain how that impacted me later, when I was going to join uni.
Speaker 4For sure, so from 3 and from 4 you didn't have a school teacher we didn't have a no, I think he later came in from 3, but then you see time has moved and you're not covered a lot and me I don't have time for equilibrium and whatever you know those things and balancing the circuit and all these things.
Speaker 2So I was like you sound like you are too bougie for high school. Not really man, not not even bougie.
Speaker 4Well, okay, maybe now that I'm saying the story. Yeah, it sounds, but that time I was like you know, there's no other ways at this point point in time, you just have to go with it as it is. Yeah, so, yeah. So you moved to form four. I'm moving to form four at this time I am taking biology, chemistry, uh, computer studies, maths, english, all languages, I think, yeah, and cr and history, because I knew cr industry that straight. Yeah for sure, those are already your master, you complement your grades.
Speaker 4But now maths, I'm still the highest, I think, in Form 4. Form 4, I'm still getting 21. And the teacher is like Babu, you've passed.
Navigating Academic Transitions and Career Choices
Speaker 4With you with you, like you've passed, keep going. But I will. Honestly, now that I look back, I do not blame that teacher. He had a purpose for us, for sure. And again it was more like in life you'll meet different people. You'll meet people who will cheer you on and at that time we used to call them the wind. So if you follow the wind and you're being cheered on and in your real, real life, you know you're going to fail again, you'll fail. But if you call yourself in the meeting and say, okay, this guy is just he's telling me something.
Speaker 4He's giving me lies or pushing me towards a particular point. I just had to re-strategize because in this particular point you are looking at uni, you need to go and pursue this course. You need to get those cut off points. So I did pick up so how did? You crack it it was mostly self study. I had to even move myself from the back bench to the guy who was getting. Steven.
Speaker 2Gondi where is he nowadays?
Speaker 4I think he's some doctor somewhere. Gondi went to UN he's now some medical doctor. Gondi doctor gonna listen to the podcast, but now we should, yeah, but it's been a while. I do. I do follow up on these guys on Facebook my classmate in seminary was known as Joshua Mamie.
Speaker 2Yeah, listen to this, please let.
Speaker 4Please, let's come here, let's talk about this thing.
Speaker 2I think he's a pharmacist, one of the best in the country. There's another guy from Northeastern. I think his name was? Can I remember his name? He was my deskmate actually, but that guy, chemistry and math, it's just that he could not get a hundred.
Speaker 4Or the teachers would take one percent from him, this guy finished the syllabus in term one.
Speaker 2term two oh crazy. In form three. Form four guys used to come to consult. Teaching practice guys used to come to consult. He knew all these KIE errors, why they're here and why they're there yeah.
Speaker 4And stuff like that. This guy was good, wait, but let me ask you Wow, you know like also in In high school. I figured there were those guys who had gone to High school before.
Speaker 2But then they came back.
Speaker 4No, no, no, these were not Still like you guys are age mates.
Speaker 2Yeah, like Joshua.
Speaker 4I hear his story.
Speaker 2I was not in that school. Then yeah, I think from one and from two.
Speaker 4First, time he was the last guy oh, are they admitted?
Speaker 2no, uh-huh uh, no, no, no, not to be admitted I wish it was no in terms of ranking. Oh yeah, but he loved playing a lot. I remember the mathematician guy. I'll tell you and this surprises me why government does not really utilize some of these talents because this guy would do a proper rocket science kind of stuff. You know, uh, satellite design, because that's pure math oh, I remember.
Speaker 2I think I know what you're talking about, like science congress no, no, no those two science things that you know not even science proper, proper um scientific stuff.
Speaker 4So research, this guy was a proper ninja it's just like he could not get 100.
Speaker 2yeah, okay, and that's not one of the fanciest school, but the guy was really good. Like it's, it's like the way, but the guy was really good. It's like the way I would say, you grasp stuff without struggling. So it was those two guys, I think. I looked for them and tried to watch them and hear what was their catch. But this Joshua. The difference between Joshua and this other guy is that Joshua used to get everything. He made me English, made English like the guy but now when?
Speaker 2I hear he was always number last, almost number last, in Form 1 and up to Form 2, term 1. I'm like sometimes, or even in general, I think there's no one who is really bad. It's just sometimes, if you're given enough time or there's like a few funny moments that happen you switch? But some of us delay until it's too late. Everyone is smart in general. What did you get? After all is said and done?
Speaker 4Your boy passed. For sure, I had to call myself. People have stories outside here. True, true.
Speaker 4But for sure, when I called myself for that retrospect I was like I need to work on myself to get into uni for sure. So I remember the last exam that I did before KCSE was the mock, and in my mock, from all those good grades that I used to get from 1 to 4, to 4, at this time my best was a C+ but in mock I'm already getting. I'm seeing the Bs. In fact I got a B+ and that's mock.
Speaker 2Mock is one of the hardest exams Toughest exams.
Speaker 4And at that particular point I knew, yes, I'd already surrounded myself with the right group, I'd set my mind to succeed. And, yeah, all said and done, I did get a B+. I missed an A minor, with one point for sure. Yeah, but that was beautiful. Great to actually get me into uni, for sure.
Speaker 2So where did you go to?
Speaker 4Yeah, so the Kenyan system Jab. Decided you choose four, decided this guy is not too.
Speaker 2You choose four and then they shake it. They shake it.
Speaker 4And when the nini becomes, still, that's what you're going to study. So remember we were talking about the cutoff points, yeah, yeah, and physics being a requirement for you to do computer science. So when I'm going to the portal, anything computer science is blacklisted for my name Reason being yes, you have a good grade.
Speaker 2You guys even used to have portal yeah, but I was. You are the best guys who lived the best life, because for us, you had to wait for two years.
Speaker 4But lucky you guys. Look at you guys. At least you didn't have to log into something and see you. Have you been rejected? Yeah, because I will tell you, I did search for computer science. Cut off, no, no, cut off much.
Speaker 2Subject requirement entry zero, because I didn't do physics. Nowadays they're that transparent yeah I didn't do physics.
Speaker 4Uh, now, because I can't do computer science, we start looking for anything that is computer related.
Speaker 2BBIT.
Speaker 4BBIT business, something, something.
Speaker 2ICT.
Speaker 4ICT information library for CG? What for library? What Procurement information systems? That is, the final courses that have information technology as part of the NINIA and, honestly, the ones that I would gain entry for was Library Something in Jai.
Speaker 4Kwat and, I think, ku. At this time I also consulted my cousin. He went to TUC and my cousin did journalism. So he told me you can actually apply to TUC, choose even journalism. He said choose even, but in my ears I heard choose journalism. And then now when you get inside you can actually do a transfer and you need to, you know, to another program. So I did that. First option took journalism. Second option, library, something, ku, and then I think that MPR procurement, the government. I think there were two scandals in the government and guys were getting rich through procurement yeah, so anybody in that?
Speaker 4year was like procurement was the thing. So procurement, even even me, the adoption, get rich real quick.
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 4KU. I think three months in the Nini comes back where you've been called. Yeah, the results. And yeah, I landed in Tuk journalism yeah. Nice, so quick, quick admission day. We did orientation, I think like a month in.
Speaker 2Then was it a university or still a political no?
Speaker 4they had just received accreditation, I think a month late after we joined. So my later head was Technical University of Kenya. But even on orientation day, everybody, if you say Tuk, nobody will understand you people want to say Kenyapoli yeah. So we went through that and then I think a month in they had opened that inter-faculty inter-nini school transfer.
Speaker 2Inter-faculty transfer.
Speaker 4Yeah, quick, quick. Who's going there?
Speaker 2Chief himself yeah.
Speaker 4Well, I'm working with confidence. I see I have nini, I have grades and mind you, wait before I join you we escaped Immobilis. You guys first remember yes, yes yes, so we after high school. That kagapo is still waiting for you to be accepted.
Speaker 2You guys used to wait for a few months yeah, I think it was two years. Kaka is two years and you don't know what your fate is. Yes, your project, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Exploring Career Paths and Realizations
Speaker 4You don't know if you are going to igaton in, uh, the end of the world or the other one is mason or what is it in kisumu, yeah, yeah so I remember I told you I had an option here at least I had a plan if uni fails. Immobilis was there for me, but the court that I was supposed to join, I didn't join in time because of that commercial scholarship, you know african parents will have everything free.
Speaker 4Yeah, and you know I had to go and talk to my mom and tell you, mom, you know, instead for for me, for paying for me computer packages, which I already studied that's computer science, because computer studies in school you can give me the other part of the money. I joined this Immobilis thing. First my mom does not even understand this thing. She knows his son has a plan to do something and I think she had to go and talk it out with one of her friends.
Speaker 2Is this Immobilis a school. School yeah, because nobody knows about it.
Speaker 4You know, nobody knows about it. And then, who says scholarship? Partial africans are you? If you're saying, scholarship is? Scholarship is full. We don't understand exactly.
Speaker 4so yeah, my mom did talk it out with her friends as she narrates the story to me nowadays, and the friend was like why not? Because again, if you're going to pay for computer packages, you will also use some money for that. And since he already knows that that's what she wants to do, you go look for some money and take him. So I joined the next cohort later. Go look for some money and take him.
Speaker 4So I joined the next cohort later and, mind you for sure, that was like a reignite, more like a spark, a foundation to my career now Because, remember, I already know what I want to study. Now, immobilist is here to actualize that dream, because now I get into class the first language I've been taught is html. Yeah, and now I'm practicing it with css oh, and we're adding bootstrap on top of it, so the vanilla on the cake that was a topping crazy recipe yes, bootstrap beautified everything that we used to create on top of our website yeah so the course, you know, immobilize was called mit.
Speaker 4So in most, most times, when I tell people I did MIT, they think I went to MIT, the uni, but it's called Mobile Entrepreneurship, something Technology, and the key focus of that program is you learn web, you learn mobile. So it was actually web and mobile, together with some soft skills, communication skills and entrepreneurial skills. So at this point in time I am positioning myself either I am getting into employment or I am going to use, because I'm a very visionary. I realize I'm quite a visionary person. I come up with ideas and again, since I have software as my sidekick here because I can go and read those instructions and actually actualize it as a business model, I actually went out and built something as part of my school project and I didn't wait for the lecturer to come and teach us more concepts.
Speaker 4I'll go and learn the few introductory concepts, and then YouTube used to be there. So, guys for School of Life, you know YouTube and our favorite guys, dr Punjabs, guys from India. So welcome to my YouTube tutorial.
Speaker 2You start learning the accent.
Speaker 4Welcome to CSS 101. Yeah, so I used to go and compliment what I learned in class together with that.
Speaker 2Yeah, we'll be learning zeros and ones, so that's normal.
Speaker 4Yeah, that was fine, and you know learning zeros and ones, so that's normal. Yeah, that was fine, and you know, at this point, also Indians by the way, seriously, they're taking over the world.
Speaker 4But go ahead, they should be paid honestly, I feel like those guys were meant to teach the world these things. Yeah, so yeah, at this point in time, I'm building solutions already I have an app and at this time also Google. I'm building solutions already I have an app, and at this time also Google is coming up with some interesting programs. The startup world is also igniting in the Nairobi ecosystem. Ihub is also coming up.
Speaker 2That's when.
Speaker 4I had started building communities. Now this is now when I'm even now getting myself inside the communities. I start attending events in iHub. I meet people who share the same concepts. This time uni, I think I started my first semester. I'm learning journalism now.
Speaker 4But before Apotook, when the faculty transfer came, when I went and applied for it, I walked into the deputies academic affairs DVC, something. And I still have a beef to that guy for sure, because I walked in and I told him hi, my name is so-and-so, my dad has sent me. Yeah, because you know, this time also, my dad knew the VC, they knew each other, they knew each other. So even before this, this interfactory transfer knowledge was actually coming from the VC to my dad. Telling my dad, tell your son to come.
Speaker 4So that was internal information. Yes, now me, I'm going there with confidence, knowing ah see, it's Africa. If you don't know anybody, who knows anybody? My dad knows you Somebody? Where are you going? So me, anybody who knows, anybody that knows somebody, where are you going? Yeah, so I'm here. I walked into that guy's office and I tell him uh, so, uh, I want to do bbit, I want to transfer and do bbit yeah he's like show me your transcript, I give it out.
Speaker 4Uh, he scans it one minute. He's like you didn't do physics, I'm like, but I did computer, your problems come back. But I did computer. He's like you didn't do physics, I'm like but I did computer, your problems come back. But I did computer. He's like yeah, I know, but you didn't do physics. You're like so you know my dad. And then I'm like I'm gonna put that line for you know my dad. You know my dad is the one who sent me here. Then I told me I don't have time for you get out of my office. And it was at that particular point in time. You realize that I knew operating a camera with all those bent angles. Now you know, hey, it's now journalism 101. Yeah, now they're teaching camera operating class a course. Yeah, tilting and spanning, zoom in, zoom out. It had to be done. One guy in our department actually told me you can actually do this journalism course.
Speaker 4We also have some computing elements, elements inside eyes on the, is it, but not the computer I wanted was not what they were offering, because there was no programming in what journalism was just how to you.
Speaker 2you know the few editing softwares, moving folders, copying, exporting.
Speaker 4And I think at that point in time I had to make my parents happy I had passed in high school. I've been called to do journalism. I actually did picture myself being a journalist. Yeah, I was going to read your news guys.
Speaker 2You had started perfecting pronunciation.
Speaker 4Yes, in fact, on my third, third year, I knew what I wanted to do you did journalism up to third year, you realize no one knows your father.
Speaker 2It's your father who knows people at this point.
Speaker 4I have to be another Mr Nyangueso because, him, he has built up his life to where he is and now I have to build. I have to be another Mr Nyangueso because, yeah, him he has built up his life to where he is. Yeah, and now I have to build up. I knew, I had to knew now. It's time for me now to build up a bed. Kaka, I didn't know about this, about you.
Speaker 4Hey bro, I used to marginalize him up to third year. Yeah, all through. Yes, and I knew now when we did this class for presentation, where you have to hold a mic and now read news in Kiswahine.
Speaker 2So you wanted to be on the other side of the camera. Well, I love operations.
Speaker 4I love production, but now when they gave me the mic to practice, that was my toughest class.
Speaker 2Because now you cannot, because you know you need to come with a script the equipment that the school had.
Speaker 4we didn't have a teleprompter that you'll read from.
Speaker 2So this was like high school journalism 101.
Speaker 4You go and write your own things there and then you go and present. Do you want to be the guy for Nikiri Pote kutoka?
Speaker 2What is that guy's name? The guy that Ruto was saying is over reporting was that.
Speaker 4I don't know his name, I don't know, but one of those guys you, I know, you've watched the news the ones who will give after you know the news goes through, they'll be like reporting from the news yes, Mark Moss, no, no, there's another guy Anyway you decided.
Speaker 4I don't want to be that guy. Yeah for sure. So I knew if I was going to end up as a broadcast journalist, it's either I'm going to be a news anchor, not a reporter, because at least the curriculum you know, you said that you end up as a news anchor, a news reporter, either you end up in the how do you call it? The newspaper, by the way, that kind of newspaper, when you see it like that, remember they're like another they're like all 50 journalists who've written stories inside there and they have not made it there.
Speaker 4They have professions, you guys who have been in the industry for 15 years, 20 years, to get a column on the first page. It either means you are some senior editor to get your work even inside the newspaper. That was hard for me, honestly. It was I knew writing not for me. News reporter not for me so.
Speaker 4I knew I was either going to end up if I had to be in front of a camera. I'm going to be a news anchor, which for now things change, by the way, Not everybody looks good in camera. But then I knew I had a voice. Oh, okay, for radio? Yes, I did. I had a voice for radio, so I knew, if things go on like this, my dad knows someone, who knows someone?
Speaker 2No, I told you, it's about who knows your dad, not who your dad knows.
Speaker 4But my dad knew someone, who knows someone, in case, but did they know, you Radio Africa Bro me I was ready Third year. I was like me, I'll just go and replace Shafiweru, or they give me like a side gig. Kube, even for your voice to be heard in radio, you also have to come from somewhere. You just don't come from nowhere and become a big guy you should have a following.
Speaker 2Yeah, so there was that you should be good at creating scandal more than you can speak over the mic.
Speaker 4Yeah, but then one thing for sure is that my dream to become a software engineer didn't go away. You are still here all this time. I am pursuing. I am pushing through with my degree program. So when we met were you still doing journalism, I think I did. The first time I came for an atlasian meetup. I was actually in my third year. When you guys were in Nairobi Design School. What was it? Bishombugwa, the one that was at the Grand Floor.
Speaker 2Yes, Nairobi Design School yeah, it wasn't higher, but there was a design school down there.
Speaker 4Yeah, I was in my third year at that particular point in time. But yeah, and remember this time also in my software world. I do not want to be employed. Oh, you want to be an entrepreneur. I built products. I built an app world. I do not want to be employed. Oh, you want to be an entrepreneur. I am. I build products. I built an app called healthcare ke in fact the first name will be queen. I don't know.
Speaker 4I actually built an ambulance selling application yeah that was the first time and I even pitched it. Uh, facebook. I just started running this program called uh. What was it called again? F8. Does this developer community for facebook that? Was there, facebook developer started running this program called F8.
Speaker 2There's this developer community for Facebook. Facebook developer circle Circles yes.
Speaker 4So I had applied for they had a grant and I went and pitched the concept. I was actually number one in Africa. And then now the final runner's up. I didn't make it because I didn't follow up with that in the presentation, but yeah, that got me enough cash to actually build that. And then now the final runner's up. I didn't make it because I didn't follow up with that in the presentation, but yeah, that got me enough cash to actually build that.
Speaker 4And it was the first time I was now earning as an entrepreneur from something that I've done, so you realize this is real. Yeah, that's the first time I've made my first 5K, as Grant was like you know, we see where this can go and you building it on top of facebook, yeah, so here is 5k for you yeah and anybody will come talking employment to me. I'll be like shush mimi, I want to build a startup.
Speaker 2Don't want to be a slave, so I used to and actually the good thing with I have they had built up this startup ecosystem yeah, those people there was, people actually started with people 22 or something yes, I did a play for pivot sometime, but I think became pivotist because it was involved in this. Yes, when I can actually know what they are.
Speaker 4Yeah, yeah, hey, shout out to sheila we need to do a podcast. She's around, she's in the ecosystem, but there was another lady, I think she went to safari, com or something. Group something when I have also.
Speaker 2Yeah, there's some girl I think. Yeah, she's head of the developers there. Yes, she's part of ushaidi yes yes, yes, yes, jessica collasso. Actually I worked with jessica's sister.
Speaker 4Yeah, I also worked with jessica's sister, okay, but yeah, that was, that was fun, for sure, and are some of the amazing ladies who really build up that, because Sheila was at M-Lab, so after you guys created for Pivot. And then they absorbed in M-Lab. Yeah, Give you an office.
Exploring Entrepreneurship and Software Engineering
Speaker 4you know more of like acceleration, so it's kind of solid, yeah, and I think, for sure me, I have did create those opportunities. And then this is out to anybody who's trying to get out into that particular space If you find yourself you love software and you are visionary, you want to build a concept around it and you don't know where to start, look for these communities, look for this. I know I have is still there, and I know the other bigger ones that actually came. You know Ushahidi, and there are always so many of them that are still trying to set up, and now there's even the startup world. There's a lot of grants and things that you can actually apply into. So, get into that. Try to shape your idea, that app that you've built, into a business. Yeah, because, for sure, let me tell you, employment is not for everybody. Yes, it's not for everyone.
Speaker 2This might actually be your ticket you're the first person who adds uh, say that statement in the rest yeah, what I've always been hearing that entrepreneurship is not for everybody so, even if employment is not for everyone,
Speaker 4it's not for everyone, for sure, it's not for everyone. Explain, well, uh, okay, thank you for putting me in the spot for that one, but anyway, anyway, for sure. Let me bring you back.
Speaker 4Okay, let me give you a case scenario. I'm sure you bought milk and bread from a shop. Yes, yes, have you ever had time to talk to your shopkeeper? Just to understand their background academically, how good they were, even uni. You'll be surprised that most of them actually went to uni. But then, yes, it's one thing that employment is an issue even uni You'll be surprised that most of them actually went to uni.
Speaker 4But then, yes, it's one thing that employment is an issue in the African ecosystem it's so hard for companies to absorb new talent nowadays from university. But then there's also that factor that you know and that's what's happening with most of the people, I'm sure, when someone who's listening right now. You have your degree, you're trying to apply for gigs, you're trying to get into the tech ecosystem, you're applying and your email is full of unfortunately we regret to inform you. Please apply after six months, and it doesn't mean that You're not good enough.
Speaker 4You're not good enough and you know that some of these things will actually shut our inner self and we'll feel like no but then have you ever tried to look at it, flip the coin on the other side and just tell yourself, maybe employment is not ready for me right now? Let me try out building a concept out of this idea, because you do have a product. The product that you have does provide value to your customers, yeah, so if you can bring in the business and the entrepreneurial spirit into the same, you could actually monetize your application and actually build a business out of it.
Speaker 4Yes and employ people and employ people and be more kinder, exactly, yeah, so that's exactly what I mean, for, like you know, employment is not for everybody. Actually, you trying out entrepreneurship can actually work out for you, and even my case study for the shopkeeper I was trying to go with this. My shopkeeper used to tell me, rather, that this shop that you see me selling you bread and milk, for this shop pays my rent, it takes my children to school. I have money to still go on vacation and I still have a savings account and I'm building somewhere else. You, you're employed, you're probably living hand to mouth with your salary because, again, salaries are meant for you to come back and you know you'll never be paid enough to make you not come back.
Speaker 4But if you try entrepreneurship, if it works well for you. Again and I also agree with you when you said guys also say it the other way Entrepreneurship is not for everybody, maybe employment, but just try to see where you land.
Speaker 2True, true, yeah. By the way, thank you for explaining that, because it gives people a different perspective about entrepreneurship. And, by the way, when I think about a shop. You know there's someone closely, I know that ever started a shop. But eventually they realized that the profits there is like two bob, five bob. Imagine how many breads do you need to sell to make a thousand bob. To make a thousand bob, for sure Like five Now when you think about that, you should be a bakery, or?
Speaker 4something For sure yeah.
Speaker 2And sometimes you know the stock doesn't move as fast, so you consume the stock. So there's a lot, but that explanation really is really important. So you start now learning these things participating in competition.
Speaker 4Yeah, I start participating in those, and that's when I meet you, and then that's now and I meet Mike and then your life turns at this point when I'm meeting, mike is introducing things called atlasian to me. I feel like the first three sessions that I went I was just floating, yeah, big up to Ian Juma I think he's called Ian Juma the white guy with I think he was at 80, yeah he
Speaker 1was at 80, yeah, so I used to shout out Ian, ian we need to.
Speaker 2I know Ian is one guy. You cannot find him if you don't know where to look, of course, but Ian, if you listen to this we need to do something talk about these experiences. That guy man is a genius, for sure you know people know the guys who really express themselves and put themselves out there for guys to know them yeah but me I know like maybe it's two percent of the guys that people know they are good for me.
Speaker 2On my side at least in kenya, I know 98 percent of guys, yeah, who most people don't know for sure, since back in the day you know before yeah I started building communities, there were still guys who were solid some of them, of course, died. But yeah, sorry to say this, but that's the truth, it's life, it happens, but there are really guys who are really solid yeah so Ian Juma actually is one of them.
Speaker 2There are a couple of them and over time you will hear their story because everyone has really an interesting story around it, yeah uh-huh. So yeah, juma comes and presents, yeah, this guy is presenting things.
Speaker 4They are cicd pipelines I'm like me, I've just learned android yeah, and hdmi and you guys are talking about these pipelines me. I just know how to package this up on my laptop and upload it on play store.
Speaker 4You know, that was just me yeah but then now I realized okay, so there are different venues of acquiring knowledge and actually trying to improve what you've built. I now realize software does not have an end. There's always going to be an iteration of perfection, making it better and adding value to your customers and yeah, that's when I also get to meet you and then now associating with people who also drive the same value. Again, looking back, that does shape where I am right now. That was your funny moment.
Speaker 4Better explanation you did not graduate right, oh for journalism I did not, you were like to hell with it. Not really.
Speaker 2I don't drop school so what happened, did you?
Speaker 4go back and graduate or no? No, no, I'm not.
Speaker 2I'm thinking of going back, though, oh but, I don't know, if I know, did you do your master's? I tell you, this chief here is a master's graduate so um but anyway, let's not go there.
Speaker 4So you start. Uh, you'll tell us when we get there.
Speaker 2Yeah, so you now start taking software engineering properly, yes, and appreciating the concept of proper software engineering, correct? Did you have to relearn everything?
Speaker 4there was that, because yeah there's kubernetes, there's cisc bucket pipeline yeah, because again, like what they teach you in school and what you're going to do in the industry, you realize you don't know anything sideline. The university is just supposed to teach you the principles and guide you how to learn how these things, the foundations and the history In other words they teach you how to learn.
Speaker 4And then now life, all the work experience now teaches you how to create and build problems. So there was that. I think there was a time where I had to, like, now start thinking do I want to, uh, do I want to go back to uni do computer science as an undergrad and then come back later and continue, or do I want to do XYZ? Yeah, so I got into.
Speaker 4No, I was actually pitching in an event and, uh, the CEO for MTBA, I think, was there yeah and then after the talk, the first time we met, yeah, the first time we met it was like, yeah, we're building this solution in a healthcare solution in Kenya called MTBA blah blah blah. I didn't take it serious, because even me, I'm trying to set up my condition and also to become I didn't take it serious because even me I'm trying to set up my recognition and I want also to become a competitor, and then I used to be a guy for hackathons.
Speaker 4When hackathons will come, you will find me there, and I'm there because I know I have a solution and I either want to win money or just push time. And then there was a hackathon by Mtiba again, but this time they had branded it as Kiape. Kiape is the company and Mtiba is the product. Pause.
Speaker 2So, now that you're talking about the hackathon, tomorrow we have our hackathon at Africa Leadership University, in partnership with Africa Stalking, here in Kigali, rwanda, the whole day. So if you know someone and you're listening and they could come to this hackathon, please encourage them. Mk will be there, sylvia Dibet will be there, douglas himself, dagi, the full-stack engineer at Africa Stocking, will be there. Amongst many other good, good engineers, this chief himself will be there. I will.
Speaker 2You're all welcome. It's free. Free, just make your way to ALU 8 am and come and build with us.
Speaker 4Please go on yeah, so the hackathon yeah yeah so I go to KAP offices yeah it's a 24 hour hackathon.
Speaker 4Yeah, so we hack through the night. I think at that time it was supposed to integrate to some of the MT by APIs APIs and then build an app around it. Now here's the catch the winner for the hackathon was supposed to be given an internship and then at the end of the hackathon would be awarded the smartwatch, something to enter that certificate. So at that time I was technically good to build a product, but then when it came to pitching I was struggling. So at the end of the hackathon I did not win, I got a certificate and yeah, see me, I disappeared. I'm like this didn't work out for me. The internship, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then me, I go MIA for a while. I still continue building my startup here and I'm also pursuing my degree for journalism. But then later on I figured there's this one number that keeps calling me a month in, I think something happened to my line.
Speaker 4I don't remember. I probably lost my phone or something, but then when I called the number, I was actually in a bus heading to town and she's like hi, this is Emily. Hr at KAP, it is Victor. I'm like hi, this is Emily. Hr at. Carepay. It is Victor. I'm like, yeah, this is Victor. So, victor, I have some goodness for you. I've been trying to reach out to you for a while. Yeah.
Speaker 4Our CTO went through your assessment for the hackathon and we want to offer you an internship position at CarePay. Yeah. It's going to be a. We are not going to pay, like she tried explaining the full contract on the phone? Probably she knew that I didn't have a phone and there's not going to be time again. It's probably like those days where you guys used to send. What do you think those things are called, roger? The tele Fax Telegrams? You're like mom's sick.
Speaker 2Come home, oh everything To save on the cost, how she was pushing everything inside.
Speaker 4But then you know there are people who really don't know things like fax and telegram.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, they were there and they were super expensive to send, so you had to compress it.
Speaker 4But there were no phones that I knew you guys had to write letters.
Speaker 2I remember my that's where Twitter got the 150 or 160 characters concept.
Speaker 4Yes, oh, that was the concept. Yeah, yeah, that's where they got the concept.
Speaker 2Like, whatever you have to say, you should be able to say with this 160. If Telegram it was shorter than that, then you should be able to say whatever yeah.
Speaker 4I feel like I've been struggling on Twitter.
Speaker 2And you don't worry about the grammar. Yes, for sure. Does that make sense?
Speaker 4Yeah, I think it has been hard for me, but anyway, the HR calls me, tells me you're offering your internship position at KAPE. They want you to come in. So when are you free to start Me this time? Because you know, the HR told me there's no salary but you're going to be given a stripping. Yeah, and the stripping was 20k, 20.000 shillings. Yes, this time me, I'm running my gumbaru startup. I do not have money that is coming from that site we call it.
Speaker 4You're surviving, you have a vision that is gonna work out for you, yeah, but then there's no money at that particular point in time. And now I'm this woman is calling me to persuade me with 20k. Do I even have money?
Speaker 4that is a survival thing. And then I'm like you said, you said you said 20k. It's like yeah, but it will be taxed, so you'll be getting like 16. Ah, I'm like, ah, okay, when am I starting? Like uh, when you're ready. It's like are you free, like next week? I'm like yeah, so you can start on monday next week, by all means I'm coming.
Speaker 2So yeah, that's how I entered out I ended up without knowing is there's a guy who pitched this idea, which turns out to be cappy of course but I now later come to meet the ceo because when I joined as an intern, yeah, I was part of the retail team.
Speaker 4it's like when you enter, okay, and then there's sub, sub departments, yeah, team. It's like when you enter and then there's sub departments, yeah. So we're trying at that time they're trying to push their savings product through MT, because I think when they started it was like you'll open a wallet, save up for your healthcare and then whenever you get sick, so the thing the catch was if you save up to a particular amount, we'll be given bonuses, because Kiape had partnered with some NGOs who, you know, bring in funds, yeah, and then so if you save like a hundred, they'll give you 50 bob. Yeah, if you save, ideally to drive the saving culture towards healthcare yeah but then we realized that that was not gonna work.
Speaker 4Yeah, to sustain Kiape as a as a company, as a startup, and I joined yeah but then, yeah, I was, I joined uh as an intern yeah, I was working with the retail team and I was working closely with CFO the CEO. That is from.
Speaker 4Amsterdam or just Kenyan team. So both my CEO and CFO were Dutch guys, so Case and Martin. But those other guys also shaped me for sure. I usually call them my big four yeah yeah, so that was case. Martin, steve miner, steve mayna, wherever you are, shut up, we should, we should, catch up again um, and then there was uh, who else? And barry, barry, ledgerware, something like that. Sorry if I killed your name, barry, but Barry was the CTO, a proper guy. He's the guy who taught me proper coding skills.
Speaker 4Debugging Java. Jvm Spring Boot 101 class. Barry was the guy and I think when I joined it was more like you go deep end in the ocean and then swim your way towards the shore. We'll catch up. That's how we used to learn, yeah.
Speaker 4And for sure that guy I usually call Keape. It was my first job, because three months in I was confirmed as a full-time software engineer and then I think, like six months in, because again I started being good. And also, like with my skills, from where I was coming in the past, growing in the career was quite easy for me. So, intern software engineer, I became a client engineer, which meant now I needed to. I was trusted with the care page clients but then it's more like a developer relations.
Speaker 4But then you still could yeah, yeah so this opened up new markets for me. Traveling into Amsterdam, traveling into Nigeria. I think I'm proud to say I build up KAPI Nigeria when it actually started.
Speaker 2I remember those days when we could speak and my my other brothers yeah, so I did, I did stay in Kiape.
Speaker 4Yeah, intentionally.
Speaker 2For three years yeah.
Speaker 4For three years, and those three years were learning, networks and learning, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4So I think also within the third year, I also started seeing, because I started off like mobile developer I did backend, I did frontend, I was full stack. At some point, yeah, kubernetes even came. I did backend, I did frontend, I was full-stack. At some point, kubernetes even came. I was like ah, I think the good thing, now my region is coming into also. Now we're shifting from running our instances on an ECS machine. We're moving them into Kubernetes. I think of all the software development team it either me and barry who knew kubernetes yeah like we took the knowledge to go and learn it.
Speaker 4Yeah, so guys used to come and consult me and then I was like by the, instead of having to write java every day, or rather just writing your solutions and then let barry write your cicd pipelines and deploy that into an ecs cluster on amazon. Uh see, I can. Classed on Amazon. See, I can also with that intrigue. How do you call it? You want to know? Curiosity.
Speaker 4Curiosity, exactly. So out of curiosity, I was like I want to know the code that I write. How does it end up in production? Now that's opening up things for me. Cicd pipelines how do you write them? I was building on top of BitPacket and now you remember Atlassian sessions.
Speaker 2I used to get those cool swag the t-shirts.
Speaker 4So I'll go to the office and then I'm like I'm the coolest guy around. Even the city was like.
Speaker 3I like that t-shirt, I'm like you see me, you feel me, bro.
Speaker 4Yeah, so there was that and yeah, so out of curiosity, I, I did choose that path. Yeah, so now devops interest yeah, and for sure, barry was my sidekick because it was like you wanna, if you wanna learn it, why not? Yeah, I mean, if the other guys in the team don't want to learn, but you feel like you wanna learn it, yeah, you can as well do it, yeah. So yeah, I now saw the full journey of building your, you know, writing uh a feature.
Speaker 4Let's say you're working on an api. Yeah, packaging that into your cicd pipeline, running your test, taking that into uh source control to scan quality checks using sauna or any other tool of your choice, uh, putting that into docker as an image. Controlization was actually just coming up as a concept at that particular time, so I did land docker. Yeah, I wrote my first eicd pipeline, actually modified the existing one because, again, the good way to learn it is by breaking it. Yeah, yeah, as long as you don't break it in production, which is also fine, because, trust me, they said, you will have to break something in production. We call it chaos engineering most of this concept.
Speaker 4You grasp them through the community engagements yes, community engagements and then also that drive of having to learn something new. I did set out a focus for myself. Yes, I am building features, but then I'm also going to create time for personal development, to know what's happening outside there. How are these big companies doing it and how can I also be part of a community where you know, they show you how to do these things? And for me, my knowledge is not just attending those events, it was more like after that I want to come back and implement these things in Kiape and also so that they see I'm adding value so it was more of a day to day practice.
Speaker 2Yes, so that's how I went about it for sure and chief that actually cleared a path to work for people like Bring Global. How was that experience as a backend engineer?
Speaker 4well, so this time I'm leaving kia peak yeah I feel like I've grasped starting knowledge to move me because, also, like I'd walked into the healthcare industry for a while yeah, so this is three years of kia pay. Remember I told you I was building my startup. Yeah, those also under three years. My startup, also in healthcare. Another three years of my startup, also in healthcare. So I wanted to change industries and, uh, at this point in time also, uh, at cafe, what was happening is I also decided to become I.
Transitioning Through Tech Careers
Speaker 4I told myself, I want to become a specialist, or rather an expert in one particular area, because I was full stack yeah so I said I wanted to focus on backend infrastructure, so building backend APIs and also putting that on cloud, yeah, deploying that into a multi-cloud environment, all these kind of things. So that was now my focus. Yeah, so I joined Bring. I come in as a senior backend engineer. Bring was they were actually building financial systems. Yeah, they had partnered with this organization called Backbase. I think that was the platform that most banks do yeah, bring was they're actually building financial systems.
Speaker 4Yeah, they are partnered with this organization called back base and that was a platform that most banks do yeah so they have already curated most of the solutions for banks. So if you're, I think, banks also moving into the digital era, so like from internet banking into mobile banking so they already build up these components. All you need to do is sign a contract with them and then now us, the developers that bring we now customize.
Speaker 4Yes exactly Now. We will customize that software as a service to meet your size and taste for your applications and also integrate it also with your legacy systems. Now to you know, pull in the transactions and all that things. So yeah, my first client was Stunt Big Bank of Ghana. Oh nice. And I think six months down in I was actually working with a guy called Gordon. Today I'm giving everybody their flowers. So me and Gordon did pull out that project.
Speaker 2But this is not the Gordon from high school.
Speaker 4No, no, no, this is not Gordon, that was called Stephen Gondi. Okay, stephen Gondi.
Speaker 2Actually, I've gotten the mathematician name Samuel Wako. Yes, Very brilliant champ, yeah, from Northeastern, you know Northeastern you need to visit there, kaka, I think the last time before Corona and everything you were supposed to go to Lodwa was to go to. Lodwa. And, by the way, one thing that I want to tell people once you realize the value of community, you also became one of the main speakers in these events trying to nurture more abilities.
Speaker 4Other people yes, yeah.
Speaker 2so anyone listening, don't just come to communities to take, just also give once you you know, you have had enough.
Speaker 4Yeah, for sure you have to give back? Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2Yeah, so you started building.
Speaker 4Stand Big with the yeah, we built Stand Big Bank of Ghana six months in.
Speaker 2Yeah, that is the digital side of things.
Speaker 4Yes, Now at least Stand Big Bank. I know guys in Ghana are using the mobile app to transact. That was us. We're the ones who built the backend side of it.
Speaker 2Is he a Kenyan? I think I'm forgetting his other name.
Speaker 4I'll find it. Yeah, but me and Godd on the back end. And then there's some figures we're building on the Android and iOS side of things. By six months in we got the product out. The client was happy. Bring also like a consultancy company, so once one project is off, they'll get you into another project At this point I think. The second project was an app for the Central Bank of Portugal. It's called CDG, so I did build up some of those components, but in total I did work and bring, I think, two years or one and a half One of those, and I also had to call it goodbye.
Speaker 4That was financial sector, so from healthcare into financial sector.
Speaker 4Yeah, and then, after Bring, I did join the big company. No, actually, yes, I remember. So I also from Bring. I did join a company in the US it's called Wiseline, also a software technology consulting company. My first client with them was Faxet in the UK. I did help them as a. I joined them as a senior site reliability engineer. So at this point, remember, I'm digressing from the software world where I actively build on the back end, and now moving fully into infrastructure monitoring, security observability, yeah, yeah, and automating how they actually build their tools.
Speaker 4on data, so Sopaxit is actually one of the biggest data mining companies in the world yeah, yeah, and as part of a small team, and ideally, what our team used to do is that if you're a client, you will go and request a particular data.
Speaker 4Let's say you're a startup where you want some insights, you just go and tell Fox hey, we want this data. They will go and mine that data for you and then, once they get the data, they will send a request to our team to provision the infrastructure that will hold that data a database, the infrastructure that will hold that data, a database, the software that was running to read that data from the DB and then they'll share the credentials with the customer.
Speaker 4So that was the bit of work that my team was doing, but when I joined, all these things were manual, so it was a manual call hey, create for us this, put this data inside there. Once you're ready, share with us the DB, urls and everything. So the value that I was coming to bring to Faxit for me, for sure, because I didn't stay for long, like three months was automation. So all I just needed to do was build something simple out of it. So anytime they will make a new request, that request will come through the API that I built. This request will create. I had a script that I'd written yeah, and this script will write Terraform code that now will provision the database itself and once the DB is ready, we'll load data into it and it will give you back the URL which we'll now give the customers. So it was like a direct integration. So, once you get the data, just call our API, we'll give you the DB and everything. All said and done and for sure, I will tell you those who want to seek to join employment. For sure, in tech or any place that you're going to work into, your employer wants value. The moment you start giving them value, you'll hear good deals coming to you? So by the time in my three months in? Are good deals coming to you so by the time in my three months in?
Speaker 4The reason why I chose to leave at this particular point was they were using a different stack that was foreign to me, so they were using Python as their main stack. I was coming from the Java side of the world, but then again, it doesn't hurt to learn something new. But then was I ready to pick up Python at that particular point in time? Yes, I was, but not fully. I didn. Another particular point in time yes, I was, but not fully. Okay, I didn't see it growing out of me, yeah. So, yeah, I decided to call the to pull the plug, now resigning, and at this point in time my manager was in the uk. He calls me and tells me victor, we want to offer you a full-time opportunity at fax it yes, because of this value that you're giving us, because before this used to be manual calls.
Speaker 4I don't know how you understand the impact of the value brought to us. This used to be manual calls that guys would call and then you'll have to put guys through the night to provision this.
Career Growth and Tech Leadership
Speaker 4But the fact that now people are able to we've automated this. It means that if a billion companies come, these requests will be provisioned at the same time and these guys will get that through automation, like yeah, man, do you want to come to the uk and join us? At this point in time, uh, journalism thing is backfiring. How it's backfiring is cause, uh, in public universities, a lot of strikes that happen, and in this time, I think there's one of those.
Speaker 4But these are for hours. Guys are not paid school fees. And the school said if you have not paid your fees by this particular date, you're not going to do your exams. And I was a victim. I didn't pay that day, but I think I paid on the weekend. So I expected that on Monday I'll do my examinations. But here we were blocked from the gate. We were like you're not going to do your exams, and what do you say to Kenyan students? So guys vandalized the school. It was proper Closed.
Speaker 2Vandalized. Like it was indefinitely.
Speaker 4We were actually suspended from school for an entire academic year exams. Yes, everybody who was sent would into the examination square, suspended by the school indefinitely for one academic year. Yeah, but now, this time, I have to call myself again and do a retrospect. What am I going to do in this one year? Yes, I am at kiape, I'm working as an intern. Blah blah, I can't go.
Speaker 3This is happening uh, uk, it's not even coming up yet, okay, so in this one year.
Speaker 4Yes, I am at KIAPE, I'm working as an intern, blah blah. I can't go to UK. This is happening. Uk has not even come up yet. Okay, so in this particular time, I think over the few months I had, I went and did an introspect and I got a course in USIU that a friend recommended me, so I did my undergrad in USIU Okay. So in this time when I'm doing my undergrad already, yes, Okay, so in this time when I'm doing my undergrad already.
Speaker 4I do not want to hear anything to do with relocation, because my first degree backfired on me. There's no way I don't want anything to make me not finish this one. So, yeah, I didn't take the offer from Faxet. It was actually a good deal.
Speaker 4I chose to stay to finish my course. It was again purely all good vibes, all good reasons, and I don't regret the reason behind it. So yeah, months in fuck's sake, I get another client, I interview with one of the big brands at the Walt Disney and I think the same day I interviewed this was through an agency, through an agency Wiseline and the same day I interviewed, I actually got accepted oh, they said, you are in, come and do this thing.
Speaker 2They were like bro enter.
Speaker 4Now I'm joining Disney. I was part of the DMAT team it's called Digital Media Entertainment something and this team ideally my team used to manage five Disney products. That was Hulu, hbo, disney+, espn News, and I've said Hulu, yeah, you said Hulu. And HBO, yeah, yeah, all those are owned by Disney. Yeah, oh, okay, there was Disney's like an alphabet, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2So All those are owned by Disney. Yeah, oh, okay.
Speaker 4The Walt Disney is like an alphabet. Okay For Google. So it's one of the fun guys.
Speaker 2And then now it's also beneath.
Speaker 4Beneath. The other company that were bought by the Walt Disney is now HBO Fox. All these things. Actually most American entertainment in here. I won't buy the worst disney, yeah. One is banone as something, yeah, so I got in, uh, into disney yeah I joined them as a senior site liability engineer.
Speaker 4Yeah, but then the scope of work, apart from having to build and have to stress about observability, chaos engineering, which is a new concept that is coming to me, because now you can imagine you streaming on these platforms and one thing that we do not want you, as a customer, to experience is latency, blamed on the company. Availability of what you're watching missing out all those things.
Speaker 4It's crazy man so my team has to handle all that, yeah, and I also have to be a visionary for my team to guide them through that. Yeah, yeah yeah and I will tell you for sure that's when I got introduced to management.
Speaker 4For sure, because my role was 50 management, 50 percent being an individual contributor yeah and uh, at this point in time, I am working in a team of uh 20 sre engineers who report directly to me. Yes, yes, and part of these 20 people. These people are as old as my dad, so these guys have been in the industry for a while so you're not telling them anything well, actually the guy.
Speaker 4One thing I can tell you for sure, at least me working with them, I think also like again, growing up in my background, it put me out for respect. Yeah, yes, so again, work is work. How was that? Like, work is work for sure, I will tell you being a manager. When it comes to work, work is work.
Speaker 4We need to work together and deliver yeah I can carry it, I can carry the weight for the team. But then if I, if I don't find you productive for the team, I have to call you up for it, and if you're not going to work, we need to dispose you and get someone who's going to do it. So there's that bit of coming from being an IC and now getting into management. But then we'll get into that. So I joined Disney. Those five products. My KPI was actually to get Hulu in. Africa.
Speaker 4And I was supposed to sell it out in South Africa. I think they must have launched by now. Yeah, but during that time it was again deploying things production crashing our servers.
Speaker 4You know, we'll actually write code to go and destroy our servers as they run, were they set out like test or no. This is actually people like. This is. This is now what you call chaos engineering by itself. Yeah, because with chaos engineering, what you're trying to achieve the main goal is trying to test your system for availability and resiliency and so that if, by any chance, someone attacks your server, you know what to do, because you know when you attack your server, the users who are streaming from that server are blocked out. Things to do with the availability zone. How does this? If Mike is in Kenya and he's streaming this content from your TV when it's actually connecting to those servers where you're streaming from, you will actually find it's talking to about 70 servers at the same time.
Speaker 4That's just to block you from not experiencing resiliency and all those latencies and all these things. So we'll actually build solutions to destroy our servers and just test and see how ready are we as Disney for HBO, if someone attacks our instances or something. So, yeah, that was interesting for a while. I actually, bro, I loved working in that company. It was amazing. I did burn out for sure because I was working at different times.
Speaker 2I remember those days. Yes, I used to work in.
Speaker 4Nairobi. My team were based in the US. So from 5 pm you are. I would stretch up to 3am in the morning. Of which even at times I would sleep, and I wake up at 6am to go to the gym and someone is spamming my inbox either on Slacks or email I have to go and report and say what happened while you were away.
Speaker 4Because this happened, this service is not available. And I have to go and write what's that thing called. Again, if something goes wrong, you have to go and write that report. I'm forgetting the name. Basically it explains the incident, what happened, what did you guys do Walk us through every minute At this point in time? Developer A was on call. He did.
Speaker 4XYZ Developer B came and spoiled it. But, then I came up at 6 am to come and fix it. So there was a lot of that bureaucracy and all these things for big companies, yeah, but for me it was a learning lesson. Yeah. I did enjoy my time there. Yeah, the experience was amazing. And yeah, again time comes. You have to call out the company and say bye. And yeah, that's where I am right now. After that, I think two months in, I joined MasterCard.
Speaker 2Nice, that is MasterCard.
Speaker 4Nairobi. Yes, I joined them through MasterCard Labs in Kenya. Oh very nice. So still doing SRE there? No, no, no. So MasterCard very nice, so still doing SRE there, no, no, no. So MasterCard came back, so I still do it as part of the full end solution. Yeah Well, you know, nowadays, software engineer, your expectations is also getting bigger. True, true.
Speaker 4Because the higher you grow, the higher the requirements and people want to get to you. So so you're tech lead in that. Yeah, so there's that and the fact that you know when you're building the product you have to go with it till the end Deploying, monitoring, all this kind of stuff. So yeah, in labs we're actually building some cool stuff Inside the MasterCard ecosystem. I cannot talk about them because, again, it's all a part of an NDA, but yeah, that's where I actually spend most of my time today.
Speaker 2Very nice. That's cool man. You know I was later on. Early on I was talking to someone and telling them if I walk to any tech company in Kenya that are set up 70% of the engineers, or maybe more, I don't know.
Speaker 2They're part of the community or they've been part of the community, and it's really something that I'm proud of to say that really, if you really set out to build something, it works, whatever it is, and this is just to encourage any African engineers or African visionaries, whatever you are. It requires those small acts of service that brings us to where we are. And Victor Abedi is an evidence of that and what we have talked about is in the span of seven to eight years. Yeah, right, so imagine what we can achieve in 20 years.
Speaker 4Yeah, there's going to be a lot If we set out.
Speaker 2Yeah, and thank you so much, victor, for making time for these I'm sure our listeners and I can see some interesting names here, big up to namini onazi, from tanzania. He's a full-stack engineer at vodafone tanzania. He's logged in. Uh, I can see sylvia the beds, our devrel at africa's talking. I see jose uh, he's a dev engineer at Tesla. No, no, no, it's an. Ev company. You can't call the name, but he's also a dev engineer at EV. There's Digital T. There's Roni. There's ronnie. There's r2. There's done, keep something.
Speaker 4There's peter there's a baby himself you're just logging oh yeah, again I'm here. I'm here to take up questions.
Speaker 2Okay, there's jeffrey yeah, there's windy, um, yeah and uh. Anyone who has logged in, uh, we appreciate you, we celebrate you and feel free to come in and ask questions, contribute, become the co-host, it's allowed. We can hear you, by the way, with our rig, where we are, we can hear you, we can answer your questions. So anytime you log in, please contribute. But until next time, maybe we should hear a parting shot from Victor Abedi.
Speaker 4Yeah, for sure. I mean anybody who's trying to get yourself into this software space. It is a beautiful place to be in. All I can just say just put yourself open to learning. Again, any good employer wants a good employee who adds value, not to come and collect salary. Take your time, Take your time. I know there are guys in the ecosystem who are big names You've probably heard of them. But then don't use that as a drive to be where you want to be. Rather, use that as a challenging factor to set yourself up to where you want to be. And, yeah, just take your time to add value.
Speaker 4I think my parting shot here is add value to your employer, add value in whatever you. My parting short here is add value to your employer, add value in whatever you do and use these tools to actually solve problems and things are going to work out for you. So from me here in Kigali this was actually beautiful, by the way, and thank you so much guys for hosting me. I appreciate it. No worries man this is just a start.
Speaker 2No, worries man, this is just a start. There's so much actually you can talk we can even dig deep to DevOps and what it means, for sure. Chaos Engineering introduced by one and only Netflix. Yeah, but if you're an engineer, out there. Check out Netflix Engineering blog.
Speaker 4Yes, they actually have a YouTube. They have a YouTube. No, they have a YouTube, yeah for the engineering team. So if you don't like reading, log into their YouTube.
Speaker 2They have some good stuff they have these engineers, so from a pony. So I quote one African proverb, and it goes by. By the way, I borrow this idea from spice FM, fm, oh yeah, those two guys, three the three guys, those guys. But if ready was like that, they really give some soberness in radio and things are actually indicate you big ups to the spice FM in the morning every day. By the way, check it, check them out. I'm not like advertising them, but I find they're really addressing some cool stuff there's.
Speaker 2Ndu there, I don't know who else.
Speaker 4I know there's a Nigerian woman who lives in Kenya.
Speaker 2It's the one, I think, whose name is Ndu.
Speaker 4Yeah, and then there's who. There's that old guy I'm forgetting his name.
Navigating Challenges for Growth
Speaker 2Now that I'm looking for it I've forgotten. But big ups to the Spice FM Morning Show. You're doing an amazing job. So our parting shot. Proverb is smooth seas. Do not make skillful sailors Smooth. What Smooth seas? Do not make skillful sailors Care to explain that. This means, in other words, we learn and grow when times are tough, through adversity. And, by the way, there is no story that actually exemplifies that than yours.
Speaker 2And the lessons learned can be applied to make things smoother and easier the next go around. If you never experience a position, how can you begin to understand what works and what doesn't? There are teachable moments. Embrace them as such, learn from them and move on. Actually, there is no truer proverb that can speak to most software engineers in the world yeah, beyond africa, more than this problem quite I don't know where it comes from. I think the spice fm says which country but of course we'll get there.
Speaker 2I just wanted to share that with you and without further ado. My name is michael. You are always from africa's talking uh podcast, retold impact masters podcast, telling the stories as they are across africa. We're telling it wrong and and until next time, subscribe, like, share and comment. We'll be hosting more movers and shakers in tech across Africa. It's just a start. Bye, thank you.
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