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Noble Conversations
Building the First Internet Country | A Noble Conversation with Eche Emole
What if you could transcend geographical borders to create a thriving digital nation? Join us as we explore this revolutionary idea with Eche Emole, the imaginative force behind Afropolitan, a bold initiative aimed at reshaping the lives of Africans and their diaspora. Together, we imagine a world where digital connectivity fosters unity, abundance, and innovation, overcoming the challenges of traditional leadership and resource constraints. Eche shares the journey from hosting diaspora-focused events to building a resilient online community, emphasizing the vast potential of uniting people across the globe to tackle shared challenges.
In a world often limited by scarcity, we envision a future filled with choices and access for African communities. Our conversation unpacks how technologies like Starlink could bridge the digital divide, particularly in remote areas, and foster an environment ripe for ambition and innovation. We challenge the status quo with a mindset of abundance, urging individuals to embrace unthinkable achievements and transform their communities into networks of prosperity and support. By addressing the deep-seated issues of black empowerment and unity, we reflect on personal experiences and the historic achievements that shape our identities today.
The episode culminates in a powerful call to action—taking responsibility and embodying "high agency" to create real change. Through personal narratives of overcoming familial expectations and career shifts, we highlight the importance of owning one's journey and building a network state that offers a compelling alternative to the traditional nation-state. As we connect talents and ideas globally, Afropolitan emerges as a testament to the power of collaboration, innovation, and a shared vision of a more connected and empowered world.
Imagine you are living in an internet country. What would that look like? What would the component of an internet country be? How would it feel? Well, you don't have to wonder anymore, because today Ece Emole will walk us through that and what it would look like.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Noble Conversations, where we build the society of our dreams by engaging in noble conversations with those who are making community and global impact. And HA Molle is definitely making community and global impact as founder of Afropolitan, which is a digital nation that enables Africans and its diaspora to live more abundant lives through the first ever internet country. So Eche is also a former business development executive at Flutterwave, and today we'll be discussing the journey to an internet country. So, as you do like this, join me, join me, let's go. Let's go and see what this internet country is, because even myself I'm even wondering ah, internet country, how that will go, work, regulation, all that. So we'll talk about it here. I think I was reading through, you know, afropolitans' website some time ago and I saw that, you know, if it were a country, the African diaspora would be the 10th largest globally, you know, at, I think, 150, 150 million. But from your perspective, like, why would you like?
Speaker 2:like why is the African diaspora so large? I mean we live in search of better opportunity and optionality in our lives, right? So I mean one could argue like our best talent has probably left the continent, like from a drain-drain perspective, right? So you see us in hospitals, you see us in sports, you see us in media. You see us at hospitals, you see us at sports, you see us in media, you see us in almost every other sort of sector. But for some reason, those sectors only thrive when we're outside of the continent. It's not thriving in the concept itself. So that's a problem in and of itself. So it makes it it's. It's sad that that's the case, but that's where we are currently yeah, I mean, is it not thriving within the continent?
Speaker 1:Obviously, I'm guessing, it's like well, not guessing, but obviously infrastructure security, opportunities, leadership, leadership.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it just comes out to really leadership at the core of it, right, like we've been very fortunate to be, to have, like, some of the worst leaders, and then it's been compounded by corruption, right. But then I think it's also like, yeah, honestly, leadership I think leadership is also plays a huge role in it as well. So, if you can fix it, if you can get together people who are aligned, like I said, there's no problem. Africa is facing that's not being faced by other nations or other countries. We're not special. It just comes down to can you get a group of aligned people to come together to do good work? That's it.
Speaker 1:I mean I'm also thinking because, like you said, there's no problem that Africa is facing, that other places have not faced.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it seems like a lot of it is. It's not even a scarcity of resources, it's scarcity of opportunities to maximize those resources. Um, yeah, and you know afropolitan, I think you know is like, from what I've seen, it's trying to build the first internet country. So like what's from your perspective, like what is, what is an internet country as you envision it, and what, what prompted you to build one?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'll answer the first question. So I think the mental framework that's good for this is you have to think about it in what does the internet enable us to be able to do today? Right, we're able to start internet companies. Give us, for example, FM, the way you seem to record right now as an internet company. You are in Houston. I am in Lagos right, we're literally able to communicate and handle our business through the internet right now. Right, so that's an internet company.
Speaker 2:We'll be able to start internet currencies, so, whether it's Bitcoin or crypto. Right, We'll be able to start internet-only banks right. So, whether it's in the US maybe you have Chime, you might have SoFi or in places like Nigeria, you have banks like Cuda, et cetera, right, so these are like internet-only banks. The question then is can we start an internet country, right? A country that cuts across borders, cuts across different sorts of borders and networks, and can we aggregate the best people at scale across these borders? Right, so that's the answer to the first question. The second question is what inspired this? I think the best way. The first question, the second question is what inspired this? I think the best way to think about the afropolitan journey is to think about it in three phases. Right phase one of afropolitan is our organization. We started out of law school in san francisco getting into the african diaspora through events.
Speaker 2:So think your favorite afro beats events, concerts, festivals. A significant highlight of what we achieved during that phase one was something called the Year of Return.
Speaker 2:That happened in Ghana in 2019, where we basically played a role in facilitating about a million plus people from across the diaspora heading to Ghana. That particular segment or phase of the Year of Return attracted about $2 dollars worth of economic activity to garner right, and so that was the first phase where we could literally see the diaspora coming together to head to one destination. Phase two then starts in april 20th. Uh sorry, phase two starts in 2020, actually, where um covid happened. So covid decimated the entire everlife events industry, and then we were forced to pivot, but we pivoted into media, but through a social audio app called Clubhouse. So at Clubhouse, between I and my co-founder, chika, we built online communities of 200,000 people globally. So on Clubhouse, we were able to literally again similar to how you and I are talking. We had community members Remember, this is the pandemic, we're on lockdown but we showed a capacity for collective action, people coming together for causes like the Ethiopian refugee crisis. We raised money for it. The Ed Sars crisis in Nigeria, against police brutality but we were also able to raise money through Clubhouse. We used Clubhouse to organize ourselves and also form groups. So, whether it was for romantic situations like shoot your shot, rooms for business deals, for business deals, for fundraising deals. We showed what the incident enabled us to do in that case, and so that is phase two. Phase three then starts in April 2021, where a man called Balaji Srinivasan. He basically writes this article about how to start a new country, and in this article, he proposes this framework I laid out earlier, like what would it look like to come together with people with shared values and purpose across the world to form a new country, right in this format right? And so, for the rest of the year, we got inspired by this right, and so we set about learning about the differences with technologies that could also help this manifest. Some of that is blockchain technology. And so we come December 2021, we're in Nairobi, kenya.
Speaker 2:I wake up at about 5 am. I'm facing the room for about an hour. My partner is asking me like hey, what's going on? What's wrong? I say to her like look, I know how I would look at someone who's about to tell you what I'm about to tell you, but I think we need to start a new country. And she's like, wait what?
Speaker 2:And so we drew some inspiration from the US founding fathers Alexander Hamilton, he's one of the founding fathers of the US, and in the first Federalist Papers, he sets out the tone as to why they were even starting a new country in the first place. Right? So in their own, in his own words, he asks the questions we are guided here to decide. The most important question, right, whether societies of men are capable or not of establishing good governance through reflection and choice. Are we forever destined to depend on our governance through accident and force? And so that became our? Why, right? No modern day nation states in Africa was created through reflection and choice. And so what would it look like to form a new government structure through reflection and choice? And that's what Afropolitan is. But then to get there, right, because you're not just going to say, hey, we want a new country. Then the new country appears. You have to build and work towards it.
Speaker 2:To get there, we decided to build four phases of our master plan, of our roadmap. Phase one was first, go out and get out of your people. Build a private network of people who are aligned with what you're trying to achieve, who are here to see each other succeed, invest in each other, build with each other and really create things that have impact. Right, and so we built that and we seeded that initial network with our passports Actually, the R passports are what looks like behind me. These are our initial R passports, right? So we sold out the first 500 of those passports. That was phase one.
Speaker 2:Phase two, for us, is what we're calling the society as a service. What platform could we use to power this digital nation? So the idea would be like could you unlock economic opportunities within this digital nation with people coming together to share services, to share investments, to be able to facilitate trade among these folks across the world, right? And then also payments, right? So that's phase two. And so to do that, we set out to build an app or a super app that allows us to enable these sort of transactions within our ecosystem.
Speaker 2:Phase three is what we're calling the minimum viable state, which is how could we build up the credibility needed to be viewed as a country one day? So in September 2022, we got recognized by the New York Stock Exchange as the first ever internet country for the African diaspora. Today, we provide visa and arrival services to Kenya, nigeria, ghana and Tanzania, right, for our members. And then, in phase four, we're combining two things together One is a Chinatown and the other one is an embassy. So take, for example, embassies are sovereign territories and host governments, right? So the US embassy in Lagos, for example, is a sovereign territory within a host government. In most Chinatowns and major cities in the world, they most likely have their own post office, their own malls, their own banking, their own restaurants. Right? You want to combine those two concepts together to give us sovereign Afro towns in major cities across the world. So that's what we're building for.
Speaker 2:So, in a nutshell, to summarize, you're an Afro-Politan citizen. You're able to navigate the world with your Afro-Politan passport. You're able to make payments for goods and services using the Afro-Politan currency. You're able to gain physical entry into sovereign Afro-towns for creative and major cities across the world. That is what we're building, but for today. Where we are right now is between phase one and phase two, which is you're still recruiting people to join the network. You're looking to recruit the best of the best people. You're looking to get the most talented Africans, the most ambitious Africans across the world to join Afropulton, right? And then leveraging the fact that you have this much chance of people in one place to then start making impact. So, is it through investments? Is it in arts? Is it in sports? Is it in media? Whatever it is that we can aggregate our leverage to go execute on. That's what type of time we're on.
Speaker 1:Okay, so recruiting as many people as possible. Is there like a number that you're like?
Speaker 2:okay, once we get here, then we'll move to the next phase so what we filter for is alignment, so it's less about the quantity of people and quality of people. So for us, it's like if you can recruit the best people there already. So so when we first started, I've laid out the, the framework, right. But then the there have been ecosystem verticals that have come about just because you have tons of people. And so today, now, ff Paulson also has a dating club, right, that wasn't something that we set out to achieve, but it was something the community was like hey, this is something that we need for us to also be able to find our compatible romantic partners In here.
Speaker 2:You have built a very solid community, right. That's number one. Today, we have our ventures group, where we invest in promising startups. Today, we have our P2P exchange group, where members can even exchange currencies with each other across the world. The fourth one is we have rentals, right, where members can rent from each other short-term rentals as they travel across the world. So you have ecosystems building across this community that you have built, but the idea is, you attract quality people and trust is your major currency, right? So a community that trusts each other is aligning each other can now build bonds that stretch across borders too.
Speaker 1:So that's that's the way I look at it, no, no, that's very, that's very robust. One of the things I'm thinking about because you mentioned something about, not in terms of you know citizenship, not like having that choice as opposed to it being an accident of you know where you don't have Reflection and choice, reflection and choice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so one of the things I'm thinking about with that is, like you know, like there are a lot of people who don't have access to you know the internet in the first place, right, there are a lot of people who don't have access to, you know, the internet in the first place, right? And so I guess it's like I'm just thinking like how do you get those people to even have, first of all, the internet access, and then that's the first stage, and then the next stage is now. Okay, now there's this community that's built on trust that you cannot be a part of by choice. Like I'm just thinking about that, like what is? What would that look like?
Speaker 2:yeah. So to be honest with you, right, like, for example, I come from abbey estates. Like my village is a place called abbey. Well, I remember, in like back in the day, I didn't like to go to the village because there wasn't really that much internet service, so you were stuck if you went there. And then now I go to the village and there's an MCN mast and, like 5G network, you're having kids, like, when I go, I'm seeing kids on their phone accessing the internet, right.
Speaker 2:So, whether it's by a normal infrastructure product or a product that we take on, whether you're leveraging internet providers like starlink or satellite providers, you can bring internet to people in rural, remote areas, right. And so then the question is okay, when they now have access to that, do they know that there's a community that they can enjoy? That is not going to say to them that their dreams are not valid or that their dreams are too big or they cannot build whatever it is that they set out to build. It's to just say like, hey, your ambition, when you come into this community, we will match you ambition for ambition. This is only a place that you come and say, hey, we want to go to the moon and people are looking at you like you're funny, it's like no, if you have the willingness to execute, if you have the ability to say, hey, this is what I want to go achieve and you have, because it's perseverance too you're going to see people in this community who are able to match you.
Speaker 2:Perseverance for perseverance, ambition for ambition, tenacity for tenacity. Right, and I think for me, when I think about, like, where we are as africans, sometimes we're not used to being the ones who lead or innovate or come up with new ideas. Right, it's always like somebody else has done it. We didn't go do it or replicate, and there's nothing wrong with that too, but it's just to say you want to be part of a community. That's just saying to you like, look, we are fine with being intelligent, we are fine with being ambitious, we're fine with respect of excellence and doing things in a way that actually is also high integrity, you know?
Speaker 1:so that's the way I see it okay, no, definitely, because I think that belief like is something, because I mean, a lot of people have like ambitions and goals, but then they look around them and they don't feel like there is that support to encourage the ambition and so it just kills the ambition. Right, yeah, um, but if if we can create, you create an environment where that is actually enabled, then we could have a lot more people engaging in community building and impact Network of abundance. That's another key term that I noticed in.
Speaker 1:Afropolitan's description of itself in Afropolitan's description of itself. So, as opposed to land of opportunity, right, which people say, oh, I'm going here because it's a land of opportunity, or a land with milk and honey, all those things but Afropolitan is focused on building a network of abundance. How do you define abundance in this case?
Speaker 2:So I think in our manifesto we say abundance of opportunity, right, abundance of like, abundance of, even like, a networking of itself, right, but the idea is we were abundance of tools, abundance of joy, you know. So I think the framework or the mental model for it is to say, like, when you sit back and examine where we're at in Africarica today, a lot of it is also down to scarcity, not necessarily always scarcity of resources, but scarcity of mind, right, we're not able to. One of the the quotes that got us going with this was, um, in the article that man wrote. He says because the brand new is unthinkable, we fight over the old, right. And and I remember just being like, okay, what is the old we're fighting over? Because we're not fighting over the old that other people are fighting over. It's like what is the unthinkable? Sorry, that we're fighting over right, because in the US or Silicon Valley, it might be hey, we're going to Mars or we're going to the moon, whereas our only unthinkable is can we have good roads, can we have stable, 24-hour electricity? Can we have a good healthcare system? These are things that have already been solved in advanced economies, good education, right. So why should we keep playing these games when these are things that have already been solved in advanced economies and we know that it can be solved. It's not actually even rocket science, right?
Speaker 2:And so when you now start to reach out to your neighbors to try to get these things around, they start playing to us the, the old beasts like are we from the same tribe? Are we from the same road? Are we some? You're like what does that have to do with anything? Because it's not like. It's not like like the ebos I'm ebo. It's not like the ebos are thriving in ebol land or the Awosas are thriving in Aosta land or the Yorubas are thriving in Yoruba land, like all of us are suffering across the waters, ashkenazi, no matter where you are in the world. So we might need to find another commonality where it's like it has to be shared values and purpose, because it can no longer be tribe. It's not even a religion, it's not even like just same sex. So what is it right? So what we're saying is like hey, noble etchek, if we agree on this vision of the world that we want to see and we want to go achieve it, let us come together and bring other people who see the world like we see it and are aligned on how we want to go there to get it, so they come together.
Speaker 2:So the organizing of ourselves is one of the hardest bits, because you have to basically be able to say, hey, are we aligned right? Are we aligned on the bigger picture here? Are we aligned on how we want to get there too? Do you agree? Yes, okay, cool, let's then move and let's keep it. Keep it going, because it's going to be a long journey anyway, right? So it's not like a journey that's going to be done in a way. So when I think about scarcity, I really do feel like it's played a huge role in what affects us as Africans, whether it's abroad or on the continent. Sometimes we're not able to imagine a place of scarcity, whereas when I'm in Silicon Valley, I see people who are dreaming in HD or 3D and you're like bro, like it's because they have an abundant mindset, because they don't know what scarcity is, you know. So it's K-reg, right? So, yeah, that's the mindset that I'm approaching it with, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean the idea of scarcity, you know, is so okay. So I'm from Aquibom, right? Uh, so I grew up in aqua boom and, you know, I would like to say like I grew up in an environment where, like to an extent, you know, I had exposure to opportunities, um, but I know the vast majority of people you know um in in similar or in the similar in the same area, did not have the same level of opportunities that I do. And yeah, I think I think about it like a lot of these people are much smarter than I am, like a thousand times smarter than I am, um, and it's just like we all know the same story yeah, imagine what that person could do if they had exposure to where they are thinking from, a place of abundance as opposed to scarcity.
Speaker 1:Yes, um because it's like people like I'm no, go ahead, go ahead no, no, I was saying it's like whether it's me or you.
Speaker 2:Basically, what we won was the immigration olympics and sometimes we didn't. We didn't even know there was a race that we're even winning. It was just more of like hey, we got lucky enough to get a visa or to get an immigration opportunity to be able to leave the country.
Speaker 2:There wasn't. I wasn't the smartest person in my class. There were a thousand people who were way better than me but the one thing I was able to get was to win a lottery right, the immigration lottery and I was able to then get exposure and leave the country. And it's like for that to be the sole determining, determining factor and whether a person has access to opportunity. Optionality is not a world we should accept. I think it's something that you, everybody, should just be like. No, like it doesn't make any sense, right? So most of us who do end up going and then having a better life. There is always going to be that survivor's remorse because you know you didn't really do that much to earn it, like your story could be different today, like there's nothing. Just because, by virtue of where you're born, you get to say, okay, cool, do I have access to opportunities or not? You can't control that.
Speaker 2:Yeah you can control it, you know. So every one of us who's had the ability to go out there and get that better life, we won the immigration olympics.
Speaker 1:That's because the immigration lottery is what I said so that's just what it is no, I, I agree, I agree, um, and I, I want to. Okay, so I want to get some context behind. You know, like your drive, your vision, like you talked about. You know survivors remorse, like before Afropolitan. You know like trace all the way back, like who is Go back to the main story Exactly, like who is Eche and like why, what drives Eche?
Speaker 2:So I moved to the US when I was about 15 with my parents right. I moved to California and I wrote this story recently on my LinkedIn. When we moved to California, I got enrolled into a white school.
Speaker 1:Was it the Allegory?
Speaker 2:I was the only.
Speaker 1:The Allegory. Yeah, I was in the cave that one.
Speaker 2:And then I got enrolled into a white school mostly white school and I was the only black kid in my set. So when I first moved in I didn't know anything about blackness. Like there's no context to like in nigeria, where all black I went to boarding school. I didn't have any concept of race. But then when I get there, they're throwing all these things at me and I'm like, oh, like I don't know this context. But you guys don all seem to think that I, you guys seem to think I should know the context. So maybe I need to go back and start doing research and so, as I said, learning about everything that has to do with black people, black history, you're like, wow, like we've really done a lot. It's like from music, from arts, from engineering, from philosophy, like yo, this is, this is dope work. But then I'm thinking, when it came time to go to college, like hey, I'm walking into wakanda. So my whole criteria was like, if I, if I could find me to these wakandans here, I'm good to go yeah that wasn't the case when I got to college it's like all
Speaker 2:these black people are fighting each other. It shocked me for real and I'm like wait, why are we all fighting each other? Like, where I I'm coming from, they think this is dope, right, and then it's like I'm just listening to them. When I went to do research by myself, with no distractions, I'm like, wait, this is amazing. Like why don't we, why don't we doubling down on this? What is? What is it? Why are we building this up some more? And then you realize like we're not all organized.
Speaker 2:I think what I came out of it understanding was where a lot of black people are talking to each other, there's an interpreter in the middle, and sometimes that interpreter is the media, or I used to say the interpreter is a white man, okay, and we need to figure out a way to get the interpreter out so we can really hear each other, understanding each other, and then focus on building the world that we actually wanted to see, and I think that has become my biggest drive, because and then I, on building the world that we actually wanted to see, and I think that has become my biggest drive because and then I said, during the events I mean during the events it allows you to really cater to a greater section of people, where you start to understand people's different contexts, right, and you're saying to yourself, like wow, like I wish these folks could meet these other folks, or these other folks could meet these other folks, and that they would see that they had a lot of shared purpose and common interest. But most of the times, either they have not traveled over there or, vice versa, they have not traveled over here, which is again what has made the internet so powerful. The reason why, even though a lot of our music, a lot of our culture, is now traveling, is because the instant enabled us to be able to see what is happening in Ghana or Houston or Nigeria or Oakland, from where you are, in real time, right, and so you got to be able to say, oh, I understand that person's context, I get it, and then, if you have the resources to be able to travel to those places, even better. So I think for me, like, what really just drives me, it's like I'm tired of seeing black people be helpless and powerless, like it's one of those things where I don't I don't go looking for the handout, I don't go looking for like, because it's like it's within us to do like. There's dignity in labor, there's dignity being able to set up for yourself. I never want to navigate the world from a place of just being helpless, especially when the resources are there for us to go execute on what we need to execute.
Speaker 2:And then, in being in the Bay, I got to see so many, so many talented Africans and black people from across the spectrum. Right, and I will keep asking. These people contribute a lot towards the baseline of a lot of these top companies in the world. What would it look like if you could aggregate this talent to contribute towards a nation or to a country or to a world that they actually can benefit from? Because it is possible? It's just more of like what is your incentive structure to recruit these people to a network and let them know like, hey, instead of just building ads for facebook, can you actually build something that enables us to acquire some sort of freedom and leverage in this world? So that's the context.
Speaker 2:So removing that interpreter in the middle between black people when communicating with each other, but also creating a landing spot for those brains you know, who are very talented and are doing phenomenal things across the world yeah, like letting them know, because a lot of them from my experience, a lot of them have never felt that they had a community who would understand and accept them right, so a lot of times they were usually the only black person in a thing. I'm the only black person, this, I mean, they used to be the only black one in the room.
Speaker 2:I'm saying there is a community now where you can come and you'll be accepted, whether you're brilliant, whether you're a nerd, whether you're even a little off, as long as you're here to do, work and do amazing work and and do amazing work and say like this is what we're doing to contribute that have in fact, you have a community that's willing to accept you, so that you should never feel isolated anywhere in the world, because you actually have a community that has your back. That's, that's what we're really, really trying to communicate here, okay, and so.
Speaker 1:so, growing up, like when you think back on your childhood, you know how do you view your. Your like did you always? Were you always the kind of person that knew, okay, this is what I want to do, or was it like, okay, well, you know, I kind of figured it out because I remember when I was in, you know, secondary school, boarding school I went to boarding school too, in Akwaebum, and what they would do is, I think, by SS1 or SS2, they would say, okay, if you're an art student, go here, if you're a science student, go here.
Speaker 2:And me yeah.
Speaker 1:Me. I did the same thing. Okay, I, I, I think I picked. I said I wanted to be a doctor because I was like, okay, that's just what people are doing, but it wasn't any specific passion, or okay, I really really enjoyed this specific thing. Um, and over time, like that's evolved and that's a story for another day. But for you, like what, like what was your journey from that to saying, oh, this is the thing that I'm meant to be building?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get that, so I come from a family of lawyers. Like my grandfather was one of the first lawyers in the Bendo division. He was also like a minister in the eastern region.
Speaker 2:So like my family is very plugged into, like Nigeria's actual history, but I never got to meet my grandfather. I never got to meet both of my grandfathers, right? Or at least I don't have the connection of meeting them, but I know I never personally. There wasn't a mutual meeting of like hey, I know you're my granddad and then I'm your grandson, but you get to learn about their history and the things that they have done based on the stories people tell you, right? So sometimes a lot of those similar traits might get passed down to you, but you also have to earn it over time.
Speaker 2:I think what I was born with was a sense of like, responsibility and honor, not just to like myself, but to the past and then on to the future as well. So somebody who's going to be able to connect both sides where you're like hey, we honor our past, but we also have to strive for the future, right? Um and then um, I went to, I went to, like I said, from high school, I went to college, I studied political science and then even in, even in um boarding school, I was also an art student. So it's it's very interesting now that I think about it how many of those books you read as an art student that help you, inform you from a humanities perspective, because a lot of those books now, like I remember, even when it came time to write the manifesto, it was books that I'd read like way back then, where I'm like, oh, like this is, this is how it relates to what we're talking about right now.
Speaker 2:But I finished up. I finished up bachelor's in political science, then I went for my master's in political science. After that, I transitioned to law school and finished up law school, but while in law school, though, I realized I'm not meant to be a lawyer. This is not for me.
Speaker 1:What made you feel that I was able?
Speaker 2:to. I think the mental model that I used to make that decision was. It's the picture of a car that's being driven, there's a driver, and then there's a passenger in the car, and the passenger is on the right side of the car while the driver is driving. And then I feel like lawyers. Are the people in the passenger seat? They're the ones who are going to tell you hey, slow down, make that left, make that right, don't drive too fast like make sure, like everything is cool.
Speaker 2:And then the driver is the one who's driving, he's the one in the seats, he's the one in the arena, like he knows, he feels every bump, he feels everything that's happening. He knows what it feels like to make a decision and be have responsibility of are we going to get here safe or are we not?
Speaker 2:right and so I said to myself, like I don't want to be a spectator watching the driver drive, I like to be the one who's driving, I like to be the one who's in the driver's seat, or at least I like to be the one who's in the action of it all.
Speaker 2:Right. So I remember realizing that like and and coming to terms with that, because I met the founder of flutterwave, where we connected at the time, and his drive for entrepreneurship just inspired me a lot, because I got to see somebody who was close to age to me, willing to step into the unknown and pursue it, even though he might not have had all the answers, and I said to myself, like that's the game I want to be in. So I transitioned from um law school to fintech right or to like the tech ecosystem, and I think I've stayed in this the whole time, where there's something to be said about being an entrepreneur yes, you wake up with the lows are very low. Sometimes you have some highs, but they. I prefer to live in a world where I take ownership over the things I can control, whereas I don't want to wait for things to happen to me. I want to be able to say, okay, I can impact reflection and do something, reflection and choice I
Speaker 2:don't want to be the person who's like things are happening to me and I keep saying to myself, like, why are things happening to me? Like, bro, I want to be able to and I can also accept the l, but it won't be one of those things where, like, we just stood, we took it, we accepted it and we said that this is how things are always going to be. I don't believe that and I think that's really the mindset that afropaul is also trying to incubate, which is like, look, we can be, we can be shapers of our own destiny if we want to right. So the Chinese were able to figure it out, the Singaporeans were able to figure it out, the Vietnamese were able to figure it out, even India is figuring it out, in a sense, like we should be able to do this, especially because of the level of talent that we have, talent that I'm going to see even a lot more of right. So that's just the way I see it.
Speaker 2:So it sounds like there's been a thread of that desire to be in the driver's seat and take ownership, even from, like you know, law school. Yeah, I mean. I mean, I used to also be class prefect.
Speaker 1:I used to also be really, um, like you know, class prefects and boarders yeah, yeah type of stuff, but I think there's always a decision, senior prefect, all that type of stuff.
Speaker 2:I think there's always a decision, senior, perfect, all that type of stuff. I think there's always a time where I know for me it was, um, you know, when you have to accept that, like you know what, you don't ever get to shirk responsibility, like the responsibility will always be on you. Like there are times when I don't, I don't want to be responsible for something. It's almost like freedom from responsibility, from responsibilities, right, and then you go into a room and then, like you might notice something, just by virtue of you noticing some things, and you're like somebody should do something about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, patricia.
Speaker 2:And then you're like there are two people I've walked in and then it's like no one is doing anything about it, and you're like somebody should really do something about that. And I think I had to come to terms with like accepting that it's not always going to be me that does something about it, but that I can no longer act like.
Speaker 2:My job is to act Like it's not to say, oh okay, cool, somebody should do something about it and then ignore it. It's like no, you're in a situation, the responsibility is going to fall on you. So you're in a situation, the responsibility is going to fall on you, go ahead and handle the business right and if somebody else can handle it, great, go recruit other people who have the same, similar mindset. So I think the word I came to really appreciate is high agency people.
Speaker 2:So, people who don't just wait and say, okay, cool, somebody should do that. They just take action, they move, they handle the business and they keep it pushing.
Speaker 1:So that's the mindset they move they handle the business and they keep them, they keep it pushing, you know. So that's, that's the mindset. No, I, I like that because it just reminded me of, you know, secondary school too, because I think, yeah, I in secondary school was interesting. I had, you know, I was interested in running for one of the positions because I was like, oh, you know, if there's something that can be done, I want to be a part of impact.
Speaker 2:But, like you, said at the time I was not looking for responsibility, so I was.
Speaker 1:I was trying to check responsibility, because I was like, okay, now people are people looking up to me needing this, you know. And so I decided not to run. But then, when I graduated and I started college and I came here and I started college, part of me was like I felt like there was more I could have done, and it was almost like I saw different things happening around me and I felt like there were things I could have done but I wasn't a part of it. I wasn't. You know, I've always viewed it as okay. There is no opportunity that I will let pass me by if there's an opportunity for me to make change in whatever way. So even if I'm like I doubt myself in the approach or whatever I'm trying to do, I'm like, okay, I'll put myself out there, let me fail and fail forward, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fail and fail forward, you know, um, yeah, so I think I think just seeing and understanding, like, that perspective, that mindset that you're having with high agency as opposed as, as it relates to solving problems is, is key. Yeah, um, I'm thinking about partnerships, you know, because the last phase of afropolitan um, I believe, is, you know, like you mentioned, foundation, government partnerships, things like that. Um, how do you see that playing out, especially when you're like okay, this is something I'm trying to build, an internet country, you know, but there are actual, like physical countries that exist where infrastructure for, for supporting this may not be as strong? Um, yeah, so two questions how do you see that playing out? And then the second question is with like, do you see the physical aspect of like, the like the physical country is actually improving? Let me use nigeria as an example like, do you see that improving? Basically, do you have, do you, do you have hope for it?
Speaker 2:yeah, so there are two, so let me answer the first one. So partnerships are very important to what we're trying to achieve, right? Yes, there's no way you're going to achieve it without having allies or having partners. Right, I think, even when we're recruiting people to join our network, we're also recruiting those allies to join our network. So, if you're a possible prime minister, if you're a possible banking chief, if you're a possible this, what we're saying to you is you have a community of people you can draw talent from you, can draw information from you, can draw experiences from you, can draw capital from right. And so when we approach any of these partners, it's to say to ourselves like hey, our job is to build one of the strongest networks globally, where anyone would love to partner with us. Right, that's number one.
Speaker 2:Number two is I remember my friend he's the CEO of this company called Rise West, right, and he said to me I remember reading his deck when he was first raising for his company, and he said to me like yo, the Naira is not going anywhere, so that if you're in Nigeria today, you need to go figure out how to move your savings from the Naira and your InvestFest to dollar, denominated like currencies.
Speaker 2:I remember saying to him like wait, so are you saying that like naira has no hope? Like how can, how can that be your thesis? Like it's like how can no hope be your thesis? And he was like bro, I'm telling you and this is like maybe, like what seven years ago now, six years ago, right, where you're still talking about I imagine this is maybe when wario so was maybe just maybe 2002 office, even a year into office or so, and I remember just saying like how can somebody just say that a country has just is not gonna make it like how is that a possibility? Compared then to now, if you listen to what you said then and move your investments over this game, we'll not be playing this game. So the reason why I'm giving that analogy is if Nigeria improves and gets better, right, if all African countries improve and get better, we're not having a conversation about Afropaulton. It just reminds me of when we were raising for Afropaulton and they would say to us how come no other people have done this? And the people who were asking us these questions were mostly, maybe, white people.
Speaker 2:And I would say imagine I was a citizen of Switzerland. You were both citizens of Switzerland. And I come up to you, noble, and I say, hey, noble and bro, we need to start a new country. I'm like why, what's wrong with this one? Yeah, what's so wrong with this one that we can all fix things that we need to start a whole new one? Most Africans, most black people know when you tell them we need a new country, we need a new paradigm shift, they know because we've never really even had a foundation. There's literally not one black modern state today you can go to and be like man. This is lit, like everything else, this is jupat like we don't have to worry about.
Speaker 2:We don't have one, and the question is why? So for me, what we're really proposing here is how do we hedge our bets? So, going back to high agency, we can stay here, we can act like one day it'll go better, or we can say let's go build something that competes against this other thing. So maybe at worst it will force this other thing to get its act together and, for our best, or at worst, if it doesn't get its act together, we move over to this other thing. That's just what it is right. So for me, it was, instead of acting and waiting around and hoping that things would change is to say no, these people need competition. Countries, nation states need competition, similar to how businesses have competition. If they're, if they have competition and they realize like, hey, people are opting out to opt in, that's a whole different conversation.
Speaker 2:And because it's an internet country, that your idea of this whole thing is to say, okay, cool, let's really break it down into small pieces. Right, I'm not saying I'm a citizen of Afropaulta. What does that mean? I need an ID card, I need something right, so that ID card identifies me as a citizen. Okay, I'm able to make payments or goods and services through Afropaulta's ecosystem. What does that look like? You can integrate with local partners. You can integrate with international partners, right? So you're not providing services to these people? And what are those services? You don't have to build all the services yourself. You could partner with service providers.
Speaker 2:But the idea is you are curating right, and making sure that it's streamlined for your people and making sure the trade is right on top. That's number two. So then number three. You're now saying okay, cool, we also go into the physical land space, so that when you walk into a place, you know that you're among your people. It's not broken down by race, it's not broken down by tribe, it's not broken down by religion, it's just broken down by you can sit here, you can meet people. You're like these are my people. We see the world the same, we want the same things, we want to improve. That's it.
Speaker 2:So for me, it's one of those things where it doesn't then involve you having to necessarily go outside to protest like, get shot, because what you're doing is never getting the power of the internet, right? If they want to shut you down, they have to shut down most of the incident anyway, right? So, like when they try to shut down twitter. In nigeria, most people hopped onto vpn right. So the idea is if governments would rather spend more time working to shut you down than working to improve. That's a lot of work, and especially because you're distributed across borders. The idea is this is what's not possible for you to do today, whereas maybe 20 or 30 years ago it might not have even been something that was worth considering.
Speaker 1:The idea of competition, like how do you, let's say, you put Internet Country you know on one side and then Nigeria on one side, like, how do you see that? Like basically competing with, let's say, the country and actually pushing it to get better, whereas, like now, it's forcing you to actually get your acts together.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So let's talk about some examples. Right? Like we have a visa and arrival thing where we handle for Nigeria, right? So when our members come to us, they're like, hey, we want a visa and arrival to Nigeria, we help facilitate that for them, whereas when it goes through the Nigerian embassy to go get that same visa, you know the stories. Same thing goes for the passports, right? So there's some people who have not been able to renew their Nigerian passport and they have basically been stuck because the government itself is ill-equipped to fulfill these things. Like my wife literally had to wait almost three, four years to get her new passport, nigerian passport. She finally got one literally just two months ago.
Speaker 2:So why are these things acceptable? So you start to look at like, okay, what are the government services where government is so terrible at where? If somebody just comes and says and says, look, I will 50x your experience just by being competent, you don't even need ac, just competence, which is like I'll say to you, it's gonna be available in two weeks, you can go to sleep, it's gonna be available in one week so you can go to sleep. The bar is so low like you're not even having to race. This isn't like gold. Most Nigerians today will settle for bronze. Most Nigerians today will settle for silver. They're not even looking for gold. We don't have bronze, we don't have silver. We're not even qualified for the race. Look, for example, now I think there's a lady who they failed to enter in for the 100 meters final.
Speaker 1:I saw that yeah Like how?
Speaker 2:how do you? That is? That is such a basic thing. But there's not going to be any accountability, nobody's going to get fired, nobody's going to be held to tax. And he did this two olympics in a row, right? So when you say competition here, we're not. This is not a. This is not. It's it. The easy competition is doing the wrong work. The, the, the bar is in the bottom of the ocean. If I can tell you that we're going to bring you to the surface of the ocean.
Speaker 2:Whatever service it is, we can do it better because we have competent, talented people who are going to be executing. That's just the way it is, whether it's with a technology stack, whether it's with a governance stack, whether it's even a services stack, right? Hey, we've organized this. We've said, okay, I'll give you an example, maybe you can put it in the show notes. Like we're building out our ecosystem today, where Afropolitan is going to see that. So, okay, these are the things that we can offer within our ecosystem. We can do Afropolitan rentals. We can have an Afropolitan father's group. We can have the legacy which is our social dating. Yeah, right, we can have a P2P exchange. These are like four or five different verticals that we have created in the community where you're like, oh, this is something that can work. We also have our newsletter that's going out to people about 20,000 people globally. Right, we have, um, what do you call Afro pass app?
Speaker 2:I was telling you about that, it's literally powered experiences both in the us and also across africa and also in london. So for us, these are like stepping steps where, again, you're showing competence in terms of execution. Right, it's not always going to be perfect, but the idea, going back to what I said, can you reflect and then choose? It wasn't. It wasn't saying, hey, we're going to build a perfect union. It's to say no, no, no, I make a mistake, we can make a new ton and then we can restack Not, oh, we make a mistake, we just live with it for generations. Why Like? Why is that acceptable? So I think, again, that's just a different mindset. Yeah, we're what we're building.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good. I think one of the things you touched touched on was visa arrival thing. I want to. I want to learn more about that. Like what's, what's that process like for, let's say, someone who who needs one? Like what, how would they go about requesting that through afropolitan?
Speaker 2:as a member. What sense can we come and say this?
Speaker 1:thing. Uh, yeah, you said something about the visa arrival.
Speaker 2:I wasn't exactly sure so basically, so okay, so basically they just they just reach out to us. Like told, you also have a whatsapp group of about 2 000 people and we also have a whatsapp channel. So basically it's either reach out to us via email or via contact us. Most of our folks reach out to us via our whatsapp group but it would say, hey, uh, afropolitan members, so we have team members. Obviously, like I'm looking for a reason to rival to any of these four countries, we get on an email and we help facilitate that for them.
Speaker 1:So it's more like a concert type service oh, okay, okay, okay, yeah, um, and then another thing that I want to touch on, which is is more recent and and I saw I was like, yes, I, I love this is you know you talked about capital, so afropolitan ventures, um, so, in terms of investing in the fund, is that, is that I'm guessing that's something that would be limited to afropolitan members, or is it open to?
Speaker 2:yeah, so so no, no, it's open, but you also have to be vetted, right so? One thing I've come to really appreciate is solving for alignment, like it's so key, like the when we first started. I'll tell you, one of the mistakes I made and sometimes you're too close to the vision is that, like you're, like yo, our, our mission is so noble that's the way you did that.
Speaker 1:Who should, who should, who should, all right who should, who should?
Speaker 2:who would have an issue with this? Who would have an issue with it? I remember going back to the scarcity thing, waking up one day to see that we're getting dragged on twitter and I was like wait, there's a disconnect here, like maybe the messaging is off or something. But then you realize like sometimes scarcity just makes people like nigerians or africans have been scammed for so long that, like when somebody comes around and says, hey, this is what I was doing, like okay, we're scammed. This one, right. I mean, you're saying internet country. They're saying this one, I bet which one be this one. But I'm like, bro, you've literally wrapped your head around an internet only bank. You'll wrap your head around internet only companies, with facts on the twitter that you're using to drag people. It's an instant only company.
Speaker 2:What exactly is the biggest leap from that to internet country? What we're just saying is that your services are. Like most of us don't realize that we spend almost 70 percent of our time online anyway. So when you're on your phone, you're online. So most of our work from a lot of us is online. So you're already on the internet more than you are off the internet in real life. So what we're saying is like now, your services can be replicated at a faster scale through this, and part of those services include your membership in either a nation state or a network state, because today, that it would take four years to renew a passport in a sovereign country in 2024 is unacceptable, it's just unacceptable. So but for.
Speaker 2:But in Nigeria, in countries in Africa, we have been forced to have the nation state in name only, with none of the benefits, right? So the reason the nation states were created in the first place was so you could have legitimacy, right. But they have a duty, right. They have a duty of competence, and they lose that, um, they lose that when you're not able to fulfill that duty. But for the rest of us, we've been able to, we're supposed to accept it as, as status quo, and to me, what I'm saying is that's unacceptable.
Speaker 1:That's basically what we're arguing here, okay, and so basically, as someone who wants to contribute to this fund, you have to be vetted.
Speaker 2:So you have to be vetted and so it's more of a syndicate. So then we listen to proposals by founders who are looking to get investment, and then we proceed from there, okay, basically, and it's live now right. Yeah. Yeah, it's live right now, so I just sent you on WhatsApp our ecosystem page on our website, so when folks want to really tap into these different verticals, they can reach out within each of those verticals, okay.
Speaker 1:And then I'm thinking about because there are lots of opportunities here for people to just get plugged in and contribute to this ecosystem. I'm thinking about some challenges. I think we've touched on maybe one or two like cynicism, people feeling like, ah, which one is this scam, is this one? But if you were to pick one as the main challenge, like what would you say is the biggest challenge to people being involved in this ecosystem?
Speaker 2:um, we don't really we've lost. We have a history of being builders as africans. Obviously, we've built the pyramids. We have our artwork, like you know, they've built things, but over the years, we've lost that, like muscle memory, and I'm talking about collectively, as a group, right, some can even argue that, like, the US, has lost that as well.
Speaker 2:So, if you really want to go to where the builders, people, are actually building every day, you probably look at China, you probably look at Vietnam, you can even look at Singapore, right, and so sometimes, when people join this, this is going to be a hard journey, right. And so sometimes, when people join this, this is going to be a hard journey, right. There's no way to sugarcoat it, right. It's like a children of Israel out of Egypt scenario. It could be 40 years or 40 nights in the desert, right, but there has to be a commitment, a single-handed commitment to saying, hey, we are going to last the distance and we're going to build hard things. We're going to do hard things together, right, and so, for me, it's one of those things where you need to get people who are going to be fine with the pain that this is going to require, the tenacity, the perseverance and also be able to be locked in.
Speaker 2:Regardless of all of that and sometimes as africans we're not used to doing long-term infrastructure building projects we're usually used to doing long-term infrastructure building projects we're usually used to being the beneficiaries of it, where it's like somebody has come to build our train, somebody has come to build our desk we need to be able to aggregate a community of builders, of people who are willing to create with their hands from the ground up, leverage whatever tools that they need to do to access that. That's number one. Number two I think the vision is also so big that focus is also going to be very important. So how do you make sure that you're executing very well on one thing and after you have done that, then you can say okay, cool, this has now been done in a very repeatable format, then move on to the next thing.
Speaker 2:And I think part of that is again the challenge that I put on myself is it's my job to recruit the best of the best people, like in every vertical. So it's not my, it's not our job as staff of balton um, founders of that for balton, like stewards, to build every service. It's just to say to ourselves go get with the best people right, partner with them and then help you build your ecosystem as you feel but and then create a win-win situation. So governments sometimes have private publicpublic partnerships. That's basically the same sort of approach we have to have where it's like make sure you've vetted the right people, make sure that they're doing diligent work, then build something that actually has a benefit to your community as you grow.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that, Brother. Thank you.
Speaker 2:I know we're close to time oh, thank you so much last time but I have like a few last questions.
Speaker 1:Um, this one is very important, I mean. Okay, so what's? What's something you wish most people knew about you and the work that you do?
Speaker 2:that I I don't see myself doing anything else, if that makes sense. Like I, like this work is something that is deeper than just a job for me, it's like my life purpose, like I, I really want to see this be accomplished. And sometimes, like there's a fear, right, like this, you don't know, like, are you bug? Are you being delusional? But sometimes you have to do something, even do it while scared, right, that's number one.
Speaker 2:Number two, I think like the vision is so big that sometimes I know it could overwhelm certain people because it's like wait, are we really trying to go do this?
Speaker 2:But I'm like we really need to get back to a time where, like the mlks of the world, the mock-up actions of the world, the government criminals of the world, that was a time where we were firing on cylinders and I know a lot of history, things happened. But it just feels like now we shy away from the hard and we want to be known for all the other stuff aside from doing hard things. And don't get me wrong, it's not to say all these other things are not important, but it's to say art, culture, entertainment, all those things are also great, but we also have to also do hard things in tangent right, so it doesn't have to be either or, and that we are also capable of doing those things, whether it's hard sciences or building infrastructure or doing things and doing it well Right. So that's that's. That's what I would say Like, this is life purpose for me. I don't see myself like leaving this to go work at Facebook or something.
Speaker 1:So that's just the context. Yeah, I like that, the commitment, the commitment. And then, when you think about Afropolitan in the next 10 years, what phase of the project do you see it being in?
Speaker 2:I think honestly when I think about because you learn so much when you're building community and building a global community if you can add value to people's lives right.
Speaker 2:While still maintaining a North Star of this is what your vision is. But you first also have to be able to add value. You can align more people together, Right? So I think for us it's like, the more I think about it, the more it's like you have to unlock a way for you to be able to put money in people's pockets. Whatever way you have to figure it out. How can you facilitate an economic opportunity, for they're much more willing to now say I'm eating right, I'm not hungry.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's talk philosophy and worldview yeah but if you're talking about philosophy and worldview and people have not eaten, again, going back to that scarcity thing, nobody wants to hear your manifesto. Feed them first, like the black man who used to have breakfast uh, what do you call? Uh, uh, uh, things back in the day, right. So for us it's like feed them in whatever way, make sure they have eating first, and then let's all start talking about, bro, what is the world and what type of world do we want to live in? Because then they have the capacity to actually think about it, versus when you're not eating. Why are you talking to me about philosophy or what the world has to offer like? My most immediate concern is have I, have I been able to feed myself?
Speaker 1:yeah, the primary need. Like is let me the primary needs first and then, okay, he's first, yeah, and then you. I know you shared the um uh link to me in the in through what's up. But for our audience, like where can they find, yeah, you know, if they want to be a part of this network? Like what does that look like for them? What can they do?
Speaker 2:so they can learn more at afropultonio. I think the best thing to do is to just subscribe to our newsletter. We send out a weekly newsletter, so if they go to afropultonio they can just sign up right there, right, and then, um, we then feel, if you folks want to also join our whatsapp channel, they can do that as well. So that's another thing that we can. We can also I'll send those links to you as well okay, okay, definitely, I'll put that in the show notes, okay thank you brother.
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