Beyond Solutions: Designing Technology Around People with Dr. David Adepoju

What does it really take to build solutions that matter?

In this episode, Oluwaseun David Adepoju shares how technology, research, and public policy can come together to solve real-world problems. This conversation is a thoughtful look at what it takes to create technology that serves people, build organizations with purpose, and lead innovation that creates lasting impact.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

When I listen to some motivational speakers that talk about people should save more and invest more, my question is, what do you save and invest? So I think the very foundation of that conversation should be what skills do you have that will generate more income for you? We have a lot of young people today building things uh that the end users are not aware they are building, or the end users are not eventually going to need it. So it's possible for you to discover the problem and you jump the understanding to building the solution. If you jump it, you're still going to run into issues. So discover it, understand it, create it, and then um you know test it out or implement it. Social media has legitimized emptiness, you know, and it does it has also amplified performative impact. But the truth is that social media has come to stay. Yes. It is the closest medium of communication and connection in the society today.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:02

We need to find a way for people who are actually doing the work to also use those mediums, right? Yes, you would say they are busy, they don't have time to talk about what they are doing, but there is power in storytelling.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Dr. David Adepoju is a tech policy researcher, innovation leader, and one of Africa's leading voices on the relationship between technology and society. As a managing partner at Citi Hub and the head of the Citi Hub Design Lab, he leads initiatives exploring how design, technology, and policy can address some of the continent's most complex challenges, spending governance, public services, healthcare, and economic development. His journey has taken him from the University of Ibadong to South Korea and New Zealand through research and innovation ecosystems across Africa and into classrooms at the African Leadership University, where he helped mentor a new generation of African innovators and entrepreneurs. At the center of his work is a simple but urgent question. How can Africa harness emerging technologies on its own terms? Through research, entrepreneurship, and public policy, David continues to explore what it takes to build a future that is both technologically advanced and yet still deeply human. This is Beyond Visible with Dr. David.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Thank you, David, for coming in. That's my pleasure. Thank you. I just want to know like what are you busy with right now? Because you're always busy with every single time I've you know reached out to you or had a conversation. There's always something in the works. So I just want to know, like, what are you very busy with right now?

SPEAKER_05 2:35

Um a lot of um innovation partnership work uh for the communities that we serve, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also a lot of uh business development. So when you reach out to me and I'm busy, that's what I'm kind of busy doing these days.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Okay, that's nice. Um and some people know you through academia, some other people know you through the impact work that you're doing, and some people also know you for the I think beyond the work you do for the CC Hub, the work that you've done in Nigeria, and also the work you've done in blockchain, there's so much that you've been a part of. Um so I I think it brings it brings the question like was it intentional for you to move through this to through all of this, uh, or was this something you just happened and then you saw an opportunity and jumped into it?

SPEAKER_05 3:27

I think there's a thread across all the things I've done. Uh, from when I was doing technology advocacy in Nigeria via Tech Mid Africa to um my university professor role, to um, you know, working in practical innovation and technology ecosystem. The thread is uh thought leadership. Um somebody that really loves knowledge. And when you look at all the work I've done, it's either using the power of evidence and insight to drive an agenda or to advocate for something or to share um some form of knowledge with the community. So the thread across all I've done is uh thought leadership.

SPEAKER_04 4:08

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_05 4:09

Uh and it's not um a case of jumping from one opportunity to the next opportunity. I think it's uh when you look at innovation generally, there's a knowledge economy and the market economy. And I think I've I've been able to play on both sides from the knowledge economy to the market economy. Okay. Thought leadership is the foundation or the thread that connects all that I've done.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

I see. Yeah. So now like we know the basis of it. I just want to talk about your time because uh our first encounter was when you were a facilitator at ALU and you became like the head of department at some point. And from there you transitioned to to working in in impact today. I just want to uh just maybe get a little insight on what your biggest takeaways were uh from the time you went to academia and how that has informed the rest of the work you're doing at the moment.

SPEAKER_05 5:02

Yeah, so uh it's to connect to what I said before top leadership. When I was in the academia, I was teaching research. Yes, yes, yes. You remember very I was teaching research. I was also doing a lot of research ethics work at African Leadership University, right? Yeah also supporting students in their ventures and supervising capstones.

SPEAKER_06 5:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:21

Um, and when I transitioned out of uh the academia, I joined CC of as head of research.

SPEAKER_06 5:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 5:28

So you can see the thread, yeah, right? Um, so research is um very dear to me, and the way we've done research in the academia sometimes makes people feel research should be hard or research should be boring, right? Which I don't believe it is. It is the uh the ability to uh bring out evidence, you know, and the what we live today. I'm a critical problem solver. If you ask me to do something, I'll ask you to go bring data.

SPEAKER_06 5:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 5:54

Because if you don't bring data, we don't we are not sure of what we are doing. We can't we don't have evidence to back it up, which means we might lose investment, we might waste time, and we might waste a lot of resources because we are riding on uh on assumption for what we want to do. So for me, I think um the transition, uh the some of the takeaways um is that in the academia, maybe my the culmination of my work will go into a journal article. Yes, right? And outside of the practical knowledge I share with students in the class, but in um in the impact and social impact space, I can see the, I can almost see the immediate um you know outcome of what I'm working on immediately. Yeah. So if I'm sharing an evidence for something, for a programmatic expression, for um maybe an agenda setting for an investment, the evidence I'm sharing is being used almost immediately. And I can see in less than six months, yeah, the work of evidence I've done is being used and it's you know resulting into program disruption, to uh setting up uh uh an investment agenda, or it's helping us set up a whole new process in the innovation space. So those are the takeaways in terms of the difference between what I used to do in the academia and what I do now. In the academia, there's a medium where the combination of my work goes to, and you need extra effort for you to go maybe find it out. Yeah, but today um I'm able to share it with the practical innovation ecosystem and they can use it almost immediately.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Okay. And I know that some of the work the CC Hub does is is usually helping organizations, probably mostly the ones uh at a much bigger scale to use research to to drive that innovation. And coming from research and uh now in this full-scale impact, you you manage the design lab in in Kigali. Just Kigali or also in Nairobi?

SPEAKER_05 7:53

So I'm a managing partner. My portfolio uh covers um beyond Kigali. So the design lab is just one of the portfolios. Portfolio work, okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

So and I think CC Hub is responsible for a lot of you know um research work and also a lot of innovation that's been uh driven through the continent. Yeah. I want to I want to see, I wanna like if you could talk, speak to like uh how your background and research informs the way you think about innovation, especially in technology, with the work that you guys do and the startups that you work with and the you know communities that you work with, how what what what are you taking from your time in research and how is that you know influencing what you do?

SPEAKER_05 8:33

Yeah, one of my professors used to say something that I still use to today. Um, he usually says, we are not students of definition, but we're rather students of problems. Okay. Um, if we limit uh things to just the definition of them, we might not appreciate the depth of those things. Yeah. But if we see things or we observe our world or our environment as a place where there are so many things that are broken that we need to fix, then we'll become students of problems.

SPEAKER_06 9:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 9:01

And then when we become students of problems, we're going to become students of research.

SPEAKER_06 9:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 9:06

When we become students of research, we're going to become students of outcomes. Okay. Right. Um, and outcomes, you know, will be driven by evidence, right? So um the work that we do at CCOB all over the continent, the underlying um, you know, framework is human-centered design.

SPEAKER_06 9:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 9:26

We have a lot of young people today building things uh that the end users are not aware they are building, or the end users are not eventually going to need it, right? So imagine you're building an uh an agrictech solution, you've attended a conference, they've mentioned all kinds of problems that farmers face on the continent. And you are technologically excited and you have the skills to code a solution, a technological solution. And you go back to your room in Lake in Lagos and you code it out, and then you've built the solution for a problem you've not validated, right? Somebody has just told you about a problem. You've not gonna validate it yourself, you've not gonna speak to farmers. Or you know, and when you talk about challenges in different sectors, when you mention a challenge, there are subdomains of those uh of that particular challenge that if you dig deeper, you might just solve for a subdomain rather than do an umbrella um you know solution, right?

SPEAKER_06 10:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 10:25

So the work that we do, the underlying uh like framework is human centered design. Yes, which means you need to discover, first of all, what the problem is, you need to understand what the problem is. You know you can discover a problem, but you don't understand the problem. Yes. So it's possible for you to discover the problem and you jump the understanding to building the solution. If you jump it, you are still going to run into issues. Yeah. So discover it, understand it, create it, and then um, you know, test it out or implement it. That's supposed to be the flow. And that is why in all the incubation programs, uh, acceleration programs, venture studio, capacity building programs uh that we do everything, you know, points back to human-centered design. The people who are supposed to use those things uh must be engaged, they must validate it, and you must align it with their um you know ambitions. If not, you are going to waste resources, yeah, you're going to waste everybody's time, and you're going to um labor somewhat in vain if you if you don't do that. So, and that is what we mean by evidence and research at CCOP. It's not just about doing literature review or you know, citing what has already been already been done. Yeah, we want to do problem statements. You have told us what the issues are, but we want to actually do the research to understand, to articulate our own problem statement. Yes. Once we have our problem statement, it's easier for those who are going to solve the problem to know the angle they are solving from. But if we are too generic and there are problems everywhere, believe me. There are if you want to solve um two problems per day, you'll find them, right?

SPEAKER_04 11:59

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 12:00

But are you solving the right problem or are you solving the problem right?

SPEAKER_04 12:03

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_05 12:04

You know, they are two different things.

SPEAKER_04 12:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 12:06

So it's very important for you to have to be able to articulate your problem statement, have the evidence that the problem exists, and understand what has been done about that problem before so that you are not reinventing the wheel. Yeah. And then you must also engage either you call them users, customers, end users, or last mile people that will engage your product, yeah, for you to invite them into sprint and carry them along, right? And that is the foundation of what we mean by social impact and building technologies uh for um the use of the society in such a way that it leads to economic prosperity. Because if without economic prosperity, what you are doing in innovation is just a waste.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Because when people are hungry, they don't care. And also, I think I'm glad that you've taken time to explain it because you can assess the foundation for the majority of what we're going to talk about today. Yeah. And obviously, everybody at CC Hub understands what you're saying. And when you interact with your colleagues or people in the same space, they get what you're you're talking about. When you zoom it out to the larger society, right? What are what is the thing that you've seen? Because usually you said some problems we can identify them. This is usually what most politicians do. They can identify, but we can't really understand. When you see people like Trump, you know, tell you that they can fix very big problems overnight. And now you start to question like, does it is he really, does he really know what he's talking about? Right. So I want to kind of hear from your perspective what are some misconceptions, problem solvers in a larger societal context. Uh, people who are actually in positions of power who make decisions that affect you and I, what do you think that they're getting wrong about approaching problems and you know, also kind of in the way that they're approaching the solutions? Like what are they getting wrong?

SPEAKER_05 13:51

When I when I speak to innovators or people in our community about problem solving, I usually say we have three types of problem solvers. We have the intuitive problem solvers, those are the people that um you know they use their intuition to solve problems. They are the set of people that would say, I did this like this two years ago, it worked. So this present situation should also be the same. Uh they are borderline spiritual. They, you know, you know, they just I just know that I know that this is what I'm supposed to do. Uh it doesn't mean that it works all the time for them, but they've um experienced, used, apply their intuition over and over again, and it seems to have worked for them. So those those are the first classification of people. Second classification are the um inconsistent problem solvers. They are the ones that they have option A, B, C, D, to Z. If something does not work now, they move on to the next alternative. If B doesn't work, they move on to C. They are the set of people that deal with artbreak uh very easily, uh, you know, because they can easily move on to the next thing that is happening. Uh for them, uh, they don't all their eggs are not in one basket. Um, they'll approach it this way. If it doesn't work, they switch. If it doesn't work, they switch. They are the sometimes you call them serial entrepreneurs.

SPEAKER_06 15:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 15:10

Uh, they've solved the problem in education, it doesn't work, they move to healthcare, you know, uh, which doesn't mean sometimes it's the good way to go, but they've by the mastery of the type of problem solver they are, you know, they will by the time they get to maybe option F, they will eat the nail on the head eventually, right? They will stumble on that thing eventually. And the third classification are the critical problem solvers. These are the people that um you have talk to them about what the problem is, but you must bring data to convince them. You know, they will not make any move until they are super sure. They are the people that ask you for blueprints. Um, how are you thinking about it? What is the end goal? They they question everything, right? Uh, they don't take things at face value, right? And I think I have I share a little bit of that as a problem solver. You can be one or both or the three at the same time. Yeah, so when you look at the world uh in those three buckets of type of problem solvers, the um intuitive problem solvers will talk big game when it comes to a problem, you know. Um you know, the intuitive problem solvers will talk big game because they by their intuition, they have the confidence that I've done it like this before in business. Yeah, I can do it like this in politics.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 16:24

Or I've done it like this in politics, I want to do it like this in business. Yeah, so you know, and it doesn't work like that, it doesn't, and that's why um when you look at the three buckets, the intuitive problem solver seems to fail more compared to the other two, right? Yeah, and these are very established frameworks, so people have different names for these three buckets I've just described. Yeah, so um, and that describes what you're saying around somebody that's you know, maybe politicians, or you're making a campaign to be the um the next position holder for a constituency, and you want to, and you've and you we are very good in Africa with problem articulation. Yeah, we know how to articulate problems. I give it to us. If you attend our seminars, our workshops, yeah, the title alone already articulates what the problem is. But the issue is that we're coming out of those conversations with as many solutions as possible, right? So uh so intuitive problem solvers are the people that have the like the top level confidence to say they can solve a problem that should take 10 years to solve in six months, right? It is by the mastery of their intuition, which is not always the truth sometimes. Um, the inconsistent problem solvers, they um they are the set of people that will you know um on the promise, but they can eventually overdeliver, right? Because they understand the boundaries of what they want to do, that it's not impossible that it will fail. It's not also impossible that it will work, right? So they um they know the boundaries of um problem solving and they also acknowledge the weaknesses that comes with trying to solve a problem. Yeah, it's it happens in business. You've you know even thought about a model that this is the model that will work and it wouldn't work. And the one that you are just trying to try out is the one that will blow out, right? So it happens from time to time, right? So I would say problem solving in the society uh is deter is um determined by the type of problem solver that you are, the record of successes you've recorded in the past trying to solve a number of problems. Yeah, um they would say experience is the best teacher, but experience can also aspire. Yeah, you know, I've never read that. Yeah, yeah, and experience can expire.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

But then you've you've already mastered the the problems that could come up. Like how would that ever leave you?

SPEAKER_05 18:49

So if you were so let's imagine that you were uh an area photographer, you get on the on the chopper on the plane to take pictures, right? Now we have drones. Yeah, you have experience and mastery of sitting on the edge of a chopper to take good photographs, but you can you no longer but that experience when you are flying a drone, it's almost immaterial because now you are more or less like standing on the ground and you know shooting that device into the air now. So you're not carrying that big camera and looking down. Now you are here looking up.

SPEAKER_07 19:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 19:27

So that experience is expired. Even though it's um there's a it's the same process or the same outcome. You want to capture images and footage, right? But the truth is that that experience of sitting on the chopper has expired for you. So if you think you can fly a drone because you used to sit on the chopper without learning how to fly a drone, you always have to obviously reinvent yourself. Right.

SPEAKER_06 19:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:52

And the reason why I also believe some experience can expire is that the rate at which technology is evolving is geometric now. Uh and that's why, you know, maybe yesterday me and uh maybe we were having a conversation on what we need to do about AI in the next 48 hours. And we wake up in the next 48 hours and there's a new announcement, there's a new model, there's a better and the creators are not helping. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

So at the end of the day, experience can expire.

SPEAKER_05 20:19

Okay. Uh, some experience can expire.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

It's the first time I've heard that, but it's really interesting. And and just on that, I wanted I've always wanted to ask um a human-centered designer this question. Most of the uh the reservation people have about going via the human-centered design process is how slow it can be sometimes. Because you start off trying to understand, you could it could take you yeah like months, yeah. And sometimes you can even start implementing and realize that you actually poorly define the problem, and then you go back. It's not like a straightforward process. You just it's it's like you can come back from the end to the beginning, sure. But then when you look at companies like Google, um, you know, or companies like Meta who are able to solve problems at a scale at a very large scale and at this at a fast rate as well. And most times those solutions are very intuitive, and like you you wonder like, how do you do this for a billion people? I've always wanted to wonder like, what do what do they know that those of those of us who just have a suffrage level of problem solving do not know? And which helps them actually do these things at scale. Also for countries who figured out uh a way to tackle like big, big problems like hunger and all of that. What do they know about solving problems quickly that we don't know?

SPEAKER_05 21:33

I kind of think you have the answer. They are sitting on a lot of data. Okay, also it's data. So if I want to solve a problem uh in Kigale, for example, yeah, I need to go on the field to collect that data. I need to have the conversations with people.

SPEAKER_06 21:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 21:46

Right? Uh, but big techs, you use more than maybe five products that they already have.

SPEAKER_06 21:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 21:52

Um, on your phone, on your computer, or even you are you interact with a particular web page that belongs to them and you. Interact and you know have access to the service and/or a product. The truth is that the rate at which they can innovate or the speed at which they can innovate will be different from me. That I'm just in Kigali trying to solve a problem for maybe traffic, or I want to solve a problem for dairy farmers, for example. I need to go speak to people. I don't have dairy farmers using a product I already have. But Google wants to solve a problem. They already have data. And you, you know, when you have data, you know, you are sitting on a gem that you can make a new product decision in less than 10 minutes, just looking at a dashboard, or just looking at a behavioral pattern, or just looking at um, you know, some form of um financial behavior data. You know, so if I want to ship a new product to a particular location, I literally have data as a big tech of people from that region, how they spend money to purchase a product, or maybe they purchase, they usually subscribe to the cheapest classification of our product. So I know what when I'm building a new product for them, I need to optimize for that. So when you have all that, that's why it feels like the product they are launching seems like it's very intuitive and they are not doing analysis paralysis, right? Where you are just analyzing and analyzing because they are sitting on a lot of data.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

I see.

SPEAKER_05 23:20

And you can launch new products when you have data, right? So I think that's the difference, you know. All right. So human-centered design um does not necessarily waste time.

SPEAKER_06 23:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 23:30

Um, because even the one of the mindsets of human-centered design is iterate as quickly as possible.

SPEAKER_06 23:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 23:36

You know, iterate as quickly as possible. If you need to change something, change it as quickly as possible. Because in the current digital economy, it's not about um how novel your idea is, it's about how fast and quick you can implement it. And that's why when somebody comes to you now, they want to share the idea with you and they're giving you an NDA. I don't think you know, because that's when you are thinking about there are more than two million people thinking about the same. And they're also like, and everybody's looking for the implementation energy or the support or the um ecosystem that they can quickly work with to launch that product or to work on that idea. So uh HCD, um, one of the mindset is be quick as uh as you know, as you be as quick as possible when you want to iterate. But I agree with you that sometimes you've articulated the problem, you know, you can articulate the problem properly and you get on the field to solve the problem, but new societal changes affect the problem that you need to go back as well. And that's why uh in human-centered design, there's also the opportunity of yeah, um, ethical pivot quickly as as much as possible. Yeah, but you need all the uh information to be correct, yeah. And even though you are uh you know pivoting quickly, you still need to get the your foundational brief correctly.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Do you do you does the City Hub actually consult with governments? Like, do you provide your services? Like let's say if they wanted to solve something in health or like hunger or um I don't know, sexual reproduction. Yeah, do you do you consult uh with government institutions or that?

SPEAKER_05 25:10

Yes, yes. Um, so yeah, government and private. Yeah, because evidence it needs to be applied at all um at all the stages of innovation, right? Uh so when you think and at CCOB, we focus on three main sectors education, healthcare, and the creative industry. Yes, right? And we have other levers like uh technology and society, where we do a lot of digital security and civic resilience um you know work as well. Uh we have frontier technologies, the application of artificial intelligence to um you know the sectors in which we work, and also our artificial intelligence can deliver um very unique solutions to societal issues, like things that are broken in the society across board, right? Yeah, so HCD is something we offer uh as either we help you think through uh your problem, yeah, whether you're private or government, where we sit down with the stakeholders, um, either through a quadruple elixir or triple elixir approach where we bring the industry, government, and the academia together, or we bring um government, industry, academia, and the end users also together, you know, because it's super important for sometimes to have the end users in the room with the other stakeholders. Yeah, so we do that. Um, so it's either you commission us to do it as a research, yeah, or we sit down with you to help you think through it, maybe to with your leadership team or the any level of your organization that you want us to work with, or you have a community in mind, we go to that community to do that engagement. Okay, or you want uh maybe your uh senior leaders to be more human-centered in their decision making. We go through, you know, it's whether you want it for two weeks or three weeks or six weeks, we go through the framework one by one for you to really understand how to we want you to be a default, we don't want it to be ad knowledge. We want you to, by the end of the session, you're going to have a default position about thinking about problems and thinking about people first. Yes, yes, people putting people at the center of whatever you're being. Technology is an enabler and it enables something for a particular sect of people. Yeah. So when you think about it that way, you won't build in limbo.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

For sure. Yeah. And I think for me, the reason I'm very curious about that is because I actually did a little um, I don't know, I don't I don't want to call this study because it was very intentional. Um, I'm problem solving. And I actually realized that there are actually problems that don't have solutions, right? And like they it feels like the more you solve it, the more you create more problems. And that feels like is the it's the kind of problems that these institutions solve. But every now and then we hear people come out and they pitch about like how they can take away these things completely, right? And as somebody who is intersected with this, like is there like what is the way forward in situations like that? I'll use, for example, traffic. If you look at traffic in Kigali, right, you would think that because there are very few roads, that's why like there's traffic. And in Nigeria, most times they construct more roads and then more people go and buy cars and then start using the roads, and you actually increase the traffic. Yeah. And then for somebody who is clueless, which is in most cases the people who actually make those decisions in in a place like Nigeria, how would you approach a problem like that? How would you you know attempt at even you know figuring out something as complex as let's say um tribalism in in Nigeria, where like people have seen their own get you know murdered by someone from a different tribe and it's kind of like uh you know corrupted the way they think, or like an issue like poverty, where if you give people money, they give it back to rich people by buying stuff. So is it very complex? Like, how would you advise somebody with a decision maker to think through things like that?

SPEAKER_05 28:56

I don't think we should take some problems at face value.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 29:00

The types of problems you are describing are hydra-headed problems where if you you know approach it from here, you are you are creating it's breaking out on the other side. Yes, yes. Um, and in design thinking, where you do tree analysis, so you have the root, you have the um the body of the tree, yeah, you have the stem, you have the cover of the tree as well. Yeah, sometimes when we look at when we look at complex problems, when you look at complex problems that we've been trying to solve for a long time and we are not able to solve them, go and look deeply. We are treating the symptoms, not the cost. Not the root cost. Yeah, yeah. I don't believe for every, and that's why maybe it's I but about Einstein that said we we can't use the same mindset we uh we used when creating the problem to solve the problem. You need to think 10 years more when you're solving the problem that you created, you know. So the and also the bandwidth of your design thinking, you know, needs to be better than when the problems were created, right? And the truth is that for every um solution you create, it's create a problem for somebody somewhere. And and that's how it is, right? But the truth is that every problem has a root, every problem has a stem, yeah, and every problem has the leaves. It depends on where you are attacking it from. And sometimes it's very, in fact, when you attack some problems from the um from the stem, people will appreciate you that you're even at least trying to take a stab at that problem. But the truth is that in some situations we we don't need to run away from attacking the root. Yeah, if we don't attack the root, that problem we're just going to be using our hand to rub the head, it's not going anywhere. Yeah, we're going to do um a lot of interventional um work, we're going to do press releases, we're going to do a lot of podcasts, we're going to do a lot of media recording that we are trying to solve the problem. Yeah. But some problems need the for you to look at it from the root.

SPEAKER_06 31:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 31:05

Traffic, for example. Um, I'll take Kigali, for example. We're beginning to have more traffic. And it's uh, and I was looking at why do we are having more traffic in Kigali compared to like five years ago. Uh, but the truth is that uh data is showing the number of cars that we have added in Kigali in the last five years, running up to like 800,000 vehicles in the last five years, in this Kigali, right? And and that that explains why we're having and the roads, you know, the topography of the city, you know, we don't have a lot of highways, right? So we still manage the same roads that we have and vehicles, people, but you can also look at the middle class as getting more um comfortable, which means people can buy afford more cars. So when you're investing in economic prosperity, you're creating you are you're creating because with economic prosperity, people cannot afford more cars, people can afford, you know, um to build houses, yeah, people can afford a lot of things for vehicles. When you were thinking of economic prosperity, maybe you were not thinking about roads that you know your roads will have pressure, right? So now economic prosperity has created pressure to widen the roads or to look for alternative transport systems, yeah. And that's why you see uh there are bus lanes, there are, you know, but the truth is that for every solution, there will be a problem. But you must be um intentional about once you know the root cause of a problem, you can always solve it easily, right? Okay, so when we um look at uh you made some examples around how people make decisions about maybe other people who don't speak their language or they're not from the same place as them. And um, when they want to make comments about such things, they don't think about the fact that for anybody to come out to express their, you know, maybe their pain about a particular thing, they are speaking from experience. They are not just taking it from the anger and just talking about it. So when you yeah, when you want to address such issues, it has to be a deep dialogue from okay, where is that your reaction coming from? And you're not when you use reaction to react to a reaction, you're most likely going to cause more problem. But when you take a dialogue approach to uh respond to a reaction that seems to be vehement or very bitter, you might understand the context of people. Yeah, and the truth is that everybody has a context, and that is why sometimes people say, My truth, my truth. There are we have your truth, but there are also universal truths, right? And the universal truth is that you cannot solve a problem addressing the stem. You need to solve the problem addressing the root.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Okay, cool. All right, I think just by hearing the word human-centered design, it means that the the systems around it can be applied to the self. Yeah, and that's rarely the conversation. Whenever we think about HCD, we're thinking about like a broader like institutional problem. Yeah, so let's let's just imagine that I want to become rich, right? And that's a problem that I have. Yeah, um, how can I apply human-centered human-centered design to design my way to work? And this is going to help so many people, basically.

SPEAKER_05 34:16

If you can crack this, I call it living by design. Yes, yes, and it also means living intentionally, yeah, right. So if you if your passion is to become let us use the word rich, maybe financially free. For example, yes, the human-centered design application to your situation will be uh, first of all, your intentional documentation of your financial priorities. So if you want to be financially free, what are you what do you spend on?

SPEAKER_06 34:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:44

That uh at the end of the month or at the end of the year, they are most likely immaterial. They don't add anything to your life. Uh, it's not as if you even paid, uh, spend those money for your comfort necessarily. It's just a form of money dire that you have that doesn't add to your to the future you desire. So intentional tracking of what are my financial priorities, right? What am I spending on? Number two, um when when I listen to some motivational speakers that talk about people should save more and invest more. My question is, what do you save and invest? So I think the very foundation of that conversation should be what skills do you have that will generate more income for you?

SPEAKER_02 35:26

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_05 35:27

Right? Because if you say people should save and invest, and people are gassed up, eventually they'll come to you. But I don't have not making anything. So the foundation of that conversation should be make money first, right? It is when you have made money, no matter how small, that we can start talking about put something aside, invest uh something out of a percentage out of what you've made, right? Yeah, so that's another human sense, just telling yourself the truth that when you are in a room where they are saying save, invest, you don't have a business, um, first of all, to take down yeah, your business should be tell yourself the truth. What is my truth? I need to find income, first of all. And how do I find income? Do I need to go brush up my skills and something? Do I need to go learn something? Do I need to go and do an apprenticeship somewhere to, you know, or do I need to pivot the industry I am to another industry? That's human-centered design, telling yourself the truth, right? Uh, you know, first of all, before you take the externalities, right? If you want to be rich or if you want to be financially free. Number three thing would be with that same example. Um, what are you um what are you investing in? Are you investing in yourself or you are investing in things? You're supposed to invest in the two things, right? Invest in yourself and invest in things. But when you invest in yourself, it is the biggest form of investment. Yes. Which means you stay relevant across times and seasons, right? Uh, which means if uh people usually say technology will take your job. And I usually say, yes, we can see examples of technology uh taking people's jobs, but technology is also changing people's roles at the end of the day. Yeah, because you need to reinvent yourself, yeah. And you can see in the global layoffs uh that happened in recent times in the last five months, you can count up to 100,000 people laid off from big techs. Yeah um, a percentage, a percentage of that UI UX designers, a percentage of that UI uh user experience researchers, percentage of that uh software marketing people.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

I actually think they target marketing.

SPEAKER_05 37:39

Yeah, and UX, UX researchers. I saw a lot of UX researchers being laid off, and that tells you that there's a change happening in that industry because of artificial intelligence. Yes, yes. And those people, one way or the other, they will still work in tech and reinvent themselves. Yeah, so AI might have led to them losing a job as a UX researcher, but it can become something else within the same industry, right? So I would say human-centered design in in terms of personal application is telling yourself the truth, first of all, of your uh boundaries, your limitations, and your current situation. Yeah, if you don't understand where you are, you will not know where you're going. Okay, and that's the truth. So um don't buy, don't spend money on unnecessary things. Um, you know, and many people don't try and impress anybody. Um because the truth is that once you've um acquired on something, in 24 hours of acquiring that thing, it has lost maybe 50% of its value and appeal to you. Yeah, and your next ambition is you're you are in your corolla that you appreciated, you know, and you did thanksgiving for being able to afford it until you meet a friend who have who has just bought a G-Wagon, and your and your Corolla or your Camry becomes uh irrelevant to you. Yeah, but the truth is that 24 hours ago, yeah, that Corolla was everything to you. Yeah, you know, so just that's telling yourself the truth of um this is my problem, this is what caused the problem. Yes, yes, these are the options to solve the problem, and this is most effective one for me. Yeah, and I'm giving myself a time frame to get out of this situation. That's the one center design for personal application.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

Okay. That's something I think is very actionable in my opinion. Something anybody can take. Let's just talk a little bit about your journey, uh transitioning. Because usually when people get uh into a new road, they get celebrated a lot. And you've you've recently completed the PhD while you were working, which is crazy, uh, by the way. Yeah, and uh you and you've actually moved from being the head of research to becoming the the managing partner at CC Hub in uh design lab. But what people need people generally are very excited to hear those things, but they don't usually see the trade-offs, like in terms of especially as somebody who's been on the field, like actually getting your hands dirty with this research and also with the body of knowledge you've acquired. What are some of the you know psychological shifts and trade-offs that you've had to like, you know, uh like you've had to, you know, get uh in terms of in order to shift to this role of management um and no longer like you know being on the field?

SPEAKER_05 40:24

Well, um, I would say for anybody, first of all, without you know arrogating anything to myself, I would say uh in any uh role or in any opportunity you've been given, try to prove yourself to be much more. If you get what I mean. Uh so we've seen we are giving you an opportunity. We might not have seen what you've done before. You've only showed us your CV. Yeah, and we've interviewed you. You sounded like you have sense, or you sounded like you, you know, uh that you can that you look like a performer, right? Yeah, but when you eventually get the opportunity, be the actual performer. Yes, don't describe performance, yes, you need to actually perform. Yeah, and and I think that's the foundation of what gets people um you know, all the opportunities for career progression generally. But for me, in terms of um some of the things we get in my hands dirty, uh working, but also like doing a PhD. Um I didn't have weekends is the truth, right? Because um doing Monday to Friday, building um in the organization working weekends, um, I'm on my computer punching keys away, or doing a research, or doing an interview, or you know, writing, or taking the feedback. And um that went on. I started my PhD in 2020, I completed it in 2025.

SPEAKER_04 41:56

Damn.

SPEAKER_05 41:57

That tells you the yeah, the stretch. It's like five years, five years, yeah, the stretch. And for every week, there's something to do.

SPEAKER_01 42:06

Wow, whether you're for five years, you didn't have a weekend, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 42:09

You know, and some weekends I'm traveling for work, which means so what I decided was every weekend, my Saturday, I I need to put like three hours into my PhD. On Sundays, I need to put at least one hour or two hours, right? But which means the uh and I'm also a family man, which means at the end of the day, um, you can call that managing my time effectively, right? Which is not always easy because like I'm tired all the time. When people say, How do you balance? I don't balance it. Uh there's no, I don't think there's a balance anywhere. They are just trade-offs. Yes, yes. So if I'm supposed to go hang out uh for four hours on the weekend, yeah, maybe I'll just do 30 minutes and use three and a half hours just on research, right? Yeah, um, or addressing a feedback from my supervisors. And so at the end of the day, that one of the trade-offs is knowing that you have 24 hours as everybody, and um you know what you need to do what you need to do to get to where you're going. Number two thing is around, I think sometimes sleep is overrated. Um wait when you are, you know, when sleep. Yeah, I think sleep is overrated. How many hours? How many hours of sleep did you get in the day? I don't calculate it, but I know I don't I don't do eight hours.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

Why do you think is overrated? Because I mean, when when I don't sleep, everybody collects around like a side. So you're on hedge, right? Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_05 43:43

So for me, I think I would describe it in a philosophical way. There's a time the gatekeeper of my brain opens it. And when I'm awake at that particular point in time, yeah, I can it's like you have, you know, when I I stop drinking. Coffee, but when I used to drink coffee actively, you know, you know that thing you feel when you drink uh uh two shots of Americano, and it seems something has just opening your brain and you have all the energy to go all in, right? Yeah, for me, I feel sometimes it's in it's around 1 a.m. in the night that's that gatekeeper opens it. Yeah, and so if anything I do between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m., if I'm committed to doing something, I cover a lot of grants.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

That's six hours. That's that's crazy, that's uh that's a lot of time.

SPEAKER_05 44:32

I I ensure that um I maximize that time. I and I discovered it by trying.

SPEAKER_06 44:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 44:39

So when I'm awake, I I can be struggling till around 1 a.m. But around 1 a.m. I have a form of energy that I think is unique, and I maximize the night to do that.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

I see, but I'm now curious like how do you now stay grounded mentally? Because I mean if you push I still sleep, right? Okay, so not at the regular time, like other people.

SPEAKER_05 45:00

Yeah, because the truth is that we are all humans and nature will always demand what it needs to demand from you. Yes, so I'm not saying people should go on. I'm not one of those people that'll say um all nights, uh all mornings, you know, it's not all grind, go big or go home. You know, sometimes I'm one of those people that will tell you to go home. If you cannot go big, go home because there's you know, you can reset at home, yes, there's love at home. Yeah, if there's no love at home, there's bed at home, go and sleep, yes, and you know, uh restrategize, right? So I'm I'm not saying it's not one of those eye-standing nonsense. Yeah, what I'm trying to say is that if you understand that the night time has a lot of enormous power for you, yes, if you have tried it, make use of it, maximize it. Some people it's in the night, they are able to strategize a business properly. Yeah, sometimes some people it's in the night, they're able to figure things out, yes, that they need to tell their team the following day. Exactly. So instead of you sleeping through it, why not maximize it for your own advantage and balance it up by maybe finding time to some people it's on weekends that they catch up on sleep properly, they just know that this week uh every weekend I'm not going anywhere. Uh um, you can't invite me out to any party. My weekend is when I'm paying for all the sleepless nights that I have. Yeah, yeah. When you maybe when you look at when you have a new baby and you're taking care of a new baby, it doesn't matter whether you are sleepy or not, you can sleep. Yes, yes. If that child is not comfortable, yeah, and that tells me that some it's you sleep is overrated because when the same you that used to sleep by 9 p.m. when you have a when you have a like infant, you need to stay awake to to be sure that they are okay before you sleep. So your sleep pattern is even just um disturbed in the first six months of their lives, right? So at the end of the day, um it's not motivational speaking, it's just to say if there's a power that you've discovered in the night, make use of it. I think for me, I made use of it a lot. And maybe number three thing to round up on that question is around resilience. Yes, yes. Um, there's power in resilience, and many of us learnt resilience in so many ways. I wrote an article a while ago on my LinkedIn that I learned resilience from going to the farm with my parents. Um, you know, we go to the farm very early in the morning, 6 a.m. we've left the house, and we trek two hours to the farm. So when you're getting to the farm around 8 a.m., all sweaty, you've trekked for two hours. You've not taken any food. Yeah. Then you get on the farm to start working. And you work till like 12. Is it around 12 noon that you take your first meal of the day? You rest for an hour, get back on the farm, work till like 4 p.m. and then take a two hour trek back home. You are getting home around 6 p.m. So that's six to six. And in those um, you know, between the six and six, you've only taken one meal and you've maybe rested for one hour.

SPEAKER_06 48:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:09

And I did that for say for the first 16 years of my life. Yeah. Right? Um from age, from the age I was able to follow them to the farm. Right? Wow. Yeah. Okay. So so it's so when I started growing, when I became like age 18, 19, I started understanding that I think the resilience I have came from some of those experiences. For me, as young as I was, maybe at from the age of seven, I've started following them to the farm. When I'm tired on the road, my dad puts me on the shoulder. When when we when we started going with the vehicle, which means it's easier to go there, but you still have to work on the farm, right? In your own little way. And you can't leave the farm when everyone is not done, right? So you need to live at the right time. Whether you are frustrated or not, you need to stay there. Or you're working and you have a domestic accident where you eat yourself with the cutlass or o you still continue working. You can't take a break. So when you think about that, and also the resilience of understanding that you are uh working in the planting and raining season, and there's a there's a season you look forward to to harvest. On the day of harvest, I'm always the happiest one because I start reflecting on the times we came to the farm at 6 a.m. in the cold and the sun. Then when we're harvesting and they are using baskets to take the cassavas and the and uh all the farm produce, I'm always happy. Yeah, so it gives me so when I'm going through a season or a process, um I'm I'm not thinking about it like I'm suffering because um I have the end goal in mind. Yeah, and I think about the farm a lot when I'm going through a season or I'm embarking on a process. So imagine spending five years working, um, doing a postgraduate program, and you were still able to push through. I know a lot of people that you know they can't just manage it. Yeah, they it's not possible for them. Um, and I'm not trivializing it, uh, but resilience sometimes is what keeps you going. Okay, and you have the end goal in mind. If there's no light at the end of the tunnel, go with your torchlight.

SPEAKER_01 50:13

Yeah, so I just want to um you know, I want to point out something that is also most people also overlook. Being a problem solver in Africa is hard, right? Because there's a lot of uh institutions that you have to deal with, there's a lot of politics involved. But I just wanted to hear firsthand from you like what are like some of the labels that you have to get through, or some of the obstacles that you have to get through to actually get solutions that cross in this part of the world.

SPEAKER_05 50:46

Yeah, so it depends on the domain where you're solving the problem. If you are solving for the private sector, I think it's easier. You just need to prove, you know, and that's why we say uh proof of concept or your MVP. Some private uh organizations will work with you when they see that you've been able to prove that something works, right? Uh, but the fact that it works does not also mean that you won't get into issues on compliance, data protection, and some of those things they are uh they are gray areas, they are you know solid um you know rules that you need to follow in some situations. There are so there are also situations where you are building something novel, and what you are building has not been considered in the framework of compliance. Yes, yes, you know, it's like your innovation is ahead of its time. Yeah, you know, some solutions are actually ahead of their time.

SPEAKER_06 51:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 51:39

Um, when it comes to public sector, you need to. Many people used to think working with the public sector is uh super hard. I think it's increasingly becoming um easier because we now have um very technical people in government as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? They might not be at the like the ends of affair, the face. Uh, but but we've we've seen situations where and some governments actually direct some problem-solving collaboration to those technical people. And once those technical people understand what you want to do, their word is law to the upper rank. Yes. And you know, that way you're able to have ease of access to um to actually get like the public sector buying in solving a problem. Number two thing is around how um multilateral organizations now do a lot of hand holding between the private sector and the and the public sector. Yeah. Where as a multilateral organization, you've worked with the government of Nigeria, maybe on energy, you know what the issues are, and the government of Nigeria is looking for solutions for energy. That multilateral organization brings that issue to you, the private sector uh player that they believe can solve the issue, and they bring you in a collaborative marriage, right? That way is also very seamless because there's a there's a broker in the middle that is doing that. But that doesn't mean that um in some specific sectors, we don't have issues, right? Uh, if you are innovating in healthcare currently on the continent, there's still a lot of like gray area when it comes to compliance, especially with clinical trials. You you see a lot of young innovators in healthcare asking questions, looking for opportunities to get permission or a license to do clinical trials. Yeah, in so many countries in Africa, there is a gray area. Uh it's uh like case-by-case basis, not as if there's a uh template or there's a portal where you need to go to to apply for such, right? Or things around data protection that Nigeria, for example, is really doing well with now. The Nigerian Data Protection Uh Commission is doing amazing work. I think Nigeria has a strong structure in Africa now for organizational data audits and compliance.

SPEAKER_06 53:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 53:56

I think Rwanda also, um, you know, this second year in a row that we um the second time that we've uh gotten the data controller license, you know, and they encourage every organization to report all your data processes, audit processes to uh the um thing is the cybersecurity center, and then you get your license. So I think um there are still so many challenges, especially in some sectors. Uh but in some uh sectors that are mature, it's easier for the private sector to work with the public sector in Africa. In fintech in Nigeria, for example, there are like you know, it's so mature, there are clear pathways to innovation there. You know where you need to go to to get a license, you know, you know who you need to collaborate, collaborate with on something. Uh but in healthcare, it's not like that. In education, things are coming up a little bit as well. So uh, but generally, I think we should have a change of mindset that it's very hard to work with government. I think government to these days they are looking for solutions. Yes. Um, especially with the popular uh popularity of digital public infrastructure. Government um is now able to deliver public services at scale, at affordable rates, but at a scale that is also um you know uh modular and useful and it can serve so many people at the same time, you know, with one solution. Yeah, and the private sector um is helping so many government uh domains to do that.

SPEAKER_06 55:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 55:26

So um I that's from my experience. But I know you know many people always tell you it's hard to work with government. It's because of the way governments are structured, yes, and you need to you need to go through it the way it is. But we've also seen changes where government is becoming agile in some countries, uh, especially when you now have a lot of young people in government who understand because uh when we say partnership for the digital economy, many young people looking for opportunity to solve problems in collaboration with government, um, you know, they work in the digital, right? Yeah, but also you can't innovate in many domains without government backing. So it's not like an enemy versus enemy kind of thing. You the collaboration needs to happen. However, it needs to happen, we need to always look for that middle ground for it.

SPEAKER_01 56:14

And now, as you were speaking, I was asking myself, like just putting myself in your shoes, like if you had to see all of these uh issues and um these obstacles, I mean you don't have to deal with it if you do if you didn't want to. But I'm just I'm just curious to like to know like what gives you hope and optimism about the future of this of this continent when it comes to problem solving. Because we know that those problems are not gonna go away if we don't do anything. Yeah, and even if we do do, even if we do something, it still wouldn't be easier, right? Because I think it's getting more complex as population grows as more like you know, um as more civilization comes, as more growth comes. But I want to hear from you, like, why should someone be optimistic about the future?

SPEAKER_05 57:03

I think about uh problem solving in Africa in terms of cumulative impact. Yeah, because sometimes we're looking for for an earthquake kind of impact that comes in an ecosystem and the problem goes away. Yeah, but the truth is that problems take time to solve. And some problems are like an elephant. Yes, somebody needs to solve the problem from the from the trunk, yes, somebody needs to solve it from the trumpet, somebody needs to solve it from the horn, right? Um uh from the tail. So I think about um solving problems in Africa in terms of cumulative impact. Yes, over time, the different um attempts that we are all making or the different interventions that we are bringing into the ecosystem, at some point we reach a singularity where we're able to have a bigger impact. Um, so the motivation um needs to be in it, it needs to be come from inside of you. But I also think about it in terms of when I'm 70 and um I'm seated reflecting on all that I've done. Do I want to have regrets not uh trying to solve a problem or not to be part of something that was bigger than me in my younger days? Yeah, or will I be proud that when my children or the younger generation are asking me, what did I do with my youth, what would be my response to them? And when I think about it that way, I want to be part of um either an organization or a team or a personal project that solves a problem in my own little way, because uh no, um we um I see it as uh different people doing different parts uh based on their own expertise, and we are solving problems in the same industry, but we're approaching it from different angles. And at some point, because you've seen look at polio, for example. If there were no vaccines for polio and there was intentional encouragement of countries uh to you know vaccinate people against polio, we would not have been able to eradicate it. So look at it, and these are issues that took 25 years, 30 years, 40 years to figure out and to reach that stage, right? So let's look at problem as um not something we can solve immediately. Um when you talk about democracy, for example, it's not something you can solve in a year. Yeah, uh, there is uh like true democracy when you look at um how elections are managed, how candidates emerge, how primaries are done, what are the um the clauses of our constitutions? Uh are we enforcing law? Uh are we also upholding ethical leadership? When you look at it's different parts. So you see organizations work on elections, you see organizations work on citizens' engagement, yes, you see some organizations working on um equity and governance. Yeah, you know, all the work that we are all doing will come together at some point to reach that stage of uh solution singularity that we can say we are proud of what we've done. Look at it in terms of Millennium Development Goals, uh, you know, then the SDG, right? These are ambitions that give people the direction of what they need to do in terms of that problem. Either you're doing it from the advocacy side or the investment side or the program implementation side or the um maybe policy making side. At the end of the day, all we are all trying to do is to solve that problem however long it might take. But we cannot because uh it will take long not to take a stab at solving the problem.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:37

Yeah, and I think as you as you were speaking, you you mentioned something about impact, right? Which is, I think, is the one thing that keeps people um hooked or keeps people like hopeful.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:48

There was this one time I came across your post on LinkedIn calling people who just give uh select like you know, put out bogus representations of the work that they've done, and even when they haven't contributed.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:00

And I really wanted to, you know, hear from you in person, like what's your take on performative impact? Because I think right now, if you go online, a lot of people, some people were probably at uh the BAO summit yesterday, and they probably didn't, you know, contribute to any conversation, but then they will come on LinkedIn and then they will write something so yeah, so long and lengthy, and you think they actually moved mountains. Yeah, right. And just wanted to hear like what are what is your thought on that and what are the dangers of you know prioritizing performative impact and in terms of how it affects our ability to move forward. And finally, like how can people sport? Like the people who are consumers, how can you sport when someone is actually being very bogus about their contribution, you know?

SPEAKER_05 1:01:44

Um I think social media has legitimized emptiness, you know, and it also it has also amplified um performative impact, I like it, like you put it. Um you can have huge following by doing a lot of eye sanding um content, yes. Um, and we are in the world of colors and glites, right? And you can have huge following with that. But are you really doing the work? No, you know, and we have a lot of that. And a school of thought would also say people busy doing the work don't have time to even come online to say anything.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:25

And and that's funny because you've okay, we'll talk about how you've managed to balance.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:30

Yeah, like people doing the work. Yeah, uh, some people say people actually doing the work, getting their hands dirty, don't have the time to come and come and tell you about it. Which I also agree with to some extent. But the truth is that social media has come to stay. Yes, it is the um closest medium of communication and connection in the society today. Yeah, so I think we need to create an opportunity, and I also wrote an anecdote sometimes around the fact that uh people actually doing the work also needs to now take the bull by the own and find time to actually show how it is properly done. Yes, and counter the and then when you put when people actually doing the work are also on the same space where people doing the fakery are, you can actually know who is original and who is fake.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:17

Who is fake, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:18

But if the people doing the original work are not telling their own stories, people will always, you know, um uh praise the fake. It's like you not telling your own story when the hunter does not tell his own story. Yeah, the when the uh lion does not tell his own story, is that how they put it? The I think the hunter. No, when the hunter does not tell his own story, the um story will always favor the lion or something. Like you understand what I want to say. I guess what you're saying. So you need to um we need to find a way for people actually doing the work to also use those mediums, right? Yes, yes, yes. Yes, you will say they are busy, they don't have time to talk about what they are doing, but there is power in storytelling. Yes, there's power in it, and I think all of us must be storytellers, yeah, because we are not just telling stories to uh to let people know that we are doing great work, we are also inspiring a generation to believe that it's possible and it can be done, right? Uh, but we we live in a world where um it's color, it's glitch, it's more it's perfect. Uh, we're looking for, and that's why we have a lot of awardpreneurs who are looking for people who are looking for accolades. I believe social media has also created what I call congratulations addiction. Yeah, where people, some people cannot stay one month without looking for something that's something people should congratulate them for. And when you do that, we've seen people who go to other people's events and take pictures from those events and they present it on social media like their own. And they always have the right English, you know. Like, you know, AI is not even helping the matter now, like they have the right things to say, you know. And you know, uh, go on LinkedIn. Everybody is uh almost like a coach, everybody's AI expert. Yes. Um, there are some people who are AI experts today, but two years ago they were blockchain experts. They go with the tides, yeah. They go with the tides, right? And then if tomorrow um green economy or circular economy is the thing, then they become circular ex on on LinkedIn enthusiasts, you know. So social media um created a level playing ground for both people who want to fake it and those who are actually doing the work. But the truth is that we cannot keep complaining about those who are faking it. If you that you're actually doing the work, you don't have any don't have any benchmark to look at. So you that you are doing the real work, what does your work look like? Right? So, storytelling, I wouldn't say just social media posters, but storytelling, intentional storytelling. And it doesn't have to be social media, it might be you know, are you putting the originality of your work and the outcome in mediums that people that matter can actually see it? Yes, uh, or you Are you sharing with the next generation to inspire them, right? Yeah, so um it's the ecosystem is like that, and it will continue. We always have people doing the work who are getting less attention, and we always get people who are the loudest who are going to get the attention, right? But I also think in the type of balance I'm talking about, you can be doing the actual work and you are very loud about the work, you know. Um, because the truth is that um if we don't have people putting out their original work there, we don't have something to benchmark those who are doing the fake work.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:33

Yeah. And I think that's something you've done. But the people who follow you on LinkedIn or Facebook, you're constantly sharing, you know, anecdotes, uh, you know, um words of wisdom and even talking about the work that you do, but you're also very busy. And I think every time I speak to entrepreneurs who are doing amazing stuff, they usually tell you that they're not able to find the time to create, they're not able to, they don't they don't get to sit down for like two hours to talk about the work that they're doing. How do you how do you make it happen? Like what's your secret?

SPEAKER_05 1:07:04

No secret, I'm just intentional about it. I've I'm I've not been consistent of late as well, because there are so many things going on for me. Uh, but I still find time to share. And I share authentic stories. Okay. I don't use, I don't even um, you know, you know, these days with AI, people can say, Oh, you can turn out three contents per day, you know. That's not if you have followed my content, I would I'll tell you the story from my experience, right? Yes, yes, and I'll bring out the lessons from it, right? So I I just um I think it's just intentionality to say, yeah, um, I want to share from a place of authenticity, and I also want to um inspire a generation to believe that it's possible. Yeah, uh, one of the um uh articles I wrote recently is around uh my early days in entrepreneurship. And you know, you can see a lot of people made comments about it, but the number of people who reached out to me directly to say, man, I thought I was weird. I never knew you had this kind of journey as well. Where I talked about how from age 16 I was already taking stabs at entrepreneurship and I was negotiating things with my uncle, with my um aunt's husband. I was um yeah, you know, I'm sure maybe you read that I was selling recharge cards. Yeah, uh, I tried to do a typing of a computer typing business. Yeah, there was a time I was selling um mathematics and English CDs on the street of Oday in New York Town. And I would, you know, and the older I got, the more I became conscious of that part of me. And you know, that innocence of innovation, you know, that you can have as a teenager, I think is good before you become become like unnecessarily self-conscious, right? Yeah, and those are things that many entrepreneurs or professionals are struggling with. But after I shared that, many people were like, Oh, so it's actually true that we were losing the innovative innocence that we had when we were pretty young. Where in your maybe when you were 22, you could approach an Obama in a place and say, I'm looking for funds to do this, or you share, you pick yourself. But as you're growing older, you become self-conscious. Like you have to think about it. You're thinking, Oh, people say when people say I'm weird, you know. But the truth is that as an entrepreneur, you need to maintain that innocence. If you are going to, you know, raise funds, speak to collaborators and everything. So, yeah, intentionality with sharing. So I still ensure that maybe twice in two weeks, yeah, I still share, I create time to do it either in the night or early in the morning. Yeah, I still find time to do it. Okay, but I stopped sending my newsletter because I can't manage, and I'm not that person that would give my newsletter to a virtual assistant to do for me. I know many people will do that and just give the topics to a virtual assistant to write it for them and they shall do the but it has to be authentic. It has to be authentic for me. Um, I know because I'm not trying to build a social media following as an influencer. I won't, I'm not an influencer, right? If I want to be an influencer, maybe I'll need to um you know launch those channels where um my newsletter somebody's managing. No, for me, I just want to share authentic stories when I'm able to share it at my own pace.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:12

What does uh human-centered design look like in an AI era? Because right now you can you can prototype solutions very quickly, yeah. Um, like you can uh find connections between problems in a like very quickly. But like what is still going to be the relevance and importance of human-centered design in an AI era?

SPEAKER_05 1:10:32

Yeah, so AI has not taken away your uh discovery and understanding process. That needs to be human. Okay, it is where you want to articulate the insight from discover and understand stage that AI helps you to articulate it better and you can quickly do your prototype faster.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:49

So, but it doesn't remove that AI solutions are even built for humans. So at the end of the day, you still need to be able to do that. The humans, you can't take humans away from um, I'm a scholar of social technical theory, yeah, and I understand what the connections between technology, people, systems, um, and um, you know, um you know, the end users of the technology and the enablers of the technology, when you bring everything together, it brings a very unique dynamics. And the truth is that you can't take people or human out of that mix. If you take human out of technology, what are you building it for? Yeah. Whatever product you're building, whatever you're building is to make the life of humans easy. Yes. For them to have more proficiency and efficiency, yeah, and for them to do life faster. So if you can't remove, I you know, it's it's just an instrument of speed to quickly ship and to validate, but it doesn't take away that the data that is feeding into it is human-facing.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:48

Yeah. Okay. And I think thank you, thank you for sharing that. And I think now, uh, just to wrap up, in the interest of time, we're gonna take two scenarios um that we relate to your work and just to give the audience a chance to see how you think through the solutions. So let's imagine that you are managing um a startup incubator, and there's this young founder who wants to build a solution to tackle the the um logistical issues with distributing food um from the farms to the table. Yeah. In um, like let's say, give an example in Kigali. Yeah, right. But there are a lot of international coaches who've been brought in, like from Silicon Valley, who have this idea of how this should operate. How is this person going to balance, you know, building with the realities of the coaching that they're getting from these international coaches and balancing that with what they see on ground to ensure that it actually solves the problem? Like, obviously, this is a confusion that most people would face because you don't know enough to take a stand. But how is how would you advise this person to actually find that balance?

SPEAKER_05 1:12:57

For me, I would say the innovator should think about three things. Yeah. Um, there are coaches, right? But there are people you call mentors, coaches and sponsors. Uh, a mentor speaks to you. A coach speaks with you, and then a sponsor speaks about you.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:16

And that doesn't mean that because you have a coach, you should be docile about what you're building.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:22

Or for you not to have your own opinion.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:24

I like a combination of your own understanding of a context, yeah, where you are building, and the knowledge of scale. So maybe the coaches will bring um knowledge of scale because they came from where you can call the Silicon Valley, where you know it's about speed, capital, and you know, uh speed to the market. But in your own context, that might not be the situation. And in Africa, innovation is not, we are not just um you know, uh leveraging already existing race. Sometimes we are building from the ground. And when you uh jettison that insight for um because a coach has said something that sounds interesting but does not connect to your context, you are the one to be blamed because you are the innovator. Okay, uh, and a coach is not a commander, yeah. Yeah, so I would say the innovator should uh hold, and that's why your own research is important. Yes, your human-centered design research. Yeah, what is that insight that you are building for? Yeah, yeah. Leverage and a coach advice people, they speak with you. So at the end of the day, pick what is yours from all that they have said um and blend it with what is your own reality and innovate with it.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:36

Okay. And if there's one thing you would change about how like, you know, uh Africa's innovation ecosystems operate today, what would that be?

SPEAKER_05 1:14:44

I think I would change uh people caressing the problem on the edge to actually getting their answer.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:51

Oh, okay. So we're gonna go into like a final round, just one word, uh, just one answer, and we just like get going and just take maybe like five of them. Uh they call it like a quick fire round. So would you prefer systems thinking or spontaneity in your work? Systems thinking. Systems thinking, yeah. Structure or experimentation in your work? Experimentation okay, long form thinking or fast execution.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:25

Long form thinking.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:26

Long form thinking. Um policy conversations or design conversations. I know you work on the design. Design okay, and building products or building ecosystems, ecosystems, ecosystems, and the final one one one breakthrough idea or years of consistency.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:46

That's a very hard one. Yes, yes. That's a hard one. One breakthrough idea. Yeah, but I can't. Yeah.

unknown 1:15:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:57

There was a question the previous guest said I should ask you. Uh, I don't know if I remember it fully, but they said if uh you had you were out of like uh the pro the eyes of the public or something, where like you there was no you didn't have to worry about anything in your life, or worry about judgment, or what would you be doing with your life if you didn't have to worry about the scrutiny of the world or you know the the pressure that comes with your role and all of that?

SPEAKER_05 1:16:26

I'll be a pan-African evangelist talking about the history of Africa, yes, how we have evolved from where we were to where we are now, yeah, and I'll be speaking vehemently against um the African inferiority complex. Okay, okay. That's what I'll be doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:45

All right, thank you so much, David. What would you want to know from the next guest?

SPEAKER_05 1:16:51

Um, I want to know what they think about um artificial intelligence and the future of work.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:01

Yes, with artificial intelligence.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:03

Yeah, yeah, with artificial intelligence. I think that does that really be. Because I think many of us might eventually retire to a farm and just have a rabbit and our and our horses, and yeah, because like artificial intelligence is fine if you're good.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:16

Yeah, but like, but uh, I would like to Will work really matter in the future. Right. I would like to hear what they think about that. But in the meantime, this has been very insightful for me, and I think it will be also very insightful for the guests. Thank you so much for coming.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:28

It's my pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:29

Um, hopefully, we'll keep the conversation going.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:35

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