Entrepreneurs

"The Medium post on “The Education System Africa Needs” by Femi Longe struck a chord. Femi calls for a total overhaul of our current colonial education systems, which are insufficient for producing a skilled workforce required to support the growing population. The challenges we must overcome for Africa to rise are equally matched by deficiencies in human capital. So, what can we do to surmount these challenges?"

"Let’s bring this closer to home. Nigeria’s population hovers around 190 million, and is expected to near 400 million by 2050. This is equivalent to combining the current populations of Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Greece, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Sweden. I am worried about now, and I am terrified for the future."

"A strong education system is the cornerstone of any country’s growth and prosperity. The current system we inherited and maintained simply doesn’t cut it. I admire Femi’s emphasis on the need for Africa to identify its goals and gear our education system towards those goals. While I agree that we should be guided by our own aspirations and cultures, I also believe that the best way forward is to learn from and build on the successes and failures of other education systems with our own goals in mind. A complete overhaul of any education system is a daunting and multi-faceted (and expensive) task. Particularly when it involves overhauling the entire curriculum, producing millions of teachers or facilitators, re-orienting mindsets, and potentially building thousands of facilities. This can feel intimidating. But there is hope."

"We can build a strong and relevant education and skill development system on the successes and failures of others, without forgetting where we come from and where we hope to go."

"For years now, the theme of “Africa Rising” has continued to resonate amongst intellectual circles focused on our continent. In that time, I’ve felt a growing concern over Africa’s state of development. I wonder what the future holds, and whether we are actually set to “rise.” Our continent’s journey thus far and what lies ahead worries me. How do we lay the path to a brighter narrative for our future generations?"

"Luckily, we live in a time when alternative models of education and skill development are being created at an accelerated pace around the world. This means that the next generation of Nigerians (and Africans) can leapfrog and create and experience new models of learning. A handful of innovators have built and continue to refine what they believe Africa needs for the next generation: context-based learning and skill development opportunities with pragmatic outcomes linked to the market."

"I teach an advanced course on vision that combines the study of state-of-the-art computer vision systems with observations from psychology and neuroscience about the visual processing strategies used in biological systems."

"At Andela, we aim to empower globally relevant builders of the future Nigeria (and Kenya, and soon other countries in Africa). Our developers hone their technical and leadership skills by working as distributed global team members of our company partners. We hope these individuals become the bureaucrats, administrators, builders, founders, and employers who have all gone through a bespoke learning experience built for purpose. What purpose? To lay the foundation for Africa’s technological evolution through technology capacity development."

"The future of cybersecurity lies in our ability to anticipate, adapt, and act leveraging AI and emerging technologies to stay one step ahead."

"We need to educate and sensitize people more. Sometimes when we talk about our programme, many people are yet to really understand the importance of educating girls, they say why only girls, why is this different from any other organisation."

"Trust your instincts, if you feel a person, product or approach is not right for your business, trust your instincts even more and do what is right for your business. Be unafraid."

"“If we have more space, in a government school or a university to make use of their spaces and their classrooms, we can do much more and accommodate so much more girls.”"

"Consider the recent research that states that 90% of jobs created in the next 20-30 years will require some sort of skill in STEM. That means that people who have STEM skills will have a huge advantage over those who don’t. Whether they are applying those skills in core technology or in healthcare, finance, agriculture, business, transportation. I think that girls should participate in creating those technologies so we can solve some of the critical issues facing us."

"I have never met a great leader who is not a reader."

"In Nigeria, we have continued to engage with the community to push against societal norms that tell girls that a STEM education is not feminine. We have worked with government ministries, secondary school teachers, communities and especially parents of girls to educate them on the huge benefits of STEM education for girls. WAAW is looking to partner with Federal Ministries of Education, Science and Technology to re-invent what STEM education should be and retrain our teachers to incorporate hands on, locally available resources to promote innovation in the classrooms."

"“I wanted to be that voice, I wanted to go back to my community and inspire more girls to consider tech as a career path.”"

"You don’t just become a writer, although honing is indeed part of the process, you just have to commit yourself to it like you would a marriage. Till death do you part."

"Several factors inspired me to found WAAW Foundation in 2007 while I was completing my Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering at Texas A & M University. At that time, I was the only woman of color in the program and my graduate education experience had been a very lonely one working mostly amongst men. I knew that I wanted to be an engineer and had the ability to be a great one, but I wished there were more women in STEM to support each other."

"Motivation is iffy because we are not usually able to turn it on when we want, so I mostly prefer the mundane act of being motivated by everyday life and everyday ups and downs."

"We pulled back on all unnecessary (mainly capital) expenditure because we couldn’t afford to risk spending any money on anything other than necessities to ensure our residents were well cared for over this time until we knew where the pandemic was going.”"

"My inspiration to write poetry is my way of trying to make sense of the human condition and the circumstances in and around me in a succinct and powerful way."

"I saw the huge impact technology could have in lifting entire communities out of poverty. I could see the rapid technological advances that were in the pipeline. For instance, I saw the advent of Google, PayPal and Amazon and some of my research was around the technologies that powered these huge companies and the impact they had on e-commerce, telecommunications, and the financial industry."

"I never felt a poet’s presence as a child I suppose, but I did always have a great affinity to songwriting which I would argue is some of the best poetry if done with fervor and soul."

"What we have done is to start to showcase women in tech as cool and successful, [and we have started to] engage girls at a younger age … and show girls that tech is really fun."

"But one of the key things that came out of the barriers, and it was supported by a lot of people, was number one the lack of communication within clubs and the lack of opportunity to conduit between the Pasifika community and the leaders of the community in the club space, and then another issue was the fear of failure or embarrassment to put yourself out there.""

"I retired but to be perfectly frank I was even busier than before. But it wasn’t as rewarding, I still loved management,”"

"Immediately there there's going to be a difference in cultures - a Eurocentric culture versus a Pacific culture - and so what Navigating Two Worlds has done is enabled the two distinct cultures to come together and for the best of it to be drawn out in a leadership sense"

"That's why New Zealand Rugby was interested in this element in that they recognised there were very few formal Pacific people involved in off-field roles and so quite a Eurocentric system in terms of off-field administrative structures, and yet a really strong Pacific contribution on the field,""

"When we started to understand Pacific cultural ways of doing things, we connected up those approaches to leadership that we felt would be incredibly valuable to contribute to off-field leadership in rugby...a collectivist approach, a relational approach, a service orientation and an informal appreciation for acts of service and leadership.""

"We didn’t know at that stage whether many of our residents could die tragically because of the pandemic as we were hearing horror stories from aged care homes overseas. Although we were experienced at caring for people, we just didn’t know what was ahead of us and what it would mean for our company’s viability,”"

"I used to back off from reaching my dreams because I used to think that I was too little, too small, too that. Now I realize that I’m doing others a disservice. The more I reach for my dreams, the more successful I am. The more I share my story, the more I empower other people to reach for their dreams. We should all do that because each of our dreams is valid.”"

"“I loved every minute of it. One of the best management teams and it continues to be great. Through that team we went from being a market pariah to a bit of a market darling,”"

"Health is a journey. I would love to see a world where the first place of living healthy is going to Mother Earth and nature to look at what nature has given us to stay healthy.”"

"I didn't plan to be an entrepreneur"

"Anyone can be an innovator"

"You don't have to look a certain way. It's not just for one type of person. Anybody can play a role, and there is so much work to be done."

"Sometimes I feel like I need three of me."

"When you finally get them, it’s very, very fulfilling."

"You’re fundraising for one fund, you’re deploying another fund, you’re exiting another fund, you’re hiring, you’re reporting, you’re doing investor relations."

"so many opportunities and potentials in Africa to innovate and help improve people's lives."

"Sometimes I feel there aren’t enough hours in the day."

"You set up a centre and it breaks even in a short space of time."

"We think that if you’re able to provide affordable, high-quality healthcare services, like diagnostics, in peri-urban areas so outside the big cities you are really able to position yourself in an industry with limited competition."

"Fundraising is not for the faint-hearted. *Getting global institutions to back you, back your firm, back your vision, back your strategy."

"The unit economics of these centres are just phenomenal."

"Dealing with polices and governments can be hard. Also, distributions: How can I get a product that I made in Lagos out here to Austin?"

"It’s a business that we remain very, very excited about in terms of the growth trajectory."

"It takes time, it takes years of building trust, years of communication, years of follow-ups."

"The way that they’ve been able to create this ecosystem that is really enabling the informal economy to really scale and have access to finance."

"Generating strong financial returns whilst delivering positive and long-term social impact alongside tangible and measurable women empowerment outcomes. Enabling job creation for underrepresented groups as well as access to capital for overlooked underfunded women in Africa. We are deliberately integrating gender analysis into our investment analysis and decision-making."