software-engineers

"It’s time for us as young African engineers to start working on solutions to solve our local challenges.” — Charlette N’Guessan on driving innovation tailored to Africa’s needs."

"To young African women aspiring to break into AI and tech, believe in your potential and skills. Stay open to collaboration, and don't shy away from driving innovation. Own your story and actively shape it. Your ideas, your voice, and your innovations are crucial to the future of technology in Africa. Don't miss the opportunity to contribute to the Africa AI narrative."

"Africa plays a vital role in the global AI landscape. Our experience navigating complex social, economic, and cultural contexts equips us to develop nuanced, adaptable governance frameworks, and models that could inspire other regions facing similar challenges."

"...it is entirely false to assume that innovation cannot thrive on the continent. The narrative must shift from waiting for external solutions to actively building and scaling local innovations."

"Decision-makers who shape global AI strategies rarely engage with the realities on the ground. It is not just being quoted as an African, If you haven’t been ground-building AI-driven models in Africa, you can’t be loud and make decisions on our behalf."

"...many AI-driven solutions introduced in Africa fail to address local needs, are riddled with biases, and inadvertently create a form of foreign technological dominance in African markets."

"Discussions about AI advancements in Africa often highlight the misconceptions held by the rest of the world. First, Africa has always been positioned as merely a passive consumer of technologies developed elsewhere: They build, ship here, and we're expected to use them."

"It's time for us as young African engineers to start working on solutions to solve our local challenges."

"If you want to build AI-driven solutions for African markets, don't focus on trends, build with purpose. Africa doesn't need fancy AI products; we need effective, impactful solutions. Also, keep in mind that for every problem, there are multiple ways to solve it. AI is just one tool in the toolbox, and sometimes, it may not be the best one. So be open-minded."

"Unfortunately, the Iranian nuclear project isn't dedicated to the extermination of the white man; Bin Laden's odds are higher."

"Tweet the wrong thing in Britain and you’ll serve 13 months. Tweet the wrong thing in Egypt and we’ll bring you here, put you up, pay for your son’s special school - while you call us apes and boast of hating white people."

"What the internet has truly changed is not political dissent, but rather social dissent. We must protect it as a safe space where people can experiment with gender and sexual identities, explore what it means to be gay or a single mom or an atheist or a Christian in the Middle East, but also what it means to be black and angry in the US, to be Muslim and ostracized in Europe, or to be a coal miner in a world that must cut back on greenhouse gases. The internet is the only space where all different modes of being Palestinian can meet. If I express this precariousness in symbolic violence, will you hear me out? Will you protect me from both prosecution by the establishment and exploitation by the well-funded fringe extremists?"

"Now my real criticism of these post-police murder riots is the wrong focus, go burn the City or Downing Street, or hunt police fools."

"Now all I can think of is joining Bin Laden and killing a few Americans."

"And you talk to most of them, and they come out telling you they're the ones who's oppressed and victims. I seriously, seriously, seriously hate white people, especially those of English or Dutch or German descent."

"Mr El-Fattah is a British citizen. It has been a long-standing priority under successive governments to work for his release from detention, and to see him reunited with his family in the UK."

"I’m delighted that Alaa Abd El-Fattah is back in the UK and has been reunited with his loved ones, who must be feeling profound relief... Alaa's case has been a top priority for my government since we came to office."

"I consider killing any colonialists and specially zionists heroic, we need to kill more of them."

"May I start by raising the case of Alaa Abd el-Fattah? As the Prime Minister knows and has said, he is a British citizen jailed for the crime of posting on social media and has been imprisoned in Egypt for most of the last nine years; he has been on hunger strike for the last six months. The Prime Minister just said that he raised this case with President Sisi; what progress did he make in securing Alaa's release?"

"By his own public posts, Mr Abd El-Fattah has endorsed killing ‘zionists’ and urged more of it. He has also been widely reported as having called for the killing of Israelis, in terms so extreme that his nomination for a major European human rights prize was withdrawn when the post came to light. He has since sought to explain himself. That only underlines the point: this is not ancient history. It is a live controversy about incitement and hatred."

"police are not human...They don’t have rights, we should just kill them all."

"there was no genocide against Jews by the Nazis – after all, many Jews are left."

"can we get back to killing zionists please? they seem to be more violent when we stick to non violence."

"Dear Zionists, please don’t ever talk to me, I’m a violent person who advocated the killing of all Zionists including civilians, so f--- off."

"So the brilliant British dogs and monkeys really think terrorists will reveal their plans on Twitter."

"I’m telling you that I hate white people."

"I am not really interested in Flash as a mere animation tool. I use Flash because of its programming possibilities, ability to integrate with graphical images, good browser compatibility and because it is easy to use."

"Some people feel that designers are often drawn to Flash because of its multimedia capabilities at the expense of other demands of a client's brief. In other words, Flash is often misused or used to build sites where other technologies might have served the client's needs better."

"On the other hand, I feel strongly that where the Web is used as media, it should always involve new experiences and excitement. I like to satisfy my desire to present something interesting that has not been seen before, even if it is at a cost. When I work with a client who feels the same, I will go ahead and do what I want to do. Each case is of course judged on its own merits."

"I agree with some of it. In the light of current Web systems, creating a site with ordinary HTML and XML technology ensures effective information media. Up to now, developing a site by using Flash meant that sacrifices had to be made in other areas. We must bear this in mind. We should also remember that Flash is a mere tool like any other Web technology. It is important to know how to use tools freely, but dependency on a specific tool leads to meaningless results."

"All acquisition conversations always require careful thought and consideration, and it was no different in this case. The Paystack team has been interacting with Patrick and the Stripe team over the past couple years and after significant amounts of collaboration and knowledge exchange between both companies, we agreed that this move was a natural evolution of what was and continues to be a great relationship."

"It is important to think of your co-funders and your partners as people you are going to be on a long journey with."

"Solutions to hard work is persistence and resilience."

"Figuring out a market that is growing is some of the things people look out for."

"Venture-backed companies are generally destined for one of two outcomes. IPO or acquisition. Five years in, neither of these were on the list of things that we care about as a company. We’ve always been focused on building the best payments and growth tools for African businesses and are in it for the long haul. The option to team up with the world’s most sophisticated payments company to accelerate our ambitions happened to show up, and we believe it was fortuitous."

"Businesses are bought, not sold. The most important thing is to choose a problem you are excited about solving, and focusing on that every day."

"Stripe and Paystack are both Y Combinator alumni, so that was the first point of contact. We were introduced to Patrick, who then offered to invest. Stripe would then lead our Series A, and along with Visa, invest $8 million in 2018. Since then, Stripe has been a close partner, and after over two years of knowledge exchange between our teams, we've built up a lot of mutual respect for each other. Eventually, it became obvious that our visions were so aligned that the natural evolution of the relationship would be to join forces in this way."

"Build something remarkable, be resourceful enough to find places where you can articulate what you are doing."

"“People with disability don’t want preferential treatment we want the playing ground to be given so we can compete as competitively as anybody else.”"

"There is a lot of potential for fintech in this part of the world."

"I didn’t set out to impact anybody. I set out to prove to myself and to society that I could be a successful software developer despite having a neurological condition."

"If you don’t have a passion for your product and you want to become an entrepreneur because of the money, close up your business and look for a well-paying job."

"All my life I’ve been told to remove the word ‘I can’t’ from my vocabulary and replace it with ‘I’ll try’ and by grace, everything I’ve tried I’ve been successful at."

"The frustrations and disappointments that come with entrepreneurship can break you, but if you are in it because you want to make a difference or you believe in what you are producing, then that spurs you on."

"Representation matters, and persons with disabilities are sorely underrepresented."

"We first of all have to cultivate the habit of reading, before more people would be motivated to write."

"Persons with disabilities are usually portrayed as being feeble and asking for handouts, in the media. I want to change that perception. We have weaknesses and strengths like everybody else and it’s about time the focus moved from what we can’t do to what we CAN do."

"Nobody is perfect. We all have a part of us that doesn’t work well. Identify your disability and turn it into greatness."

"You must put in the work. Do not expect a free pass just because you have special needs. You need to be exceptionally good at what you are doing but institutions also need to put up an enabling environment that lets people with special needs be as productive as they can be."

"I tell myself, “You can do this, you’ve done more difficult things and survived. And even if you don’t make this deal or you can’t do this task, life goes on”. My faith has also played an important role."