Seated at the front L-R: Yvette Underdue Murph (PhD), Leandre Berwa, Dr Abebe Geletu W. Selassie, Prof Kathy Lachenauer, Howdy Pierce, Me 😉
Today I had the opportunity to moderate a panel discussion at my school under the topic, Technology Entrepreneurship in Africa: Exploring the Peculiarities.
The panel consisted of; Howdy Pierce, Co-Founder and Board Member at Cardinal Peak, Colorado; Prof Kathy Lachenauer, Professor of the practice at CMU Africa; Dr Abebe Geletu W. Selassie, German Research Chair, AIMS Rwanda; Yvette Underdue Murph (PhD), Director of Enrollment and Student Success, CMU Africa; Leandre Berwa, Chief Executive Officer, SLS Energy.
Our discussion focused on technology start-ups in Africa and how they can leverage their uniqueness for competitive advantage. A few things stood out to me from this discussion, and you could benefit from knowing them.
On the question of globalisation, the panel unanimously concluded that it is more beneficial than consequential. As pointed out by Mr Leandre Berwa, the implication is that we have to access ourselves on global and not local standards. If we create perfect products for our markets by any standards, globalisation becomes less of a threat. To give a hypothetical example, a technology company located in a small country in Africa sees globalisation as an opening to a global market to the extent that it has world-class technology.
Another thing that stood out to me was the idea that qualifications for the sake of qualifications are a waste of time. Dr Abebe Geletu W. Selassie shared a story of an acquaintance who went on to do an MSc degree in Computer Science for the sake of doing an MSc degree and then contrasted that with the more focused approach he took to his learning and how that potentially resulted in making him a more resourceful person. To be meaningful, our learning must be directed and directed at something.
In speaking about his career, Howdy Pierce repeated the cliche that life is too short not to work on exciting things. You should have heard that already, but coming from someone who has practised that all his life and has gone on to achieve some fantastic things had some gravitas. Howdy speaks like one who has not only read Cal Newport’s, So good they can’t ignore you but lived the book’s principles. So I will spare you the pain of reading my sub-optimal assessments and hope you read the book.
Embedded systems kept coming up throughout our discussion, and it was clear that the hard things guarantee the most leverage in terms of career positioning for young engineers. AI, too came up, and I really liked Dr Abebe Geletu W. Selassie’s remark that AI can be included in any field, so long as we know where and why to include it. That sounds cliche, but give it a second thought in light of all that start-ups using AI in their products only as a result of the hype. We must understand AI and machine learning only as ways of modelling problems. Once we have that understanding, it is easy to appreciate that sometimes relying on AI to solve problems may not be the best.
There was so much to talk about from this panel discussion, but I think I have done an excellent job of summarising the most important things for you!
Back to top