Al Kags

I just had a conversation (for the umpteenth time) about the education and expertise of our generation and the need for de-education and re-education of our minds as young Africans as a means to fostering faster TRUE development in the continent. I was speaking with a student who works in a health institution in remote parts of Kenya – while pursuing her degree. In speaking with her about her model of study, I was struck by the benign-ness of it all; the inability to make use of all of the resources (knowledge-wise) at her disposal and the tendency to simply read for the exam – and therefore for the degree certificate.

I found myself lecturing her on the difference between expertise (the ability to analyse and synthesise knowledge) and qualification (acquisition of papers). Shortly, I was raving on the perspective that our parents grew up on: go to school and university and get one job and aim to be a manager which I stressed was different from our times which require us to acquire knowledge, build global links and share knowledge. Ergo, build expertise to find real solutions. The sweetener I showed is that experts paid well at least and have global opportunities.

I really must have sounded like the nutty professor hammering on about the way that the 8-4-4 system mis-educated us by making us cram information into our heads and not encouraging us to think for ourselves and for not strengthening our analytical powers. On such themes I can be a little stark… and my listener’s face looked a little overwhelmed, but I can’t help it.

Now on reflection, I know that as I think about the Safaricom Innovation Board and how it should be structured, as I think about the business that founded many years ago that is centred around innovation and most importantly as I think about the new Kenya that we are seeking to usher as of today, I know my madness is not off base.

To innovate, we must challenge convention. To challenge convention, we must gain and manipulate knowledge and information to build our understanding. To do so, we must unlearn what (and how) we learnt under 8-4-4 and re-teach ourselves to think and analyse and connect.

I shall now go do a jig.

You will remember that recently I angrily wrote to Michael Joseph, the retiring CEO of Safaricom about the Safaricom Innovation Forum, because of its oppressive rules of engagement. It was nice to see Michael respond immediately and I was further honoured when he and his team decided to engage me further. On both those posts, I got over 250 comments (many of which I did not approve for public consumption because they were angry and personal and repetitive) and quite a lot of emails, which I shared with Michael and his team. The ideas that many of you shared went into APIs, Appstores, Idea platforms etc.

We then met a number of times with the Safaricom team led by Wadzanai Chiota-Madziva, the Safaricom head of Value Added Services during which they asked my views on what they should do. They were honest with me: they said (a) they receive a lot of proposals and ideas (many of which are really similar), (b) they have a very small team to manage all of these ideas and give feedback but 200 proposals a week are still too many to effectively manage and (c) they hear us – the techies and innovators on what we want but the big question was how they do it efficiently as a business that still must be profitable and efficient.

I suggested to them that they need to remove themselves from the centre and move to the side. Instead, they should get a buffer that stands between them and the community. This way, they will be able to see the issues and not the myriad of little details delivered in all sorts of ways, they will be able to recieve feedback from the community in a digestible way and they will be able to engage more fruitfully with the community.

I further suggested  that this buffer, which I loosely called the Safaricom Innovation Board, should consist of innovators and professionals who have built themselves around innovation and who are clearly respected members of the ICT and particularly the innovation crowd.

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The Safaricom team then suggested that we form the board and the overall consensus from us was to push back and say, not so fast. We suggested that instead of appointing us so directly, Safaricom should invite nominations from the techies and then decide based on the nominations, who they would invite. In our view, there are many people in the community who can support Safaricom as a buffer and they should consider a wider pull. Of course they must consider who they can work with and so on but there are many people they should look at and decide on.

So the opportunity is there. We can all nominate someone we think is appropriate to join the Safaricom Innovation Board by 17th August 2010 so that Safaricom can consider them before they announce. We should choose people who are respected and who have a good track record in the industry. Most importantly (in my view) one should have done stuff in the service of the ICT Community and as an innovator… At least thats how I will choose my nominees…

At the end of the day, that they listened is one happy thing.