Strategies from Successful Ghanaian Founders: Embracing Change, Innovation, and Digital Solutions

[00:00:00] Hello everyone, this is Adrian from the Sound of Accra Podcast. If this is your first time listening, this is show we speak of top Ghanaian founders, entrepreneurs, and creatives worldwide. And the aim simply is to leave behind all the listeners meaningful takeaways that they can apply into their personal lives, into their businesses, or even into their professional careers. In this episode, we are simply going to pull from previous episodes, some of the best pieces of advice that I've received, or I've learned that I've been able to do this.

[00:00:30] from previous guests that have featured on episodes throughout this year in 2024. So if you're a creator, you're an entrepreneur, or you're a professional with a side hustle, or even a professional with a career that wants to grow in their career, this is the episode that you want to listen to. So as we take all of the best pieces of advice from previous guests who have come on the podcast this year. So that's all for me. I'm going to leave you to the guests, I'm going to leave you to the interviews.

[00:00:59] Hope you guys enjoy this compilation episode. If you like more of this, let us know in the comments. Enjoy. Take care. And you mentioned COVID. Let's go there. I mean, I believe you were in a BBC interview a few years ago talking about COVID and the impact on Africa or Ghana. How have you seen kind of like COVID impact the continent and the country? And how have like enterprises and entrepreneurs responded to COVID or pivoted or kind of brought themselves out of the pandemic?

[00:02:01] Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's still an opportunity that people can still look at and take advantage of. Yeah. They get it right. Definitely. Yeah. I think I'm, I'm excited to see a lot more local like businesses pop up because I feel like we don't have enough of them. And we kind of import so much. We do. We do. We import so much. I mean, how are you importing 10 tomatoes? I know. When we've got tomatoes in particular. Yeah. I don't get that. Yeah. So I think we definitely do get to see a lot more of that.

[00:02:26] Yeah. We've done quite a bit of training actually of women in agribusiness to help them, to show them what technologies are available to dry their fruits or preserve their fruits or can them. Like, you know, you produce something, just can it, you know, there's so many technologies now that are quite accessible. Yeah.

[00:02:42] And we have some interesting institute where we are, we have a food research institute that nobody ever uses apart from people coming in from abroad, but fantastic resource. Like if you want to produce something, there's so many technologies and there's so much local knowledge that you can tap into by just visiting a local office. You know, people don't really know about these things. So there's a lot of potential, you know, but it's just really about, again, sometimes information is not really readily available. So it's really again about connecting those dots and figuring out what's, what's available.

[00:03:11] And people being aware of it, maybe the government making people more aware of these resources. Yeah. That could be a simple, simple way. No hanging fruit. Yeah. Yeah. Something that we do need. Yeah. Now when we launched Shark Express, the first two years we were running a campaign and that campaign was that when you see a Shark Express driver who is studying

[00:03:30] in a traffic light, we started that campaign way before anybody thought about it because there were, there was this stigma and mindset about, perception about dispatch riders that we needed to fix. Right. Because we wanted to be the pacemakers. We wanted to change the way they live. And we actually did. Today you don't see so many dispatch riders jumping red light because majority of those who are standing by the red light now are either a product of Shark Express or now they've seen Shark Express right in stupid.

[00:03:59] So what we used to do was that when a customer takes a picture of a Shark Express rider in traffic, observing the traffic regulations, like standing by the red light and send this to us, we reward both the customer and the rider. Wow. So we give the customer free deliveries. Yeah. And we, at the end of the week, we give the rider a reward. Yeah. For, for observing that. Wow. We run that for two years consistently, then that's become a culture in Shark Express. Wow. It's like in the center. So that center helped to kind of make a call. Yeah.

[00:04:29] And I, I still have pictures of customers sending to us, taking pictures and videos of them. Yeah. And, and then praising them. Some went all the way to social media to praise us and praise the rider for observing red light. Oh, because of a laugh. Is that a common thing? That might just go through the red, pass the red light? Before, it was a common thing. Wow. Now it's better because of one, the police effort in trying to reduce, so they have cameras around. So the government's getting involved in them. Yes, the government is involved. The IGP is heavily involved.

[00:04:59] What does IGP stand for, for those who don't know? Well, this is because you have asked me. The police. The police. Okay. That's what it is essentially. So, um, he, yeah, he got involved. Okay. There are a lot of, um, policemen around or motorbikes at the traffic areas, key areas, their cameras are setting areas. And these, these people are always monitoring to make sure these riders don't do that.

[00:05:25] But before the IGP did this, we were taking precautions or we were putting measures or deployed a campaign to make sure that these guys don't do what they're doing. You were ahead of the game. We are ahead. Because then we wanted to reduce the risk of destroying the parking. The risk of accidents. So many things that involves that, right? Because that way it doesn't increase your cost of operations. Right. And we also care about riders.

[00:05:54] No, our customers are not just the end users, the users, but our riders and our staff are also part of our customers. So we need to make sure that these guys are properly taken care of, that kind of thing. So, I mean, we, the campaign worked and now there's this culture in shock express that if you jump a red light, you are either punished or you're out of the business. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Because it's severe. It's a severe. It can lead to anything. I'm not just told you. We don't tolerate it.

[00:06:21] We don't, we, we have actually allowed police to take some of the riders to court. Wow. Yeah. Because you don't know what that can, that can be a danger to their life and to others. So when a policeman calls us and he says, there's some things that is not a mere misdemeanor. We don't tolerate those things. We will tell you, okay, please process this rider. We will let the police do their job and work with them. And we will always work with them. So you can ask the police station. They will tell the shock express we're always working with them. Wow.

[00:06:51] We work with the police because we need to make sure we are. That's the level you've got to. Yeah, that's the level we've got to. Side by side with the police. Yeah, we work with the police. Incredible. Yeah. And if you go to any of the police stations, they will tell you this. Okay. I just woke up to the police station. You know shock express. They'll tell you they know shock express. Sometimes I go there myself personally to tell them that, okay, all right, okay, let's do what we need to do. Yeah. Wow. You can even train the police. You could open shack, the driving school. This is, I love this.

[00:07:17] It's, it's, and, and that, that simple action sends a strong message to that rider. Yeah. That the company will not allow you to do the things you're doing. So if you misbehave, you follow the due course or the due process you're supposed to go through. So when it got this message clear, my, my father-in-law is a, is a, is a, is a retired DC, DC OP.

[00:07:42] So, I mean, I need to make sure that his son-in-law's business is, is, is very compliant and we are doing what the law expects us to do. So, um, he's a very, he's a good man and he's well known in the police force. Mm-hmm . And so you don't also want to do anything that is contrary to the good job he's done for the country. Of course. Right. You want to, you want to kind of honor that reputation. Exactly. You want to uphold that reputation. It makes you feel good, right?

[00:08:09] It makes me feel, because if I go there and I tell them my father-in-law is DC OP, uh, retired doctor, woman, as a, yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's good. It's powerful. It's, and, and, and, and no demand because of the job he's done. So they, they are not surprised when I also tell them, you know what, let's follow the due course. Right. Cause then that's the right way to go. And so that's what we, so we, we, we've done this for years and it's now become a culture in Shark Express where people, the riders are always compliant. They follow the rules and regulations.

[00:08:39] The, the, the ride carefully and then they make sure that they, they deliver the package most importantly, safely, uh, and reliably. Anthony. Thanks. Anthony. car, dh

[00:09:06] just something new. You could have another conversation, maybe another time and go into other a bit of shack express what's been your kind of secret in terms of like as a content career i mean you're clearly you got it in terms of like socials and you're following what's been some what's not the secret but what's been kind of like the key kind of uh principles you've kind of stuck by this

[00:09:36] helped you to kind of grow you're following your reach and your platforms right so my content if you aren't aware is more so vlogs um mainly so you know vlogs are essentially following me around in my day-to-day life right so it's not like a production per se right yeah but you're just i'm just being myself and doing what i'd normally do so i think what is most important is being authentic and we

[00:10:03] hear that over and over again in this type of um you know these types of uh scenarios so i just try to be myself and try to take it easy yeah and i try to be you know truthful because people also enjoy you know seeing the real side of me or whoever that whoever they follow right yeah so i just try to be authentic and i think that's what people are drawn to because they can relate to me right like

[00:10:32] they can relate to my messy hair or they can relate to you know grocery shopping it sounds really trivial but yeah those are things that most normal people participate in right so i think that's a factor as well so you know if you're going to be um an influencer or anything in that in that um realm i think being authentic is definitely the the number one thing to try to um do and as well when you aren't authentic

[00:11:02] you can't keep it up right if you're not being yourself how can you maintain not yourself to get it right it's almost like living a lie and eventually you'll get drained and you'll be tired of trying to keep up something that isn't true it's not sustainable it's not sustainable right so just being yourself through and through and i mean even saying that there are some things that i do want to improve upon

[00:11:27] or change about myself so it's almost like bringing them on that journey with me yeah to become a better version of myself so it's not that i'm changing into someone else but you know as people evolve right so just a natural progression of life and people like that so all of that that's wonderful um i think you're right because you see other creators in the space at least maybe in gone at least i'm like miss drew um dela you know when you see their vlogs they don't just share the highlights

[00:11:56] they share the downs and exactly the bad stuff that they go through and people can relate to that and it's like you're going on a journey with them and if it's just highs it feels artificial it doesn't really feel organic doesn't resonate yeah because you know we see look at some people's maybe instagram profiles and it just looks too perfect like you want to see people like you know with a with a chip in your eye in the morning or that morning look you know people want to see that because if it's just too

[00:12:22] perfect then it's it's like are you people start to question are you even real right right right yeah i guess it's exactly and how long you've been vlogging for well i've been doing it for about 10 years now consistency yes well at times i haven't been as consistent it's been 10 years so i've definitely had a moment or two where i've just you know been to myself and haven't necessarily

[00:12:45] posted as often as i would yeah and of course you know during my pregnancy i didn't actually post much at all yeah and you know that's understandable because your body's changing you're carrying a baby you're tired right so i took a break at that time but then i've also been posting since he's been born so i've been working non-stop since he's been born and it's it's catching up on me

[00:13:12] congrats congrats on being a mother um and uh you've got another you know kid to the family right so three number three yeah oh congrats beautiful and um of course doing all these things and being a parent isn't always easy how do you kind of balance all that it's not easy i don't know how i balance it because i have a very dynamic range of children my daughter is 15

[00:13:37] my son is 11 and then i have a newborn those are three totally separate categories of stages of life right so you got the teenager transitioning into a young adult yeah then you got the the boy who is transitioning into being a teen but not quite but he's not a baby anymore he's not a kid anymore and i got a newborn baby that i'm talking google gaga too so right i gotta learn three languages

[00:14:04] that's a man's yeah yeah so um but i think the baby brings us together in a way you know um you know of course they all love each other right but there's just something about having someone to be responsible for for my older kids they enjoy being responsible and and helping and being helpful

[00:14:28] and taking care of you know what i mean a person so um so i think that it brings us together as well yeah yeah okay and how's how's it impacted how you've had to organize and manage you know content creation entrepreneurship and you know your partner and things like that time your partner yeah i'm just tired man i'm tired that's how i imagine i'm on like negative sleep i'm even like sleep training him right now because he doesn't sleep so well throughout the night and it's heartbreaking last

[00:14:57] night was the first night that the sleep training has begun essentially you put them in the crib and ignore them they scream their head off like an hour and you just have to let them do it it's pain was a pain it's painful because yeah you know that you know deep down that that you know um maternal instinct exactly instinct that's what my baby so i had to let him cry it out it did actually help him sleep a little bit longer but like it was just so mean yeah wow yeah that's quite it's quite

[00:15:26] something so i think when i get my sleep back i'll be like i'll be so amazing yeah one thing that i've spoken to previous guests about rochelle is when they've maybe had maybe a child or they have a kid they have like a new kind of purpose or reason to kind of not live but to kind of achieve something oh yeah you know i had this one guest i interviewed um he owns this puzzle uh company and um his

[00:15:52] daughter's a co-co then oh okay nice and he's inspired to kind of like build this empire and hand it over to her as generation of wealth talking about the younger generation of course you've got kids and um of course they're probably going in school and they're eventually going to start looking at what job they're going to go in what business career etc what does that look like for you because um of course maybe generation wealth is something you're going to build and also um of course you're raising kids here in ghana i mean if you're from canada you probably had a

[00:16:21] different upbringing yeah what does that look like for you in terms of what maybe the direction you want your kids to go in and the environments that they're in like do you do you see them going to a certain field or are you trying to push them into a certain field or you let them you let that kind of naturally take its place in the environments that they're in right so right now i mean there's a lot of people making money online right whether it be drop shipping or white label selling products um

[00:16:51] there's this other one i can't remember the name of it it's going to come to me um what is it called affiliate marketing right so you got all these ways to make money online and um i i personally don't know what fields are going to be left in terms of jobs that people can work at in the near coming future true with ai coming on scary definitely scary i was looking at a video

[00:17:21] ai is running on mcdonald's there's no humans in a mcdonald's somewhere in the states it's an ai operated mcdonald's that's crazy no humans yeah right i think amazon fresh is almost up there right amazon fresh right so it's getting there and i just don't see where people are going to go to school like we used to and work and even in toronto the uber drivers they're all doctors from other countries

[00:17:48] it's true right you get a lot of people driving uber with uh master's degrees or whatever they can't get a job there's no jobs yeah they're doing uber so you have to create your own job right so imagine you spend all this money getting an education yeah and you got to pay that money back no right and you're not even working in the field you expect it to be working in because you know what i mean so on that being said i want to not i want to but i do um actively challenge my children right now

[00:18:17] to dabble in this online um world of making money right and they're smart and like i don't even know i don't know how to use a computer as well as my children okay i asked them like you know me can you show me how to use this app like they're telling me how to use it like no mom this is what you do and i'm like damn so i don't see why they can't figure out how to make a website yeah

[00:18:42] how to code like you know how to do um social media marketing and all that type of stuff make an instagram and sell something you know what i mean so i'm definitely um you know more on the side of that there'll be entrepreneurs and it's just unlikely they'll work somewhere like that you know what i mean that makes sense i mean i guess that comes from your experience as well that comes from my experience and yeah i just think entrepreneurship is just the way to go you

[00:19:10] know i like school for the for the purposes of discipline you know of waking up early getting your stuff together doing tasks like you get homework you finish the homework you return it so those are healthy habits that that but that's thought that to me is all school is good for you know i mean so they do have to go to school yeah for that but i mean and even like i think about how

[00:19:37] much pressure um the black community not the black what should i say um like our parents coming from other countries coming to the west they put such high value in school but if you say you're doing something entrepreneurial it's just so foreign to them yeah and they don't i they don't get it they don't like it you know because it's so used to like the traditional school be doctor lawyer or or

[00:20:03] whatever right yeah so when you're doing an entrepreneur something like that they don't get it and they don't feel comfortable about it yeah you know when i first told my not first but when i was doing youtube my parents were like what youtube right so it just doesn't feel they don't have a sense of pride to call their friends and tell them yes my thought my daughter's a youtuber you know it doesn't sound as good as my daughter's a doctor i know right yeah but the ironic thing is that some of

[00:20:31] these creators can make more money than the doctor but it's always necessarily about money it is yeah but i mean no but we know that for sure but parents just can't accept that they're telling everyone my daughter's a youtuber what the hell is that so for a while i feel like my parents wished they could tell their friends my daughter's a doctor you know it's the easier explanation but how do people understand a youtuber right yeah i totally really i totally can relate because um i didn't just

[00:21:00] do business management university many years ago i did the music technology so i used to be like a music producer and my parents didn't understand but then down the line when i start to win all these awards and start to perform at different places and then they were okay we get it now right it took them a while yeah yeah and radio thing as well so yeah definitely get it um rachel it's been an amazing amazing conversation i've enjoyed speaking to you um what would you give in terms of tips for

[00:21:25] people that maybe they have personal brands or their content creators or their entrepreneurs and maybe they want to do it in an environment like ghana africa or maybe maybe they're out there in the states and the uk or europe what kind of tips general tips would you give to them um go for it it's like such a simple um concept but you know we spend a lot of time thinking about doing it and thinking but all that time wasted thinking you could be doing it you know so um what do

[00:21:55] they say fail forward you're not going to get it right on the first try right and it just sounds so simple but don't give up don't give up you have to do it i always say that if you're going to create content especially content creation if you're going to create content right do it as though no one's ever going to watch it right so can you create this content and do it to the best of your ability

[00:22:19] with zero views right you never will be tired of it if it's something you genuinely want to do and something you genuinely love or you're genuinely interested in if no one's watching you don't regret creating the content yeah right so find something to do it where it just is natural to you that's what i'd say you know powerful advice right yeah some of the best content creators they've been creating when they had like zero following and zero views and they kept creating

[00:22:48] and what they create they love it right so they weren't discouraged at the fact that no one was watching who cares they still love that content and they still created it and now a lot of them are you know super successful yeah that's right i mean you focus on you know the passion and why you did it in the first place and that should kind of get you through tough moments when maybe you don't have the views or maybe when you're not even monetized or exactly when no one's listening to you i mean

[00:23:13] same thing with podcasting you know a lot most people can't get past seven podcasts they give up yeah so you'd have to keep as a very very very very good advice how do you keep you talked about your inspiration you talked about some you know figures that are doing great you know the virgils you know the um what else i mean other people that you mentioned as well i mean all of these amazing great people you know in the fashion space how do you kind of continue to you know continue to

[00:23:40] innovate and inspire yourself to continue to create something new because innovation i think is a very important thing in fashion right so we keep learning i'll be honest we keep learning the kind of volume of content i consume from the internet and social media we are made sometimes i'm awake at 1 a.m tossing and bed and the next thing i'm on the page looking at what people are producing yeah what can we do different yeah you know fashion is yeah sometimes you walk into a shop and then they look and feel

[00:24:10] you go to mangoes it looks like banana republic you go to banana so how do we sort of not fall behind when it comes to what we produce so i my biggest what inspires me or pushes me forward for me is what the future hope like i said yeah the future is what we've we've created now and what the next generation will carry forward i i i watched a movie recently it's called the house of gucci you should watch that

[00:24:37] house of gucci house of gucci yeah is there a piece of the gucci story how succession failed at gucci yeah but the brand did you feel i don't know whether you understand succession field at a point yeah in the brand according to the movie but the brand still stands okay so the owner according to the movie the founder had passed had two sons one was handling the business the other was just a

[00:25:03] shareholder they needed to pass it on to the next generation a lot happened the guy that took over from the business lost the focus of the brand that needs to be built and he had unfortunately had to sell 100 shares to a partner that came along so as it stands now there isn't a gucci family member that is a shareholder on gucci that's sad yeah i understand so aside if you're going to learn anything

[00:25:31] from that yeah it's not what we are doing now but it's the next next generation next year yeah because you are talking two three generations after here after now you're talking probably 150 years to 200 years where would the brand be we are not focused on how much we're going to collect from customers now we are focused on where the brand will be because that's short-term thinking isn't that it'll be long exactly i went for a show in vegas last week i think i told you about it and it is the biggest

[00:25:59] fashion event in the world it's called sourcing and magic you have all the manufacturers and the buyers in the fashion industry all players coming to one event to showcase their stuff and to connect and all of that now the number of people that came to our booth to see us the first thing they mentioned that they because they like the brand black and famous so for me that's the first thing

[00:26:24] you've got to write brian and grace of the name the name yeah you know and the ethos of it and the fact that it is not just people think it's just targeted at black people i said no it's people with our color come and be part of this story yeah now if you've got if you've gotten your name right yeah if you've gotten a name that feels as good as confort or gucci or louis vuitton how do you

[00:26:49] capitalize on it how do you turn it into the next biggest brand in africa and you don't just talk it away you get it's something that you you you want to leave it out and leave it to the next generation that is for me what this inspires me how do i make sure that as we do this yeah and we do it for the next 100 150 200 years the name will still be there and this podcast is will be will be named

[00:27:13] there also that is the story behind the brand and that's the vision we have for the brand i think that's what it was it's like that's incredible how do you plan to pass on what you're doing to next generation whether it's teaching them the same skill sets or maybe passing on generational wealth etc or maybe opening doors that help people to go into this field how do you plan on doing that so like for for me is building the structures of the brand well i mean back to the movie there was a

[00:27:43] whole there was a whole a guy that was dedicated to keeping the brand identity the brand ethos so his he was called a i think the conservative or the conservationist or something like that director of the brand in the movie and his job is to make sure that the brand doesn't move away from why it was set up and what is supposed to deliver wow so you can pass money to the next

[00:28:11] generation but they will squander it or they'll blow it but if you build a strong structure no one can take the structure away because everything is laid out from beginning to end and one of the things i suffer from is i can't i don't see much so i have a lot of things stuck in my head so what are things i'm working on now is to get the whole team okay including my wife who's a

[00:28:35] partner yeah to sort of write everything that we want to do down yeah and we follow it you have a 10 year plan the 10 year plan might not go to plan but at least it's a plan so if it's done in 10 years is done in 15 or 20 years yeah it was still a plan that is being followed so what is driving all of this is where we are we are moving towards african apple will come has come to has come to stay but

[00:29:01] you need to evolve you cannot continuously do african apple from africa and go global because africans who always like african at all but with their prides like african approach to what can we offer them from africa that still looks like what they have yeah yeah that comes to being a commercial money yeah that's where you guys i don't know whether i'm making things that makes sense but it makes sense you want to probably want to be in those conversations you know because that's how

[00:29:30] one way you can probably get the brand to go global properly global and be in these stores wherever you go i can go in the store in dubai and find black and famous in in a store over there yeah that's what you want um i believe that you know when each of us is born you know when each of us is given an opportunity to life you know an opportunity the breath of life when you wake up there's a certain

[00:29:56] thankfulness you know to the almighty for the gift of life but the the gift of life is also about what you do you know what kind of legacy do you intend to use that life for what kind of impact to use that life you know life is not about you know coming in and walking around and you know and then exiting without contributing to you know the creativity of creation you know so for me i feel that that's the

[00:30:26] core definition of my intention to focus also on activism is that you know i have the gift of song the gift of music the gift of our ability to also talk to people not about you know how special they are but also the power of god that is in them you know the the importance to also embrace you know

[00:30:50] an idea of humanity too that is just beyond they themselves as individuals you know and i feel that that is the fundamental to all of us being able to live harmoniously together but for me i also recognize at a very early time in my career too that to also articulate there's a difference between

[00:31:12] being able to articulate those ideas and then also being able to make them real impact in the real world because we live i you know ideals and ideas are great but to be able to transform those ideas into soul that led to also my belief too that i have to find you know organizations and individuals and systems that

[00:31:39] also share the same vision that i have and then leveraging my impact to and my belief to be able to work together to make these happen so those were the things that kind of now uh you know started i started engagement with a lot of organizations and you know that's how that came about yes that's what how that came about and did it come to you or did you more like i've got this great idea no it came to me

[00:32:05] because i was really that's what i represented and i was doing so organizations you know you know all of a sudden they're you know i remember one of the even earliest mission success that we did was actually with the guinea worm eradication initiative that was going on in ghana uh you know it was the kata center you know unicef and a whole lot of organizations who were working on it so at a point they and they came to talk to me about you know they were like you know you're from the north we need somebody to really help

[00:32:34] us in terms of not only um trying to eradicate uh this issue but also going into the communities and starting and advocates within the communities for uh people to make choices in terms of you know the water sources because we're trying to do trying to go to the the roots of the problem so we had to uh you know uh kind of advocate for clean water initiatives from people who are drilling wells

[00:32:59] organizations who are drilling wells and government and at the same time to the communities about making sure that when you go and fetch water even in an area during like the dry season the processes that you need to go through to make sure that water was portable enough and all that so we went on the ground and what i was doing too was that i also brought a lot of musicians along you know because i was like

[00:33:23] you know many musicians who had a platform but did not were not using it for anything i brought them along so i would take them we went on a mission in the north you know different villages meeting communities talking to chief looking to leaders working on music together all of this stuff so this was stuff that we were doing and then at that time too i had a big festival to uh independence day festival wow so the festival was also used as a platform to to advocate for this yeah then you

[00:33:53] know i started uh working with the the un global fund approached me because uh they were working uh bono was doing the whole one initiative and all of that and um they you know they were doing hiv aids initiatives in terms of yeah in terms of trying to get cheap medication and all of that kind of stuff they had like the eye these ipods so i from the red yeah yeah yeah yeah that was all of that so i was

[00:34:18] engaged to be one of the main voices for that and then uh even through our advocacy uh the first uh uh funding for uh kind of uh ghana aids commission uh got like a big funding from the un global fund at that time uh for one of their funding from the organization came to you know uh ghana aids commission you know

[00:34:43] and now so came down went on the ground you know met people you know and advocate so that was how i dealt with things you know even when it came to peace building building i was i collaborated with an organization out of rwanda ages trust to go into rwanda and travel all around and go and learn the found the root causes of the genocide there you know meet community leaders uh you know uh

[00:35:10] uh you know work uh in peace building ideas with you know various uh partners down there in order to push the idea of peace among africans and also elevation of you know the identity of africa you know so so that's how i operate you know and then with the environmental initiatives to you know right now also championing the re-greening africa initiative that unep is putting together you know to restore

[00:35:37] you know thousands of you know hectares of land uh reclaim land you know um also encourage organic agriculture sustainability protection of biodiversity empowerment of women you know inspiring youth all of these are ideas that i believe you know for me it's more about upholding the greater good in us so it

[00:36:03] defines the kind of the umbrella of as an activist i don't go into active activism because oh you are you and goodwill ambassador or you are all that kind of stuff you know those are all kind of they're just titles for people to obey the mission of what you represent but the long run is all part of what i see as my mission as a person yeah in an artist and also a citizen of the world doing

[00:36:30] my due diligence and also my belief in in god as to what i need to use my life for that's powerful that's impacting that's powerful murky yeah in the midst of all of all of this you know advocating fundraising um rallying up other artists raising awareness collaborating with organizations with other communities what's what's the main thing i know i know your mission encompasses so many

[00:36:59] different things but what's the main thing that keeps you up on that in terms of africa because africa there's so many things that we need to work on yes yes yes yes infrastructure to the politics yes yes yes yeah to you know to solving the labor yes yes yes yes what's what's the one thing that keep what's the what's one i know it might be a hard question to answer but it's i think it's simple i think it's simple i think the bottom end of it is you know they said you know

[00:37:26] africa needs to awaken you see when all of these things can be solved when you have a people whose consciousness is awakened as to who they are and where they're going once we have that it will transform everything you unlock everything it will unlock everything because you know you need to have capital

[00:37:51] to make a lot of this when you look at a construct of let's say an economic model that's based on capitalism but human capital is actually the real capital if you wake your people up and say they want to transform the content everybody says today this is what africa this africa we want we are all going to work together to build this continent we all going to go if it's roads okay

[00:38:18] we'll go and we make it happen with the human capital because we all work together for the greater good of all of us yeah if we change that mindset yeah we will transform everything so it's all a mindset change but if we have been programmed through colonial education and also you know subscribing to you know the religious concept of constantly waiting for a better life when you die yeah you know that's really

[00:38:46] a fallacy because god will never give us life if life is about waiting to die to go and find that life yeah it doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense so focusing that this is our time this is our opportunity and we to awaken we to work together for us yeah if that changes it changes everything everything else then it's like okay economic opportunity all of this we work together african leaders work together

[00:39:14] and if you're working towards something that is a greater good self-service becomes goes to the back because you know that in the long run when the ecosystem you know as a friend told me yeah why will you fight each other to get a loaf of bread when you can build an oven together and everybody can get a loaf of bread whenever they need it it's amazing it's just incredible um i love quotes like this and

[00:39:41] i think you know africans aside i think as black people at least what i see in the west yes we're quite kind of selfish or you know kind of like you know we try and do things for ourselves but we're not we're not trying to collaborate you see the asians yes how they bring their wealth together yes yes yes community yes yes you know we do need to see a lot more about no we need to see a lot more of that but you see that's what i'm saying that our for the what the first thing to get over is a mindset

[00:40:10] because our mindset has been programmed for a long time and what we have to understand that we we are one of the races that has been enslaved that has been colonized that is still being uh is still the pawn of new colonization any major power that is coming here it's not coming here if it is collaborative collaborative is about owning the narrative so everybody that's coming here is looking at

[00:40:39] winning so when they look at winning that means that they have to play the game better than you do so if you are only in the game just playing and not understanding that even if you have partnerships you have to know that the partnership is looking for advantages you know so we need to get out of that whole thing start looking at how we work for we first yeah if we work for we then we can be able

[00:41:06] to also on equal terms be able to engage i mean we only have to look at the headline and see that who among the people of the world will find resources and then others will come in and then you the one who owns the resources get the littlest percentage of the resources when it was found in your own ground yeah you know i mean we have mineral rights we are the most what's it called but all the deals

[00:41:34] that our leadership is doing the deals we are always the last in the deals how do we what kind of mindset mindset or educational system programmed us to look at that and say that is all right no it's not okay you know it's not okay we're understanding ourselves look at cocoa bauxite gold all these different those are leverages and if they are leveraging and imagine when you leverage that even and quantify

[00:41:59] that as holdings you can find that as holding that means you are richer than everybody so if you have that as holdings why will gold that is extracted from the ground be used as a a platform for currency to be strong what of the gold that is in the ground why can't you if we had the upper hand we will quantify that as wealth and in economics use that as this is the resources that we have we are

[00:42:25] leveraging that for this for you to bring us that because we have that is in the ground but the extractive aspect of it has become more valuable than the ones that own it you know and i think that we just need to look at the educational system and know that we have been programmed to feel a certain way about ourselves we have been programmed to to see what wealth is wealth is the land that we've been

[00:42:50] given and i think that god gave us everything that we need and we have spent so much time and others have spent so much time to blind us from seeing what we have and i think that's why we need to look at you know the religions that we follow yeah uh this education that we follow the the media that we consume

[00:43:14] from outside and see that all of it is meant to keep our mindset in that space so that we never rise beyond who we are because we only have to look at history and see that we were enslaved we were colonized so if we are engaging the same entities they're not coming here to for our betterment they're coming here to keep us our mindset still in that space but it's none but we ourselves can be able to

[00:43:41] rise beyond that so if we're envisaging a new africa the new africa has to first be in terms of changing our mindset changing our mindset and like the little competitiveness yeah tribal competitiveness you go even here you go you know some business that the right person is there somebody would be like oh or you or your debbie who who is it what tribe does he belong in and all of a sudden it's more about a tribal thing we've become they're caught up in me more good meaning yes yeah yeah no meaningful things

[00:44:08] exactly the prime directive we've lost the path of the prime direct directive and fighting over things that are not important to our collective uh define our collective purpose and define our collective vision to be able to rise beyond the challenges the challenges that we have are will dissipate when we change our mindset it's the way we view the world that has really brought all

[00:44:33] that's why we go to somebody to go and borrow money when we are sitting on wealth you know so so so we we need to and this is the time yeah you know and this is the time for us to do that you're going to the imf and things like that no no no no no no no no you know we are far too blessed with too many human capital first of all which is one of the most valuable thing had a guest that said the same thing and then we also have the economic capital too that is there

[00:45:03] you you