TAP Magazine Issue 16

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Rebranding Africa One story at a time 2

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M O SE S M U TA BA RU KA editor-in-chief

WINNIE MILLS country coordinator

PAU L K I D E R O photographer / creative consultant

IGNACIO HENNIGS creative consultant

GATHONI KANG’ ETHE Contributor & Production assistant

S T E P H A N I E M AT U Production Manager

NATA SHA N TAG A R A Contributing writer

AHISHAKIYE ELIE Art & Design

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NU DA KI O H CO LA & LI ER DE ND ET OU

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Cover art by Elie Ahishakiye @elie.a.arts

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youth to voice their ideas and opinions about “The Africa We Want” and the steps we need to take to get there.

This digital campaign, supported by our narrative partner Africa No Filter and run by our very own Gathoni Kang’ethe, run over our various platforms with the discussion anchored through the hashtag #TAPTheAfricaWeWant.

On page 77 of this issue, you’ll find a summary of the campaign’s milestones.

RAS

MUTABARUKA

Editor-in-Chief TAP Magazine

DEAR TAP FAM, Warm greetings to you and I hope you’re healthy and energized as we enter the last quarter of 2022.

This year, a lot has gone on behind the scenes at TAP. Production wise, two of our short films, “Colours are Alive here”, and “Jihan’s venture”, all produced and filmed in 2021 have been broadcasting on Al Jazeera English since early this year and they’re now on YouTube. If you haven’t seen these films, please watch them on YouTube and let us know what you think. In June this year, the first film won a prize at the New York Film and Television Festival. This was our first film award and I want to congratulate everyone who worked on the film and to thank our production partners, Big World Cinema.

As well, we’ve recently travelled to Ghana and Sierra Leone to start filming season three of “Homecoming”. The first episode aired last week on Deutsche Welle and we’re hoping to go to four more countries before the end of this year. For those who are new here, Homecoming series profiles young Enterprising African youths from the diaspora who’ve moved back to the continent.

As you’re aware, here at TAP, we are continuously striving to stimulate nuanced, vibrant, and dynamic conversations about Africa. From October 2021 to June 2022, we used our platform as a space to engage Africa’s

Talking about this new issue, we’re blessed to have on the cover Arielle Kayabaga. Arielle is one of the many Black/African women who are making political moves and smashing glass ceilings everywhere. Born in Burundi, she migrated to Canada as a child refugee and would later become the first black women city councilor in London Ontario, the first Burundian Canadian parliamentarian and was recently appointed the chair of the Liberal party of Canada Black Caucus. Arielle is an excellent example of dreams being valid.

Regardless of where your journey starts or the circumstances you encounter along the way.

For this issue, we also interviewed Delilah Kidanu, an entrepreneur who Co-founded KOA Technology, an appbased platform with a mission of helping African millennials save and grow their money starting in Kenya. You can learn more about Delilah and KOA from page 27. You’ll also find an interview with Omi Iyamu and Doctor Lwidiko Edwards. After working in Silicon Valley for over 15 years both at Microsoft and Google, Omi left two years ago to start Artist Crowdfunding Exchange (ACE), a platform he believes will revolutionize how artists interact with their fans and the creative industry at large.

On his part, Doctor Lwidiko, who is also a PhD scientist, tells us of his vision to build the first Disneyland for Science in Africa. In his home country of Tanzania.

I’d love to finish off by sending my sincerest condolences to the family, friends, collaborators and to all Rwandans in general for the loss of Yvan Buravan. The TAP Team condoles with you all.

As always, with gratitude

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Meet Arielle Kayabaga The journey of a Burundian child refugee onto Canadian Political power halls

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lack/African women are making political moves and smashing glass ceilings everywhere. Arielle, who moved to Canada from Burundi as a refugee is a good example. She became the first black women city councilor in London Ontario, first Burundian Canadian parliamentarian and was recently appointed the chair of the Liberal party of Canada Black Caucus. Arielle is an excellent example of dreams

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being valid. Regardless of where your journey starts or the circumstances you encounter along the way. We were privileged to meet up with Arielle on her first day as a full Member of Parliament and to witness her first steps into the corridors of Canadian political powers. We discussed coming to Canada as a refugee, her activism, black folks and politics and we even spoke about her love for “Gitoke”. Enjoy the read

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Please Introduce yourself to the TAP FAM.

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y name is Arielle Kayabaga and I’m the newly elected Member of Parliament for London West, Ontario Canada.

I’m a mom. I’m a friend. I’m a sister. I’m a daughter. I’m part of many, many communities and lots of extensions of who I am are interconnected with a lot of people. I was prior to being a member of parliament, a city councilor for London, Ontario, the downtown area.

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Before that, I was just a community member, serving, supporting, and working to better our community.

What were some of your most memorable childhood memories?

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y most memorable memories as a child were when we lived in Burundi, and on Saturday afternoons, we would sometimes be able to drive to the beach, and, you know, eat peanuts and Fanta. On the way, we would have the car windows down, all the way down and the wind and the breeze would be

hitting your face – this was one of my favorite things to do and one of the most memorable.

For those who don’t know, tell us about Burundi

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ell, Burundi is a country in East Africa. It’s part of the East African Community. It’s my homeland, where I was born. It’s the land of my ancestors. I think one of the things that we tend to do is connect stories of war and struggle to a people, and we forget that there’s a rich culture – people who have rich histories.

Burundi has a very strong

and rich, hospitable culture.

Burundians are very smart, hardworking and resilient.

Because they have been going through a lot from the beginning, from when Burundi was created after colonization, Burundians have been resilient, and they have stood strong in lots of trying moments.

Tell us of your journey to Canada.

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e came here as refugees. My journey to Canada started as a refugee, and eventually we became permanent residents and

became citizens. Came here as a child with my family. We first lived in Montreal, a French speaking city, because we’re Francophones from Burundi and then we eventually moved to London, Ontario, where it’s more of an Anglophone city and we learned English.

I learned English here, and we rooted ourselves in the City of London, and we’ve been there since.

What did you know about Canada before you left Burundi?

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efore I left Burundi, I only knew Canada through TV, through movies, through conversations that I overheard adults talk about, and I didn’t have an idea of what Canada was and what it was about. But I knew that there was no war in Canada, because a lot of people who left Burundi to Canada left because they were fleeing the war to be in a safer place.

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So, coming to Canada, I imagined it being big like in the Movies, this is what we saw. I wanted to experience snow. I thought snow was going to be fun because people would lay in snow on TV – but snow is cold.

Then of course, once here, we had to navigate the systems as immigrants, as refugees trying to figure out how to, you know, not just survive, but thrive in this country, and it’s a long journey for immigrants. It’s a long journey for refugees. It’s a long journey for single parents. It’s a long journey for people of color, for black people, but it has, in my opinion, met a lot of the expectations that we came here looking for. We’ve been able to do most of what we wanted to do. Most importantly, in Canada, I was able to find a country where I wasn’t concerned about dying every day because there was no war in this country.

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What sort of dreams did you harbor before moving to Canada?

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didn’t have dreams. I was 11 years old. I came to Canada at 11 years old. I think we were here on my mother’s dream of wanting to find a better country for her children. A country that could afford a future for her children, a safe country, obviously it wasn’t easy for her being a refugee, a person of color, she was also a single mom, she was a lone parent at the time bringing her children here. It was not easy.

How was it for your mom and for your family navigating the system those early days?

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t is tough navigating the system as a newcomer to this country, finding a job, finding a house, even finding neighborhoods that are safe for your family and that you can afford can be complicated. Then there’s language barriers, sometimes for different people depending on what language they already speak, or what language

they don’t speak. For us, we were in Montreal, at first, it was a Francophone city, and then we moved to London. So having to learn English was a challenge for our family. I would later participate in advocating for Francophone services when I was in high school for that reason.

We need better policies around housing accessibility, we need more affordable housing in safe neighborhoods, and not concentrating people in areas with difficult social issues that don’t afford those who live there the chance to be successful.

It’s important to make sure that we support newcomers who have left everything behind and are coming here with sometimes nothing because often they’re fleeing the war with nothing with them. Those of us who’ve been through this system need to work hard to address these challenges because we’ve been through them and know firsthand how tough it is.

What’s the biggest misconception about being a “Refugee”?

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ust the word itself, as a person who was displaced, the word “refugee” can be dehumanizing. It takes away the person behind the term of being a refugee, and it connects

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them to a situation or a state that they’re in. Because being a refugee is not an identity. It’s a state that you’re at the moment.

And a lot of times, it’s because you’re looking to be in a better place to be in a safer place. So that’s a huge misconception that we connect refugees, people who are refugees to that term, when it’s just a state, not an identity. We need to humanize people. We need to understand that refugees are humans, just like any other person. We need to see the people before we see their struggle so that we can better understand their struggle and better support them. We need to connect to the humanity of that person and not their current situation.

What excited you about politics and do you recall what triggered your first journey into politics?

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olitics is entrenched in everything we do on a regular basis. It’s part of how we eat our food, how we buy our clothes, how we get around our cities, how we live within communities where we live and it’s sort of hard to stay away from politics when you are part of lots of different intersectionality that connects you to the marginalized. I think the first time I got involved in something that was political was when I was in high school and was advocating for access to education in French and wondering if we could

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get a university that served Francophones. And again, that was out of the space of being in London, in a very Anglophone city as a Francophone, it was hard to learn French and to navigate a system that when you have a language barrier, in a bilingual country, so just things like that. It was actually really nice to figure out that you can advocate for things in your country, and you don’t have to lose your life over it, and you can make change through connecting with other people who have the same passions as you, who are affected by perhaps the same, you know, issues or have the same barriers as you and then getting together and bringing that force together and advocating to bring that change.

That was what really excited me about politics in that I saw it as a vessel of change, as an instrument that could help me improve not just my life and my children’s lives, but also people in my community, people that I really care about who are experiencing lots of systemic barriers, and we could work together to get those removed, and to be in a country where we can actually do that was what really excited me about being involved in politics.

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There’s a perception that black people have a serious case of “political lethargy”, do you buy this?

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don’t think that black people are not engaged in politics.

I think that there are some barriers for them to be engaged in politics because politics has been an institution that not many people have been able to access for a long time.

As a community, we come from different parts of the world and we all have different stories, and I don’t know what the story is for every single black person, but I do know that a lot of our community members who don’t

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find the time to get engaged or involved in politics, it’s not that they don’t want too or that they don’t understand that it’s important. It is that there’s already a lot of barriers for them to be engaged. When you work precarious jobs, which a lot of our community members find themselves in, when you have children that you have to take care of, and you don’t necessarily have all the support it is difficult. A lot of women in the homes are breadwinners, and they are, you know, at work when some of the meetings are happening. I don’t believe that they don’t participate because they don’t want to. It has to be intentional in the way that we engage these communities

while at the same time, we must bring these barriers down.

Are there any policy changes being discussed or applied to remove some of these barriers?

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here have been a lot of policy changes in the last 20 years or so to empower people who want to get involved in politics.

First, like, limiting who can and cannot donate to a campaign.

When you’re a young black woman, for example, and you’re running in politics, and you’re running against someone who’s more established in society and has a lot of, you know, business background or business, or

comes from resources, because of the policy changes that we have, it helps you start on the same playing field. It is still not the same playing field because you don’t have the same resources that that person has but it is a good start.

What policies are you going to push in the house that will improve this situation?

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or us to be able to remove some of those barriers there’s a lot of steps that we could take. Childcare is one avenue, affordable housing is another avenue, more meaningful employment, raising, having more living wages for people, building systems that function and that build

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strong communities. It’s important to have these policies in place so that we can improve quality of life for everyone and in turn they’ll be able to have the headspace to think about getting involved in politics and leadership. It’s not just politics but leadership. You don’t have to be in politics, you could also be on boards that make decisions on their children’s lives, or boards that you know, make decisions that impact how we build our streets, how we build our transit systems and how accessible we make them or nonaccessible. There’s so much work to be done on things that impact us daily and that people with the most lived experience would be the most equipped to help us draft policies around. They live it every day and have more accurate feedback on what needs to change than anyone else.

How did you decide to throw your name on the ballot for the city council in London?

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he way I decided to run for city council, I had participated in a couple meetings. I was a mentee with the City Council at the time, and just sort of listened in to some of the conversations that they were having, conversations around housing, transit, different things that once again, impact lots of people in my community, lots of people that I care about, and it just hit me in that moment that conversations like this can be had with people who have lived experience.

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And I also wanted to see more progress happen in our city, especially around transit, and I did put my name in the hat because of that. It was a seven month campaign, first time campaigner. The entire team was brand new and first time and we ran against seven other people, and we won in a ranked ballot system.

I was 27 years old, we won as a team, because it wasn’t just my work. It was a team of people, a community of people that came together, I’m a believer, you know, working communities and having a village that supports you, and it was an honor.

You were the first black woman elected on the city’s city council. How did that make you feel?

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had two feelings about that.

The first feeling was I was honored, the second feeling was, we were in 2018 and it was sort of unacceptable that it was the first time that we elect a black woman on city council. That was a milestone that should have been celebrated way before.

It’s good that we’re celebrating these barriers that women are breaking and the glass ceilings that women are breaking but, when we think about where we’re at now, in this century, it’s a little too late and as we celebrate, we should also feel the guilt of needing to do more work.

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What does community mean to you?

or me, when we talk about community it means you’re not working alone, you’re working with a lot of people. For example, during campaigns, you are working with people who are investing their time, their money, their dreams, and lots of people are investing lots of different things in you. When I say community,

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that’s what I mean. It takes a village to do something impactful. That’s why I say breaking those glass ceilings I couldn’t have done it alone. I did it because of the people who believed in me, who donated their time, who donated their resources, who voted and who believed in this being able to happen. Afterwards, it was beautiful to hear a lot of people talk about how they saw themselves in me; how they felt represented.

For a lot of different reasons, there were young women who felt represented, there were refugees who felt represented, There were a lot of people who maybe didn’t see themselves in that seat, but believed that we could be in that seat together, and we were able to work hard to get there.

It sounds like a lot of groups of people have their hopes on you. Do you feel the pressure or burden of carrying the dreams of these people?

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don’t carry the dreams of other people. I do not feel the pressure of carrying the dreams of other people, because I do not carry the dreams of other people. I think I come into this role as another person from the community.

I’m a community member, and I’m here to serve and work for

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my community. But I also am Arielle, and I have to be Arielle, and I can’t be everyone. I think people have trusted me to represent them. I believe that they trusted me to represent them as Arielle, not as the entire community because I can’t possibly embody the thoughts and dreams of every single person in the community. But it does matter when we talk about representation and the impact that representation has. When we look at the time when Obama became the first president in the United States of America to now, how many black people have been able to participate and be successful in their political ventures and careers and desires to represent their communities. Black people have been able to see themselves in leadership roles and I think it means something when people are able to see somebody who looks like them be successful. When you go back to history and realize that there was a time where these things were not possible and not even legal for us to participate in, it shows the power of representation.

What part of campaigning do you enjoy?

I think campaigns are tough.

I enjoyed door knocking –it’s one of my favorite things to do. You know, resources were tough, being able to connect to resources at the beginning of the campaign, you know, trying to tell people who you are, when

they don’t know who you are, and making them believe that you’re here to serve them. Yeah, those are very, very difficult things as someone who’s young, who is a woman, someone who’s a black person, sometimes it can be challenging to have those intersectional, different identities that you bring to the table. But, one of the biggest things that you can do in a campaign and be successful is connecting with people one on one and it works What would be your advice to young people who want to get into politics

M

y first advice for young people who are interested in running is always to do it. If you have the desire to do it, just do it because you will never know where you’re going to go with it. You never know whether you can or cannot if you never try. And my second advice is to make sure you’re completely passionate about it. The work is a lot and it takes a lot to be a person of color in the political space. Make sure that your intentions and your dreams match. Then ground yourself in your community as well because those are the people who are going to be supporting you from the beginning, all the way through the journey. So make sure you have those strong connections.

How do you deal with social media as a public figure, we’ve seen in the past serious threats directed to you and your family?

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think that social media has been a great tool for a lot of work that many people have been able to do, but it has also been a challenging tool especially when women, women of color or young people in politics get attacked. I do believe that we need to have better policies around that, and I think in this campaign that was one of the commitments that we made. That we will improve social media policies so that we can end online and cyberbullying and online attacks because those are things that will make women and young people not want to participate in the political system.

So how I deal with this is, I set boundaries for myself, I don’t have to engage with everybody, and I don’t read comments, ever. It’s important not to read comments because you’re going to read both sides, there’s going to be positive comments, you choose what you want to allow in your headspace, because you also need the energy to continue to do the work that you’re doing. I think that we’re in an era where we think social media is an all be all tool, but it’s not.

And on many occasions, I have refused to participate in social media, because I don’t have to compromise myself to do the work – because without social

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media, I’m still doing the work, so I’m not going to put myself in a compromising situation where my mental health is not being prioritized. I think that’s something that we all must do, collectively prioritize our mental health.

That said, I’m also aware that we just went through a pandemic, we all only had social media as a tool to stay connected with one another. We learned how to use it in a very powerful way. Good and bad. Moving forward, I think it’s important that we make decisions around how we want to continue to use it.

Looking back at your time as a city councilor in London, what would you say was your biggest milestone?

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’m proud of the work that we did on the City Council. We were in government when we faced a global pandemic.

And it was very nice to see how different levels of government came together to do the best that they can to support the community. Obviously, there’s a lot of hurdles that we had to get through, but we were all learning. I’m proud of the work that we did around housing; we invested over $73 million in social housing. We created shelter spaces for the winter for people who are living rough.

We did a lot of work around the reduction of the opioid crisis in London even though the pandemic increased that more, we did really do a lot of work

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around that and the prevention of the spread of HIV. I’m very proud of the work we did around diversity and inclusion. In 2020, I moved the motion to implement an antiracism lens on our budget. It’s a very important thing to do because the budget decides a lot, basically, your money is where your policies are, if you don’t allocate money into specific areas that you know are critical, that area never gets the support that they need. If you’re putting on an anti-racism lens on the budget, you’re improving housing, you’re improving transit, you’re improving daycare, even the design of the city. Now, whether that’s going to be followed through or not, we’ll have to measure it in the next couple of years.

How would you sum up the current relationship between Africa and Canada?

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n terms of the relationship between Canada and Africa, I think there are a lot of opportunities to grow. I think there’s a lot of trade opportunities. There’s a lot of opportunities to do business between Canada and Africa, there’s a lot of opportunities to learn from each other. I hope these relationships are built and we can also do more trade between Africa and Canada that benefits Canadians and Africa.

What do you hope to achieve in parliament?

I

look forward to serving the community. I look forward to delivering on housing, childcare, climate change, and all the things that I campaigned on, and I believe that the work can be done but it takes the community, it takes lots of dedication and I’m excited and I’m willing to work and I hope that people will work with me.

If you had to share a meal with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be and what would you have?

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ichelle Obama. I would love to eat my favorite dish, Gitoke, which is a Burundian dish with Michelle Obama – putting it out there in the atmosphere.

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Meet Delila K idanu The Fintech Entrepreneur helping young people build sustainable saving habits in Kenya

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ow meet Delila Kidanu, an entrepreneur who Co founded KOA Technology, an app-based platform that helps Kenyans save and grow their money. Born in Ethiopia and raised in Kenya, Delila grew up in the age of MPESA. At the time, MPESA was Kenya’s and most likely Africa’s only mobile money platform offering financial services. It did a good job helping customers send and receive money and purchase airtime.

However, it did not provide other essential services such as savings and investment. And Delila always knew that this was a big gap that needed addressing,

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so amid the pandemic and a waning economy, she and her co-founder raised capital and launched KOA.

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oday, KOA is on a mission to bridge the gap left by MPESA, cooperatives, SACCO’s, banks, and informal saving groups in the savings and investment sector. As things stand, most existing platforms scare away customers due to unattractive interest rates and complex manual systems. Moreover, these traditional systems have become less appealing to the digitally-savvy millennials and generation z, who would rather transact their money through mobile platforms. Despite infrastructure and trust challenges, the fintech startup has had a good start. It has already onboarded at least 5,000

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customers. KOA seeks to expand across the continent in the future and to extend its product offerings along the line as the company grows.

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e spoke with Delila about her interesting backstory, her career journey, African Fintech space, co-founding KOA, and her ambition to create a Pan African company. Catch the full interview below:

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Please introduce yourself to the TAP Fam

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y name is Delila Kidanu and I’m one of the co-founders and Chief Operating Officer of Koa. Koa is a mobile goal based savings platform where we encourage individuals to save for their future and invest that money and earn up to 10% interest. The idea behind KOA was really to help individuals with building wealth on their journey and making sure that they can get the discipline to save over a long period of time.

Where did you grow up?

I

’m originally Ethiopian but I grew up in Kenya although I moved around Africa a bit.

I’ve lived in South Africa and Zimbabwe for example.

I graduated high school here in Kenya and went to study in the UK. I started off thinking I wanted to be in the political science side, so I took a course in international relations and a bit in business. I later worked in the development space but quickly

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decided that I wanted to take the path down technology.

I then went ahead and took a master’s course in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship.

What did you want to do as a young child growing up?

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hen I was little, I always wanted to be in a diplomatic or development space and having studied in international relations and going into Brussels and working there within legislation and policy, I was able to understand how outside of policy there are other ways that you can make a difference when it comes to development and pushing countries forward.

Having been able to see all of that and seeing different types of economic situations in different countries, led me to really want to be in this innovative and technological space, because I think it can have a really big impact on how we want to drive our countries forward, especially on this continent.

What is the state of FinTech in Africa?

The FinTech space on the continent is booming right now.

It’s super innovative and there’s a lot of companies that are coming up.

I always say that on the African continent, you can’t generalize the FinTech space because there are different markets.

When you look at a market like Nigeria versus a market like Kenya, they’re different. Kenya is mobile first and Nigeria has a very deep infrastructure history that allows Fin Techs companies to develop diverse innovative products very

quickly.

Across every country on the continent, we see huge innovations coming about and it’s very exciting to see what people are building, how it’s coming about and the different approaches you can take to create a successful startup in the FinTech space that has longevity.

The Global Venture Capital community looks to have their eyes set on FinTech in Africa. What makes this sector more lucrative than others?

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hen it comes to the VC space, it’s very important to understand that there are cycles of funding. At some point, we were looking at the gig economy and that was the biggest, you know, that was the biggest piece of the pie!

In the last couple of years, it’s been FinTech. I believe because FinTech is really democratizing access. We are building the rails for payments. We are providing access to people in rural areas to

access formal investment products, for example. I think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done in the financial space, that FinTech’s are plugging the gap there and so that’s why funding has really gone deep into FinTech in the last couple of years.

I think a lot of other sectors are also getting a lot of funding, but ultimately whether

you’re selling a product, whether you are creating something afresh, you’re selling a good, you need to be paid somehow and if you can’t be paid, then that’s an issue. And I think a lot of these ecosystems and a lot of these companies need the core infrastructure for payments, for banking, for business banking, all of those needs to be solid for us to build a really big and robust startup ecosystem. This is why we have to get FinTech right first.

When and how did KOA come about?

We started KOA about a year ago, well we launched in the market about a year ago and the aim of KOA was really to be the antithesis to the kind of credit market that we see, especially here in Kenya. My co-founder and I did a lot of work in West Africa and really got to see how the Nigerian ecosystem was building up FinTech’s for fractionalized investing, for savings and all these pieces. And when we looked at Kenya, we specifically saw that MPESA had a huge piece of the pie. But what we saw was that the offering when it came to building wealth

and building financial products that help you build wealth, was lacking. So, when we started KOA, our aim was really to help people build a habit of saving and to allow them to do that easily, without understanding what to invest in, when and how to buy a stock or whatever. To just set up a goal, invest their money and build the habit of doing that and earn interest while doing it.

The idea behind KOA was really to help individuals with building wealth on their journey and making sure that they can get the discipline to save over a long period of time.

We really wanted to tap into the behavioral side of savings so that we reward you for saving. If you log into the app today, you can go in and you can decide that, okay, I want to save for my child’s birthday, or I want to save for my birthday and you’ll set the duration, you’ll set how much you want to save every day, week or month and we will encourage you regular and remind you at each point to keep saving.

So if you choose daily, then every day we

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will communicate with you.

Hey, have you saved today? You said you wanted to save, what are you doing? Or how are you spending the money?

It should come here. That’s really the idea and I think we don’t really have a product like that in the market. And even when we look at banks, we see that they have savings accounts, but we are not encouraged to save, right? It’s on us to really determine whether we want to save and how much we want to save.

When we came into the market, we also wanted to be innovative, of course, and so when you look at, for example, trying to open a bank account, you still need to go into the branch. If you want to open an asset management account at Britam or Sanlam, you still have to go there and you have to sign papers. With KOA you can download the app, log in, start saving all within two minutes, and it’s fully digital, so you never have to come into the branch.

Saving can be hard; what have you seen from the activities on KOA?

P

eople always say that savings is not sexy, and it really isn’t, because, if I spend on whatever I’m buying, it’s going to give me so much joy. But our philosophy is that – can you delay that

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gratification that you’re getting from that initial purchase? Can we make sure that okay, today, even though you’re paying into KOA, you’re not going to feel that big excitement or thing, but tomorrow when you buy that car, when you buy that phone that you wanted, or you take that trip that you’ve been dreaming about for a year, that’s when you get the gratification. This requires that the people who are working with us and coming onto KOA have a completely different mindset. You need to commit to your savings journey, and that’s what we’re helping people do –by helping them change their behaviors.

Money is a very personal matter and there’s a lot of distrust around that, what have you done to address that?

W

hen it comes to customers and the mobile app, it’s really about trust.

In this first year, we needed to make sure that our customers know that Koa is not going anywhere. We’re here with you. We’re walking this journey with you, and we did that in different ways. For example, we partnered with the likes of Britam, who’ve been in the market for over 20 years.

Then we got admitted into the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) of Kenya Sandbox, which is a national regulator that

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really puts a stamp on what we’re doing – that we are a trustworthy institution. That really supported us in our trust building and securing our initial customers and growing our platform.

Do you guarantee that people will not lose the money they save with you?

H

mm, guarantee is a very strong word, but yes, it will be there.

No regulator, bank or asset manager can guarantee you anything, right? Because everything is based on market dynamics. So even today, if you went and you invested in an asset like a product at an asset manager, it’s also dependent on how the market is going.

Will the money that you invested be returned to you when you want it returned to you? Yes, always. That is our ambition.

Unless you tell us that you want to lock the money up and you know, in that case, we’re doing what you told us to do. But, yes, for us, it’s very much about,

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okay, you have given us these instructions, we are executing on those and in the long term, we are doing it to benefit you.

When it comes to saving, when is the best time to start?

I

think when it comes to saving, you can never start too early. I have vivid memories of going to visit my cousins and they had massive piggy banks since they were like eight. So, they’re learning how to keep cash. But today, because we are a mobile app and we are tech first, we are looking at digital natives.

We’re looking at people who are at the beginning of their careers and are starting to save, people who are looking for things that they want to save towards. If we can support you early on in your career, then we can walk the full journey with you. We can buy your first phone with you.

We can buy your first laptop with you. We can buy your first car with you all the way until your first house.

You need to commit to your savings journey, and that’s what we’re helping people do –by helping them change their behaviors.

What is the best saving advice you can give?

S

aving requires commitment. You need to determine one; do I have something I’m saving towards? I’m I saving towards financial freedom?

I’m I saving towards a house that I want to buy? I’m I saving towards enjoyment on Friday?

Whichever, whatever it is, you need to have a reason that you’re saving.

Saving also requires consistency.

Once you decide to save, you just build that habit. Once you get into the habit of it, it’s really not, it’s not difficult. It’s something that becomes your routine and you’ll always make it happen.

I think when it comes to saving it’s almost like a decision that you have to make and often times people think that it means that you need to do huge lump sums, when actually you can start with 10 Bob, 20 Bob, a hundred shillings, whatever it is, that is still savings and maybe it doesn’t get you to where you want to go as fast, but ultimately you still have

more than you had initially. And so, for us, it’s really about that consistency, having the goal and starting small.

Financial literacy in Africa is very low. is KOA doing something to address this?

W

hen we first started KOA, we realized that we are looking at a market where financial literacy is not taught in early education, in university or even in your first job. People are having to figure out these things as they go. We got a lot of questions of, okay, what is Interest? What is a money market fund? What is an asset manager, and so on and so forth? Thus, very early on we really decided that as part of what we’re doing with KOA, we want to focus on educating our customer base. Even people who are not on KOA, we still want to make sure that you are educated so you can make good financial choices for yourself in the future.

So we started doing webinars where we would host finance 101, or budgeting 101, savings and really going through all of the topics that are very important for you to understand.

The more that we ran those sessions, the more we realized there’s a lot of content that people enjoyed. Today, we have a team dedicated to developing in house content around

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financial literacy and different pieces that we thought were very important.

This is now a core piece of our product. It is now embedded within our mobile app.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced thus far on this journey with KOA?

A

cross the board, across the continent, you see that there are three key issues that come up. One is always building trust with your customers, especially when it has to do with money.

Money is a very personal piece.

It’s something that people really, really hold onto, of course. So, building trust with them for you to be the middleman between them and their money, that takes a lot of time. The other piece is the growth mechanism.

As a FinTech, you’re competing against banks, here in Kenya you’re competing against the likes of M-pesa.

And that’s also why we decided to go into the CMA Sandbox, which has been a great experience for us and made sure that we can play around with our innovative technology, but also make sure that we keep our customers’ funds safe and also play within the regulatory framework that exists.

Then you’re also competing against any financial providers, such as investment houses or asset managers. So you really need to find that niche and make sure that you can present your value proposition and make sure that people understand why they would come to you.

Very exciting highs, but also a few lows. I think some of the most exciting things that we’ve seen are the growth of our team. I think without a great team, the product wouldn’t be what it is. Also, we’ve seen a few customers who have been long lifelong customers of banks or lifelong customers of asset managers, decide to close their accounts at their traditional institutions and come onto KOA

The last piece is always regulatory. In any market you

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go to, because you’re operating in this middle ground between not needing to be regulated versus needing a full on banking license or any type of license. It’s really difficult to find that gray area in the regulation where you fit. I think here in Kenya, they’ve done a great job in mapping out where FinTechs can play and where they can’t play.

What has been KOA’s biggest milestone thus far?

KOA is turning one in June, 2022. It’s been about a year since we’ve been in the market, and I think we’ve seen a lot of milestones that we’ve achieved.

full time and I think that is really a testament to the product that we’re building.

Saving requires commitment.

You need to be committed and you need to have a goal you’re saving toward. I’m I saving towards financial freedom?

I’m I saving towards a house that I want to buy? I’m I saving towards enjoyment on Friday?

Whatever it is, you need to have a reason for why you’re saving.

Looking forward, how do you envision KOA in the next 10 years

W

e are only turning one in a few weeks, but we do have ambitions for the whole continent, really starting off in this region. We want to make sure that our product is at its core solving the problem for our customers and once we feel like we’ve gotten that in Kenya, then we will start our expansion outside of Kenya.

Beyond that, we’re looking to be here for the next 10 years, we’re really looking to take our customers with us on this longterm journey and make sure that we can be with them every kind of big financial step along the way.

So really today we might be working with whomever on getting them a phone or getting them a flight ticket to their

favorite destination and maybe in five years from now we’ll be with them as they raise funds for their wedding or plan their honeymoon. So that’s really our ambition –It’s to walk that financial wealth creation journey with our customers.

What are the three things that Founders must be prepared for before going for funding rounds?

T

he three things a founder must be prepared for before going out to fundraise is one; have a plan, make sure that you know why you’re raising and how much you’re raising for. Two; get ready for a lot of nos. You’ll get a lot of them. It’s part of the process, it’ll happen, but it’s okay. It doesn’t mean that your business or idea is not good. And three; enjoy the process. There’s a lot of feedback that you will get from the experienced investors you’ll speak to and that will only make your business better.

Looking back, what are the two mistakes that you’ve made as an entrepreneur that you can share?

the mistakes you make are what makes a strong company in the end. We’ve made a lot of mistakes in the past, from our hiring process, to how we document our processes, to how we go out and fundraise, to how we make sure that our valuation is correct. There’s a lot of nuances in building a FinTech, especially, and so I think I can’t even pinpoint two mistakes.

I made a mistake this morning {Laughs}.

What’s the best business advice you’ve received?

T

he best piece of advice that I’ve received is to trust yourself as a founder. Nobody knows your business as well as you do, and you need to trust that especially when you make decisions. The other piece is to also have fun along the process.

It’s a journey. And you need to enjoy every step of the journey, otherwise the process will be very difficult and tedious. Lastly, it’s also to build a strong team.

Your vision and what you aim to build is only going to get there if you have people around you who understand your vision, who want that vision as badly as you do.

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think the life of an entrepreneur is all about making mistakes every day.

If there was a playbook on how to do this, then everyone would get it right. I believe that

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Meet Doctor Lwidiko Edward The Tanzanian Medical doctor and PhD Scientist on a mission to build the first Disneyland for Science in Africa

by Ras Mutabaruka

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D

id you know that countries that entered middle income carnations, had 25% of their workforce within Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), in Tanzania only 0.3% of the workforce is in the STEM field.

Imagine the opportunity missed!

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ow, meet Dr. Lwidiko Edward who I first met in Kigali back in 2018 and have continued to follow since then. He would go from Tanzania to Sweden where he went to pursue his PhD at Uppsala University. I’d learn how connected he was to his people, how he viewed his country & our continent and the role that education can play in elevating Africa. Although he spoke of his privilege growing up with more than most of the people he knew, he would also consistently speak of how, once he grew up, he wished that he’d interacted with science during his youth in a different way.

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or this, he founded ProjeKt Inspire, where he works with young Science professionals in producing science kits for training primary and secondary school children & runs Annual STEM Bootcamps for secondary schools.

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efore moving back from Sweden, he also bought land and set up a STEM Park Tanga.

A facility where students can interact with various unorthodox sciencebased installations. So, what’s the big picture? Dr. Lwidiko’s mission is to build the first Disneyland for science in Africa. He tells us more below

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Please introduce yourself to the TAP Audience

M

y name is Lwidiko Edward, medical doctor and a PhD scientist. I’m also the co-founder of ProjeKt Inspire, where we are inspired to build the first Disneyland for science in Africa. I was born in Tanzania, in Dar es Salaam. My family was a stable family, so we had a very beautiful environment growing up with my siblings. I have four siblings. The whole idea of being a scientist within our family has been quite profound. My big brother is an engineer, my big sister is a civil engineer, my other sister is a lawyer, she’s the only deviate.

What were some of your fondest memories growing up?

G

rowing up in a home where my father was a professor and my mother a businesswoman, we were relatively in better condition from where our family is traditionally from, a village in Njombe, around 700 kilometers down south in the southern islands. And one of my fondest memories has been traveling to Njombe and getting to experience that village life and family, playing with my friends and relatives.

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How did you end up in Sweeden?

W

hen I finished my first degree in medicine, in Muhimbili University here in Dar, I was thinking I need to get out of this country and get more exposure. Apart from just seeing things on TV. So I applied for a scholarship for a PhD direct entry from MD to go to Uppsala University in Sweden. I got the scholarship and got to go to Sweden and do biomedical sciences, specifically, doing research in malaria and drug resistance. I’d spent time there doing all my lab work, courses etc. then I’d be going back and forth collecting malaria samples in Tanzania and spending time in Sweden learning and working with the labs there at Uppsala University.

When I left the country for Sweden, I was interested to see what life has to offer out there and had thoughts of staying in Sweden. But before I left, I had already started ProjeKt Inspire and that is one thing that really, really was driving me to come back and say, okay, I’m going outside to gather as much as I can so that when I come back, I’m as useful as I can be. ProjeKt Inspire has always been pushing me to come back and do more work in Tanzania. Even right now, some conversations I have with my friends, my spouse – she’s in the US. The debate is always let’s come back, let’s come back and do work here.

What was your first day in Sweden like?

M

y first day at Uppsala University was interesting. I entered the compound, and there was this huge billboard that said, “Uppsala University Science Park” and I was like this is what I want, this is what I want to build. I’d later learn that this park is humongous.

I was thinking about kids, a science park for kids, but this was an entire compound with labs and all this really, cuttingedge technology. Still, I was like, we need this back home.

I went and stood there, took a picture with my big coat, I still have this picture with me. From landing there and seeing that I was like, okay, I think this is a place I could learn a lot and get inspiration from. Mind you, it was snowing, I’d never seen snow in my life before.

Outside of winter, did you have any other culture shock?

I

had one huge culture shock.

So, there’s this moment where I went to work at the lab, and people invited me for lunch. I was like, oh, you’re inviting me for lunch, great! Let’s go for lunch.

We went all the way to the cafeteria, and people opened their bags and put their lunchboxes on the table. That’s when I was like, I don’t have

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that. In our cultural context, If I tell you let’s go for lunch, I invite you, right? And that means I cover for that stuff. We didn’t have the culture of bringing food to work or inviting someone for lunch and they had to figure out their own lunch situation.

What was your homecoming journey like? When did you figure out it was time to go back home?

D

uring the last few months, when I was writing my PhD thesis, that’s when Corona hit – and it hit hard. While the Swedes are known for having their own Swedish personal space or social distancing is natural, the isolation went a step further, and I was isolated and worried, I am all this way, far, locking myself up writing, yes, but still worried about what’s happening back home, my family, is everything okay? During the very first wave, early 2020, I was like, okay, I can’t take this pressure of being so far away and a lot of things happening.

There is a lot of uncertainty, and there’s my loved ones at home.

I thought to myself, okay, summer is coming, I would really love Swedish summer, but I must go back home and continue with my work there, because I couldn’t do the isolations for much longer, and, I had already an engagement with the University, Muhimbili as an academician there.

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So, I was like this is even great, more reasons to come back home and contribute meaningfully from the experiences I’ve learnt in Sweden.

What were your first impressions after being away for so long?

T

he very first thing I noticed was that a lot of improvements were done within the country over the five years I was away.

The roads were better, we didn’t have an interchange before, now we have. I was impressed more than being sad that I’m coming home. I was like, okay, this is exciting, there’s beautiful things happening now, and this is an exciting time to be back.

Because we had our former president Magufuli, as controversial he was, but things were moving, and in a pace that you know provides opportunities to pick up and keep working on. So, when I was driving from the airport to my home I saw the first fly over there, I was like, okay, you know, we’re going places. The country was also open. Within the COVID situation you’d expect a lot more people locked up and things like that, but it was open. I was like, business as usual, you know.

So that was the first thing. But slowly I started to reintegrate, get back to my team and ProjeKt Inspire and get back to my family. It was brilliant.

Tell us about ProjeKt Inspire and how it started?

G

oing to study in Sweden opened my mind in terms of, okay, our academic experiences, teaching and methods back home could be better, right there and then it became a personal mission to give this experience that I didn’t get growing up in an academic situation in Tanzania with all my privilege, to young people who need to have that. So, to me it’s more personal, in terms of, I didn’t get opportunities to experience learning in the way that we are doing it in ProjeKt Inspire and I wanted to give this to the next generation. Our motto as ProjeKt Inspires is, if I have seen further, it’s by standing on the shoulders of giants.

I am here where I am, because there were people who made progress then made their shoulders available for me to stand on and be who I am. So, I feel indebted to make my shoulders available for other people to stand on as well.

Why is STEM so important in an African context?

T

he question of the importance of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, like STEM in an African context is that, as much as there might be flaws within STEM, it remains the one area that has progressed humanity furthest thus far.

And Africa as a continent has a lot of opportunities to capture and leapfrog the success that

other countries have with proper investments in the STEM field. There are references that show that countries that entered middle income carnations, had at least 25% of their workforce within the STEM fields. Today, Tanzania has 0.3% of its workforce in STEM fields.

So we’re missing out on a huge opportunity to develop STEM professionals and STEM in itself to progress and leapfrog to places that we need to be as a country and as a continent.

What sort of Programs do you have at ProjeKt Inspire?

A

t ProjeKt Inspire we have three major programs.

One is for kids between 3 years to 14 years; we call it the rising stream stars. We do it at our premises here in Dar and in Tanga, where we invite kids to come every Saturday and we do hands-on project based integrated learning, where kids can learn different aspects of science, technology, engineering, and math in an

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integrated manner. They break things, they make things and build things, they demolish things. They have experiential learning with that, and this is usually every week.

The second main project is to package these experiences that kids have in projects in science kits. So these are engineering kits, technology kits, science kits, so that parents can buy for the kids Legos home, or schools can buy these kits to have in the labs, they can use this as lab solutions for the kids to learn.

The third project is with secondary school kids.

We do a boot camp every year where we gather these young people between the ages of 15 to 21. Young innovators and critical thinkers, and we throw them problems, let’s say outbreak of cholera, how can you use science, technology, engineering, math to solve that, and they put practical knowledge to make sure that what they learned makes sense.

All our three projects that I’ve just mentioned, all house under one dream of building the biggest Disneyland for science in Africa, and this is work that we have started already, in Tanga, where we have the first Science Center in Tanzania, and first of its kind in East Africa. Once I’ve finished this work, I can, you know, rest in peace. Every time I go to bed, I think about it. These are the dreams that make me lose sleep.

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Knowing of the gender gap within STEM, what are you doing to make sure that Girls are involved in this future?

T

he question of gender gap within the STEM fields generally is a question that we really hold dear in ProjeKt Inspire and even in our programs we have this issue in mind. Primarily, the element of inclusivity and retention.

Not only just joining but also retaining, once you’ve joined, after you’ve graduated do you stay and practice.

We use other professionals within the field to come and talk to our girls and encourage them, providing them with a working environment to be able to do that. The second thing that we usually try to do is to have customized sessions for girls, for example, girls in coding and programming, girls in engineering, we are working with a University in Michigan, Michigan State University, to have a very specialized girls’ program at a primary school in Kiparang’anda for example.

It is important, it is important to take gender in STEM. It is very disproportionately represented.

It’s exciting that it’s grown over the last two decades, but more must be done.

What have I learnt about myself since coming back to Tanzania?

I

’ve learnt that I did not know much about myself, this experience of coming back and the work we do has really taught me much about what I can do. The entire experience with ProjeKt Inspire, with family, with work at the University; it tests your limits, it tests your resilience.

There are times when you feel like you need to throw in the towel. I think I’ve learnt that there’s a fight in me that I didn’t know I had previously.

With your educational background, have you received other opportunities that have led you to question why you’re here?

I

often have family and friends and even my spouse ask the question of, with your qualifications and PhD and being a medical doctor, there’s so much opportunities out there that you could grab, you could be making six figures in a year if you want, don’t you think about this?

But, for me, there’s this burning

passion to the mission that I already started with ProjeKt Inspire. The glow in the eyes of the kids that we see at our center, the sort of impact that we’re having in these lives is something that I don’t think I’d be able to get somewhere else. This is the place where I can create impact and be meaningful.

My heart is here, I don’t think I’ll be able to feel fulfilled if I do something somewhere else. I’ve invested a lot in this over the past seven years or so and it’s starting to show, it’s starting to be promising. We’ve been on the runway for ProjeKt Inspire

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and now the flight is about to take off and I think I’m well positioned to fly.

What would be your advice for other young people in the diaspora thinking about moving back home?

I

remember Recently I saw a meme that was going around comparing two of The Economist Magazine covers, ten years apart. 10 years prior, they were saying Africa is a dark continent. And then there’s a new one that says Africa is rising. And it is. So, my advice for young diasporas is that there’s a wealth of opportunities to create impact here. To be relevant within the continent and to our people. So, come back home.

There’s a lot that can be done. There’s a lot of open collaborations, a lot of diasporas who really are working here now, on the continent, they are open to connecting and sharing their experiences. Come back and grow this continent.

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THE POWER OF ART

- In conversation with the muse multi studios in khartoum

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From the extraordinary landscapes to diverse people and rich culture, all corners of the African continent can be an artist’s muse. While art has not always been at the forefront of Africa’s psyche, recent Africa Day celebrations have incited interest in art at the governing bodies’ level as a “lever to build the Africa we want.” A mandate proposed by the AU for African countries to promote and invest in African arts as a vehicle for promoting and achieving development goals.

An example of an organization that is driven by the importance of Art in Africa is The Muse Multi Studios in Khartoum, Sudan. We had the privilege of speaking to them to learn more about Art in Sudan, and what they are doing to make a difference.

The Muse is a creative enterprise that aims to promote art in Sudan. Founded in 2019 by Reem Al Jeally, it was built off the lack of support and representation of Artists in Sudan. Despite there being a cornucopia of talented artists in Sudan, they often remain in the shadows. Without proper support, a thriving community of creatives remains dormant.

An unfortunate reality that many African countries can relate to.

One that is, however, slowly

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changing.

When asked to summarize what The Muse does, Mawadda Tariq, the communications director, tells us that they give artists space, training, and tools they need to create and put their work out there. They also have various themed workshops to teach people how to use art as a form of expression, exploration, and therapy. Currently incubated in Savannah Innovation Labs, they exhibit Sudani artists to highlight the thriving art scene in Sudan.

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The art scene in Sudan is a hidden gem. A diverse and expansive community of artists create unbeknownst to most of Sudan, the rest of the continent, and the world. Reem Al Jeally, the founder of The Muse, is an example of someone “creating great art and doing great things for the art scene,” Mawadda says.

Other Sudani artists people ought

to know about include Bakri Moaz, Elhassan Elmuontasir, and Dahlia Abdelilah. Mawadda explains that these artists deserve an honorable mention because not only are they creating art, they also support communities of artists and promote art in Sudan.

Art is important because it is “a powerful form of expression,” Mawadda says. She recalls a transformative workshop that The Muse had with kids healing from the trauma and pain of war from the Geriaf Reformatory Center. Through an art session with an art therapist, the children began discovering ways to use art to express veiled emotions.

“They had so much pain and trauma that they didn’t even know about. We worked with them to create art, and the therapist was able to analyze it and provide the center with information about how to support the children”.

Through the course of the session children who could barely muster up the courage to respond to questions were blissfully painting with a newfound sense of confidence. Mawadda reminds us that when words fail, art thrives.

“When you don’t have the words, art can be so therapeutic… a healthy coping mechanism for people healing from wars, trauma or anything difficult”. In a country dealing with the trauma of revolutions, coups, and war, offering people a healthy avenue to express themselves is important and The Muse recognizes this.

Art is also a powerful means to memorialize heritage and express culture. In Sudan art has been used as a form of storytelling and rebellion. For example, a recent exhibition by the Muse features Dahlia Abdelilah, an artist and figurative painter who uses her art to explore social,

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cultural and gender issues.

That is why platforms like The Muse, which provide artists with avenues to create, are imperative in Sudan and the rest of Africa.

“Platforms for artists to thrive,” Mawadda says. “We [as Africans] need to support them and then give them the space to be found by larger audiences and get the recognition they deserve” and that is exactly what The Muse is doing in Khartoum.

This continent is jam-packed with rich history, cultural diversity, and natural beauty from which artists can draw inspiration. Yet often artistic career paths are hindered by stigma and lack of support from the community.

The Muse is looking to change this, to encourage Sudani’s and Africans to see the immense value of art. Hearing Mawadda’s testimony underscores the importance of investing in art in African communities. Examining the effect of simply providing the space for exhibitions for artists to teaching children how to express themselves with art it is clear that investing in Art will indeed be imperative in building the Africa we want.

If you’re interested in getting involved in the work that The Muse is doing then check out their website here. Follow them on their social media platforms here to stay up to date and learn more.

By Gathoni Kang’ethe

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f a young and upcoming talent today needs funds to buy equipment or work on an album, how are you going to raise that funding? Are you relegated to asking friends and family like in the old age? If you’re a content creator and you have shot the best video that everyone wants to watch, imagine if there was a platform where you could encrypt that video, then sell a token key with a specific password to access the content. Back to artists, if you’re a musician, wouldn’t it be cool to categorize your fans. To know these are the fans that are willing and able to pay for my music, these ones only come to concerts, the other group only likes my pictures etc.

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ell, blockchain technology can solve all these issues and help take the creative industry, an industry which provides employment to more young people

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than any other one, into the future. And, one Omi Iyamu has built a platform that does exactly this. Like most entrepreneurs, Omi’s journey is one of passion, resilience, consistency, and belief in making dreams a reality. He started out working with big tech firms such as Google and Microsoft where he rose the ranks to become one of the most sought-after software engineers and project managers in Silicon Valley before jumping into the startup life full time. As a man who is not afraid to take big leaps of faith, he had previously founded two startups, one while still a student.

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believer in failing several times before you succeed, Omi is convinced that he’s finally found a breakthrough, a one-of-a-kind Web3 Social funding platform that brings together the worlds of Social Networking and Crypto and designed for Artists and Creators of all kind in the Sports and Entertainment Industry allowing them to monetize their fanbase in a more transparent and equitable way.

Artist Crowdfunding Exchange (ACE). A

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Kindly introduce yourself to the TAP Fam!

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y name is Omi Iyamu.

I am the co-founder of Artist Crowdfund Exchange (ACE), and I lead all of the products and tech at ACE. I’ve been working in tech for about 15 years now in the bay area, in California. started off as a software engineer then sort of rose up the ranks and branched off. I grew up at Microsoft, but I spent the bulk of my career at Google leading different projects and teams. From the payment’s org to Google Brain, which is the Artificial Intelligent (AI) research org, which alludes to my core background, which is in AI and Machine Learning (ML), specifically, computer or pattern recognition, algorithms, and stuff.

IS ACE your first entry into the Startup space?

I

’ve founded two other companies in the past. A booking system, which was leveraged by a life insurance company, and then a drone company –was really a computer vision company, but then it morphed into a drone company. We were doing some super cool stuff back in 20 2014.

We built an autonomous drone recognition system –super cool stuff. It didn’t pan out, we rose through during the time when everybody had a drone

company, and then we also crashed when that time crashed, when all the regulations came in and started limiting the use of drones and the size and how they can fly and where they can fly and permissions and all of that and so we sort of died in that large death of companies.

That’s sort of my history and with ACE now I’m in another very cutting-edge space, which is blockchain and nonfungible token (NFT’s) . We sort of married that with a social network designed for creatives, artists, athletes and folks in the sports and entertainment industry.

What led you to ACE?

A

bout two years ago, I was approached by one of my co-founders, Darren at another co-founder’s birthday, and he had this great idea, this great blockchain idea to support talents, especially musical folks. He said he had this idea for a crowdfunding company for musicians that would help support them in their career growth. That was the initial pitch of the idea. And so, being a tech guy, I had to go and do the sniff test or what you’d call tech due diligence. After this, I saw the opportunity and it was for more than just musicians –for the entire sports and entertainment space. This is where we began.

we did a campaign here in Nairobi called quarantine cash court where we were trying to test how strong fans of different early-stage artists were, and if they would be willing to invest in the success of these early-stage talents. At first with just being present to support them, then taking other small actions such as social media likes, follows and then eventually going the extra mile of spending money and this was very successful.

From there, we learnt a lot, initially, we had originally designed the platform to be more of a financial application, but it became clear we needed a social element to become the base of the platform, so something such as a Facebook or like an Instagram embedded with deep financial aspects in a very understandable and unthreatening way.

So, users don’t need to understand anything about blockchain, or finances, or crypto or whatnot. All they’re

To test the validity of this idea,

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doing is supporting the talents and all the actual tech stuff fades into the background. So that’s what we’ve done with ACE. A platform where fans can support their favorite artists, creatives, entertainers throughout their journey and projects in a very social and nonthreatening way.

What is an NFT?

A

n NFT is a nonfungible token. An entity that provides unique signatory and ownership. Think of it as a piece of paper that has your name and your signature, and everybody’s different. So that piece of paper cannot be divided, you can’t split it in two, you can’t exchange it for another piece of paper. It’s singular, it’s one of one.

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And in simple terms, and in relation to NFT’s, what is blockchain?

N

FT in of itself is the signature, the entity that says okay, you are the owner of this. But the blockchain is what keeps the record. The blockchain is your record keeper, it’s the public ledger, some can have private blockchains but it’s just a record book, saying, this NFT with this specific unique ID is owned by this person. And when you sell it, there’s going to be a new record, that this NFT was transferred from this person to this person.

So, this person is now the new owner of it.

And how does blockchain work?

I

n the blockchain world, there are different assets.

The two largest classes of assets are currencies, crypto currency, which if it needs to be a currency, it needs to be fungible. And then there are tokens. There are different kinds of tokens. There are fungible tokens, for instance, the Shiba Inu coin is a fungible token.

One Shiba coin is the same as the other, and operates like a traditional currency. Then, there are non-fungible tokens which means that one is not the same as that. So you might ask, why even make such a token? The purpose of it is that there are applications that lend themselves well to having a unique thing that cannot be exchanged and that is fundamentally different.

The obvious one is artwork. If I paint something, and you paint the exact same thing. They’re fundamentally still different, no matter what anybody says.

There are artists today that can paint the exact same MonaLisa,

or even better versions. But are they the same as the original one? Absolutely not. It’s these types of applications that non fungible tokens lend themselves well to.

Therefore, why blockchain has had a good push in the arts, and the photography world for example. And we’re using it in a different way in the sports and entertainment world.

What other ways can artists and creatives in general benefit from this technology?

T

he obvious thing is that visual artists and folks that create unique pieces of work such as writers, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, dancers, choreographers etc. now can keep track of the sale of their work. They can assign ownership of that work to people through an NFT. It’s the people who own the NFT, the creatives themselves who have access to this particular blockchain so creators now have control of their work. That’s one

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Brilliant, so, this is now where ACE is helping artists develop?

Y

side of the coin.

The other side is that artists can now offer a stake in their artistry or other things as fungible tokens. Imagine there is a Jay Z coin, so when their fans buy the Jay Z coins, they feel like they own a piece of Jay Z, and Jay Z can architect that in a way, whereby they get specific benefits, either in the digital world or in the real world. So, there is that aspect of it. They can then use these tokens for a variety of things. Filmmakers can use it as a vehicle for crowdfunding for example.

Let’s say I’m trying to produce a movie, and I need to source funds from many people. If my film’s budget is 10 million, I’ll create 10 million tokens that my fans/people/investors can buy, and they get something in return. Anybody that buys the token, that information is stored in the blockchain ledger.

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es. We are providing different investment vehicles that the talents can use to leverage their fan base. So, talents that have dedicated fans, we’ve designed our entire app, to be able to allow them to use the different token classes that we introduce to monetize their fanbase and at the same time allowing their fan base to receive a return on investment (ROI).

In practice, how does that work?

L

et’s say Jay Z comes on, it doesn’t have to be Jay Z it can literally be anyone, it can be the guy that does gigs at the local bar and has a dedicated fan base. They come on and go through a verification process where we make sure they’re who they say they are, that they have some artistry going on and a fanbase. Once this is done, a limited supply of access tokens is minted for them. So, assuming that person is Jay Z, an unlimited supply of Jay Z tokens is issued, let’s say a million Jay Z tokens are minted, Jay Z can then turn around and sell them to his fans. His fans on ACE can buy as many as they want, and he sets the initial price. He can say my tokens are going for five bucks a token and his fans can buy as many as they want.

Once they’re all owned by fans, the only way a fan can own another JAY Z token is to buy it off the market of somebody that’s willing to sell, now, this willing seller will set their bid price. Let’s say I bought mine at five bucks, I can say I want to sell it at 10 bucks now, and somebody else is willing to buy, they buy at 10 bucks. I’ve made a profit and they get what they were looking for, because they were willing to buy for 10 bucks. So, it’s an open market marketplace for trading tokens, or trading access tokens.

Now, you might ask why I would even buy an access token in the first place. Assuming Jay Z, when they come on, they set what the benefit of each tier is, they must decide this tier gets this, this tier that etc. For example, they can say okay, my top tier fans get free VIP access to all my shows.

As well, those top tier fans, if you set the price at five bucks, you can also say they need 1000 tokens to be in that tier.

So, they’ll need to have spent 5000 bucks to be in that tier, minimum. We’ve baked these features into the actual app itself, we can even restrict artists posts to certain tiers. So, if Jay Z is in the studio and he’s working on a new album, and he wants to give his top tier fans a sneak peek, he can do that and it’s only the top tier fans who will see that on ACE. So that’s the value of owning the token, and you as a fan, you

also still get an additional value when you sell the token. So, assuming I’m no longer a Jay Z fan, and I want to sell, I can sell and turn a profit. That’s how our access tokens work.

I see a lot of benefits for fans, what are other benefits for creatives?

T

he very first thing, obviously, on the initial sale, if you minus the cost of maintaining the platform etc. an artist will keep about 80%. So, he can keep 80% of that. Furthermore, every single time their token exchanges hands between fans, he also gets a 5% cut off each trade. All these and they don’t have to do anything. It just happens automatically, because it’s baked into the blockchain and into the smart contract that manages their token.

And to touch on that Smart contract, he can also bake more things into that as well.

Assuming he is signed, and he has a manager, and he has a label, and each takes a share of

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the token, they can write that into the contract and all those folks don’t need to do anything to receive their shares when a transaction is made. They have a wallet attached to them that collects their fees automatically.

Assuming a manager takes 10%, every time a token is sold 10% of that sale goes to the manager’s wallet. That’s just how blockchain works. That’s our access token.

So, artists can now financially categorize their fanbase?

T

he implications are so wild, because for the very first time, the talent has a brand-new way to financially categorize their fan base. They know that, okay, these fans are my big spenders because they bought 1000 tokens for me. These fans, you know, they only have a token, or they haven’t even bought a token, they’re the craziest fans, but they don’t invest in the work. He/she can categorize them, and that’s so powerful because you can do so much just because of that. You can host a private event for only your top tier fans etc. I think the beautiful thing for the fans is that they are invested in the talent, right? They feel like, okay, I put in money, and I can get a return. You know.

With this sort of trading or exchanging high valuable

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assets, do you see regulators jumping into this space?

T

he regulation piece is obviously a big piece in this entire space. It really is but there is only one issue with it, which is whether to treat tokens as a security or not. And regardless of where this conversation goes, what that means is that you’re just going to have more rules to follow.

I’ve been in spaces that end up getting heavily regulated in the past. Thus, I know how to navigate that and what we’ve done from the beginning is that we designed everything to work in regulation. So, our platform is already regulation proof. The only other piece which we are already actively doing is getting the relevant licensing ahead of time, so that whichever way the pendulum swings in that space, we are covered. But with respect to the actual architecture itself, it works and already follows the right regulation. Things like making sure that you’re always getting the best price and doing the bid ask. Essentially, we work like a stock market. We modeled the technology in the backend of transactions to mimic the stock market.

How does one join ACE?

Y

ou just create an account. You download the app, Ace store fan, and create an account.

That’s it. That’s literally it.

But for a talent, you must go through a verification process.

So, after you create an account, you go through a verification flow as an artist, because it’s the verification flow that allows you to mint a personalized token.

But as a fan you don’t need to do that. You can go on and then add your card, fund your account, and buy. You don’t need a blockchain account, all that is done for you.

How have the mainstream folks in the music and film taken to this? Do they see platforms like yours as a threat?

Mainstream folks see us as folks disrupting their industries, but we are bringing them along. It’s not a zero-sum game.

There is space for all players in this. Remember I mentioned that because we use smart contracts to manage everything, the industry folks can literally just move over because in the end, it’s all about controlling the money for them. They can literally move their artist ACE and write back everything into the smart contract. If Universal today can come on and bring on the entire roster of artists and their fans, we can offer them a smart contract. In fact, it’s actually much easier because they don’t have to do any accounting, it just works, and they can see all the accounting transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. So, we are bringing them along too. There is a space for them too. They can create a

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business account, not yet, but soon they will be able to literally create a business account and attach folks to it.

What are you most hopeful for the next five to ten years?

W

hat I would hope to happen in the next five to ten years is really a change in the mindset on three fronts. On the fans front, fans become a lot more comfortable investing in their talent because they believe in them and or they’re already seen a return on investment on that front.

The second thing is on the artist’s front. In the next five to ten years, artists can do two things; one, be able to truly categorize their fans. Say these are my true fans. These are, you know, folks that are just passing by and are able to do that, and be able to grow, to have a more linear growth curve, because right now, it’s not linear at all.

If I start playing the piano, or if I’m a singer, and I want to grow my career, it’s not linear growth.

It’s almost very flat. Because I’m funding everything myself, I’m growing my fan base myself, I’m trying to do things myself, until I get to a step function that I really mastered a path, or I’ve blown up.

And typically, it’s at that step function when I get signed, or if I’m a sports guy, this is when I’ve joined a team and whatnot.

What I want to see is that it’s

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not a step function, it’s more of an actual linear growth. So, as you’re growing, because you are directly monetizing your fan base, you’re taking the funds from that, to grow your craft, you get even more funds, and you continue to grow. It becomes an actual linear growth, and it evens the playing field across the industry.

The third thing that I would like to see is the industry trying to change and leverage blockchain to do the things that they need to actually do. So, filmmakers and producers, leveraging blockchain to fund their next projects, record labels going the M&A route of acquiring folks onto their label etc. So those are the three changes that I would love to see. Will they happen? I certainly hope so, but ACE will be doing everything to help at least provide the tools that are necessary to make those a reality in the future.

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Africa we wan 69

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H

ere at TAP, we are continuously striving to stimulate nuanced, vibrant, and dynamic conversations about Africa.

From October 2021 to June 2022, we used our platform as a space to engage Africa’s youth to voice their ideas and opinions about “The Africa We Want” and the steps we need to take to get there. From education to pan-Africanism, to trade to the creative industry, we run a digital campaign where dozen African youth participated by telling us about their aspiration for this continent.

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his digital campaign, supported by our narrative partner Africa No Filter, run over our various platforms - Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and our website with the discussions anchored through the hashtag #TAPTheAfricaWeWant.

Below is a summary of the campaign’s milestones

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We run a bi-weekly competition where young people telling us the Africa they want and laying out tangible and creative ways to get there.

to participate and discuss the future of our continent.

We were also able to get the Official African Union social media accounts and office to join the campaign and endorse the messages shared on social media. We hope they will include some of the messages in their strategic planning.

We reached over 150,000 young Africans We accelerated pan-African conversations about the Africa we want, including uplifting the civic engagement of African youths across the continent and the diaspora.

We grew our social media reach by 30% and increased our engagement by 400% while at the same time building new networks and opportunities and directly collaborating with a new pool of pan-African creative partners from North Africa, Southern Africa, West and East Africa and the diaspora.

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The work done under this campaign and Africa No Filter support helped us tell and show the world that African youths are up and alive and engaged in the issues of their continent. That it is not just old corrupt men who are tuned in and who have ideas of the type of Africa we want.

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We had hundreds of submissions of ideas by African youths on the Africa they want, and we had thousands of people tuning in into our live discussions

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The project allowed us to rebuild and establish new relationships and contacts.

We’ve added more than 20 creatives to our list of collaborators across the continent and the diaspora.

We’re already collaborating with some of these creatives in our other storytelling work.

We were able to use the campaign to build relationships with international media agencies.

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A

bout Africa No Filter ANF’s vision is a world where the prevailing narrative within and about Africa is reflective of a progressive and dynamic continent.

narratives within and about Africa.

Through research, grantmaking, and advocacy ANF aims to build the field of narrative change-makers by supporting storytellers, investing in media platforms, and driving disruption campaigns.

They support the development of nuanced and contemporary stories that shift stereotypical and harmful

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DAILY FLIGHTS TO LAMU

skywardexpress.co.uk

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