…I visited Google, Intel and Apple. All these companies are looking for online workers. They want us to give them 100,000, 200,000 and 300,000 workers out of the Kenyan youth.
This statement was uttered by Kenyan President William Ruto on the first of October at a church service in Nairobi, a few days after he had returned from a trip to the United States where he led a US-Kenya business roadshow in which he pitched the country to top US tech companies and investors in Silicon Valley.
In the USA, he met Apple CEO Tim Cook, Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger, Alphabet’s chief financial officer Ruth Porat, and Microsoft’s chief operating officer Brad Smith. The trip was partially organized by the US Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman, herself a former CEO of eBay and Hewlett Packard, who encouraged US tech companies to invest in Kenya, which she touted as a gateway to the rest of the continent and country with a vibrant tech sector.
The statement was met with widespread criticism from the Kenyan media, opposition leaders and civil society leaders. One of the opposition party leaders, Senator Sifuna, dismissed Mr. Ruto’s prognostications as lies. “He has increased the cost of doing business in Kenya and now wants to hoodwink Kenyans with phantom opportunities in other countries.”
The big tech firms have confirmed that they met with President Ruto and that they intend to increase their presence and investment in Kenya. In the past twelve months, Microsoft and Google both opened landmark development centers in Nairobi and began recruiting some of the country’s top tech talent. The Silicon Valley roadshow undoubtedly boosted Kenya’s profile to tech investors.
On Wednesday, Oct. 4, Ruto attended the launch of a development center in Nairobi for the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform. The center, only the second in Africa, provides resources for developers to work on apps and services. The launch came a fortnight after Ruto met AWS executives in New York. Youth unemployment is a major headache for the government of Kenya, with 38percent of young Kenyan adults unemployed.
President Ruto campaigned on a platform of job creation for the youth, so he is undoubtedly under pressure to deliver on this campaign. On the other hand, Google’s total number of employees globally is 180,000, which may imply that the prospect of 300,000 Kenyans being hired by big tech companies may be a bit more optimistic than realistic. So does this make President Ruto a liar? Or is he a dealer in hope?
In August 1963 in the United States, a black Preacher named Martin Luther King Jr stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC and said the following words: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
In the months leading up to the utterance of these words, America was not a place where black people had the same rights as white people. In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr and some of his black friends had launched a campaign against Alabama’s system of racial segregation. The campaign began on April 3, 1963, with sit-ins, economic boycotts, mass protests, and marches on City Hall. On April 12 King was arrested for violating an anti-protest injunction and placed in solitary confinement.
In June of the same year, President Kennedy condemned racial segregation in a national speech. The day after the speech, Medgar Evers, a black leader of the civil rights movement, was shot in front of his wife and children by a white man as punishment for his activism and a warning to other activists.
Southern States in the US openly defied the President’s appeal and federal orders for desegregation of schools and the provision of equal rights to blacks and whites. Any realistic person would have known that the prospect of the United States treating ALL men as equals was as far-fetched as the notion of dogs flying. Yet, on that fateful day in August, a Baptist preacher took the podium to predict that there would soon come a day when his four black children would enjoy the same rights as white children.
Was Martin Luther King a liar? Or was he a dealer of hope?
In 1964, Nelson Mandela, during the Rivonia treason trial, made the following statement to the judge as he defended himself while accused of a crime punishable by death:
“During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realised. But, My Lord, if it needs be it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
At the time of making this speech, white South Africans enjoyed a standard of living that was higher than many whites in Europe, and black South Africans lived poorer than many blacks in other African countries. The notion of an end to apartheid or any system of white domination was not only far-fetched, it was considered criminal to utter it.
The fear of black domination among the whites was also a cause for fear among white South Africans. Mandela did not espouse either white or black domination, but he predicted that there would come a day when South Africa would be a society in which neither the whites nor the blacks would dominate. Rational people, both black and white, easily dismissed him as delusional.
Was Mandela delusional? Or was he a dealer of hope?
History has a full list of leaders who have led amazing transformations. From Mandela to Sankara to modern day heroes like Patrick Awuah and Tope Awotona, these leaders have endured ridicule or disdain at some point in their journeys as they have communicated bold visions and taken risks and encouraged others to take risks with them as they pursue groundbreaking visions. At the time when they embarked on their visionary journeys, the destination looked impossible to achieve.
Yet they needed to communicate that vision in order to inspire people with resources (time, talents, and treasure) to invest in their vision. How were they going to do this an avoid being perceived as delusional, dishonest, or dangerous? The sad truth is that it was not practically possible for any of these leaders to avoid being perceived in a negative light while doing the necessary work of communicating their vision and inspiring people to come on board with the vision. This is the terrible paradox that faces visionary leaders in Africa.
You must choose to be ridiculed in order to pursue the vision that only you can see and believe is possible. You must believe so deeply that the desired future is possible that you are willing to be castigated, maligned, bad-mouthed, and shunned…until eventually people start to see that the impossible is possible. Not many leaders are willing to take this chance, and because of this unwillingness, many African leaders settle for smaller goals and achieve much less than they are capable of achieving. But this is not enough for Africa.
The challenges and opportunities in Africa require bold thinking, bold actions, and bold leaders who are willing to suffer ridicule and shame in order to pursue a transformative future that the majority of people struggle to understand or believe.
Dear African leader, do not give into the fear that makes you ordinary. Africa needs you to make Africa work for Africans. Make bold decisions. Take bold actions. Make that bold prediction.
>>>The writer is a scholar and practitioner of organizational development and leadership and a leadership Coach and Facilitator. Over the past three decades, he has successfully coached and trained leaders in Africa, North America, and Europe. His passion for leadership enhancement was born out of his experiences as a cadet in the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) and as a military officer serving in combat in the Sierra Leone Civil War where he was shot twice. As the only Sierra Leonean with a Ph.D. in Leadership, Modupe was the founding Dean of the African Leadership University School of Business, an institution providing a Pan-African MBA degree to Africa’s mid-career professionals. He is the Co-founder and CEO of BCA Leadership (www.bcaleadership.com), an organization that has impacted over 4000 African leaders with coaching and knowledge-sharing services. He leads a team of forty-two Coaches across Africa and he is the curator of The Made in Africa Leadership Conference. Contact Modupe through email at [email protected]
