My American Experience.

#LEAPOFHOPE

First of all, I would wish to thank all of you-the millions following us through YALI Networks across Africa, the Kenyan Youth looking upon us to borrow a leaf on how to model themselves into civic leaders, American friends we’ve known and worked together even before this program, the good friends we’ve since come to appreciate and learn from here in U.S and at the U.S Embassy in Kenya, the two governments of U.S and Kenya through their Departments of State and Foreign Affairs respectively.

Indeed June 18^th will remain a special day for me personally and I think to most of my Fellows too. It was indeed that day you wish to experience. I had just given out money from Hifadhi Africa fund a community based organization called Pokot Education and Peace Support Organization (PEPSO). Hifadhi Africa and PEPSO program coordinator David Lomoywara had agreed to initiate a number of community projects starting with “Smile A Feet”. This is a project seeking to donate shoes to school going children in Kenya from less privileged background. Hifadhi Africa Organization had no money but we knew what such a project will impact admission intake in the Country especially among minority communities. My Directors Charles and Jovenal agreed with me that small efforts go long distances and that this partnership will transform lives bottom up. Coincidentally, Eric Legg, an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University would yesterday teach us on the importance of focus on community recreational sport and youth development.

 

My first flight would take me to Brussels airport in Belgium. I had left Nairobi at 10:45p.m only to touch ground the following morning!. I was fed, given warm sheet and head phones. Kenyan Matatu crew should have been on board with me, they would have learnt something on customer care. There were no major happenings at Brussels apart from admiring planes alighting, boarding and taking off open mouthed. I moved around classifying them according to their brand companies. I was also fascinated seeing crowd of 80% white people. In Kenya, we usually have small number of white people at any given time. I left for Washington that afternoon. I had gotten used to the security check in system and terminal gates. Peeping down from above the clouds, I saw oceans below me. (I wasn’t scared, Pokots don’t fear water. We need water for it’s the most mysterious thing after God Himself). It hit me that we’re actually crossing to the great America. It never happened in my wild dream that a son of a Pastoralist could do that?   

  

I had already made friends. Stephen, the first person to welcome me to USA (albeit 13,000 meters high!) wished me well. He was seated beside me from Belgium. The feeling when you realize that you are actually entering USA!

We landed and proceeded for the security check in. No petrifying search and scanning as I was expecting. No Marines everywhere as I was contemplating. No hard YES/NO questions as I had been told. In fact, I was addressed as a SIR. That was a shock. After claiming our bags, I wandered around to familiarize myself with the airport area-Washington Dulles International.  

It later took me 4 hours’ flight from D.C to Sky Harbor International Airport, Phoenix, Arizona State. I had gotten used to both on a plane and security check in processes, so I afforded to sleep. At the airport, a team from Arizona State University-who were to be my host were already waiting for me. 

Don’t make me describe the car I was put in. And I mean “I” because the car was exclusively to ride me alone. Among those who picked me was a girl from Nigeria while my driver was a guy originally from Somalia.  

To be continued……….

KNOW YOUR LEADER: POST-INDEPENDENCE

 While most of us have been born into these "digital-aged governments", we lack knowledge of our brilliant post-independence leaders. KNOW YOUR LEADER is my new series to highlight them. Not to write about them because there is nothing that have not be written or said about them. First to grace is Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara (December 21, 1949 – October 15, 1987). A son of the Continent.

"Sankara become President at the age of 33, with the goal of eliminating corruption and the dominance of the former French colonial power. He immediately launched one of the most ambitious programmes for social and economic change ever attempted on the African continent. To symbolize this new autonomy and rebirth, he even renamed the country from the French colonial Upper Volta to Burkina Faso ("Land of Incorruptible People"). His foreign policies were centered on anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalizing all land and mineral wealth, and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritizing education with a nation-wide literacy campaign, and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles. Other components of his national agenda included planting over ten million trees to halt the growing desertification of the Sahel, doubling wheat production by redistributing land from feudal landlords to peasants, suspending rural poll taxes and domestic rents, and establishing an ambitious road and rail construction program to "tie the nation together". On the localized level Sankara also called on every village to build a medical dispensary and had over 350 communities construct schools with their own labour. Moreover, his commitment to women's rights led him to outlaw female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy, while appointing women to high governmental positions and encouraging them to work outside the home and stay in school even if pregnant".

E-commerce: Its Development and Future Perspectives

E-commerce, also known as Electronic commerce is a business industry where transaction of products and services are conducted electronically or online using internet applications like e-mail and web services. It is basically application of technology in the daily transactions of businesses by companies that include marketing, sales and exchange of data to aid in the financing and payment so that it does not necessarily require physical presence. It presents an effective and efficient way of communicating within organizations and is therefore more useful way of conducting business.

The success of e-commerce is mainly associated with its numerous advantages over retail shops that make businesses adapt. These benefits include reduction in cost of operations because online shopping does not necessarily require physical presence, therefore cutting down rent and other costs that are eminent for retail businesses. With online shopping, customers are also able to compare prices in the market before committing to purchase a product or service. E-commerce also allows small businesses to mix and equally compete for global market share with established businesses. Online shopping also greatly reduces time wastage.     

E-commerce was massively adapted with the innovation and introduction powerful personal computers that powered a whole new world of intellectual, social and financial interactions by enabling linkage to global information networks. Businesses were using primitive computer networks prior to that to conduct electronic transactions called Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). The innovation of universal standard for sharing business information electronically by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) known as ASC X12, followed by many other breakthroughs like the Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) triggered this shift to the new era.

Introduction of networking services for home PC users like the CompuServe enabled not only emailing but also chatting and electronic Mall where users could purchase items directly online merchants was another notable reason.

Currently almost all major business entities across the world use online credit card sales and digital identifications. There is also heavy investment on their part in regard to security of their online users. Many governments and military of stable economies are also investing more than decades before in new technologies for even more effectiveness and that can only serve as indicators of more engagement in e-commerce. This conscious investment can be attributed to the extreme growth in smartphones, tablets and other portable devices; e-commerce has been growing at least twice as fast as total retail sales since 2008.

The future of e-commerce is therefore where businesses appreciate personalization and curated content like Near Field Communication (NFC) that allows a user to transact through his/her smartphone or filtering and recommending products based on customers’ previous purchases. To cope up with competition as a result of e-commerce, businesses have to depend on product differentiation and keenness to end-product to keep customer loyalty.

The growing confidence of people to use their credit cards online is also another indicator that e-commerce has a lot to offer in terms of expansion. This exponential growth in online transaction, spending and ecommerce penetration will be expected to cause drastic changes as the global markets mature leading to further impetus for a favorable online scenario.

Growing online e-commerce will also lead to increase in creation of new jobs and business opportunities for people with the necessary skills like e-marketers and online customer support staff. Programs like Search engines, SEO Services, social media co-ordination, secure online payments, handling the integration of online accounts therefore are some of the services which will be in demand to support this e-commerce trend in the future.

In conclusion, the future is bright for entrepreneurs and businesses who are either planning or have already adapted e-commerce worldwide. There are so many opportunities that online business transaction presents to all its users which has led to confidence in investing in these opportunities by championed by institutions like Amazon and eBay.

Many governments and military agencies are also following this foot print by adapting technologies in their daily operations in the attempt to create effectiveness and efficiency.    

Organizational Culture

http://hifadhiafrica.org/

Google, the brainchild of Larry Page, then 22 and Sergey Brin then 21 from Stanford University had its first office in a garage in the suburbs. Larry and Brin had no food and other necessities but succeeded in building one of the best Organizations in the Planet. Google was founded with the idea that work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun. The Founders believed that great, creative things are more likely to happen with the right company culture. Over the years therefore, the technology giant firm have emphasized on team achievements and pride in individual accomplishments. They stressed on employees’ contribution towards their quest to change the world more than looks and dresses. A part from that, the company provides free food to all its employees worldwide because their founders relates to lack of the same.  

One may ask what is an organizational culture and its relation to performance or simply why it matters. Well, Organizational culture is that shared belief or tradition that all members of a particular organization identifies with and prides in. In layman’s language, it’s the binding bond developed overtime that unites the organization towards its ultimate vision. You may have probably heard someone saying, “We at Safaricom do this way…” or “That is not how we do it here.”

This culture is critical for serious and competitive companies because it rallies employees’ positive energies en route to the realization of their missions and ultimate goals. 

In the last decades, confusion and panic rocked many established organizations with the emergence of what is now famously known as generation Y. The Dot Coms as they were earlier referred to defied bluntly an existing definition and mind frames of what and how Organizational Culture should be. A generation that had tremendous believes in their capabilities had emerged. They believed less in the mighty institutions and knew that they depended on their individual skills if they are to knock new heights. Understandably, the new definition was reluctantly adapted. It was more of a survival issue for most managers. It was a losing debate.

Like most subsequent Institutions that were formed after this turbulent period and importantly by the same generation Y, Hifadhi Africa Organization’s position on the raging debate that has since shied from subsiding, is one that is employee centered. HAO is a youth-inspired vision and our ultimate goal is to transform societies. Assembling a team with the right passion for change, integrity, professional qualification and the desire to achieve personal development are our emphasis, more than the individual’s social life, dressing code or working hours. We are determined to power societies to prosperity and our team must be the one with the right ingredients to doing exactly that. 

The Organization is investing in healthy interaction among our members, the communities around us and the world at large because these are some of the things that shall define our culture. Being developing as the organization is, our Directors have and are continuing to lay fundamental foundations that shall captivate sense of common understanding and origin. 

At Hifadhi Africa, members are empowered to contribute intellectually towards innovative ideas that shall gear the institution’s wheel and take lead in their implementations. At the same time, our programs are designed to accommodate the communities we are engaging. Managing talented, visionary young team and uniquely diverse African Communities only serves to make our job fun.  

Organizations must enrich performance-led environment that seeks to explore individual growth and hence contribution instead of the traditional “formal outlook”. Employees must be empowered to run programs that they love and have passion to doing them. There is also need for open communication and freedom of expression as well as breeding the right mix with the old generation. 

To quote Joe Mucheru, the Google Kenya Country Lead, “the fact that you are paying someone a big salary is not the issue anymore. They want to know if they are making a difference.”           

      

DIRECTOR’S NOTES

I would wish to take you, my reader through a journey, a process of Hifadhi Africa Organization’s achievements and stakes ahead. In respect to our celebration of 8 months of existence, our experience has been exciting and one with a lot of notes to take, as a family and individually. Of interest are the opportunities that our involvement has presented.

To start with, we have a growing team of twelve visionary, proactive professionals who believe in the power of IMPACT and CHANGE. To us, those words are irreplaceable. For that reason, we’ve dedicated our efforts, time and resources towards the same-Impacting Lives. We Transform Societies for Prosperity.

Our Organization believes that education is the start of human empowerment. Education enables people to appreciate other cultures, environment, gender and races that might be in one way different from theirs or what they were used to. Though we do not dismiss the importance of other aspects of life, knowledge aid self-awareness and self-hygiene which in turn creates a vibrant and civilized society we hanker for. That is the reason, ladies and gentlemen as to why we strive to offer “sustainable equal educational opportunities” supported by other pillars and strategies outlined by the team. 

Our approach is simple. For Africa to stand on its feet, Africans must shoulder responsibility. We must be in the frontline and sacrifice more. We must champion innovation-breakthroughs and participate in issues that will lead to essential transformation of our dear continent. Africans, both leaders and their followers, must collaborate with the rest of the World to build a just society. Wearing a sorry face and always expecting without making enough effort has not worked in the last fifty years. 

The Organization has so far sponsored FOUR bright unprivileged students from pastoral communities in the northern Kenya. Through Hifadhi Africa Scholarship Program and Jerry Isaac Memorial Fund teams, we intend to mentor, nurture and churn a generation of great young Africans. By championing and supporting embracement of education in seemingly marginalized communities, we are preparing a Kenya envisioned in the Vision 2030 where high quality life to all is a promise. Our target, through your support is giving 20 full scholarships annually to potentially tomorrow’s trend setters.

The team has also registered great successes on various fronts including conducting events and more importantly establishing the house and creating the fan base and followership that we now enjoy. These milestones have been made with our fans moral support.   

HAO has just started and our table is ever full. Our intent is to transform education sector in Africa. We want Fred, Halima, Antony and Sharon to be taking their University lessons while herding. We are envisioning systems that enables our interaction with youth in Namibia and Cairo without physical contact. We shall then pride in being the link between societies and prosperity.  

               

YOUNG PEOPLE TRANSFORMING SOCIETIES THROUGH ENTREPRENEURSHIP

I have many friends, and many of them are working. Some are students while others are busy building businesses. All of them are my friends because they have some kind of motivation. I have not known why I’m in their friendship circles, but what I know is, you rarely hung around me if you know nothing to do with your tomorrow. Tomorrow is so special to me that I suffocate promising friendships just because of it. In short, I appreciate people who make efforts to doing something because they are driven by conviction that it can grow. 

Building a successful enterprise needs a lot of patience, risks taking and energy among others. You’ve heard stories of persons who built multinationals bottom-up. The story will not normally end without describing their ages and traits. But more important is the answer to the question after that, “And what is driving you?” Often, our attractions towards reading these stories are the catchy headlines and use of language. The answer to this question in most cases is in past tense. Meaning, motivation comes before success. 

Contrary to the last century, a good number of young people are running well performing and growing ventures. Despite high competition and the complexity of the industry each day, opportunities still exist for more young entrepreneurs to exploit. We only need to accommodate more flexible approaches that appreciate the communities around. CSR is becoming a necessity and young blood like Hesham Da Silva, Facebook Founder among many others are taking the philanthropy game to all time philanthropists.

Many young entrepreneurs are proving each moment their intent of creating a better future by inventing and innovating solutions. It’s critical that youth-led organizations like Hifadhi Africa champions the devolvement of issues like community service and mentorship at Primary and Secondary level, this way, we shall be churning a generation of social entrepreneurs. They exist, but they can be more.