# Dr Sangu Delle: Africa’s Future, Fighting Corruption & Investing in Billion-Dollar Startups

An episode of [The Peswa Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1781537541), 25 May 2025, 1 h 52 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/110e1ce70/podcast/play/117753119/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-2-31%2F421135843-44100-1-b9b28e22a107c5e1.mp3

Send a text In this episode of The Peswa Podcast, we sit down with the brilliant Dr. Sangu Delle, entrepreneur, investor, author, and thought leader for an eye-opening conversation on building Africa’s business future, the impact of failed leadership, and the corruption that has hindered progress across Ghana and the continent. As the CEO of CarePoint and Founder of Golden Palm Investments, Sangu shares his remarkable journey through entrepreneurship, social impact, and venture investment — including backing tech giants like Andela, mPharma, and Flutterwave, with his portfolio raising over $1.2 billion in funding. We also explore: •How leadership failures have undermined potential in Africa •What it takes to build world-class businesses in a challenging environment •His work with the Sangu Delle Foundation •His unique path through Harvard, Oxford, and beyond — and how his academic journey shaped his mission 🔗 Watch now, link in bio 📩 Connect with us: • Follow Bill on Instagram: @billcobbinah • Follow us on all socials: @thepeswa 📢 Subscribe The Peswa on all Platforms: https://linktr.ee/thepeswa Get access to amazing royalty-free music for your projects — sign up for an Uppbeat account using the referral link: https://share.uppbeat.io/cy9fcqqxj4tg Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more conversations like this! #GhanaBusiness #entrepreneurship #podcast #productivity #business #africa #Ghana The Fresh Patch Podcast - Where Good Pets Get It. Welcome to the Fresh Patch Podcast where we talk about everything, from dog... Listen on: Apple Podcasts Support the show

## Transcript

[0:00] You've invested in flatter weave.
[0:02] You've actually invested in Adela Pharma.
[0:05] Walk us through that gym. We were at a buying Lusaka and
[0:10] we're grabbing drinks and Greg is telling me about the idea.
[0:14] And at that moment I just knew something hit me.
[0:18] I just knew I said this idea is brilliant.
[0:20] And so immediately I went to an ATM.
[0:24] Could you know, I took our money and I told Greg, look, I'm going
[0:26] to make a deposit. I get very annoyed when you have
[0:33] all these people giving all these motivational talks and
[0:36] lying to young people. There are certain things you do,
[0:40] but it's dishonest to try and go there and just say, oh, just
[0:43] work hard. Working hard alone doesn't do
[0:46] it. In the last eight years,
[0:50] unprecedented levels of corruption and rot that pervaded
[0:54] all elements of society. And because overnight if you had
[0:58] 4 million CDs of assets, you had $1,000,000, by the time they
[1:03] left power, that 4 million CDs on your balance sheet was worth
[1:08] $250,000. I wanted as to Andela to build
[1:12] their HQ for Africa, their hub for Africa Co located there.
[1:17] Then we can bring IBM, Google, Microsoft.
[1:20] So we almost create this cluster right of of tech giant would
[1:24] create an ecosystem and instead of recognizing how positive this
[1:29] will be for the country as well, we're more interested in what's
[1:32] in it for me. Decades apart, yeah.
[1:34] A decade into the future, Is there something you could tell
[1:36] me now, using myself as a point of contact for young
[1:39] entrepreneurs who are trying to build something valuable for
[1:42] this African front a decade ahead?
[1:44] What would you tell? OK community, thanks for turning
[1:57] up showing up here again to all our old folks and the new ones.
[2:03] So I just had a conversation with Sangu Daily and two things
[2:09] really. First off, I'm a big fanboy of
[2:13] Sangu Daily and I really hope my fanboyness was not seeping off
[2:16] through the conversation. This guy is unbelievable.
[2:19] Remember when Dick told me about the prospects of this podcast,
[2:23] one of the names that was on top of our list was Sangu Daily.
[2:27] And here we are had a 2 hour conversation with him.
[2:31] A very heavy conversation at that.
[2:32] Just to give you an overview, Sangu is the chairman and
[2:36] founder of Golden Palm Investments.
[2:39] They've been the capital power for a couple of iconic start-ups
[2:43] in the African ecosystem. Think about M Pharma, flatter,
[2:46] Weave, Andela. Yeah, Sangu is a guy group are
[2:51] then from the beginning. He's also the CEO for care
[2:55] points, formerly African Health holdings.
[2:57] You know, tech forward tech driving health startup does your
[3:03] amazing work. Thomas Foundations you sit on
[3:06] numerous boards, Harvard advise you board Harvard Medical School
[3:10] board, Ashesi University, the board of Ashesi University.
[3:14] So yeah, valued guy and we spoke about his journey, his
[3:20] perspective on the African continent, the prospect he wrote
[3:24] the book Sangu is a real powerhouse and I'm excited about
[3:29] this conversation. I'm excited for you.
[3:30] They're about to listen to this conversation.
[3:33] Well, that said, I really hope you had enjoyed the conversation
[3:36] with Sangu. But then we've already
[3:39] announced, made it clear that we are taking on the journey as a
[3:44] community to read books in our attempt to create our own
[3:48] entrepreneurial stories, right? And the book we decided to read
[3:52] as the UT story by the autobiography of Captain and
[3:58] Kofi and Mabi. We are going to start reading
[4:02] this book in June, the 1st of June.
[4:05] We're still exploring how we're going to keep ourselves
[4:07] accountable. We're hoping to feedback from
[4:09] you as our community on how we think we can distract to this.
[4:13] I mean, we start convenient for you so we can shoot us a name,
[4:17] shoot us Adm on our socials, the password or send me an e-mail
[4:22] host@thepassword.com. So yeah, I can't wait for us to
[4:27] delve into this book together and take on this journey.
[4:30] So enjoy the conversation with Sargu.
[4:33] OK, great. So I think like I was saying,
[4:37] I'm actually surprised. I'm shocked, still in shock that
[4:40] I'm about to have this conversation with you because
[4:44] for me and the person, like I mentioned, we are like fanboys.
[4:47] We really admire what she represents, especially for me on
[4:50] a personal level, what it means to be a person of capacity and
[4:55] being spent for the African course, especially the African
[4:58] course. And so when Dick told me when he
[5:00] started to do this podcast and he said, OK, we're going to take
[5:04] this gym, other than top tier names we're thinking about was
[5:07] you right? Too kind.
[5:09] And all it took was for me to reach out on Twitter on X and
[5:13] you replied like we were so shocked that you actually
[5:14] responded and here you are. Well, let me tell you something
[5:17] funny and maybe I'll get in trouble by saying this, but on
[5:23] SO emails I literally have probably like let me check
[5:30] something of the order of see I've seen here 40,000 plus
[5:38] unread emails. So emails get tough because they
[5:40] get overwhelming. LinkedIn gets choked, WhatsApp
[5:45] gets choked. X is like the best place.
[5:50] So funny enough is the one place that my unread emails is 0
[5:54] because very few people assume you're going to respond on X,
[5:58] but I actually respond to every message on X.
[6:00] Though now I feel like after saying this I'm going to be in
[6:02] trouble. Yeah, actually I'm going to be
[6:04] in trouble and to. But why?
[6:05] Maybe you say yes to the request, the invitation?
[6:08] So to me, it's very simple, right?
[6:09] I, I actually consider it a privilege, right?
[6:17] I consider it a privilege to be able to share knowledge, right,
[6:22] And share experiences. I wouldn't be where I am or I
[6:26] wouldn't have have accomplished 10% of what I've accomplished if
[6:31] it wasn't for the generosity of those ahead of me who shared
[6:35] their knowledge, shared their wisdom, shared their experiences
[6:38] and mentored me. And so for me, it's AII.
[6:41] Consider it a moral responsibility to pay it
[6:44] forward. Yeah.
[6:45] Right, this this is the second time I've heard you used that
[6:48] like moral responsibility. You mentioned how it was about
[6:51] your book, Yes, and how you feel like you more or less had a
[6:55] moral responsibility to tell the African story.
[6:58] You know, we get to that. But you are barely, you're
[7:02] barely, you know, 40 years. You're thinking 3839.
[7:05] Yeah. And you've done remarkable
[7:08] things in the short while. You started very impactful
[7:14] companies. So Golden Palm Investments that
[7:17] has gone ahead to invest in start-ups like M Pharma, Della
[7:20] Flat Wave. These are like iconic start-ups
[7:23] in the African ecosystem, raise billions of dollars in venture
[7:26] funding, impactful work. There is care point from the
[7:31] Africa health holdings, great work, tech forward health care
[7:37] system you're building, there's clean acquire.
[7:39] There is your foundation when you are, you're an author of a
[7:44] book, The African Making, the African Making Futures, right?
[7:50] You sit on boards from schools at Shesi University, Perry, all
[7:55] of that. And you're so many recognitions
[7:58] and you're not even 40 yet. And so I, I kept asking myself
[8:02] what could be the batteries behind such a person?
[8:07] What early stage independence could make somebody this way?
[8:11] And then I saw your talk at Helsinki 8-9 years ago.
[8:15] Sorry about you and your dad. Slash.
[8:17] Yes, and you're telling me about, you're telling the story
[8:20] about how you had a tradition with your dad and that in that
[8:24] hour drive going to school, you had to do it between.
[8:27] You're going to read The Economist and then you tell him
[8:30] what you're learnt. And that's like, I now
[8:34] understand the mail, how you have become what you've become.
[8:39] There's another story of your mum where you were scoring
[8:42] hundreds, you know, like your courses in school and then you
[8:44] go in 92 in social studies and she told you she was
[8:46] disappointed. Yeah, it was in 95.
[8:48] It was. I got 19 out of 20, so it was at
[8:52] 95% and she was not happy. And so it beats me to the
[8:58] questioning how was going up like having parents who had
[9:02] these high level standards, what kind of values did they
[9:07] instilled in you growing up? It's a good question.
[9:12] And I will First off start with you asked how is this possible,
[9:19] right? And I think for me it's very
[9:21] simple. It's faith, which is the single
[9:24] most important thing that my parents instilled in me right
[9:29] And so I've I always say this and sometimes people think I'm
[9:34] being self deprecating, but I'm being extremely sincere.
[9:38] There is there is not a single thing I have accomplished or
[9:42] achieved in this life that is of my doing right.
[9:46] I've always believed and my life is living proof that it is the
[9:53] work of the Lord right. And I'll and I'll break it down
[9:56] in ways look, people say or you mentioned that you're not even
[10:02] 40. My Lord and Savior.
[10:05] I was not 40 either, right? He was 33 right when he saved
[10:11] the whole world. And so there's our faith has a
[10:16] tradition of young people in leadership.
[10:20] Our Savior was a young man in leadership.
[10:22] Just, you know, sometimes we overlook that part of the story
[10:25] of Christ. Imagine this.
[10:27] This wasn't just a man at a time who was coming to challenge the
[10:32] status quo and was coming to disrupt the order of the day.
[10:36] This was a young man, his early 30s, right?
[10:41] And for me, that alone sets the template in the example, right?
[10:46] I always refer to Scripture, one of my favorite verses that
[10:50] growing up, I always had it on my desk.
[10:53] First Timothy 412, right, which is don't let anyone look down on
[10:58] you because you are young, but set an example for believers in
[11:01] speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and impurity, right?
[11:08] And so number one for me is faith.
[11:10] Look, when I was, when I was doing Graduate School, I did the
[11:20] Doctor of Law at Harvard Law School, the MBA at Harvard
[11:24] Business School, and the PhD in economic anthropology at BM at
[11:28] the same time as I was working and writing a book.
[11:30] It doesn't make sense when you do the math.
[11:31] It doesn't make sense, right? In fact, I was nominated for a
[11:36] fellowship, and the fellowship thought my CV was made-up.
[11:42] Seriously, they thought this was so I'm Africa 419.
[11:46] Someone has because they they have had a history of some of
[11:48] that. So they reached out to one of
[11:51] their recommenders, Henry Louis Gage junior to say that, eh,
[11:54] someone is is bringing fake applications and putting your
[11:59] name on it. And he said, who is that?
[12:01] He saw it and he said, no, that's one of my students.
[12:04] Now I say that because it doesn't make sense from a human
[12:07] perspective, but it makes sense from a spiritual perspective,
[12:12] right? Because what the Lord does in my
[12:16] life is he allows things to happen that will not make sense,
[12:21] right? To show his hands in my life.
[12:25] And that's why I if I give myself the glory, I'm lying to
[12:27] you. I was.
[12:28] Going to ask this question about because I realized you're very
[12:30] vocal about your spirituality on your on your tweets interviews
[12:36] have seen either something brought you to the place of
[12:39] recognition and surrender to God.
[12:42] I mean, you grew up in a by religious home.
[12:45] Your mum was a Muslim, your dad was a Christian Catholic, and at
[12:48] some point you came to a certain appreciation and embraced the
[12:52] faith, right? Would you want to touch on that?
[12:55] What happened? Of course, look, I, I was
[12:57] raised, both my parents are very strong believers, right?
[13:01] And so from a very young age, I was raised in the faith at about
[13:07] age 4, I was the youngest master ever at Kaiser King right now
[13:12] with, and I'm sure a lot of young people relate to this.
[13:15] You grow up, you go to church all the time.
[13:17] You're, you grow up in the faith.
[13:19] You grow up, you get a bit older and you, you lose your way a
[13:22] bit, right? You start getting concerned of
[13:26] with other things and you want to hang out with your friends
[13:28] and play and party and all of that.
[13:32] But I think the Seminole moment for me was when you go through
[13:39] certain experiences in which you are forced to go on your knees,
[13:45] right? Those experiences, you recognize
[13:49] the the limits of your humanity and you recognize that you are
[13:53] nothing. You're completely nothing and
[13:56] you have no choice but to look up and remember who your God is
[14:02] and who your Father is. And that to me was the moment
[14:07] and inflection point of what happened.
[14:10] Renewed faith. Well, I've, I've shared a lot of
[14:13] this openly. This was, I think even was it
[14:17] last year or so. I, I, I was on a program with,
[14:22] with manifest. OK, right where I shared the
[14:25] experience at. 5 million. Dollars $5,000,000 in debt right
[14:29] where? And I was what I think I was 26
[14:34] at the time. You go through that, you know
[14:38] God, you know God you look for him.
[14:44] And so when he took me through that it, it changes how you look
[14:53] at the world, right. And I'll tell you also 2
[14:58] interesting things that also happened to me in 2013, October
[15:03] 2013 to be precise, I was in law school and I had a very weird
[15:11] dream in the dream, more like a nightmare in which I died.
[15:16] I woke up terrified, truly terrified.
[15:20] Of course, I didn't go back to bed.
[15:23] And I stayed up reflecting and asking myself the question,
[15:26] well, what if I had died? What if I had died?
[15:31] And at that moment, I realized that I was, I wasn't ready to
[15:36] die, right? And I, I never wanted to ever
[15:45] have that feeling of not being ready to die, right?
[15:49] And so I vowed to myself that day to live differently, right,
[15:53] to, to live in a way where you are ready for death because
[16:01] Shakespeare. And this was a quote, if you
[16:05] remember the story I told about my dad, my dad and I used to
[16:08] love Shakespeare. We used to read Shakespeare
[16:09] together. And we'll, we'll finish each
[16:12] other's quotes. And there was one quote we'd
[16:14] always share together, which was I think Sizak 2, scene 3 or so,
[16:18] where he said, of all the wonders of this earth, it seems
[16:23] to me most strange that men should fear knowing that death,
[16:26] a necessary end, will come when it will come.
[16:31] And so I resolved to live differently.
[16:33] I resolved to live life knowing that tomorrow is not guaranteed
[16:37] and today is all you have, right?
[16:41] And so when you live life like that, you move differently
[16:45] because every day you wake up as a gift.
[16:48] Today's a gift. I don't take it for granted that
[16:50] I woke up today and I'm able to come and do this podcast today.
[16:53] I don't take it for granted. Today's a gift.
[16:55] Every day I wake up and I'm alive, I wake up and I say,
[16:57] Hallelujah, today's a gift. I've been gifted 24 hours.
[17:01] What do I do with that? Right?
[17:03] 10 years from that experience. Literally exactly 10 years, same
[17:07] time, October 2023, I got in a car accident, a very, very
[17:13] insane car accident that had spiritual undertones to it, and
[17:19] I emerged unscathed in what was nothing short of a miraculous
[17:24] intervention. And that happened in 10 years
[17:28] after. The dream was not lost on me. 10
[17:34] years to the month was not lost on me.
[17:38] I keep A-frame picked. The car was completely totalled.
[17:40] I have a frame picture of it in my office, my house.
[17:46] To just remind me of the sanctity of life and how we need
[17:53] to be grateful for life and of of purpose and of what really
[17:58] matters. And it reinforces that 2013
[18:03] resolution to live differently, to live with a different type of
[18:09] purpose. Very interesting.
[18:12] And so I see that you have, you have been intentional with your
[18:16] life and you are for the most part, like I said earlier on
[18:22] been very focused on the African narrative, more so the economic
[18:26] narrative of the African continent.
[18:29] And I also wanted to understand where that came from.
[18:32] And I got to understand that, well, there was this, I don't
[18:36] know if that's true, but then your your parents were housing
[18:38] refugees in your house when you're growing up and your mum
[18:43] indicated more like a very pan African household.
[18:46] And your dad is Ghanaian, your mum is Egyptian.
[18:49] And there's some booking Abbey somewhere.
[18:51] Yeah. Is that right?
[18:53] Is that is that good to understand where your passion
[18:56] for the African continent? Yes.
[18:58] So I'll say that I was raised in a Pan African household, right,
[19:04] proudly Ghanaian, but with roots, as you've identified,
[19:07] also in Egypt and the Kina Faso. And so I always joke that I'm an
[19:14] African mutt, you know, But I was shaped deeply by some of
[19:22] those forms of experiences growing up.
[19:25] My father and doctor Ibn Chambas and a few others had set up the
[19:32] African Commission on Health and Human Rights back in the 80s.
[19:38] And so that organization, they were deeply involved in
[19:43] supporting refugees from the civil conflicts in Sierra Leone
[19:47] and Liberia. So I grew up with many of these
[19:49] refugees in our homes, men whose limbs had been chopped off.
[19:59] And this is I was 5-6 years old being exposed to this women who
[20:04] grandmothers who had been brutally raped by child soldiers
[20:10] young enough to be their grandchildren, right?
[20:14] And so those experiences stained my conscience, right?
[20:21] And and lit a fire in me. To want to fight for the
[20:32] progress of our continent and the development of our
[20:35] continent. At the same time, I also
[20:39] recognized in growing up and experiencing the different faces
[20:47] of the African continent, and you realize that our continent
[20:52] is the narrative of our continent is often
[20:56] misrepresented, underdeveloped, and is too often told by
[21:01] outsiders, right? We're not telling our own
[21:04] stories. And those who tell the stories
[21:07] from the outside, it doesn't have the same depth.
[21:09] It doesn't have the same weights.
[21:10] And so for me, the African narrative needs to be reclaimed,
[21:15] reimagined and retold by Africans, for Africans and for
[21:22] the world to hear from us on our own terms, right?
[21:26] That's so important to me because we can talk about all
[21:33] the development that we need. And you know, I'm, I'm involved
[21:36] in a lot of these things. Yes, we need to support
[21:38] entrepreneurs. Yes, we need the right sorts of
[21:41] economic policies. Yes, we need infrastructural
[21:43] development. Yes, we need to upgrade our
[21:46] healthcare infrastructure, education.
[21:48] There are all these things we need to do.
[21:50] But underpinning all of that has to be who we are, our dignity,
[21:59] our purpose, our strength as a people, because that's what's
[22:02] going to permeate and carry through all of this.
[22:05] And you see that when you go to China, for example, the, the,
[22:09] the, the, the progress and the accomplishments and achievements
[22:12] of the Chinese people is not accidental.
[22:16] You you drill down to their underlying philosophies and the
[22:19] Chinese people are very proud and very determined and they
[22:22] have a worldview, right? You see the same thing in India.
[22:28] You see the same thing in Russia, you see the same thing
[22:30] in these other places. So the question for us is what
[22:33] is our worldview? How do we look at the world?
[22:36] What is our perspective and how do we approach the world firm in
[22:40] our belief systems, right where we're not just younged all over
[22:46] the place, but there's a very clear sense of where we're going
[22:49] and why we're going there right? And the last, you know, you look
[22:53] at that to me is part of what made Kwame Nkrumah so great and
[22:59] why it was unsurprising that he won the poll for the greatest
[23:04] African of the Millennium. Because whether you agree with
[23:09] him or you disagree with him, one thing you cannot dismiss is
[23:12] he had a worldview, right? He had a very clear worldview.
[23:16] He had a very clear philosophy that was that centered us as
[23:21] Africans and that created our own independent thoughts,
[23:24] independent mind, independent charts forward.
[23:28] OK, as a young man, you grew up with a father and this heavy
[23:34] influences on the African continent.
[23:36] You've done great work across the continent.
[23:37] Even with your book Mr. 45 African Countries about the span
[23:41] of seven years, which is 600 entrepreneurs, you've really
[23:46] interfered with this country, you've invested or doing work
[23:48] here. What is your world view about
[23:50] the African? My worldview about Afghan
[23:54] continent is we don't have a worldview.
[24:03] No. But in all seriousness, there's
[24:06] I see so much potential for us right in the last eight years,
[24:15] for example, and I've been I was very vocal about this online and
[24:22] on social media. So it's no surprise that I was I
[24:27] was deeply disturbed by the events that happened in our
[24:31] country by what I called and insist was it's not that we
[24:36] haven't had corruption before, but this was unprecedented,
[24:39] right? Unprecedented levels of
[24:41] corruption and rot that pervaded all elements of society.
[24:45] One ton disregard for some of the fundamental pillars that
[24:52] uphold our society. We saw a significant erosion and
[24:56] press freedom right. We saw blatant disregard for
[25:02] certain constitutional processes and safeguards.
[25:04] We saw a whole lot of issues. And, and of course, we saw
[25:11] economic Armageddon, right, where for the first time in our
[25:14] lifetimes, we, we, we defaulted on our debts, which has not been
[25:17] done. Haircuts on, on domestic debt,
[25:21] pensioners loosen. I mean, these were horrendous
[25:23] times. And at some point I was so
[25:29] downcast and and almost depressed by what was going on
[25:34] because overnight everybody in Ghana, for every $1.00 of assets
[25:40] you have, it was now worth $0.25.
[25:44] Because think about it, at the time the last regime took over
[25:49] office, right? In 2017, if you had 4 million
[25:57] CDs of assets, you had $1,000,000 worth of assets at
[26:03] the time. So if you had a company with a
[26:05] balance sheet of 4 million Ghana CDs, you had $1,000,000 worth of
[26:08] assets on your balance sheet. By the time they left power,
[26:13] that 4 million C DS on your balance sheet was worth
[26:16] $250,000. So through all the hard work,
[26:21] through nothing you've done, right, through nothing you've
[26:25] done because of failed economic policies and failed leadership,
[26:32] you've lost 75% of the value. So to get back to the original
[26:36] value, you have to quadruple your assets.
[26:38] You have to 4X your assets. Just think about that.
[26:41] You 4X your business to stand still.
[26:45] That's why I joked with somebody and I said in describing the the
[26:52] economic situation in the last eight years, I was telling a
[26:57] friend that imagine you're running as fast as you can, but
[27:02] you are on a very steep hill. So you are running so fast only
[27:06] to stand still. That was the situation.
[27:09] Yeah. But imagine you don't run fast.
[27:11] You just slide off the way down, right and in.
[27:16] But in all of this, what kept me going and what kept me inspired
[27:21] was young people. I always, I am.
[27:24] So even though I didn't go to a chassis, I'm so passionate about
[27:28] chassis. And I, I give so much to a
[27:30] chassis because a chassis, I always say a chassis saved me.
[27:36] Seeing the students and what they're doing, their passions,
[27:39] their creativity, their innovation, it gave me hope.
[27:43] It gave me so much hope for the future that even though I was
[27:48] disillusioned in terms of what the political class or the old
[27:53] God could offer for us, I'm deeply inspired by the younger
[27:57] generation and what I saw. That chassis gave me great hope
[28:03] for what could be. Talking here you talk about
[28:08] Africa and the whole I mean I saw your tweets back thing and
[28:12] how it even got into trouble depends on your life and all of
[28:16] that. I want to ask this question when
[28:19] are you running for office? Hello friends, so sorry to
[28:23] interrupt you. I know you're enjoying this
[28:25] conversation here and I'm so sorry about rudely interrupting
[28:27] you. But then it's come to attention
[28:29] that about 82% of you guys who consumer content have not
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[28:47] Thank you. So I'll go back to what I shared
[28:56] in the beginning when you asked me what is the underlying
[29:04] explanatory variable for all of this?
[29:06] What explains my life? That's fine.
[29:09] And I told you that it was faith, right?
[29:13] So when I was younger, and again, there's there's there's
[29:18] evidence of this in some interviews and all of that.
[29:22] I've always been very interested in politics as a vehicle for
[29:26] change, right? I volunteered on the Obama
[29:31] campaign in, in 2012 and in, in, in 2008 and in 2012.
[29:38] So in 2000 when I was in the US in school, I, I've, I worked on
[29:41] his campaign in 2008 and 2012. I've supported a lot of
[29:47] campaigns in the US and here as well, Friends who are running
[29:50] for office, helping them with, you know, with, with strategy
[29:57] policy and so on and so forth. But from a faith perspective,
[30:03] I've always believed that the Lord rules in the affairs of
[30:08] men, right? And so one massive change that
[30:14] has happened with me is whereas in the past, right, in the past,
[30:20] I would come out and have maybe this is, this is a particular
[30:27] ambition or thing that I want to do, right?
[30:30] And I'll lay it out and I'll go after it.
[30:33] I no longer approach life that way, right?
[30:36] I now look at things very differently where I try to be
[30:41] guided by where the Lord wants to take me.
[30:45] So I always refer to Proverbs 3. Five, trust in the Lord with all
[30:50] your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
[30:53] And So what I know I'm passionate about is I'm
[30:56] passionate about good governance and transformational leadership
[31:02] on this continent, OK? The means in which that will end
[31:10] up will be in accordance with what the law tells me, right?
[31:14] So. Look at the things with the mere
[31:16] eye, right, seeing how we take your father again, I think I've
[31:22] I've you have good reason to believe that that is a really
[31:24] great influence in your life, right?
[31:26] And I gather that even with like what you're doing with like an
[31:30] entrepreneurial space, entrepreneurial exploits,
[31:32] hearing that story you shared in Helsinki gave me good reasons
[31:35] that, OK, well, this man has engineered his son to be this
[31:39] way. Now your dad has what's it
[31:43] called? He was the CPP chairman, right?
[31:47] Heavily involved in politics. So I really would as like I'm
[31:50] expecting to see rollout with his son as well.
[31:53] For such a very intentional man who has engineered it sounds to
[31:57] be this economic powerhouse with no powerhouse who seems
[32:00] passionate about our political landscape, I have good reason to
[32:04] think that he has erased you with similar underpinnings and
[32:08] it's just a matter of time that he plays out.
[32:11] So I'll tell you something interesting.
[32:17] What you attribute to the father is correct, but you are pointing
[32:22] to the wrong father, right. And case in point, if if my
[32:29] father had his way, I would be a dermatologist by now and I would
[32:34] also be a very strong bona fide member of the Convention
[32:42] People's Party. But we chat our own paths and
[32:48] there's no question both my parents have been extremely
[32:52] influential in my upbringing and have imparted.
[32:55] I always say that all the positives I attribute after the
[33:02] laughter to their upbringing. All the negatives are mine only
[33:06] and I'm me not listening to to what they taught to me.
[33:11] But yes, I did grow up with political awareness, right?
[33:17] Because my father would have all these.
[33:19] And don't forget back then CPP was banned as a political party.
[33:23] And so I, I grew up seeing a lot of these things.
[33:29] I grew up when he'll be having all these meetings.
[33:32] So I was very aware, right? I was very politically aware
[33:35] from a very young age. And I think in many ways that
[33:39] sparked my interest in how how can politics be used as a
[33:46] vehicle for positive change, positive transformation.
[33:49] It's unfortunate that it's gotten a very negative, you
[33:56] know, it comes with a negative connotation.
[33:58] And I think most people when they think of it today will
[34:02] probably attribute or associated with negative things, with
[34:05] corruption, with power grabs, with all sorts of things that
[34:10] are not aligned with what I think intrinsically it can be.
[34:18] And is this happening? Because what it does is it
[34:20] pushes a lot of young people away.
[34:23] I encourage a lot of people and a lot of young people and a lot
[34:26] of good people to get involved however they can, whether that
[34:30] is whether you're supporting a campaign, supporting policy,
[34:34] whatever it is. I always run in for office
[34:36] yourself. Why do I push people to do that?
[34:39] Because you know, in the Greek philosopher Plato, when you read
[34:44] his book on the Republic, one of the things Plato always says is
[34:48] if if the wise don't get involved in politics, you'll be
[34:52] governed by fools, right? So effectively what that means
[34:57] is when you abdicate your responsibility, your civic
[35:00] responsibility to get involved in the governance of your
[35:04] society, and when all the good people don't participate because
[35:10] they say this is bad or this is dirty or we don't like this.
[35:15] So if all the good people are moving away, who is left, right.
[35:19] And then we end up actually suffering the economic and
[35:25] social consequences of bad leadership, as we saw in, in,
[35:30] in, in the last several years. And so as a general principle, I
[35:37] encourage, I think it's a civic responsibility to vote, to be
[35:40] politically active and to ensure that we play our role as
[35:44] citizens, holding our leaders accountable, right?
[35:48] Pushing for the very sort of because I always say, look,
[35:51] politicians reflect us as a society.
[35:54] It's easy for us to say, ah, these politicians are corrupt.
[35:57] They are corrupt, but so are we. It's true.
[36:02] Go and who wants to be in line? We want to jump lines.
[36:05] I mean, we're we're we're it's a reflection of us as a society as
[36:09] well. And so the change cannot just be
[36:11] top down. It also has to be bottoms up.
[36:13] And we need to reflect the society we want to see if we
[36:17] want to see meaningful change. Interesting.
[36:22] Pardon me if I'm still trying to.
[36:24] I really, I'm, I'm a big believer in foundations and so
[36:27] pardon me if I'm, I'm still exploring the support, but it
[36:31] seems like a foundation of who you are as a person, all that
[36:33] you've achieved your education, formal education.
[36:37] So you went to Christ the King, went to Ghana International
[36:40] School, went to Perdy School, went to, went to Harvard,
[36:43] studied African Studies, went back to economics, and you went
[36:47] to have a Jewish doctor, Harvard Law MBA, Harvard Business
[36:51] School, International Human Rights, University of Oxford.
[36:57] Yeah, Oxford University. And then versus Birmingham for a
[37:01] PhD in anthropology and African states.
[37:03] Economic Anthropology. Splendid, great, mind blowing.
[37:08] But I, I, I want to understand if you can remember, were there,
[37:15] was it an intentional journey decided to take in all of these
[37:19] academic journeys and what informed your decisions in all,
[37:22] in all these fronts, right. So why did you go to Harvard to
[37:25] study African Studies and economics?
[37:27] Why didn't you decide to pursue law and Harvard Law School?
[37:30] Why did you decide to do an MBA? And what thinking went into you
[37:34] deciding to do human rights and law and then anthropology and
[37:38] African Studies? Right.
[37:41] So it's a good question and I'll I'll the two things here.
[37:45] So the first is the question of why pests use so much school
[37:52] that I'll address first and and then I'll get to the
[37:57] specificities of the programs. So the first thing is why so
[38:02] much school? Part of that is historical and
[38:08] I'll explain. I come from Nandam, right in the
[38:14] Upper West Region of Ghana and the history here matters.
[38:19] When the British came to Ghana, present day Ghana, then Gold
[38:25] Coast, all of what is today Ghana was not a colony.
[38:30] The Gold Coast in the South was a colony then the north was a
[38:34] territory. Well, we, you know, northern
[38:37] regions, Savannah, but those were territories.
[38:40] They were not. That was not a colony and so the
[38:44] British approached the governance of these two
[38:47] geographic areas differently. When they first came education,
[38:52] there was no education in the north.
[38:54] The education was in the South. Later when they allowed
[38:57] education, they only allowed you to go up to class six, Class 6.
[39:05] So much so that when we go to the year 1919, there were about
[39:11] 211 schools in the South educating almost 30,000
[39:18] students. There were think look at that
[39:23] tool 200 and 11:30 thousand students.
[39:26] The entire N only had four schools educating 294 students
[39:35] and so as far back as the 18th and 19th to you had 18th, 19th
[39:40] century. You had people from the South,
[39:43] you had fronties with PhDs. Yes, Ghanaians had PhDs from
[39:48] Oxford's Cambridge and the leading European universities.
[39:52] The first person from the north with a first degree was 1963.
[39:59] My father graduated with his degree in 1970.
[40:02] So there is nobody my age from the North who is more than two
[40:06] generations educated, right? So that's one element of it.
[40:14] So when I pursue education in the way I pursue it, part of it
[40:20] is the Lord has blessed me with a brain that works differently.
[40:30] And so part of it is to honour him with that.
[40:32] And part of it is to honour my ancestors and my people who
[40:36] never had the opportunity to go to school, let alone there is no
[40:41] way my grandfather could have ever dreamed in his lifetime.
[40:47] He couldn't even have the audacity to dream that his
[40:51] grandson would be in school, would go to Harvard, would go to
[40:57] Oxford. It was not in the So for me,
[40:59] it's, it's bigger than me, right?
[41:02] And it is, it's also inspire others to take it up and to say
[41:09] that, look, once you have that blessing from God, you maximize
[41:14] it to the fullest of your potential, right?
[41:17] And that's what the leads, Doctor Suley Gariba, who was a
[41:20] very close mentor of mine, a brilliant man before he died.
[41:26] Doctor Gariba told me when I was a young kid that whatever gifts
[41:30] and talents God gives you, you carry it to the fullest of your
[41:36] potential. And he's, I, I know he's looking
[41:40] down on us from heaven. And I hope Uncle Suley is, is
[41:45] proud that I've listened to his advice.
[41:47] So. Essentially strand of this is
[41:51] that you're trying to making a statement and then you are
[41:54] carrying your ancestors along. Yes.
[41:59] The second part of the. Question the second part in
[42:02] terms of the specificities of what I did, it's it's easy to
[42:07] look at it now and it seems almost a straight line, but it
[42:12] wasn't. So when I first went to Harvard
[42:14] University, I went to study pre Med like every good sensible
[42:19] African child, right? You know how it is.
[42:22] As my uncle told me growing up, he said hey, there are four
[42:25] options, doctor, lawyer, engineer and Foo.
[42:37] So so when I didn't do medicine and I decided to do economics
[42:44] and I wanted my economics to be focused on development
[42:46] economics, so I added African Studies.
[42:49] My uncle was very upset because I had clearly fallen into the
[42:53] 4th category. So that was, you know, I went in
[42:58] pre Med, but I fell in love with economics and I was fascinated
[43:03] by how it give you tools to understand the world because the
[43:07] world runs on, I mean, you know it, it affects everything from
[43:11] elections to your day-to-day life too.
[43:14] It gives you the tools to understand how the world works,
[43:17] right. So from there, you know, 19
[43:21] years ago was when I founded Golden Palmer Investment.
[43:24] So I was very young when I founded it because I had a big
[43:27] thesis I had actually done, I mean. 1920.
[43:33] Oh, yes, I 2000, I was 19 when I yeah, I was 19 when I set it up.
[43:39] And at that time I had done so. So to give you a sense of the
[43:47] context there, I had, I always had these.
[43:52] Interesting hypothesis about how Africa's development would
[43:59] evolve. And the net that I am, I went
[44:03] and I, I crunched global economic data, right?
[44:07] So just looking at how have other countries developed from
[44:12] the year 1000 AD to the year 2000.
[44:15] And I wanted to look at 1000 year perspective because that's
[44:18] where you will see all the trends, right, over a long
[44:21] period of time. And I was trying to understand,
[44:24] OK, in different regions, how did they happen?
[44:27] Across different periods, how did they happen?
[44:29] And I found certain themes that were consistent across time and
[44:33] across geography. There were similar things that
[44:37] happened once per capita income reaches a certain level.
[44:40] Similar things happen when urbanization rates reach a
[44:42] certain, there were just similar things happening.
[44:44] And my thesis was very simple. Why should Africa be any
[44:47] different? Do we have 3 heads, right?
[44:49] Why should we be any different? And so I kept talking about it
[44:54] and I had this roommate who actually shared a bunk bed,
[44:59] Jamie Stan, very, very, very successful fund manager today in
[45:03] the US, runs a very large $4 billion fund.
[45:08] And Jamie, we always, I used to joke in fresh money.
[45:11] I said this guy is going to be our generations.
[45:13] Warren Buffett when he was. And you know, I used to say, I
[45:17] used to joke that when he was five years old, when you were
[45:21] five, what did you get for your baby?
[45:22] I. Didn't think I remember nothing
[45:25] maybe. Probably some toy or something.
[45:28] Yes, extra meat or toy or Fanta. He when he was each five, they
[45:32] give him Microsoft stock stock at Microsoft and we're teaching
[45:35] him how to invest. Yeah.
[45:39] So. So by the time this guy got, you
[45:43] know, by the time we were first year in universities, his
[45:46] knowledge was very different. This guy was investing,
[45:48] understood the markets and me, I didn't know those things.
[45:53] So chairman teach me, but I humbled myself and he taught me.
[45:58] And he's the one who told me. He said your idea is a great
[46:01] idea, you should invest behind it.
[46:04] I said, what do you mean? He said you, you this thesis you
[46:08] have means that there's and I said, OK, but with what money?
[46:14] He said raise money. I said from who, right, Who come
[46:18] to Ghana at that time you're talking of almost 20 years ago,
[46:22] Who here is going to give you money to do it right?
[46:25] We didn't have that sort of setup.
[46:28] So he actually taught me how to put together a picture deck.
[46:32] He taught me how to and, and he wrote me my first check and
[46:37] helped me and then I then went around, gave presentations
[46:42] elsewhere to other classmates and, and so on and so forth.
[46:46] And that's how I raised the first round of capital $50,000
[46:53] 19 years ago for Golden Palmer Investments.
[46:58] And there's, I think there's a lot of lessons there, right?
[47:03] And I always say, and and This is why I get very annoyed when
[47:10] you have all these people given all these motivational talks and
[47:13] lying to young people. I don't like that.
[47:16] I like honesty, right? And it will be disingenuous and
[47:23] intellectually dishonest of me to sit and come here and tell
[47:26] you that, yeah, genius brain and all of that.
[47:30] Yes, God has blessed me with, with some natural, God has
[47:37] blessed me with, with, with, with sharp brain.
[47:40] I will not deny that. But that's there are people in
[47:44] Ghana, there are people who are smarter than me.
[47:47] I am telling you, there are people who are smarter than me,
[47:49] but they don't have opportunity, right?
[47:52] So it wasn't anything intrinsic. Part of it was blessings and
[47:57] privilege, right? I happened to get accepted into
[48:02] Harvard, which in and of itself is a blessing, is very
[48:05] difficult. Now 60,000 people up, their
[48:07] acceptance rate is less than 3%, so just getting that alone is a
[48:13] huge advantage. Now I happen to be randomly
[48:19] assigned to a room with somebody who has third generation
[48:24] Harvard, whose family is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
[48:29] Does that have anything to do with me?
[48:30] No, right. And this is someone who was then
[48:34] able to teach me, right? And I was able to learn from
[48:39] that. He gave me my first break,
[48:41] connected me with you see where I'm coming from.
[48:43] And of course, there's certain things I had to do.
[48:46] I had to work hard. I had to produce the returns
[48:49] needed. I had to be humble enough to put
[48:52] myself at his feet to learn. I had to have integrity where it
[48:56] was easy for people to try. There are certain things you do,
[48:59] but it's dishonest to try and go there and just see or just work
[49:03] hard. Working hard alone doesn't do it
[49:06] right. You need a good amount of of
[49:09] luck and blessings, as we call it here.
[49:13] And there's social capital and network that there's certain
[49:18] things that privilege affords you those advantages.
[49:23] And of course not every. And I say it's not just
[49:26] privilege because if it was, when people also see someone who
[49:29] succeeded and say, oh, it's just because this person is so and so
[49:32] or had so and so. Now, if that's the case,
[49:34] everybody privileged to be successful, should they not?
[49:37] But that's not the case. So it's important to have the
[49:41] full picture. There's certain things that play
[49:45] a role. Hard work plays a role.
[49:48] What you put in plays a role, but privilege also plays a role.
[49:52] Social capital plays a role. Your network plays a role.
[49:56] Your credential plays a role. And that's the full picture.
[50:01] So now I get the idea on how you got to Harvard, studied African
[50:07] states in economics, why you said to do law.
[50:11] Yeah. So at that moment, I set up
[50:14] Golden Palmer Investments and I knew that I wanted to be an
[50:18] entrepreneur. I mean, I'd been an entrepreneur
[50:20] for a long time, from before I knew what entrepreneur was.
[50:24] Is this tell you tell about how you you monetized helping your
[50:29] friend with his homework? Exactly.
[50:31] And you know, when by even prior to that, when there were fairs
[50:35] doing the the road that he said, you know, when we moved to East
[50:37] Lagoon, it was all Bush, all Bush.
[50:39] In fact, one of the things that sometimes I wake up, I think
[50:44] about it and I say back then when E Lagoon was Bush on Lagos
[50:50] Ave. there was they had the chief.
[50:53] My father had an opportunity because back then it was so
[50:55] cheap because nobody, nobody wanted E Lego.
[50:58] No, if you had dashing somebody line is they'll tell you, what
[51:01] do I want to do in that forest? He had an opportunity to buy 100
[51:05] plots today and he said, what am I going to do in this forest?
[51:09] Thank you, thank you. Can you imagine?
[51:11] And not just in your Lagos Ave. sometimes I sometimes I want to
[51:20] wake up and say this mom, huh? So, you know, so I knew.
[51:28] So back then when they were doing the road, we would put
[51:32] water, just tie what I've put it in my valves and I put it in the
[51:35] fridge. Or we could come back and we'll
[51:36] sell it too. Because for you to get water or
[51:40] buy anything, you have to go very, very, very, very far.
[51:43] By then that question was not what you see.
[51:45] It was a massive circle with just debt on it.
[51:50] Then my mother found the coins in my pocket and then we got in
[51:54] trouble. She said how can we charge her
[51:56] before doing our route so they take away from me.
[52:00] My lesson there was not that don't charge the people doing
[52:02] their route. It was that when you get money,
[52:04] hide this from mommy. So when I started tutoring
[52:09] people, I knew that if I charge them money, mommy, you'll find
[52:13] the coins, I'll be in trouble. So they paid me with food.
[52:17] Oh yes, and one of them Niyamanqua.
[52:20] I do my very dear friend. I Niyamanqua used to have these
[52:24] amazing. He used to have my mother is a
[52:26] health nut. So my mother there, she will
[52:28] give you the the multigrain brown bread if she's if my
[52:33] mother has put him back tired to be the factory 1 then just she
[52:37] was very chisel when it came. No sugar in anything, no Sudan,
[52:40] none of that. Niyamanqua will come with combi
[52:44] sandwich. They're very nice food.
[52:49] So he'll pay me with, with the food and, and I used to help him
[52:54] with homework. And so I've, I've always had
[52:56] sort of these and, and I was always entrepreneurially minded,
[53:00] but because I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur full time, I
[53:02] wanted to also make sure that I had the right tools and the
[53:06] right, I had everything I needed to make sure I'll be successful.
[53:10] And I recognize that having more knowledge, more training and
[53:16] having the right sort of background would enable me to be
[53:19] successful in raising capital and running the business and in
[53:22] establishing credibility, also recognizing that I was very
[53:26] young, right? So that's kind of what informed
[53:30] the JD MB A the PhD it, it part of it was came from my father
[53:40] just encouraging it. He said, look, if you can, you
[53:42] should pursue. He said, look, if you, when he's
[53:48] the one, of course, who always shares this is this is the
[53:50] history of our people. We've never had this
[53:52] opportunity. So he never forced me.
[53:56] My parents never forced me to do anything, but they, it was just
[53:59] encouraging to say, look, if, if you can do it, why not?
[54:04] So I did that at the same time as I mentioned with those
[54:07] programs. And then Oxford was, I got, I
[54:12] was invited to join the Africa Advisory Group at Oxford
[54:18] University and supporting the Rhodes Scholarship.
[54:22] And I, I was invited to be on. So I'm on the selection
[54:25] committee of the Rhodes Scholarship for West Africa.
[54:28] I've been on the selection committee since it was set up.
[54:32] So through that I got to learn a lot about Oxford.
[54:34] I got to go on campus and I was like, this place is, it's
[54:38] fascinating, right? Harvard was founded in 1636,
[54:43] were technically ordered in America.
[54:44] America was created in, as you know, 1776.
[54:48] So, you know, we, I thought Harvard was very old, 1636, you
[54:53] know, and then you go to Oxford. There was a war at Oxford and
[54:58] the college I was in that's from the year 900 AD, You know,
[55:02] you're going somewhere and they'll tell you, you know,
[55:04] 1342. And I'm just like, wow, I
[55:07] thought I was old, right. And that there's I saw.
[55:10] I was, I was, I was amazed by what I saw there.
[55:16] And so I decided to just look into it wasn't anything serious.
[55:23] And then I, I saw this program, which fascinated me.
[55:29] I was very interested in it. I've always been passionate
[55:31] about human rights and I've always had a deep intellectual
[55:35] interest in the law, which is why I, I studied law and, and
[55:41] became a licensed lawyer. And so that's kind of what
[55:45] explained the Oxford part, yeah. Right, so now to we already
[55:52] touched on your at least coins with entrepreneurship and how
[55:56] you start the Golden Palm Investments.
[55:59] Now you've invested in Flatowave, you've last invested
[56:03] in Andela and Pharma iconic startups.
[56:08] So from the young man who was 19 started this Golden Palm
[56:12] Investments with $15,000 in investments, to being the one
[56:17] backing these iconic startups in the African ecosystem to the
[56:22] best of your knowledge to have up the top of your head.
[56:25] Walk us through that genie. How did all this play out?
[56:28] Right. Again, it looks like a straight
[56:31] line, but it wasn't, right? When we first started, we were
[56:38] more of a venture studio in the sense that we would come up with
[56:45] ideas and we'll build the business ourselves.
[56:48] We'll incubate it from scratch, hire team builder.
[56:51] So I'll give you clear examples. Had a thesis around, I told you
[56:59] when I crunched the data, we realized that around the world,
[57:04] as per capita income increased, consumption of protein went up.
[57:11] All over the world, consumption of protein goes up
[57:13] significantly. So the thesis here also was,
[57:16] well, consumption of protein should go up in Ghana as well.
[57:21] So we set up an agriculture company, We invested in
[57:27] aquaculture, invested in tilapia farms in the lake, right?
[57:32] I did. I found the best feed in the
[57:36] world that was in Taiwan that we're bringing in so that we'll
[57:41] have the biggest fish with a lot of protein.
[57:47] And then we also had a thesis around.
[57:50] So that was on the fish side. We also invested in in cats,
[57:56] cattle, right, for beef consumption.
[58:00] And then we also invested in 1920.
[58:04] Yeah, we also invested in maize, right?
[58:06] Because again, the, the data we had seen from other places show
[58:10] that you generally also saw not just an increase in protein
[58:13] consumption, but you also saw quite an increase also in, in
[58:19] the consumption of corn and maize, right?
[58:23] So we did that. We had another thesis that at
[58:25] the time the average birth rate per woman in Africa was 5.9,
[58:30] right? Compared to, I mean, China is
[58:33] 1.1, right? Europe is under 2.
[58:36] And So what does it mean? And we know this, look, in the
[58:39] next 25 years, Africa's population is doubling going to
[58:41] be 2.5 billion. What does it mean to have so
[58:45] many babies? What do babies need?
[58:47] Baby food. So we went out, we bought, we
[58:51] went to Kenya, you know, bought a manufacturing business to make
[58:55] baby food. So those are the sorts of things
[58:57] we are doing. And so we did a similar thing in
[59:01] financial services around the thesis of globalization and how
[59:04] much hands would trade. We did.
[59:07] We had a similar thesis around healthcare.
[59:09] So we're doing all these things. Then had a big thesis on
[59:13] technology because I was seeing how technology was disrupting
[59:17] things in the US and elsewhere. And I believe very strongly that
[59:20] technology is going to have an even greater impact in our world
[59:24] because it allows for a certain leapfrogging, right?
[59:28] So on the back of that we set up a technology company at a time,
[59:33] Golden Palm Technology Limited. Now what we learned painfully
[59:38] was that with general entrepreneurial, you know,
[59:44] savviness and and, and and and business knowledge.
[59:48] Yeah, we run it. We've created a healthcare
[59:50] business, we created agriculture, we created
[59:51] financial services, we created a real estate business, which was
[59:54] where that $5,000,000 debt for halachem, right?
[59:57] Created all these businesses and you know, it wasn't difficult to
[1:00:01] do. Could I don't have to be, I
[1:00:05] didn't have to be an expert at real estate to run a real estate
[1:00:07] business because it's intuitive. I could hire the right people,
[1:00:11] technology. If you don't understand C plus,
[1:00:14] can you talk to the programmer? So that was where I said we're
[1:00:17] in trouble, right? Like none of us, and we are no
[1:00:22] programmers or not. We don't understand this world.
[1:00:24] And this team consists of Jamie Stan.
[1:00:27] No, so Jamie was, was wrote the check, right.
[1:00:29] He was my first investor. I'm talking of the team I built.
[1:00:32] So I, I when I, when I set it up, I actually partnered with my
[1:00:35] brother, but who I still work with.
[1:00:37] We've been working together for about 20 years.
[1:00:39] And of course we made at a hires, we bought some other
[1:00:41] partners, etcetera. We can't, it can't just be one
[1:00:45] man or two men running this whole enterprise.
[1:00:49] And so we then went out and started looking and realized
[1:00:55] that, look, we don't know this thing, but we're seeing all
[1:00:58] these people doing interesting tech things.
[1:01:01] What we do know is business. What we do, we know business.
[1:01:04] Or we said, why don't we go and we can help some of these tech
[1:01:08] start-ups grow, expand, we can give them some money, we can
[1:01:12] leverage. And, and that's how we became
[1:01:14] accidental venture capitalists. So that there are first VC
[1:01:18] vehicle was that technology company incorporated where we,
[1:01:22] we, we put in capital in it and uses balance sheets to invest.
[1:01:25] So what we are now doing was the other businesses we created was
[1:01:28] creating cash. So the cars generated from
[1:01:30] there, we're investing in tech. Then it got to a point where
[1:01:37] tech just took off in a massive way.
[1:01:40] And that's when we divested from all the businesses except
[1:01:43] healthcare to really focus on tech because it was clear that
[1:01:46] that was the future. And that was going to be the
[1:01:48] greatest source of of returns, no?
[1:01:55] It's a lot of sense. So I just want to I really
[1:01:57] understand. How do you meet look, the DC?
[1:02:02] I'm really interested in these three stories.
[1:02:04] M Farmer, Andela, Fat Weave. How do you meet Greg?
[1:02:08] Yeah, So when it comes to so M Farmer, so Greg and I knew of
[1:02:15] each other, You know, Ghana, everyone really knows everyone.
[1:02:17] It's a small, I always joke that Ghana is, is almost insane.
[1:02:21] You have to be careful. If you don't take time, you,
[1:02:24] you, you where you have to, you know, we're just such a small
[1:02:28] place that everyone kind of knows everyone.
[1:02:31] And so Greg and I actually connected in Zambia, Lusaka.
[1:02:36] I was in Lusaka doing research for my book and Greg was there
[1:02:40] meeting with the Ministry of Health and he was thinking of
[1:02:46] piloting the original idea from Mpharma at a time, which was
[1:02:51] this E prescription and at a time Mpharma hadn't yet been set
[1:02:55] up. So I'm at the airport.
[1:03:01] I see this young person with like some government delegation
[1:03:06] has come to pick the person. There's a bunch of four by fours
[1:03:09] outside. So I'm just like, hey, who is
[1:03:11] this important person here? The person tends, I see his big
[1:03:15] head. I say, ah, Greg, but what are
[1:03:18] you doing here? So he's not laughing.
[1:03:21] And we said, OK, let's grab drinks this evening and catch
[1:03:24] up. So we grab drinks.
[1:03:28] We were at a buying Lusaka and we're grabbing drinks and Greg
[1:03:33] is telling me about the idea. And at that moment, I, I just
[1:03:40] knew something hit me. I just knew I said, this idea is
[1:03:44] brilliant. And so immediately I went and,
[1:03:50] and Greg and I laugh about this. So I went to an ATM.
[1:03:53] Did you know I took our money and I told Greg, look, I'm going
[1:03:55] to make a deposit. I'm going to make a deposit.
[1:03:58] Yeah. Like, we're going to get
[1:04:00] involved in this. And I remember calling Alex
[1:04:05] Malantes in California, who is who was one of my partners on
[1:04:09] investment committee. And I say, Alex, I've met,
[1:04:13] there's this idea. I said, it's going to sound
[1:04:16] crazy. Keep in mind that Greg had never
[1:04:19] worked a day in his life. Greg's first job after
[1:04:23] university was being CEO of M Pharma.
[1:04:26] So imagine me going to and I'm telling them that, look, I know
[1:04:29] this is going to sound crazy. And Greg's Co founders also had
[1:04:34] just graduated from university. I mean, they are as green as
[1:04:38] possible. In fact, his first chief
[1:04:40] technology officer, when we interviewed him and we asked him
[1:04:43] what's your experience? He said he was president of the
[1:04:46] computer science club, Right. So I call Alex and I say, Alex,
[1:04:51] you I know you're going to think I'm a madman for what I'm about
[1:04:55] to tell you, but I think this has legs, OK?
[1:04:57] And this is either going to be one of the best investments
[1:05:00] we'll make or this is going to be I said there's no middle
[1:05:02] ground. It will either be a big winner
[1:05:04] or it will be 0. There's no middle ground here.
[1:05:07] So he gets on a flight, comes to Ghana.
[1:05:10] We meet the team Golden Tulip at the time.
[1:05:14] So he was Greg and his two Co founders.
[1:05:16] We met them, we spent a lot of time with them.
[1:05:19] And Alex and I go and debrief and Alex says you are right.
[1:05:24] This is either going to you and I are either going to be heroes
[1:05:28] from this or we are going to look back and everybody is going
[1:05:31] to say are you people stupid? How do you invest in a bunch of
[1:05:35] inexperienced green people with 0 work experience were just an
[1:05:40] idea but we felt very strongly in it and so that's how it
[1:05:48] started. We gave a temp sheet, we
[1:05:49] invested and M Farmers first office was my conference room
[1:05:54] nicely gone. That's that's literally where
[1:05:57] and and and helped. I mean, those days I was going
[1:06:01] to Greg with meetings, travelling, fundraising and so
[1:06:04] and for my soul near and dear to my heart, because I I was there
[1:06:07] as I was born. And of course, Fast forward, the
[1:06:11] rest is history and Della. So I had some very close
[1:06:17] friends. Walter Badu, who is the managing
[1:06:22] partner, 4DX4DX is one of the premier venture firms on the
[1:06:26] continent. And his partner Peter Auth, who
[1:06:30] were friends of mine and She'll tile.
[1:06:36] She'll is one of the most brilliant human beings I've met.
[1:06:40] She'll went to Stanford University when he was 16,
[1:06:43] finished it in two years. She'll overlapped with me.
[1:06:48] We're both at Harvard Law together.
[1:06:50] While he was at Harvard Law, he was the head of seed practice at
[1:06:53] NEA, which is one of the largest venture capital firms in the
[1:06:57] world. He now runs his own employee,
[1:07:00] runs his own fund, several billions of dollars of assets
[1:07:04] under management. He is absolutely brilliant,
[1:07:07] absolutely brilliant. His brother also.
[1:07:10] I always used to joke. His brother Sujay set up
[1:07:13] Frontier Car Group, which we invested in and that was our
[1:07:18] first four exit. Nasfest acquired them in 2019
[1:07:22] just before COVID hit for $700 million, right.
[1:07:27] So As for that family I always used to joke with, with Sheil's
[1:07:31] mom, Sheila and Sujay's mom. I said, Mommy, whatever the milk
[1:07:35] you give them, you just, I won't tell anybody.
[1:07:37] You just tell me so that I can be giving it to my children.
[1:07:41] So it was, they were good friends with, they knew E and
[1:07:49] they also knew Jeremy Johnson. So they connected me to them.
[1:07:54] So through that and funny enough, I was, I even
[1:07:57] interviewed E for my book. So when I heard what they were
[1:08:01] doing in Andela and they were pitching it, I said, but this is
[1:08:03] a no brainer. I mean, it's an absolute no
[1:08:05] brainer with and it's not just a fantastic financial investment,
[1:08:09] it's an amazing investment in terms of the social impact and
[1:08:14] the multiplier effect and the ecosystem impact, right?
[1:08:20] So we invested in in Andela and flat out we were simple.
[1:08:23] He he did it when he left Andela, I said, Hey, where are
[1:08:27] you going? He said, I have this data.
[1:08:29] I said I'm in because I I right. No, seriously, you tell you
[1:08:33] before they even set up the stuff, we wired money into his
[1:08:37] his this thing you tell you, we did say I immediately and it
[1:08:42] ended up being one of the greatest.
[1:08:44] And you see, that's why sometimes I say that in all of
[1:08:46] this also when yes, there's the analysis you do and all of that,
[1:08:55] but a lot of it is also just faith, faith and being guided by
[1:09:03] the spirit. It did not make sense that
[1:09:05] you'd, but at that time flatter wave when we did the first deal
[1:09:09] was at a valuation of $2.5 million, right, which in CD
[1:09:14] terms at that time was 10 million Ghana C DS.
[1:09:18] That was what it was valued 10 million Ghana C DS, 10 million
[1:09:21] Ghana C DS when we invested. Do you know what it's what the
[1:09:24] last valuation was 45 billion Ghana C DS, 45 billion Ghana C
[1:09:32] DS. So that's an increase in
[1:09:35] valuation of 4500 in GHS stems, right?
[1:09:42] And to me that tells a powerful story about the the possibility
[1:09:50] of what happens when you give young Africans opportunity,
[1:09:54] right? How many more flatter waves are
[1:09:57] out there? How many more Andelas and M
[1:09:58] farmers are out there that have not been fulfilled simply
[1:10:03] because we have not given opportunity to young people?
[1:10:07] That's why I'm very excited about some of the initiatives
[1:10:11] President Muhammad is championing the the drama
[1:10:17] program they launched where to help catalyze 10,000 startups a
[1:10:21] year. The 1,000,000 coded you see
[1:10:24] these things, if executed well, will really be able to boost the
[1:10:28] ecosystem. You told us necessarily, you
[1:10:30] told about how you wanted Andela wanted to set up a campus, You
[1:10:34] know, let's bring it to Ghana. And then our people embarrassed
[1:10:37] you. Yeah.
[1:10:38] Yeah, yeah, it it because my dream at the time was Ashesi, a
[1:10:44] leader in computer science, engineering, all of that.
[1:10:48] I wanted us to Andela to build their HQ for Africa, their hub
[1:10:53] for Africa Co located there. Then we can bring IBM, Google,
[1:10:57] Microsoft. So we almost create this cluster
[1:11:01] right of of tech giant creates an ecosystem, bring mess, bring
[1:11:05] all right. That was the the big dream and
[1:11:08] unfortunately our people disgraced us.
[1:11:11] I brought them and we're going to invest $70 million.
[1:11:16] And we wasted our time instead of focusing on and instead of
[1:11:23] recognizing how positive this will be for the country, we're
[1:11:28] more interested. We're more interested in what's
[1:11:31] in it. For me, that's money I'm
[1:11:34] investing. Can I get some in my pocket?
[1:11:36] So I was embarrassed. So I called a very close friend
[1:11:41] of my sister of mine who Claire Akamanzi, who I knew from
[1:11:47] Harvard, who was at that time, she was in Pokagami's cabinet,
[1:11:51] the president of Rwanda. She was in the cabinet, she was
[1:11:54] CEO of the Rwanda Development Board.
[1:11:56] So I called her and I said, my sister, my country has disgraced
[1:11:59] me. Please, this is a brilliant
[1:12:01] idea, can you look into it? So she looked into it.
[1:12:03] She said, ah, bring them, bring them.
[1:12:06] So we go to Rwanda, they look at it and they say, wait, you guys
[1:12:11] are going to invest in creating these developers.
[1:12:16] You match them with work abroad and they are saying, OK, your
[1:12:19] top developers are able to earn $100,000.
[1:12:22] We as a country that they are staying here, they don't need to
[1:12:25] travel. So there's no brain drain.
[1:12:28] I can tax them and get that $20,000.
[1:12:31] So it's positive for me and I'm creating this ecosystem and
[1:12:34] you're seeing it now you, you know how in the US you have the
[1:12:37] PayPal mafia, now we have the Andela mafia, right, going out,
[1:12:42] yes, it's a no brainer. So much so that Rwanda said,
[1:12:46] come, we'll give you tax holiday 10 years.
[1:12:49] Come you all the campus, come, don't build it anywhere.
[1:12:52] We'll give you land. Hey, come the money.
[1:12:54] How many engineers do you say you create 2000?
[1:12:57] No, no, no will match you dollar for dollar, make it double.
[1:13:00] That is a forward thinking government.
[1:13:02] That is a government that understands what it takes to
[1:13:05] build a sustainable ecosystem and that's a government that
[1:13:09] understands that. Why would you take $1 million
[1:13:13] and put it in your pocket today where you can create a Mac, you
[1:13:17] know, a system that will generate 100 times that in the
[1:13:20] long term as a full thinking government, as a full thing.
[1:13:25] And that's why I look Rwanda, They they are so serious.
[1:13:30] You can set up a company in Rwanda in a matter of hours
[1:13:34] online. You don't need to go to anybody.
[1:13:37] You don't need to have one online.
[1:13:40] If we are serious about championing entrepreneurship
[1:13:43] and, and and and catalyze in growth, why is it so?
[1:13:48] Like why should it be Wahala? I can't and I've done it.
[1:13:50] I've sat in Ghana and I've set up a company in the US online.
[1:13:54] Just do it now. Go to legalzoom.com.
[1:13:58] In a matter of hours, you have a company incorporated in the
[1:14:00] line. But we that we rather need to
[1:14:04] have a lot more. We make it difficult.
[1:14:07] Why should it be difficult? Why should it be difficult?
[1:14:12] I would like to touch on your experience as ACEO for
[1:14:15] Carepoint, but I'll show it for now.
[1:14:18] Still on this matter you your book, just so we speak to
[1:14:23] entrepreneurship in Africa as a whole.
[1:14:25] Your book does that making futures.
[1:14:28] You know, young entrepreneurs in a dynamic Africa where you go
[1:14:32] around. You spoke to several
[1:14:33] entrepreneurs during the research process.
[1:14:35] He spoke to 600 entrepreneurs over the course of seven years,
[1:14:39] 45 African countries. I spoke to over 1000 but I did
[1:14:43] in depth interviews with 606 hundred.
[1:14:47] So like yeah deep one hour plus interview, some of them several
[1:14:52] hours, multiple days. So in depth was 600 but met over
[1:14:56] 1000. That's like someone's life work.
[1:14:59] Someone can just be just do that and go to bed.
[1:15:02] So I want to understand, right, especially with your perspective
[1:15:06] on entrepreneurship in Africa as a whole and how because we have
[1:15:10] the view of this podcast, I mean, our manager, I told you
[1:15:12] when I was sitting here right now, there's a conviction we
[1:15:15] have that entrepreneurs are going to build this content.
[1:15:18] And that has been the tale for almost every developed economy
[1:15:22] in the world now. And so you going into this
[1:15:25] project, who were you before going to this project and what
[1:15:28] did you become after that meal? That process regards your
[1:15:31] perspective on the African continent, entrepreneurially
[1:15:33] speaking, the government information.
[1:15:35] So what kick started? So look, I had ideas for a while
[1:15:40] and I've always wanted to tell the story.
[1:15:43] But what Kickstarter did was 2013, October 2013, You know
[1:15:51] what happened? Yes.
[1:15:52] So at that moment I said, look, I'm not putting off these things
[1:15:55] anymore. What if I'm?
[1:15:57] What if I died? Then these ideas and these
[1:16:00] dreams all die. So that's when I jumped into it.
[1:16:05] Look, I didn't know it would take as long as I did.
[1:16:06] Let me be honest, right? It took, as you know, the whole
[1:16:09] process took quite some time. It took seven years.
[1:16:15] But it transforms the way I looked at the world.
[1:16:19] It transformed the way I looked at Africa.
[1:16:21] And that's why today I caution people when they want to talk
[1:16:26] about Africa, this Africa, that Africa what?
[1:16:28] What Africa are you talking about?
[1:16:30] You sat in a cry in your village and you want to talk of Africa.
[1:16:36] We need to have humility when we make certain generalizations or
[1:16:40] someone wants to sit and say, yeah, you know, in Ghana, what
[1:16:43] Ghana when your experiences of Ghana is airport, Laboni, East
[1:16:49] Ligon and maybe Easter, you go to the village.
[1:16:54] Can you really purport to speak of Ghana?
[1:16:58] I've been to every region in Ghana, right?
[1:17:01] And I've combed throughout all of Ghana.
[1:17:05] And when you do that, it humbles you.
[1:17:07] It makes you realize that you need to make sure that your your
[1:17:12] your perspectives are properly grounded.
[1:17:16] So when we talk of Africa, what Africa are we talking about?
[1:17:18] There are 54 countries and when you when you visit and you see a
[1:17:23] lot of them, you realize that there are certain things in
[1:17:27] which is the same story. And there are certain things in
[1:17:30] which we could not be any more different, right?
[1:17:34] And that's why when people get upset and say, you know, you see
[1:17:42] people online, ah, what's this Africa that they are showing and
[1:17:44] they want to show the nice houses at Airport Hill Central.
[1:17:47] Sacco. Look, we have MTV curbs in
[1:17:49] Africa and then you have others who are just showing the pot and
[1:17:52] I say you're both right and both wrong.
[1:17:55] Africa Ghana is not Airport Hills and neither is it children
[1:18:01] would crush or call with flies. There's so much nuance is
[1:18:04] already above and more right. And so I think for me, it is the
[1:18:09] humility to understand the limits of our experiences and
[1:18:14] the the discovery of deep nuance, right?
[1:18:20] And an appreciation for those nuances, right?
[1:18:25] Yeah, so did it, did it make you more hopeful?
[1:18:32] It did. It did.
[1:18:36] It made me hopeful in the sense of recognizing that there's
[1:18:42] still a lot more that unites us than divides us, and that the
[1:18:49] challenges we face cut across similar challenges and and I
[1:18:55] feel very strongly that the fortunes of our continents and
[1:19:04] our destinies are tied together, right.
[1:19:07] With that kind of experience, if I, if I were to ask you that if
[1:19:10] you have all the resources right, all the resources to
[1:19:15] tackle one particular problem, now, please the African
[1:19:20] continent. So, you know, I was at the
[1:19:26] Africa Philanthropy Forum some years ago.
[1:19:30] This was a long time ago. Actually, this must have been
[1:19:34] more than eight years ago. I was speaking on a panel and a
[1:19:39] question was asked of, you know, let's say if you could invest a
[1:19:44] billion dollars or so into any single thing.
[1:19:47] So it was, it was touching as a similar thing, right, where
[1:19:49] someone would say look invested in infrastructure or do
[1:19:53] electrification, right, so that all of Africa has electricity,
[1:19:56] that's all we need and then we'll figure out the rest
[1:19:58] etcetera, etcetera. What I said I would do with a
[1:20:05] billion dollars, as I said I would invest a billion dollars
[1:20:08] in a shesi and let me explain my think in there.
[1:20:14] I can invest in electricity, I can invest in clean water, I can
[1:20:17] invest in what have you, and I'll solve that problem, but
[1:20:22] there'll be more problems than I'll come.
[1:20:25] I wouldn't even be able to solve all the problems too, because
[1:20:27] you said one thing. And even if I solve that
[1:20:30] tomorrow, a new problem will come.
[1:20:33] Or I can invest in the ecosystem that produces the problem
[1:20:38] solvers who solve the problems of today and tomorrow.
[1:20:43] And that that to me, is what will sustainably put us on a
[1:20:50] different path. Making sure that we have the
[1:20:54] right sort of ethical, entrepreneurially minded leaders
[1:20:58] across the board in private sector and public sector.
[1:21:02] Because when you have the right leadership, the rest will take
[1:21:06] care of itself. Well, let me ask you this
[1:21:13] question, Sir. I did ask Celita, but I would
[1:21:18] like to ask him now with all the work you do, I mean, now he
[1:21:21] actually sits on the board of Washington University.
[1:21:24] And so it must mean a lot to you with what you do in all your
[1:21:28] pursuits, what you're doing now, what gives you the deepest sense
[1:21:31] of meaning. So for me, it's actually very
[1:21:40] simple, right? It's three things, three things
[1:21:49] that are the forefront of of all of this, right?
[1:21:55] In terms of your question of meaning, the 1st is do I glorify
[1:22:05] God through it? Do I bring pride to my parents
[1:22:14] and do I set an example for my daughter?
[1:22:18] That's it. And when he meets those three
[1:22:21] things, it gives me great joy, great purpose.
[1:22:29] Well, Carepoint Africa and the CEO for Carepoint Africa as well
[1:22:36] Forward tech, grieving health startup company.
[1:22:40] What's it about? What, what's, what's the thesis
[1:22:42] there? What are you trying to achieve?
[1:22:43] There. So on Care points, look, we said
[1:22:45] we want to build Africa's healthcare future right across
[1:22:50] the continent. We have about 1617% of global
[1:22:57] population. Yeah, we are responsible for 25%
[1:23:02] of the global disease burden, which means that at any given
[1:23:05] moment, every 4 diseases in the world, one is in Africa.
[1:23:11] Just think about that. Meanwhile, for every four people
[1:23:14] in the world, one is not in Africa, right?
[1:23:18] So we have a disproportionate amount of the disease burden.
[1:23:23] And to make this worse, we only have 3% of global healthcare
[1:23:26] workers. So imagine out of every 100
[1:23:32] diseases, out of every 100 people in the world, 16 are
[1:23:36] Africans, but out of every hundred sick people, 25 Africans
[1:23:42] and out of every hundred medical personnel globally to help solve
[1:23:47] this, only three and we represent only 1% of global
[1:23:51] health care expenditure. You see the problem with that?
[1:23:54] Now factor on top of that lay on that the demographic explosion
[1:23:59] that we're going to double our population in 25 years.
[1:24:04] So if we already have this problem at 1.5 billion, what do
[1:24:07] we do when we are 2.5 billion? And so and even if you gave me a
[1:24:14] cheque of $10 trillion to invest in healthcare in Africa today,
[1:24:18] do you know how long it takes to get an US agent?
[1:24:22] By the time you catch up in the traditional way of doing things,
[1:24:27] we probably would have lost millions, if not 10s of millions
[1:24:30] of people. And so it requires a very
[1:24:33] different approach. It requires us to see how we can
[1:24:36] leverage technology. It requires us to see how we can
[1:24:38] move and think about it also, not just at a micro level, but
[1:24:43] at a macro level, public health, health systems, preventive care.
[1:24:49] And especially when you look at the data and the trends that
[1:24:52] we're shifting away from infectious diseases towards
[1:24:56] NCDS, non communicable diseases, hypertension, diabetes, right,
[1:25:02] the rise in oncology, cancer, these things, our health system
[1:25:07] is not built. Our health infrastructure has
[1:25:10] been developed mostly for infectious diseases.
[1:25:14] We're not ready yet for the sort of strain that NCDS are going to
[1:25:18] introduce to the system. And so we can do business as
[1:25:23] usual. So for us at Carepoint, our goal
[1:25:25] has been to build this tech forward network of hospitals,
[1:25:30] clinics, health facilities to leverage technology, to leverage
[1:25:34] AI for us to be able to really move into predictive medicine
[1:25:38] and personalized medicine and to leverage economies of scale and
[1:25:41] scope to create efficiencies to create greater clinical
[1:25:46] outcomes, right? So to make to make people get
[1:25:49] better care effectively, right? And to try and use technology to
[1:25:55] reduce the cost of care, right? And ultimately, we want to
[1:25:59] democratize access. We want to make sure that as
[1:26:01] many people as possible can get access to quality care.
[1:26:05] And that is our resonator. Interesting on this one, it ties
[1:26:13] like healthcare and like health for Africa.
[1:26:16] You did this project clean Aqua where you were providing access
[1:26:20] like enhancing access to like water bowl water.
[1:26:22] Think you you've completed the project 2022 by the time you're
[1:26:27] attached about 200,000 people or hundreds of communities.
[1:26:30] There's not a question. It's just like thank you for
[1:26:32] doing what you did on that front.
[1:26:35] So now back to you as a person. Are you a chief, you a chief, a
[1:26:40] chief. So now Maluna.
[1:26:42] Maluna. Maluna, what does that mean?
[1:26:44] So Maluna is, is that is basically development chief.
[1:26:48] Oh. Yeah.
[1:26:50] OK, so I've been tasked by a paramount King 2 set up a
[1:26:59] development plan for the municipality and to focus
[1:27:05] especially on the development of our youth and our women in
[1:27:09] Nando. How's it going?
[1:27:12] Look, it's been, it's been great.
[1:27:15] We, you know, as you know, I moved the headquarters of my
[1:27:19] foundation to Nando. So we've been doing a lot of
[1:27:22] projects in education and health and in economic empowerment.
[1:27:27] We launched Project 1000 to empower 1000 women
[1:27:31] entrepreneurs, right? We've been doing that, setting
[1:27:34] them up to, to. We're doing 200 hairdressers,
[1:27:38] 200 seamstresses, 200 traders, 200 weavers, 202 Brewers, right?
[1:27:47] We are also doing this partnership with a Nandam raw
[1:27:50] bank. You want to borrow today 35 to
[1:27:53] 40% interest rate. I always say are you selling
[1:27:56] cookie? No, like I mean how if you are
[1:27:59] paying 40% interest rate, how much profit are you going to
[1:28:02] make, right. And and this again is the
[1:28:07] economic consequences of bad leadership and failed economic
[1:28:12] policies. It trickles down, right.
[1:28:16] So what we then said was, look, you can expect a young woman, a
[1:28:22] young man who is trying to start a business, we pay 40%.
[1:28:26] So we're going to, we're doing a partnership between my
[1:28:28] foundation where we say that give the young man and young
[1:28:32] woman the loan. Instead of the 40%, we'll do a
[1:28:36] partial guarantee of the loan. So it's all 40%, bring it down
[1:28:40] to 30%, OK, or 25 or whatever, because there's a guarantee.
[1:28:45] So your, your risk is diminished.
[1:28:46] Now we're saying that only charge them 10% and the balance
[1:28:50] with the foundation will pay. So that admit it, it, it, it
[1:28:53] helps to support them and then until at least they're on their
[1:28:57] feet, right? We've we launch education.
[1:29:03] The BC pass rate was 11% and Nandam actually has some of the
[1:29:08] highest educational qualifications per capita in the
[1:29:13] country. There's no house in Nandam that
[1:29:15] doesn't have a PhD or doctor. Because I told you before, we
[1:29:18] didn't have any school. So everybody is a great right.
[1:29:22] You know, we have a scene and also Nandam Festival.
[1:29:25] Our soil is hard. Even growing stuff in our soil
[1:29:28] is difficult. We don't have any natural
[1:29:31] resources. So in Nandam we always say that
[1:29:34] the only thing we have is our God and our brain.
[1:29:38] So from childhood, your parents and your grandparents will give
[1:29:42] it to you. Die, there's no distance for
[1:29:45] you. You better go and learn.
[1:29:47] But now the standards have fallen BC pass rate of 11%.
[1:29:50] So we're investing in, we're providing grants to try and
[1:29:55] support the schools. We've launched a teacher
[1:29:58] training program. We trained about 6 or 700 of we
[1:30:01] had a program that trained about 6-7 hundred of them.
[1:30:05] This was last year. We brought some international
[1:30:08] educators and we are launching a teaching price for excellence
[1:30:12] where we're saying that the teachers who have had the
[1:30:14] biggest improvement over a three-year period in their
[1:30:18] students performance will give you a large prize.
[1:30:22] You know, 10,000 CDs will buy you a ticket, all expenses paid
[1:30:25] trip to Dubai. I want I want teachers to know
[1:30:28] that look because right now you perform, you don't perform.
[1:30:33] Y'all getting the same side. Like what is the motivation to
[1:30:35] do well, right. And they already, they are where
[1:30:38] you go and talk to them. No, the last school I visited,
[1:30:42] no textbooks. No, I mean, it's very
[1:30:44] depressing. It's very, very, very
[1:30:46] depressing. In fact, there was 1 teacher
[1:30:48] teaching the whole GSS. So when he's teaching GSS 1, GSS
[1:30:53] 2 and GSS 3 have nothing, then he'll teach and he's teaching
[1:30:56] all subjects. I mean, how, how, what sort of
[1:31:00] society are we building if we're not properly investing?
[1:31:04] And that's why you know, when I was when I critiqued the free
[1:31:11] SHS, it wasn't the the argument I made is it is a great thing in
[1:31:16] principle by you look, look at Vietnam.
[1:31:19] I've just said Vietnam to study their economic miracle.
[1:31:23] Vietnam did not have free SHS when they enjoyed the economy.
[1:31:26] But what they did was they invested in super high quality,
[1:31:30] basic educate, very high quality.
[1:31:32] So I, I've always believed that we should do it progressively,
[1:31:37] right and quality, make sure the quality here is very high and
[1:31:43] the free, I don't believe it should be free for everybody,
[1:31:46] should be means tested. Why should my children go to
[1:31:49] school for free when I can afford it?
[1:31:51] Do you understand what I'm saying?
[1:31:53] So when in a country where we have limited resources, it
[1:31:56] doesn't make sense. Why should all of us, people who
[1:32:00] live in all these areas, who can afford it, why should we be
[1:32:02] going for free? Instead, we should have a means
[1:32:05] tested program where below a certain income level it should
[1:32:09] be free. Yeah.
[1:32:11] Above that you pay so that you are creating resources that can
[1:32:16] now be used to subsidize it and so that the money that's being
[1:32:19] spent on it can now be used for other things, to upgrade the
[1:32:22] quality, to upgrade the infrastructure to do all these
[1:32:25] things. Issue I'm coming from already in
[1:32:28] an environment where we know well we we have one of the
[1:32:31] lowest tax to GDP rates in the world.
[1:32:33] People don't pay taxes. A few of us who pay taxes were
[1:32:37] over tax right. So now already people don't pay
[1:32:40] taxes now the school that they are paying to you don't have to
[1:32:43] pay. So how how is government going
[1:32:45] to get the resources right? So I, I always thought that the,
[1:32:52] the goals were very laudable, but it was politicized and over
[1:32:59] politicized. And that's the problem I have
[1:33:01] sometimes with how we approach education health, sometimes we
[1:33:05] over politicize these things. And instead of you take even
[1:33:09] Agenda 111, it doesn't make sense.
[1:33:11] I mean, healthcare can tell you doesn't make sense.
[1:33:14] You are going to build 111 new hospitals.
[1:33:16] Do we have the medical staff for it?
[1:33:19] Do we Why? Why would we waste?
[1:33:22] And the estimate has now come that is going to cost almost
[1:33:26] close to the IMF bailouts. Doesn't make sense.
[1:33:29] It doesn't. What about our existing
[1:33:32] infrastructure that chips compounds?
[1:33:33] What are we doing with them? Why don't we upgrade the
[1:33:36] existed? Why don't we look at some of the
[1:33:40] novel ways of leveraging technology and so on and so
[1:33:43] forth to be able to reach the same goal, right.
[1:33:47] But when, when we have a system where we don't, our budget is
[1:33:52] not based on what is going to be the best for the country, is
[1:33:59] based on what, what can I structure where I can do a deal
[1:34:06] here? That's the fact.
[1:34:08] And I always say that if we don't face up to the facts of
[1:34:11] our situation and we don't understand the problem, we'll
[1:34:14] never have a solution. So may I have a lot of very
[1:34:17] contrary and ideas? If you understand the political
[1:34:20] economy of corruption, you know that just getting up and saying
[1:34:23] stop the corruption it won't do anything because contrary to
[1:34:27] what people think, the people who get the corrupt money, it
[1:34:33] doesn't. Yes a good amount stays in their
[1:34:35] pockets, but a good amount also trickles down.
[1:34:38] Go and go to any MP and visit them in their office and see
[1:34:41] what you see. You see a line that will wrap
[1:34:44] around every day. People are coming to give them
[1:34:47] pressure, school fees, hospital, this.
[1:34:50] That's all of that is on their head because there's an
[1:34:53] expectation that they need to solve those problems, right?
[1:34:58] If they don't solve it, what happens?
[1:35:01] You have voted out and they always joke that apparently they
[1:35:04] say identity for the longest time nobody does more than want
[1:35:07] them in identity and then that they do just suck you right.
[1:35:11] So you are even for somebody who goes in and says you are forcing
[1:35:16] the person to be corrupt because how much is the MPP?
[1:35:18] D look at his salary and look at the demands.
[1:35:23] No, you get where I'm coming from.
[1:35:25] Then you. The people are not empowered
[1:35:26] economically. They will place burdens on these
[1:35:28] politicians and they will intend to do other things.
[1:35:32] And the only reason that people are having those issues is
[1:35:34] because there's a void. The failure of our governance
[1:35:38] has created a void if we are solved for those issues, those
[1:35:41] sorts of pressures or not, you know, So we have to look at it
[1:35:44] holistically. Yeah.
[1:35:45] If we don't, we'll be sitting here.
[1:35:48] You invite me in five years, we'll be having the same
[1:35:50] conversation, right? Yeah.
[1:35:52] And you, you're very passionate. It's clear about Africa and
[1:35:59] Ghana. And I mean, we, we've pointed
[1:36:01] out some of like the buttresses too, who you are as a person
[1:36:04] now, your passion for Africa, your exposure with your, your
[1:36:08] parents, your upbringing. There's something interesting
[1:36:11] you mentioned that when you're growing up, you're reading books
[1:36:13] with your dad, right from Shakespeare to the Economist.
[1:36:16] I want to just touch and we understand.
[1:36:19] That and please, my father clearly made sure I read all of
[1:36:22] increments books. Great.
[1:36:25] That's that's the question about to ask us to we we believe it
[1:36:30] once ringshang of exposure, people go to do great things.
[1:36:32] Are people who are exposed right?
[1:36:34] And then one wrong of exposure is reading.
[1:36:36] So I want to understand, are there like 3 books or three
[1:36:39] thinkers that have really really shaped a perspective as a
[1:36:42] piercing of the African continent?
[1:36:45] Yes. So of course in Kuma, right.
[1:36:54] And I always say, whether or not you agree with him, no one will
[1:37:00] argue that he was one of the most brilliant thinkers of his
[1:37:04] time, right. And I would argue in our region
[1:37:08] of all time, absolutely brilliant and worth reading.
[1:37:13] So he was extremely influential, alright, in, in kind of in
[1:37:17] shaping a lot of my thinking there.
[1:37:24] Another person whose writings and speeches I think also played
[1:37:32] a massive role for me was Madiba, right?
[1:37:38] Mandela Madiba also, because for him it was, so I'll say in Kuma,
[1:37:46] the big part of in Kuma was around his philosophy, right,
[1:37:56] and his thought leadership. For Madiba, it was around moral
[1:38:03] leadership, right? And, and, and, and a lot of
[1:38:07] lessons around moral leadership. And a third that I'll put, which
[1:38:15] actually would would sound maybe surprising at first glance for
[1:38:22] me is Chimamanda. Right.
[1:38:26] It's Chimamanda because while the others are more historical,
[1:38:34] Chimamanda gives you contemporary insight into not
[1:38:39] just Africa, but the African diaspora as well.
[1:38:44] And yeah. When I asked you what's which
[1:38:54] are the things you doing brings you a deep sense of meaning.
[1:38:57] You gave me a criteria for what will qualify.
[1:39:01] You spoke about God, parents and then your daughter.
[1:39:05] You've touched on the you've touched on the 1st.
[1:39:07] I saw a teacher recently about you and talking about how your
[1:39:10] daughter wanted to go to the beach and she's three years old
[1:39:13] and he was she's not feeling too well.
[1:39:16] And then he told her when she's better you go and she brought
[1:39:19] the crucifix. He said she's barely in Jesus
[1:39:21] name so you could go to the beach.
[1:39:23] And the question I want to ask is that what does she mean to
[1:39:28] you? She has a variable come into
[1:39:32] your life. Yes, yes, yes.
[1:39:34] What dynamic has she brought? You know, the the older you get,
[1:39:41] the more you understand your parents, right?
[1:39:45] And a lot of things, it pains me to admit this because when I was
[1:39:49] young, look, you, your parents would say this.
[1:39:52] You roll your eyes, huh? Your eyes want to fall down.
[1:39:54] You know they're going to be like you one day.
[1:39:56] You'll be a parent and you'll see.
[1:39:58] And I just like ho ho. But there's a lot of truth to
[1:40:02] that. There's a certain type of love
[1:40:11] that is unimaginable, unfathomable, indescribable.
[1:40:17] Until you experience it and that is the love of a parent when you
[1:40:21] have a child. You know I was joking with a
[1:40:25] friend that I need to go back to all my ex girlfriends going back
[1:40:31] to Stephanie. I'm at a few in class 4 and tell
[1:40:34] them that their love. I told them I love them.
[1:40:36] They have to enjoy it because I've now experienced what real
[1:40:40] love is right? But it changes everything and
[1:40:44] nothing else matters. OK.
[1:40:48] When my daughter was born, I resigned from 11 boards, right?
[1:40:54] And when I tell you nothing else matters, there is nothing else
[1:41:01] matters, right? There's no ambition.
[1:41:04] There's no anything that you put up that will be a threat to her
[1:41:13] well-being, her happiness, her development, her growth.
[1:41:19] I drop it, right, because I believe that it is my, it is my
[1:41:25] responsibility as a parent. My number one responsibility is
[1:41:31] to raise her, to raise her in faith and to give her the tools
[1:41:35] to be a productive member of society, to be a kind person, to
[1:41:41] be a good person and to be a person that will bring pride to
[1:41:47] me and bring glory to God to God.
[1:41:51] Is it fair to say that these three things are because I want?
[1:41:53] I mean, I was thinking, with all these numerous pursuits, you
[1:41:57] know, how do you keep yourself grounded as a piercing?
[1:42:00] Is it fair to say that these three things, your faith in God,
[1:42:05] love for your daughter, and maybe like love of your parents,
[1:42:08] keep you grounded? Absolutely.
[1:42:10] Look, faith is. In fact, as soon as this is
[1:42:13] done, I go to Mass everyday, right?
[1:42:16] So from here I'm heading to Mass.
[1:42:20] That keeps me very grounded, right?
[1:42:23] I'm a minister of the Wed, So that's my ministry.
[1:42:28] That also keeps me grounded. And family keeps me grounded,
[1:42:36] right? And you know, people who know my
[1:42:39] mother will know that it's difficult to have a big head
[1:42:44] when you have a mother like mine.
[1:42:46] I remember one time I had been featured in Forbes.
[1:42:54] I was very excited. I called my mother very excited.
[1:42:57] Mommy, mommy, mommy, I'm in Forbes.
[1:43:01] This woman said, hey, the vitamins I told you to buy for
[1:43:03] your grandma, have you bought it Right?
[1:43:08] I'm just there like did completely dismissed the Forbes
[1:43:13] and was, did you buy your grandmother's vitamins?
[1:43:17] But you see, what my mother was modeling for me was to not let
[1:43:23] things get to your head and to not be confused by the smokes
[1:43:32] and mirrors of these things. It's all vanity.
[1:43:35] It's all vanity. And I repeat again, it's all
[1:43:40] vanity. All these things.
[1:43:42] Vanity at the end of the day, when you die, when someone is on
[1:43:47] their dying bed. I've never met anybody on their
[1:43:50] dying bed. And I've met a few who have ever
[1:43:52] said, ah, I wish I had gotten more magazine features or I wish
[1:44:01] I had gotten more money, or nobody says that.
[1:44:05] What did they say? Talk to anybody on their dying
[1:44:07] bed. It boils down to they wish they
[1:44:10] had spent more time with family or they wish they had, you know,
[1:44:13] their regrets. A lot of it is.
[1:44:18] Yeah. Right.
[1:44:20] So, and in fact, the the longest longitudinal study ever done was
[1:44:27] done at Harvard University on happiness.
[1:44:29] They followed young boys from World War 2 all the way till
[1:44:34] now. A lot of them are dead, but they
[1:44:37] followed it and they found that the single most important
[1:44:40] variable responsible for your happiness was relationships.
[1:44:44] Relationships because beyond a certain point, that money is
[1:44:49] what is meaningless. How many cars can you drive at
[1:44:52] the same time? How much food can you eat?
[1:44:55] And so sometimes we get caught up in the meaningless things in
[1:45:00] life by one day life will hit you, and when it hits you, you
[1:45:05] realize that it's all vanity. You and I are exactly a decade
[1:45:12] apart, age voice and I. I told you in the beginning, you
[1:45:16] represent a certain idea. But our beards look the same
[1:45:20] age. Yeah.
[1:45:22] And you sort of represent what it means for me to be a person
[1:45:27] of capacity and be spent on the African course we after.
[1:45:31] From this conversation, I understand that we aligned on a
[1:45:34] lot of things decades apart. Yeah, a decade into the future.
[1:45:38] If there's something you could tell me now, usually myself as a
[1:45:40] what's it called point of contact for young entrepreneurs
[1:45:46] who are trying to build something valuable for this
[1:45:48] African continent and just as human beings A decade ahead,
[1:45:52] what would you tell me? I will mostly tell you things I
[1:45:57] wish I had known a decade earlier, right?
[1:46:00] So that you know, they, there's a proverb, I think it's a
[1:46:03] Chinese proverb or so that says that the fool does not learn
[1:46:11] from his mistakes. The smart man learns from his
[1:46:17] mistakes, but the wise man learns from the mistakes of
[1:46:20] others, right? And so invariably you make your
[1:46:25] own mistakes. That is life.
[1:46:28] But if I can share some of my mistakes in the hopes that you
[1:46:31] avoid those, I think that's probably the best I can do.
[1:46:35] And I'll share a few of them. Number one is 1 big mistake I
[1:46:40] made, which I've changed now is, you know, when I was younger for
[1:46:44] a long time, 20 years or so, I used to sleep an average of 4
[1:46:46] hours a day, right? There used to be a point of
[1:46:48] pride for me when they are sleeping, I'm working.
[1:46:51] I used to tell young people, hey, work, don't sleep whack.
[1:46:56] Now you know, there is a Proverbs also in the Bible where
[1:47:00] they talk about where you shouldn't be sleeping.
[1:47:03] Tiffany, you know, there are a lot of verses like that.
[1:47:04] I'll be like whack. I regret it.
[1:47:08] And I wish I could go back to all those young people I misled.
[1:47:13] I read and there's a Ted talk and a book, Why Sleep Matters by
[1:47:16] Matt Walker. When you don't sleep, you're
[1:47:18] killing yourself. High correlation to Alzheimer's,
[1:47:22] cardiac issues, respiratory illnesses.
[1:47:26] And now I really make sure I sleep 7 to 8 hours because when
[1:47:29] I wake up, I'm refreshed, I'm productive, I can do a lot more
[1:47:33] sleep. I know what I'm telling you.
[1:47:36] Sleep, sleep. Take care of yourself, take a
[1:47:42] break, exercise, eat well, don't be drinking too much.
[1:47:49] No, I, I know what I'm telling you.
[1:47:50] It's these things will matter so much to your success in ways you
[1:47:54] will not appreciate. OK, the second thing I'll tell
[1:48:00] you is it goes back to that longitudinality.
[1:48:04] Relationships matter. Nurture your relationships.
[1:48:09] OK? Too often I find that nowadays
[1:48:13] there's a transactional approach to relationships, to
[1:48:16] friendships, to romantic relationships, to everything.
[1:48:21] It's very transactional and that's not going to set you up
[1:48:26] for long term success, right? Build authentic relationships,
[1:48:32] get to know people and don't always.
[1:48:36] One thing my mother taught me, which has really helped me in
[1:48:38] life with respect to relationships, is everybody
[1:48:41] wants to come and say you want to hit up someone, what do you
[1:48:45] want from that person? But nobody wants to think about
[1:48:50] what can you give? There was a young man, I will
[1:48:53] never forget him till the day I die, who was based in London,
[1:48:57] who had again reached out on Twitter.
[1:49:01] So we had a call. When we had a call, you know, we
[1:49:05] spoke all of that. And he, I was thrown aback by
[1:49:10] the question he asked me at the end because I am used to, you
[1:49:14] know, at the end, how can I help you?
[1:49:16] Tell me these are the 3-4 things and I'll see how I can help.
[1:49:18] That's what I'm used to. His thing was he said, I imagine
[1:49:24] you get contacted by that all the time.
[1:49:26] But my question for you is different.
[1:49:28] Is there any way I can help you? Is there anything you're doing
[1:49:31] that I just whatever it is, what's bothered?
[1:49:34] Like, even if it's a small way in which I can help you, I would
[1:49:37] love to. And I told you, I'll never
[1:49:40] forget that guy because that was the first time in my life
[1:49:45] anybody I'd ask that question. So don't always be looking at
[1:49:51] life in terms of what you can get, but look at it primarily
[1:49:58] from how you can give. And that's how my mom raised me.
[1:50:00] Most of my mentors, I didn't first reach out to them to
[1:50:05] collect. I reached out to learn and to
[1:50:07] give because it is in given that we receive.
[1:50:15] Thank you very much, Sangu. Well, I thank you on a personal
[1:50:20] level for representing an ideal and being who you are and making
[1:50:26] me aware that it is possible. And thank you for what you do
[1:50:30] for the African continent, for our community.
[1:50:33] Thank you for coming and sharing your thoughts and walking,
[1:50:37] walking us through your life, essentially.
[1:50:41] It's been a very heavy conversation.
[1:50:45] Hopefully you can do it again. And all the best in all you're
[1:50:49] doing, all the best in doing things that will bring glory to
[1:50:53] God prior to your parents and prior to your daughter.
[1:50:57] And God bless you. Thank you.
[1:51:00] Amen. And as I said, it's a privilege.
[1:51:03] And I pray that, you know, some people might get a few insights,
[1:51:09] learn one or two things and hopefully maybe get inspired.
[1:51:13] But I am I'm inspired by the younger generation and I am
[1:51:18] hopeful that the younger generation will be the catalyst
[1:51:24] to let us create and be the Africa that we deserve, right?
[1:51:33] Thank you so family in the cry the world beyond.
[1:51:38] This is a conversation with Sangu daily and I hope you had a
[1:51:41] good you had a good time as much as I did, Dua.

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