# Ernest Danjuma: The Visual Storyteller Changing Africa’s Narrative

An episode of [The Peswa Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1781537541), 30 Nov 2025, 1 h 25 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/110e1ce70/podcast/play/117753117/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-2-31%2F421135861-44100-1-b040d11393b0465f.mp3

Send a text Ernest Danjuma Enebi (aka @TheDanjuma) — born in Kaduna, trained as an engineer in Boston, started in construction in the U.S., and now leads Denda: a creative agency that tells African stories through photography, film and design. In this episode he tells us how the move from Kaduna → Boston → New York shaped his career, why he left construction to build his own companies, and the origins of his photo project and book Waka Waka — a 15-year visual archive of contemporary African life. FOLLOW ERNEST: Instagram • @thedanjuma — https://instagram.com/thedanjuma Denda Works — https://denda.works Simplify cross-border payments with WeWire — the smarter way for businesses to send and receive payments in local and international currencies across 80+ countries. Empower your business with fast, secure, and seamless global transactions. 🔗 Start today at WeWire.com Click the link below to support the show—every bit of support goes straight into helping us create even better content, reach more people, and share more incredible conversations. Support the show (click here) -- https://www.buzzsprout.com/2423582/support 📩 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! 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] Waka waka, What inspired this project?
[0:03] We need champions out in the world telling our own story.
[0:07] The president who wants to denigrate does not need a
[0:09] professional camera to tell a bad story.
[0:11] Jackpot, which is like a thing in Nigeria now, which is this
[0:15] brain drain situation where people are frustrated with their
[0:18] environment and think, you know, I have to leave to be able to
[0:21] make it successfully. That was not the the case back
[0:24] then because what what happened back then was we were getting
[0:29] dual messages that were compounding.
[0:32] One message is where you are is shit.
[0:37] Concurrently, we have the message.
[0:40] Well, there's a place that is not quite like where you are,
[0:44] where it's a land of milk and honey, You know, where all your
[0:48] problems could disappear if you could just make it.
[0:50] You have to do whatever you can to leave this shit that you're
[0:53] in. And I always think that about
[0:55] like Africa. And somebody said that like they
[0:58] see, they see the brilliance enough in us, but they tell us
[1:01] we ain't shit, right? So you got to be looking at what
[1:04] they're doing, not what they're saying to you.
[1:06] But we're going to need a lot more people telling a holistic
[1:10] story of of Africa. And it's not some story of or
[1:14] how amazing Africa is or changing the narrative.
[1:17] Everything, everything is in here.
[1:19] If I to ask you to give me a brief on what you think Africa
[1:22] is, what would you tell me? Hello, friends.
[1:28] So be excited to tune in again. So the conversation you're about
[1:32] to listen to, you know, before I go to the conversation you're
[1:34] about to listen to. It's been exactly a year since
[1:37] we started airing the personal podcast.
[1:39] As a team, we've made a commitment to get better with
[1:44] each episode and we take feedback seriously and we try to
[1:48] bring you the excellent content and to.
[1:50] One way to appreciate that for us as a community is that we've
[1:54] decided that our targets by the end of the year is to reach
[1:59] 10,000 subscribers. That seemed very far fit, even
[2:01] though we're about a month away from the end of the year.
[2:04] But we believe the community we have.
[2:07] So let's rally together, lend us a subscription.
[2:08] We haven't with a guarantee that this will only get better.
[2:12] So the conversation you're about to listen to is with our first
[2:16] international guest, so to speak, Ernest Nibi Danjuma.
[2:19] He is the managing partner and founder for the Dendal Group.
[2:25] And what they essentially do is they lead efforts to
[2:28] storytelling and creative efforts for brands and
[2:31] businesses and individuals, which is really focused on the
[2:34] African continent. And one of their flagship
[2:38] products now that they have on the market is Waka Waka, a book
[2:40] that essentially tells the African story across 16 African
[2:46] countries. And it was a splendid
[2:48] conversation, for lack of a better expression.
[2:50] And as much I mean, it's just build something.
[2:55] Mr. Ennis Danjuma. That's right.
[2:57] Thanks for coming. I appreciate it.
[2:59] Yeah, I think the little conversation we've had, I made a
[3:03] resolution. We already had like plans to
[3:05] travel a lot, but I listen to action.
[3:08] This morning has actually gingered me to take travelling a
[3:12] lot more seriously. Yes, be intentional about
[3:14] travelling because remarkable work.
[3:18] I shared it, yeah. So as I was seeing, I was
[3:21] telling you before, typically before I I get to speak with a
[3:25] guest, I mean, given the doctor to be gather on the guest,
[3:30] there's a setting definite portrait that forms for me right
[3:34] regards to the guest. But with you, it's a very
[3:36] different conversation. It's like, where am I pleasing
[3:40] this man? Right.
[3:42] You know, right? Like an enigmatic voice kind of
[3:46] thing. Fairpoint, is there a question
[3:51] there? So like for me, I'd like to see
[3:54] if you can afford me a brief of who you are.
[3:57] Got it. What would you say?
[4:02] Allow me to reintroduce myself. Thank you so much for having me.
[4:09] This is an absolute pleasure. It's good to be back in Accra
[4:14] and to be on here with you. My name is Ernest and Jumainebi.
[4:18] I am Nigerian by birth, by, you know, upbringing.
[4:26] I currently live between New York and I guess the rest of the
[4:31] world in many ways. What is a description of me that
[4:36] that is what you say about being an enigma, not being able to
[4:41] have people place me in one, one place or the other is something
[4:46] that has kind of followed me around.
[4:49] And maybe I've, I've tried to embrace it in many, you know, in
[4:54] some ways, the long and short, if I could give a short answer
[4:59] is I'm a retired engineer and I'm currently a storyteller.
[5:08] And my most recent work is this piece of art called Waka Waka,
[5:17] Observations on Contemporary African Life, Culture and
[5:21] Landscapes, which documents my travels across the African
[5:26] continent and my observations of how Africans across the
[5:34] continent live their lives. And, you know, a lot of, you
[5:41] know, you could put me in any one bucket.
[5:44] I do a lot of things. I run a creative agency.
[5:47] I've done a lot of work in construction.
[5:50] I, you know, I, I've been a big fundraiser for causes that are
[5:57] close to my heart, a lot of which benefit the African
[5:59] continent. I've tried to be a voice for
[6:06] justice, equality, things that are important to me.
[6:10] And so, you know, I let I let people call it, you know, you
[6:16] want to, you want to call me one thing you want to call me, you
[6:19] know, like you can't really put me in one box or the other.
[6:23] You know, I've, I've learned to embrace that.
[6:26] And and maybe Waka Waka in many ways is, is one way of bringing
[6:32] all of my worlds together. So you can call me any number of
[6:35] things, but you can call me author.
[6:37] Yeah, I guess that's it. That's easy.
[6:39] That's easy way to put it. There's this.
[6:42] Statement by naval Ravi Kant I saw recently and he was talking
[6:46] about how the people who have truly embraced life are the
[6:49] people who don't want to be boxed they're truly smart ones
[6:53] are the ones who don't want to be boxed they.
[6:55] Because they are aware that it's one organic thing in this life,
[6:59] you know, and the force of creativity knows no boundaries.
[7:04] And the same force we see in the leaves and in the cheese and in
[7:08] the rocks. Because there's nobody.
[7:10] So nobody, they don't want to be bottled, right?
[7:11] That's right. When I saw you the first time, I
[7:14] I called you John the Baptist. You did say that that didn't
[7:18] catch me of God. I was like, you know?
[7:20] And that's like a summary of the things I've gathered on you
[7:23] because like I said, you have voice.
[7:25] That's right. But you're an enigma and
[7:27] enigmatic voice, you know, kind of in the world.
[7:30] And that's eating wild locusts and honey.
[7:33] Nobody knows what you do. Yeah.
[7:35] So on three fronts, you're an engineer.
[7:38] That's right. You're a business consultant and
[7:40] you are, what's it called again, a storyteller.
[7:44] That's right. Right.
[7:45] And you're going to take those 3 rounds and start from, I think,
[7:49] interesting enough, in that same order.
[7:51] It kind of gives the trajectory of your life.
[7:53] Now you've built Danda. That's right.
[7:55] And then? This great work with Waka Waka,
[7:57] right? That's right.
[7:58] So grew up in Nigeria. Let's go back.
[7:59] Let's go back to Kaduna, Nigeria, where you're born.
[8:01] User facts, Yeah, yes. And so if you're looking to move
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[8:33] Hello, friends. So I'm so excited that you tune
[8:35] in again. It's been exactly a year since
[8:39] we started airing the personal podcast.
[8:41] As a team, we've made a commitment to get better with
[8:47] each episode and we take feedback seriously and we try to
[8:50] bring you the excellent content. And to one way to appreciate
[8:53] that for us as a community is that we've decided that our
[8:57] targets by the end of the year is to reach 10,000 subscribers.
[9:02] That seemed very far fit even though we're about a month away
[9:04] from the end of the year, but we believe the community we have.
[9:09] So let's rally together, lend us a subscription.
[9:11] We haven't with a guarantee that this will only get better.
[9:14] So as I'm not sure, I mean it's just build something.
[9:18] So born, born, raised in Kaduna, Nigeria.
[9:20] It's a, an amazing city, a cosmopolitan city in the north
[9:27] of Nigeria. It has produced a lot of amazing
[9:33] folks. And I, I often say, you know, a
[9:37] lot of people say they, they are great in spite of Nigeria, in
[9:46] spite of Kaduna. I, I think, you know, we are
[9:49] great because of, of Kaduna of being able to grow up in a place
[9:56] where that was a melting pot of Nigeria.
[9:58] You know, a lot of places in the, on, you know, in, in
[10:01] Nigeria and in the world basically are very segmented.
[10:04] You, you grow up around the same kinds of people that you know,
[10:09] as you religion wise, culture wise, ethnicity wise.
[10:13] Kaduna kind of sat on this fault line where the Muslim north of
[10:18] across Africa really met the Christian South and it was, I
[10:24] want to say the capital of the of northern Nigeria in the early
[10:27] days. And so it just had a lot of
[10:31] culture growing up. I met a lot of amazing people.
[10:34] It, it everything I am in a very interesting way is because of my
[10:42] life in Kaduna, you know, and I'm very proud to carry it
[10:46] around with me. So growing up there, ended up
[10:52] going to all the way to university in, in Zarya, which
[10:57] is also in Kaduna, studying mechanical engineering because
[11:01] you know, as a, as a African, you got to do, you got to be a
[11:06] engineer, doctor, lawyer, you know, maybe a banker in my own
[11:11] world, because my mom was a banker, you know, and your dad,
[11:17] my dad was AI guess he was a scientist.
[11:20] He but entrepreneur as well. And you know, he did, he was
[11:25] also a teacher. He's also a archive, if we, if
[11:29] we want to be honest, but he was just a, he was a guy who, who
[11:33] did, who still does. He's a very, you know, still
[11:37] here, still has a lot of innovative ideas.
[11:40] He's always trying to do something, do something new, do
[11:43] something, you know, So growing up in that kind of household was
[11:49] just, you know, you have to be, you have to be something.
[11:53] I ended up being becoming taking on engineering, even though I
[11:57] think I, you know, my creative life was very, very, very rich
[12:03] in many, to say, to say the least.
[12:05] I wanted to do acting. I wanted to be a comedian.
[12:08] I was, you know, I was a clock clown, but I was also kind of, I
[12:11] took books very serious. Not maybe not because I was
[12:16] particularly interested in in studying and formal studying,
[12:20] but because I knew you got to play without interruption.
[12:27] If you did all your work and you did it well the first time
[12:31] around. And if you came, you know, if
[12:33] you, if you placed highly in class, you got vacation and you
[12:37] got to play during vacation where whereas everybody else had
[12:39] to do lesson, they had to do extracurricular work, They had
[12:42] to hear about how they didn't come first and how all the
[12:45] people that came, you know, above them did they have 10
[12:48] heads, all these different things, right.
[12:50] So that was my driving force to excel academically.
[12:56] And you know, and I'm going to skip back and forth a little bit
[13:03] because again, that's the way I tell stories, but I find
[13:06] engineering. What drew me to that was the
[13:09] fact that I always got to create, right.
[13:13] I, I got into engineering because of, because I was really
[13:17] good at technical drawing and technical drawing really was
[13:21] being able to create, you know, geometric shapes and put things
[13:25] together and, and draw machines, machine parts in many ways.
[13:30] And so that's what drew me to engineering.
[13:32] So it was still a form of creativity.
[13:35] It was still a form of getting to use my hands, getting to use
[13:38] my mind, getting to use all the same sort of assets that would
[13:43] come to bear in, you know, in writing this book or in, in the
[13:47] way that I approach, you know, art or, you know, creativity or
[13:52] storytelling. And so, so I started off as a
[13:56] mechanical engineer, ended up leaving Zarya halfway through
[14:00] it, you know, one, because my mind was always focused on, on,
[14:07] on exploring the wider world, right?
[14:09] I just didn't, you know, I felt like I wanted to see more of the
[14:13] world. Where did that come from?
[14:14] The books. You know, I, you know, again,
[14:18] because I grew up with parents and I detailed that in the in
[14:21] the first chapters of the book. My parents always prioritized
[14:26] travelling and seeing the world. Even when they had like young
[14:29] kids, I remember they would always just, you know, they
[14:32] would go abroad, go to the US and they didn't have means.
[14:36] But it didn't take a lot back then to kind of just go and
[14:39] explore the world. And I remember that that was a
[14:41] very, very big part of their own lives.
[14:44] And so that's where I got that from.
[14:47] You know what's? It we're going with them.
[14:50] Sometimes, yeah. So they would always take one
[14:52] child, maybe the youngest child at the time with them or maybe
[14:57] the easiest child to travel with.
[14:58] I don't know. I don't know what the
[14:59] methodology was, but but that was important to them.
[15:04] And I think my dad always travelled as well.
[15:08] He he was always kind of just this explorer.
[15:11] My mom was also very, very curious and kind of, you know,
[15:14] And so that that I think is if I had to place it, I would say
[15:17] that's where where that that came, that came from.
[15:20] Yeah. Now I'm wondering why you like
[15:24] to play because like you mentioned, Kadena was like a
[15:27] melting point. Melting port.
[15:30] I've heard stories of Kaduna, you know, a lot of scary stuff,
[15:34] insecurity situations, terrible. And I'm wondering how, you know,
[15:39] clearly your parents are middle class.
[15:41] They had some means, you know, relatively and so was that.
[15:46] I'm sure that was like a fair escape from like all the
[15:48] trouble, all the noise going on, right?
[15:51] Was that enough? No.
[15:52] I, I, I it. So it's certainly got worse.
[16:01] Interestingly, as democracy came, so did more freedom, so
[16:08] did more freedom of expression, so that, you know, it became
[16:11] harder to sort of quail a lot of the riots.
[16:13] But growing up, riots were always a, A, you know, a force
[16:18] to reckon with in Kaduna. And it, it was a scary at times,
[16:23] Yeah. Growing up, you know, you never
[16:26] really knew it. It'd flare up from nowhere.
[16:29] Sometimes it would be, you know, something would be said, you
[16:34] know, as far away as, you know, in Norway.
[16:37] And it would manifest itself in, in the small town in Kaduna, you
[16:44] know. And so it was always, and maybe
[16:47] that's not I talk about that. Maybe that's so interesting
[16:49] because it, it just, you couldn't escape the world and
[16:52] the things that were happening in the world just because you
[16:54] were in Kaduna. In many ways, it came there to
[16:57] come, come meet you, whether you liked it or not.
[16:59] And nobody was spared from it. It wasn't like something that
[17:03] was happening in certain parts and other parts were like, oh,
[17:06] no, there's nothing happened. No, it was you could get caught
[17:10] up in traffic and that would be that would be it.
[17:13] So it was very it happened, but it wasn't.
[17:17] It didn't, it never made any. At least I didn't think of it
[17:22] as, you know, I got to leave this place because we didn't
[17:26] think of it as insecurity in many ways.
[17:28] I just felt like and conflicts are always with us, right?
[17:33] Violent conflicts between, you know, neighboring, you know,
[17:39] factions has always been with us.
[17:41] It exists everywhere in the world.
[17:44] I think maybe Abuja becoming the capital and being so close to
[17:47] Kaduna, a lot of people found out as an escape to kind of just
[17:52] be like, why? Why am I fighting in this city
[17:54] when I could just go into this new place where there was a lot
[17:58] of resources coming into it. So, so maybe the worst thing
[18:01] that happened to Kaduna was actually Abuja, the Abuja
[18:04] becoming the, the Federal Capital Territory and that was
[18:07] like a 2 hour drive away. You know, that, that drew a lot
[18:10] of resources away from Katrina, including my parents.
[18:13] So we who moved to, yeah, who moved to Abuja kind of around
[18:19] close to or around the same time that I, I ended up leaving for
[18:22] the, for the United States. But the conflicts, as you said,
[18:26] which has endured in many ways, which has deepened in in many
[18:32] ways, and which has, again, is, is at the center of, you know,
[18:36] the president of the United States sort of tweets about, you
[18:41] know, genocide against Christians.
[18:44] And you know, how, you know, the US has to come intervene, which
[18:48] is ironic. But But yeah, so the when you
[18:53] live, when you grow up in Kaduna, it is not it it is not
[18:59] it's it's not a wild there. There are certain people.
[19:01] There are certainly people who feel like his words are welcome
[19:06] that are, you know, at least finally, it's bringing at least
[19:09] some attention to a matter that all too often we've tried as a
[19:13] country to ignore for since as far as I was growing up, we've
[19:17] always tried to kind of sweep it on the rug and or isolated to to
[19:21] a place up north. Makes me feel like, I mean, when
[19:27] when we were talking earlier, you mentioned that even with how
[19:29] you dress, it's like try to blend a variety of ideas from
[19:35] places you've visited, right? So it's like living in a place
[19:38] like that where there's constant battle because there is variety,
[19:44] correct? It gets to live through that.
[19:45] I feel like you build a certain tolerance for correct vying
[19:49] opinions and vying ideas. And so it's actually formed the
[19:52] man you are now. You know, now that you, you, you
[19:57] call it that way. I I'm, I'm always fascinated.
[20:01] To see other people who grew up around me as well, to see how
[20:05] they've, how their lives have, you know, either similar to mine
[20:09] or different from mine. And then try to draw almost a,
[20:14] almost a pattern of why I'm a certain way.
[20:17] And I'm, I'm certainly a student in history.
[20:19] So I, I go back to my old report cards to try to find, you know,
[20:22] what was I interested in, as you know, in nursery school as a
[20:25] kindergarten, you know, and I think I was always interested in
[20:29] geography. I was always interested in
[20:31] social studies. I was always interested in
[20:32] music. So not that different from the
[20:35] things that, you know, that fascinate me now.
[20:39] But you're right, it, it, Kaduna was a, was a melting pot.
[20:43] And that in many ways opened me up to being more curious about
[20:49] the world and the way I manifest, you know, in my
[20:53] dressing and my taste in music and my tasting and life and
[20:57] travel and all of these different things.
[20:59] I think is a, is a is certainly a manifestation of of so.
[21:04] You go to the United States, you live Nigeria to the US.
[21:08] Which year was this? This is O3. 2003 So you go to
[21:12] the US, you know, you study mechanical engineering, you
[21:15] still went to school studying, correct to study engineering.
[21:19] Yeah, so I go. I start all over again.
[21:21] Okay, yes. What's informed that decision?
[21:27] You know at the time jackpot, which is like a thing in Nigeria
[21:32] now, which is this brain drain situation where people are
[21:36] frustrated with their environment and think, you know,
[21:39] I have to leave to be able to make it successfully.
[21:42] That was not the the case back then.
[21:45] You know, in fact, my parents were fighting tooth and nail to
[21:48] keep me in school to to at least finish my first degree in
[21:51] Nigeria. My mind was dead set on on going
[21:58] abroad, and not just because I'd gone and explored the United
[22:01] Kingdom for a couple of months right after high school.
[22:04] This is 16 year old me, by the way.
[22:08] I was dead set on going to the United States.
[22:10] And now as a storyteller, I know that a big piece of that was a
[22:17] storytelling that the United States had invested in and
[22:23] almost bludgeoned the rest of the world into into into
[22:28] submission on. And so I learned that lesson.
[22:33] And now I'm using that lesson to speak to that young version of
[22:37] me. Because what what happened back
[22:41] then was you were getting dual messages that were compounding.
[22:47] One message is where you are is shit, right?
[22:54] And we get that message all the time.
[22:56] This place, the traffic, the road, everything, nothing works.
[23:01] It's just, and we spew that over and over and over again
[23:07] concurrently we get the message. Well, there's a place that is
[23:12] not quite like where you are, where it's a land of milk and
[23:16] honey. You know, where all your
[23:18] problems could disappear if you could just make it.
[23:20] You have to do whatever you can to leave this shit that you're
[23:23] in. But once you make it here, all
[23:26] your dreams are going to come true.
[23:28] And so when you have those two messages, you know, as a young
[23:33] person, like, you know, these things are coming at you.
[23:36] You're getting the music, you're getting the movies, you're
[23:39] getting the the clothing, you're getting all the culture.
[23:43] All of these things are are shoved down your throat,
[23:48] sometimes in very, very subtle ways.
[23:52] You it forms this idea that we've now come to accept as
[23:56] just, you know, it's just no, but but is it not real?
[24:00] Is it not? Is there no power outages?
[24:02] Is there no, you know, all these different things?
[24:05] And so those things, I think I was, I was very, very influenced
[24:10] by those things, but I was also very curious about the the wider
[24:14] world. And so I think that informed
[24:17] kind of my my own choice to to do what I needed to do.
[24:21] And this was me like I wield this thing against the objection
[24:29] of both of my parents. You know, I will convince the
[24:34] damn. In fact, I was one of the most
[24:37] important jobs I've done trying to sales jobs.
[24:42] He was convincing them that I wasn't going to go go do drugs
[24:45] in America as they thought I was, which coincidentally is
[24:49] also another thing that, you know, that the parents actually
[24:54] hear or used to hear about America.
[24:57] So but yeah, so that's, that's how I end up going.
[25:00] But I was I was dead set. I think I'm a I'm a finisher.
[25:05] And so the idea that I left something unfinished, I was not
[25:09] going to let mechanical engineering win me, as we say.
[25:14] So I say, you know, I must win. I must win.
[25:16] I must win it even though I want to do something else.
[25:18] I must do. I must finish this thing first.
[25:21] And then I'm going to go do whatever else it is I want to
[25:24] do, if for nothing, for the fact that, you know, it would make
[25:28] my, my parents, my family and everybody else proud.
[25:33] Yeah, that at least I I did something, yeah.
[25:38] And into Northeastern University.
[25:41] Northeastern University. What is that, Boston?
[25:42] That's in Boston, MA. OK.
[25:44] And then what happened from there?
[25:47] What did you study there? Mechanical engineering and
[25:50] business, Yes, yes, yes, yes. So my path back is a little bit
[25:53] longer. So I go to Community College 1st
[25:56] and then I spent two years there and transferred to Northeastern
[25:59] University, spent three years there and then graduate
[26:01] mechanical engineering and with a minor in business
[26:04] administration. And I know you took the leap
[26:07] into construction. Yes.
[26:08] So my, my first job I could, I was very interested in studying
[26:13] in, in actually becoming an aeronautic engineer in, in
[26:17] fixing jet engines, designing and repairing jet engines.
[26:22] But at the time, because I was an American citizen, a lot of
[26:26] those jobs were defense contract work.
[26:29] And so you have to have some form of security clearance or be
[26:32] a United States citizen or permanent resident or something
[26:35] of the sort. And so, so I ended up going to
[26:38] construction, which was another thing that I was very, very
[26:41] fascinated by and I was very, very passionate about.
[26:44] And so I moved to New York because I got a job in New York
[26:49] at the time. Mind you, this is during the
[26:51] Great Recession, you know, if the O 8 yes, so this is the
[26:56] worst time to be to be getting out of, you know, out of
[26:59] college, But I do I get a job very lucky to get a job in
[27:03] construction in New York. So I start like I get my foot
[27:08] started there, you know, and the rest is history.
[27:12] And OK, so now you like young man from Kaduna immediate to the
[27:16] US and honey, that's right in the in the heart of a recession,
[27:20] you get a job. Correct.
[27:22] An engineer, that's right, sure, you're on a good trajectory,
[27:25] making some good dollars, sending some back home.
[27:26] That's just typically the case. When did the switch happen?
[27:32] OK. So I'm going to correct some
[27:34] parts of that because I wasn't making good money.
[27:37] So that was the first, that was the first of because again,
[27:41] label was so much cheaper because of the aforementioned
[27:46] recession. So, but it but it was good.
[27:50] It was a good first job, first formal job.
[27:53] So I do that for a couple of years.
[27:56] And but there's this thing that's gnawing at me, which is
[28:00] the fact that I have these other skills I'm able to, to bring
[28:06] people together. I'm able to have this strategic
[28:12] mind. So I, I approach my bosses and I
[28:15] say, Hey, listen, I'm already doing all these things in my own
[28:18] community, raising, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars
[28:22] at the time for nonprofit, for a nonprofit Face Africa, that was
[28:27] working with convening, you know, Africans in the diaspora,
[28:32] you know, in a way that wasn't being done.
[28:36] That was only done by, you know, you know, white, you know, old
[28:41] white man who had, you know, a lot of money to, to spend.
[28:44] So we were using social media to, to convene people to, to get
[28:49] to, to build community in a way that was very, very different.
[28:52] So I said, listen, I would love to use that to, to help build
[28:57] this company even further. So I want, I want a promotion.
[29:00] I want, you know, I want a lot more skin in the game.
[29:04] Like I'm not making a lot of money.
[29:05] And, you know, they said there was not a lot of room for growth
[29:08] within the company because, you know, they had the the guys who
[29:12] were, you know, everybody was positioned in a certain way.
[29:16] And you know that I just didn't have the personality.
[29:18] I didn't have the the fighter. I didn't have the dog in me, you
[29:23] know, so I said, all right, all right, we'll see.
[29:28] So I left, went started my own thing, business strategy
[29:33] consulting. I said, you know what, I'm going
[29:36] to start helping small businesses, which I was already
[29:40] doing anyway. A lot of them were coming to me.
[29:43] Small businesses, start-ups, social entrepreneurs were coming
[29:48] to me because I was able to build community.
[29:50] Can you help us fundraise? Can you help us think through,
[29:53] you know, different ways to either set up our business or to
[29:56] grow our business? My engineering mind was again an
[30:02] asset in this world to think differently about the problems
[30:07] that existed. So I struck.
[30:10] So I left and started my own company.
[30:13] It was Denda that was that was that was the original.
[30:15] The original format of of Denda was that it was a business
[30:21] consultancy helping with business strategy for start-ups,
[30:28] small businesses and and social enterprises.
[30:33] So you know, nonprofit organizations.
[30:36] Yeah. So we start that obviously as a
[30:41] they call it a a start up helping start-ups.
[30:46] So obviously I feel like that as one does, but you know, I
[30:52] learned valuable lessons. I and more interestingly, to be
[30:58] honest, because I, I never felt like I was never afraid to fail
[31:03] on my own because again, I didn't leave because I was too
[31:08] big for construction. I left because there was no room
[31:10] for me to grow in there. So, so three years of building
[31:15] my own company, my old boss, my old colleague who was my
[31:21] immediate boss at the, at the construction company, left to go
[31:24] start up his own construction company.
[31:28] He bought into a a construction company that was selling and
[31:32] then he called me and said, hey, I need you.
[31:37] OK, I said. I thought you.
[31:38] Didn't have the fighting spirit. I said I'm no, this is not him
[31:41] saying this now, this is so this.
[31:43] Our collective boss was the one saying I didn't have the
[31:46] fighting spirit. But to be fair, he said they
[31:48] said that about him as well, right?
[31:49] He was Vijay, who was my very good friend as well.
[31:56] He was a Indian immigrant as well.
[31:58] But, you know, so we had the same kind of, we knew what it
[32:03] took to, to, you know, to build a company and we knew we had to
[32:07] present in a certain way in the world we existed so as not to be
[32:11] taken as aggressive and all these different things, right.
[32:14] And that's what was being seen as not having the dog.
[32:18] And so when he got the chance to start his own company, he called
[32:23] me and he said, listen, I want you.
[32:25] I want nobody else. You tell me what it's going to
[32:28] take for you to come back into construction.
[32:30] I said, brother, I'm not in construction anymore.
[32:34] I'm retired and I, but at this point I'm in California, so I
[32:38] left New York. I'm I'm far away from New York.
[32:41] Yeah, yeah. Why are you in California?
[32:44] Because of like access to capital.
[32:46] No, it was just, you know, a new opportunity.
[32:49] Family had moved out there. And so I was like, no, no, no,
[32:52] no, no. From, from the East Coast, from,
[32:55] from New York. And so I was like, you know
[32:57] what, I'll move out here. It was AII made some moves as
[33:01] well, but there was a new opportunity in California as
[33:04] well, for they were building sort of this African renaissance
[33:08] in California. It was the early stages that,
[33:10] you know, California has Hollywood as well.
[33:11] So I had been very, very interested in Hollywood.
[33:14] If you remember from, from Joe. So he calls me back.
[33:20] You know, man, if you've ever lived in New York, you know, you
[33:23] can't leave New York. I think.
[33:25] God damn, man. I'm trying to leave the game.
[33:29] They keep pulling me back. Anyway, I moved back to New
[33:34] York, you know, because my things are my, my things are in
[33:38] storage in New York. So I always know I want to move
[33:40] back to New York. But being able to move back to
[33:42] New York on my own terms, you know, dictating my own salary,
[33:46] dictating the terms in which, you know, and being this hot
[33:50] cake, like I'm talking salary now tripled from what, you know,
[33:56] the things they were saying. I wasn't able, you know, I
[33:59] didn't have the the dog to do. I was now at the center of being
[34:03] able to to do those things. I think that that was validation
[34:07] in an industry that is very, very, very, very, very, very
[34:13] tough. I mean, you know, and they say
[34:17] if you can make it in New York, you can make it.
[34:19] You can make it anywhere. I think they're talking about
[34:22] that the, the construction industry in New York and you
[34:25] know, yes. So if you know anything about
[34:28] commercial construction in New York, you know, it's not a game.
[34:32] And so being able to, to go back there and build and, and show
[34:38] that, you know, I always had this, this is, this is light
[34:41] work. And so we built that company
[34:43] again from scratch. That was air ideal.
[34:48] OK, yes. And we built the company from
[34:51] what was it a 412? What's it for like a $4 million
[34:56] company or I don't know if it was 12 or $4 million.
[34:59] Anyway, it grew at 144% in the 3-4 years that I was there
[35:04] through COVID, through all of these different things.
[35:08] So again, being able to come back as an executive in, you
[35:14] know, as AC suite executive, you know, that, you know, one of a
[35:20] very few black people, very few Africans who was able to kind of
[35:26] be in that, you know, in that world, in that space at that
[35:29] level was very, very, it was very amazing.
[35:33] And to, and to build that with, again, another, you know,
[35:36] immigrant and an Indian immigrant as well.
[35:40] I think it was very, very, very, it's, it's one of the, the great
[35:43] joys of my life. But did that for a little while.
[35:47] My, my plan. I mean, he told me, hey, just
[35:49] come do it for two years and you could do, I'll, I'll, you know,
[35:52] I'll make sure it's worth your while.
[35:55] Just come help me set this thing up and then you can go do
[35:59] because I know you want to do Africa, which is what he always
[36:02] has to say. So after I think he came back
[36:05] 2018 left maybe 2022. Yeah.
[36:11] And that that was that was my life in.
[36:13] And so I was like, you know, at this point, all right, I think
[36:16] I've, I've done construction. So at the time you were at this
[36:20] time when you moved back to build this construction business
[36:24] with your partner, correct then I was still running?
[36:28] In the background, yes, it was, it was, it was latent, but I
[36:31] had, I had, you know, projects here and there.
[36:35] My business partner at the time, Amy Sinclair, she stayed in the
[36:39] game kind of pulling me into, you know, on a project basis.
[36:44] We would do projects here and there, but it it stayed in the
[36:48] background. And then when I came back I sort
[36:53] of rejected retooled it and re rebranded it as as Bender works
[37:01] I'm. Going to go back a little.
[37:04] You come back to when you came back.
[37:05] Correct. But going back a little, I'm
[37:07] just wondering, typically when people make leaps right there,
[37:12] there is a cushion that they they have their minds on.
[37:17] Right. Because yeah, this young man,
[37:20] there's a recession, economically speaking, the US is
[37:23] like it's plummeting, you know, economically.
[37:27] And you have the opportunity to work.
[37:28] You get like a decent salary, but because something is nudging
[37:33] at you, you decide to leave, right?
[37:36] What was the Cushing? Was that something in the
[37:38] background? Was it like you felt that well,
[37:40] if anything goes best, I can always go back on what?
[37:44] What was the cushion at the time, if you can remember fair
[37:47] that gave you like the bandwidth?
[37:49] Fair. Afford that move.
[37:51] Fair, fair. There wasn't anything.
[37:54] But you know, it was, it was two things.
[37:57] If I can, and that's a brilliant question, by the way.
[38:00] I think it on the one hand, it was the fact that I had a lot of
[38:10] people who believed in me as a, you know, as just this person
[38:16] who was capable of building something amazing of doing more.
[38:20] And I, I have to, I, I always said, you know what, I owe it to
[38:28] them to try to do something, something else.
[38:34] And at the time I'm young enough that I, I think, you know, if I
[38:39] don't do this thing when I'm young, they're going to the, I'm
[38:45] going to get. I, I was looking at how my older
[38:49] colleagues were being pushed around because they had now come
[38:53] to rely on that salary, on that paycheck that they were getting
[38:57] from people who are maybe no more brilliant than they were,
[39:01] but were more willing to take risks, you know, about suffering
[39:08] in the near term as opposed to, you know, settling for this
[39:12] false sense of comfort. OK, You know what I mean?
[39:15] And so I, I, that was the thing. I, it's not like I was like,
[39:18] yeah, that was one of the biggest drivers for me.
[39:20] I was like, you know, I don't want to end up 60 and now I got
[39:27] a mortgage, I got kids, I got now now I'm stuck like at this
[39:31] job and some 40 year old is talking to me anyhow that
[39:37] doesn't know anything just because like his dad gave him
[39:39] the company and now he's you know what I mean?
[39:41] So you are seeing a lot of that like the, the parents were
[39:44] bringing their kids in to learn to trade as the people who are
[39:48] going to take over in the future.
[39:51] And I'm thinking to myself like, like, look around you, the
[39:58] industry's going to change. You're going to be you're,
[40:01] you're young and fast and agile now.
[40:03] So they'd want you, you know, and whatever for whatever the
[40:06] guy said. Like the that, that same guy
[40:08] ended up coming and fighting for me to leave my boss who had
[40:13] brought me back from California. I'll give you anything to leave
[40:16] that company and come work for me.
[40:20] This is me who didn't have the dog or me who had left the
[40:23] industry like completely like I just want to go do creative
[40:25] shit. So they're seeing that.
[40:30] I got to think of myself. And I always think that about
[40:33] like Africa. And somebody said that like they
[40:36] see they see the brilliance enough in us, but they tell us
[40:40] we ain't shit, right? So you got to be looking at what
[40:43] they're doing, not what they're saying to you.
[40:46] You know what I mean? And so that was one thing that
[40:50] kind of was, was a pull or the cushion, I guess if you will.
[40:56] I think the second was just the fact that I wasn't making that
[41:05] much money to begin with. Like, So what what is this
[41:08] question that you're this thing that you're so tell you?
[41:10] So like if I was making like, you know, McKinsey money or like
[41:14] I can understand why some of these other cats like have to
[41:17] kind of just be like, man, I can't.
[41:20] I got like my life was not affording me some privilege that
[41:25] I was like, oh, this comfort is too much.
[41:28] I can't leave. There was not opportunity for
[41:30] growth. So all of the factors I think
[41:33] allowed me, yeah, to be, you know, be in a position and and I
[41:38] think I had a, a support system as well that didn't push me to
[41:43] take things that were short term benefits, but long term, because
[41:49] that that is an understated factor of why a lot of people
[41:53] settle or a lot of people stay in comfort zones is they have
[41:57] they have a lot of family I got to send money to.
[41:59] They have, I had never had that kind of pressure, even though I
[42:04] could've. So I give them a lot of credit
[42:07] because the I was the one person who made it out of Woo.
[42:11] Woo was abroad. So a lot was riding on my
[42:15] shoulders and and I never got that pull of, you know, it's
[42:21] time. Yeah.
[42:22] You know, like what are we, what are we doing here?
[42:24] Like you can't leave this job. Like I never got that, you know,
[42:28] at least in the in the, in the way that a lot of people get it,
[42:31] you know. So I would say that that was
[42:33] that was the cushion for me. Yeah, I think this was like the
[42:36] motivating factor, like the fear of what the future will hold
[42:40] correct if you had stayed, not because you had some Cushing in
[42:43] the present. Right.
[42:44] Yeah, and it's good to mention that community, to have a
[42:47] community that believes in you, correct is really an
[42:50] understated. Very, very, very.
[42:53] You speak a lot like entrepreneurs and really common
[42:58] variable is that there are people around them who just
[43:00] believe you can get things done like their parents or some
[43:03] friends who say, hey, brilliant, you can do this, you can just do
[43:06] things right. Hopefully we are building such a
[43:09] community with this podcast, right?
[43:11] Just telling people that hey, the people are doing this,
[43:13] they're humans like you. You can also build these things.
[43:14] These are facts, right? So as good you mentioned, when
[43:19] you are doing like your whole community thing in New York and
[43:23] reason money for you mentioned something with Face Africa, I
[43:25] want to touch on that again. I know it's like a water related
[43:29] project. These are facts, yes.
[43:31] So Face Africa is a clean water nonprofit that raises funds and
[43:42] builds wash projects. So water, sanitation and hygiene
[43:48] projects in Liberia start in Liberia.
[43:53] But it really was bigger than that.
[43:55] I think our mission when I joined the founder and my very
[43:58] good friend Saran Kapa Jones, the honorable Saran Kapa Jones,
[44:04] we were both very young kind of just, you know, I think, you
[44:07] know, 20s for being honest, like, and I think our idea was
[44:12] that we wanted to change the way Africans in the diaspora thought
[44:18] about giving or about development on the continent.
[44:22] We always thought it was some rich white guy's job to do or
[44:28] some energetic young white, bright eyed student that wanted
[44:35] to go to Africa and you know, get their, you know, get their
[44:40] credentials, you know, in in aid and all these different things.
[44:44] We wanted to change the idea that Africans needed to get
[44:48] involved and that this was their battle and that failure to get
[44:52] involved was in itself fueling these negative stories and
[44:59] negative stereotypes that they were ending up having to combat,
[45:04] right. We were here or we were overseas
[45:06] trying to teach people geography or Africa is not a country.
[45:09] Africa. I'm like how when you're not
[45:13] there, somebody else is going to your home.
[45:14] They're defining the story for you.
[45:16] There I go. I went to Africa.
[45:18] So you're not going back because you're so traumatized that you
[45:21] had to leave and for good reason a lot of the time.
[45:25] But we wanted to change that idea and, and the idea was
[45:28] simple. Water was this essential, yeah,
[45:35] tool in development, in the growth in, you know, in when
[45:39] womens''s education in rural areas and urban areas, it was
[45:42] this common thing that we could all rally around.
[45:46] And so we said, okay, we'll build community around, you
[45:52] know, creating access to to clean water first in Liberia and
[45:58] then we'll work around the continent, both in physically
[46:02] building projects, but also in advocating for governments for,
[46:08] you know, institutions to get involved in community building.
[46:13] And so we started to do that work and what we wanted to do
[46:16] was get the young Africans, the young brilliant Africans who we
[46:20] knew were going to become the CEOs and the CFOs and the
[46:25] leaders in community were going to make a lot of money 1020
[46:28] years down the line. And they were going to become
[46:30] the people who were the philanthropists.
[46:33] So we wanted to catch them young and teach them how to give, you
[46:38] know, to organizations that were African owned who are not
[46:43] getting Neil, who are getting 2% of the fund of the funding that
[46:47] was coming into into Africa, 2% of it was was going to African
[46:53] owned African LED organizations. So that's some of the things
[46:56] that we wanted to try to sort of re reframe the minds of of
[47:02] Africans in the diaspora. And so we tried to build
[47:04] community around that. We had an amazing gala that we
[47:07] would do every World Water Day, which is March 22nd in New York,
[47:13] bring together 3400, You know, people brought together Nobel
[47:17] Prize winners, you know, champions of industry.
[47:20] We honored people in the diaspora who are doing amazing
[47:23] work, people on the continent. It was just a a way to build
[47:28] community, but also to galvanized that community into
[47:34] action, into targeted specific action on the continent, you
[47:40] know, and I'm very proud of that work.
[47:41] Amazing. Yeah, amazing.
[47:43] Well, let's go back. Of course you came back.
[47:46] Yeah. So you're your partner, Amy
[47:49] Clear, you said. Amy Sinclair.
[47:51] Amy Sinclair. Yes, I'm sorry.
[47:53] So you came back and you have to tweak things with Dender,
[47:55] correct? What did you change?
[47:57] What became the? Vision now you're.
[48:00] In hands, full hands are full in the game, correct?
[48:03] What changed, right? So, so Amy had a, a social
[48:08] media, social media, but also a communications company that she
[48:13] was building. And she's built it into this
[48:17] amazing platform now. And she does work around the
[48:20] continent, around the world really with multinational
[48:24] companies. So she had that when I came
[48:28] back, excuse me when I came back, or at least when I was
[48:32] thinking about coming back after I left my job, I took a couple
[48:34] of months to try to figure out what do I, what, what can I turn
[48:40] this into that that still resonates, but that is, is, is
[48:46] something that's needed and a creative agency was, was the
[48:51] natural sort of next step, right?
[48:54] I I realized very early that storytelling for brands was
[49:06] existed, but it had gone stale, right?
[49:09] Because the inspiration was all coming from the same place, you
[49:14] know, we, you know, our lives in the West, it did this, it was
[49:19] the center Hollywood. And that kind of storytelling
[49:23] was centered for so long that all the stories started to look
[49:26] the same. All the, everything started to
[49:29] feel the same. And I thought we had a unique
[49:32] opportunity because again, of my travels and my exposure to the
[49:35] African continent, that's what very unique type of storytelling
[49:39] that I was doing just on my own, both in my written storytelling
[49:44] and my visual storytelling. And the way I talked about art,
[49:48] music, fashion, all these different things that it was
[49:52] resonating and that the trajectory of branding and
[49:55] communications worldwide was looking for fresh voices, fresh
[49:59] faces. And so, so we built that.
[50:03] So we retooled it around that simple idea that we could tell
[50:11] stories, we could tell anybody, any brand story.
[50:14] But using this, we've come to call it a grill like
[50:22] storytelling that is quintessentially rooted in
[50:26] African culture, African ingenuity.
[50:29] And you know, you know what that is?
[50:30] It's the, you know, sitting under the tree and, you know,
[50:34] let me tell you about this story.
[50:35] It's using parables, it's using all of these different, you
[50:39] know, techniques, but then weaving it and delivering it to
[50:42] the audience in the mind blowing ways.
[50:44] Or at the end you're like, Oh my goodness, what you know, and,
[50:48] and that template is working for, you know, in, in African
[50:53] cinema. It's becoming more exciting.
[50:57] The world is more interested in, in stories outside of just
[51:00] Hollywood, outside of just American life and American
[51:02] culture, outside of just Western culture.
[51:06] You sing stories from Asia with the rise of Afrobeats.
[51:12] One other thing that we've seen is that after music, and we saw
[51:17] this with Hip, with hip hop, after music, on the back of
[51:21] music comes culture and, and, and the world as it, it was
[51:28] getting to know, you know, our music, it was then opening its
[51:35] eyes to the other things that we were doing.
[51:38] And these were just natural sort of things that they would plug
[51:44] into. And so we're seeing that come to
[51:47] come to fruition. But none of this stuff is
[51:49] happening by accident. None of these things.
[51:51] These are these are tracks that we've that have been laid over
[51:55] decades. And, you know, you're starting
[51:58] to kind of see now, now the trains, now they're now the
[52:01] trains are getting on the tracks, you know, and it seems
[52:04] like, oh, it's just some moment, but, you know.
[52:08] It's interesting I mentioned Girl Dick when you were trying
[52:11] to get a name for our studio. You almost you almost use that
[52:14] name Grill. Grill.
[52:16] Grill. Yeah, yeah.
[52:17] Yeah, we try to find your name for this thing you're doing.
[52:22] Absolutely. But we changed our minds, sure
[52:26] that pronunciation was, wasn't. I was about to say it.
[52:36] I was like, I didn't catch my breath.
[52:41] Yeah. So.
[52:43] Which was this when you started to go back and set the creative?
[52:45] So this is 2022. Oh, this is very recent.
[52:49] Second. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[52:51] It's very, very recent, man. It's been a bloodbath, man.
[52:55] I ain't gonna lie to you. It is.
[52:58] Oh my goodness. How many people are in the same
[53:02] now? Oh, five.
[53:06] Well, we, we work with sort of contractors around across the
[53:10] African continent because again, one thing that we wanted to do
[53:13] was bring in the, the, the, the undercurrent, the underpinning
[53:18] idea because that the most exciting thing coming out of
[53:24] Africa and is, is Africa's creativity.
[53:29] The custodians of that creativity are the young people.
[53:31] So, right. So when people talk about how,
[53:33] you know, Africa's youngest continent, all that stuff, what
[53:36] I think they fail to realize is, yes, these, it could, you know,
[53:42] in the age of AI, you don't need that many bodies to just be
[53:46] around. But our creativity, the
[53:49] creativity of the young people is one thing.
[53:53] When you layer that on top of the fact that these are young
[53:57] Africans who are hungry, who are, you know, your surroundings
[54:01] are full of stories. It's just a natural place for us
[54:06] to come. And so we work with people
[54:08] around the continent, including on this book.
[54:11] It's, you know, it's people from across the continent that worked
[54:15] on everything from editing, from, you know, creating the
[54:22] merchandise, you know, all of these different things that work
[54:26] on our, you know, our videos and you know, we ideate we do all
[54:30] kinds of things together. So pulling on the creativity of
[54:32] the continent is something that I've always been fascinated by,
[54:37] and so I get to do that on a daily basis.
[54:40] Your main work is working with individuals and businesses,
[54:43] correct on this continent. So with businesses, I think
[54:45] about brand. No, in the US, In the US, around
[54:48] the world, yeah. But we're leveraging the
[54:51] ingenuity and the talent of creative creatives on the
[54:55] continent to deploy, you know, interesting news stories in a
[55:00] way that they've never seen. Because again, we're taking your
[55:03] stories and taking your brand within your, you know, your
[55:07] context. And we're infusing this our own
[55:09] storytelling, storytelling techniques with our own sort of
[55:15] influences. And so it creates very fresh
[55:19] brand stories that, you know, that resonates with people
[55:22] around the world, really. Imagining the kind of chaos
[55:25] going on in your mind of an engineer who went to, we did
[55:30] construction with a very rigid area and who is heavily
[55:36] interested in creativity and then the creative juicy.
[55:39] So I'm wondering how you know all that is coming together.
[55:44] You know, from like you're an engineer, correct, structured,
[55:47] correct, And then you're creative, correct, you know.
[55:51] Craters are very, very structured.
[55:53] Yeah, they're, they're some of the most rigid people you'll
[55:57] find. I I actually don't think
[55:58] engineering is as rigid as you think it is.
[56:01] It's very, it's open to changes that are based in fact.
[56:06] It's constantly thinking of ways to improve, which is.
[56:11] So I don't, I actually don't, I, I think I disagree with the
[56:13] premise that I think there is a way in which you synthesize
[56:21] thought that is very almost linear in a way in, in, in
[56:27] engineering that I think can be an asset in, you know, in, in,
[56:33] in the creative space. You know, I think again, maybe
[56:36] because of my life, it's been, it's centered around organizing
[56:43] the chaos of the world and figuring out a way to create
[56:46] that harmony. Again, my environment in which I
[56:50] grew up was that my environment in the US was that my, my, I'm
[56:54] always in a world. I mean, the world is a chaotic
[56:59] place that we're always trying to kind of, you know, bring into
[57:03] harmony in our minds or in, you know, I live in New York.
[57:08] A lot of people would say, oh, this is the most chaotic place
[57:11] in the world. Not in my mind.
[57:13] It's because again, I'm able to synthesize all of the the
[57:20] chaotic parts and bring it together in a nice sort of
[57:24] synthesized way. And so maybe that is my, my, my
[57:27] big, my big superpower, if there is one, is being able to say,
[57:31] OK, things are all over the place.
[57:35] Engineering, the number one task there is problem solving.
[57:40] So if I cannot solve a problem, in many ways, I'm a poor
[57:44] engineer. If I cannot figure out a way to
[57:48] solve, to solve or resolve a problem, you know, that's,
[57:52] that's my biggest challenge. So there's never going to be a
[57:55] thing that's like, we can't, we can't reconcile these two things
[57:58] together. Let's try.
[58:01] That's my challenge. Nice.
[58:03] So over the past three years, I mean Waka Waka is, I wonder if
[58:09] you get great products, great works with that one.
[58:10] Danda, appreciate it. We're going to come to that.
[58:12] OK, fascinating work, great work.
[58:16] But I'll tell you that you want to touch like some of the
[58:19] projects you guys went back during the last three years, OK?
[58:23] Absolutely. I think some of the most
[58:28] exciting projects have maybe even happened in very recently.
[58:35] I just did an opening, the opening video for the United
[58:40] Nations Global compacts. They have a big summit in New
[58:44] York called Unstoppable Africa. And it what is it 3000 people,
[58:52] world leaders come together and you know, talk about the African
[58:56] continent and you know, but from a business lens.
[59:00] And so we were able to work on the opening video, which really
[59:06] talked about the idea of the history of Africa, but through a
[59:12] business lens, right? We're always talking about, you
[59:15] know, we always think Africa just started, you know, in post
[59:18] colonial in 1957. But you know, there's a lot of
[59:24] there's a lot of things and and we've been doing, you know, a
[59:28] lot of things way before people arrived, you know, shores.
[59:34] And so we were able to tell that story.
[59:36] And again, that's that's that technique, right, which is now
[59:40] let me there you go, Let me go all the way back and then let me
[59:44] bring you all the way into the present and then tell you how
[59:49] these things are connected. And we brought that together
[59:55] with an amazing poet. It was it was a multi sensory
[59:58] project. We, you know, we got to do a
[1:00:00] live performance of the. So imagine getting to create an
[1:00:04] ad, but then instead of just having the ad play, you almost
[1:00:08] can, you know, act it out in in front of a live audience.
[1:00:12] And so that was just a remarkable piece of
[1:00:15] storytelling. We've done being able to work
[1:00:20] with a brand Liberty and Justice on a, a swim, a swimwear line.
[1:00:28] That was the first African owned brand at Target.
[1:00:36] Target is a big multinational store, department store in the
[1:00:42] US to recently come under fire for things we won't talk about.
[1:00:50] But being able to do that project maybe a couple years
[1:00:54] ago, what was this now maybe two years ago, to be able to tell
[1:01:00] their story again, I think was was a remarkable piece of work
[1:01:05] for us. Working with, with African
[1:01:12] fashion brands that are coming into the United States, Being
[1:01:15] able to create experiential design, you know, experiential
[1:01:18] pop ups for them. You know, being able to tell
[1:01:23] stories through Visual Medium, working with the United Nations
[1:01:29] Development Program, Holloway and Maiduguri and, you know, and
[1:01:34] the, the heat of the, you know, of, tell stories of, of
[1:01:39] homecoming for internally displaced people who had been
[1:01:43] pushed out of their homes to tell that story of, of
[1:01:46] homecoming visually. So we've been able to do work
[1:01:50] with not only brands, personalities, but also
[1:01:56] multinational organizations. And you know, we remain open for
[1:02:03] work. That's that's the most important
[1:02:05] thing. I'm most excited about my next
[1:02:07] project. You know, all the other things
[1:02:09] are in my past. Waka Waka I I got the
[1:02:19] opportunity to go through the book, the material.
[1:02:22] The first person I thought about was Dick, because Dick is
[1:02:25] particularly excited about photography and telling stories
[1:02:28] to visuals. You're thinking about doing a
[1:02:31] book, book, a poem, an anthology of sorts.
[1:02:34] And it's like a great idea, right?
[1:02:36] But also a person been encouraged to travel.
[1:02:39] Come on. 'Cause like I read, I read this,
[1:02:42] I'm like this is the same. Africa, I read, you know,
[1:02:45] Absolutely. So what inspired this project?
[1:02:49] Why did you just start to do this and what has it taken you
[1:02:53] from how many countries? You said 16 Africans. 1616
[1:02:56] countries, Yeah. OK, so the inspiration, I mean,
[1:03:01] I mean, I've, I've travelled, I've always been fascinated by
[1:03:04] travel from when I was young began I, you know, I mentioned
[1:03:10] my parents, you know, used to travel.
[1:03:12] I think that was very fascinating to me.
[1:03:15] I was very curious as a young child.
[1:03:18] I've always been. But I took on the idea.
[1:03:22] I took on the, the challenge of trying to visit all the African
[1:03:25] countries a few years ago and maybe a few maybe a decade ago
[1:03:30] or so and the, I plan to do 2 new ones every year.
[1:03:36] That was my idea because again, I'm travelling on my own dime.
[1:03:40] Obviously it gets very expensive.
[1:03:42] I'm trying to add many points during this, you know, the, the
[1:03:47] photographing of the, you know, the photos that end up here.
[1:03:50] I have a job, I have a full time, I have a full time job.
[1:03:53] So I'm travelling and I have at some point it's 5 or 10
[1:03:59] cumulative business days of holiday throughout the year.
[1:04:04] So it's not like, you know, I got a lot of money or a lot of
[1:04:07] free time on my hands a lot of the time, right?
[1:04:13] And my idea was maybe I'll do a, a, a project at the end of my
[1:04:19] travels across the African continent.
[1:04:22] But I think there's something that happened in 2019.
[1:04:25] I went for a wedding in Sudan, in Khartoum, a good friend of
[1:04:29] mine, Khair and Iman. It was generous.
[1:04:34] They invited me for their wedding.
[1:04:35] And it was an opportunity to go to a new country, but also go
[1:04:39] witness, you know, their wedding.
[1:04:41] And I tell stories I tell. I was always telling visual
[1:04:45] stories of my travels anyway, so I went there trip happens.
[1:04:51] And they they always just were saying this was right after the
[1:04:55] the revolution that took out the dictator that had been president
[1:05:00] of Sudan for I must say 30 years.
[1:05:04] And all I kept hearing was man, I mean, the joy that filled the
[1:05:09] air there that the energy, you know, it was dirty December
[1:05:13] really in Khartoum. I'm not kidding.
[1:05:15] Do it like performances. There was like, you know, there
[1:05:18] was a big concert in the open park with American rapper,
[1:05:22] Sudanese, American, Sudanese rap artist Boss.
[1:05:26] He had a whole show with his crew.
[1:05:29] It was just the time. The wedding was amazing.
[1:05:32] It was just like, I was like, what?
[1:05:35] This is insane, you know, got to just drive around town, took
[1:05:39] photos, videos, all that stuff. I spend only two days.
[1:05:42] So I'm thinking, man, I got to come back.
[1:05:45] I leave. I go for another wedding in in
[1:05:50] Ethiopia, in Bahadar, and then go back to the US January 2020,
[1:05:56] January 120. Twenty.
[1:05:58] Yeah, we know what happens. We know what happens a couple a
[1:06:01] couple of months later is the entire world shuts down.
[1:06:05] But more interestingly, a few, maybe I want to say a few years
[1:06:11] down, a few years down the line, another conflict erupted.
[1:06:18] There was this proxy war that, you know, outside forces started
[1:06:26] to fight within the country and. South Sudan.
[1:06:29] This is not even South Sudan. This is in, in Sudan where, you
[1:06:34] know, forces that were funded to so there was the, the the RSF
[1:06:41] militia force was funded by 1 country was fighting the, the
[1:06:47] army of the country, which was again funded by another country,
[1:06:52] as they would, you know, would have it.
[1:06:55] And it really just tore the country apart, tore the capital
[1:06:57] apart. All right.
[1:06:58] There was a lot of fighting around, you know, in the
[1:07:01] peripheries. But I think when it came to the
[1:07:03] capital, it could no longer be ignored.
[1:07:05] And a lot of people had to flee. And a friend of mine who was
[1:07:08] there was like, hey, you know, just hit, hit me up once.
[1:07:12] It was like, yo, those, those photos you took from that
[1:07:15] wedding, I don't even need those photos, you know, 'cause those,
[1:07:19] you know, we didn't get a chance to get a lot of photos.
[1:07:21] And we're trying to put together things.
[1:07:23] You send us some of those photos and, you know, I'm sure there
[1:07:27] are other people that had photos here and there on their phones
[1:07:30] and that, you know, they were kind of just putting it all
[1:07:32] together. But I think that reminded me of
[1:07:36] just how a precarious our current moment is, right for for
[1:07:44] good and for bad, and just how rapidly Africa is changing,
[1:07:50] right. And in my travels, I think that
[1:07:52] started to bring to the fore whether it was a neighborhood in
[1:07:56] in Addis Ababa Piazza, which was this charming neighborhood that
[1:08:02] had been paved over and, you know, rebuild in this nice,
[1:08:07] beautiful way, but had taken out, you know, a lot of the
[1:08:11] character, you know, that I fell in love with when I went there.
[1:08:14] That made that reminded me of home.
[1:08:16] That made me give me a sense of comfort when I got there, right.
[1:08:19] You know, it was a battle store that was like, yo, I any city
[1:08:24] that got a battle store that's all right with me.
[1:08:26] I feel like, you know, I feel calm, whether it's, you know, so
[1:08:31] whether it's gentrification, whether it's conflict, whether
[1:08:35] it's climate change, cities are kind of evolving rapidly around
[1:08:42] the country, around the continent.
[1:08:44] And so I wanted to do, I wanted to create a project that was
[1:08:49] almost a, a living testimony of a living document of our time
[1:08:56] here, of what our current reality is like.
[1:09:00] That was a 360 view of what life is like around the continent.
[1:09:05] You know, but to preserve it, but also to, to celebrate, to to
[1:09:11] educate and, and hopefully to, to make people you know who are
[1:09:21] you know who, who wield any form of power to get them to think
[1:09:26] about, you know, how all of these factors are interplaying
[1:09:30] with each other. It's actually kind of full
[1:09:35] cycle. You know, given that you left
[1:09:38] Nigeria, it's really admitted that it was greatly owed to the
[1:09:45] exposure to the stories of America, right?
[1:09:49] And Hollywood did a great job to convene from the ROTS, and now
[1:09:55] you come back and you get to do it to tell the story of the
[1:09:59] African story. That's right.
[1:10:01] What do you hope to achieve with this?
[1:10:02] I mean, you've mentioned that hopefully that people to
[1:10:04] preserve their reality, the people of power have a better
[1:10:08] context and understanding of what our realities are.
[1:10:11] I mean, make the right policy. And So what does the future look
[1:10:17] like with this book and this project, You know, distribution
[1:10:20] wise, what they thinking about, you know, how can we get one?
[1:10:26] I mean, there's a lot in there. So what what I'm hoping to to
[1:10:33] accomplish with the book is that I want people to, to celebrate
[1:10:41] their, their, their reality, wherever however it might be
[1:10:46] right, their, their photos. And I was showing you earlier
[1:10:49] some messages that I was getting from just the mundane things.
[1:10:54] I think it one thing I've learned being, you know,
[1:10:59] travelling the world and living, you know, in many different
[1:11:02] parts of the United States at least, is that man, they'll tell
[1:11:07] a story about anything. They'll tell a story about, you
[1:11:12] know, cops, just these kind of cops like there's just and I'm
[1:11:18] like, but they don't have time to like tell a full like story
[1:11:22] of like different pieces of Africa.
[1:11:25] Everything is just like, you know, it's, you know, the last
[1:11:29] tribe to make contact with, you know, civilization And like, you
[1:11:34] know, so I'm often like, OK, I wanted to make a book that
[1:11:40] created almost a permission structure so that people like me
[1:11:45] who are observing their lives as hopefully as you just said,
[1:11:48] right? Hey, I've seen this thing.
[1:11:50] I could do that. Like what's so special about
[1:11:54] this guy that he he make a book? I can't make a book.
[1:11:56] Exactly. That's the energy.
[1:11:59] That's what I want. That's what I want people to do
[1:12:02] is this is my own. This this was these are the
[1:12:05] things that I pulled from my own archives.
[1:12:08] It took a lot of work, but there are a lot of things that are
[1:12:12] missing from this book. And I get that all the time.
[1:12:15] Like people look at the first thing they look at is which
[1:12:18] country? Which country?
[1:12:20] No Chad, no Gambia, No, you even go to DRC.
[1:12:28] And so, yeah, I haven't gone everywhere.
[1:12:31] And even if I did go everywhere, I'm not going to be able to tell
[1:12:34] all the stories of everywhere. That's your job to pick up your
[1:12:38] own camera or go into your own archives and put together Waka
[1:12:44] waka 2, waka waka 3, whatever you want to call it, your own
[1:12:48] observations on, on African life, culture, landscapes,
[1:12:51] whatever it is that piques your interest so that we're able to
[1:12:55] form a, a holistic picture of, of what life is like so that
[1:13:01] we're no longer having to fight this because it's so it's so
[1:13:05] easy. The the person who wants to
[1:13:08] denigrate does not need a professional camera to, to tell
[1:13:11] a bad story. They could do with their cell
[1:13:15] phone. So if you want, if you want to
[1:13:17] call, if you, if you want to do that, if you want to fight that
[1:13:20] machine that has been in operation for decades, slowly
[1:13:25] but surely you're going to have to, we're going to need a lot
[1:13:29] more people telling a holistic story of, of Africa.
[1:13:33] And it's not some story of or how amazing Africa is or
[1:13:38] changing the narrative. Everything, everything is in
[1:13:40] here. It is the raw, it's the ugly,
[1:13:43] it's the difficulty in travelling across the continent.
[1:13:46] It is the sometimes scary pieces.
[1:13:49] It is conflict. It's all of those things are in
[1:13:52] this book because I, I think we don't need to whitewash
[1:14:00] Africans, Africa's story to make it beautiful as it is.
[1:14:04] If we told just an honest, complete story, Africa is
[1:14:11] beautiful enough. And so that's, that's what I, I,
[1:14:15] I want to do with this and I want this book in, in a million
[1:14:19] homes across the world as my own goal.
[1:14:24] I could be rich. No get it.
[1:14:28] Ah, but not really. Ah, but, but that's the so I
[1:14:32] want, I want it in as many hands as possible, both for people who
[1:14:39] come from the places that I've come from, so that they see
[1:14:43] what's possible, the gems that are around them.
[1:14:46] But I also want the young, you know, white kid in Appalachia
[1:14:52] in, you know, in, in Luxembourg, wherever, in Asia and Saudi
[1:14:56] Arabia to have this on their coffee table and pick it up one
[1:15:00] day and be like, oh, this is so fascinating.
[1:15:03] I want to go, you know, to Liberia.
[1:15:08] You know, I heard I saw something in this book once.
[1:15:12] That's the reason I went there. Like I want to hear those
[1:15:15] stories years from now in the same ways, you know, a music
[1:15:19] video of Maze and, you know, Puff Daddy made me want to be
[1:15:24] like, yo, I want to go to Harlem.
[1:15:27] You know what I mean? It's no different from that.
[1:15:29] And so but where can you get the book that is the book is in
[1:15:35] short supply. Ode to to the tremendous success
[1:15:40] of the book. The first print is almost sold
[1:15:45] out. It's going to be available at at
[1:15:49] some of the finest retailers across across the continent.
[1:15:55] The lot is 1 Christy Brown, you know, the residence, you know,
[1:16:01] Sue here in Lagos, you know, department stores across the the
[1:16:07] continent are going to carry it from, you know, Marrakech all
[1:16:11] the way to, you know, Cape Town and across the continent.
[1:16:17] So it's going to be there. It's just going to take a little
[1:16:20] bit of time because again, it's self published.
[1:16:23] Moving these books around the world is very, very expensive
[1:16:27] and I'm trying to keep the cost of the book down so that it is
[1:16:32] accessible to the people that I'm trying to talk to.
[1:16:37] Why? Why?
[1:16:37] Why the name Waka Waka? Waka waka.
[1:16:42] So waka waka is a it feels like a derogatory kind of phrase.
[1:16:51] It it means a gallivanta, somebody who can sit in one
[1:16:55] place is like waka waka. You know it.
[1:17:01] You know, waka is to walk in in Nigerian pigeon and Cameroonian
[1:17:06] pigeon as well. I got some people fighting
[1:17:10] online about where what the origin is from.
[1:17:12] This is a Cameroonian phrase. Yeah.
[1:17:14] I grew up being called this. I was in Nigeria, so I don't
[1:17:17] know where it came from, but hey, here we are.
[1:17:21] But I think being able to reclaim that name because in a
[1:17:25] way what this has done is it has it has almost vindicated me in
[1:17:33] all my travels where I would normally get people being like
[1:17:37] this one man, you're here again. You're movie can't stay in one
[1:17:40] place. Now it seems like I try to tell
[1:17:44] you I was working on something, man.
[1:17:46] Yeah. Anyway, so that's this is this
[1:17:51] is me reclaiming, reclaiming this title that, you know, has
[1:17:55] has dogged me for for, you know, since I was a child.
[1:17:58] Really. It's.
[1:17:59] Nice. She left Kaduna.
[1:18:00] I mentioned that you did a project on Homecoming.
[1:18:04] When are you coming back home? I'm home, baby.
[1:18:11] No, I, I think I get that question quite a bit.
[1:18:16] And I think maybe it's, it's the wrong way to think about it
[1:18:20] because we need champions out in the world telling our own story.
[1:18:28] If I just came here and I'm I write this book and I'm selling
[1:18:31] to all of us, there's a big piece of the world that needs
[1:18:35] this story, that needs to hear the story more than we do.
[1:18:38] And so I think of our people outside of the country as our
[1:18:44] emissaries. I think we need to figure out we
[1:18:46] need to think of them as ambassadors, like how are we
[1:18:49] deploying them? How are we deploying their
[1:18:51] talent to serve their homeland wherever they are, right?
[1:18:57] I come back home. I don't run away from from home.
[1:19:00] I, I feel at home everywhere I go.
[1:19:04] I'm grateful for that. I get welcomed everywhere I go.
[1:19:09] And so I'd miss out on that if I was just in one place, you know,
[1:19:14] where, where we'd be home for you.
[1:19:15] If I, if I was living in Kaduna, that'd be home, right?
[1:19:20] Because that would be home. But you know, I would be, I
[1:19:25] would be locked in, in that location.
[1:19:28] So in many ways, I think my job has always been a storyteller
[1:19:34] and a storyteller tells our stories.
[1:19:38] I take home around the world and and I champion the continent
[1:19:43] around the world. And I think the work I'm doing
[1:19:45] is just as important as being at home.
[1:19:48] OK. So you just, you described it as
[1:19:50] an emissary of the African continent, the story tell of the
[1:19:53] African continent absolutely outside this book you have in
[1:19:57] your hand, which is extensive work of the African story.
[1:20:01] If I had to ask you to give me a brief on what you think Africa
[1:20:04] is, what would you tell me? A brief on what Africa is Africa
[1:20:14] is a it's it's an interesting place because it's and what this
[1:20:26] book tries to do is it shows the almost contradictions, the
[1:20:35] similarities, but also the differences that exist, right?
[1:20:39] Because every time someone says Africa is a Africa is a country,
[1:20:44] we scream and shout Africa is not a country.
[1:20:47] But when we're at the World Cup and our country doesn't make it
[1:20:52] or our country's out or there's an African country in there, all
[1:20:57] of a sudden we're all rooting for that one, that one country
[1:21:01] that's, you know, that's from the African continent, right?
[1:21:04] Whoever makes it the farthest in the World Cup.
[1:21:06] You know, we even go to France where most of our African
[1:21:10] players are playing, and that becomes our country.
[1:21:14] And so in many ways, it's this walking, breathing
[1:21:20] contradiction. Very interesting, rich, sort of,
[1:21:30] you know, I don't even want to moral of of just cultures of
[1:21:38] stories of, you know, things. So in this book you'll see the
[1:21:43] similarities in architecture, in life, in religion, in, you know,
[1:21:50] influences from East to West, but you'll see very, very unique
[1:21:54] differences. You'll see similarities in the
[1:21:57] way the markets are organized, right.
[1:21:59] It looks like it looks chaotic, but they know how to like
[1:22:04] everybody knows how to make it work.
[1:22:06] They don't need traffic lights to move like every, everything
[1:22:09] is moves like a orchestra that is playing without a conductor,
[1:22:13] with an invisible conductor, I should say.
[1:22:16] And so I think that's how I would describe Africa is like
[1:22:20] there's a camaraderie, but there's also a, you know, you
[1:22:27] know, this, this, this tension, you know, And so that's that's
[1:22:34] the fascinating part. And I think once we start to
[1:22:37] kind of accept that as a strength and, and accept it as a
[1:22:45] reality, right, that if you want to think Africa as a country, go
[1:22:48] ahead. If you want to think Africa as a
[1:22:50] continent, go ahead. Both are true at the same time.
[1:22:54] Yeah. Yeah.
[1:22:56] I told you this earlier on, if I see it in my final words,
[1:23:00] there's a Ghanaian, a popular Ghanaian artist, Romanian
[1:23:04] Ghanaian artist called one of the Kabbalah.
[1:23:06] One of the Kabbalah means like waka waka moving around.
[1:23:10] Really he looked like him like a split.
[1:23:13] I I saw a photo, I will, I will agree.
[1:23:16] It's very interesting that you know the two.
[1:23:19] The two of you should connect. I don't know how, definitely
[1:23:22] probably through this episode you guys would connect
[1:23:24] something, but I'm really excited that there are people
[1:23:27] like you who have made it their mandates life's work to tell the
[1:23:32] story of our continent. I'm excited for the project for
[1:23:35] Dender and keep going. Appreciate that.
[1:23:40] You should travel across the world and this book will be like
[1:23:44] 2 million homes. And it'll be done.
[1:23:47] I like that. And it will be done, yeah.
[1:23:50] So yeah, really, really rooting for you.
[1:23:54] And it's been an inspiration for me on a personal level, on a
[1:23:57] skeletal, on a creative level, you know?
[1:24:00] So thank you very much for what you're doing, Mr. Earnest.
[1:24:02] I appreciate that. And hopefully when you're what's
[1:24:06] it called, when you've done all The Walking and telling the
[1:24:08] story about continent as a grill you want to be, you come back
[1:24:12] home and drink water. Come on.
[1:24:13] I always come back to drink some water.
[1:24:16] I always come back, Yes, so. So.
[1:24:20] Friends and community, it's been a pleasure speaking to Mr.
[1:24:24] Ernest on Waka Waka. That's right.
[1:24:29] And as our mantra remains, just build something.

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