Futuristic Africa

21st Century Classroom

2008-10-02T06:25:00.001-07:00

21st century classroom!What is the 21st century classroom?
i think we should redefine the classroom of the 21st century.The world all around us is changing so rapidly...What with all the ssocial networking,all the information,all the pressure to succeed....

Yet one thing remains constant.The classrooms.We still follow a colonial /soviet style academic regimentation.Rules ,fixed timetables ,same fixed lectures.I think the academic culture in most African universities has not changed much.

In other words we are studying in the same academic framework that our parents went through.But i always think that to much regimentation kills creativity and the beauty of life.Remember Athens and Sparta .Regimentation leaves no room for creativity.Just procedures and rules and boredom.Yet life must be made exciting.Even academic life.
Man is born free.And should learn freely.

What is the best way??
Maybe if only students were given room.Less lectures and more of field work and personal studies it would ease up life a bit .And perhaps unleash the forces of creativity.

Imagination thrives in an atmosphere of freedom.Academic excellence is beautiful and i love it when i excel with flying colors.My bone of contention is the system that we use to arrive at excellence.It should allow room for a little bit of imagination.

I think the 21st century lecturer can interact with their students easily via Facebook ,Blog Catalog and other social networking sites,should give students more time to be with themselves in order to discover their talents,strengths and weaknesses.

In such an atmosphere of academic freedom ,universities will be beautiful and illustrious and i would not wish to get as quickly as i am wishing now!!!#!!!1

Social Business

2008-09-30T06:58:00.000-07:00

Social Business

What is Social business.Is it the future of the 21st Century?According to Muhammad Yusuf,social business is not charity.Simply business with society in mind.

Its profitable but also involves lots of social responsibility.The business is for the benefit of the society.

If something is inevitable,embrace it!

2008-07-22T09:30:00.000-07:00

If something is inevitable,embrace it

If you know something is inevitable ,embrace it.Especially for business leaders.we live in a fast changing world.
In the 80s ,managers in Africa could sit pretty and watch changes pass by ,ignoring them,foolishly believing that governments would protect them from fierce competition and cushion them against losses.Businesses in Africa in the 80s were run like parishes ,with the manager the High Priest who resisted all change and innovation , excommunicated change agents, ignored trends and instead clung to a "sit ,wait and see" Business management model.

For two decades we watched the world fly as we crawled.First came the push for flatter management that we conveniently ignored,then the opportunities of globalization and then the need to embrace high technology ,research and development.

Unmoved by the global changes in business management of the late 80s precipitated by the success of Japanese style management ,they dragged entire state corporations down and happily contributed to the slow demise of our economic potential.

What we must do in the 21st century is have open minds.Openness and flexibility.Ability to adopt global trends and practices .

African firms should be the first to go Green since we suffer the most from global warming.African firms should invest more money in research and technology since ,at this time ,we are the least innovative .African shareholders should learn to sacrifice company dividends for the sake of reinvestment.

African firms

should invest more in alternative energy since we have the most unreliable energy sources.
Whatever the world does,We must do it two times better!

This could make our businesses sustainable,at least in the near future!!!

2008-07-22T09:24:00.001-07:00

Futuristic photos for our Futuristic Blog
Visitors have complained to me about the blandness of my Blog......it is just all articles and no photos.Pictures are worth a thousand words!!

Since my DigiCam is now ready for use ,am gonna snap some really Romantic photos and share with you all...
They depict the lives of noble ordinary people ,including ME,who like everyone else
work for a beautiful life and beautiful world.Hope you will love them!!!

2008-07-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

While Africa Sleeps
They say China slept for 500 years.How long has Africa slept.I think we have slept for too long.Maybe you could say the odds were so much against us...somewhat insurmountable.

The 1960s offered us a great chance to put things right.Instead we blew things away.No revolutions.No movements.No intellectual ferment.just stagnation.Plain stagnation.and what does stagnation do? It kills the spirit of initiative in all of us!!

And what do you do for the future when the past has bequeathed you nothing? Can we build a unique generation that is devoid of the failures and the burdens of the past?Can we move forward and forget the past?

Can the present generation of Africans recreate a new future despite the corruption and shortsightedness of their leaders??

I think we can.genius defies conventions!!! We can build a unique genius by tapping into ourselves and recognizing that we have failed and the failure is due to us.people improve by admitting mistakes.
Who would have thought that 19th century Russia,the rotten structure ,would rise into a world power?Who would have thought that an obscure South East Asian Nation would rise from the darkness of the past and build one of the most powerful military and industrial machines not only in Asia but in the whole modern world!

The task of redefining a people requires a collective genius and cultural regeneration.only a supreme act of will can save a beautiful and enchanted continent from sinking.

Join me next time and let us define Collective genius and cultural regeneration.GOOD NIGHT TO EVERYONE.LUV YOU ALL

Of truth and beauty

2008-07-19T01:36:00.000-07:00

Futuristic Africa

Futuristic

2008-07-19T01:08:00.000-07:00

Add to my blog

2008-07-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

Of Beauty and Truth
The power of the truth,why are we humans so obsessed with the truth?In the medieval times the truth was Absolute.Everything could be explained only through the eyes of God.In some way the mind was confined in some small place.Tiny.Imagination was killed.

In some way.it's our imagination that keeps us going.Imagination creates hope.Hope creates the will.The will creates what is real to us.

But the reality.What is reality.At the end of the 19th century the world entered a hopeful millennium,inspired by a passionate pursuit of truth.Thoughts that changed conventional thinking and culture.From music ,arts and science ,the universe we recreated through bold thinking last witnessed in the renaissance,and like in the past ,people were ready to die for truth.

It was a time of beauty.People were able to experience the divine and the unconventional.That is the greatness of our minds.We can open our minds to truth imagination and creation and build an extraordinary reality,or we can close our minds to imagination and submit ourselves to 'reality' and fate.The truth is ,we almost certainly create our own fate .It is the wonderful choice that only God could give.Can you recreate your fate?

2008-07-10T08:28:00.000-07:00

Alternative modernity
How do we build an alternative modernity....a modernity and future that defies history i.e. that does not follow prevailing historical and economic conditions..

It is a question of how do we rectify history,and put the history of a nation on an alternative trajectory.
The Nazi tried to create an alternative modernity and plunged the world into darkness.

The soviets alternative modernity version plunged the world into 70 years of uncertainty and blood and pain.

The Japanese created an alternative modernity thrice with extraordinary and mixed results.the first during the 16th century when they went through a mood swing and closed their country to the entire world;in the second instance was during their 1930s with their glorified Greater East Asia Co Prosperity Sphere;the third instance was the success of the economic miracle from the 1950s.
There is one thing ,altering historical direction requires monstrous mental and physical effort because history is almost fatalistic,we don't really alter it in the real sense,we just interrupt it for a short while,maybe 50 years,maybe 100 years....but you know what HISTORY HAS ALMOST ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD

Second Dimension

2008-07-09T08:15:00.000-07:00

My third day on attachment.Having some great time but my adventurous side is really getting the better of me.I have this unfulfilled desire for discovery.

I have the curious mind of a child and the imagination of a Romantic....i want a big and mystic world where my imagination can turn to reality,my thoughts from the metaphysical into the physical.

I live in the second dimension.....the invisible man looking for truth and beauty.....the born socialist waiting to reap from the fruits of capitalism.....the born revolutionist who believes it's too late for revolution.

I live a life of paradox in a world of great paradox.We all do.

2008-07-04T05:12:00.000-07:00

Sleepless in Blogosphere
Ever since I was young I always wanted a place to escape into and let my imagination rule. I have a 21st century mind but I think my id lives in the Romantic times.
Is excessive imagination a sign of an underdeveloped superego? Where is Freud? What about genius? Is genius some kind of knowledge from the past? Is genius rational……I could ask a thousand questions and convince myself that my blogophilia is a rational choice. The truth is it is not. The more I do it, the more I become desperate for it……it is like smoking marijuana or skiving classes……or sinning……it sucks you deeper and deeper into a bottomless pit until you are broke and penniless and still imaginative and wanting more…..
That is why you cannot blog solely for cash, even if your blog pours a couple or a trickle of it...There is a deep, volcanic passion that accompanies and sustains you even when your Adsense account reads $0.0000000000….
Once you open your blog, your mind closes to reality and the world that stares at you is a rusty computer and the hundreds of your loyal “friends”, waiting eagerly for your fingers to tell the story of the day……
My instincts tell me that this the feeling that Einstein felt when he worked his way towards the General Relativity theory ,Schrödinger on his way to wave mechanics and the Spanish conquistadores in their heavenly search for El Dorado. It is not a feeling as such...It is a state….like living in a second dimension where time is no longer the dictator of events …the imagination dictates everything….
We all hate time….the Mussolini of the Space….what would space be without time….perhaps eternity but maybe that is what makes life so beautiful…..it is a time dependent state of affairs….if life was so long what would you do the rest of the time after you turn 80 and are deprived of the life’s finest moments. If we lived to 400 years, most teen suicides would be the at the age 120…
We live in a perfect system…the Blogosphere is the world .What if the Bohemians had had a blog ,or Emily Dickinson or Edgar Allan Poe where they gave the world voices of genius and Google Adsense gave them cash to get bye……some 100years from now the world will discover an Emily Dickinson in some obscure blog ..And we will relish the greatness of the blog…….

2008-07-04T04:47:00.000-07:00

Futuristic Blogging
We live in a very beautiful world. A highly dynamic system of living where change occurs as we sleep. Innovation shatters conventions and creates new opportunities that are boundless.
The Japanese made us rethink the meaning of innovation. In the post 80s world everyone was always looking for the unconventional silver bullet that would lift sinking ships into profitability. That is the heritage of the 80s.The 80s called for bold ideas that set the stage for surreal world of the 21st century.
And from the 80s we now have such illustrious vocabulary in our 21st century business as futuristic planning, strategic thinking, long term planning, flatter organizations, innovation, research and development.
One megatrend of the 21st century is going to be blogging .The original bloggers were just idealistic people who wanted to network on issues and share ideas and publish. Money was never part of the bargain. But innovation and Google brought blogging into mainstream capitalism. If people could make money through websites, why not blogs? Which after all take 5 minutes to set up?
The Future
In the future our lives are going to be ruled by blogs from the 90year old great grandmother to the kiddo learning to write. Blogging gives us a share of the WWW. It offers a real world where we can meet people like us everyday.
I think blogging is going to reduce crime in the future and keep people more than informed.
Lecturers will discuss their units with their students via blogs, students will discus units before exams I very productive focus groups and presidents and representatives will discuss issues with their constituents in less straining environments. It is called Blog Democracy.
Company managers will source ideas and communicate with their employees through Company blogs , so there will be less waste of time in meaningless company strategy meetings and now that the blog is here we can get rid of the loud mouth office gossips.
What else, in this era of tailor made solutions, universities will start offering a tailor made course .Lets called the Bachelor of Science in Blog Development and Management. I guess this course will be very popular. It will be like the MBA in the 80s and the 90s.
Blogs are also going to take away the influence of the big media in politics. They who control the blogs will control opinion and politics. So hope into the Future Express and start building your community. Start blogging.

2008-07-01T08:12:00.000-07:00

The Afrikaners’ Trek North

Apartheid era South African firms are aggressively foraying into African countries where they were previously banned. And they are finding raw markets, unexplored frontier markets like Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Botswana. Today you can see the almost ubiquitous presence of MTN. Engen, Stanbic, and Alexander Forbes in many African nations.

Is it fair that companies that sustained apartheid for so long should benefit the greatest from the dismantling of apartheid? I think the South African onslaught should be checked since the playing ground is becoming quite uneven.

South African companies relied on cheap apartheid black labor to accumulate capital and build sophisticated business systems. Such systems are now being used to conquer newer African markets. It is unfair to local businesses in those countries and in a way it kills local initiative.

De Beers

This South African diamond concern made billions of dollars from diamond mining in southern African countries and from African wars. In addition it exploited cheap African labor made available by an institutionalized racism. As in other countries where injustice was done, the companies that supported that regime should also stand trial for crimes committed against humanity like in Nazi जर्मनी.

2008-07-01T06:31:00.000-07:00

Socialized Business: The 21^st Century Management

When Mohamed Yunus started the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in the 70s ,it was considered such a revolutionary idea.No one thought that people could make money by investing the in the poor.In an era skyrocketing of loans to the least developed countries and the resulting debt crisis ,the international banks were wary of international lending.institutions believed that microcredit was unsustainable

Companies had no great motivation to go green before the oil crisis prompted by Yom Kippur War.In the subsequent decades companies invested heavily I alternative energy to reduce on their over reliance of war.

Dream Green

Welcome to the 21^st century. The GREEN Century. In the 21^st century it’s cool to go green. In the 20^th century it was inconvenient. Huge mining conglomerates extracted minerals and devastated beautiful landscapes leaving a legacy of ruthless exploitation. Whole villages were destroyed and are still being destroyed especially by the Chinese with their primitive determination to expand their economy and create wealth.

In the near future it will be difficult for companies that do not follow some standards of accountability and transparency to even access international markets. This is the beauty of the 21^st century.

Human Face

Capitalism, the brutal economic system that led to countless wars and enslaved millions is finally being held to account ,not by a counter socialist system ,but by the very people it enslaves.

In a way, capitalism is acquiring a human face; thousands of businesses around the world are setting very high ethical standards.Of course African countries ,as usual are lagging far much behind.But a Global trend has been set and in the future Green will be Gold.

Fairness will be profitable.

Kaizen for Africa

2008-06-30T09:52:00.000-07:00

Can African Countries adopt Japanese Systems of management of the 1980s?

World class management has driven growth and opportunity in the West and Far East and in the process created First World economies in those regions.
Shortly after World War 2, the Western World and Japan were keen on recreating the pre war economic pre-eminence that was characterized by great pride in building huge factories that processed steel, coal and large scale manufacturing. The so called heavy industry.
There was a romantic obsession with industrialization and heavy engineering. Many nations knew that only massive industrialization could lift them up from the devastating effect of such a huge war.
If Africa and India had had the capacity in the 1940s, they could easily have outdone the European powers that were starved of raw materials and capital economically.
The Pacific Renaissance
In the 1980s Japanese firms shook the world with a unique system of management that saw Japanese firms capture the auto and semiconductor business in the world. Japanese were becoming world leaders in engineering led by firms such as Toyota,Sony,Matsuhita at a time when Western firms were facing a recession and stagnation in sales.Many Western business leaders and scholars trooped to Japan to learn their business and management philosophy.
Many were quite fascinated by the spirit,loyalty,familialism and worh ethic that they found. Some proposed that the Japanese system be entirely transplanted to the West while others advocated only for the best attributes of Japanese management due to the huge cultural difference .Some Western scholars went as far as studying as the Japanese system of education that produced such great business leaders. Some were even more radical and went as far as deepy studying the Analects of Confucius and even attended yoga lessons. The fascination of western leaders with Japanese was almost irrational .Everything Japanese was treated with great respect an was suspected to have contributed to their wonderful business success and pre-eminence. Even Japanese women’s pride in husbands who are always away from home was considered a plus in this new realm of business management.
Conspiracy Theory
Search intense fascination left plenty of room for the conspiracy theorist>Some Western leaders alleged that the Japanese government and industry had joined to conquer the world like they did in the 30s and 40s with creation of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Some alleged that the Japanese pre-war industrial conglomerates were emerging once more to build a militaristic-capitalistic nation to once more dominate Asia and the world.
The Burst of the Bubble
In the late 80s the bubble economy burst and the Japanese economic miracle came to an end yet it left lasting effects for the future management of business. Many businesses in the world came to adopt the Japanese systems of :
Kaizen : continuous endless improvement of quality
Group think
Total quality control
Total quality management
Employee stock ownership plan
Enterprise unions
Kaizen in Africa
African businesses currently practice traditional Western management of the 1970s or a derivative of it. Although change is trickling in new IT based businesses, management is still characterized by routine processes, lack of innovation, poor staff morale, pyramid type of management that puts great emphasis on the bosses, the CEOs and MDs in their ivory towers.

The employees at the bottom, who are always on the frontline in the day to day operations, are rarely listened to. Rarely will you find high performance teams in a firm or a vibrant R & D department. This is partly due to the fact Africa imports almost all the technology and processes that it uses for production. The employee is always reduced to the executor of routines>
Africa like Asia inherited a colonial business culture that put great premium on profits rather than the workers and the production floor.

Asia (the Far East) managed to do away with this system and in its place created a highly competitive management that respected workers more than profits; that placed great focus on capturing markets rather than making quick short term profits to please shareholders; that reinvested profits rather pay dividends.

As a result, managers in Asia have more flexibility and choice in making investment choices. It also saves companies from excessive borrowing.
There reality is that African firms with their backward technology, poor and sometimes corrupt management are falling behind their Asian and Western counterparts further and further.
Yet African firms could do more at little cost to at least bridge the gap in management an technology.
Embracing urgent change in African firms
Arian businesses must adopt a futuristic outlook that focuses on long term planning to see their companies consolidate local markets while at the same time going continental and eventually global. Africa must introduce the management of Urgency that involves rapid fire implementation of change including management reforms, retraining of employees for the modern, globalised highly competitive work environment.
A world class modern African firm must embrace the following long term systems:
-Ability to constantly generate value
-Thinking globally (A keen eye on global opportunities and trends)
-Embracing rapid change (radical change)
-Tap the power of high performance teams
-Create and define a vision (ambition)
-Customer driven quality
-Create a pool of expertise
I addition firms must adopt the following short term goals:
-Creation of direct links between suppliers and customers
-Flexible product lines
-Shorter product cycles
-flatter management systems rather the pyramidal structure
-Re-training of employees in newer, more relevant skills
-Intense focus on efforts to improve quality and productivity at all stages, infinitely.
-Cleanliness and modernization of the workplace
-Building of intellectual capital within organizations.
Africa must try and embrace the good of the Japanese style management,particularly its long term goals.

2008-06-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

China Loots Africa
In the 1960s, China formed a unique brand of socialism that was built not on the back of factory workers but on the back of peasants. Chinese peasants mounted a historic and intense struggle for socialism.
Many developing countries particularly warmed to china, including nations that were neither socialist nor communist from Zimbabwe, Angola, and Mazambique to Tanzania. African people looked to China with fondness. In China they saw a poor comrade with whom they had been humiliated in imperial wars and a nation that had triumphed in the face of mounting obstacles.
This fond comradeship took a dive when Deng Xiaoping instituted the reforms in the 70s.From then on China would follow a pseudo -imperialistic policy towards Africa. China knows she cannot conquer Asia economically due to Japanese pre-eminence and Asia‘ s relatively developed and competitive economies.
Wild West
Helped by foolish and incompetent African leaders the Chinese government is launching a long term investment in and acquisition of African mineral wealth with total disregard of human rights abuses of the regimes and environmental concerns.
Gullible African leaders often boast about the ease of doing business with China.”They do not question us about democracy and human rights.”You will always here government officials say.
African leaders are usually too stupid to be taken seriously. Sometimes you wonder how such a concentration of stupid and narrow minds easily find their way too politics and concentrate around power and decision making.
The truth is that China is growing at the expense of Africa ,and the Chinese officials ,usually used to strict bureaucratic control of government business ,are having field day sealing deals with these gullible Africans in this fools’ paradise. To the Chinese, Africa is the Wild West.
The Future
Yet as in the past it is the young generation of Africans, who are currently growing under great deprivation due to the corruption and foolishness of the leaders that they elect, who will pay the price for this “Look East Policy “.By the it’s not even policy, it’s just a mantra, sung by the gullible ,who by some twist of fate always trace all our problems to the colonial period, from the spread of AIDS ,under stocked hospitals, government corruption ,famine and all the problems that ever bedeviled this continent.
In Africa, you cannot have a genuine debate about the future…..there’s always a ready and unequivocal chant: Colonialism. It is always a convenient excuse. For every African who looks forward into the future, you will always find a million voices that look to the Past.

2008-06-27T02:54:00.000-07:00

My New Beautiful Blog
I think am doing quite fine with my blog,for an upstart like me. I have set up Google Adsense at last after months of frustrations and struggle.You know you 've got to be a bit web savvy for this but its not that hard.

The other good news ,i have participated in my first online survey...its really quite simple ,you register free and start earning your points in as many surveys as you can,when you have earned enough points .you can redeem these and earn your cool cash via Western Union.

I think its time Kenyans started working in their underwear....by this i just mean employing yourself ..at home.But really the cash is not much...
Those earning $200 a month are considered the Joneses in this interesting scheme.
Anyway by for now...let me plan on having a very beautiful Friday.............the last time i partied must have been in May and it was not so much of a thrill.Plus am stressed over this attachment issue really..nice weekend to everyone

2008-06-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

21st Century Dreams
Dreams.Dreams.What is there to do in the 21st Century Africa by a 21st century African. I have always wondered. When I was young I wanted to serve in the government like my father…in my teens I wanted to explore the continent and write about it and talk to leaders, stop the wars.
In my adulthood I am faced with the stark reality of living Africa. Staying put and overlooking all its failures and corruption and dishonesty and finding a small place big enough for me and my family and then shutting my eyes, living a long trouble free life ,long and lasting life, eyes wide shut.
That’s all they do. The doctors, the engineers, the lawyers, the bankers, the investors. They hibernate and embrace a tiny world. The rest will somehow take care of themselves.
I am faced with this life of delusion. And I am reluctantly trudging on to this dark path of dishonesty and indifference .The time tested criminal cowardice of the African intelligentsia ,that readily steps aside leaving the ship of state in the hands of the buffoons and the undereducated.
Most African intelligentsia have solid belief that the task in Africa is too much ,too demanding that maybe this burden could be shelved to the younger generation or to the West. After all,”the West caused all the problems.” It is the perfect excuse, and it has worked perfectly well for the last 40 years.
Yet Africa‘s pain and underdevelopment is a direct result of our dishonesty and lack of honour.Lack of service and sacrifice. A primitive kind of selfishness. Ali Mazrui would never admit this. We are in this state not because of colonialism but because of ourselves. Our values. Our lack of honor.
That is why this continent crashes the dreams of so many o its people. The youth in Africa. They would leave the continent to the older selfish generation if they had somewhere to go. They would flee the old continent and seek a new land free from the old tribal prejudices, immorality, and corruption and ineptitude. The older generation is too inexperienced and too ready to cling to power. The younger generation is poorly trained and in deep desperation.
They have lost the faith in the land in which they were born. This why Africa is headed for doom. It is the place where dreams are not fulfilled and those that sprout are swiftly extinguished. In such land only despair drives the soul of its occupants. The land undergoes a slow and steady death orchestrated by the foolish leadership.
So 21st century Africa will be once more, a century of nightmares.

DreamAfrica

2008-06-16T10:01:00.001-07:00

Get this widget!

2008-06-16T07:23:00.000-07:00

Africa Cashing from Blogs
I have read lots of articles of how people are making some really good money from their blogs.Most of them are sound like easy Do it Yourself manuals.....i mean just open a blog,post some beautiful article,subscribe to PayPal and Google Adsense ,join some affiliate site and watch money flow to your pockets as you sleep.
Sounds pretty simple especially if you are after some quick cash.
It could be further from the truth.The truth is that blogging needs some great degree of web savvy and the readiness to get your hands dirty writing inspirational articles to your target audience.
A new generation of tech savvy Asian netpreneurs are redefining online money making by developing high performance blogs that rely on a wide range of platforms from Google Adsense to software vending and in the process minting lots of cash....
Making cash from blog entails intelligent ideas and marketing genius......joining the right affilliate programs ,having some unique product to sell, offering some great software at a small price....
Why has Africa not cashed from blogs?The reasons are numerous from poverty to poor infrastructure and lack of quality technology based education.whatever the reasons we risk being left very much behind just as The Green Revolution and the Asian tiger revolution left us behind....
Come on guys.......let us get onto the keyboard

2008-06-16T07:03:00.000-07:00

I Dare Dream
Hello guys ...welcome to my new blog.I have this great proposal to raise some money for my Software for Slum project.Its really high time we expanded our small project and may be in the future it might change lives.
for those not familiar with it...it's about training thge residents of Kibera in basic IT literacy.
I am doing it with my friends from jkuat and i really hope that this thing will be quite big some time.
I need lots of volunteers ...if you are good in programming skills ...i mean C,C++ ,Java etc you can just leave me a message in my blog and volunteer.
I always think this must be our time to change Africa for the better and it must be done through selflessness and deep sacrifice.
Especially for us young people....THIS IS OUR TIME!!!!!