Thank you Sterling Bank for the opportunity to keynote the 2019 Agriculture Summit Africa today in Abuja.
We are working to bring intelligence in farming. How can you predict the profit of farms even before they begin the farming season? How can you ensure fertilizers are customized to the specific regions they will be used?
The march to $1 trillion agro-economy has started.
Dear Community,
I got the feedback on this post here. My apologies for not being helpful. Largely, people expected to read the basis of my call. With the news everywhere, I had assumed we knew what was happening.
I have updated the piece. Understand that I call things the way I see them. Mr. President gets my praise (which is nothing) and also gets my criticism (which is irrelevant).
But benchmarking what we do when local crises happen to the shame in South Africa, and how Nigeria has managed it, personally, I rate it “brilliance”. You do not have to agree with me – I do not write for that. But as many noted, I must provide the basis of my call. I have done it accordingly below.
I want to use this medium to commend the Nigerian Government and President Buhari on how the nation has handled the shame in South Africa. This is governance at its best. I challenge our leaders to extend this level of quality to internal crises that take place within the nation.
To Minister of External Affairs, Nigeria’s Ambassador to South Africa, Speaker of the House and even the political parties APC and PDP, all of you just showed that you can all lead. Extend this brilliance to other areas.
These are things the nation has done well on this South African shame and where we have failed on parallel local issues. Let me list some areas the president has shown brilliance (on handling the xenophobic attacks in South Africa) and also failed on internal matters.
Simply, there are many positive elements on how Nigeria has reacted and managed this shame in South Africa. I do hope we replicate the same in other areas. South Africa must pay for waking up the eagles because the eagles have left the nest.
God bless Nigeria.
There’s a saying that goes thus, “Assumption is the lowest form of knowledge.”
I agree.
Especially when it has to do with your health, never assume. Instead, go for a test. Be sure about your health conditions rather than result in self-medication.
Last year, September 2018, I had a slight fever accompanied by headache and stomach upset.
“it’s malaria” – my assumption.
I quickly ran to a nearby clinic and explained to the pharmacist. I told him to give me some malaria tablets and a pack of Flagyl. Since I was having stomach upset, a pack of Flagyl would do well. He did sell everything I asked for and I used according to his prescription.
A few days after, it got worse. My health condition didn’t improve. I went for another type of malaria drugs and some antibiotics. Perhaps, those drugs I used were not working. It never cured my ailment. I continued managing my health. I assumed that the change of environment could be the reason why I feel sick.
Three weeks after, I couldn’t bear this anymore. I started feeling weak and almost fainting. I gave up on my assumptions and visited the hospital
The doctor immediately sent me for a diagnostic test. I was scared of the outcome.
Who knows what could be wrong with me?
The result – ”typhoid and enteritis”.
Wow! I have never heard of enteritis since I was born.
I Google searched and read many materials I found online. Hmmm, the way forward, I was asked to go for a scan. The doctor wanted to be sure if much damage hasn’t been done.
I went for a scan. Luckily, there was no damage done to my system, but I was still having internal pains in my lower abdomen.
However, I was not given any drugs because I had abused a lot of them while trying to treat myself based on my assumption.
My meal was changed totally. I was restricted from taking pepper. For nine months, I ate food without pepper. As an African man, it was weird. I had no choice.
I got healed completely in June, 2019.
Thanks to the support I got from Nonye Aghanya, a US clinician.
Here’s what I learned from the experience:
Dear pharmacist, stop selling drugs to people without a doctor’s prescription.
Stop killing people just to make a profit.
Say No To Self-Medication!!!
I am so surprised that many people are extremely troubled that AI could do some doctor’s works in the near future. In this Harvard Business Review piece, I explained how this will work. I do not have time to reply to each person that commented on my LinkedIn feed. So, this is my global response. Please also read this. Please free your mind and be open to the possibilities of the future. Do not just sit there and be vomiting why things cannot work. The limitations of today can be unlocked by technologies of the future.
The solution is called CareAi: an AI-powered computing system anchored on blockchain that can diagnose infectious diseases, such as malaria, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis, within seconds. The platform is engineered to serve the invisible demographic of migrants, ethnic minorities, and those unregistered within traditional healthcare systems. By bringing AI and blockchain together, CareAi uses an anonymous distributed healthcare architecture to deliver health services to patients anonymously. This makes it possible for these invisible cohorts to get access to basic healthcare, and useful contextual information without compromising their identities, for fear of deportation. This is important, as without access to health services, these communities might pose health risks to the wider population.
Doctors are systems. You can codify every variable doctors consider and engineer machines that can do some of their works. This one in Brussels (I took that photo myself) does disease diagnosis and prints receipts of treatment strategies. This may seem like rocket science but it is not that hard. Our Medcera has a path to get to that mountaintop for Africa.
I have a phone dedicated to startups and businesses we serve. It is a service we call Private Client Services: Startup Growth. It offers founders and entrepreneurs 24/7 access to me. We talk over hard business things, strategies, growth and wins. We bring our people, invisible but great, to make those wins happen.
We work with unrivaled tenacity, bringing all our assets and networks to ensure growth takes place. It is hard to get in because we do not accept payments; we win only when you have won.
As you build, we want to work with you. Though we come with humility to learn on what you do and have done, our value addition is unbounded.
We have advised and worked with amazing CEOs; the testimonies are everywhere. You will like to build with me and my team. If you run a startup that utilizes technology, and looking for an invisible growth-maker, click and email my team.
As we celebrate here [Goldman Sachs leading Kobo360’s $30 million raise], the best moment arrived when the CEO of Kobo360, Obi Ozor, dropped this line, this morning to me, “Thanks for all your support and advice.” I am very proud of what Kobo360 has accomplished and even more optimistic that Kobo360’s mission to build a logistics operating system in Africa will advance our continent in the age of AfCFTA.
In the last 9 months, our portfolio firms have added (net) cumulative value in tens of $millions (yes, paper money). Join PCS, and have your personal professor: become a category-king founder with me.