Educate Zambia Campaign

Why this was my best year as an entrepreneur...
__And why you can't afford to stand still !

In the age of AI, the only jobs that are secure and guaranteed are for entrepreneurs. Let that soak in.

For me, this was my best year as an entrepreneur... and it was because of AI. For the first time in years, I went back to work with our teams as de facto “Chief AI Officer“ and not just “entrepreneur in residence” [as our group CEO likes to say].

I cut back meetings and speaking engagements and did what I like best, strategising on how to develop new AI businesses or how to “AI-it” in our business.

Setting up our first AI Factory in Cape Town, South Africa, and actually seeing the GPUs being installed by NVIDIA engineers, reminded me of the time Ericsson shipped my first mobile system in 1996; it was an exhilarating experience.

I travelled and met with some of the leading global players in AI including Sir Demis Hassabis, James Manyika, Josh Woodward, Thomas Kurian, Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, Dario and Daniela Amodei, Larry Ellison, and so many others. I even met up with my hero, Fei-Fei Li.

It was just amazing! With a shared vision for the future at this exciting time, we have some great . Some of them include you!

The best part of my time was spent studying and reading, including some of your insightful comments here on the platform. I made sure that 90% of my daily reading was on AI. I spent more time on YouTube than at any time in my life. Because of AI, I listened to hours of podcasts. I soaked myself in it, just to build up knowledge.

Systematically, I found myself able to drive change to engage AI within our businesses. I wanted what I call “AI infusion". This has begun and will accelerate dramatically. Then I wanted new AI-driven businesses, and that too has started.

The best compliment I received this year was from the great man himself, Jensen Huang: “Strive, you have made sure that Africa is at the table in this new technology; we are all at ground zero together".

I think the best part of what I have tried to do will come from the platform we are creating for African entrepreneurs. By creating GPU-as-a-Service, we have lowered the barrier of access to , which is what AI entrepreneurs in Africa need to develop their own AI-driven entrepreneurial ventures.

However, this is, of course, only possible if those entrepreneurs start by using at least part of my own playbook... starting with !

These GPUs for the African continent will mean nothing if you have only casual knowledge of AI. You have to commit yourself to “sacrificial” learning.

By “sacrificial" I mean that it must you something. To start, it must cost you in , starting NOW.

If you are not able to set aside three hours a day to go back to school or online, on a course you pay for... you are not really .

If you need to borrow money, then it must be to help you learn about AI. I am being very serious here.

It must cost you in money because your success depends on YOU. No one owes you a living, and no one is thinking about you [except your own family].

Don’t buy this myth that the government or donors will do something for you. Policies can help, yes, but even the best policy will not help you if you don’t to the needs of the day.

If need be, you can sell something valuable to you... a TV, a sofa, whatever!

As it is the season of though, in my next post I will give you a little "present" put together by my team, a list of some courses and they compiled that are mostly free that you can study as you for the New Year ahead. The rest is up to you.

I want to inspire you “TO DO”... not to watch or even admire. Every time I post, I want you to drop what you are doing, take out a notebook, and list some things you can DO!

And if this leads you to an AI-powered business idea, great! But shhh... Don't share it here. Just DO!

Image credit: "You're not going to lose your job to AI; you will lose your job to someone who uses AI". Jensen Huang

What comes to mind when you think of a glacier? Perhaps a vision of massive ice deserts, holding most of Earth’s freshwater, yet devoid of life. Only part of that sentence is true!

Scientists estimate that global glaciers harbor a biomass comparable to all the soil in the world’s rainforests. With rising global temperatures, entire clades of glacial microbes are dying off, decimating living ice and leaving behind just frozen water.

Meet Arwyn Edwards, Tom Battin, and Birgit Sattler, the researchers racing against time to catalog this vanishing biodiversity, from the depths of the ice sheets around the world to the glacier streams draining the roof of the planet.

Their work could enable future scientists to study these microbes for their unique adaptations.

Read more: https://bit.ly/4rFdX7r

Festival of European Cultures is back. May is the Europe Month and we are bringing to you European cinema, drama, sport and more culture. This year, also in Livingstone. Book the dates in your agendas, entrance is free.

With Alliance Française de Lusaka Embassy of the Czech Republic in Lusaka Suomen suurlähetystö Lusaka - Embassy of Finland LusakaEmbassy of Sweden in LusakaAmbassade de France en Zambie / French Embassy in Zambia German Embassy Lusaka Embassy of Ireland, Zambia Embassy of Italy in Lusaka - Zambia Zambian-Italian Cultural Centre The Livingstone Museum

👟 Get your sneakers ready and start training—the EU Run & Walk 2025 is coming!

📅 Date: Saturday, May 17
📍 Route: Choose your challenge—5km or 10km!
✅ Registration: Absolutely FREE & open to 1,000 participants!

This year, we're celebrating 50 years of partnership between the EU and Zambia.
Join us in Lusaka for an exciting day filled with fitness, fun, and vibrant community spirit, proudly hosted by the EU in Zambia!

Keep your eyes open 👀—registration link dropping soon!

Let’s move forward together, celebrating half a century of friendship! 🌍👨🏽‍🦽🏃‍♀️🏃🏿🏃‍♂️

Literature laureate Doris Lessing believed access to books was of utmost importance in order to become a good writer:

"I was brought up in what was virtually a mud hut, thatched. This kind of house has been built always, everywhere there are reeds or grass, suitable mud, poles for walls. Saxon England for example. The one I was brought up in had four rooms, one beside another, and it was full of books. Not only did my parents take books from England to Africa, but my mother ordered books by post from England for her children. Books arrived in great brown paper parcels, and they were the joy of my young life. A mud hut, but full of books.

Even today I get letters from people living in a village that might not have electricity or running water, just like our family in our elongated mud hut. “I shall be a writer too,” they say, “because I’ve the same kind of house you lived in.”

But here is the difficulty, no?

Writing, writers, do not come out of houses without books."

Read the rest of her Nobel Prize lecture in which Lessing speaks about the importance of books and reading: https://bit.ly/2UquTkB

How Leaders Can Open Up to Their Teams Without Oversharing In the age of social sharing, people who work together know more and more about each other. In general, this is a good thing. Research shows our brains respond positively to people when we feel a personal connection with them. Command and control management is on its way out, and bosses who practice...

How you (really) change the world
__Building the skills of the future... investing in young minds!

I wanted to share some with you today: Applications for Higherlife Foundation's Joshua Nkomo Scholarship are now open, as of 2 March until 31 March. If you know of academically talented students looking to begin university as undergraduates in Zimbabwe [including non-Zimbabweans from other African countries], I hope you will pass this on.

We are now focused especially on recognizing and building excellence in STEM subjects [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics] though all other disciplines are welcome, too. Those looking to enter the fields of and , and too, of course, are encouraged to apply. This has become one of the most important things my wife and I have ever done.

You can find out more here: https://applications.higherlifefoundation.com/jnsf

Some of you have asked how this Scholarship program got started. When Joshua Nkomo died in 1999, I had already spent a long time thinking about how to honor him. He had stood up for me when so many had been afraid even to talk to me, simply because for several years the then-President of Zimbabwe had opposed my plan to set up a private sector mobile network business.

After doing research, my wife and I decided in 2006 to sponsor a new scholarship program, for high achievers, separate from the Higherlife Foundation's high-volume education program for orphaned and vulnerable children which we started back in 1996 [which has now funded over 350,000 kids].

The Joshua Nkomo Scholarship was designed initially to sponsor 100 Zimbabwean students per year, who were the most gifted kids nationally after high school [secondary school]. As the country has 10 provinces, we divided it into 10 students per province with a requirement that 50% were young women.

Since then, the Joshua Nkomo Scholarship program has supported about 3,050 university students to achieve their academic dreams in every field imaginable. Many students also transitioned to universities around the world, and a significant number received scholarships for Master's and PhD studies. I'm proud to say I've heard our program has now produced something like 1,830 medical doctors, and even some Rhodes Scholars, which is really hard to do!

Soon, we will begin to roll out a program to train engineers. Without engineers, Zimbabwe [and all our African nations] cannot enter the AI revolution and will be left behind. The emerging plan is to support the training of both engineers and scientists [of all kinds] to ensure our country's future in technology.

Now in its 19th year, our Joshua Nkomo scholarship alumni have created a community network called "the Joshualites." Once in a while, some of the Joshualites write me comments here on the platform or my LinkedIn. Your kind words, career and academic updates, and also your stories of how you are also giving back to your communities, mean more than you can know.

In December when I received an honorary engineering doctorate at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, what a surprise to find one of our Joshualites there, too, in her robes, being awarded an actual PhD in Engineering the same day!

I also had the blessing to meet four Joshualites in January at an online surprise celebration organized for my birthday. They each took a few minutes to share what they are doing now, and are all really remarkable lights of hope.

I'm deeply honoured we were able to play our small part in their journey toward greatness, and servant leadership in their communities. I won't mention any specific names because I don't have permission, and also because I don't want to leave anyone out. We're proud of all of them.

In sharing this post today, what I want you to see is that changing the world is not that difficult. It can be done one child, one student, one dream, at a time... one kind act here, and one there.

One of my favourite passages in the Bible says: "If you cannot be faithful with just a little, who shall entrust you with a kingdom?"

It does not start when you have billions. It starts when you can help one person. Remember what I said long ago: "I do not give because I have; I have because I give."

Let those who have ears to hear, hear.

The Nigerian-born, US-based author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been listed as one of Time Magazine's '100 Most Influential People'. Her essay 'We Should All Be Feminists', was even sampled by Beyoncé and copied onto T-shirts. Over the years she's written novels, poetry and numerous short stories - and now her new book, 'Dream Count', marks a highly anticipated return to fiction after more than a decade away. So why the long wait? She spoke to the BBC's Emma Barnett.