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M3NSA and Steve Hanke on African Leadership

This is an addendum to my previous article on the negative reaction to Bola Tinubu's win.

After hitting "Post now", I thought about a more constructive response to what I was seeing online: rather than complain about the naked ageism and lack of criticality in the assessment that Tinubu was unfit for office, I asked myself what a "proper response" would sound like.

I did not need to think very far: Steve Hanke, the colourful American economist seemed like a template gotten right.

In his meanest tweet yet about the Nigerian government, read here, Steve dips into the Trumpian trope and calls the sitting president "Sleepy Buhari". He accuses him of working to maintain power rather than the rule of law, and goes on to call him corrupt and incompetent. Not old.

In tweets, here, and here, and here, Steve addresses instances of alleged corrupt actions, and points to the state of Nigeria and its economy as evidence that Buhari was a no-good leader, and his hand-picked president-elect will likely tow the same line. At no point has he yet addressed what's inflamed many young voters: that both men are "too old for the job".

There is, however, a good argument for "too old for the job" being codified into constitutions the world over, especially with regards to the highest public executive office. Ghana, for instance, has a minimum age limit below which a citizen cannot stand for President of the Republic. It only makes sense to have an upper limit, given the very well documented effects of immaturity and old age on a person's ability to get things done.

But that is besides my point. I would have been happy if such arguments were forwarded in the wake of Tinubu's win. Unfortunately, cheap shots are more fun to dish out.

***

Ghanaian musician, M3NSA, tweeted a couple of days ago about two candidates from the NDC seeking office at the parliamentary level. In this tweet, he warns about either one or both men, citing his knowledge of them from the past.

I highlight this because on this one ocassion, Steve and M3NSA are on the same page, shining a critical light on African leadership by focusing on the stuff that matters more: outcomes of the leadership under discussion, character, etc.

I highlight this tweet because it flies in the face of the prevailing sentiment about the apparent source of our problems in the eyes of those who were disappointed by the recent Nigerian polls.

This moment of exemplar sanity for the otherwise radical M3NSA is a nice thing to dwell on, because it highlights the nature of the leadership situation in Ghana (and elsewhere on the continent), and the irony in how the next generation of leaders are already picking apart this current one.

***

Ghana's political scene is going to heat up in the coming months as we're entering an election year in 2024. Given the state of the economy, the manoeuvrings of the main opposition party are a delightful playback of 2014-2016, when Nana Akuffo-Addo was the toast of the tired public.

Heck, I even read the NPP 2016 manifesto and ogled over the juicy bits in a previous post on this same blog. I can't wait to witness what will happen this time.

[akpenekudjo]

So Nigerians want Obi

Let's talk a little about the just ended Nigerian presidential elections.

Being Ghanaian, our louder neighbours to the east tend to take up a lot of space in our collective consciousness, no matter how hard we try to mind our own business. In spite of our relative closeness, many of us who've never lived there for any length of time know very little about the ins and outs of Africa's most populous country.

It is from this seat of ignorance that I wish to opine on a thing that's caught my attention in the aftermath of Bola Tinubu's win.

It came to the fore of my thinking a few days back when a popular Ghanaian journalist, Manasseh Azure Awuni, tweeted a picture of Bola. It was a close up that emphasized his droopy lips, sleepy eyes and deeply wrinkled face. Take a look at it here.

The sentiment of that tweet was shared by the wider Twitter community, among whom Peter Obi, a younger contestant, seemed to have a lot of support. The general feeling can be summed up as: Africa's challenges are largely the result of poor leadership, and young blood is needed to guide the continent in the future.

Stated as fairly as I can, I find nothing immediately wrong with the diagnosis and proposed remedy. It's a pragmatic observation that some of the continent's leadership struggles are caused by leaders who are somewhat out of touch with what the youthful energies of their countries need to be galvanized for great exploits, so and so.

Fair enough, but there's the hard-to-ignore ageism and somewhat ironic lack of an inclination towards meritocratic solutions that deeply, very deeply, troubles me.

Take the tweet by a celebrated investigative journalist who is credited with exposing corruption at the highest levels of public office in Ghana. He tweets an unflattering picture of the winner of a national election (let's, for now, set aside the irregularities of their process: I'm a firm believer that all high-stakes contests are inherently corrupted) with a caption that reads "The fresh blood and mind to take over from old man Buhari."

Perhaps my reading of this is too critical. There should be, after all, room for humour. But Manasseh seems here to stoop low and criticize the competencies of Bola and Buhari in reference to their age, rather than their past actions and, perhaps, character in previously held offices.

It felt like a cheap shot to take from a prominent media figure, no different from how famous Western media houses despoiled themselves during the Donald Trump presidential campaign and term in office.

But it gets deeper than Manasseh.

Following the conversation on one multinational WhatsApp group showed me hints that my ill-feeling about the nature of the wave of negative sentiment following Tinubu's win was justified.

It came to a head when one of my peers suggested that the death penalty be handed out for corruption, to rid us all of the canker. No be small Rawlings vibes.

Anyone who has witnessed something as petty as SRC elections on any large-enough college campus in Ghana will know that the problem with corruption and poor leadership in the country, Nigeria, and most of the continent has little to do with age.

This was something I learned in my first term in high school, a truth I have validated since at all levels of my education and even in the cutthroat world of tech business, dominated by young change makers.

I don't think we're ready.

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I'm Back

I last wrote on this blog on 6th March, 2017. It's just shy of 6 years since I last lamented the state of Ghana's independence.

It's 2023, and things have really, turned to shit.

The impetus for my return is Marc Andreesen's new venture on SubStack. He's made a non-committal commitment to airing his thoughts in public in an easy-going, very informal fashion. No pressure, just words whenever they come.

I feel like I need same to, how do I put this, "save the situation". I'll probably never explain what I mean by that, but writing has benefits, and any impedance to the activity makes it a little harder to get to the goodies when you need them the most.

I've also restarted this blog because, rather than open one on the new hotness that is SubStack, or return to that old haunt that is Medium, I want to see what I can do here instead. There's also that thing about old ghosts and such, but let's move on.

Much like Marc has done, so do I intend to do here. I'm too lazy to type out a manifesto-of-sorts about what to expect, and what not to expect, so I'll live this open and leave you lot guessing.

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Does This Reflect the State of Ghana’s Independence

I found this picture shared on several groups on WhatsApp today. It’s 6th March, our country’s independence day. The Ghana flag still carries Shutterstock’s watermark.

Oh well…

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Thoughts on the (Near-) Future of Consumer Tech

Here are a couple of observations I’ve made over several months, condensed into a short blogpost because tldr.

#1 All your software will be a service.

SaaS is the most marketed model right now for software. Those of us delivering software might take for granted that we don’t actually have Facebook on devices we own. Facebook Inc, the company behind the social networking service, has Facebook (the product) running on their devices (servers) that they allow you to access your little corner of. Access to the social networking software they run on their servers is given to you, for free, as a service. 

Some other companies don’t give you that access to their software for free, but that model is still the same. They own the product. They offer you access to that as a service.

But that’s web software, which only runs on servers designed to be accessed by clients. That’s SaaS by design. The main benefit of Facebook - the connectivity - is currently realised if the software is running on “one” device that everyone has to access. That’s how you see your friend’s updates and what not.

I’ve seen a similar model replicated by Adobe, JetBrains and Bohemian Coding. Adobe has discarded their classical model where you bought their software, and a secret passcode that let you unlock it so you could use it on your own device.

Now, the software is download from a “management” app that is tethered to Adobe servers. The software cannot be run without the “management” app - and by extension, Adobe - keeping an eye on it. I’m sure all this is because the software, by design, cannot simply run on Adobe servers and access sold to you. Even if it could, it doesn’t need to because you, the user, don’t benefit immensely from sharing that same software with other users...

...unless the product evolves to make that beneficial.

I only realised I had an Adobe ID after installing Creative Cloud and seeing my Behance stuff. Genius move, Adobe. Slapping a social layer on top of Illustrator and Lightroom is the clever trick that makes being perpetually connected to Adobe servers matter in an otherwise perfectly isolatable environment.

To be fair, I didn’t explore CC much before uninstalling it. It creeped me out the way Adobe knew I was using their software. The fact that removing it from my system wasn’t as straightforward makes me think about what motives they have behind their service.

Adobe Creative Cloud does have its perks: early access to something like XD kept me on their service for a few more hours. In the near-future, all your software will hook you on to the vendor’s servers so you can continue paying for the benefits while enjoying goodies from their coffers.

Bohemian Coding has a similar scheme they’re implementing. Sketch licenses now give you full access to your software, running on your own device, forever, plus one year of free updates. That’s great if you’re working alone. 

I’m not a Sketch user, so I can’t verify this first-hand, but from what I know, their file formats are not backward compatible (or are frequently not backward compatible). Perhaps there are technical reasons for this: backward compatibility is tricky. But there’s also a huge upside to Bohemian Coding’s business. You may not care about the latest, greatest features in the new Sketch update, but the day you need to access files from newer Sketch versions (whether at work, or downloaded from the Internet), you’ll have to pay another $99.00 for the new update.

They didn’t have to build the social layer to keep milking the cow: Sketch users did that for them. 

But Bohemian Coding isn’t blind to the benefits of the cloud. They’ve launched Sketch Cloud Beta, which lets you share your Sketch files with other Sketch users around the world. For free. You just have to keep your Sketch updated.

If there’s no web front-end for creating your own Sketch Cloud account, you’ll need to be a Sketch user to do that. Yay for Bohemian Coding’s bottom-line.

#2 Corollary: Your software (’s vendor) will know you.

Microsoft pulled a sly trick on me last week. I installed the Community edition of Visual Studio. It’s supposed to be free (you don’t pay for it) software. However, they give you a 14 day trial period within which to use it. After the trial is over, you cannot use Visual Studio.

How to unlock it? Sign in with your Visual Studio Account. 

I’m not even joking. That’s all I had to do. Let MS know I was this guy, and they’ll let me use their software on my own device. I don’t benefit greatly from Visual Studio if Microsoft knows who I am. I use their software locally, and that’s fine. Version Control happens on Git. Microsoft needn’t get involved: Github has to, because my code sits on their devices (servers).

When I was looking for alternatives for Sketch, I found one. I forget the name now, but the app looked ridiculously good for free software. They offered it at the same price as Visual Studio Community Edition - my identity. If this becomes a thing, you (probably) read it first here.

Just like your favourite web services want to know you so bad they first try to get your phone number by slight, and then by force, your favourite desktop apps are orienting themselves towards the same end.

People are already used to the sell-my-personal-info-for-freeware paradigm. It may take some adjustment before they map what they do on the web to what they do on the desktop. Microsoft’s Windows 10 update saw people’s desktop accounts switch to their Microsoft accounts. Android beat MS to it years ago.

And it kind of makes sense, because the software is increasingly becoming a service rendered to someone. Apps that need the cloud to work - like your Google Assistant, Siri and Cortana, Google Photos and iCloud - are deeply integrated into the operating system. For them to work, they must be able to identify you. It’s somewhat disingenuous to pretend this blog post is talking about the “future” of software. It’s the present reality.

#3 Tech companies will profit from your sentimentality

This is an easy one. Cloud storage services bill you by how much data you save on their servers. One of the biggest highlights in recent years has been automatically uploading photos from smartphones, tablets and new laptops. For people with relatively modest cloud data needs (like myself) who probably would never give Dropbox a cent for their personal use, things like photos will eventually add up to the point where, one must pay to continue using whatever service they signed up for.

Photos, like few other digital things, carry a lot of sentimental value. I probably wouldn’t delete the pictures from 2014′s Halloween celebration just so I can have a little more space on Dropbox. As habitual as smartphone photography is, eventually I will have to start paying Dropbox. The cost of paying will far outweigh the cost of losing my favourite photos from way back.

It’s a similar thing with Facebook. I disliked the service long before I eventually left. I was sentimentally attached to the people and experiences I had on that site. Well, some of the people. What actually drove me to dislike the service was not the service itself, but some people I was friends with. I could have unfriended those, but I felt my online life needed a new direction.

My attachment to the people dwindled, but Facebook kept a history of the experiences - many of those positive - and knowing I will lose all that if I unplugged, I kept the service at an arms-length. 

My attachment to Twitter was even stronger. 

As software becomes social, uninstalling will become as costly as withdrawing from society. Only the outcasts will disconnect.

#4 All your hardware will become a service

This too follows from #1. I first had this idea when I watched consumer electronic devices become less reparable. I entered the university “naive” about computers. My ideal machine was a custom rig of handpicked parts that I could upgrade when I needed a performance boost.

I disliked laptops, because they were too compact, making changing parts more expensive and inconvenient. There was also the culture around laptops of just buying a new machine when the old one became less powerful.

Eventually I got a laptop. Six years later, I have two machines largely unused, and a fresh device on my lap. I’ve kind of “bought” into that culture of replacing a laptop after a few years. I realise I’ve grown into the hardware-as-a-service paradigm when it comes to my work devices.

Phones have been that way since they became ubiquitous in Ghana. You don’t often hear of people repairing their phones. I mean, you do, but it is far more likely that someone with an old device will “upgrade” it by throwing it out the window (literally, sometimes) and buying a new one.

What this means for hardware manufacturers is, they are assured of a continuous stream of cash coming from people upgrading their old phones to new ones. It’s almost like...a subscription.

Yes, that’s right. 

Two vital components of phone hardware, the memory and the battery, have also become tied to the rest of the hardware. Some years ago, if you needed more space to store more music, you popped in a higher capacity memory card and kept your old phone. These days, you’re stuck with the internal memory your manufacturer put in. If you want more space, you’re getting a new phone.

Same with the battery. Previously, I didn’t mind when my phone’s battery was growing weak. All I had to do was to get a manufacturer’s replacement and pop that in. Now, a battery change means a new phone.

As people hop devices, there’s only one thing that remains constant: their data. The hardware on which that data sits is just a service used to hold it temporarily, until the next upgrade.

#5 Conclusion 

You may have realised after four observations, the pattern here. The future of consumer tech is for providers to use the power of technology and marketing to make more money from their customers, while going out of their way to provide convenience. It’s a simple model, but it works. People - so long as they can afford it - will go for convenience. Businesses, so long as they can profit from streams of payments, will keep those channels alive.

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Portuphy’s Comments

Yesternight, I caught bits of the NDC chairman’s press conference on post-election violence against his party’s supporters. On my way home from work, I could not ignore the open display of support for the incoming government’s party displayed on public transport and private vehicles in East Legon.

Perhaps it’s just the cloister I find myself in, but from where I sit, the NPP is overwhelmingly popular in the public’s eye.

Kofi Portuphy’s comments are the latest in the string of public outcries by the NDC leadership about the conduct of NPP supporters after their remarkable electoral victory. The current president made similar comments in his speech at the inauguration of the transition team. The media has also picked up on this phenomenon. It is gradually becoming a part of the public’s conversation.

The first thing that worried me about the NDC chairman’s comments was his claim that, paraphrasing, “one cannot openly display support for the NDC without seeing some sort of backlash”. I thought this was overblown. Seeing that, he himself was clad in NDC colours, he was obviously betting on partisan sympathy rather than respect for the country’s law which criminalize such behaviour. 

His next comment got me thinking: Portuphy suggested that NDC supporters harassed for their political orientation should, in his words, “defend themselves”. 

I found this comment inflammatory at best: calling on a broad section of the public to “defend themselves” against another broad section of the public is an open call to arms. If an NDC sympathiser felt persecuted by the climate of opinion in Ghana right now, many casual interactions will be viewed as politically motivated threats. Having been “given permission” to defend himself against such threats, it is very likely that tensions will escalate.

As is often the case with me, the absurdity of the situation caught my attention. I assume you’ve already noticed my heavy bias against the NDC, and how this filtered Portuphy’s words to create such an uncharitable interpretation.

I’ve found myself in the opposite camp in international politics, where I felt my own independent opinions were being threatened by an increasingly authoritarian Left to the extent that, on my own accord, open hostility was a just response to outrageous attacks on my point of view.

Were I in the NDC’s camp, the shock of defeat at the polls would have set me on a path of distrust and displeasure that will colour how I see the world around me. Wearing such a lens, news of alleged hostility against those I consider on my side due to political affiliation will rile me up. In such a climate, had my party chairman come out - in party colours, showing solidarity to the victimized - to admonish us to “defend ourselves”, open hostility will, from my point of view, be justified.

From my present pro-Akuffo-Addo perspective, “self-defence” is just stoking the fire and invites my ridicule. It is entirely unjustified. And here we have the makings of an intractable conflict where, both sides of the argument in their minds are right.

A case of two conflicting rights is never ideal. There must be some resolution at some point. Sometimes, the path towards that resolution is rough.

I still hold that Portuphy’s comments are inflammatory. I’m also disappointed that the two main contenders in the polls, John Dramani Mahama and Nana Akuffo-Addo, have not come out, together, to condemn the criminal acts motivated by party affiliation. Unless I’ve missed it, I haven’t noticed any comments critical of the EC’s role in prolonging the drama of the election by keeping silent while both parties irresponsibly claimed victory.

Unless I’ve missed it, I am yet to see any major public figure criticise the NDC for “claiming a comfortable lead” at a time when all participating presidential candidates saw there was no clear lead in the polls until the only clear lead was the NPP’s. This is public deception; fraudulent communication that has been swept under the rug (like we do with many of our problems at the first sign of relief) since Nana was declared winner.

I fear this election story is not over. After Nana is sworn into office, we begin another four year cycle which will end in the 2020 polls. I hope Ghanaians prove they are as forgetful as they are forgiving. 

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Where do you get your Energy?

Scott Adams spoke a lot about energy in his book that, like most of his ideas, struck me as genius. The gist goes something like: successful living involves managing your energy level so it mostly remains at a good point. Good, high energy keeps you positive, and being positive increases your odds of success a whole lot.

Keeping a good energy level involves “hacking” your life by making choices you’re aware will impact you positively. For instance, if taking a long walk this evening will make you feel better, choose that over catching the hourly news or coiling up in bed to read your favourite book.

Doing the things that give us a kick tunes your mind to put it, and your body, in the best possible state for whatever ends you have to meet.

Anyone who pays attention to his life (that should be all of us) will recognise certain patterns that make them tick. Some people describe themselves as “morning people”, so waking up at six am instead of 4am is the best way to ruin their day, even if they had a longer, better sleep. Some people are “people-people”, and sitting alone at home knitting or reading is torture. Such people know the impact on their mood when they’re in the middle of a bustling, active crowd, and will seek such just as a plan would seek light.

Maintaining good energy means knowing what you are like, and orienting your life and activities towards taking advantage of your personal situation.

Last Friday, I was chatting with one guy at work. He told me how much he loves challenges. He’s the sort of guy who seeks out difficulties just for their sake, and gets a kick out of surmounting them. Right now he’s learning Japanese.

I related his observation to myself and replied that I don’t find joy in seeking new challenges. I actually said that I shy away from challenges. That isn’t exactly true, but I only realised that after more introspection, later that evening.

I asked myself what actually gets me ticking. The answer was obvious.

Novelty.

I’m indifferent to challenges. I don’t do things because they are hard. Neither do I do things because they are easy. I do things because they are new/refreshing. I love to experience the new. Boredom and routine kill me.

When I look back at my endeavours in this light, the pattern is clear: I picked up a relatively obscure musical instrument because it was obscure. My tastes in art, politics, etc are markedly different from those of the people I am surrounded with. I get bored with work that takes too long to finish. That is why I have never written anything novel-length. It just gets old quickly.

I stopped photography when it became too common, and I was surrounded by too photographers doing the same thing I was doing.I could not differentiate myself enough, so I lost interest in that and sought other novelties.

It’s gotten to the point where it’s something like a complex: I’m addicted to the new and shinny, to the uncommon. 

While this has the sad effect of making me value relationships less the longer they endure, it gives me an extensive breath of experience that has some merits I am happy to live with. 

I can’t say I’ve yet to figure out how to hack my life around this pattern of behaviour, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out shortly.

[akpenekudjo]

Being a Psychopath will make you Successful

We can look at success as being able to get what you want. It’s not a definition you must agree with, neither will it hold as a great generalisation of success. But we can agree it makes a significant component of a successful life.

In Scott Adam’s biography, he lists some essential things that can increase your odds of being successful. One item on the list that caught my attention (because you don’t see it everywhere, put that way) was not being afraid of embarrassment.

It struck a chord with me because it is relatable: most of my failure was because I was afraid of disgracing myself. Timidity has been my bane since adolescence. I was never afflicted in my earlier childhood, and, my selective memory confirms, my fortunes have changed in accordance with my present disposition.

Scott also mentioned “selfishness” as a pretty big component of the successful life. I like to put the fact in more honest terms: being a psychopath is crucial to a successful life.

You must have heard those surveys that successful executives have a mental profile similar to psychopaths. I think this is so, because being successful, ie. getting what you want, suggests the following prerequisites:

You know what you want (have a goal, motive)

You have no qualms about how you get what you want (nothing else matters)

You have the nerve to actually act through to your goal

All these, true for the most successful executives, is true for any worthwhile serial-killer/criminal politician.

In my line of work, I’ve found that those who’re best at getting exactly what they want are the unreasonable folk who care about only one thing: the goal they have in mind. I’ve seen relationships fractured, promises broken and many other “bad” things happen around those who were unfortunate to be on the wrong side of a successful person’s march to victory.

Those of us who’re less successful, ie. less good at getting what we want, tend to be the “nice guys” who, concerned about other people’s feelings, hold back and sacrifice our own ends for their wellbeing.

I wrote about sacrificing a perk by lending money to a friend yesterday. It’s a classic example of selflessness leading to personal misfortune.

I could have been happier today had I cared less about my friend’s misfortune and more about my own material needs. 

I’ve recently started thinking and working this way. Once I know what I want (or have a fair idea of it) I just work at it, no matter the cost to others. If it sounds like I’m going to be a pretty nasty guy, well, I don’t see it that way. As someone who suffered under bullies as an adolescent, it’s time to turn the tables.

I’ll conclude by admitting that this definition of success is deliberately abstract. For some people, the goal of their success is great personal relationships. In that situation, they sacrifice other ambitions to succeed at this one. On the surface, they aren’t the psychopaths that make the successful stereotype. But on the inside, they know what they truly are.

[akpenekudjo]

What To Expect from President Akuffo-Addo

These are the highlights from the NPP Manifesto for the 2016 election that concern me. Full disclosure, I am a socially liberal male software developer and entrepreneur/freelancer/artist under 30, living in Accra. 

I am pro Western-style economic and social development, who will benefit greatly from an economy that is well-integrated into the global economy such that national lines blur in the areas of business, travel and communication.

I am looking forward to a comfortable early retirement without a government pension, in a country of my choosing.

Some more disclosure of the things I personally want from my government, as a Ghanaian. These things/concerns were drawn out based on the struggles I’ve faced as a young adult in the country. Prior to this, I was not aware of the actual policies of any of the contenders, so this is just me, unprimed :

Acquiring a passport should be quick, without stress and without corruption

Internal flights should be cheaper

Roads should be more efficient to reduce rush-hour traffic to and from Accra

Acquiring a .gh domain name should be easy, so we won’t have to append “ghana” to our domain names

Internet services should be cheap, so more people can get online and use them for their benefit

Enforce electronic transactions for some services to improve monitoring and fight money laundering, as well as force behaviour change in Ghanaians away from cash-based transacting.

Reduce corporate taxes so more of us engage in business ventures and employ more Ghanaians to make the lives of Ghanaians better

Improve infrastructure (like Internet access, office spaces, power and roads, housing) so businesses can take advantage of a more friendly environment.

Automate government processes to speed up work and reduce corruption (eg, passport office, getting a driver’s license)

Go nuclear, for cheaper energy

Solar energy should be cheaper, so more people take it up and get off the national grid

Food and accommodation should in Accra should be cheap so people can spend more time earning money to improve their lives, rather than struggle to survive

After reading through Nana’s manifesto, here is how his plans align with my concerns:

Improve financial inclusion and electronic payments

Create a national database to link NHIS, passport data and other national identification to increase tax inclusion to formalise the economy

Reduce corporate taxes from 25% to 20%

Remove 17.5% VAT on financial services, local flights, and return to a flat 3% flat tax for small businesses

Provide tax rebates to businesses that hire fresh graduates from the Universities

Allocate land in every region for the development of specific business areas (think: sector specific Silicon Valleys dotted around the country)

Reduce import tariffs and make importing goods into the country easier, less prone to corruption

With the private sector, include a factory in every district in the country

Create a National Industrial Sub-contracting Exchange to link SMEs with large scale enterprises

Invest in Natural Gas as a long-term energy strategy

Power government buildings with solar energy

Incentivise post-harvest businesses in the agric sector

Create a Light-Rail System to facilitate transport to urban areas from residences

Build two harbours in Jamestown and Keta, while benchmarking harbours with current world class destinations such as Dubai

Build more flood drains in Accra

Automate access to public services

Create a Presidential Advisory Council for Science and Technology

Introduce the History of Ghana in the primary-level curriculum

Include childhood, prostate and breast cancers under NHIS

Institute periodic asset declaration for government appointees

Out of all these goodies (😍) the only one I strongly disagree with is the bet on Natural Gas as a long-term energy strategy for the country. Fossil fuels are, aside being non-renewable and hazardous to the environment (carbon emissions, all that stuff) they are extremely inefficient in that they cost significantly to produce enough energy.

On the other hand, nuclear energy, while being cataclysmic in its danger when mishandled, is far cleaner and more efficient (which means: cheaper) than fossil fuels, and is less restricted to specific geographies (like hydro power). There are many companies and countries that have decades of experience handling nuclear material safely. Any fears of the dangers of civilian nuclear energy can be taken care of by industry that, acting in its best interest, will work toward making the technology safe for us.

In fact, my hope of a nuclear Ghana was first stirred when Akuffo-Addo hinted at that in a publication in the Daily Graphic. I imagined Ghanaians will succumb to the FUD about nuclear energy that has dogged the technology since its discovery, which were recently heightened in Europe and Japan after the Fukushima tsunami. When a leading, then-incumbent politician hinted at this direction, I had my hopes up, because in nuclear power lies a great solution to our countries energy situation.

Other than this, I feel confident that, if Nana Akuffo-Addo is able to carry out his agenda, my life (and the lives of many, many other Ghanaians) will be much better than it has been.

Cheaper transport, more infrastructure to lean on, less corrupt bureaucracy, cheaper food and lower taxes are things a modern nation need. Let’s hope that’s what Ghanaians have voted for in 2016.

[akpenekudjo]

Baba Jamal gets a Hairdo

One side story that tickles our Romantic instinct is Ama Sey’s victory over Baba Jamal. It’s classic political David versus Goliath: the former a “mere hairdresser” and the latter, a political heavy-weight.

Feminists will read a pro-woman narrative into the facts on a ground: the proud man was unseated by his brave, female challenger. Some might even use this as a case in point to suggest women can too be “equal participants” in politics. Political satirists and tabloids will definitely spice their pieces with this story too. This is good material for many people.

For someone on the outside of Ghanaian politics, and a habitual apathetic observer, I missed out on a lot of the campaign popcorn. This news hits me without much context other than the second-hand facts I am sharing. From what I hear, Jamal was entirely dismissive of his inexperienced opponent. If experience teaches us anything, the odds are mostly in the underdog’s favour .

As one who badly wanted to see a President Akuffo-Addo since 2008, this is icing on the cake. It is also a reversal of the 2008 fortunes of my favourite politician at the moment (Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah is on his way!) who found himself on the incumbent side with all its guns out, only to be defeated by the twice-defeated (and now late) Atta-Mills.

2016 has been a grand year for me in politics. The spokes were thrown in the wheels of the global left with Brexit, followed by Trump. Now, at home, NDC bigwigs get a righteous beating and Akuffo-Addo is on his way to his first term as President of our republic.

My resolution for 2017 and beyond is to take active interest in local politics, because there is good material in it for a lot of writing and debating. Also, I’m an adult, and I heard adults are interested in such stuff.

[akpenekudjo]

Don’t be Guilt-Tripped into Acting

Last week a friend asked me a huge favour I was not prepared to do. It involved money, and I’m always wary of needless expenses. 

He was desperate - as people often are when they need money - and his closed mind was certain he could get my money back before the end of the day. It was a simple thing to him: give me the money, I’ll use it as temporary collateral and return it before the end of the day. It wasn’t actually going to be spent.

He was wrong, as people often are when they need money.

It’s almost the end of the next week, and I still don’t have my money. And the overhead of worry is uncomfortable. People don’t like to worry, because worry is mental pain, and mental pain is hard to treat.

But why did I do him the favour, when I knew it was too much for me to do?

I felt bad about seeing him struggle. My altruistic instinct is quite keen, and when it kicks in, I could give my life for someone. You won’t believe me until you see my kindness. I felt bad for him and, out of pity, I offered my help. I bought into his fantasy and let my money go. And now he isn’t as eager chasing me to return it as he was when he needed it. 

Had I thought hard about it, I would have known that there was no assurance that I would have gotten my money back at the stated time. Anytime something depends on another person, you cannot have 100% certainty that it will occur, because people die, or they make mistakes. People are not laws of physics that, when completely understood (that feat itself unachievable) work the same way every time. People have agency, and they can change their mind or be subject to “unforeseen circumstances”.

I would have remembered that I actually needed the money the next week, because I had something I urgently needed to buy for myself. I forgot about that little plan and sold out, because the space of decision-making is small, and a lot of things get thrown out in order for the mind to focus on the immense task at hand.

Our decision-making powers are optimised to put our most immediate concerns first, and every other thing later. The stress of a situation riddled with guilt and other emotion exacerbates this phenomenon. This has the unfortunate effect of making us blind to things that, by their nature, are not yet immediate concerns. Imagine I was flying to Kumasi the following day, and I had planned to use my money for just that. The flight would have been on my mind, and immediate concern, and the potential lack of money coming from the high probability of disappointment would have prevented me from buying into my friend’s marketed concern.

Unfortunately, the thing I needed the money for was low on my agenda before I was put on the spot, and when the time came to make my decision, my mind threw it out of the window as an unconcern, and rather, to the fore came my present guilt, which I wanted to get rid of.

Which brings me to one irony of the whole situation. Externally, I was a selfless actor in this scenario. But, another point of view demonstrates the opposite.

My act of selfless giving even in the face of future inconvenience was self-serving, to the extent that I acted to assuage my personal guilt by doing something about it. When I helped my friend out, a part of me was doing the same thing you do when you buy yourself a treat - I was satisfying my own urge. I was paying to be relieved of my temporary guilt.

In my point of view, all altruism is selfish, and, with respect to the actor undistinguishable from any other selfish act.

I feel quite stupid giving in to my friends story. Because not helping out would have done nothing to spoil our friendship. Yet because of my own selfishness, I’m sitting here at 6 am wondering when I will get my money back.

Shame on me, eh?

[akpenekudjo]

How to Predict the Future

#1 If you are in Africa, look to the West. I, along with many rational people, saw the rise of personal/mobile computing in Ghana by reading books, nearly a decade ago, on computing in the US. I took advantage of it early, and got myself steeped into computing well before the current glut. It was a simple formula that worked then, and I’m sure, it will work again.

What I foresaw in computing, I saw in the arts. Americanism, what I describe as Western culture distinctly non-European in character, is a foretaste of what we’re going to see in Ghana in the next half-century. This post is coming late. I’m sure you’re already aware of how young enterprising artists are crafting a self-image that is at once African awareness and global/cosmopolitan confidence. These are the people fashioning the framework the next generation is going to build upon in an effort to raise Ghana (and Africa) out of the shadow of its colonial past, just like other nations (re)invented themselves after several generations.

What I foresaw in the arts, I foresee in morality and religious life. The rise of decadence in public life is a path we are faithfully following. Today, Christian morality (through the lens of German enlightenment philosophy and American individualism) holds sway in the country. No one thinks twice about claiming this country for God (the Christian one, or when they are pressed to sound tolerant, the Islamic one too) in public and in private. Social issues that have taken the more humanistic turn in far advanced economies are still approached with medieval antagonism. Our society is stuck in the past. But for the moment.

Within the next decade, I see a rise in rationality the likes of which Europe saw when the Church lost its place in society. And with it will come increasing tolerance for areligious life in the country. Already the intellectuals are at work laying the groundwork for the revolution of thought. 

The lip-service payed to religion and morality today is only the first step in the course of our history. It is a matter of time till our churches are as empty as the lives of many who fill these churches today.

#2 Measure the climate of opinion. Every era is defined by a few issues. An astute reader of society will tease out of the noise the bullet points historians will leave against our time in the future. 

These issues fluctuate between extremes. Just like the swing of a pendulum or the sine curve, human society has a rhythm to it. When one set of ideals swings one way, it swings too far, and must, by a force as sure as a law of physics, swing the other way with as much vengeance. It never fails.

Being a contrarian can be an uncomfortable thing. Sometimes, posterity will judge you favourably as being ahead of your time, because, while the pendulum swung one way, you were already ahead of the ball, swinging the inevitable other way.

I have a hypothesis to explain why this happens. People get fed up. It is in our nature to be restless. Rest is boring as death, and rational people will always seek some new trouble to put themselves in. It’s weird how this turns out in real life: fed up with men and women claiming the right of God to rule other men and women, people did the opposite thing: they took power into the own hands and made themselves the “divinity” that gave men and women the right to rule other men and women. And the right to take away that right.

Shortly after that, they took away the “God” that had cost them so much trouble in the past. That’s what being fed up with society’s power hierarchy can cause people to do.

Were this trend to continue, the little private dictatorships that are companies will experience similar revolutions, where people will choose not to be slaves for a wage and someone else’s profit. Marx saw something like this. Capitalists are quick to point out that he got it wrong, but look at the Bernie Sanders generation coming entering adulthood. Look at Europe, watch the rise of robotics and AI to make more and more work less and less profitable for people. The hippies brought us todays liberal West. One wonders what these Marxist foetuses have in store. 

It took millennia to get rid of God and his kings. Marks hasn’t seen 500 years yet.

Our Pax Americana has a lot of people fed up already. The wars of Bush (America’s dumbest president after Trump) and Obama (the Nobel-laureate with the most kills) were a step too far in the minds of many but the most deluded. The current wave of feminism too, is something to watch. If anything, the future is going to be a significant reaction against these symbols of the status quo.

#3 Obviously, look at the children. We see the world only from our perspective. Whoever is at the bottom of the stairwell sees a world different from the one seen at the top of the stairs. What we see shapes our lives. Today, we are adults in a world shaped by our young minds in the context of an older generation. What they saw as the bright future they had made for themselves (that older generation) we see as outdated and ready for change.

Those who are coming after us have seen a world without much conflict, where petty issues like calling someone a name is as grave as killing 6 million jews. They have the Internet, and knowledge is ubiquitous as the air. In their minds, the current context forms the foundations of a future they can best tell us. 

How they see the world we give them today will guide how they fashion the future you and I can only speculate about. We did that to our parents, and our children are about to do the same to us.

I probably have more to say on this subject, but my finger-tips hurt. In the future, I’ll dictate such long posts.

Oh wait, this is now.

[akpenekudjo]

This Year’s General Election

If Twitter is an indicator of the way the national vote will swing, John Mahama will win this year’s general election and stay in power for a second term.

There are interesting parallels with this campaign and John Mahama’s first contest against Nana Akuffo-Addo in 2008. The NPP was in power, and they had the funds to pull off an expensive campaign. The NDC was running lean and humble.

Nana’s followers won the vote for him on social media. The “NDC people” were no where to be seen online. More or less. There was more visible enthusiasm for the NPP’s new presidential candidate than for the 3-time contestant Atta Mills.

I know this doesn’t mean anything in the context of the current election. The human mind just loves to find patterns and this is one I have found while trying to avoid everything election related.

Take it for what it’s worth.

ps. I have strong opinions on many things. My country’s politics is one field I have never cared for strongly. Now I am an adult, I’m sure this will change. You’re likely to see more political posts from me after the election.

[akpenekudjo]

Why 4chan is the Bastion of Culture

Several social Internet sites implement some system of merit that allows users to reward by giving (or punish by withholding or negating) other users “fake Internet points.”

These FIPs act as currency in the commerce of social interaction, and within the closed universes that are our favourite social sites, they go a long way to replicate the common phenomenon we’re familiar with in real life.

By lacking, by and large, these systems, anonymous image boards like the *chans lend themselves to the unrestrained unleashing of human expression. My time on 4chan has shown me that culture can thrive in uninhibited space.

The *chans aren’t entirely immune to in-universe social consequences: take my favourite board, /pol/, on 4chan. By revealing the country from which people are posting, contextual baggage is created around a post and prejudices can be directed at an OP once you know what country they’re posting from.

Boards such as /b/ are freer, thanks to this more-or-less complete anonymity. From one post to another, you cannot know who is saying what, where they come from and what they believe, think, etc. Posters are free to role-play across threads, test ideas, be who they’d rather not be, etc.

Being devoid of real-life social consequences (like imprisonment for airing unpopular opinions), life on a *chan can make one really honest. Your friends and family are not around to compel self-censorship. You won’t be downvoted to hell for being yourself, or gilded for toeing the line. You just speak, and your words are joined with the words of thousands of other anons spinning the wheel of Internet culture.

It is no small feat that the site has been one of the most consistent sources of what became cool years after they had moved on.

I felt the release of radical, unrestrained expression after moving away from home for a few months and living where few people knew who I was, or where I had come from. I was free to do the things I really wanted to do: good and bad. I learned so much about myself in those few months, and I am willing to bet the experience will be cathartic were I to throw the reigns off one more time. 

Free culture is at once seductive and offensive. Unfortunately, people get so offended these days they are driven to judge and destroy all that they find displeasing. It is foolish and short-sighted at best: tragic at worst.

I hope the *chans never die. I hope the good, the bad, the rotten all get to thrive in their anonymous spaces, doing the things governments, pressure groups and loud minorities in real life judge, ostracise and persecute. The world is becoming increasingly hostile to freedom. Ironically.

[akpenekudjo]

Don’t Listen to your Customers

The title of this post is business advice no startup I know personally will want to hear. But I’m convinced this is true, so I’ll write on, and if you’re curious, you can read along.

If you listen to your customers, and you’re happy with your business life delivering on the wishes of each client you have, it’s likely you believe so strongly in the prevailing mantra that you’re prepared to slave for their cedis. That’s okay. I disagree with your belief, but I have no business convincing you to think differently.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll know two things: the easiest thing you can do is satisfy a customer. It’s a gift that keeps on giving, because the customer is never satisfied. If you derive joy from being the guy who did what they wanted, you’ve found a renewable resource.

But, being the easiest thing to do in business, it is significantly less fulfilling - if you’re anything like me, that is. People like me dream about unprecedented transformation, not saying “yes sir”.

The other thing you’ll know, if you think like me, is that people value comfort more than most things they think they value. And it is far more comfortable to be babied and pampered than it is to take initiative and responsibility. People prefer being told what to do: they want direction, to be led rather than to lead and take the responsibility for leading.

If you look at the patterns of people’s lives, the greater majority of them are willing to cede some facet of their lives to other people they trust will not screw them over. The most blatant example of this comes from religion: the idea of an “eternal soul”, our consciousness of infinity and some sort of perpetuity that transcends our finite lifespans, is one shared by every one in some capacity. For a lot of people, matters dealing with this are handed over to some version of a priesthood that claims itself as the most trustworthy custodian of these things. And though we attached a lot of importance to our souls and eternal destinies, you will, were you to step back from the crowd to look down on it, admit how absurdly careless we are with entrusting something so permanent into the hands of half-strangers.

Yet we do this everyday. It is normal, and goes almost completely unquestioned. Even in the context of Western individualism that places more significance on the individual than the collective, people have not escaped the ceding of grave matters to self-proclaimed experts in the respective fields. Your average non-religious individual has only transferred the power and authority of those aspects of their lives to industry, advertising, engineers and the general scientific community.

The structure remains the same: the individual puts themselves in a submissive relationship with some authority figure that is allowed to dictate what is best for them. Said authority has free reign to think for them, propose, coerce (as the liberal-materialists often do by guilt-tripping people into causes) or shame people into acting in some way that furthers their interest.

I argue that this structure is most conducive to business. Scientists don’t tell people what they want to hear (I’m sure preachers do, but that is beside the point). They tell them what they think is true, and those people, because of the authority granted them (the scientists) usually take everything hook line and sinker.

I argue this is what a business should seek. 

As an advocate for open source technology, I sit back and watch business men pay Microsoft and Apple and Oracle a lot of money for what they can get for free. And sometimes, the free stuff is actually better than the paid-for stuff. And sometimes, the same amount of frustration a clueless customer will use to get round the paid-for stuff is what that customer might use to get round the free stuff. And paying for a little technical help on the side is entirely within budget. Yet most businesses tend towards “trusted” names and brands they have confidence in: just like you’ll prefer hearing about God from your pastor than from me, an Internet stranger with questionable beliefs and morals.

The greatest software companies on Earth run significant parts of their businesses on free, high quality community built software and assorted tools. The rest buy their tools at abnormal prices. This is only possible because those customers are comfortable trusting these companies to do the best for them. And if the best costs thousands of cedis, “it’s just the cost of doing business.”

My argument for a business is this: don’t do what your customers tell you to do: make them trust you to do the best for them. Try not to break that trust.

Also, sorry for the click-bait title.

[akpenekudjo]

Why Pretending Works

Before I share why I think it works, let me be clear on two things: one, I haven’t had much experience with the Fake-It-Untill-You-Make-It mantra, so none of this is backed by anecdotal conviction. Two, the why is kind of obvious, so in my mind this blog post is redundant. I have no new insights to share.

Pretending works, because the human organism is based on a very simple model: it takes input, processes that input and acts. Our most advanced creation that mimics this model almost perfectly is the computer, but many many other inventions are all based on the same idea of input-process-output. The processing step may be visceral, or conscious, but it is always there, and no amount of reasoning can break this model.

This model has a flaw: any system that functions like this is limited by what input it can get. Again, obvious. But think of the implication for a moment:

In the computer world, there exists a thing called virtualisation, where software pretends to be hardware and “fools” the operating system - the collection of software that makes the machine work - into thinking it actually has the hardware the software pretends to be. Virtualisation is why I can run another operating system inside my current OS, because my “guest OS” will never know it isn’t running on real hardware. Everything it runs on has been faked, but it chugs along nicely because it is none the wiser.

If you feel bad for my guest OS, you might do the same for the “real” OS. Because it too doesn’t actually know it is running on real hardware, despite the evidence of the fact that I have.

To my “real” OS, it makes no difference if its hardware is fake or real. It just cannot know the difference.

If you feel bad for my “real” OS, you might feel the same for yourself, myself and all our friends. If all we ever get are “inputs”, there’s nothing to really tell us which inputs are fake and which aren’t.  The best we can manage is to discern what is a poor imitation from what is so flawless it must be real.

Alan Turing’s test for AI exploits this flaw in the human system: if a man is able to hold a conversation with an AI and not distinguish when he is speaking to one from when he is speaking to a human being, then the AI passes the intelligence test. Turing’s idea is simplistic, and if you did a little digging, you’ll find rebuttals and whatnot. But the idea on which it stands is inescapable: we simply cannot know what is real. All we can know is how well our inputs match what we assume is real.

And that is why pretending works: because our brains and bodies are not equipped to know the difference between what’s real and what’s not. Because we can never really know.