The Great Recalibration
Africa does not have a large white-collar class to be disrupted. It has a vast informal sector to be augmented, and the risk is a computational divide rather than job loss.
Informal productivity
Essays & Writings
Essays, analyses, and published articles on African economic architecture, institutional underwriting, and domestic productivity.
Everything, newest first
The Architecture of Context
A 42-storey tower is a giant from the street and a dwarf from the 95th floor. On why context is the lens through which information acquires meaning.
Altitude and perspective
Life as a Venture
Live like a venture capitalist, not a merchant bank. On backing character before it is proven, following on when results lag, and expecting power-law outcomes from people.
Essay
Between Ameen and Amen
Two words so alike they are nearly indistinguishable, turned into an unbridgeable divide. On who benefits when shared deprivation is recast as sectarian suspicion.
Essay
A Pilgrimage to the Hither-Land
Four journeys across Nigeria in five years — a forest, an island, warm springs and a creek — and the discovery that our land is enough.
Essay
Beyond Politics: The Elite’s Role in Nation Building
Politics is transactional and operates in electoral cycles. Nation building is transformational and spans generations. On the three pillars and the elite’s particular responsibility.
Nation building
Message to my president-in-the-making
A note to an incoming president: respect those who employ, tax the wealthy, retire the subsidies, and stop mistaking regulation for revenue.
Nation building
Habits maketh a Nation
The habits a country must give up before its circumstances can change, beginning with the attraction to hopelessness.
Nation building
The Limit of Money
Money is a language for communicating economic activity, not an asset. Separated from real things it conveys nothing, because value must be created before it can be represented.
Informal productivity
This is not a feel-good post
Each generation has handed the next a broken inheritance. On the apology that is not coming, and why the waiting has to end.
Essay
On becoming a listening TWAT
Thinking, writing, acting and talking. On the discipline of the empty cup, and why so few of our leaders write down what they believe.
Essay
Nothing published under this position yet.
Announces new writing only. Sent approximately four times a year.
You will receive new essays when they are published.