Conversations
Has the internet created a virtual labour market for new kinds of services? Does connectivity now allow job-seekers from the Global South, young people from low-income countries, to grow rich online? Did this help overcome the borders that have separated rich from poor? If not, might the Metaverse now create this new market space in the cloud? Are online labour platforms becoming immersive labour markets with equal access for all? I discuss these questions in conversations with online workers, policy makers, academics, educators, consultants, and firm executives from around the world.
#11. Conversation with Martin Hecker: AmaliTech and the Digital Skills Accelerator Africa
#10. Conversation with Jacques Nyilinkindi: Objectivity's Software Developers Serve Global Clients from Rwanda
#9. Conversation with Godfrey Zvenyika: Deriv, an Online Broker, Serving the World from Kigali
#8. Conversation with Gary Bennett: Tek Experts and the Future of Rwanda's Services Exports
#7. Conversation with Vivens Uwizeyimana: Umurava, Kigali's Supplier of Digital Work To The World
#6. Conversation with Hassan Tha Kreator: Filmmaking in Nigeria and Rwanda
Across the world, many people’s dream job is located somewhere in the creative economy. Making films and creating video content has become much more accessible over the past few years, and as the digital realm brings the world closer together, collaborations across borders can emerge in creative fields that were hitherto limited by geography. In our conversation, Hassan Tha Kreator tells me about his journey as a young filmmaker from Nigeria to Rwanda. We speak about the vast differences between these two countries, the future of African filmmaking, and how the strengths of different countries can complement each other as Africa’s creative economy expands.
#5. Conversation with Pépita Uwineza: PesaChoice, Work, Culstuer, and Change in Rwanda and Africa
Imagine you’re a global business services firm, thinking of setting up a new delivery center in an African country. Your first problem will be to decide on the right country. The next problem will be to figure out how to manage the local workforce. What are the labor laws, customs, and skill levels in that country? PesaChoice is a human resources management platform that seeks to help incoming companies with this second challenge. As PesaChoice expands across the continent (currently in Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda), part of its service becomes helping incoming firms solve their first challenge of comparing the pros and cons of different African locations. Pépita and I have a broad conversation about the opportunities for Rwanda’s young population, about the differences in customs and culture between different countries, and about her own life as a parallel to Rwanda’s development.
#4. Conversation with Oriane Ruzibiza, of Education First, on Training Rwandan Digital Service Exporters
When Global Business Services (GBS) firms choose new delivery locations, they look for stable governance, conducive regulations, reliable infrastructure, and workers with the right skills. Rwanda already tops Africa’s charts on governance, regulations, and infrastructure. And the Government has now begun an initiative with international development partners to train a large pool of GBS workers. Oriane and I discuss Kigali’s GBS ecosystem, and she introduces EF’s English language training pilot, which is tailored to GBS agents and free of charge for any GBS firms.
#3. Conversation with Joseph Semafara of SolveIT Africa, About Kigali's Ecosystem of Digital Service Exporters
Rwanda’s progress over the past three decades has turned this small country into one of Africa’s newly emerging technology hubs. Global Business Services (GBS) companies have recently set up delivery locations in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, and Joseph Semafara is a leading figure in providing these investors with a “soft landing”. His company, SOLVEIT AFRICA, trains young graduates to become GBS agents. Together with other training providers in the Kigali ecosystem, Joseph works closely with the firms that are already in Rwanda, and with firms that are currently on the cusp of making Kigali their next delivery location. In our conversation, Joseph and I discuss how Kigali‘s ecosystem of digital services exports has changed over the past 2-3 years, and what this seems to have unleashed for Rwanda.
#2. Conversation with Adewale Yusuf about Alt_School and the Future of School and Work in Africa
Africa is full of young people who see the internet as their ticket to a better life. Adewale Yusuf, a Nigerian tech entrepreneur, saw this continent-wide drive as an opportunity to connect African workers, mainly programmers, with global clients, mainly tech companies – all remotely. For this, he built TalentQL, a platform that acts as a wormhole – transporting African coders into the borderless realm of the global digital market. But he realized that more was missing than the mere connection between the supply and demand of digital work. Few applicants were ready to deliver the services that global clients needed. So, Adewale did what entrepreneurs do, he founded another company: AltSchool. AltSchool is a learning platform for software engineers, product marketers, and data scientists – remotely. In our conversation, Adewale and I discuss whether the pre-Covid world of cities and offices is turning into a post-Covid world of video calls and long-distance learning circles, and what roles young Africans might play in such a world.
#1. Vili Lehdonvirta, Book Launch, Cloud Empires: How Digital Platforms Are Overtaking the State and How We Can Regain Control
Lehdonvirta is Professor of Economic Sociology and Digital Social Research, and we spoke about his book, Cloud Empires, which, as of 27 September 2022, can be picked from shelves of bookstores and clicked from the warehouses of empires. Vili traces the cyberlibertarian endeavours of using technology to free us from the shackles of coercive states. He shows how moving fast, breaking things, and with constant in-flight fixes, platforms like eBay, Silk Road, Upwork, Uber, Amazon, Apple App Store and others ended up becoming the very thing they set out to escape: states; often coercive ones at that. He shows how these platforms now have more in common with 13th and 14th century empires than with the libertarian utopias their founders sought to create. They are states based not on territorial jurisdiction but on membership. We discuss if earthly governments can still reign in these empires, or whether they might become virtual democracies one day.
