Can we disrupt Africa? | Abdullah Verachia | TEDxEuston

[Music] so what is it that I'm going to talk about I am going to cover this concept on disruption and I want to focus on where Tommy ended and Tom really spoke about this fourth Industrial Revolution and Martin Luther King is famous for saying in his prison cell in Alabama that the danger with revolutions is that the majority of people sleep through revolutions and Tom spoke about the fact that we must be very careful that we're not even at the starting line of the revolution and so for me the question is rarely around how do we participate in this revolution and all of the hype and the sensation there is around robotics and AI and machine learning and all of what we see in this digital revolution that we're going into so part of what I want to talk about is rarely to set some of the context and in setting the context it's important for me to put some elements out there the first one is the fact that we are already in a highly disruptive digital economy with rapid sector disintermediation and with phenomenal changes that we see and the changes that we've seen in the last five years and the changes I'm going to argue that we'll see in the next five years will see a significant change in every sector that we know when we see and understand and appreciate for me a massive change in terms of my personal life was two and a half years ago spending some time in South Africa with Sebastian Thrun who by the way was the architect of the Google self-driving car that today will fundamentally change the automotive sector forever Sebastian Thrun a Stanford professor was also the architect of MOOCs and created the first online mass of course for open education and so the individual is really a change maker a maverick a revolutionary and he said that what we learned and what we studied three years ago not 30 years ago is 90% irrelevant to how we're going to navigate and lead our organizations there are countries in the next five years and for me that rarely starts to speak about how do we operate in this type of shifting landscape and if we see this revolution how is it that we're able to participate in it and what is this revolution mean for a continent like Africa and part of my reflections and my musings have been ready to talk about what disruption means in a contextual setting like like Africa and so a number of people asked me because I didn't come from South Africa I came through late last night from Harvard in Boston and people have been asking me are you not jet-lagged and I said no this day has been phenomenal because we've met Mavericks we've been exposed to Mavericks that are really driving the change on the continent and so what does that change mean for us let's look at this picture here because I think it best encapsulated this disruptive economy that we're going into what worried me when I put this up was that stat on tinder nine hundred and seventy two thousand twenties swipes up or down in one internet minute so nine hundred seventy-two thousand people saying yay or nay on tinder every single minute let's not even talk about vine or any of the others but tinder really got my attention I'm married with three kids so tinder doesn't it's not important to me but nonetheless it was important it was reflective so these swipe says you know if you're not familiar with tinder and you happen to be single it's the opportunity to swipe up if you like somebody you swipe down if you don't but nine hundred and seventy two thousand people are doing this at the same time so head your bits and see where you land and so let's bring this together and let's talk about why disruption is critically important for a continent like Africa and so for me I want to start with this premise that innovation and disruption has to be contextually relevant otherwise we get caught up in the hype and we rarely get caught up in stuff that's irrelevant to a continent like ours we tend to miss what this option means in our continent and secondly and perhaps as importantly disruption and innovation has to be based on the end user and the end user is critically important and so to color this and to contextualize this I'm going to ask you to do a test and I want you to spend some time with a person or three people so one on your right and one on your left if you invested a thousand dollars and no googling please if you invested a thousand dollars in the following stocks in January 2010 how would you rank their performance in 2017 simply which one would be the most valuable today from the thousand dollars that you put in in 2010 take a minute let's do that so for those of you who on your phone I hope you on tinder not googling the answer but nonetheless this is not an election it's not democracy you have to vote who thinks Tesla pick your hand up right up okay who thinks Apple right up who thinks Amazon Wow Amazon who thinks Netflix who thinks Domino's Pizza really who thinks Google so and I hope if Federer and Amina you can give a surprise because it actually is Domino's Pizza [Applause] and so let's talk about this and let's talk about what it means and and let's really start to contextualize why is it that we get caught up in the height and we get caught up in the disruption and failed to appreciate the contextual relevance of disruption and I want to link it to our continent and we fail to appreciate that disruption and innovation as I said is about the end user what did Domino's do phenomenally well they were able to take the disruptive elements and make them contextually relevant to pizza and many examples and there's phenomenal examples that you can pick up online driverless pizza the most fascinating example for me was the example when Domino's created an app because everybody thinks create an app and we innovative you not innovative by creating an app what Domino's did beautifully was Domino's created an app yes and that didn't mean that they were disruptive they created an app with a phenomenal human interface and what did they do they created an interface where you were able to create your own pizza with a multitude of ingredients and once you created an Abdulla pizza you could put that pizza on the app and sell the pizza by telling your friends and your family so you're 31 Twitter followers that this is my pizza and then every pizza that gets sold in your name you'll get an incremental cost or profit of that that's huge intimacy so that's disruption right contextually relevant disruption let's look at another example and so everybody is really caught up in an Amazon and so I was in Silicon Valley in September with some executives really talking about what disruption means from a Silicon Valley context four years ago we started to wonder what which shopping look like if you could walk into a store grab what you want and just go what if we could weave the most advanced machine learning computer vision and AI into the very fabric of a store so you never have to wait in line no lines no checkouts no registers welcome to Amazon go use the Amazon Go app to enter then put away your phone and start shopping it's really that simple take whatever you like anything you pick up is automatically added to your virtual cart if you change your mind about that cupcake just put it back our technology will update your virtual card automatically [Music] so how does it work we used computer vision deep learning algorithms at sensor fusion much like you'd find in self-driving cars we call it just walk out technology once you've got everything you want you can just go when you leave our just walk out technology adds up your virtual cart and charges your Amazon account your receipt a sent straight to the app and you can keep going Amazon go no lines no checkout no seriously so that's what Tom spoke about let's say I in real life that will fundamentally change the lives of many people in the retail sector largely in developed country context but what it does mean for me and how it pains me is that we've got the technology of AI of robotics of machine learning how do we translate that technology into emerging market economies like ours how do we make it real and relevant so if we're living through this period of disruption and let's take this Amazon example further in 2006 Amazon was a seventeen point five billion dollar mark evaluated company in 2017 it's a five hundred billion dollar company and at the same time companies like Sears which were double its size ten years ago and now four hundred ninety five times smaller than it in terms of market capitalization so that's disruption in our lifetime how do we make sure that we don't sleep through this disruption and so let me bring it back and let me take it to the continent and so for me it comes down to this my life and I spend a lot of time really thinking about what's the canvas that we're painting on what are the colors that we need what are the skills and who the Mavericks who are going to drive this change and we've had the privilege of connecting some of them today and I want to spotlight see that I've had a close intimate relationship with some of them disruption deals with pain points it addresses organizational or country pain points and so this is a pain point right and the logical view and how we educate it is that if we've got this type of a context and we don't have the amount of retail outlets then let's build another mall and we all familiar with what jamia has done in terms of really building this disruptive model this is Africa's first unicorn company and that's a tech company with a valuation of a billion US dollars and so yes it's early days but in three to five years I'm going to argue that this will become the new normal we must talk about the stories of companies that are fundamentally changing this continent like jr. and that's it in 2015 I had the privilege of reading an MBA group that I do every year my Business School Gibbs and I took a group of 31 MBA students to India and one of my students was a medical doctor doctor in Abby's English wedding and she came with me and many students who traveled with us were from large banks and large insurance companies and they wanted to visit these companies in India and she kept on coming to me and saying I want to visit disruptive healthcare models in India and part of our journey we had the privilege of spending time with dr. Debbie Shecky who's known as the Henry Ford of Medicine who's revolutionized Affordable Health Care and so she then came back in October 2015 and for six months left private practice as a medical doctor in South Africa and rarely started to think about how do I impact the healthcare environment what's the pain point in South Africa well the pain point is that this is what health care looks like it's overwhelmed it's overburdened 83% of South Africans are dependent on public health care and only 17% have access to private health care and so as a consequence of 83% of people dependent on public health care the state burden of healthcare has become complicated and complex and so part of that is we see long lines and so she spent some time in a community called deep slit which is 16 kilometers from senton which as you know is one of the wealthiest parts of this continent and so she went to Dib Stewart and really started to understand the socio-economic dynamics of that community 750,000 people the nearest public hospital 46 kilometers away and so people would take an entire day of work and go to the nearest public hospital on public transport get there and wait in lines like this year and possibly not get to the front the employers are disconnected from their world and so when they ask for a day of leave just to access basic health care they were denied that and so what happens what happens is that you defer health care and when that happens for say 50,000 people then the bigger causal impact is that healthcare conditions deteriorate as a result of that and so she then said can I set up a low-cost health care facility in Div Stuart and she knocked many funders and everybody said no there isn't funding available because people in these communities don't have the finances to be able to pay for low-cost health care because that's the mindset that's the unconscious bias that's how we think of the context of others and that's not the way we should and so what does she do in May 2016 she self funds her first facility in deep slit and this is what it looks like she pivots it on for strategy areas quality you can walk into any of her quality health class facilities any time when she opens from 8 to 8 365 days a year and get a phenomenal world-class facility affordability she charges the equivalent of 18 US dollars for your entire medical check-up including all of your medication and the equivalent of that in a private healthcare facility would be upwards of 50 US dollars convenience she opens as I said 365 days a year 8 o'clock in the morning until 8 p.m. at night and she uses technology to understand the data the patterns of behavior to cut a long story short what she's managed to do in a short space of 18 months is she now sees 15,000 patients a month in four facilities across Johannesburg and she'll soon open a facility every month and she's proof concept and now funders are there one thing to know what are you doing [Applause] what I find incredibly heartening for people like dr. tabby singularities these are the Mavericks who are fundamentally using disruption to transform our societies to bring dignity to the lives of our people and to really change the narrative by saying if the elements of disruption how do we use them to address pain points in organizations and societies that we live in to create affordable healthcare and what she's managed to do through the pivot of technology and because of a model that she's built is that the average waiting time from the time you walk into the facility till the time you leave is 27 minutes try and get that anywhere in the world in any general practitioner and you won't and the most heartening thing for me is that she brings an affordability and convenience you go to the facility if you're not healthy in the next seven days you come back for a free checkup you get a call the next day to ask you what your service was like and how people are syste dyou and the best part of this year is that the majority of the people or the third most wanted request in the facility is for medical sona's for pregnant ladies who come there so that they can see their babies and so in connecting with them the question is often why is this life changing it's life changing because the cost of that so now in a private health care facility is upwards of $150 for 18 dollars now I can at 7 p.m. at night after work come and spend some time to see my my baby girl or boy and that's life-changing and so for me but the question that that I want to leave is yes we've got disruption and yes the world is fundamentally shifting but we are the Mavericks we're the Mavericks that are changing this continent where the Mavericks that rarely start to transform the societies that we in disruption is not about technology it's not about the digital economy it's this fusing of social scientists and digital scientists it's the fact that many of us are caught up in the digital elements but it's the social scientists that will change society and that picture-based encapsulate how do we get these social scientists how do we get people to come together and connect around the social scientists and the pain points that we have in society secondly how do we equip our people how do we equip our people to get the skills our societies to get the type of knowledge and expertise to be able to participate in this economy because when we talk about leapfrogging it means that we passed the starting line it means that we've got all of the tools to be able to not start at the starting line but be a few steps ahead because we're not going to be left out of this revolution arguably and we've got to create the skills and so my last point that I want to do end with is to say that I run a youth organization called the collective genius and part of that is really seeing how do we change the education landscape and we've started and I become very particular about what we teach kids because we must teach kids curiosity we must teach empathy we must teach design thinking we must teach coding we must teach social scientists because we're in a society where 7.3 billion people many of whom in developed markets are talking about disruption but the one sector that has not been disrupted has been education if rip van winkle had to wake up today I promise you he'll say that everything's changed except education because we think education is about the preacher standing in front and pushing stuff down and you regurgitating it every June and every November in your final examination and that's not how we should be teaching should be teaching the dreamers and the doers we should be teaching people who are creative and innovative when we teach solids liquids and gases yes we can say come in repeat solid liquid and gas but we can show it we can show water and ice we can smell it we can feel it we can touch it we can taste it and that's what we should start doing in our education sector and so as I was flying from Harvard Business School last night where Gibson Harvard run a senior exec program for 60 executives from across Africa I walked with a heart full of hope and promise for this continent because the 60 people I think demonstrate phenomenal change and I walked in today and I wasn't jet-lagged because I met speakers who really demonstrate the society that we want to live in and so I'm going to be disruptive and I apologize for that I'm going to be disruptive with with two minutes and I'm going to read something that I wrote on the plane last night because it really speaks to my heart and I want to end on it and so I'm sorry that I'm speaking of a piece of paper I wrote this late on the plane yesterday but I want to close with it because for me my heart is filled with tension as I go back to South Africa and let me close with this it's Kwame Nkrumah who said that I'm not an African because I was born in Africa but because Africa was born in me when Africa is born in you you fall in love in love with it's special people was there wisdom was there care what they respect you fall in love with its food and its culture you fall in love with its beautiful beaches its great mountains its rivers and its valleys my beloved Africa on this plane in reflecting on this love I've come to realize that I love how you make me feel and the warmth shows which you embrace me I love that I have the privilege of being born a son of your soil I love being showered with a kaleidoscope of showers at Victoria Falls but I hate that 319 million people in sub-saharan Africa I without access to reliable drinking water every single day I love hearing the beat of my heart and feeling the flow of my blood as I connect eyeball to eyeball with a glorious elephant in Kenya but I hate that central Africa has got 64 percent of its elephant population in the last 10 years I love that we've been blessed with a landmass larger than the collective geography of India China Mexico the USA and most of Europe but I hate that 220 million Africans are considered to be continually in a state of hunger I love that you home to the world's tallest and largest land animals that you Raph and the African elephant but I hate that we haven't been able to create to create the scale and the size that we need to drive sustainable and inclusive growth my Africa I love that we the wealthiest continent under the ground was the largest reserves of bauxite and cobalt and diamonds and phosphate and platinum group metals but I hate that above the ground our collective GDP per capita is less than fifteen hundred US dollars I love that we have all the potential to light up most of our continent through potential opportunities such as the grand Inga dam in the DRC and the ash Agoura wind farm in Ethiopia but I hate that almost five hundred and seventy five million people in our continent live without electricity which means that 80% of our people rely on energy sources such as wood and charcoal and dung in order to cook their food every day I love how your wisdom taught me that it takes a village to raise a child but I hate how sometimes we forget we forget this because 59 million children of primary school age are currently not in school I love your proverb that says if you want to go quickly go alone but if you want to go far go together but I hate that some of our leaders have forgotten this for they have amassed wealth for themselves and forgotten our people I love how you embrace different cultures and languages 1500 of them that color our continent but I hate the scars of centuries of oppression and colonialism whose shackles still haunt us every single day I love how you have produced some of the finest fruit and some of the best fruit maize and grains in the world but I hate that you still have people who can't find bread to fill their bellies so they can sleep at night I love that you have some of the most talented and gifted woman in the world but I hate how you can't protect them and how a hundred and eighty thousand women on the continent still die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth every single year I love how excited and proud you make me feel when I teach cases on dangoty and Mtn and so many other phenomenal companies that were birthed from your bosom but I hate that we haven't been able to produce a few more to address the crippling unemployment challenge my Africa I love how you've given me so much from an incredible childhood to the greatest experiences to the best weather to the privilege of hundreds of dialects and languages and cultures and people I love that you've injected a special serum deep in my veins that I can't explain I can't verbalize I can't articulate I can't rationalize but I can feel because you the home of Kwame Nkrumah of Wangari Maathai of Julius Nyerere of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Nelson Mandela and of Patrice Lumumba and as I reflect I realized that I'm Restless between these emotions of love and hate but in this restlessness and on the sprain and the incredible beat of my heart I have realized that I want to love you more because you my Africa and the Africa other people I have to be honest and realized that your scars are the consequences of years of brutality and a very difficult past based on colonialism and requires me to roll up my sleeves and do so much more because hate will get nobody no way but hard work and contextual appreciation of our past and the incredible opportunity of our future might just get us some way yes we are in an era of the swift disruption we have entered the fourth Industrial Revolution my Africa we won't sleep through it for as Patrice remember once said one day Africa will write its own history and it will be history of glory and dignity and the history now [Applause] [Music]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 6,976

Rating: 4.8347106 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Change, Future, Positive Thinking, Youth

Id: gCv47TLl_ro

Length: 27min 17sec (1637 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2017