Ivy League bluster, didn't I say it 10 years ago?

[.]

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I said it over a decade ago. The only concrete things Ivy Leaguers bring to the table are a bloated ego na kisungu mingi bluster to fool the gullible hoi polloi. Iyo tu.

Where are they now, you may ask?

Ayisi Makating-tingtiing : After Africa Online flopped miserably in the early 2000's  - because he and his two colleagues below can hardly run a cattle dip to turn a profit - he retreated with his tail between his legs to the familiar cubbyhole of all failures; the NGO world. A world where you receive free money to fail even more, and conventional business metrics like profit and being axed for failing miserably time after time do not matter. He got IFC and Norfund to sponsor his scary misadventures in the social investments netherworld. Africa Lakes cratered, his current Fanisi Capital is amorphous in character with unheard of investments to boot. He might not even be the current CEO. All the assorted Fanisi websites list him nowhere. But just read his Wikipedia page. You would think he was the CEO of a listed company of high repute and profit or something! All his disastrous failures are cleverly swept under the table with kisungu mingi that would dazzle my Turkana people in Eliye! isapite!


Amolo Ngweno : Same route. After AfOl foundered, she became the CEO of some animal shelter or something, then quickly deleted her wiki page to avoid any further failures being mulikwad. At least she was smarter than Makating ting tiing in that regard. Currently runs BFA - a veritable factory of kisungu mingi and little else. Have you ever heard of it prior to today? Of course not. Isatragedy!

Karanja Gakio : Same same. His resume hosts nothing but a thick stream of gargantuan failures! After hopping hapa na kule failing every single time ad nauseam, and even retreating to paid employment, he ended up in Zimbabwe designing simple websites for a living. Don't believe me? Google Cyberplex alongside his name. Like Amolo, he wisely yanked his Wiki page to avoid further embarrassment. IsaRoyalPite!
 

Baby-faced Mugo Kibati : After his disastrous stint at the Vision2030 Secretariat,  nothing of substance has ever been heard of him. Remember all his grandiose projects - full to the brim with hefty kisungu mingi? What happened to them? All flops. Can you name any successful one? I thought so. IsaDisaster!


Then comes this...


https://postimg.cc/Hcp7RWcX

A Yalie on crack who sold out to Hellywierd live live. Was broken in to celebrity-hood through gangbangs and sodomy.  Much like L.A. gangs break in new members through severe fisticuffs. Or the mafia does with their La Cosa Nostra perversions. Ask her. If she's honest  and sober from the drugs, she'll admit it to you.

Didn't I tell you all that these Ivy Leaguers are not worth a bowl of warm spittle? Business-wise especially.

Kazi yao ni kisungu spaaaaaaaaa with those they deceive left with emptier pockets while munching the bitter dust of character development I tells ya.

Where are kina PK who used to argue with me daily about how these type of ferras were the best thing since sliced bread? I challenge him to produce a SINGLE Kenyan Ivy Leaguer who has run a successful business beyond mom and pop level. NGOs and employee-hood gigs don't count!

For the last time I say...ISAPITE!!

[patel]

Gachora MIT is still doing his thing hapo kwa bank. All is not lost. I agree with you when it comes to power point presentation these ivy leagues have it. Then from there it's all dust. How is life in Kajiado county?

[.]

Gachora MIT is still doing his thing hapo kwa bank. All is not lost. I agree with you when it comes to power point presentation these ivy leagues have it. Then from there it's all dust. How is life in Kajiado county?

 
But why the bloated egos then? Wakuje bole bole bila steams miiiiiiiingi to work for us as mere salaried men instead of feeding us bluster miaka nenda miaka rudi.

Gachora pia has to line up for his paycheck crumbs monthly despite his executive MBA from Wharton! You'd expect him with his engineering background to be starting and running billion shilling manufacturing companies of repute in Kwiinya yet he leaves that to semi-illiterates like Devki and Manu Chandaria while retreating to the riskless comforts of paid employment at NCBA - a company whose owners are trillionaires in Kshs so how much profits the bank is making or not making does not matter to them. Isapite.

Na Ory Okolloh? Gallivanting from one NGO to another, still blogging praaaaaaaaa to nobody in particular.  What does Ushahidi do again? Any successful investments from her Omidyar Network free NGO money?

Bottom line, isadismalrecord for all of them.

Sisi tuko Tigoni tiguuuuuuuuu but will be back in Cali later on in the Summer to browse through old haunts and check out how much worse Hamellikwa has been since I visited a couple of years ago.

Was shocked last time how the homelessness and drug epidemic there just seems to be getting WORSE hapo by the day, I tells ya.
But kila nyani na starehe zake. Life is what you make it wherever you are.

Ni hayo tu,

[Nefertiti]

Wapi Dr David Ndii lol. I thought Mugo Kibati was going to rescue Telkom Helios - by merging with Airtel. Sija-sikia kitu walai. These guys' underperformance make useless Tusker dwarf look good for opening new Safaricom till numbers.

BUT - in caps - these handful of guys don't "represent" Ivy League. You need some statistics to decide if being Ivy is a feature or a bug. I know a couple of relatively successful Ivy alumni doing good things in Kenya.

For sure, the top 0.1% of Zuckerberg, Jobs, Gates, etc - are Ivy League dropouts. What do we make of this?

STATS boss.

[.]

@ Nefertiti. The only thing of value Oxford Ndii came back to Kwiinya with are those miwani ya kamba with the red side-frames. Iyo tu.

With all his highfalutin talk and "expert" analysis - with monster ego to boot - you would have thought his economic prowess would have come in handy in transforming the Kenyan economy somewhat. Wapi? The guy has been reduced to squeaking feebly from twirra, thoughts in a muddle, sometimes criticizing the same government he chose to serve. Whattapity!

On representation, I believe they are a very good representative sample of the wider Kenyan Ivy-League community. If there are many more unknowns of their kind doing big things in Kwiinya (and worldwide), the question becomes; how come most of us have never heard of them? It proves my point even more. If the Ivies purportedly produce the best brains, how come these Ivy League Kwiinyans never feature anywhere beyond their verbal/written blue streaks?

On the dropouts, again it proves my point all the more. As I said - again, over a decade ago - to the bitter gnashing of teeth and high-pitched inveighing from my good Ivy League buddy PK; look at the Forbes 400 over the past 100 years. How many Ivy League MBA graduates have featured on that list? If indeed they are the best brains and their schools have been churning out hundreds of thousands of graduates, would it not be logical that said "best brains" would heavily populate those Forbes lists? Of course it would. But they don't!

The reason why Gates and ilk dropped out of the Ivies to hang their shingles is because they were sharp enough to realize very fast that an Ivy League education - in business especially - is actually antithetical to achieving business success. It teaches you conformism, obedience, it destroys creativity to smithereens and bloats egos for no good reason. It prepares the student to be a VP or a manager (i.e. an employed quisling), not a risk taking, creative, entrepreneur or innovator who can build tangible products that can be monetized  and that transform societies. The average Ivy Leaguer Kwiinyan engineer can barely build a baiskeli or low cost piki piki..heck..even a cellphone for Kenyans to enjoy. They are too busy compiling sheaves of worthless plans, hopes, feasibility studies and assorted writings while talking nineteen to the dozen on TV shows like Ndii does! Iyo tu.

Bottom line, as I said, wakuje bole bole. Sorry to defrock Amolo's pops but he is a PRIME example of why Ivy Leaguers in general and Kwiinyan Ivy leaguers in particular are laughable underperformers where the rubber of TANGIBLE achievements hits the road. With a degree from Harvard in NUCLEAR PHYSICS, he returned home to - predictably - edit juicy political gossip in newspapers, like a diploma holder from KIMC, for the next 50 years! IsaComedy!

I threw the gauntlet down to PK on this issue over a decade ago and all he could say was "give them (Makating ting tiiing and co) time and you will see." 10 years down the line si mumeona? Or does he need 10 years more ?

ISAPITE!!!!

[Nefertiti]

Hahaa okay. Yes being Ivy is just that. Even Bitange Ndemo is ambassador in Amsterdam - even MPs thought he was overqualified for the job. Nope - he is only good to lecture not create anything.

My only caveat to your apt criticism - is, where are the Kenyan inventors and entrepreneurs?? Ivy, hustler or any mold? 

Hakuna talent Kenya. Nobody said development is the preserve of the Ivy League alumni. Don't hoist a yoke on them, they never applied for that.

[Nefertiti]

Kenyan talent is like this: Sam Gikandi, MIT alumnus, is CEO Africa's Talking, an API company Raised 20m usd or something. In short, a good joke.

[Nefertiti]

Shikoh Gitau, PhD Wits SA . Okay I agreed is not really Ivy. Runs a "digital transformation" company Qhala, not raised a coin from VCs, nor done anything of serious note. But she's very good at TED talks and powerpoints.

[Nefertiti]

Oh, whatever became of Dr Shem Ochuodho? Or Dr Cate Getao? Lovely speeches that's it.

Kenya's bankable talent remains people like Dr James Mwangi, Equity - worth a meagre 1B usd but relatively transformative.

In short, you are looking at correlation not causation. Kenya has no talent at all, why would her Ivies fare any better?

[.]

Wrote a whole essay then accidentally refreshed and lost it all

[.]

The gist of my essay; talent iko. Chandaria and Comcraft that straddles Africa, Asia and beyond. Built it from his father's simple duka in Ngara. James Mwangi and Equity ($9 not 1b) built it from humble beginnings to a company with tentacles in 7 countries and that has transformed millions of lives of Africans of modest means.

Heck there was the illiterate Kirubi whose business talent could not be gainsaid despite the initial murky origins of his startup capital. He literally was one of the key pillars of the Kwiinyan economy, creating thousands of jobs and delivering tangible products and services daily to millions of homes in the region.

And still others more in Kwiinya are coming up.

Further afield, there's Patrice Motsepe and Strive Masiyiwa. These are the real movers and shakers on the continent. 99.9 percent of the Ivies in Africa on the other hand fail miserably to live up to their so called Ivy credentials. They all quietly disappear into oblivion. Mostly into the cubbyhole of failures I mentioned earlier. Isapite.

Forget about the Dr Shems and the lot. Those are theoreticians so their failures can be excused.

What about the Ivies? Kazi yao ni kupiga kelele kwa media praaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa and flossing their resumes squaaaaaaaaaaaaaa while delivering near zero.

The funny things is it is the illiterates of the world who own multibillion dollar businesses who are then invited to Harvard to give these "smart" Ivy students lectures on how to succeed . If that's not an irony of ironies of magnificent proportions, I don't know what is.

Ni hayo tu.

[.]

But, however I agree with you somewhat that there's a paucity of talent. The definition of it is where it gets tricky. Academicswise, most of the African intelligentsia; the educated middle and upper classes, are brilliant and talented IN THEORY. However his problem in practice is a very simple one.

Mwabrika kazi yake ni kuongea tu shpuuuuuuuuu, kuwaste time truuuuuu, drink pombe, to shake their behinds tangla, tangla, to marry multiple wives as soon as they make more than subsistence money, and to fornicate day in day out. While time and life passes him by. Hiyo tu.

Pik Botha was right. The average African does not plan beyond a year. He cannot rule himself and his people. Given the chance they just kill each other and cause chaos. Isn't that what the post-independence story of Africa has been?

Rwanda. Sudan. DRC. Somalia. Coups after coups galore from Capetown to Cairo. Cannibal dictators. Illiterate presidents like Idi Amin. Chad, Mali, Liberia, Sierra Leone. I can go on and on! Nigeria for Pete's sake. The comical giant of Africa with its largest GDP. Oil galore for the past 90 years yet still imports petrol! Isajoke

Mwabrika is yet to master himself, let alone his very resource rich environment. How then can he compete in a cutthroat, unfair world?

And he - mwabrika -  looooooves to loot (easy maney). Oooh yes. Is that not so? Of course you know tis true. Whattapity!

They do not understand hard work and building wealth legitimately. Nor passing on generational wealth. They are always starting from zero. And even when it's left for them (intestate always - no planning of course) they fight for it ngweeeeeeh until it all turns to dust. With the little crumbs left spent on booze, women and fancy cars. No thought given to their children's future. Isatragedy.

This is why Afrikwa is a dismal underperformer on the international scene despite having a vast able-bodied population, a massive middle class and staggering natural resources - the most in the world - that could easily transform the continent into a world leader.

Yet Africa is a mere consumer of world goods. Importing even toothpicks made from its own trees!! While exporting little more than beans and salt. IsLaughable!

And let's please not blame colonialism and neocolonialism. Those are hogwash justifications for the abysmal failure of the continent. The Singapore's, Chinas et al were all colonies yet are world leaders at present.  Exporting cutting edge technology yo boot while our Ivy techies blog.and produce insect tracking Ushahidis. Those countries were not immune to attempted neocolonial influences were they? How then did they succeed while Africa failed?

Tis laziness. No more no less.

I see it all around me. Intellectually brilliant Kwiinyans doing ndombolo at Rhumba clubs. Shaking their waists at Quiver Kilimani. Two sheets to the wind in no time. Before waking up in the morning to give stunning presentations at work stunuuuuuuuu, of zero consequence to the cosmos.

And they steal. Boy do they steal. The average Kenyan intellectual is very brilliant. At stealing. They hate hard work. They think hard work is a msungu trait.

A few years ago I was constructing some buildings and hired a couple of architects and engineers. The meetings with them were comical. Muchene kwaaaaaaaaa, stories about how many of these ngels, these ngels, these ngels I tells ya they had bagged, and little else. No real plans for the future beyond what club they were going to at night. They called me a msungu for keeping time, not drinking during the daytime and insisting on sticking to the meeting's agenda instead of irrelevant talk. This laziness is the NORM in Afrikwa. They are actually surprised when others achieve things very quickly while they rot mark timing in their laziness. Isacomedy.

Bottom line, Afrikwa will only evolve out of its developmental miasma by learning what hard work means. Without that we are soo soo dooomed. Who will lead the transformation charge amongst us? Please let it not be our Ivies!

Ni hayo tu.

[Nefertiti]

Ati Equity is worth 9B from where? Even Safcom is a measly 3.5B after plummeting from 15B high when Bob Collymore was flirting with Safcom TV when streaming was in vogue, cloud services and Alpha research lab. Little Cab. BUILDING real stuff not just gazillion till numbers. Saa hii Starlink is eating their lunch so bye bye that stock.

Equity Bank is SMB on the global stage. Even just basically thinking - what does it offer the world besides just a glorified sacco. It's not a neobank for sure - it's investment finance is non-existent. Just a big sacco. Stripe or PayPal are worth big for neobank - meshing into fintech, startup finance, crypto, etc. Basically they build digital assets - old banks were sacco turned into banks - FB etc leverage social media into digital banking - others are Flutterwave or AliPay or even WeChat.

If you see greedy Elon Musk trying to turn Twitter into WeChat- neobank means noone will walk into Equity Kawangware branch to open chama account. What for - when chama is already on FB or WhatsApp group with all the banking features?

Safcom has had chance to be super-app akin to WeChat or Paytm. But Bob and now Tusker dwarf have been dithering - talking endlessly - YEARS - about what only Africa has an opening. WeChat, AliPay have galvanized China. Paytm has Indian market. Musk is taking on Stripe here. Nigerian rockstar "GB" is attempting to scale Flutterwave over Africa yote - but seems to be undermined by conniving Equity and Safcom through CBK. Using ukora tactics to beat competition instead of innovation.

Sorry for the insha - but talent shows in RESULTS. Dr Mwangi yes has a 1B sacco - MJ built 3.5B kiosk. Merali or Chandaria sijui Vimal Shah - or Kirubi - are old money built over generations. Sioni talent hapo.

Talent= RESULTS. Show me a regional company driven by one figure in one generation - GB, Dangote, etc - Naija has some shadow of talent . The Kenyan Indians have tried but with dismal results. Firestone is worth maybe 100m usd - just tyres, pens and cooking fat!!! - 👀👀

[Nefertiti]

I don't mean Strive Masiyiwa is not talent. But he is British - his 2B is stashed there not Zim. Mo Ibrahim is stuck in UK or Europe too, not war-torn Sudan. Mo is 4B or something. Good talent. Mo and Masiyiwa are big outliers.

Kirubi hmm. At least let us have some modicum of standard. Business comes down to $$. Bic, lotion or sanitary pads are awesome products but they don't scream talent.

SA has some talent yes, with Naija. I think what you need to get impact - is a critical mass of talent - and capital will follow. This is happening in Kenya, Naija, SA, etc. Ruto was celebrating on Twitter how Kenya is leading Africa with 800m usd FDI.. which is a pittance but a good start for him to scale the hunt.

[Nefertiti]

🙂
Strive Masiyiwa is Ivy League.
Mo Ibrahim is Ivy League.
Naija Flutterwave GB is Ivy League.
Patrice Motsepe is Ivy League.

Half the stable of "talent" you use as evidence is Ivy League. 👀👀

I also don't think that successful "illiterates" invited to give graduation speeches are a middle finger to Ivy League education. They succeed inspite of their relative modest education not because of it. All of them are very naturally intelligent and driven people.

As Elon Musk says, one only needs high school literacy to thrive, the rest is natural talent. That means COLLEGE education itself - not just Ivy League - is unnecessary. It is the employees who need formal accolades. The fact that I cannot find handy Ivy League vs Entrepreneurial success/failure studies online points to a lack of causation between the two.

I stick to positive criticism. Every culture or race has achievers and slaggards. Mwafrika has lots of talent. I SEE WILLIAM RUTO AS A BIG POLITICAL TALENT. Rising from nowhere to the top despite all odds. He has the chance now to put it to the test - in leadership - and so far I see it going very well. The naysayers need to hold their breath. Give him the time of day.

Kenya has the critical mass of talent and macros needed now to take off. This I sniff from the leadership in FDI no matter how pitiful (800m vs tiny apartheid Israel 20B 🙂) - but in my eyes Kenya is doing very well politically, economically - and is poised for big things. I mean you have 5th democratically elected president - compared to Idi Amin and Muhoozi - and leading in FDI is a very positive indicator of confidence.

Go, Kenya, go!!!

[Nefertiti]

So Mr "." are you a lazy, worthless, philandering African? Or do these dashing adjectives exclude you?

I, Nefertiti, am a proud, talented, trailblazing African techie and Nipate insha writer.

[.]

🙂
Strive Masiyiwa is Ivy League.
Mo Ibrahim is Ivy League.
Naija Flutterwave GB is Ivy League.
Patrice Motsepe is Ivy League.

Hahahaha! @Nefertiti on which planet are they Ivy league?

I know my inshas have stung , but let's please not resort to PROPAGANDA when putting our points across.

What are the Ivies?

Strictly defined, they are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Upenn with its crumbling Wharton and the Yalies who are sometimes on crack

Loosely defined, we can thrown in an Oxford AT BEST because it prides itself as the Harvard of Europe despite the similarly abysmal showing of its Kenyan graduates.

Which of any on this list of achievers belongs to the Ivy League ? #HonestyNotPropaganda

[.]

Ati Equity is worth 9B from where?

Ikwiti made a staggering 32 billion shillings in profit and had assets worth 877 Billion shillings (well over $8b before the shilling tanked) in fiscal year 2001 alone😁. #HonestyNotPropaganda

[.]

Talent =RESULTS

I fully agree with ya here. But please remember tech is not the world and the world is not tech. It's just a small portion of it. The universal metric of RESULTS is cold hard moolah. Legitimately built through sweat!

I have nothing against exporting beans and salt if it brings in the moolah Dangote style (simiti). I just have a problem with Ivy Leaguers of abysmal showing coupled with staggering ego. Like the techies creating flop companies like the Ayisis, or designing simple rat-tracking software with NGO free money, or reduced to designing websites, while bragging braguuuuuuu in the social and mainstream media about their resumes and (non)-achievements, instead of creating useful companies that actually make a profit and benefit many Kwiinyans/Afrikwans . #bluster

You and I know full well that nothing of substance has ever come out of our Kwiinyan Ivies in general and techies to be specific. No offence to non-Ivy techies.

Their abysmal showing is writ large. I don't even see why that's  a point worth debating over.
 

[.]

But on the whole I admire your optimism on Kwiinya.

My criticism of Mwabrika is also constructive . Urging him to eschew laziness if they are to compete on the global stage.

Deep down you know tis true.

A prime example of this happened again to me yesterday. Standing in a looooong line (no seats of course!) at Huduma Center GPO in town waiting to be served. A smartly dressed chap walks in pretending to be talking on his cellphone before cutting the line! Nobody protested until I loudly did, after which he retreated to the back.

Mwabrika loves short cuts and stealing. Iyo tu.

With the same spirit, I can bet my bottom dollar that the same chap is looting biiig wherever he works. Oooo yes. As I've said umpteen times, this is the NORM not only in Kwiinya but Afrikwa kwote.

Oh, and when I got to the counter, the systems were down, had been so for a week and the lady CSR there had no clue when they would be up again! Perhaps our Kenyan Ivies could start by fixing such basic things? And helping GoK fix systems like Ecitizen so that millions of suffering Kwiinyans don't have to deal with having to log on to different departments through the portal, some of which are also down !

This is way more important than rat-tracking software IMHO

If Mwabrika cannot sort such basics despite having swarms of Ivy techies and techies in general then is it any wonder that his country is super doomed?

I lived in Capetown for a while and I can tell you for a fact that the middle and upper class bleks there are so sooooooo lazy. And of course stealing is their stock in trade. Zuma and his Guptas are a prime example.

The ordinary bleks are even WORSE. They just drink pombe at the shebeens shwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa discussing zero. Then cry that the few hard working foreigners - some of whom risk life and limb to get there, raise capital and run businesses that benefit them (South Afrikwans) jobswise - are "stealing their jobs." When sufficiently angered every few years, South Afrikwan bleks will behn (as they say) all those businesses to ash and loot the copper electrical wires to sell in order to fund more shebeening. Isapite.

Back in Kwiinya hard working business owners have to install CCTVs everywhere. Oooo yes! And even when they do, the very educated employees still collude to looooot properly in a very sophisticated way.

Anyone who owns a company in Kwiinya will tell you so.

If only Mwabrika could use that looting energy and stealing-addicted brain to actually build legitimate wealth slowly, Afrikwa will be a paradise.

Unfortunately, instead of leading from the front with their "brains,"  the Kenyan Ivies instead do so in looooooooting properly.

Ask Titus Naikuni who looted and destroyed KQ to dust and is currently enjoying roasting goats while scratching his balls on his huuuuge farm in Kajiado, perhaps partial proceeds of the lootment!!!

Isapitty!