[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]
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]
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