Some leaders make a loud entrance with their clothes, airs, and flurry of minders moving about furniture. Others show up wearing humility on their sleeves and with their long thoughtful pauses.
Tonny Omwansa, the CEO of Kenya National Innovation Agency (KNIA) shows up with a small bar of chocolate. “Oh, this. I’m on my way to my daughter’s school function,” he explains.
Hopefully, he is making a good impression over at KNIA, a semi-autonomous government institution set up by an Act of Parliament to develop and manage the national innovation ecosystem. “We ensure meaningful interaction between the key players of a national system of innovation that ranges from academia, government, private sector, civil society, and industry in terms of funding and appropriate policy.”
He is running a programme of 14 universities to improve the entrepreneurial capacity of the leadership, policy environment, and funding framework for innovative ideas.
Right. Back to the chocolate.
How many children do you have?
I have two boys and two girls; 14 and 12-year-old sons, then six and five-year-old daughters.
Irish twins, the girls. I think that’s what they are called.
Oh yeah? I have enjoyed fatherhood so far. I didn’t think I’d have girls to be honest. Growing up, I wanted to have boys I could play with; ride bicycles, take off the wheels of cars, do more boyish things, rough things, because I like that sort of rough tumble. I didn’t picture a daughter in this equation. I only had one elder sister, much older than me. As the last born I felt like she was raising me like her son.
How did having daughters then change the game?
It changed me of course. My daughters have made me more tender and reflective. I’m more sensitive and less reactive. I pause before reacting to things. When one of them wakes up and is kind of moody, I will be like, okay, I don’t understand this but what does it mean? I take my time. If we are leaving the house and my little one is like, "where are my shoes?" and I’m like, damn, man, you should know where your shoes are. But I won’t say anything. I will be like, okay, let me go at her pace. It’s not the ideal [Laughs] but let’s try it for a change.
It comes with its frustrations but then I ask myself; what is life about anyway? There will come a time when their shoes won’t be there.
They will have left with all their shoes. So perhaps I should enjoy this moment of the mystery of the missing shoes. [Laughs] Because maybe I’m being honoured.
What do you think your sons find most frustrating about you?
Funny, because one time I paid for the children to attend a certain programme and I wasn’t available so they went with their mother, and they were asked about the one thing they didn't like about their dad. My wife later told me that they said, “We hate when Dad gets angry.”
What, do you turn into Hulk, the rage monster, when you get angry?
It made me reflect. What did they mean? Is it that I am unfairly angry? Anger is a reflection of disappointment, and the reaction sometimes is a measure of what has been done.
Kenya National Innovation Agency CEO Dr Tonny Omwansa during an interview at Lavington in Nairobi on July 31, 2024.
Photo credit: Bonface Bogita | Nation Media Group
Is it always balanced out though, the measure of the anger against what has been done?
It depends on who is measuring. Sometimes, I am trying to deter similar behaviour in the future so I raise the punishment bar.
Anyway, upon reflection I thought, maybe I needed to moderate my expression of my frustration because even though I am trying to guide them, they look at it from the present context. They will be like, man, I just broke a glass and he is screaming at me, almost breaking the door. What did the door to him? So I picked that as a major issue and figured I needed to find a way to engage them more intellectually so that they see the point
Where do you think the anger comes from? I read somewhere that anger mostly comes from the past.
[Pause] I wouldn’t say that I have excessive anger. [Long pause] I think it’s driven by the fear of failure, fear of something going wrong. It scares me because I have nothing to look back to. My parents died when I was relatively young. I have no inheritance I can fall back on. It’s just me. So if somebody messes with my Sh200 I can overreact.
What kind of childhood did you have?
I was born in Kisii. As the second last born of many siblings in a struggling family, I was disadvantaged. I needed to prove myself, so I went into sugarcane farming. I would also burn charcoal and bricks and use the money from these ventures to buy my books and clothes in primary school.
One Christmas day, I was pushing a wheelbarrow full of charcoal and my siblings were like, "Are you crazy, you should be relaxing?" I made Sh80 and I told them, " Guess what, I'm going to have a better time than you because I have the money."
My dad could only pay my school fees up to Form Three because he had retired. I remember trying to raise enough money from my older siblings and friends for my school fees and other expenses. In the end, I went back home and continued with my entrepreneurship. That's how I raised money to finish high school. College wasn't any different; half of the money I earned went to pay for my studies at the University of Nairobi.
Eventually, I went to the US for further studies. I have an undergraduate degree in Computer Science, a Master's in Computer Science, and a PhD in information systems. So, I raised myself. That’s the kind of childhood I had.
The fear of failure significantly contributed to this journey. Back in the day, parents would educate the older siblings who would then take care of the younger ones, but it didn't always play out. Something kept telling me; you got to fight for yourself. Our parents didn’t have much and my mother used to say that work never killed anyone. Maybe that’s where the spirit of working hard comes from.
You are 45 now. Have your 40s been kind to you?
I think so. By any standard. In your 40s you realise that you have to start taking care of your health. You have to slow down on certain things, to put less pressure on yourself. I started noticing that I was more tired than I used to be.
When I started the Innovation Agency three years ago, it was exciting to build it from nothing. I like building new things. I was alone so it took a lot from me. I messed up my back because I had a bad chair since we couldn’t procure good chairs.
And then there is my blood pressure. When I was young I would travel from Johannesburg to London to attend a meeting and the following day I was off to the US for another meeting. The time difference barely affected me, I would wake up and I just go. Those days are gone and self-moderation has caught up.
So, you have taken your foot off the pedal?
Yes, it’s not that I can't do more. It's just that I’m not pressing myself hard to, you know, losing sleep.
Having said that, my personality is such that I am a nuisance if I don't have a challenge. I like that I need to have something I'm working towards, something that keeps me alert and awake and engaged and people to work with and navigate.
I like complex systems. So this is something that has happened throughout my life; that after I accomplish something, I'm going to set up another one, not because it is going to make a difference in how much food I'm going to put on the table or the size of the mattress I'll sleep on or the size of the bed, but I want to make a difference, that's all.
What are you anxious about now?
The kind of world I’m leaving my children in. Will they be valuable to society, be God-fearing, and have a positive impact? Or will they get carried away? Will they miss the mark? Will they get misled?
I realise I have little control over these questions and so I spend a lot of time thinking about how to prepare them for a future that I do not know. Maybe my son will go study somewhere and tell me, "Dad, I’m buying a house on the 67th floor in Taiwan and I'm going to get married to some Chinese lady."
I don't understand that environment. I don’t know how they will navigate. I can’t imagine. I have no control over the environment that I am preparing them for.
Incidentally, before I let you run off to deliver this chocolate, what did marriage bring to your life and what has it taken away?
[Pause] That's an interesting question. It has given me completeness. Before I got married, I was in the US doing graduate school. At some point, I reached an anticlimax of myself. I was on a destructive path. I was making a good income, running projects, I had lots of freedom, owned a house and was flying high. I was investing money all over, sometimes in places I didn’t remember. I was working hard, but I didn't take care of myself.
I needed to slow down because the speed I was moving did not necessarily translate to success.
I learned that life is one indivisible whole. You can't be right on one dimension and wrong on another and consider it to be a success. I lost some friends to road accidents during that season of my fast life. For that reason, I got married. Family brought me wholeness and completeness.
What have I lost as a result of marriage? Even more interesting question. One is speed. I'm generally a fast-paced person. I just like to do many things, you know, real quick, move into something else. I cannot do that anymore. It simply goes in a family or marriage context.
You move as fast as the slowest member of that family. So I'm always slowed down.
But on the flip side, as you grow a little older, you realise that you just can't get up and start running. You wake up in the morning, take a few minutes, first of all, for the system to adapt, and then you start moving. And marriage has helped me to kind of slow down.
