If there was no humility or modesty in the world, how would you introduce yourself to someone who doesn’t know you?
[Laughs] That’s a good one...but a hard one. [Pause] Well, I’d say I’m the first tech ambassador in Africa. I’m one of the World's 100 Most Influential People in Digital Government, according to Apolitical.
Let’s see…[Pause]... yeah, I'm in the world top 100 in Artificial Intelligence... .Africa's top 100 on digital and comms, Mozilla Top 25.
Globally recognised by Mozilla under their RISE25 Award as one of five advocates leading the development of artificial intelligence.
People see me as a global leader however, [raises a finger] more importantly I’m a father, a husband and God first….God first.
I only ask this question because I’m a creative writer and you are here, and I doubt I will ever run into you again. Do you think AI [artificial intelligence] is going to take away my job?
[Chuckle], Please take comfort that AI will never replace creativity as long as it is generative because it has to generate from something, right? AI doesn't imagine on its own because it can't think. Look at what makes us human; memory, sight, energy.
AI is challenged in that regard. My friend, Maria Ressa, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, says that artificial intelligence is neither artificial nor intelligent.
Profound, right? Which is true. It’s not artificial because it generates from you and me. It will never have independent thought or original thought. So no, it will not replace you. What you need to figure out is to what extent do you use AI as yourself to enhance your work.
You've been writing for over 20 years, right? Do you remember your first article? No. Exactly. But it's somewhere. Imagine if you just deploy AI to tell you, okay, so in the last 20 years, what have I been writing about and what have been the changes in my writing over that period of time? When you know this, you can decide to keep this trajectory or to start to write something else.
You can use AI to break down feedback from readers, trends, and things like that and use that to write better.
Fantastic insight. What else are you passionate about like this?
I'm passionate about people, about that intersection of how humans - how the human story continues to challenge technology. I'm passionate about the human condition; how you and I exist is because we've read people's stories.
I spend almost 70 percent of my time out of the office just meeting people, talking to people because people's stories are interesting. And the more I understand them, the more it helps me think about how these new tools can enhance the human experience.
What do you remember about your childhood?
I grew up in Olympic estate in Kibera. When it was called Kibera, not Kibra.
[Chuckles]. We didn't have hierarchies. We didn't have tribes.
It was very much around sharing. It didn’t matter whether you grew up in Olympic, Ayany, Karanja, or Kisumu Ndogo. I attended Olympic Primary. Very tough. Excellence was no joke.
I remember the games; kati and shake and whatnot. Something interesting, in my older years one of the professors told me that those games were scientific; they improved our cognitive and mobility skills. If you compare how you cross the road and how this generation crosses the road, it’s very different, because of the shake we played.
You are able to approximate speeds. The scrapes we used to get from football, germs entering into your body improved our immunity.
There was no particular profession to admire at that time. There were no role models, to be honest. It was really much about you passing exams and seeing what the future held. Just getting by.
When did you start to feel like your life was taking a different trajectory?
My mom brought a computer home once, I was fascinated, so I started typing on it and improving my typing skills. I was 15.
I could type 120 words a minute. In 2000, I volunteered for an organisation and I was lucky to have been selected to be in one of those UN conferences as a youth delegate. My job was to register a whole lot of women for the conference, tens of them queuing. Grassroots.
Since I could type fast, I was registering more women than the rest of the volunteers and this lady noticed me. She was the secretary-general of an organisation that got me my first job in Tunisia. She was called Dr Corine Kumar, a sociologist.
How was growing up under a famous father like yours? (Footballer, Allan Thigo)
It’s almost interesting that there's this image you have of your dad being very famous out there, but you know, in the house it's just your dad. I got that a lot after. We'd go to the stadium a few times. Strange enough, he took us to all the worst games and, you know, the derbies. [Laughs].
Then my mother read the riot act.
So I started almost hating football because of all the violence that was associated with football.
He was a dad, he paid school fees, discipline…but he was hardly there because of football and travel, but when he was around, he was a disciplinarian.
He made me read the newspaper. In school, I would get all the spellings right. My articulation is from him.
What have been some of your most difficult decisions?
Being young and making the decision to move to Tunisia. It was a leap of faith. I had to learn French. Another tough decision was moving back to Kenya just after post-election violence. I had to give up a lot, a career, a diplomatic community. I had everything in Tunisia.
I sold everything and I came back to no job, to nothing. I had enough network, so I wasn't scared about not being able to make a living. But I was coming back to a society that I didn’t understand anymore having been gone for eight years. People had moved.
People had schedules. I had hardly kept any relationship with my friends from childhood. I was a foreigner in my own country. I had to create new friends. It was hard. If you move as fast as I do, a lot of my life is tied to my work.
So if you do not fit in my work, it's very hard to be friends. It doesn't help that we can’t just hang out, I don’t drink. I don't do the social stuff. I'm not interesting enough.
Our father was a footballer, but I'm not into Premier League stuff. Kenyan social life on Saturdays is around this. So normally I just sit and play with my son, but he has a schedule. [Laughs]. He is 10.
You are turning 50 this July, how do you feel?
I don’t feel 50, at all. I feel 37. [Laughs] I have a lot of energy. I don’t hang out with people my age; they are too slow for me. [Laughs].
Guys who talk about buying land… dude, land is not going anywhere. [Laughs]. I feel disconnected from such people. I'm more challenged by this generation because they're not linear.
What do you look forward to in your 50s?
Well, slowing down. Honestly. I really want to slow down. I've been blessed to have travelled extensively in my formative years. The only country probably I've not been to is Australia.
Other people want to travel when they're older. I always tell people, travel when you're younger because at least you can carry your bags, you can walk around. Don't wait when you're older, go for a holiday.
I'm looking for a transition. I always tell my wife I'm looking forward to running a small coffee shop, but not for money.
This is informed by my formative years in the Arab world and something about that coffee culture that was quite interesting. Coffee shops have no hierarchy there, it’s all about conversations.
When have you been very scared in your life?
Wow. [Pause]. Post-election - when my mother died. While taking her body upcountry, we ran into a roadblock in Molo manned by a mob.
A very hostile mob demanding that all non-Kikuyus identify themselves. They had machetes and clubs. And they wanted blood.
You can imagine how scared I was. The guys come and start to rock the car violently. Two guys in the mob happened to have been youth we had worked with from Molo Youth Society that we had some peace project with earlier on.
They saw me and said, Ah, let these ones go. And we left. It was a very traumatic experience.
If you had to apologise to one person, who would that be?
My mother. She died at 59. I always say maybe I could have done right by her. It’s a complex situation where you have to be away but then be there for your parents. I think we turned out the way she wanted us to turn out. I wish I was there for her longer.
But I left to work abroad. I was struggling with the decision and she told me that she had lived her life, so I should live mine. I was young, I realise. I shouldn't beat myself.
Are there some three boxes you want to tick now?
I think at the personal level, I want my family to be secure. I don’t want to be rich and own a whole country. In fact, I know the kind of house I will live in when I'm 70.
It will be a two-bedroom house. It’s pointless to stay in a house you can’t clean yourself. I joke with my wife that I don't want a house upstairs because I may not be able to come down when I go up.
Professionally? It’s about legacy. We don't build institutions, but we should. The one thing I've learned from abroad is that people build institutions, not just naming things after yourself. Around technology, I want to do something around building skills and leadership.
There's no technology leadership, leaders who understand tech, because the world, honestly, will be technology-enhanced.
What makes you insecure?
I'm somebody who's constantly being spoken into by prayer and affirmation. My grandmother constantly did that.
My mother did that. My grandmother from my mother's side kept telling me ‘listen, I prayed for you every day ever since you were a child.’
So it has to take something really dramatic to undo my blessing. So nothing makes me insecure.
