The Vim Views & Versions - Blogs of a MIghTy African

You might know me for many things, but you might know how much of a basketball buff I am (or have become). Growing up in Kumasi, Ghana, I was not so much into basketball like football, tennis - which I played a lot and followed assiduously. I was passionate about trivia too, combining several trips to the KNUST Children’s Library with tennis matches involving my brother Kofi and friends. I knew lots of trivia in football, tennis, athletics, boxing, & bball as we called it, especially my friends on KNUST campus who played it. We didn’t have many basketball nets and hoops to play in my community so I didn’t learn to play the sport. I liked Michael Jordan like many folks, as well as Penny Hardaway - 2 of the top guards of the 90s - playing for Chicago Bulls and Orlando Magic respectively. My passion for basketball extends to my cultural neighbourhood, such as blogging about African players in the NBA, emphasizing pride in continental talent like Joel Embiid, Pascal Siakam, etc and Ime...

I have been following basketball more closely since I went to the USA in 2001 to continue my journey to MIT from Presec . During my 10 years in the US, I fell in love with the game of basketball. #ILoveThisGame . This love grew partly because I was unable to watch much football as a big sports fan. If you think I am talking about the NFL, you must be new here . Football, aka soccer, okay, I am about to talk about American sports so I would defer for now . I have blogged about  basketball  a lot. This time, let me tell you about NCAA basketball , even though March Madness is a couple of months past. I support the following colleges in the annual tournaments: Stanford, Syracuse, North Carolina (UNC) and UConn . From September 2001, I spent almost 12 months in Syracuse , New York with my dad who was working on his Post Doc at the time. I worked at a local grocery chain to get money for school, helped my dad with some side hustles and he taught me how to cook . He also was the...

On January 11, 2019, I  joined the  Success Drive  Whatsapp platform to be featured, share, answer questions, etc.   This was set up by Derrick Obeng of  Campus Radio Ghana . This was similar to the conversation I had with the  NUGS Volta Region Bloc Women's Platform  to share and discuss  volunteeringh , following after  Barcamp Ho  coordinator  Courage Christson Tetteh  had done something similar with them earlier.  Pamela Klutse  made that one happen and I blogged about it as well. 2 awesome people who all were part of the  Barcamp Ho 2018   organizing team. We discussed many things on the Success Drive  show , it was like a hot seat -  #KonnectKouch  ( watch this space ).  Edith Bannerman , the host, asked me: " So studying at  MIT  and Stanford ? How did that go? "  I picked up  #MightyAfrican  from my tertiary education in the US.  Let's dig int...

At the Stanford SEED Centre in Accra, here for a design thinking workshop. Ready to learn. Maybe blog this later too. :-) — Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) October 17, 2013 Today, I participated in a design thinking workshop at the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies (SEED) centre in Accra . It was organized for Rancard which is one of the companies in the first cohort. I am working at Rancard now (yea, long story, will share that with you later). Ehi Binitie , my boss and one of Rancard co-founders, has been a huge fan of design thinking this year and ensured people he worked closely with got to appreciate the same. So about 10 of my Rancard colleagues and 5 of our friends from our clients (mobile network operators) joined for this workshop. Bill Scull , who has a lot of experience in Business Development with companies in the Silicon Valley , is one of the coaches based in Accra now working some of the companies in the first SEED West Africa cohort. Today...

Earlier this year, the Ghanaian Ambassador to the US, His Excellency Daniel Ohene Agyekum, was at Stanford to meet members of this community. It was a 90-minute meeting organized by the Akwaaba (Ghanaian Students Association) here, spearheaded by Kwadwo Osei-Opare. I wasn't sure what to make of the meeting. I have never really encountered politicians or statesmen that close (from Ghana). Either way, let's get into what happened. I was given the honour of introducing the ambassador. I knew about him as a one-time Ashanti Regional minister during Rawlings' time. I grew up in Kumasi. After the intro, Mr. Agyekum gave a little speech to the audience. Half of us were Ghanaian students, others were Caucasian and Black American. As a historian, Mr. Agyekum saw it to talk about Ghana's history, the might of the Ashanti kingdom and how Ghana is really democratic. The Ghanaians in the room must have been wondering, "erm, we know this already". But it wasn't just Gha...

Ghana's 54th birthday happened this past weekend. As expected, it didn't have as much fanfare as four years ago. President Atta Mills gave a speech . The nation's teachers threatened to remove any single spines of any celebrations. Ghanaians all over the world found an excuse to party. Folks wore Ghanaian colours when they normally wouldn't. Others learnt how to recite the Ghanaian pledge and sing the national anthem again. Many things happened. How did I spend/celebrate/reflect upon the 54th anniversary of Ghana's independence's weekend? Let's find out. I woke up late on 6th March, Sunday , to watch my team, Manchester United, versus Liverpool. I was over 30 minutes late and I was greeted with the punishment of a two goal deficit. Ah, if I had woken up early! Like all of Red Devil nation, we all believed MANUtd will make a comeback but it was not meant to be . So I congratulated Liverpool on their win and because the heavens were impressed with my honesty/...

Ghana's 54th birthday happened this past weekend. As expected, it didn't have as much fanfare as four years ago. President Atta Mills gave a speech . The nation's teachers threatened to remove any single spines of any celebrations. Ghanaians all over the world found an excuse to party. Folks wore Ghanaian colours when they normally wouldn't. Others learnt how to recite the Ghanaian pledge and sing the national anthem again. Many things happened. How did I spend/celebrate/reflect upon the 54th anniversary of Ghana's independence's weekend? Let's find out. On Friday March 4th, like everyone other Friday, I wore an African shirt . After finishing school work, etc, I watched some of the Chicago Bulls-Orlando Magic game. Y'all know Dwight Howard aka Superman aka Chocolate Shoulders is Ghanaian right? Yes, because people say we look alike. I left the game to the Black Grad Students Association meeting with a couple of things on mind but the primary one being ...

While at the Stanford Africa Forum two weekends ago, I asked a question during the education panel . The recipients were to be Chris Bradford , the COO of the African Leadership Academy (ALA) and Zimbabwe's Lennon Chimbumu Adams , one of the first graduates from the ALA. The ALA is a residential secondary institution located on the outskirts of Johannesburg, a two-year program that prepares students for university. You can learn all about ALA on its wikipedia page . I was thinking about a recent new story I heard about Ghana's Ashesi University, where it was reported that out of 90 total graduates last May, 14 percent went on to graduate school abroad. Still, a majority of Ashesi’s graduates stays in Ghana . On the Ashesi website, it also stresses the latter point, saying 95% choose to stay in Africa . Hence, I wanted to know what the total number of graduates from ALA's first ever class, how many graduates were staying in Africa, what universities were they going to or w...

Two weekends ago, I was at the Stanford Africa Forum . If you were there and you saw a young man wearing an African shirt , unlike the many others who were wearing suits and their cousin-type attires, that would be me. The fairer one. The theme for the event was " Entrepreneurship and Development: Doing Business in a Frontier Market ". It was organized by Stanford students, including some from the Graduate School of Business (GSB). I must congratulate the team for putting up a great event. I wasn't going to miss this event for anything. It's what I do. I live for events like these. I documented a lot of what happened at SAF through.... tweets . Yes, I am loving my HTC Aria powered by Android. Let me tell you what I took away from SAF as per the tweets. First of, I am not a big fan of keynote speeches. I won't lie, I wasn't too interested in who the keynote for SAF was, so I skipped his speech totally. You can find his name at the Stanford African Business Foru...

As part of running the 10 kilometre race last Friday, my group was also fundraising for Run4Edcuation. Together, we raised over a $1000. Shout out to Fanuel Muindi and Shantal Marshall (two Stanford students) for this great initiative. Fanuel's quite the runner, having run the San Francisco marathon amongst many other races. His goal is to run the Boston Marathon. Fanuel got interested a couple of years ago and decided to run for a cause. This idea gave birth to the Run4Education group and he's been running to raise money to support students in East Palo Alto Phoenix Academy. Apparently, 75% of East Palo Alto kids won't graduate from high school. Ghana and Africa, listen, nowhere cool . Small contributions can go very far, even in the expensive United States, to make children stay in school. Here is some info about Run4Education Run4Education is a group dedicated to filling the gaps in education so that every student gets the chance to reach his or her potential,...