The Vim Views & Versions - Blogs of a MIghTy African

Hello 2019! I am 35 years old now. That is a watershed moment age. Just after my birthday, I was named African Male Youth of the Year 2018. You can read about it on various news sources and read what I also said about it here . In 2019 and beyond, I want to be an even better leader. Yeap. bit.ly/VimViewsVersions I want to write about more posts around leadership like I have done in the past too . But the point of this blog post is to share with you some cool articles written about me , praising my leadership abilities, etc. Ato Ulzen-Appiah is a Ghanaian Star https://www.konnectafrica.net/ato-ulzen-appiah-is-a-ghanaian-star/ I met Ato Ulzen-Appiah http://tokpatic.nandaseye.com/i-met-ato-ulzen-appiah/ Meet Ato Ulzen Appiah, the Mighty African Who Shuns Speaking and Acts to Motivate https://amoafowaa.com/2014/12/22/meet-ato-ulzen-appiah-the-mighty-african-who-shuns-speaking-and-acts-to-motivate/ 9 heroes of modern day Ghana worth celebrating just as Dr. Nkruma...

Ever since the year 2003, I have  seen  people say I would be the president of Ghana . They must have seen something in me . Some have been saying #Ato4President  for a long time . But that's not the point of this post so we won't get into that. I would rather have people say I am (not I would be) a great leader . I don't think I am a really great leader ( which is what we need to see ) but I am trying and would love to be known as one of the best leaders of all time . The same way Alex Ferguson is one of the greatest managers of all time. Beyonce is one of the greatest singers of all time. Tim Duncan is one of the best basketball players of all time. Oprah is one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time. The late  Nelson Mandela is one of the greatest leaders of all time. Catch my drift? I have blogged about (my) leading into leadership at KNUST-JSS , Presec , Syracuse ,  MIT , etc. Where am I today? Let's see. One fine day in ...

I met  +Mabel Blankson  last year after  +Barcamp Ho . She was introduced to me by  +Ali Bukari Maiga . I rode with her,  +Seyram Freddy Ahiabor  and another lady back to Accra after the event. I didn't get to know her as much as I could have but that's a story for another day. Early this year, she approached me saying she wanted to write about me on her blog. Wow, I thought. Hadn't realised she was the writer type. After some whatsapp chats back and forth, she asked me a number of questions and I answered her. Today. this blog post was born. yibellla journal: A LEGEND OF INSPIRATION- ATO ULZEN APPIAH : You meet him and you see nothing but inspiration. He has got great brainchildren which are fruits of bold initiatives he took. He dared ... Read on. It's a good read. I have talked about various things in the post she has via some of these blog posts so you can learn more via these. The Tech (KNUST primary and JSS) years . The Presec years . The MIT y...

Earlier today, many Global Shapers in Africa had the pleasure of sitting down with Professor Klaus Martin Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum. He himself has really championed this Global Shapers community, a community of young people with demonstrated potential and excellence who are committed to changing and shaping the state of the world. I wanted to share a few soundbites from the session. For me, the biggest was his 'raving' about Nelson Mandela. I asked him a question about "how he would compare the youth of today to the youth of decades past" since the World Economic Forum has been existence more than 40 years. In answering the question, he went into stories of how WEF was involved in the birth of a new South Africa. He mentioned how he invited Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and De Klerk to Geneva when Madiba was released from prison and forged conversations and relationships around trust, and reconciliation. He ended up saying that no leader has i...

Earlier today, I was part of "A Meet-The-Leader" session with the "Oga At The Top" of OANDO, Mr. Wale Tinubu. This happened as part of events organized for Global Shapers attending SHAPE Africa and the World Economic Forum this week. Learn more about OANDO on Wikipedia . Here is a great write-up about him. Below are a few tweets I wrote while we were all picking his brain on various issues and learning and sharing. In a session with Wale Tinubu of Oando, a successful African oil and gas company from Nigeria. #shapeafrica #wefafrica — Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) May 8, 2013 When there are pockets of excellence in Africa, it converts into powerful progress. Via Wale Tinubu of OANDO. #leadership #shapeafrica . — Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) May 8, 2013 "Built capacity by copying what the foreign companies were doing n wouldnt sit there for them to continue doing it"- Tinubu #shapeafrica — Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) May 8, 2013 "For my ...

Earlier, I attended a leadership panel run by Coca-Cola in conjunction with the Global Shapers Community in Cape Town. Today is also the 127th birthday of Coke! I have had maybe 3 coke cans to celebrate this. I also re-posted a blog post I wrote about Coke a number of years ago. The panel featured 3 panelists from Coca-Cola, one of which was William Egbe. There were a lot of great learnings and insights shared. I was live-tweeting some of them. And now we have a blog post :-) When you're making a decision, no matter how risky, make sure you know the potential implications and can handle them all. #wefafrica — Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) May 8, 2013 "You can't be too special when it comes to integrity. Everyone must follow the values"- Coca-Cola leadership panel @ #WEFAfrica #shapeafrica — Ato Ulzen-Appiah (@Abocco) May 8, 2013 "Take the vision (however boring it is) & repeat it over & over again inpractical ways".- Coca-Cola leader...

Social innovation will be very important in shaping Africa. I think we all agree we need critical thinking, creative working and entrepreneurial acting in driving progress on the continent. That must be social though, it must be done together, in groups, in organizations, in systems, in partnerships and collaboration. I am in Cape Town this week. I applied and got invited to join the World Economic Forum on Africa event this week. Before that starts on Wednesday, I am attending SHAPE Africa, which is the first gathering of Global Shapers from around the African continent. I've been in the midst of multiple awesome Africans but never have I been a group like this, on the continent itself. Interestingly, I know very few of the people attending SHAPE Africa so far. I know the Director of the Global Shapers Community, Yemi Babbington-Ashaye, from our time at MIT and also half-knew Nancy Sumari, and I later realized her husband, Luca Neghesti (of KINU) who I knew was there. Yeap. I ...

Last July, I was welcomed into the Global Shapers Hub of Accra . Interestingly, I had only heard about it a month earlier when the Accra folks were looking for additional shapers in Ghana. I wasn't too clear on what the Global Shapers were but the way I just explained it to friends of mine recently are that Global Shapers are the young people shaping their communities who are connected to the World Economic Forum . Let's pick something from the official website. " The Global Shapers Community is a network of Hubs developed and led by young people who are exceptional in their potential, their achievement and their drive to make a contribution to their communities " Since I've been part of the Global Shapers Hub of Accra , I've gotten to share and learn from some very awesome individuals based in Accra. The curator of the hub is Nadia Zeine who runs Brand Effect (seen their signboards in Ayawaso West Wuogon?) and Other Stakeholders, amongst other thing...

I've been meaning to write this entry for about a month. After the facebook campaign for presidency got its 233rd member, I decided it was time. If you didn't know, 233 is Ghana's country code (phone). It's of major significance to me. I've been honoured to see people speak highly of my leadership skills, etc and it's been making me wonder if I am up for such things. This is the 4th in my leading to leadership series, if you missed earlier entries, here they are: Tech/KNUST Primary & JSS (pre-high school), Presec (high school), and Syracuse (pre-college). In this entry, I will talk about the MIghTy years. A dream to attend the best engineering school had come alive. A prayer to be in a world-class institution had been answered. How did I deal with leading? Let's find out. Before we get into the stories surrounding 77 Massachusetts Avenue, we must understand how we got there. One joyous day in March 2002, I received a phone call. It was from MIT. I had...

I was checking my favorite news feed source yesterday - Africagoodnews.com . Yes, the name is self-explanatory. They try to aggregate good news about Africa. One story which struck me was that 5 Africans had been named in Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of the Year 2009. I was not surprised to see President Paul Kagame in there, I just blogged about him a few days ago. The other name that struck me was Dambisa Moyo's. I thought to myself, this lady is doing it big. Her 'Dead Aid' book is probably the most important book written by an African in the last few years, and no, it is not a novel. Dambisa and Paul are joined by William Kentridge,(South African artist), Hadizatou Mani (Niger), Barbara Hogan (South Africa's current health minister). Congrats to all these individuals and may they spur us all on to become as influential. I want to dwell on Dambisa Moyo , her Dead Aid book and the chatter it has generated at the water coolers in the blogosphere. I ...

When my friend sent me an email asking if I wanted to attend a lunch with Patrick Awuah, I was ecstatic. I had met Patrick before, at the Harvard Business School African Business Conference in 2005 but being able to get this face-to-face time over a free meal was too good to pass up. Patrick Awuah is my hero. I tried to tell him when I saw him but I don't know if he understood the gravity of my statement. Patrick is the kind of person most of us must aspire to; an individual whose heart is set on Africa's development, has taken, continues to take steps to realise the African dream. What has Patrick done to deserve my awe? He started the Ashesi University, a model university in Accra which is setting the pace for educating the next generation of African leaders, entrepreneurs, etc. Achimota alum (Akora) Patrick Awuah left the shores of Ghana in the 80's to pursue his undergraduate education at Swarthmore College. He loved the experience there so much that he broadcasts what ...

This year is the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. Personally, I didn't know much about the genocide until the Hotel Rwanda movie came out. I was amazed by the courage and bravery of Paul Rusesabagina and learnt some more about the events surrounding the events of 1994. A couple of years ago, I wrote a poem commemorating the anniversary which you can read here. Recently, I have fallen in love with the work Paul Kagame is doing in Rwanda but also more importantly, the work Rwandans are putting in to support him. A few months ago, Obama was all the buzz, but now he's in DC doing his thing while I pay more attention to Paul Kagame. Uganda's Sunna sang about Obama as an African hero , but Paul Kagame is ours, and is a leader we must begin to celebrate. Paul Kagame was in MIT as an the first African leader to deliver MIT's prestiguous Compton lecture. Not George Bush's best friend J. A. Kuffour, or Thabo Mbeki, or Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, but a former guerilla warl...

One fateful day in 2000, I heard Arthur Musah (one of my idols at Presec) had gotten into MIT. The excitement that greeted this announcement was big in Presec because MIT was supposed to be the best engineering institution in the world. I had sworn not to do anything related to biology because I hated my biology teacher and I was quite strong in Math. It was the first time I heard about the Massachusetts (not Minnesota, Michigan or Montana) Institute of Technology. I declared that I was going to follow in Arthur's footsteps and enrol in MIT one day. Praise be to God, one day in March 2002, I found out I was admitted into my dream school. For a moment, I wondered if it was the Michigan Institute of Technology; I had some doubts. I must have done something right with my time at Presec. Some decisions and goals I set led to this moment, but what happened in that lean year between Presec and MIT. A lot happened, but it ultimately made me a little different from the person I was at Pres...

My senior secondary (high school) experience in Presec constitutes some of the best years in my life. My leadership journey continued. I didn’t get any ‘would you run for president’ questions there but I got similar questions about leadership. Here, I was in a boy’s school, separate from the ‘distractions’ that girls could be and in an environment where you had to be of your best behavior. Being of your best behavior may help shape your leadership abilities, but it is not the only trait or factor in leadership. I didn’t have all these traits in Presec and though I may have gained some, I may still not be the finished product. Writing the first entry about leading into leadership was nice, so we get to do it twice. I chose to go to Presec because it is an excellent school and I also wanted to get away from my parents. I wanted to become more independent and get the chance to ‘live a little’. I wouldn’t go to a Cape Coast school because I didn’t know any relatives there and I had to be ...