The Vim Views & Versions - Blogs of a MIghTy African

I asked my Senegalese friends to name their  top 5 songs  ever, from Senegal . I do not have a Senegalese alter-ego yet, but I have met Gelongal and Youssou Ndour and I led  Museke . I also asked  Google  Gemini (yes, not Meta AI, Chat GPT, Grok, Deepseek, or POE - because, I asked it through Google Sheets). You know it is my friend these days right? I also contributed my top 5. My first time in  Senegal  was in 2016. But prior to that, since 2002, I had been learning about Senegalese music from my  African friends , all around the USA, while at  MIT . I got to know more about this when me,  Edward Mabonga, Phelele Fakudze  and others started  Museke  in 2006. It was great to see some of my friends suggest songs that we were jamming to back in the day. I wanted to do a list of top 5, but there are too many songs. So I have aggregated  11 , to represent Senegal in the World Cup of  #MusicWeDeyFeel ...

I asked my Kenyan friends to name their top 5 songs ever, from Kenya . My Kenyan alter-ego, David Ochieng Mwangi , also contributed, thanks to all he has learnt around Museke . I also asked Google Gemini (yes, not Meta AI, Chat GPT, Grok, Deepseek, or POE - because, I asked it through Google Sheets). You know it is my friend these days right? I also contributed my top 5, while reminiscing this list from 2009 . My first time in Kenya was in 2011. But prior to that, since 2002, I had been learning about Kenyan music from my Kenyan friends at MIT . I got to know more about this when me, Edward Mabonga and others started Museke in 2006. It was great to see some of my friends suggest songs that we were jamming to back in the day. I wanted to do a list of top 5, but there are too many songs. So I have aggregated 11 , to represent Kenya in the World Cup of #MusicWeDeyFeel . The starting eleven . Drop your opinions, props, suggestions in the comments section . Here we go, in no part...

We at GhanaThink believe strongly in our mission: mobilize and organize talent for the primary benefit of Ghana and our vision: build a critical mass of patriotic, passionate, positive, proactive, progressive and productive young Ghanaians . Our mission is very broad so there are so many things we can do but we would only do what's easiest for us to succeed at given our state and situation  . We started GhanaThink with the spirit of volunteerism . To this day, GhanaThink is run by 100+  volunteer members and labour , including myself.  Volunteeringh opportunities with us exist for all Barcamps we organize. Aside the members, we normally have a group of volunteers per each local team,  and if we need more, we look for some. Currently, we normally get new volunteers through our community - Konnect , etc or people who we have noted who want to volunteer with us. Volunteerism is when people decide to help get something done to help others without being paid for it ....

A few years ago, I joined a seminar by One Ayindaa called  ENTERPRISE SATURDAY . The topic was HOW DO I MAKE MYSELF EMPLOYABLE THROUGH VALUE ADDITION? This followed the first Barcamp Ahanta in December 2019 , which was a partnership between GhanaThink and One Ayindaa . As Justice Baidoo puts it, One Ayindaa is a movement of young men and women of Ahanta. This was a year after we at GhanaThink had organized Jobcamps in the 10 regional capitals , and after the National Youth Employment Convening, the #YouthDeyJob & #Youth4Work hashtags were born. Here are a few key things around work readiness and job skills I shared - and now you have access to the same information. Adaptability & Ability to Learn Being able to adapt & fit into different environments, having an attitude of learning, ability to get up to speed to do different tasks and being smart are probably the most crucial things for one to be employable. Lots of young people are taught to take instructions and...

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...

I have always been solution driven , especially since I returned to Ghana in 2011. Oftentimes, we discuss the problems and challenges that we face, complaining, a lot. I decided many years ago that I want to be part of conversations that start from: “This is how we are going to solve this problem”. I stopped mostly listening to Ghanaian radio because it is full of complaints, bad news and not enough “What are we doing about this problem?” I want to see what I call Solution Radio . Some journalists like Bernard Avle have been driving more of that. One of the problems is air pollution. We at GhanaThink and others funded by Clean Air Fund are doing something about this. We have been working on a Clean Air Ghana project funded by Clean Air Fund.  The tagline for the #CleanAirGhana project was eventually chosen as Be Part of the Solution, not the Pollution. The key people involved in this were Gameli Adzaho, Patrick Keli Atitsogbui, Irene Dery, Daniel Prince Yakuba, Ruky Jane Azusong, ...