Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Join Us - Let us take Africa back


I recently started a new job in a company called ThoughtWorks inc. If you visited our website, you will learn that ThoughtWorks is a company that builds custom software for companies and it also has a very strong social impact program.

While they were trying to recruit me, I had a meeting with the chairman and founder and he broke down for me what this social impact program is about. I left that meeting feeling radicalised and since then, I have been behaving like a member of a cult. I have tried to recruit everyone that is at a loose end and now I have moved on to those with ongoing careers. A pal who wanted me to join him at Microsoft has now retreated after I turned the guns on him and tried to recruit him for ThoughtWorks.

Many of you are probably not surprised that techies (read geeks) can be cult like. But your lack of insight is not the half of it. We are fighting digital colonialism (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsKcQsfCDg8) perpetrated by the likes of Google, Microsoft and Oracle. Led by our fearless leader, Neville Roy Singham (google him), ThoughtWorks intends to empower Africans to take their destiny into their own hands.

So now, I am going after my friends running the rat race in the diaspora. It is time to stop careering and start contributing. But be informed that there will be no soft landing. You will come and you will jump out of a helicopter taking heavy machine gun fire from Alshabab militias. The government closing down media houses, Besigye getting beaten on the streets and civil servants stealing all our money is what you have to live through everyday. The pot holes, the dust, and the boda bodas will be your every day experience as opposed to your 7 days experience may be once or twice a year.

I know some of you will think that Uganda is better off with you over there sending serious hard currency; especially now that diaspora remittances are almost rivalling coffee as a major earner. But the truth is, most of that money gets stollen in taxes and or used in consumption. What we want is your brains. You have the ideas that will transform this economy and make the lives of your brothers and sisters better for generations to come.

Only you can effect the real fundamental change. Join us...