During the summer, sandwiched between the end of my first Stanford Fellowship and a trip to Uganda with Grameen, I was asked by the Corporate Council on Africa to give an interview about my work. They were putting together a feature on "ICT innovators" for their Africa Journal, and wanted to talk about FrontlineSMS. I'm always happy to talk about my work - after all, I rely on this kind of interest to get word out about what I do - and am constantly surprised at the level of interest I get.
This week I finally saw a copy of the Journal. They had chosen to interview just three individuals, quite likely due to time and space constraints, but I found myself in the company of a couple of hugely talented Africans doing great work to further the advance of ICT on their continent. Funnily enough, one of them was Nam Mokwunye, a good friend of mine from Stanford, running an ambitious project to connect 100 Nigerian universities. Being seen as someone "whose localised solutions have greatly contributed to Africa's ICT infrastructure" felt strangely odd since I don't generally see myself as doing that. I am happy to simply be in a place where I can help others achieve their own goals and dreams.