We got into conversation about entrepreneurship, about innovation, and about whether Africa is truthfully prepared and ready to partake in the fourth industrial revolution.

This is part 1 of a 3-part conversation. Have a listen, and please subscribe to her channel, so you do not miss the next episodes.

Two Questions

I recently finished reading two books: I Am Not a Robot, by and Co-Intelligence by Prof. . I found the pairing useful because the two books approach AI from different but complementary directions.

Mollick’s Co-Intelligence is primarily concerned with how people can work with AI. His framing is I find extremely practical: how to collaborate with AI, how to remain the human in the loop, how to use AI as a co-worker, tutor, coach, or creative partner, and how to adapt to tools that are still improving rapidly.

Stern’s I Am Not a Robot approaches the question from the side of lived experience. Her work is less about AI as an abstract technical system and more about what happens when AI enters daily life: work, learning, intimacy, decision-making, productivity, attachment, automation, and the uneasy boundary between assistance and replacement.

What I found interesting is that very little in these books felt completely new to me - this was a delight. I do not say this in any way to criticise these books. It is likely just [great!] evidence that I have become an extreme AI user over the past two years.

Business school did that to me. The workload required reading, analysis, writing, presentations, strategy, modelling, research, and constant synthesis across different subjects. AI became part of how I managed that pace.

This is what I think both books do well: they give language to patterns many heavy AI users already experience but may not have fully named. Mollick helps explain how to work with AI deliberately. Stern helps explain what that work may be doing to us.

Ladder of Learning

In I am Not a Robot, Stern discusses the Bloom’s Taxonomy. First developed in 1956, the taxonomy organized learning objectives in the cognitive domain into levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. It became one of the most widely used frameworks in education because it helped teachers and institutions think about different depths of learning.

In 2001, the taxonomy was revised by scholars including Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl. The revised version shifted the categories from nouns to verbs and reordered the upper levels. The familiar revised sequence is: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. This revision matters because it reframed learning as active performance rather than static possession of knowledge. A learner is not simply expected to have knowledge, but to do something with it.

Four Rules

Mollick’s Co-Intelligence is useful because it frames AI not merely as a tool to be used occasionally, but as a collaborator that must be managed deliberately. The four rules he offers are quite practical in my opinion: always invite AI to the table; be the human in the loop; treat AI like a person, but specify what kind of person it should be; and assume this is the worst AI you will ever use.

This is the balance I keep returning to. AI is powerful enough to help people learn. It is also powerful enough to help people avoid learning. It can accelerate mastery. It can also simulate mastery.

Have a listen wherever you get your podcasts, or read the full article via my blog: Mastery.

According to the ITU, roughly 6 billion people are connected to the internet, compared to fewer than 400 million at the turn of the millennium. Three-quarters of humanity now participates in a shared digital environment where information can move across borders almost instantly.

However, more than 2 billion people remain offline. Only about 36% of Africa’s population is online, meaning roughly 64% is offline. This is the real crisis: Africa accounts for roughly 43–45% of all offline people on Earth.

The digital divide is what pushed me to pursue a Master of Science in Information Management Systems at the Malawi University of Science and Technology [research track], and specifically the entrepreneurial opportunities posited by Africa’s Digital Transformation.

In present day, artificial intelligence is diffusing through society at extraordinary speed. According to Microsoft, roughly one in six people worldwide now use generative AI tools, while nearly 80 percent of organizations report using AI in at least one business function. Global investment in AI has reached hundreds of billions of dollars annually. As I pursued my MBA at the Michigan State University, I got deeper into the question of what kind of tech we can build for those who are vastly marginalized.

Yet the technology itself is only part of the story.

The amount of compute used to train frontier AI systems has been growing at roughly five times per year since 2020, dramatically increasing humanity’s ability to generate, synthesize, and distribute knowledge. Questions that once required teams of researchers and years of analysis can increasingly be explored in hours, days, or minutes.

And yet, despite unprecedented access to information, the world’s defining challenges remain remarkably familiar: conflict, inequality, institutional distrust, climate change, corruption, political polarization, and uneven development.

As our tools become more powerful, a more difficult question emerges:

What happens when technological progress outpaces human progress?

That was the heart of my talk.

WORLD 2.0: Smarter Machines, Faster Evidence, Same Egos

On the 22nd of March, 2026, I and 8 other leaders took to the stage with TEDxMSU, and I delivered a talk on ‘Ego’.

TEDxMSU is a non-profit initiative led by students of Michigan State University. This year’s theme was Sonder, and it celebrated the realization that every person you encounter is living a life and carries stories as vivid and complex as your own.

This being my first TEDTalk, it was ideally a very brief synthesis of a broader body of work explored throughout the both the Lessons Books [publishing on the 6th of July, 2026] - a seven-part inquiry into international development as it is lived, practiced, and inherited, particularly from the vantage point of the Global South.

That book series is my 4 year commitment, to preface this here podcast: the Lessons Conversation.

From the first industrial revolution through imperialism, neocolonialism and development to artificial intelligence and global cooperation, I in this talk examine the tension between what we now know and what we are willing to do with that knowledge.

The audio in this substack and the video on YouTube are similar, yet starkly different. I explain why and how at the beginning of the podcast.

Watch Via YouTube

Listen wherever you get your Podcasts [Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc]

If you make time to listen to both, I’d love to hear from you what were the things I may have edited out, or just forgotten to say on stage. Feel free to email me your ideas, and stand a chance to win free copies of my upcoming books [if you get some things right!]

Episode 8: Mastery [Coming Next Week]

10,000 Hours, and How Artificial Intelligence Can Get You There

In next week’s conversation, we get deeper into tech, as we explore artificial intelligence.

I am currently reading two books: Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick, and I Am Not a Robot by Joanna Stern. I had a sit down with the former Minister of Tourism in Malawi, Dr. Vera Kamtukule, to discuss the future of technology in Malawi, and beyond.

In that episode, we will dive deeper into how I personally use AI in my day to day life; how leaders like Ethan and Joanna use AI, and some best practices on how AI can help you advance in your personal work and explorations.

As always, keep asking:

What works?

In what context?

Under what circumstances?

and…

Why?

The historical narrative primarily begins around 1770, marking the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It moves through merchant capitalism, colonial companies, slavery, wage labour, factories, industrialization, crises, technology, empire, dependency theory, globalization, and all the way to present day artificial intelligence.

Perhaps my favorite part [biases considered]: the book includes women like Anna Wheeler, Flora Tristan, Rosa Luxemburg, Joan Robinson, and Silvia Federici. Cassidy specifically discusses female factory workers and Federici’s argument that unpaid domestic labour is essential to reproducing the capitalist workforce.

African economies inherited systems shaped by extraction, fragmented production, weak industrial bases, imported curricula, interrupted political continuity, and young populations trying to enter a global economy already shaped by others.

These conditions in present day still influence how African countries produce, trade, educate, govern, and imagine development.

Rethinking economics in Africa therefore requires more than just policy adjustment. It requires a deeper rethinking of how Africans are taught to understand value, production, labour, history, power, institutions, and the global order. The classroom, the farm, the factory, the port, the household, the ministry, the market, and the university all belong in the same conversation.

Economics is often introduced as the study of scarcity and choice. That definition has its place, but it narrows the field too quickly.

Economics is the system through which societies organize value: who owns resources, who works, who is paid, what is produced, what is imported, what is exported, who captures profit, what the state protects, what households reproduce, and how a country sits inside the global order.

Seen this way, economics becomes foundational knowledge. Every university student should encounter it, whether they are studying engineering, tourism, education, public health, agriculture, technology, arts, law, public administration, or business.

Every profession operates inside economic systems. Every sector creates, captures, distributes, or loses value. A university education should prepare students to understand those systems with historical, institutional, and practical clarity.

Africa needs people who can model policy and understand dignity. People who can read balance sheets and still care about the village. People who can build industries without reproducing extraction. People who can govern systems without forgetting humans.

That, to me, is the real work.

Listen to the full podcast, or read the full article via my blog byntha.com

The phrase suggested something cheap, something temporary, something that might break sooner than expected. If a product was Made in China, it was often viewed as an inferior alternative to goods from Europe, America, or Japan. The label became a shorthand for low quality.

Looking back, that perception is remarkable.

Today, China is one of the most important industrial and technological powers in the world. Chinese companies compete directly with some of the most powerful firms on earth.

Huawei has become a global force in telecommunications and consumer technology. BYD has emerged as a serious competitor in electric vehicles. DJI dominates large segments of the global drone market. China leads in batteries, renewable energy manufacturing, and increasingly artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The country that was once associated with cheap manufacturing is now associated with industrial capability.

After reading Patrick McGee’s Apple in China, I found myself thinking less about Apple and more about how that transformation occurred.

While the book is presented as the story of Apple’s relationship with China, it is ultimately a story about development. More specifically, it is a story about how countries learn.

One of the book’s most important insights is that Apple did not simply use China. In many ways, Apple helped build China.

Conventional narratives often describe the relationship as one in which China provided cheap labour and manufacturing capacity while Apple captured the value through design and innovation. There is truth in that interpretation, but it is incomplete.

Listen to the full podcast, or read the full article via my blog byntha.com

I had shared that I do not drive in Detroit, and when I spoke with his campaign manager, Cal, he was more than happy to pick me up and bring me to Ecorse. It was a small logistical detail, but a make or break one, for me. In conversation with him as he dropped me back home later that day, Cal joked that there is roughly a 50% flake rate in volunteer organizing, which made him even more committed to making sure as many people as possible were able to participate.

Campaigns are often narrated through the visible things: the candidate, the speeches, the endorsements, the policy platform, the fundraising numbers, the election results. But the day-to-day running of a campaign depends on the people doing the practical work on the ground: organizing volunteers, moving people, assigning turf, answering questions, solving problems, and making sure others are able to show up.

For me, that was my entry point into the day. That was how the day started.

The room was filled with founders, policymakers, and ecosystem builders gathered around a shared objective: increasing the probability that companies are built and sustained here.

I really like how the City of Detroit is approaching their entrepreneurship programming. It is quite deliberate: municipal grants, residency stipends, coworking access, and roles like Director of Entrepreneurship are all designed to reduce friction and create density.

As someone who is both an entrepreneur and a policy analyst, I find myself more than curious. From the inside, the strategy feels coherent. Capital is being deployed, networks are forming, and leadership is aligned around making Detroit competitive for builders.

But the city reveals itself differently once you leave that room. Moving through Detroit with the Director of Youth Affairs, Jerjuan Howard, the layers begin to separate.

Institutional support, ecosystem energy, and neighborhood reality do not fully overlap—they operate in parallel. Jerjuan’s work—through debate programs, public space, and the Howard Family Bookstore—exists at the level where rebuilding becomes physical and immediate.

His question at the end of the day to me, “Do you plan to stay?” left me reflecting on what I hope to gain from and give to Detroit.

Read the full post

I am taking my first few months in Detroit slow, learning her soul.

Detroit is a useful contradiction because it was not a peripheral city trying to become relevant. It was relevant—technologically, industrially, and culturally—at a scale that reshaped the global imagination of production. And then it ceased to function as the kind of system it had been.

The 1950 census lists Detroit at 1,849,568 residents. By the 2020 decennial census, the city’s population is 639,111. A structural unwind.

The misleading part is that the city is still physically large. The Census Bureau profile reports Detroit’s land area at about 138.7 square miles. Detroit is large enough to fit the combined land areas of San Francisco, Boston, and Manhattan within its borders—and it actually ranks 64th in the United States by land area.

Read the full article

I guess we are finally here: our first episode!

I started working on The Lessons Conversation in 2023 while working within the United Nations in New York.

At the time, the goal as the Synthesis and Lessons section the UNDP Independent Evaluation Office was simple: advance organizational learning in UNDP, across the UN, and partner institutions.

I was mandated as host, and over time, it became clear to me that there was far more to unpack.

When I left the UN, I requested to continue the work independently. In doing so, I also realized how much I didn’t yet understand [about international relations, and more]. That realization led me to begin writing the Lessons book series.

Today, that series is complete, and set for publication on July 6.

Along the way, I also delivered a TED Talk—World 2.0: What works, in What Context, Under What Circumstances, and Why—which further shaped the direction of this work.

Now, this platform evolves again.

For the next year, I am [attempting to] commit[ting] to recording consistently:

• Lessons Weekly — short, 20 - 30 minute explorations

• Extended episodes — deeper conversations with guests

• Audiobooks — bringing the written work to life

This is both a continuation of the conversation and a discipline—of thinking, researching, and articulating ideas in real time.

Occasionally, I will be joined by others through three segments: Leaders’ Legacy, Community Voice, No Names. For now, this is a more direct body of work.

If you’ve been following the journey—thank you.
If you’re just joining—welcome.

This week’s lessons are about why there are no Apple Stores on the African continent.

Read the full article: byntha.com/numbers

Until next time, keep learning!

I started working on The Lessons Conversation in 2023 while working within the United Nations in New York.

At the time, the goal as the Synthesis and Lessons section the UNDP Independent Evaluation Office was simple: advance organizational learning in UNDP, across the UN, and partner institutions.

I was mandated as host, and over time, it became clear to me that there was far more to unpack.

When I left the UN, I requested to continue the work independently. In doing so, I also realized how much I didn’t yet understand [about international relations, and more]. That realization led me to begin writing the Lessons book series.

Today, that series is complete, and set for publication on July 6.

Along the way, I also delivered a TED Talk—World 2.0: What works, in What Context, Under What Circumstances, and Why—which further shaped the direction of this work.

Now, this platform evolves again.

For the next year, I am [attempting to] commit[ting] to recording consistently:

• Lessons Weekly — short, 30-minute explorations

• Extended episodes — deeper conversations with guests

• Audiobooks — bringing the written work to life

This is both a continuation of the conversation and a discipline—of thinking, researching, and articulating ideas in real time.

Occasionally, I will be joined by others through three segments: Leaders’ Legacy, Community Voice, No Names. For now, this is a more direct body of work.

If you’ve been following the journey—thank you.
If you’re just joining—welcome.