A village boy who could reshape the global village

Justice William

Justice William likes to view himself as an advert for Botswana’s educational policies and the public education system. A man with a humble background, he did all his pre-tertiary schooling in his home village Bobonong, starting out at Madikwe Primary School, through to Mosetlha Junior Secondary School, and winding up  at Matshekge Hill School, where he graduated with a  first class in 1996.

After a two-year BSc foundation programme at University of Botswana, he was selected to study Environmental and Civil Engineering in Canada. As part of the curriculum, he had to take introductory Java programming. It was a rough awakening when in one of the project modules he scored the lowest mark in a class of around 500 students. Initially, he took the defensive route; afterall, he was in class with kids that had grown up with computers and had taken computing lessons in secondary school. Afterwards, he decided that he was going to study programming to avoid a repeat of the 47% mark.

 “It turned out that the more I practised the more I realised that I was a natural in analytical thinking required for programming,” he recalls. “I then decided to ask the ministry of education to allow me to switch programmes. From 47% I managed to be in the Dean’s honours list by the time I graduated and have an offer from Microsoft before I even had my degree.”

Having identified where his passion really lie, he changed his study programme to software engineering.

By his account, William’s journey to one of the world’s biggest firms Microsoft was unexpected. He had never submitted his CV to the company. His suspicion is that someone who knew his work may have. Out of the blue, a call came through inviting him for an interview, and the company flew him business class to Seattle, Washington.

“I had never been in business class before,” he quips. “I kept thinking, ‘these guys know how to spoil a candidate’. I went through the most rigorous interview from 7am to around 7pm and by end of the day I was confident an offer was coming since I had met some high level executives in the group.”

An offer, which he accepted promptly, arrived within a few days of the interview.

“It was all very humbling,” he looks back. “A young guy from Bobonong, not a child of the connected elite, never been to private schools, but just out of hard work was at Microsoft. I was rubbing shoulders daily with guys and ladies that can be classified as the best in the world and I guess I was also good enough to be called that too. My origins are, without question, very humble and had it not been for the opportunity to study overseas I would not have done software engineering and therefore all due thanks to Botswana’s educational policies.”

William I joined Microsoft as part of the MSN Messenger team (now called the Windows Live), which worked on the chat application that was used daily by millions of people worldwide. In the days before Facebook, Messenger was a hot item in its time, allowing users to chat, or make calls. William’s role included working on Manageability systems that lea to collaboration with MSN Search (now called Bing).

“I believe the application that was developed as part of this inspired the now successful Microsoft System Center,” he suggests, “although System Center was released way after I left Microsoft.”

After two years at Microsoft, he wanted a change. There were good offers from some reputable names, including from Amazon. But he chose to join a smaller company called Medio, which built search engines and he became the lead developer for T-Mobile International, where he built a code running in five European countries. He wrote codes such as the Yahoo Integration.

William looks back at Medio as the company where he greatly matured as a developer because he was given more challenging tasks than at Microsoft, or would have possibly gotten at Amazon.

“When I turned down the Amazon offer I refused a US$20,000 signing bonus and a higher pay cheque, but I never regretted it as I grew more as a professional by joining Medio,” he says.

When the urge to come back home set in, William briefly consulted in South Africa. One of the major projects he undertook in South Africa was as part of a team that built a new behind scenes trade integrating platform for one of the country’s major financial institutions, Rand Merchant Bank.

For the past three years, he has focused on personal entrepreneurial initiatives, and in the process developed some revolutionary applications. One idea grew out of the anger and frustration he felt after being stuck for hours in a queue at the Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property. By the end of that day, he had started penciling the idea of a queue management system that he would call World Queues.

“I worked day and night,” he recalls. “Three months later we had the first version of the queue management system that we put on a trial in Botswana Savings Bank banking halls at Broadhurst. The system that I developed from scratch with not even a small budget worked like a charm,” he says.

The system manages customer flow by allowing customers to digitally queue through the platform and then calling them as their queue spots reach the customer service. It permits queuing online, or via sms, after which the customer receives an acknowledgement that informs them of their reference number and the time they can expect to be served. The system is ideal for service providers that are prone to long queues such as hospitals and banking halls.

With two collaborators, Martin Moatshe and Motlhalosi Ntwaetsile, he has developed Intelligent Quotations, a platform that allows someone to request quotations from many suppliers at once, as well as being able to locate service providers in their locality. Although initially meant for companies to post requests for quotations (RFQs) and tenders, he realised that he could serve an even bigger market by widening the scope to include a wide range of services and service providers.

The way it works is that someone who needs a service – be it a painter, plumber, or mechanic – posts it at www.intelquotations.com, and the posting immediately reaches all the registered service providers in that particular service category. Similarly, procurement officers in different companies and departments would simply post RFQs and tenders notices at www.intelquotations.com, which will instantly reach all the registered companies that supply the required goods and services.

“Intelligent Quotations that can change the world and put transparency to the procuring processes of different countries,” he explains.

The next step is to introduce virtual stores within Intelligent Quotations for local producers of items like crafts, baskets and artworks, thereby exposing them to international clientele.

“I remember how the people in the US like dibaga, manyena a Setswana, and our traditional baskets, but for the local producers setting up an e-commerce website to sell their products would be a tall order. That’s why we will allow them to create a store, take pictures of their merchandise, put pricing and when a customer buys we will handle all the credit card application, facilitate shipping and hold the payment escrow until the customer has received the merchandise and is satisfied with it. Then we release the payment locally to the seller. We believe as we expose the sellers internationally they can get better prices for their wares internationally,” William says.

At the Botswana Innovation Hub, there is what is known as the Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC). It is a result of partnership between Botswana Innovation Hub and Microsoft Corporation, and part of its mandate is to support and facilitate R&D as well as education and innovation activities in ICT. Through the BizSpark programme that supports ICT and technology innovation start-ups with potential to be scaled up, Microsoft Innovation Center will offer Intelligent Quotations assistance that includes technical support and global visibility, as well as training and virtual incubation. The Microsoft Innovation Center manager Patel Barwabatsile explains that Botswana Innovation Hub sees great potential for Intelligent Quotations to be scaled up into a global business with enormous commercial success.

When William explains the potential for job creation and foreign revenue generation, he draws a parallel with the United States company Google, which has users throughout the world yet most of the jobs it created are in its home country.  William has a vision of Intelligent Quotations becoming global player with a Botswana-based support structure that includes software developers, call centres, billing systems, and administrative offices. He projects thousands of jobs within a few years.

He is already planning to give Intelligent Quotations more capabilities. These include adding support of all international languages, and building mobile phone support, which will make it downloadable globally through platforms such as Google Play, and Apple Store.

Could Intelligent Quotations be the next major foreign revenue earner for Botswana?

“There is no limit to how much this can earn for Botswana,” he responds. “We just have to market it regionally and internationally to get global penetration.”

Article adopted from The Sunday Standard                     

Author: Mesh Moeti

 

 

 

Building a Culture of Innovation

Botswana Innovation Hub CEO Alan Boshwaen

Like all innovative thinkers, Mpho Motsamai sees a business opportunity behind each inadequacy. He is part of a team of final year software engineering students at Botho College behind the revolutionary cash dispenser that, if it reaches product stage, stands to change how pensioners are served.

Named Tandabala, after the old age pension, the dispenser uses both fingerprint and face recognition for authentication, kinect technology and a touch screen that represents cash in image form, thus making it easier for the elderly to use. Also allowing easy navigation is the device’s audio capability, while the kinect studies if the user has any problems using the dispenser.

The concept’s developers – Motsamai (24), Kabelo Bolaane (23) and Givemore Mvumba (22) – first entered it in local ICT competitions in 2011. This year the team won the Botswana leg of the Imagine Cup 2013, co-hosted by Botswana Innovation Hub (BIH) and Microsoft Innovation Center. As local champions, they represented Botswana at the Microsoft Imagine Cup finals, the world’s premier student technology competition, in St. Petersburg, Russia.  

Even as it might be a while before the invention becomes a product, perhaps it best illustrates what BIH’s chief executive officer Alan Boshwaen means when he says Botswana has to inculcate a culture of innovation and build support systems around it. He makes reference to last year’s World Economic Forum report that observed that though Botswana has done well in building strong institutions, it is scoring weaker in terms of technological readiness and sophistication. It is a gaping gap that, hopefully, BIH will mobilise stakeholders to fill.

BIH is a government-owned company that was borne out of the Botswana Excellence Strategy which proposed a three pronged National Strategic Goal for the diversification of the country’s economy, creation of jobs and driving the country towards a knowledge-based economy. The company has a broad mandate to develop and operate Botswana’s first Science and Technology Park – which is currently under construction – to contribute to economic development and competitiveness by creating new scientific, technological, and indigenous knowledge based business opportunities, as well as add value to existing companies, and foster entrepreneurship and technology transfer. It is expected that when operational, the park will be home to innovative companies and research institutions, both homebrewed and foreign, leading to creation of knowledge-based jobs.

The company has prioritized four focus sectors: mining, ICT, bio-technology as well as energy and environment given their importance to Botswana’s economy and potential to drive economic diversification.

Boshwaen’s view of innovation is as an enabler that will make Botswana more competitive in terms of adopting different approaches and new technologies, but not necessarily hi-tech.

“When you talk science and technology, often people think hi-tech things that are done in developed countries,” he says. “But if you instill a simple culture of innovation and build support for it you get meaningful results.”  

He gives the example of what used to be a common feature in public buildings throughout Botswana – rainwater tanks.

“This was not hi-tech, but it was a good and effective water conservation innovation,” he says.

The starting point, therefore, is to identify a problem, and then find an intervention that resolves the problem to move society forward. Take the cash dispenser, for instance. If it is eventually deployed, its developers believe it would eliminate the long queues at social grant payment points, and the need to carry coupon books, which get lost and can be destroyed if not handled with care.

“The other main thing about the current system,” says Motsamai, “is that whenever a beneficiary moves to a new place, they have to re-register in that district as one of the pensioners. Of course, this might take some time and as a result, the pensioner would not get their money on time.”

Boshwaen believes two things must happen to set Botswana on the way to being an innovative society. The first is development of better mechanisms to fund new ideas that have been tested and are proven to work. The second is to create an internal culture to take up these ideas and put them to effective use.

He sees BIH assisting in putting the ideas into products either through funding or entrepreneurial training. He emphasises the idea’s viability and relevance, as well as marketability. He believes the country has to be innovative in funding ideas by learning from the developed world. 

“We can create an opportunity for people [with new ideas] to pitch those ideas to businesspeople,” he suggests. “That is what happens in advanced countries. Money doesn’t come from government; it comes from the private sector. Perhaps we need to create avenues for people to interact at that level.”

The other model he suggests is for government to present some of the problems it encounters in delivering services, and invite ideas that can be developed into solutions.

“From a pool of suggested ideas, a panel of experts would then determine which one is the best. If we do that, Botswana’s young people will use their own minds  to determine how to resolve various  issues. It is not even too expensive. Just by creating and supporting a new system for ideas to flow  through, new business models will come up,” he points out.

Boshwaen broadens the discussion somewhat to encompass indigenous knowledge. He asks, “How can we get commercial value out of our unique products like medicinal plants and indigenous fruits?”

However, he states that there has to be scientific validation to determine nutritional value and safety of the various medicinal plants and fruits. BIH’s intervention would be on taking such products to commercialisation.

From where he sitting, Boshwaen is looking out for certain milestones that would tell if BIH is delivering on its mandate. In ascertaining if the milestones are being met, he will ask himself and his team a set of questions.

“Is there meaningful technology transfer that resolves issues that Batswana face? Is our economy creating new businesses that are aligned to innovation? Are we having more young people involved from point of view of self-employment?,” he rolls out the questions. “Our agenda is that in the next three years would like to have built the science and technology park. We would like to see certain critical facilities in the park that will support the whole agenda.”

When asked the description of people he employed to help him drive BIH mandate, he replies that he looked for  people who can get their hands dirty, and have a “can-do” attitude.

“They are people who are interested in achieving the outcome, and in the concept of  moving Botswana forward,” he says.

He calls it a small team of professionals from various fields, including different branches of science, as well as business, property and law. His approach was to build a core team that would then create linkages with other like-minded organisations to expand BIH’s capacity. Some of the partnerships that have been forged are with organisations such as Microsoft (leading to the establishment of Microsoft Innovation Center within the BIH to enhance professional delivery of ICT services and products, as well as create and improve skills of Botswana’s ICT professionals), the Council on Health Research for Development (COHRED), an independent international foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland (to promote research and development for health, equity and development in Botswana and Africa in general), the Southern Africa Innovation Support (SAIS) Programme (which promotes collaboration within the innovation ecosystems of African countries in order to provide greater impact  on economic and social development), as well as Lund University and Krinova Science Park in Sweden (to establish a CleanTech Centre of Expertise programme within the BIH).
                     

Author: Mesh Moeti

Article adopted from The Sunday Standard