Leveraging Cloud Technologies to Accelerate AI Innovation and Economic Development in Africa with Andrew Mori

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Unlocking Africa podcast.

[00:00:04] I'm a scientist by academic history and spent a lot of time studying physics, computer science

[00:00:10] and mathematics at university in Stellenbosch, Cape Town.

[00:00:14] Most companies today are capitulating and finding a middle ground between buying some

[00:00:20] of those resources to serve these applications that serve customers and renting some of them.

[00:00:26] This gives us an opportunity to keep the data internally on the continent and use it in our

[00:00:31] best interests. How do we keep our data insightful and valuable for us and useful for improving

[00:00:38] things on our own continent? Stay tuned as we bring you inspiring people who are

[00:00:44] unlocking Africa's economic potential. You're listening to the Unlocking Africa podcast

[00:00:51] with your host Terser Adamu

[00:00:55] Welcome to the Unlocking Africa podcast where we find amazing people who are doing amazing

[00:01:01] things to unlock Africa's economic potential. Today, we have Andrew Mori who is CEO and

[00:01:09] co-founder of Deimos which is Africa's leading cloud technology and professional

[00:01:16] services company based in South Africa. Welcome to the podcast. Andrew, how are you?

[00:01:22] Thank you very much. I'm very well. Thanks. Thanks very much for having me. What a pleasure.

[00:01:27] It's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. How's your week been so far?

[00:01:32] Not bad, quite busy. We are operating across five or six countries working on different

[00:01:40] cloud-based projects, some international, some locally and it's been pretty busy. I think

[00:01:46] the second half of this year has picked up quite nicely lots of customers, unlocking initiatives

[00:01:52] and proceeding with plans that previously have been a little bit behind or they've

[00:01:58] held back on. So things are quite busy at the moment. Brilliant. I'm sure we'll get into that

[00:02:04] further on in the conversation. You've listened to the podcast and you probably already know

[00:02:10] what I like to do with stuff in the beginning. I was hoping you could introduce yourself

[00:02:15] and just tell us a bit more about Andrew Mori. Sure. Thanks for asking. So just on my personal

[00:02:23] life, I guess I'm a scientist by academic history and I spent a lot of time studying physics,

[00:02:31] computer science and mathematics at university in Stellenbosch, at the University of Cape Town

[00:02:37] and the University of Rhodes University, but also conducting scientific research at the CSIR in

[00:02:47] South Africa which is called the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Facilities.

[00:02:52] I think cut a very long story short. I left academia to start programming and I've spent

[00:03:01] a good decade or two programming across different countries, in particular the UK.

[00:03:08] I also spent a fair amount of time in the US in programming and then returned to Africa

[00:03:16] and I've spent a fair amount of time building engineering teams pretty much from the ground up

[00:03:22] and I did get an opportunity to join a high growth startup in Nigeria in 2014 where I had the privilege

[00:03:31] of contributing to the growth of a very large engineering team. I think we were at about 100

[00:03:37] people when I joined and we grew the engineering team to about 200, 300 people and it was a

[00:03:45] wonderful experience living and working out of Lagos and just experiencing a thriving ecosystem of

[00:03:54] technologists and startups and just contributing my little part to say the Nigerian tech ecosystem

[00:04:03] and since then I've returned to South Africa in about 2018 and started a company called Deimos

[00:04:12] that again is completely focused on engineering and technology talent in Africa

[00:04:19] and we are using our expertise to help companies globally leverage technology in the right way

[00:04:27] so I think that's my academic and working background.

[00:04:32] Thank you for sharing that. I guess what's quite key or stands out for me in terms of your

[00:04:37] experience working for high growth startups in Nigeria and then returning back to South Africa

[00:04:43] to launch Deimos so what was the inspiration behind founding the company Deimos?

[00:04:51] I think one of the biggest things that struck me as I entered Nigeria was how completely

[00:04:58] misunderstood or how I personally didn't understand what was happening in Nigeria at

[00:05:04] the time and I in a way naively entered the ecosystem without realizing a number of things like

[00:05:15] the intellectual technological capability and capacity that is currently

[00:05:23] available in places all over Africa. Nigeria is a big highlight but there are absolutely

[00:05:30] other hubs like Cape Town, Johannesburg, Kenya, Ghana, even as West as Senegal and I think that

[00:05:40] that was probably the most surprising thing is realizing how wrong I was about all of that

[00:05:45] and the inspiration for Deimos came from the incredible the wonderful experience I had

[00:05:52] working with and building teams in West Africa and at the time it felt like I'd uncovered or

[00:06:01] discovered something interesting, something novel in a sense and that the rest of the world didn't

[00:06:07] know and if you think about where let's say American companies today they talk about

[00:06:13] nearshoring and so that you know American companies will nearshore in LATAM so in South

[00:06:19] America they'll look for engineering talent traditionally in the UK or even in the US you

[00:06:26] know their off-shoring would typically go to Eastern Europe so Poland, Russia, Ukraine,

[00:06:34] lots of Eastern European countries that have exceptional engineering talent and even India

[00:06:39] and that's generally the standard approach for finding offshore talent and at the time

[00:06:46] you know I'd spent in Nigeria my eyes opened to the opportunity pretty much at the same time as

[00:06:54] Andela started and a bunch of other startups in Nigeria that were created around that time

[00:07:01] started utilizing that talent and even today I think it's still the case where a lot of global

[00:07:07] companies are unaware of the enormous opportunity there is in Africa from that perspective

[00:07:13] and I think that was one of the things Tersa, the opportunity that lay in front of me in terms of

[00:07:20] helping grow and foster talent on the continent and then using that talent to help companies and

[00:07:26] help projects globally and to compete in that market. That was one of the pieces of inspiration.

[00:07:32] The second one is a more general problem where as the CTO, as the technology lead for a high

[00:07:38] growth startup, I'd run into several problems and some of these problems if I touch on them

[00:07:45] lightly would be things like ambitious founders, ambitious board members or boards investors etc

[00:07:53] and looking at the multitude of problems that engineering or technology leaders face

[00:08:01] and that usually has to do with people wanting to go to market very quickly

[00:08:07] and best practices falling by the wayside naturally you know if you're prioritizing

[00:08:12] time to market expansion into new markets and speed and agility you tend to have to let go of

[00:08:20] quality engineering practices and I think I have an opportunity to change that slightly or at least

[00:08:27] move that needle in the right direction and that ultimately led me to with my wife and other

[00:08:34] business partners to start the company called Deimos whose goal is to help businesses use technology

[00:08:41] best practices in their best interests and do so with African engineering talent. It felt like

[00:08:46] an opportunity to showcase what we in Africa have in terms of our capabilities to put it

[00:08:54] on the global stage and compete with other countries. Thank you for that. So as you mentioned,

[00:09:00] the inspiration was from the experience of building teams in West Africa and seeing the

[00:09:06] opportunity I guess the opportunity specifically in the cloud technology space so for those

[00:09:12] out there who aren't familiar with what cloud technology is can you explain it to us in very

[00:09:20] basic simple as possible terms? Yes sure so I think a lot of people misunderstand the cloud as storage

[00:09:29] which it is but it's a lot more than that. Let's talk about resources and what I mean by resources

[00:09:36] would be CPU or central processing unit storage RAM or random access memory or memory capabilities

[00:09:44] network databases things like that and so before the cloud all of that stuff would sit inside of a

[00:09:52] private data center us engineers we call it on-prem and so what I mean by that is companies that are

[00:09:59] leveraging technology or tech enabled businesses generally have applications and these applications

[00:10:06] and data sets need to be hosted somewhere and hence the word serve ad so typically we would

[00:10:12] buy a bunch of servers and put it in the warehouse somewhere or somewhere in an office

[00:10:17] and that warehouse or that server would thus be connected to a network that network connected

[00:10:23] to the internet and ultimately be made either privately accessible or publicly accessible

[00:10:29] and those applications would form a wide range of different uses so things like

[00:10:36] authentication websites access to financial services etc all of that stuff needs resources so

[00:10:44] for example if you log into your bank today I mean so if you go to the bank homepage or the

[00:10:49] application homepage and you log in and you end up looking at your bank balance typically what

[00:10:55] happens in that scenario there's a number of services a number of applications that would

[00:11:00] be hosted and that would require resources and so that that existed prior to what we call the cloud

[00:11:07] today and so in a cloud world those resources are made available to businesses on a pay-as-you-go

[00:11:15] basis so in a sense it's like renting resources from another company as opposed to buying

[00:11:22] resources so the pitfalls of buying resources would be things like you know take a bank or an

[00:11:28] e-commerce or an edu tech company their business is focused on those things in particular it's not

[00:11:34] really focused on technology and now these companies need to hire procurement teams they

[00:11:41] need to hire infrastructure teams and niche experts to to manage complex resources and so

[00:11:50] most companies today are capitulating and finding a middle ground between buying some of those

[00:11:58] resources to serve these applications that serve customers and renting some of them

[00:12:03] and I think the last topic the last item to just comment on here is that when it comes to

[00:12:11] critical business critical functions like as a user I should always have access to my bank

[00:12:18] account these applications they need to be highly available they need to be redundant resilient

[00:12:24] and so what the cloud really offers is an extrapolation of the traditional hosting of

[00:12:31] applications and what I mean by that is in the traditional sense we would buy some resources

[00:12:37] we would secure it in a room somewhere in our office but the point to say is if there was a fire

[00:12:42] or a flood or a disaster that that stuff it may have a backup plan but ultimately it's a single

[00:12:50] point of failure and the term cloud the term cloud generally refers to a region and a region

[00:12:58] has availability zones in them and those azs or availability zones are like copies of each other

[00:13:05] so if something if a fire breaks out in one az you still have your application available

[00:13:11] in the remaining two azs and yeah you get does that make sense yeah I think I've got a clearer

[00:13:20] picture or idea so you've given us a description of what cloud technology is so how would you

[00:13:27] describe the current state of the cloud technology space in Africa now we are speaking in general

[00:13:34] terms that it probably differs greatly from region to region but I guess in general how would

[00:13:39] you describe the state of the cloud technology space on the continent so that's a great follow-on

[00:13:46] question because you know I gave an example about a region and if you extrapolate that you would

[00:13:53] move over to the global network and I think the largest amount of or the most advanced

[00:14:00] cloud industries in the world would be sitting in China and then the US and Europe and I'd say that

[00:14:11] Africa had been has been neglected from from that perspective but there are some really

[00:14:18] positive things happening and the first one would be underwater sea cables that are now

[00:14:25] really tracking along the coastline of the entire continent connecting Africa to the world in a

[00:14:32] high speed internet a high high speed connection and what's what that investment has done is

[00:14:40] opened up the possibility for companies like amazon web services Huawei cloud Alibaba cloud

[00:14:48] Google cloud Microsoft Azure to invest further into the continent and what I mean by that is

[00:14:55] literally building regions so at the moment the only regions and I mean public cloud regions

[00:15:03] in the whole of Africa would be there's a an amazon web services region in Cape Town

[00:15:10] there's a Microsoft Azure region in Johannesburg and that remember a region will have three

[00:15:16] data centers or three available availability zones and I'll talk about why that's important in a minute

[00:15:22] and then there's a Google cloud region in South Africa and there's also a Huawei cloud region

[00:15:27] and I am fully aware that all of the public clouds that I've mentioned are looking at West

[00:15:33] Africa they're looking at East Africa and they're looking at Egypt for expansion of their

[00:15:39] of their infrastructure so to answer your question I think Africa has been relatively

[00:15:44] neglected from this perspective and why it is important is it allows companies locally to

[00:15:53] leverage these these resources in a way that allows them to host data internally in the

[00:16:00] continent so prior to today if you're a business operating out of Kenya or Nigeria and you have

[00:16:08] critical customer information or critical financial data and you are only using the public

[00:16:14] cloud and your public cloud is not available in your region then essentially what I'm saying is

[00:16:19] your critical data is sitting in regions like London, Spain, Portugal, Europe, America and the

[00:16:27] east of the world so it brings up complications there's latency complications there's you know

[00:16:37] or currencies and not being able to pay for international services in local currencies

[00:16:43] and ultimately I think yeah it poses a number of problems for high growth startups and for

[00:16:48] enterprises on the continent and yeah I think your question has been answered but I do believe

[00:16:55] we are in a state of growth and that these companies are investing into the region and that

[00:17:01] in the next five years I'm I've a very strong conviction that there will be multiple regions

[00:17:06] available to Africa that will benefit mostly end consumers and the businesses that serve them

[00:17:13] so it's growing so you've slightly touched on this in terms of why do you believe

[00:17:20] more cloud regions across Africa are essential for the continent's digital transformation ambitions

[00:17:29] so I touched on the resourcing side you know the traditional server

[00:17:32] but the public cloud brings something else with it and the other things that it brings

[00:17:39] besides the items that I mentioned the availability the resilience all of that all of those features

[00:17:46] it also brings services or a managed service or proprietary services that these big companies

[00:17:54] these multi-billion dollar even trillion dollar companies are providing businesses and end users

[00:18:00] and what I'm referring to are things like next generation data and analytics services

[00:18:07] and I'm also talking about things like artificial intelligence and access to large language models

[00:18:13] and access to next gen AI and these things are typically being pushed by these big companies

[00:18:21] into their networks into their resourcing and they are being made available but for

[00:18:26] example today if you wanted to use Google's AI or Amazon's AI or or any of these big public

[00:18:36] cloud providers if you would like access to the forefront of technology you typically

[00:18:42] need to make requests to Europe or requests to America and it's these local regions that allow

[00:18:49] for the general availability of the same services that the Americans or the Chinese have

[00:18:55] access to being deployed on the continent in Africa and why is that important it's important

[00:19:03] because you know Africa is a continent of opportunity and you know not only do we have a growing

[00:19:10] population but we also have a growing data set and I think you know if we if we consider how

[00:19:18] how valuable data is becoming that I think it's imperative for our continent to take control

[00:19:26] and benefit from our own data and what I mean by that is keeping some of this data internally on

[00:19:34] the continent not hosting it externally and training models on our own data sitting in a

[00:19:39] London data center so I think it's important from a privacy perspective from a you know I think

[00:19:47] I don't want to go into a political discussion but for example if you think about global you

[00:19:54] know previous colonization you know the the the modus operandi would be come into Africa

[00:20:01] take the diamonds and mine what do you want and take it back you know what I mean Tessa so

[00:20:06] this gives us an opportunity to keep the data internally on the continent and use it in our

[00:20:11] best interests and not let other continents benefit from from our growing continent and yeah it just

[00:20:18] kind of puts the power back in our in our pockets and it allows us to be in control of

[00:20:26] our continent a little bit more I agree I guess you probably read or hear quite often data is

[00:20:33] the new gold or oil it is a valuable resource that we have to maintain or keep within the continent

[00:20:40] but you've talked about the obvious benefits of more cloud regions what would you say are the

[00:20:48] current challenges of expanding these cloud regions within the continent I think the

[00:20:56] the challenges are very clearly infrastructure related and geopolitical stability related

[00:21:03] so you know in South Africa where I live we've struggled with constant power issues so that

[00:21:10] I'm talking about electricity going on and off and it's the same in West Africa and East Africa

[00:21:16] and generally a typical problem that has plagued our continent for many many years

[00:21:21] and one would imagine that stable electricity is required for a highly functional data center

[00:21:30] it's a power hungry thing and there are ways to mitigate against that hungriness but it's definitely

[00:21:36] something that is a challenge on our continent you would need extremely reliable and stable internet

[00:21:44] stable electricity as well as internet and I think the internet stability has improved drastically

[00:21:51] but but furthermore than that I'm talking about actual physical infrastructure strong roads

[00:21:58] you know security and political stability that those things are all important and if I was the

[00:22:04] CEO of Microsoft or Google I would be taking all of this stuff into account before investing

[00:22:10] billions of dollars into a specific region you want to make sure that your investment is

[00:22:16] is looked after and it's certainly difficult to do that in certain countries in Africa at the

[00:22:23] moment I'd say those are the biggest challenges interesting so as you mentioned infrastructure

[00:22:28] and certain geopolitical issues are the biggest challenges so from your experience or from some

[00:22:35] of the success or work you've seen happen over the years how do you think government and

[00:22:43] private sector can work together to accelerate the development of this cloud infrastructure

[00:22:49] that is much needed I think it really boils down to skills development and in whatever way that can

[00:22:56] that can be facilitated between government and private sector I would suggest that that's probably

[00:23:02] one of the biggest areas that that would have an impact on all of this the last thing we want

[00:23:07] to do is have you know foreign entities running local regions for cloud providers I think there's

[00:23:16] very strong case for job creation and you know network engineers infrastructure engineers

[00:23:23] you know a really big opportunity for for jobs to be created in this entire

[00:23:30] escapade and yeah so skills development is one I think the government needs to

[00:23:36] really take control of you know the the stability of regions and the access to

[00:23:42] stable internet and stable power I think those that alongside of skills development

[00:23:48] would set our continent up for success you've touched on a key point there with regards to

[00:23:54] skills development I guess a area that we can't ignore which is closely aligned to cloud

[00:24:00] technology is the AI market I think I read recently that Africa's AI market is expected

[00:24:07] to reach 3.8 billion by 2028 so what role do you believe cloud technology can play in shaping

[00:24:17] Africa's AI capabilities yeah if you don't mind I just want to step back a couple of steps and

[00:24:25] I think the internet has been a great leveller for our continent in the sense that let's be honest

[00:24:32] we don't have the best tertiary education in the world and a lot of candidates a lot of young people

[00:24:38] tend to you know they make it through school but the point is the internet allows young people to

[00:24:45] get access to information that can catpult their careers and I've seen this firsthand so one of

[00:24:53] the greatest joys I've had helping foster talent on the continent is coming to the

[00:24:59] realization that there are young people that are teaching themselves very niche things like AI so

[00:25:06] just before AI I was completely blown away by working with self-taught engineers and I mean

[00:25:13] engineers that have learned detailed technologies like cloud technologies like Kubernetes so

[00:25:19] Kubernetes is a it's an actually an orchestrator of containers and what I mean in this regard

[00:25:26] is a let's call it a new compute paradigm it still runs on servers but it's um it's managed in an

[00:25:33] interesting way and this technology was invented by Google many many years ago but that has been

[00:25:40] adopted it's now ubiquitous across the whole world everybody is using Kubernetes as a compute

[00:25:46] paradigm and you know when when we started Daimus in 2018 we started hiring in West Africa

[00:25:53] and we found people that were internationally competitive globally competitive on a skill

[00:26:00] set of for Kubernetes and they were aged 21 22 years old and it's just indicative of young

[00:26:08] people getting access to information and courses and online learning that results in huge career

[00:26:18] progression and if you think about just that on itself you know there's a natural progression into

[00:26:25] say today's state of the art or forefront of technology which would be AI and it's even

[00:26:31] even more so now so terse if you're a young person in west or east or south or north Africa

[00:26:38] and you've come out of a decent university where you have a strong or even schooling

[00:26:43] school system where you have a decent background in the basics mathematics sciences etc you could easily

[00:26:50] with with some ambition gain access to AI courses and learn and become trained in

[00:26:57] artificial intelligence and then enter the global workforce as a young a very young person

[00:27:02] with one to two years experience with with AI and and you know I've kind of almost lost

[00:27:09] the question but I just think it's such a powerful notion to to imagine how young people from rural

[00:27:17] parts of Africa are able to enter the global workforce on a cutting edge forefront technology

[00:27:23] like AI simply through learning online thank you for that so yeah I think you've covered

[00:27:28] the question and more because I guess the initial question was in terms of the role that

[00:27:32] cloud technology can play or is playing in shaping Africa's AI capabilities

[00:27:40] I think it's been a natural progression people learning about cloud technology and then getting

[00:27:45] access because that's really where so every every AI today chat GPT Claude all of it from

[00:27:52] Anthropic etc it's all being served from from public clouds for for basic and for the most

[00:27:58] obvious reasons so performance resilience of it high availability etc so so all of that AI is

[00:28:06] being run on top of public clouds mainly some some of that data may have been trained in on

[00:28:10] internal systems you'll see you know Elon Musk at the moment if you look at Tesla today

[00:28:17] they're busy installing some of the largest GPU clusters on the planet and so that would be

[00:28:23] running inside of a private data center but the the access to to those models let's say

[00:28:29] let's say are going to become available to drivers in cars that AI is being accessed through a public

[00:28:36] cloud and yeah I think that you know it's a natural progression you know AI generally

[00:28:42] comes from data sets and those data sets are typically also held and and maintained and

[00:28:49] managed within big data lakes in big data warehousing solutions and the public cloud has a

[00:28:55] has a big part to play in that and yeah for our continent just getting access to these kinds of

[00:29:01] things is important so as a business today I can be sitting in Rwanda and generating lots

[00:29:09] of business data or consumer based or B2B data and I could be transforming that data and and

[00:29:17] doing you know data manipulation on it and storing it inside of a data warehouse like Google's

[00:29:24] big query and literally using using that data center sitting in Johannesburg so as a business

[00:29:30] in Rwanda I'm able to store manipulate gain insights run you know models on top of this

[00:29:37] data set to produce AI that can also compete with other suppliers in the world thank you for

[00:29:43] I guess it's clear that there is growth and increased access to AI technology and tools

[00:29:51] within the continent but despite that I guess the reality is a lot of people still see it or

[00:29:58] what we've said during our conversation is that Africa is still considered one of the

[00:30:03] least prepared regions for cloud technology and AI so what do you think are probably the

[00:30:10] biggest barriers to things such as AI adoption on the continent?

[00:30:17] Yeah I think let's just address the elephant in the room these things are expensive

[00:30:21] and I wouldn't consider Africa as the you know most prosperous continent on the on the planet

[00:30:29] and we are plagued by poverty in certain regards I think these things are expensive and

[00:30:36] I mean let's just talk about businesses that are growing and are on the up on the continent

[00:30:41] they are being challenged by you know devaluing currencies and so these these companies are

[00:30:49] let's say they're working in Ghana let's say a Ghanaian company a Ghanaian startup or a Ghanaian

[00:30:54] bank you know today their cloud bill is $100 well if their currency devalues overnight tomorrow

[00:31:00] their cloud bill is going to be 200 well not $200 but but Ghanaian city will double and so we

[00:31:06] we struggle with instability on our currencies and at the moment all of these things need to

[00:31:13] be paid in international currencies like dollars and pounds and one so I think that's a big part

[00:31:20] of what's preventing businesses from you know fast adoption or gaining you know gaining

[00:31:28] broader access to things is these things are currently quite expensive and we need like we

[00:31:34] mentioned earlier so we need governments to provide stability and governments need to produce good

[00:31:40] infrastructure so that that our economies may flourish and our currencies remain stable

[00:31:45] and yeah I would I would say that that's a big really big part of it and we have touched on

[00:31:51] on the other areas you know infrastructure issues skills development and lack of you know it's

[00:31:58] uncommon I mean I must I must speak out of turn but I don't think it would be that common to walk

[00:32:04] into a secondary school in in a rural place in Africa and see you know fundamental AI being taught

[00:32:12] at the school level never mind the university level so we're on the back foot but you

[00:32:18] know I don't think we're going to complain about it we're definitely on the back foot but the only

[00:32:23] way out of this is through it and I think yeah it's it's a combination of private and public sector

[00:32:30] working together to address these fundamental problems that you know if they are addressed

[00:32:35] or even slightly improved it'll make it easier for businesses to try new things and

[00:32:41] invest in new initiatives and adopt cutting-edge technologies it's true as you mentioned these

[00:32:48] things are expensive and one or a couple of the things we can do to reduce cost is to improve the

[00:32:55] infrastructure and as we touched on earlier upscale local tech talents so maybe we can

[00:33:02] touch upon that in terms of we haven't really spoke about the work that you're doing some

[00:33:07] of the work that you are doing at DayMos in terms of contributing to the efforts of increasing and

[00:33:13] upscaling local tech talents maybe we can talk about that so what's also interesting is um

[00:33:20] you know the opportunity like I mentioned it already but if you think about the problem

[00:33:26] and the problem is this is just my opinion that I don't think we need to be worried

[00:33:32] that AI is going to overtake all of our jobs simultaneously I think AI will eventually and

[00:33:39] slowly start replacing aspects of the current job force today but not in a super negative way

[00:33:47] it'll displace things in such a way that skilled workers will adopt new things and

[00:33:53] you know as a software engineer you know there's a lot of information today

[00:33:57] that points to all engineers being out of the job and your jobs being at risk

[00:34:04] and you know nobody really knows the future but I am trying to say that this skills lack

[00:34:12] the this is a global problem and sometimes these problems present opportunities and what

[00:34:20] I mean by that is you know here in Africa we have a lot of smart people that are gaining

[00:34:25] experience that are learning these new skills and it's these people that are going to fill

[00:34:31] the gaps in the global workforce that's under pressure and what's interesting about it

[00:34:38] as for us as Africans is that we you know we would be competitive on pricing as well so

[00:34:45] let's say a senior software engineer and you know Deimos employs interns juniors intermediate

[00:34:52] seniors staff level principal level and upwards so if you look somewhere in the middle let's say

[00:34:59] a senior software engineer which is a really high level to get to if you want to be globally

[00:35:05] competitive or you know globally acknowledged as a senior software engineer it's not normal

[00:35:12] to see someone with less than five years experience get to that level it can take up to 10 or even

[00:35:18] more but let's say you're at that level you know in in Africa you could earn you know between

[00:35:25] three and five thousand dollars for that that level on a monthly basis today but an engineer of that

[00:35:31] level and skills sitting in the US or in Europe would would would want to you know look for

[00:35:38] salaries up to eight nine to ten or even double as expensive as that and so that presents an opportunity

[00:35:44] for us because you know locally things are not as expensive as you know living in san francisco or

[00:35:50] as you would know living in london is is a little bit more expensive than living in cape down

[00:35:55] or legas or kenya or or or garner and i think you know that puts us in a strong position

[00:36:02] we are more competitive in that regard so um yeah there's multiple opportunities for talent to excel on

[00:36:10] this continent and and what i wanted to just talk about is that it's not a local issue you know um

[00:36:16] as i say to my team where do the senior engineers come from because there's a limited amount of

[00:36:21] senior engineers and definitely principal etc there's a limited amount of these people in

[00:36:27] on the continent today and so the answer is tomorrow's seniors are today's juniors right so

[00:36:34] somebody needs to invest into their into the junior ecosystem and train them up to become seniors and

[00:36:40] that's where they come from they don't just come out of thin air and uh yeah i think you know companies

[00:36:45] like demos or or companies like any one of our customers have a obligation to invest into skills

[00:36:53] development so it's in our best interests and the honest answer is that you know there isn't another way

[00:36:59] you can't i mean you one one could attempt to poach talent from other companies and companies do do that

[00:37:06] and that's just natural um but it's a zero sum game right it's closed loop there are only

[00:37:13] 100 000 seniors in the world or i don't know what the figure is like two million globally or five

[00:37:19] million globally and it's a zero sum so if one company is stealing from the other the number stays

[00:37:25] the same and and so what i'm alluding at is all of us in the world globally have to invest into

[00:37:31] to internship programs and and and training juniors and so you know at at demos we um

[00:37:39] we've known this for a long time uh we sponsor nonprofits that and i can mention a whole

[00:37:44] number of them um that are focused on getting engineers into junior positions and a lot of companies

[00:37:52] are adverse to stuff like this because it's very expensive to invest into a junior and you know

[00:37:59] there's also risk involved in that too so i've personally been on on the receiving end you know

[00:38:05] you you spend a lot of time and effort and money training somebody up and as soon as they're

[00:38:10] enough boom they jump ship and are they working at tesla in america right and so but but that's

[00:38:16] just par for the course you can't avoid it and uh it's it's really our duties too i think

[00:38:21] i think it's it's our obligation as as businesses to to do that so okay keeping on the theme of

[00:38:29] talent all of your experts highest are from africa that's right is this something that was

[00:38:35] done intentionally yes brilliant brilliant yes and what was the motive behind that i think it goes

[00:38:41] back to that inspiration that i received working for a high growth startup and coming coming to the

[00:38:47] the conclusion that i was completely wrong you know um i guess look i'm we were talking 10 years

[00:38:52] ago and things are very different today i mean i'm of the opinion that most people who know

[00:38:57] anything about africa will have a very different picture um today than they did 10 years ago

[00:39:04] but i would say that yeah i don't think you know most people in america in europe wouldn't

[00:39:10] wouldn't have thought about africa as a a source of talent um and and you know it's

[00:39:17] clearly obvious that it is the the next glow or the next largest workforce um and a very capable

[00:39:24] one at that and so yeah i think um it was just it was just uh you know putting your money where

[00:39:31] your mouth is and saying hey we know this is an opportunity there's no reason why we can't compete

[00:39:36] globally using african talent and and that's what we we set out to do terça and that that's what

[00:39:42] we've done and i can tell you unequivocally that it's worked and it works and you know

[00:39:48] daimos's engineering team is extremely strong and you know um what you know what what what's

[00:39:55] interesting about that as well is that um it gives people the opportunity to stay on continent

[00:40:00] so you know we talk about brain drain right so you know as a medical doctor i know that

[00:40:06] nigeria or south africa or kenya that we've trained really strong doctors and these doctors

[00:40:11] typically end up being attracted by universities or hospitals uh in more mature markets for

[00:40:18] bigger salaries and you know the promise of a more stable environment and i'm sure that's

[00:40:23] worked for the individual but as a as a continent i think um we need to do what we can to fight

[00:40:30] against that and and being able to provide people with high paying jobs from being able to work from

[00:40:36] home being able to stay in in a country of your choice i mean i know a lot of africans who

[00:40:42] have left the continent not because they don't like africa but it's because they're looking

[00:40:46] for a more stable environment for a harder currency and i just think you know for example at daimos we

[00:40:54] pay everybody in dollars and it mitigates the risks that come with earning in a local currency

[00:41:01] and it gives people the opportunity to stay in the country and so i'm telling you right now they

[00:41:06] are like 20 25 uh people at daimos that if they weren't able to work at uh at a place like this

[00:41:13] for a high paying salary in an international they would have left the continent already but

[00:41:18] what's happening is these individuals who i'm very close with um they they stay they're staying at

[00:41:24] home and they're spending their money at home and they're supporting families and businesses and

[00:41:29] they're starting things locally and so i just think it's uh it's a good hedge against the

[00:41:34] brain drain um is is doing things like we're doing you know interestingly i still have conversations

[00:41:40] with people who talk about or complain about skills shortages on the continent so i was

[00:41:47] wondering how do you approach talent acquisition because you don't seem to struggle finding

[00:41:53] the talent in such a niche industry um i don't want to speak like an expert on it because

[00:42:01] i'm i'm just lucky in their sense to be working in in the cloud and so it's very attractive to

[00:42:08] young technologists um to be able to say i mean even you know it let's let's let's say that South

[00:42:14] Africa has a slightly more mature engineering market than the majority of the rest of the

[00:42:20] South Africa or the African countries but even in South Africa even today when i speak to some of

[00:42:26] my seniors about jumping from project to project they don't want to work on old technology

[00:42:31] and you know even today um they are companies public companies that that have really outdated

[00:42:38] technology stacks and so you know let's say i'm just going to give you a fictitious example like

[00:42:45] you know it let's say an old traditional bank in in South Africa potentially running on a language

[00:42:52] like Fortran or Delphi or something that would have been deprecated 25 years ago

[00:43:00] nobody really wants to work on that young engineers or engineers in general

[00:43:04] they want to be working on you know next gen cutting edge you know uh bleeding edge technology

[00:43:11] like AI and and and you know machine learning and uh and just generally you know new and

[00:43:17] interesting languages um so i think being able to provide people with access to

[00:43:23] exciting cutting edge technology is a great attractor and i think that's one of the things

[00:43:29] that um is attractive about uh working at Deimos and so i just feel like i'm lucky to be able to

[00:43:36] offer that to people and so that that is a big part of um of people being able to attract people

[00:43:43] the other is um is two things like i've already touched on well earning a earning in a currency

[00:43:51] that's not devaluing on a monthly basis is a huge attraction and secondly and that's also again a

[00:43:58] lucky thing right i can't um say that every company has that privilege if you're if you're a big workforce

[00:44:05] in in Kenya you're typically paying people in shilling and you know you're earning in

[00:44:11] shilling and therefore paying in shilling and it's you know those employees are at risk of

[00:44:17] their currency devaluing overnight and things becoming more and more expensive for them so i

[00:44:24] have the privilege of being able to pay in dollars um which is a great attractor and then um

[00:44:31] the other is the permanent remote working so you know pre pre pandemic uh 2018 we made a decision

[00:44:40] to to build a company that allows employees to work from anywhere in the world if they wish

[00:44:45] um and so you know this work from home brings about a level of flexibility you know it's it's

[00:44:53] very nice to hear of very senior people not having to ask permission every time they need to go pick

[00:44:58] up a child from a school or something like that and so it's a it's a you know we've built a very

[00:45:03] flexible environment that is attractive to young people brilliant so as you mentioned

[00:45:10] i love the young engineers or people that you work with or wanting to work on next

[00:45:16] journey new cutting edge technology and also the trends that we're seeing in terms of work life balance

[00:45:23] yes so with that in mind are there any current trends that you're seeing in africa's cloud

[00:45:30] technology space that you're quite excited about the trend's been going on a long time

[00:45:37] i think um you know there's a there's a cultural term called devops and devops is a is a mindset

[00:45:45] it's a set of practices that form a larger culture um you know i would say the discipline would be

[00:45:52] something like it's called site reliability engineering and i think um you know what i what

[00:45:59] seen is um yeah a bit of a trend um africa's been producing very good sre's or site reliability engineers

[00:46:07] and you know and these sre's and i'm speaking from my own experience i can't speak from

[00:46:14] from from a wider perspective but you know our sre's at damos are working at global companies

[00:46:22] in america and the uk and you know we're seeing a great success and so i think there's this you

[00:46:30] know this trend where you know african engineers are all becoming stronger and stronger at the

[00:46:37] infrastructure layer at that layer of the cloud and that to me looks like like quite a trend

[00:46:44] there's another thing um that i'm seeing but it's not so much cloud related it's it's just

[00:46:49] the greater the ecosystem becomes the more successful businesses become the more entrepreneurs it produces

[00:46:55] and and i've seen like you know people talk about things like the paystack mafia or uh whatever you

[00:47:01] want to call it so more more successful companies that are utilizing the cloud produce uh people

[00:47:08] that that are then you know going out and starting new companies and it's just this general

[00:47:14] cascading pattern that i've noticed on the continent thank you for sharing that so if we go past

[00:47:20] current trends look into the future where do you see africa in the next five years with regards to

[00:47:30] how the cloud technology space will evolve you know the infrastructure how would that look like

[00:47:37] we're playing catch up um so in a from a realistic sense i think um what i mean by that is you know

[00:47:45] i i'm i'm of the opinion that uh you know the public and private sectors across all countries

[00:47:51] hopefully will be heading in the right direction slightly more stable infrastructure um more attractive

[00:47:57] international investment and you know cascading effects like you know skills development and so on

[00:48:03] so i think you know we probably are playing a bit of catch up but but long term i think we're in a

[00:48:10] really unique uh position i think our data uh the data that our continent is generating will be

[00:48:15] unique and and and ultimately valuable and i think this is something that all of us need to

[00:48:23] think about how do we how do we keep our data insightful for us and and valuable for us and

[00:48:29] they're useful for improving things on our own continent so if we look closer to home where do you

[00:48:36] see yourself and damos in five years time you know what role do you see your company playing

[00:48:43] and shaping africa's cloud technology space infrastructure the controversial thing that

[00:48:51] i was saying is that i think the world is maybe over committed to deploying things in the public

[00:48:58] cloud and i i believe that not everything that's currently being pushed in the cloud

[00:49:05] needs to be in the cloud it can be a really expensive place and i think there's an opportunity

[00:49:12] to find a bit of a balance and what i mean by that is so i see damos really helping companies

[00:49:20] understand how to use the public cloud in the right way but but also i see damos building

[00:49:26] um local solutions for for cloud services and and so i'm not going to say much more than that i just

[00:49:34] feel like there's a big opportunity to solve africa's cloud resources problems in a unique way

[00:49:41] and it does include moving things back into private data centers into this hybrid multi-cloud

[00:49:49] state and that's something i'm pretty excited about quote of the week as people we often

[00:49:55] have quotes mantras african proverbs or affirmations that keep us going when times are challenging or

[00:50:01] when times are good do you have one that you can share with us today yeah i think um look it's going

[00:50:08] to be boring to talk about this from a nigerian standpoint but it's something that i learned in

[00:50:13] nigeria and it comes from feliciti talking about suffering and smiling and i think you know

[00:50:19] that resonated a lot with me in my time in nigeria and it helped me gain perspective on things and i'm

[00:50:27] just suggesting that you know while we are struggling on the continent and we are playing

[00:50:33] catch-up that we can do so in a fun and exciting way and it doesn't all have to be negative

[00:50:41] and i think you know the world has painted aspects of our history and aspects of our

[00:50:47] current state in a really negative light and i think it's on on us to to show the world that you

[00:50:53] know while some of that may be true that there's enormous beauty and enormous potential and something

[00:51:00] that that we need to showcase and show the world i agree it's about that resilience and also seeing

[00:51:06] the positives in as many situations as possible which is definitely an african mindset and also

[00:51:13] a entrepreneurial mindset as well which kind of go hand in hand so thank you for that andrew we've

[00:51:21] come to the end of the conversation it's been a fantastic conversation you've shared a lot of

[00:51:26] insights from i guess how african's ai future is being shaped by cloud technology and also the

[00:51:32] importance of investing in cloud infrastructure, upskilling local talent and a lot more so thank

[00:51:39] you for your time it's been an absolute pleasure pleasure is all mine thanks to sir thanks for all

[00:51:44] the time and wonderful questions so appreciate it and we will speak soon thanks a lot have a good one

[00:51:51] thank you to everyone who has listened and stay tuned to the podcast if you've enjoyed this

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