It is exactly three minutes past 9 p.m., and for the first time this month, I am back in the office. I don’t want to call it my happy place — that sounds too romantic for a place that has also seen pressure, confusion, unpaid bills, and long nights. But honestly, this is still one of my happiest moments.
I’ve had a very, very crazy day. I kick-started it early, as usual, and by the time I got to the Captain Deck — that’s what I call the Afrifama Hub — I was already running on fumes. First thing we did once we got in was brainstorm on how we put Afrifama on a bigger stage. Not just the usual arena. East Africa, and beyond that, eventually.
Tonight, what keeps me up is a light bulb moment that took a month to arrive.
I’ve lost count of how many trips I made in and out of the office today, how many requests landed on my table. Builders waiting, millers waiting, transporters waiting. Ah boy, sometimes you just feel so tired. But then I remember why I started this, why I’m still building. Sometimes you really wish to go home, but you just can’t until you finalise on a few things.
While I’m writing this, my phone rings. It’s someone close to me, and I have to reject the call — I don’t want to lose this moment mid-write. She’ll be pissed off for a minute, but she’s a good reader and she’ll understand.
Last week, two of my very best African teams crashed out of the World Cup. I still can’t believe how Senegal disappointed me — leading in the 84th minute and still losing it all. Unbelievable. But we keep trying. We keep brainstorming, ideating, adjusting, all in the name of building.
Sometimes it makes you feel empty when you’re just exhausted and someone asks why you do this. Sometimes you’d wish you were doing it for the money. But the truth is, it’s never been about that. That’s the real drive.
I remember a conversation I had yesterday with someone close to the office, about how innovation actually happens. I brought up Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Elon Musk, Strive Masiyiwa, and James Mwangi from Equity Group. Different people, different eras, but one thing in common — they pushed and pushed until they hit the wall.
It reminded me of a documentary I watched a few weeks ago about Elon Musk, where he talked about coding out of a rented space — not even a proper facility, not even a good computer. They did it anyway, because that’s where the push took them. And somewhere in that pressure, the light bulb moment hit.
Musk said something about trying so many times before it clicked. I told the gentleman I was talking to — for me, that moment came last month. I was looking for a solution for Afrifama. Call it SaaS, but honestly, that sounds too deep for an agricultural guy like me. Let’s just call it a technology tool that could help us and other farmers.
I have no coding background — same as when I built my own website — but I sat down and started toying with the ideas that were already there. AI came to save non-programmers like us.
The light bulb moment doesn’t announce itself. It happens because you’ve exhausted your normal methods, and somewhere in the middle of trying, the switch connects, and the bulb goes on.
That took me back to the Lean Startup, a book I was introduced to back in 2018, at a social enterprise called Balloon Ventures in Kericho, where I was working with entrepreneurs. One story that stuck with me was Instacart — how they tried to build a SaaS, spent so much money and personnel, and eventually it collapsed. Why? They didn’t start with why. They didn’t start lean. They didn’t start with an MVP.
So when I sat in my office for two, three, four days, I didn’t just start coding blind. I kept going back to my business plan — a reminder of why you need one when you’re starting or growing anything. And by the time I was done, I had literally built out a backbone for what this business will use for years to come.
Not perfect. It still needs debugging, real developers, people who understand the technical side far better than me. But it was alive, and that changed everything. When I sat down with developers after that, I wasn’t explaining a dream from the clouds anymore. I could show them something — this is how the farmer moves, this is what the dashboard should capture, this is what the system must solve. That alone changed the conversation.
Talking to that gentleman, I told him something I’ve come to believe: you don’t actually know innovation is happening while it’s happening. Innovation doesn’t happen because you want it to. It happens because people — entrepreneurs, students, mothers, anybody — are looking for a better way out of a pain point that’s jeopardising their progress. The more you sit in that discomfort, the crazier your attempts get, until one of them actually works.
I call it trancing. I go out of this world for a bit, and in that state, things start getting built.
Someone will ask me later, “How did you even do that?” And honestly, I’ll just say, “I don’t know, man. It just happened.” But it didn’t just happen. It happened because I kept trying. Innovation can never happen if you never try.
Those are the key learnings from last month, as we head into a new one. I might leave the office around 10ish, maybe later — who knows with entrepreneurs. But when I get home, I’ll be smiling. Because I have people who believe in me, and that matters more than anything else. People willing to sacrifice their time and energy just to push this thing forward. That’s what I call friends of innovation. Edison had them. Musk had them. Without them, you never cross that loop.
If you’re reading this and you’re part of this team — you’re a legend. You’re pioneering something from deep in the roots of our villages here in Africa. Someday we’ll look back at these nights and know this is where it started.
But hey, before I get too serious — there’s still one African team trying to make the round of 16 tonight. I’ll only catch the second half once I’m home. If they win, I’ll celebrate to the moon. If they lose, I’ll just say, “Ah boy, not another Senegal night.”
Anyway, what are you building? Would you love to see what I’ve worked on recently? Let me know in the comments. And honestly — the algorithm still troubles me. But hey, we’re here to stay.