It's about owning problems and getting innovative. Dr Ayiku cracks the code on transforming everyday cast-offs into ingenious solutions. Discover the hidden "what ifs" waiting to be unleashed!
Guest: Dr. Andrews Ayiku, Lecturer/SME Industry Coach, University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA)
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrews-ayiku-31000374/
Hosts:
Alejandro Juárez Crawford
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/alejandro-juarez-crawford
Miriam Plavin-Masterman
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/miriam-plavin-masterman
______________________
Episode Introduction
In this episode Dr. Andrews Ayiku explores how young entrepreneurs are tackling social issues through creative solutions like sustainable charcoal from coconut husks. He emphasises the importance of a problem-solving mindset, adaptability, and collaboration to empower individuals to become agents of change in their communities. We also discuss about mindset transformation and the personal transformation that comes from solving social problems.
______________________
Resources
______________________
Episode Sponsors
Are you interested in sponsoring an ITSPmagazine Channel?
👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/sponsor-the-itspmagazine-podcast-network
______________________
For more podcast stories from What If Instead? Podcast with Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman, visit: https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/alejandro-juarez-crawford and https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/miriam-plavin-masterman
Own What You Want to Do | A Conversation with Dr. Andrews Ayiku | What If Instead? Podcast with Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (00:01)
You know, Mim, I'm particularly excited about our guest today. There's a tendency, I think, in the myths of innovation and entrepreneurship and even leadership and making change to think it's supposed to happen overnight, right? The innovator gets the light bulb and then within moments they're in a conversation with some major venture capitalists often played by the same kind of actor in the movie version, right? And...
Mim Plavin-Masterman (00:29)
100 % or they're in their garage and there's the montage of them like testing all these things on the garage. But the montage is like five years and 12 seconds on the screen. Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (00:39)
Exactly. And that 12 seconds can be really destructive, right? Because there's this other way of doing things where what does it mean? There's a phrase I've learned from our guests today, whom we're very excited to introduce in a moment, and the phrase is, don't wish for it, work for it. And I think about someone who's working a problem, and they don't even know if the way they're working on it is going to succeed.
often for a period of 10 years, more than a decade. And how do we sustain that if we think we're supposed to have that early success? We're gonna get into that theme and many others today. Mim 'am, look, I like to give you a hard time for these episodes, but I think today, yeah, you ready for it? Okay, so I'll sneak it in. All right, all right, just watch out. It's when you're not gonna be waiting for it. It's gonna come by surprise. So on that note.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (01:25)
I know. I'm here for it. I'm here for it. I'm ready. I'm warmed up. I'm warmed up. Bring it. Bring it. I got this. All right. I see. All right. All right. You're just going to throw a little knuckleball sometime. Okay. Okay. I'm here for it. Let's do this.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (01:38)
That's what we do.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (01:42)
Awesome, awesome. So today we have the distinct pleasure of being joined by Dr. Andrews Ayikku who's coming to us straight from Ghana. So we are very excited to have him. He is currently the West Africa manager for the E4 Impact Foundation, which is entrepreneurship for impact. He's the lead entrepreneurship trainer for the whole region. He's also a lecturer at the University of Professional Studies and a lecturer at the University of Makini in Sierra Leone.
He's worked across a variety of countries and continents in Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Italy, Pakistan, Senegal, Canada. In addition to all of his extensive academic work, he's done private sector work for banks, including the Bank in Africa, the United Bank for Africa. He's run work in innovative microfinance. He's done work for the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning. So he's a man who wears many hats.
And we're very excited that he gets to add another hat to his collection, which is podcast guest. So welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you for joining us.
Andrews Ayiku (02:41)
Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited. Thank you very much. I'm excited.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (02:48)
Welcome, Andy. Thank you so much for taking time with us here, wearing new hats in your collection of many. I'm Alejandro Juarez -Crawford, and this is my co -host, Mim Plaven Masterman, here with you today. And we're on a mission together here to make experiments of your own feel as normal as watching videos on your phone. Welcome to What If Instead? The podcast. Now, Andy, I'd love to start us
Andrews Ayiku (02:53)
Thank you.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (03:17)
with the people that you serve, who you work with, and you want to enable them to ask the big question, what if instead, and respond with experiments of their own. Maybe you can talk about the people you can serve, and that you're here to serve, and some of the ways that you're hoping to equip them or remove obstacles to their asking that question with their own experiments.
Andrews Ayiku (03:44)
So basically I work with students at the university who want to develop their business ideas. So the key issue is that there are no work available and we are going through the economic conditions. So people are being told, people are being encouraged to start their own work. But what kind of work would they start? Especially with the kind of social issues that we have in this country. And other countries have worked with social issues are key from malaria, from environmental issues.
from solar, even in my country Ghana, now we are having serious issues with electricity. A lot of businesses are going down. So the key question when people come to me is that what should I start doing? What can I do? How can I be successful? The how and the why questions are key to them. But it's very interesting for you to know that their mindset is one of the key things that I usually recommend when I'm helping them to develop a business idea. It's not just your passion. It's something you want to do.
Are you wishing for it or you want to make it happen? Are you ready to put in your time, your efforts and your energy for the journey? Because the journey is unpredictable.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (04:50)
Ah!
You know, if I'm hearing you right, Andy, you're making a distinction from just having a passion. It brings me back to that idea of what I wish for versus what I'm really going to work for. You're making a distinction between having a passion for something and putting in the energy, the consistent effort, all of that work to develop solutions. Am I hearing that right?
Andrews Ayiku (05:05)
Exactly.
Exactly. That's exactly what I'm saying. For them to show commitment to whatever they want to do, whatever they dream, they have to, and that's where the challenge comes from. Because how do you get their state of mind from wishing to making the necessary efforts to make it happen? We can take a year, two years, and getting ready for it. Basically, most of them are not ready for it. So you need to work, help, support, coach.
mentor them throughout the journey and it will be very successful. Yeah.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (05:47)
This is fascinating because as I'm hearing you talk about the social challenges that are being faced with the students that come to you in Ghana, I'm also hearing a lot of sustainability concerns that are embedded or wrapped around the social concerns. Your point about solar, your point about malaria. Sadly, malaria is back because of climate change and increasing conditions of temperature throughout the world. How are your students thinking about the social piece of entrepreneurship? Is it?
social for sustainability? Is it social for the community in Ghana? Kind of, are they moving between the levels? What are they doing?
Andrews Ayiku (06:25)
So initially when you talk about social issues, the mentality for a typical Ghanaian, a typical West African is government issue. Government needs to do this. Government needs to do that. Now government is not doing it. So who's going to do it? So you need to solve community problems. One of the first things that I've learned with my account with Alejandro and the project that we did is to think about your environment. What can you solve? And currently when I enter into my social enterprise class, what social issue have you identified that you can solve? And I learned that from my interaction with him.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (06:51)
you
Mim Plavin-Masterman (06:52)
Mm -hmm.
Andrews Ayiku (06:54)
So this helps them to start thinking about the community. What is there for me to solve? And there is data, there are people dying, there are people having issues. How do I solve them? Then when they come back to you, they come back with a concept note about starting a social issue, social intervention in the community and how you can support them to make a business case out of it.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (07:18)
Mmm.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (07:19)
I mean, I think this is fascinating because there's public health implications, right? There's entrepreneurship implications, there's profit implications. Like, how do you help the students sort of sort that all out as they're developing these ideas?
Andrews Ayiku (07:27)
Exactly.
So I'll have them to put down together a business. We have to use this social model canvas, social enterprise model canvas for them to put something together because I can't introduce you to an incubator and I can't introduce you to an accelerator. Me, myself, I can't help you when you don't know what you are about. We do all those analysis to get everything ready to enable them to even talk about it. And they had opportunities to pitch.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (07:48)
you
Andrews Ayiku (07:58)
about the problem that they want to solve. And that is the starting point. But we spend time to do a market research to find out what will be the impact. I'm sure there are problems, but is it a real problem? Are people suffering from it? Is there data to back whatever you want to do? So we go through all this and it's a journey with a lot of patience. Yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (08:21)
You know, I love that line. I can't help you if you don't know what you're about and I want to come back to that but First I'm hearing you describe a shift You said many people say the government needs to when it's a problem the government needs to handle this and maybe we can even think broadly about the human impulse to say see a problem and say, you know, somebody needs to do something about this right and then on the other side you're describing this
difficult process of sustained effort to solve, to be involved in creating a solution yourself or taking part in that. Can you talk to us a bit, maybe even tell us a story about one of the young people you've worked with and how they went through that transition or shift?
Andrews Ayiku (08:58)
Yeah.
So one of the students I worked with was actually at the law school when I met him. He came for one of my by the fireside program where I was telling them to identify a social issue. One of the social issues he identified was the coconut husk. When people finish drinking coconut together, they just throw it into the gutter and result in two gutters. So I asked him, what can you do about it? This gentleman went to do a research, came back and then pitched to me that he can use the coconut husks to come up with a charcoal.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (09:28)
Okay.
Andrews Ayiku (09:40)
He can use it apparently there's a technology. I said, go ahead and do more. Currently, I'm sure one of these days we'll have the opportunity to speak to him. His name is Amin. He has built, he goes around to collect this coconut husks, turn them into charcoal and the number of trees because in Ghana, people use a lot of charcoal, but we come from wood, burning of wood, which will cause deforestation and all those things. So this just must be able.
to through the problem we identify because I said go back to the communities. They know government should be able to clean the road. Government should be able to do that. Government is not ready to do anything. The same applies to one of my students who I've gotten there. There are lots of waterborne diseases. We don't drink good water. That's why the pipe -borne water is an issue. So he did the research and so realized that there's a tablet that when you put in the water, it will help you to prevent water blindness. He wasn't waiting for government.
And I can give you a lot of stories that I've had the opportunity and the privilege to work with people solving social issues in the community from malaria and other things just to keep. And even solar as well. People are trying to develop solar that will help because now we have a lot of light -offs. We have even given, there's a song on it and other things just because we are waiting for government to do it by your own way. How do you solve the social problems in your community?
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (11:04)
You know what really strikes me about Amin's story and the way you're thinking about this is that that research you talked about, what can you do about it? Unless Amin had gone out and experimented with the husks of the coconuts and the charcoal and everything that I'm hearing about in this story,
Andrews Ayiku (11:07)
Mm.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (11:33)
he would never have known how he could be an agent of change, how he could solve this problem. Is that right?
Andrews Ayiku (11:41)
Exactly. So you had to go around to check are the coconut ads available? Where are they producing it from? Who is in charge of that? Where can you collect it? And what damn site can you put it to start the project? So if the raw materials wasn't available through market research, I'm not sure this will work because we really wanted to have impact. How many garters will you be able to clear? And one of the things you do was to get containers to collect it. So you had points in Accra where it was collecting this rubbish, these coconut hacks.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (12:06)
Right, right.
Andrews Ayiku (12:11)
Because a lot of people drink coconut every day. It's all over the place. But where do they throw their axe in the gutters? So the gutters are always choked. And since he started collecting its gutters that are choked, are just reducing. But he did a research. And as I said, I have to work on his mindset to tell you it's possible. Because he wanted to be a corporate lawyer. And I asked him what solutions are you going to solve for the community? But now, he knows the solution that he's solving now. Sure.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (12:33)
Hahaha!
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (12:33)
Okay.
We can call this the corporate lawyers principle. If we could just take everyone who wants to be a corporate lawyer or a management consultant or investment banker and put them through this process Amin went through, we could really change the world.
Andrews Ayiku (12:55)
Exactly.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (12:55)
Okay, just so we're clear, like that one landed a little bit. I was a management consultant. So, you know, I feel very seen right now, but maybe not in a good way. But as I'm listening to you talk, Indy, I was thinking about your background and how you have background in microfinance. You have background in banking. You even have background in government agencies in terms of the ministry. How did you come to decide, okay, entrepreneurship is where I'm going to be? Because if you look at your, you know, your sort of
through line or your track record, it sort of seemed like you were heading to a traditional banking or finance kind of a position. Okay.
Andrews Ayiku (13:28)
Exactly, I did my first degree in finance. I'm a finance guy. But when I was working at the Ministry of Finance, I had the opportunity to go and stay in the northern part of the country. Then I...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (13:42)
Wait, so I was being harsh to both of you when I talked about consultants and finance guys? I didn't know. All right, go ahead, excuse me. Mute this host.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (13:45)
Okay.
Andrews Ayiku (13:49)
So I had opportunity to, yeah. So I don't know whether I've told you earlier, Andrew, I had opportunity before starting the microfinance to go to India for three months, to go and work in Hyderabad, Bangalore, where you were working with the low level people, the poorest of the poor to understand. I was part of the team that developed the microfinance policy for Ghana. So when I came back,
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (14:15)
Thank you.
Andrews Ayiku (14:17)
then I realized that there are lots of social issues that can be solved by individuals. But that didn't change my mind. I decided to go to the bank and I realized the bank wasn't serving the people who can bring change. All that they were interested in is the bottom line. So I took it upon myself when I left the bank six years ago, I said, I want to go into academia, but I want to focus on helping people change their mindset. So myself, I started a community service.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (14:18)
you
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (14:24)
you
Mim Plavin-Masterman (14:25)
you
Andrews Ayiku (14:44)
going to community rural areas where they won't have the opportunity to sit in my class, to organize sessions for them, tell them how to start a business, how to develop a business idea and don't wait for government. So then I entered into academia, then I realized that it's a call to help people to solve social issues. And the best way to do that is to write articles, go on radio to speak to people, let people believe what you have to do. But I have to equip myself and that's how I got to know.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (14:57)
you
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (15:08)
Mm.
Andrews Ayiku (15:13)
I realized that I need to position my mind on what I want to do and I needed resources. And it will be the best resource I've gotten so far is from is is team which which has helped me to to grow. So every week I write in the newspapers about issues, social issues, issues that you people don't want to talk about how bring it up. How businesses are suffering, how businesses are more into into profit, but not into.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (15:16)
you
Andrews Ayiku (15:41)
into society, not into people. No, no, no. So everybody wants to make money. So now when you talk to me, they want to make or what is your triple bottom line? For instance, why not the society? Why not the community? You can send me a pitch without talking about the negative effect and the positive effect of your business model.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (16:00)
You know Andy Before you go on and and we want to take this in some interesting directions I think mems about to can you just describe for our listeners the team you're talking about your Characteristically humble there's no question that the rest of us in that international Group we're learning from you, but can you talk about what exactly are you referring to what kinds of?
Andrews Ayiku (16:09)
you
Hehehehe
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (16:28)
or tools or methods are being useful to make this shift happen that you're describing.
Andrews Ayiku (16:34)
So there's a social entrepreneurship program led by Alejandro that I had the privilege. My university joined and that was where the learning opportunity, the other side of social entrepreneurship started for me. That's where the love itself started. Because I had the weekly meetings with people I know I would never meet on my own and they were sharing experiences from other countries, from Indonesia. There's a guy from India, from Bangladesh, from...
Mim Plavin-Masterman (16:35)
you
you
Andrews Ayiku (17:01)
and they were solving issues with students. So I also presented my students and my students were shocked because the social issue you find in Ghana, somebody has a solution somewhere else. But I'm not sure I'll never had the opportunity to bring all this together for me to appreciate what I'm actually doing. And that is where the motivation comes from. So he brought together a group of intellectuals who want to solve a problem. You see, I don't know the number of people I've met who really want to see something happen. No.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (17:07)
Hmm. Hmm.
Hmm.
Andrews Ayiku (17:31)
Everybody is trying, but I met a group that want to bring change. So on a weekly basis, they actually the change you want to bring. You can go to ZGME and keep quiet. So that is what my mind, with all my years of working, that group changed my perception. I hope it will be hoping to more people to change their minds. They got a lot of room. In fact, okay, I must admit to you that I'm using some of the materials to teach my social entrepreneurship class now.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (17:52)
Hmph.
Andrews Ayiku (17:58)
all the material I've changed. The university asked me, where did you get these materials? I said, I got it from them. I've not told you, but I've changed. I've put my name on it, but it's yours.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (18:05)
So Andy, I wanted to follow up on one thing that you had talked about before the comments you had just made, where you were talking about whenever you're getting someone to present a business model to you, you are making them present the positive and negative sides of the business model. To me, that's such an unusual but really important way to f -
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (18:07)
It's ours.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (18:32)
frame a business model because so many companies, especially in startup mode, don't try to measure the negative costs of their product. They don't want to know the externality. They're like, that's someone else's problem, right? Because now my...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (18:41)
Mim, for listeners who might not know what an externality is, can you break that down?
Andrews Ayiku (18:43)
That's that.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (18:51)
Sure. Okay. So an externality is generally where there's a cost, a negative cost in some way of using a product or service, but that cost is pushed off of the company to a neighborhood or community members or even customers. So some examples might be people buying Airbnb's.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (18:54)
Okay.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (19:09)
and taking rental properties and making them vacation properties. What that does as an externality is it makes rent less affordable for people in those communities. And that's an example, but that's not accounted for as a cost of Airbnb's business model, for example. Yeah. Right. Right, right. Exactly. No, perfect. So, yeah. So, Andy, so to my question, like, how are you getting students to measure this? Because that's one of the things I'm fascinated by is like, how do we think about the
Andrews Ayiku (19:10)
Hey.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (19:21)
Got it. So it's a cost of what I'm trying to do that I'm making somebody else bear. I'm externalizing it, right? OK, thank you. Go on.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (19:39)
or the burden that our businesses put on a community or a society, and then how do we really make a different kind of cost benefit analysis when we're evaluating what to do?
Andrews Ayiku (19:44)
So basically, I look at the number of people you have been able to employ over the period of time when you started your business, does the impact on them, the number of people you have employed? And then the community, are you polluting the society? Are you polluting your community? What kind of pollution? How are you making sure that the polluted water is not, especially those into soap making? I have students who are in the business, I say to develop soap making, and that is how do you manage the wastewater?
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (19:51)
Mm.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (20:09)
Okay.
Andrews Ayiku (20:13)
Initially, they think, oh, I just pour it in the gutter. No, it's a chemical. You have to manage it well. So exactly. So those are some of the things that I do. And those who are into other businesses that disturb the society, what are you doing about it? So you talk about that before you start with your partnership, your value proposition, and other things. And it's helping them to think. One of my students recently had this banking gun, advanced savings alone. My student does more organic farming because of the issues related to using.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (20:19)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Andrews Ayiku (20:42)
all those fertilizers that you have. Now the bank, I partner him to go and train local farmers because of that social enterprise business idea. So he wanted to do and sell. When he started thinking about the social issue, the bank is saying that, listen, for my social corporate social responsibility, I want you to lead. And I have a lot of examples of students who rather going to pitch for money, they go and pitch for collaboration to solve a social issue for a community.
that has a problem and they are able to measure how many people will you employ, what is the effect of this. So basically that is why I come through this program. I've had opportunity to change people's minds, not just about the money, about the society and the community.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (21:23)
You know, Andy, you're really making me think in a way that I haven't thought very often, which is I'm used to thinking of a social enterprise or innovation as solving a problem. And there's financial issues and there's impact. But what you're helping me shift in my thinking, and it's really exciting idea to me, is that
Part of what makes an enterprise a social enterprise is just that we're looking at the whole picture. It's just that we're thinking, okay, which costs are you making somebody else pay for? And what's the impact if you're dumping in that water stream, right? It's almost like if we don't do that, then it's like we have a very narrow window that we're looking through. So it's a...
Andrews Ayiku (22:15)
Yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (22:18)
Maybe this is obvious to you too, but to me it's a very different way of looking at enterprise to say actually what we need to do is open up our focus to show the whole picture, not just a little part of it. That's a radical idea to me.
Andrews Ayiku (22:34)
Sure. Sure, I'm...
Mim Plavin-Masterman (22:37)
I agree. And I think in America in particular, it's radical. For sure.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (22:42)
Yeah, in America, we have like a little tiny pinhole that we look through called shareholder value maximization this quarter. And if you can do that, forget it if you ripped everything else out of the business. But seriously, you're really making us think. And there's at least a couple directions we could take this discussion in now. One would be, you know, you're enabling folks to make this shift in their thinking from
Andrews Ayiku (22:54)
Okay.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (23:12)
somebody needs to do this to, I'm going to figure out a way to do this from book research on how it's been done before to learning through researching what could happen from a shift from, well, I'm thinking about part of this problem to I'm thinking about the whole problem. Those are all changes, not just in how I draw my business on a canvas, they're changes in mindset. And I want to ask you,
Andrews Ayiku (23:23)
you
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (23:41)
How do you enable folks in a systematic way? Are there systematic ways that you're helping to make that change? And what are the ways, the tools, the ways of interacting with students that are enabling you to do that? How are you making that possible?
Andrews Ayiku (24:02)
So usually, as an investor, I organize a boot camp, a three days boot camp, using the design thinking model tools, where we go through the tools and then I allow them to spend their own rest of the day coming up with something. So they'll come up with all these ideas so big, they want to solve the problem of Ghana, they want to solve the problem of Sierra Leone, all those countries. And then...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (24:10)
Uh huh, uh huh.
Andrews Ayiku (24:27)
we spend time to bring it together. But one of the things I do to support them is to do the research for them. So your initial desktop research, I have to help you because when you ask them to do a desktop research, if you come out with a hypothesis for them to go and test in the market, it becomes an issue. For instance, they'll go and test it with their family members and you tell them everything is okay, no. So we'll organize a focacore group for them. And then some of them feel you have to pay, no, you don't have to pay, you have to do it yourself. So even when I go on the phone or I get people for you to speak to.
You need to do it yourself, not me, because you'll be on their journey. I want you to appreciate the thoughts and you need to be committed. You need to be reliable and you need to be adaptable. These are the skills that I tell you. If you have a business idea, are you adaptable to situations? Are you reliable? Are you committed? The moment you start asking such questions, they will run away because they want to do a government job. When I realize you are there because the government job when you are there, you just get paid. You don't come up with any innovative idea. Then I use the innovative canvas.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (24:58)
Uh -huh.
Yeah.
Andrews Ayiku (25:23)
which will help you to redesign that innovation that's in your mind.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (25:28)
Wait, let me jump in for a second because I want to just state two things I've heard from you that are really interesting and tell me if I've got them right. One is that at the beginning of the process, folks often want to solve problems that are so big that they're vague, right? We're just going to make everything perfect in Ghana or in the world. And you're forcing them to actually design practical solutions. I'm hearing about that, but I'm also hearing that you're challenging them not to say, not to ask you for how to do it.
Andrews Ayiku (25:45)
Is that hmmm?
you
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (25:56)
figure out, to derive solutions that might not be known, and you use these words adaptable and reliable, right? So if you could, in a few minutes, continue with what you're saying, but give us a story about that shift again that you've just described, if it's not too much.
Andrews Ayiku (26:17)
So I, one of the things that I've learned is for, is enable people to own whatever they want to do. So I will help you by you be part of the process ongoing and the part of the process from the beginning, I will let you know that it's not an easy journey. I won't lie to you about it. So how flexible are you if things change? So you've seen a community you want to do ABCD and a telecom company comes to do solve that particular problem. What do you do?
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (26:33)
Mm -hmm.
Mmm.
Andrews Ayiku (26:42)
Is that the only social problem that you are going to be pertaining to? So I have a lot of students, oh, please, Andy, you said I should do this. I want to do, somebody else is doing it. What other problem have you identified? So the problem identification takes a time for them. But if you are not adaptable, you are not reliable, you yourself, you need to be committed. If you have to get to a community at this time to interview them, you need to be there. So it's a field work I want you to experience and own.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (26:48)
Right.
Mm -hmm.
Andrews Ayiku (27:10)
So you need those skills before you go on the field. And I'll tell you point blank, you go and think about it. So the bootcamp moves you from the classroom where we have the hypothesis to test. You do the questionnaire during the bootcamp. So when you get to the field, you go and talk to the people and you come out with your results, but we need to validate it.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (27:10)
Mm -hmm.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (27:27)
This is fascinating. So as you're thinking about this whole process of getting students to kind of change their mindset, to think about like a problem solving process as something dynamic, is something ongoing, it's like the parameters are going to change, right? The rules are going to change. How has your approach to even teaching that changed over the years that you've been doing this?
Andrews Ayiku (27:34)
Hmm.
Yeah.
So over the years in the past, I felt I wasn't helping them. I wasn't challenging their mindset. It was just normal. Making them feel that they would just be the biggest of Ghana and all those big names. I remember one of the students I went to his house, he has posted all those pictures in his room. He's wishing to be the Amazon chief executive. And I realized you don't work for it. Those guys are adaptable, they are flexible, their mindset is different. They need to change. The guy has built the business and given the business.
somebody to run, but that business goes to sustainable. What have you done? So then I, my approach now is to tell you the truth from the beginning and let you own your business. If I've not owned the business that I'm doing, the skill that I want to develop, I'm here to learn more. I'm at that stage that I really want to help you to be successful. So the way I'll come to you when I'm going through this, the only choice you have is to survive because I'm going to work through.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (28:28)
Hmm.
Mmm.
Andrews Ayiku (28:48)
I'll tell you the truth and I'll build your mind. You know, after the session with you, the opportunities I saw from other countries, then I started thinking aloud. I said, no, no. So what have I been doing? Because people have solutions and people are working on solutions. Why are we working on problems in Ghana? Why do we think an IMF or somebody else will come and give us?
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (29:09)
Mmm.
Andrews Ayiku (29:13)
money to do it. We said, when was we can use our mind to change? So when I work on your mind and we start in this approach, I'm so happy. I'm a Christian. So I give glory to God. Since I entered into this, it's never because of monetary issues. Then I have stayed in the bank and make a lot of money. I've been choosing bankers in Africa, but helping people, people going out and mentioning my name, that I've helped them to employ people.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (29:40)
Mmm.
Andrews Ayiku (29:42)
That is where my excitement comes from.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (29:45)
That's amazing. That's amazing. Now, I think what you're doing with the students is just, it's really transformative. I mean, it sounds like it's even transformed you. Like you're just lighting up as you talk about it.
Andrews Ayiku (29:52)
Yes, exactly.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (29:57)
It is very interesting. Any of us who's been an instructor or a facilitator can probably relate to something you just said, which is when someone is doing something meaningful and then they turn around and they say that you helped them do it. I was at an award recently for green entrepreneurs in the Hudson Valley and this amazing entrepreneur wins the award. And I'm so impressed. I'm like, wow. And
She comes back and she says, actually it was this one session that we had that got me on this road. And I'm thinking, what? And you feel a kind of chill, but I want to switch from that chill that keeps many of us going to ask you, you described this really interesting thing. You've referred to it twice, of all these people in their respective countries working on problems and how that relates to this idea of ownership. And I want to explore that a little bit.
We tend in international work to have these ideas that someone's got the perfect model, right? And it comes from, we're taking our models from Davos or the IMF or some McKinsey or something like that, right? And we're just, we're showing folks how to do things in this great way. You're describing something which sounds so different from that, that it's almost unrecognizable to me, which is this multilateral,
Andrews Ayiku (31:03)
No.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (31:26)
collaboration and comparison. Can you talk a little bit about that? This podcast is on a website, a magazine about technology and society called ITSP. And I'd be fascinated to hear how is that multilateral piece working and why does it matter?
Andrews Ayiku (31:48)
So one of the things that I've realized over this journey is that, for instance, I was in Sierra Leone in January. And the kind of problems people are trying to solve using technology is quite different from the kind of problems, the same problem that people are trying to solve in Ghana. So people have farms where they are using technology to tell them when they have to water the farm, when the plants are going to grow, technology. I think they got the technology from a particular country. I don't know which country, but it helped them. So the farmers over there is something that they are exploring.
Now, this is changing the lives of people in that country. Now come to my country, Ghana, where we are now introducing new things into the ways we do things in Ghana. For instance, people are no more concerned about socializing because we have free education, government and all those things. And that is hampering how people think. So now people need to grow and do new things, new learnings. So how do they do that? So I'm equipping people in class, for instance, to think about the new dimensions of solving problems.
using new technology, using new media to reach out to social. So there are students who is into advocacy, especially about breast cancer. We have a huge issue about breast cancer. In Ghana, when somebody is diagnosed with breast cancer, they think it's spiritual. How do you change people's minds? They don't come for treatment. They think somebody is doing something for them. This is something that you need to use social media to do. This is something that you need to get to the community. This is how to have to build the soul. I'm helping to build a social enterprise.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (33:08)
Hmm hmm.
Andrews Ayiku (33:15)
solving this particular problem. And there are a lot of social issues that technology diversifications are key things that has to come in to be able to close the gap. I don't know whether that answers your question.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (33:28)
It's it's incredible what you're saying and you're really making me think because I have the habit of thinking Technology is something where it's made somewhere in the world and then we just distribute it to people right? But what I hear you saying when you use the word community and when you talk about breast cancer as a community Solution and to help someone breast cancer involves in knowing the community. You're making me think that it is only by knowing the
the specifics of people and how they're interacting and the problems they're facing. It's the same as the coconut husks you started with, only by knowing the specifics that we will actually be able to use technology and other solutions effectively. Am I hearing you right?
Andrews Ayiku (34:13)
Exactly. So in Ghana, it's more like October breast cancer day breast cancer week is done. Nobody traces them. Those people who get the they are diagnosed with nobody traces them. They go back to the churches, they go back to the society because they they die. But this can be worked on. Somebody needs to choose them. So this lady told me that, listen, I want to set up a social enterprise. She's a medical doctor. I want to follow up to them. I start keeping the data.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (34:32)
Mm -hmm.
Mm.
Andrews Ayiku (34:41)
Who are the organizations in charge? And she started last year. And this year, she started me by October. I have something to show you. The number of people I've been able to trace to change their mindset. Why don't you come for treatment? Why do you want to stay away? Nobody's doing. So you see how the whole thing works. So now she's building a community around that idea. How to sell it, how to grow it, how to touch people. Because government will not do that. Nobody will do that unless she solves it. So these are key things I'm telling people to follow up. People suffering from chronic illnesses.
How do they solve it? How can you use technology? Telling them this is what you're even sending news to them about what they need to do, perfectly else. And I learned this from the interactions I had with some of the students. You realize some of the students, the kind of solution they were proposing from Palestinians to all those places. And that's changed my mindset that everything is possible. You need to create a community and have an impact. I'm more concerned about the impact, Aliyan Duda. You are not just doing anything. It's not about the profit.
But how many people do you think you can empathize with? How many lifestyles will you be able to change? How many people will you bring them into this solution that you have?
Mim Plavin-Masterman (35:49)
I mean, this is just fascinating because I think you're, it sounds like you're using technology to create these communities around public health initiatives. And then getting the sort of building almost like a, when in the States we would call it like a bandwagon effect or like a snowball effect of like people go, they see the impact. Now they come back to their communities. They're telling people they went and that becomes the proof that other people need to get involved. I mean, I just think it's amazing.
Andrews Ayiku (35:57)
Exactly.
Excerpt.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (36:19)
I mean, I guess I would ask as a sort of a follow up to this discussion, like are there, if you were to say, okay, these are the top two or three public health issues we're gonna try to address in Ghana that your students are trying to address, like what would they be? How would you sort of think about them?
Andrews Ayiku (36:37)
So the first one is breast cancer because I have a survivor who came and told me she wanted to start running this and we are working on it. So she's the main person now. That's the first thing. Another social issue, let me think, on health is about the female hygiene, the pad that they use. So they are part of Ghana whereby people don't really have the menstrual pad.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (36:41)
Okay.
Okay. Yep.
Andrews Ayiku (37:05)
where they are setting other things, it has its effects. There are some places too, when they are doing their menstruation, they don't go to school because of all the stigma. So this lady contacted me that she wants to have an effect. She wants to change people's mindset. And she had me talking on radio about identify social issues. Tell me what social issues you have. I'll help you do a business model out of it. So she called me, she said, in my community, this is the issue, what can you do? So we did a research.
And now we have a company that is ready to distribute every month because people don't go to school, people don't go to work. So in a community, which I'm even yet to visit, but we are always on call. I said, if you have any issues, identify the social issue, call me. I'll help you to use. And the tools I got from Alejandro's session, which I hope it will be big and open to a lot of people because it has changed my thinking, my perception. I'm ready to solve issues because of what I saw.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (37:41)
Mm.
Andrews Ayiku (38:02)
because of what I made. And it was, I think it was for 10 weeks or something where every week you need to dedicate two hours listening to people pitching solutions. Then I realized that why don't I extend this to my country? So the breast cancer lady, I said, you can do it. And I gave her the bootcamp. She went out, did the hypothesis and is running. The lady with the menstrual issue told me about this, that in the community, it's a big issue. What can I do? I said, let's make it a business case.
Because I wanted to, I want it to be a real problem. Alejandro, that's one of the things I learned from you. If the problem is not real, what are you trying to solve? There's no impact. There's no measurement. Because I'm sure anyone who is supporting her will come. How many people have you solved their problem? They don't want to see numbers. So that's how I started from. And basically you don't need much money to do this. You need a mindset, you need a devotion, you need your effort. You need to be committed to solve this social issue. So my two main things, yes.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (38:35)
Hmm. Hmm.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (38:56)
So a quick follow up on that before I promise I will let Alhonder say something. But my quick follow up on this is if you're talking about getting these products to the rural areas, my logistics hat goes on. I'm like, how do you actually do that? I mean, isn't it really hard to get this, all these products to all these different small villages and small towns and cities throughout Ghana?
Andrews Ayiku (39:18)
So now we've identified three communities that are close to each other, that when you go just a distance, you'll be able to have the effect on them. And that's what we are doing. So because of logistics and because we don't have any funding now, my focus is that when you come identify a community that when we go to one community, we can meet two or three people, a maximum of this number of people, we meet opinion leaders, this is what we want to do. And it will shock you how the chiefs will tell you, this is what I want people to bring to me.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (39:22)
Okay.
Okay.
Andrews Ayiku (39:47)
nothing. It's a big problem. I can't solve it. Are you using technology? Come, come and do it. And they will register. They all have Android phones. You keep sending them messages every week, just to allow them. Have you gone for your treatments? How are you feeling? If you're having any pain, we are coming to do this. And this is what helps. So we are not doing it for the entire country. I want a success story. And I've told those guys that they are coming to me. You need to have a success story. And I also give you an opportunity for all the media people in Ghana.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (40:09)
Mm -hmm.
Andrews Ayiku (40:15)
to come and take a video of what you are doing. And surely you'll be able to win something and continue. Yes. So that's how I'm empowering people.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (40:25)
I'm hearing such a distinct paradigm from the ones that govern business, international development, government, and I'm gonna try to pull three things that I've heard as I've listened to you, Andy. One is it's about owning, figuring out the solution. It's not.
My professor's going to tell me it's not the government's going to do it. There's no they that need to solve this. It's I or we. And that is such a... You know, we talk about entrepreneurship as if it was a specialty, right? But what you're describing is owning what it means to solve the problems we're confronting us, whether I'm a Brex cancer survivor or I'm looking at polluted waterways or any of the other issues you've described. So this...
idea of owning it. But then that goes to something that in many ways is even more sort of shocking relative to the usual paradigm, which is this idea that when we're deriving that solution, it's not 90 % what somebody figured out somewhere in the world that we just then bring in and maybe 10 % local application. What I'm hearing is you're flipping that and that what makes a solution work,
is what I know about the people interacting and about the specific, maybe it's not people, maybe it's infrastructure or a natural system and the practices people are using. And when you say it, it seems, well, of course, and yet it's so different from the way I was trained to think. Or it's like, no, we'll figure out the best solution, go in and solve it. And I'm hearing something very different, and that leads full circle.
to where you started, which is the third big idea that I'm hearing, which is, as I go through that process of owning and then deriving it, how does it transform my mindset, my ability to stick with something when it doesn't yield right away, when I don't derive the solution quickly, when it takes that long and sustained effort? So those three ideas, the ownership, the deriving by doing,
where the specifics are what constitute the solution and the mindset change that happens through the process of doing that are really striking as I listen to what you're saying.
Andrews Ayiku (42:58)
Yeah.
Exactly. Exactly.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (43:07)
I was gonna say one quick follow up on this is that what I think is one of the most interesting sort of dynamic pieces of it is the direct input from the local community as fieldwork, as like hypothesis testing of like, okay, I think this is going to work, but I'm actually gonna go try it with these people and then come back and refine my thinking. And I think that there's a way in which, again, that's a very different way than we're traditionally thinking about prototyping. Like normally we think about,
just going to roll the solution out across a variety of places and it will be fine. And in some ways, this is parallel to like my own research is on repurposing abandoned infrastructure, like old rail lines and turning them into parks and things like that. And one of the challenges there is that the parks are physically somewhere, you can't move them. The remnant is the remnant. And so how do you think about bringing the local community into it to make it work for them? Like, what do they think this remnant should be?
Andrews Ayiku (43:46)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (43:59)
you
Andrews Ayiku (44:01)
Thank you.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (44:06)
And so I guess to come back to your point is how do you make sure that the students are keeping the communities they're trying to serve in the center of the problem they're trying to solve? Even as the dimensions are shifting, how do you make sure they keep that need to serve or who they're serving centered in front?
Andrews Ayiku (44:18)
us.
So one of the key things that we need to do is, I told them that identify your key stakeholders. You really have to identify your key stakeholders and you can't do anything on the social enterprise measurement class without identifying your key stakeholders, without even speaking to me. So me from the, during the boot camp, you need to identify those who are going to speak to in the key stakeholders for you, because this thing will never be successful. A gentleman started doing a project, never spoke to the chief, the community leaders, they closed him down.
That's not the father is going to be beneficial to them. And that's a very big lesson to me. It started social. It started hospital or something. People said, that's not what we needed. So for me in my boot camp class, you need to come up. Even if there's an MOU between you and them. And surprisingly, me, when they are able to do this from the beginning, they are able to get free land, free accommodation, especially when they understand what you are coming to do.
So taking a flounder perspective is a must. And anybody you ask who have been doing my session, my bootcamp will tell you that for Andrews, the first thing we tell you to do is identify your key stakeholder. Go and talk to them. They should even tell you that they are willing to implement it because if you feel the community has failed, the stakeholder has failed. So I try to lock down the stakeholder. So the breast cancer guy, the lady, the one doing the menstrual, the queen mother,
Mim Plavin-Masterman (45:43)
Love it.
Andrews Ayiku (45:49)
actually sits in states to direct. So, so, so, so they know, but who will give you the figures in the community about the people there who give you those, the household who lives with them. You are just coming with a solution, but I let the community, the stakeholders, the opinion leaders own this. So it's easier for them to call them for a meeting. It's easier to assemble them. It's easier to get them to accept. You don't have to talk a lot. And that is how the measurement will work from our side.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (46:15)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Andrews Ayiku (46:19)
In Ghana, for instance, that is the best way. If you get them to understand, you are quick to be successful.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (46:25)
Andy, you're giving me this idea as you say this, as you describe these powerful projects and endeavors and changes.
that the only thing universal is our specificity. The thing we all share is that there are a lot of details the way we do things. I was having coffee yesterday with a guy called Mike Hine, who was for many years our county executive in New York state where I live. And he talked about a time when there were veterans of wars and there was a high rate of homelessness. And he said, look, let's solve this.
Andrews Ayiku (46:42)
Yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (47:07)
And everyone said, no, you can't. That's a federal, veterans is a federal issue. I said, but wait a minute, what do we have here to solve it? And they ended up creating a center and doing a bunch of great things in Kingston, New York. And what struck me as you were speaking is we have this tendency to assume, and even you're so charitable that you sort of say, well, I'm learning this from the folks in all these other parts of the world. Right. But.
I actually think listeners, if I could wish us to note one powerful thing in what you're saying, it's that what you've described is something that is relevant to all of us. It's the one universal thing is that we have to get into the specifics with that agency and ownership to solve these problems. And to me, that is an idea that can keep us powered during very challenging times we're living in.
Andrews Ayiku (48:04)
Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I totally agree. So, so this mindset, this new me you see now,
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (48:08)
It's not one way. It's each of us learning from the other, right? So we got to get rid of that idea that somebody's teaching and somebody's learning. And we got to start listening to what we derive specifically and taking inspiration from that. That's what I'm hearing as you speak.
Andrews Ayiku (48:32)
is because of the experience I got from a session I had, not on my own, but I was selected to join, not alone, but I took it myself to spend money and it became part of my schedule because I was putting in time and effort and my emotions because I wanted to learn something and when I did that, I did my background on all the various professors, all the students and at every point in time when we have a session, we have about 150, 200 students and I keep all those records. I was actually keeping records of everything because I wanted to bring change.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (48:45)
Hmm.
Andrews Ayiku (49:02)
So my mindset had to change and I don't want to be the same person after that session. If I get the opportunity of joining next year or this year, I don't want them. I want my contribution to be far more better. So I wanted to be a better person. And that is exactly what I think to people I meet. You can't be in my session and be the same or you drop out. You can't be in my session without about change because I'll call you as a guest speaker to come and talk to people about what you have learned.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (49:21)
Mmm. Mmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Andrews Ayiku (49:31)
So it's a competition. You have to be part. Every week, if I have a class session on the weekend, I will call you as a guest speaker because you've learned from me. I mean, tell people that. And so nice competition. People are sending me messages. I'll be able to do this. I'll be able to do that. I've signed an agreement with the chief. He's calling the people for me to come and do the social issue. Initially, when I'm on radio, continue.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (49:53)
If we were... Yeah, go, go, go. What were you gonna add? Excuse me.
Andrews Ayiku (49:57)
No, no, no, this is going to be short. Initially when I was talking about social issues, people would say, no, it's government issues. Leave it to government. Are you now government? But now people are saying, I want to come to you to learn. I want to have a change. Me, myself, I want to be involved in the change. So you see the mindset that has changed? Yeah. Thank you. Please.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (50:11)
Hmm. You can't be in my session and be the same. That's what I heard you just say. And that.
Andrews Ayiku (50:19)
No, that's a very big challenge. And I'll tell you from day one.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (50:23)
Yeah, and you walk out. See if you could say it again. You walk out.
Andrews Ayiku (50:28)
Exactly. You walk out with that perception that you are going back and coming back to change people's lives, to talk to people. You have to be successful. You don't have a choice.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (50:31)
I love this. So no pressure, no pressure. You have to be successful. There's no other option. I can't.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (50:42)
Yeah.
Andrews Ayiku (50:49)
If it takes you two, three, four years, I'll still be following you. You are still my friend. I'll still help you. But you need to come back and tell people what you have changed. So the first time you get a society, get a community, get a stakeholder that believes in what you are doing because you believe in yourself. Identify the problem you want to solve. Let's validate it. Let's do hypothesis. Let me show it's real. Start solving it. No matter the number. Even five, I will celebrate you. I'll write about you in the newspaper.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (51:10)
Huh.
Andrews Ayiku (51:17)
So the opportunity for you to be on my lips is your ability to achieve something and it's for free.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (51:22)
I wonder what the relevance of that is to some of the generational issues we're experiencing in many parts of the world. If you're young today, you've inherited a lot of broken systems. They don't work in all these areas, health, environment. And what you're saying to me seems to be, and maybe we can close our discussion with just this last
question which is if you're young today and you're in my country, rates of mental illness have gone up, folks are often criticized as being entitled or unmotivated or what have you. What's the connection between what you're saying? You can't leave my session and be the same and you become an agent of change. You become someone and
And it makes me wonder whether we need to think about the generational dynamics differently, not why aren't you working harder, but have we offered you what you're describing, Andy?
Andrews Ayiku (52:29)
I think in a country like where you have the issue that you're having, I think the first thing you need to think about is to be very intentional and deliberate about what you want to solve. And since you can't solve all the problems, be very intentional. If about 10 people have mental issues, what can I do? Where is it coming from? Identify it. And if all of us, if I have 10 students and each person is taking mental health as an institutional problem.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (52:38)
Hmm. Hmm.
Andrews Ayiku (52:57)
and deliberately looking for solutions. I'm sure we can make it happen. There should be a deliberate and intentional effort. They should be willing to make sure that it works. The current generation really, really are not willing to get things where they want fast results, which doesn't happen. They need to be deliberate and very intentional. So on my journey, I'm very deliberate and intentional.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (53:06)
Mm.
Andrews Ayiku (53:25)
You have to be successful. You have to make it work. And I will be following you. I don't care how long it takes. But if I give you 10 and you change one person, at least you are doing so well. Deliberation and intentional helps at this point in time to make things happen. Thank you very much.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (53:44)
I mean, I feel like I've just listened to a lesson from a philosopher in the best way. Like, this is very humbling. I don't know. I feel like I've learned so much from our conversation.
Andrews Ayiku (53:51)
Um... Uh...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (53:57)
You better, you're not allowed to have a conversation with Andy and not come out changed. That's right. Get on it, get on it. No watching Netflix after this. Dr. Andy Ayuko, it is such a pleasure and a privilege to speak with you. I really do come out of this conversation with my own thinking and mindset shifted. And I'm grateful to you for that and for taking this thoughtful time with us here today.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (53:59)
I have to be successful. I have to have changed on the way out. I know. I know. I was listening. I was listening.
Andrews Ayiku (54:24)
Thank you for the opportunity anytime I will be available. Thank you.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (54:29)
Wonderful, thank you so much.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (54:29)
See you soon.
Andrews Ayiku (54:30)
Thank you.