Exponential Africa

Endless West is using science and technology to reimagine how some of our finest consumed-goods are created. They create beverages that are made one molecule at a time. This new way of producing eliminates the need for traditional farming methods and their practices that strain the environment, such as use of pesticides, excessive water usage and carbon emissions. #futureproofAfrica #collaborativefutures

We talk to Thomas Kriese, who has been designing and managing the way people interact online for close to 20 years. At SU, Thomas heads up the community development and engagement efforts globally. He is responsible for refining and executing on our global community strategy, and working collaboratively with the local community leadership around the world. He represents the community and its interests inside the wider organization and is creating a scalable infrastructure for growth and build out. Thomas has a degree in Linguistics from the University of California at San Diego. When he’s not spending quality time with his wife and three daughters, you can find him swimming, biking and running his way into fitness.

David Roberts is regarded as one of the world top experts on disruptive innovation and exponentially advancing technology. His passion is to help transform the lives of a billion suffering people in the world through disruptive innovation.David served as Vice President of Singularity University and two-time Director (and alum) of the Graduate Studies Program.He is the recipient of numerous awards and medals and has led the development of some of the most complex, state-of-the art systems ever built, to include satellites, drones, and fusion centers. He also worked as an Investment Banker in the Mergers & Acquisitions Group at Goldman Sachs Headquarters. He received his B.S. in Computer Science & Engineering from M.I.T. was a Distinguished Graduate, and majored in Artificial Intelligence and Bio-Computer Engineering. He holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.His fascination with technology began in the fourth grade after building a hovering electric drone, to carry his younger sister to the bus stop, powered by what was formerly his mother’s vacuum cleaner, and fortunately limited by the length of an electric power cord.

Nathaniel Calhoun helps guide Singularity University’s approach to changemaking and impact as a founding member and Vice Chair of its Global Grand Challenge Faculty. He has moderated numerous SU Executive Programs and Directed SU’s flagship impact program, the Global Solutions Program (GSP). Nathaniel closely tracks innovations in emerging decentralized and platform cooperative technologies that create brand new business models and opportunities. He tracks disruptive and precedent setting changes within policy, especially related to governance and civic technologies. He specializes in helping both private and public sector actors to understand how to leverage and prepare for the growth of these and related trends, offering a unique take on the options facing an aspiring “exponential organization.” Nathaniel also supervises the creation and implementation of digital technologies at a global scale that help alleviate poverty while increasing business literacy along with digital and financial services in Sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia. He does this work through CODE Innovation, a consulting company he founded in 2009 to help organizations like UNICEF and Plan International to use web and mobile technologies more effectively. Code Innovation has received financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to further develop their Self Help Group digital platform, which is growing exponentially in nine languages and more than a dozen countries. Nathaniel has two decades of experience in the field of education, public speaking, moderation and resilience building. He tracks the threat of technological unemployment and the relative merits of the solutions that humanity is offering around this issue. After living and working in Africa for more than a decade, Nathaniel enjoys helping organizations to think through their strategies with new and emerging markets.

As Director of International Summits, Bohdanna’s work is to bring influencers together to cross-pollinate regional, national, and global ideas that will grow into tech and social change for the betterment of us all. After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington, Bohdanna worked at Northwestern University as their Special Events Coordinator. There she met and worked with politicians, Supreme Court justices, and the brightest academic minds and witnessed the power of knowledge and change. From there, she moved to San Francisco and received a Post Baccalaureate Certificate in Painting from California College of Arts and an MFA in Painting from San Francisco State University. For the next decade Bohdanna concentrated on her art career. She exhibited her work in the US and Europe while also teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute. Bohdanna’s paintings focused on beauty and history and how they can bring people together visually. Merging her creativity and passion to bring people together in collaboration, Bohdanna began working for The Thiel Foundation as their Event Curator, managing all aspects of their events from high level design, curating speakers, and building partnerships between other organizations. Some specific highlights include: Managing all events for CNBC Transforming Tomorrow: a documentary focused on the Thiel Fellowship, working with Wired.com in producing events for ‘Teen Technorati’, a web series on The Thiel Fellowship, and producing events for Breakout Labs Unboxing: a showcase of BOL’s grantees. Bohdanna was also one of the architects of The Thiel Foundation Summit; a bi-annual assembly of young entrepreneurs and visionaries from around the world. Working directly with entrepreneurs inspired Bohdanna to open 10 Forward Events, a full service event-curation firm specializing in producing innovative and one-of-a-kind events for the science and tech industry, startups, entrepreneurs, and VC firms. This endeavor ultimately brought her to SU.

SingularityU South Africa Summit co-organiser Mic Mann and creative director Youri Licht recently travelled to the Singularity University(SU) summit in Thailand where they interviewed various SU speakers. Season 1 is a series of in-depth conversations with some of Singularity Universities most innovative and creative minds. Ramez Naam is a computer scientist, futurist, and award-winning author. Ramez spent 13 years at Microsoft, where he led teams developing early versions of Microsoft Outlook, Internet Explorer, and the Bing search engine. His career has focused on bringing advanced collaboration, communication, and information retrieval capabilities to roughly one billion people around the world, and took him to the role of Partner and Director of Program Management within Microsoft, with deep experience leading teams working on cutting edge technologies such as machine learning, search, massive scale services, and artificial intelligence. Between stints at Microsoft, Ramez founded and ran Apex NanoTechnologies, the world first company devoted entirely to software tools to accelerate molecular design. He holds 19 patents related to search engines, information retrieval, web browsing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Ramez is also the H.G. Wells Award-winning author of four books: The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet (non-fiction), which looks at the environmental and natural resource challenges of climate change, energy, water, and food, and charts a course to meet those challenges by investing in the scientific and technological innovation needed to overcome them, and by changing our policies to encourage both conservation and critical innovations. He’s a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy at Aurora Illinois. In his leisure, Ramez has climbed mountains, descended into icy crevasses, chased sharks through their native domain, backpacked through remote corners of China, and ridden his bicycle down hundreds of miles of the Vietnam coast. He lives in Seattle, where he writes and speaks full time.

Today's conversation is with an incredible thought leader, innovator and futurist Adam Pantanowitz, talking about his favourite topic Hacking Humans with Mic Mann. We get to hear some interesting insights on the work Adam is doing as well as his philosophy on a number of issues from overcoming adversity to hacking tips. Adam Pantanowitz is a fanatical technologist, who enjoys solving seemingly unsolvable problems, particularly with the help of cloud computing and machine learning. He is part of the SingularityU South Africa faculty with a focus on biotechnology and speaks about the future of technology with a focus on tech-human convergence.

Today's conversation is with a future superstar discussing how she programmes robots and dances ballet with them. Growing up Merritt Moore was inspired by her elders who taught her the passion of understanding what makes the world tick, through the sciences and the stars.A hat-trick achiever, Merritt is a Quantum Physicist and Ballerina, delving into the astronaut sector. An accomplished ballet dancer, she programmed robots to dance alongside her in Instagram videos that have since yielded up to 15 million views. Merritt is currently pursuing a career as an astronaut. She has been cited in Forbes 30 under 30, in a children's storybook and has featured in TIME and Vogue. She explores the future of A.I./ machine learning, specifically with dance, and welcomes all forms of collaboration fusing dance, physics and tech.

Listen to the latest episode of Exponential Conversations in a discussion with Rafael Brown and Mic Mann on The Future of music concerts in VR & Gaming. A great migration into virtual worlds is taking place at warp speed. Now is the time for you to explore and discover the opportunities and potential that lie ahead. Virtual and augmented reality tech is the next evolution in computing and is set to disrupt current computing. Featuring: Rafael Brown is a veteran game designer having worked in the games industry for the past 25 years. He has worked across the range of PC, Console, and Mobile for game studios. He now is the CEO of gaming development company Symbol Zero, where they combined forces with Roblox, Ctrl-Alt-Create, and House of Moves, to deliver a virtual concert for global music artist, Lil NasX, that attracted more than 33 million views in 2020. Rafael makes VR games, worlds, and experiences with immersion, emergence, narrative & online platforms.Join the conversation. Don't miss out!

We are excited to launch Season 3 of Exponential Africa Live, kicking off on the future of Bitcoin and Crypto. Will 2021 be the year of mass global adoption in the crypto and Bitcoin space. Already we are seeing large organisations like Tesla, Square and BNP Melon get involved and more to follow.Featuring:Mic Mann: Host, SUSA Co-CeoHenri Arslanian: PWC Global Crypto LeaderTanya Knowles: SingularityU SA Faculty, BM AdharaFarzam Ehsani: CEO and Co-Founder VALR

This conversation will focus on Investing in Disruptive Innovation, technologies that are on an exponential growth curve and are going to ultimately change the way we live in the future. Featuring Catherine Wood, Founder & CEO of ARK Invest.With over 40 years of experience identifying and investing in innovation, Cathie founded ARK to focus solely on disruptive innovation while adding new dimensions to research. Through an open approach that cuts across sectors, market capitalisations, and geographies, Cathie believes that ARK can identify large-scale investment opportunities in the public markets resulting from technological innovations centred around DNA sequencing, robotics, artificial intelligence, energy storage, and blockchain technology.Andile Ngcaba: Founding Partner & Chairman Convergence Partners.Andile is a South African businessman. He is chairman, founder and majority shareholder of investment group Convergence Partners. Andile is involved in significant new communications infrastructure projects across Africa including - Seacom (the first undersea fibre optic cable system serving Africa’s East Coast). The first private-sector satellite in Africa (Intelsat New Dawn) which was launched on 22 April 2011, a joint venture to bring high capacity, long-haul terrestrial fibre to South Africa (FibreCo) and recently a new joint venture with Google to invest in CSquared, a broadband infrastructure company headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya.Paul Pagnato, Founder & CEO of PagnatoKarp.Paul is Co-Chairman and Chief Visionary Officer at Cresset and Founder at PagnatoKarp, a top multi-family office and private wealth management firm, with over $9 billion assets under management. Paul is a Barron’s and Forbes top advisor with more than 27 years of industry leadership, ranked #1 in Virginia on Forbes Top Wealth Advisors and #2 in Virginia on Barron’s Top 1,200 Financial Advisors lists. Paul began his career as a microbiologist working collaboratively with NASA and McDonnell Douglas to search for life in outer space.

Let's Talk About SPACE, Baby!  The allure of the unknown intrigues us as human beings, and we want to adventure and discover new frontiers. The future of spaceflight will lead us to off-planet vacations and eventually humans on mars.Join the conversation focusing on the various innovations and advances in the space ecosystem and what we can look forward to in the future from manufacturing, to travel, to self-preservation.Featuring:Mic Mann: Host, SUSA Co-CeoRuvimbo Samanga: Founder at AgriSpace & Policy Analyst at Space in AfricaJason Dunn: Co-Founder Made In SpaceAdriana Marais: Founder Proudly Human, SUSA Faculty Quantum Physics & Space

Join the conversation, focusing on how can we embrace a Digital Health Future so that we can help Africa leapfrog. From online doctors, chatbots, telemedicine, remote doctors, nanobots and more. Join these incredible experts as they discuss how to create a new healthy future fuelled by digital health.Featuring:Divya Chander: SingularityU Chair Neuroscience; Atlantic Council GeoTech CenterDr. Chander is a physician, neuroscientist, and futurist who trained at Harvard, UCSF, UCSD, and the Salk Institute. She is Chair of Neuroscience and Faculty of Medicine at Singularity University, Visiting Scholar in Medicine (Bioinformatics) at Stanford (where she was on the Anesthesiology faculty for 8 years), and Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center. Babusi Nyoni: Co-founder of Sila HealthBabusi Nyoni is a tech entrepreneur working between Amsterdam, Nairobi and Cape Town.He works in the fields of emerging technology and big data innovation with a particular focus on developing sustainable solutions for the global South.With over 10 years of experience in the advertising, financial and technology industries, he specialises in contributing the practical skills needed to drive meaningful innovation in areas where scale and impact are hindered by structural limitations. Adam Pantanowitz: SUSA Faculty Biotech, Hacking Humans & RoboticsAdam Pantanowitz is a fanatical technologist, who enjoys solving seemingly unsolvable problems, particularly with the help of cloud computing and machine learning. He is part of the SingularityU South Africa faculty with a focus on biotechnology and speaks about the future of technology with a focus on tech-human convergence.

This conversation will focus on Parenting and Life Long learning. The future of our success as humanity lies in a great education. Most parents want their kids to grow up so that they are successful and can make a positive impact in the world. However, it’s not clear on the way forward as a parent especially because of the pandemic. Is it better to homeschool or make sure they are in a school or university that is more project-based or that focuses on building human potential rather than grades? How can we educate the youth to develop the right skills needed for the future and what are those skills? How do teachers need to adapt to more of a remote working environment? The pace of change keeps accelerating and what we learn today becomes irrelevant tomorrow. How do we build a culture of life-long learning so that we remain curious and motivated to constantly keep learning new skills and tools? Exponential technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, 3d printing and networksand sensors have become widely more available to amplify and enhance learning inmuch more empathetic, immersive, and experiential ways. How is this impacting education?Featuring:Dr Esther Wojcicki - SingularityU Faculty for Education. Esther's primary focus is to help parents, teachers and managers be more effective at home, in the classroom, and in the corporate world! Esther holds three honorary doctorates and is the best selling author of "How to Raise Successful People".Fred Swaniker - Deeply passionate about Africa and believes that the missing ingredient on the continent is good leadership. In line with this, he has founded two organizations that aim to catalyze a new generation of ethical, entrepreneurial African leaders: African Leadership Academy and the African Leadership Network.

The world's population has reached over 7.7 billion, according to population.io and is continually rising. More and more people are being pulled out of poverty, living a better, healthier, more abundant life.Join the conversation with Wolfgang Fengler - Who is the World Bank's Lead Economist in Southern Africa and Phathizwe Malinga - MD of SqwidNet and part of the SingularityU South Africa faculty with a focus on connecting Things to the Internet (IoT).Exponential Africa LIVE Show!The Internet of Things, or IoT, refers to the billions of physical devices around the world that are now connected to the internet, collecting and sharing data. It is a system of interrelated, internet-connected objects that are able to collect and transfer data over a wireless network without human intervention. Super-cheap computer chips and wireless networks have made it possible to turn pretty much any physical object into an IoT device.

Flying cars, air taxis, and flying humans were once a dream and in science fiction novels and movies. Richard Browning has redefined our concept of human flight.The conversation tonight will focus on the story of the incredible jet suit that Richard has created as a disruptor in the future of travel and mobility. As well as some of the most exciting, most cutting edge technology that is in the market and will be coming soon.Featuring:Richard Browning - Founder and Chief Test Pilot of Gravity Industries which designs, builds and flies Jet Suits, pioneering a new era of human flight. The company was founded in March 2017 to challenge the perceived boundaries in human aviation and to inspire others to dare to ask “What if?”.Emmanuel Ezenwere - Innovator and entrepreneur who is passionate about solving global problems. He is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Arone Aerial Logistics.

This week's episode looks at the future of artificial intelligence and how we can build better humans using AI as well as create smarter companies that enhance and augment our capabilities in the workplace. From self-aware and self-replicating software systems and robots that are emerging to autonomous vehicles or predicting Robo advisors, the future is said to be better from the convergence or augmentation of this technology with others.Featuring:Dr Vivienne Ming: Professional Mad Scientist. Co-Founder & Executive Chair, Socos Labs. Theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, author, and mother of two. Co-founded with wife Dr Norma Ming, Socos Labs is a mad science incubator dedicated to solving some of the world's most pressing problems. In her free time, Vivienne works to design AI systems to help treat her son's diabetes, predict manic episodes in bipolar sufferers, and reunite orphan refugees with extended family members.Dr Mark Nasila: FNB Chief Data and Analytics Officer, Mark has a PhD in Mathematical Statistics, an expert in the data science and analytics field. This has placed him in the privileged position of being part of a small community of thought leaders in the data science industry. At FNB, Mark has developed an AI system for the bank to enhance the forensic review process.

In Africa, we have an abundance of sunlight to power our solar future! Every five days, the sun provides the Earth with as much energy as all proven supplies of oil, coal, and natural gas.This episode has a focus on how we can create new clean energy solutions for South Africa and Africa by thinking differently! We need to come up with new ways to manufacture and produce energy and create an internet of energy so that we can develop a new market for energy that will democratise the industry and create a flourishing new energy economy! How can we create energy abundance for a prosperous future? Featuring:Ramez Naam: Co-Chair for Energy and Environment at Singularity University. An innovation expert and clean energy thought leader, speaker, and investor.Arash Aazami: Raised in Niger, West Africa. Founder of Kamangir, an R&D agency creating solutions for a quickly digitalising energy landscape.Michael Heyink: Co-Founder at Yellow. A digital retail platform focused on delivering consumer products like solar home systems to consumers in Africa.

How will the future of work be impacted by this pandemic? We need practical workforce solutions to be implemented to help the immediate challenges for organisations and employees. Join this conversation with leading global experts! #futureproofAfrica​Featuring:Hilda Liswani - Founder and CEO WeBloomHilda is an Award-winning sustainable investment professional. WeBloom Africa is a mainstreaming gender-lens fund Investing in Africa.Valter Adão - Chief Digital & Innovation Officer Deloitte Africa, SingularityU SA Faculty Future of work & Digital Transformation. Recognised as an expert in the fields of disruptive innovation, business re-imagination and emerging technologies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.Krista Pawley - Co-Founder & Head of Reputation and Impact SingularityU Canada. Designing experiences and reputation strategies for leaders working at the intersection of innovation and impact to understand, prepare and shape a more sustainable future.Adetayo Bamiduro - Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, MAX.NG a pioneering mobility platform in sub-Saharan Africa. A leading innovator and global expert on sustainable mobility and digital financial inclusion.

A great migration into virtual worlds is taking place at warp speed. Now is the time for you to explore and discover the opportunities and potential that lie ahead. Virtual and augmented reality tech is the next evolution in computing and is set to disrupt current computing. Join the show as we will be looking at this transformative technology to discover new worlds and augment our current reality.Featuring:Cathy Hackl - Cathy is a leading female futurist in AR, VR, and AI, LinkedIn recognised her as one of the Top Technology Voices globally. Hackl has worked with brands like UPS, HTC VIVE, Sony Pictures, Magic Leap, and Adobe.Dimitri Mikhalchuk - Dimitri is the co-founder and chief revenue officer of the Teslasuit. Dimitri is at the top of the most influential people in the field of VR \ AR (according to Evening Standard, UK).Brian Afande - Brian is the Co-founder and Managing Director of BlackRhino VR, an Extended Reality agency based in Nairobi.