Perspectives
March 5, 2025
"The day I stop trying is the day I stop breathing. We will have easy for dessert."
This phrase has become something of a personal mantra throughout my career. Colleagues have heard me say it in strategy meetings when facing seemingly insurmountable infrastructure challenges. Team members have seen it scrawled in my meeting notes during difficult negotiations. Partners have received it in messages when projects hit unexpected obstacles.
It began as a simple affirmation during my early engineering days, a reminder to persist through technical challenges. Over time, it evolved into something deeper – a philosophy about innovation, resilience, and purpose in Africa's technology landscape. In moments when conventional wisdom suggests something cannot be done, when resources seem insufficient, when established models don't fit our context – that's precisely when we must keep trying, keep innovating, keep believing in possibilities beyond current limitations.
The phrase's second part – "we will have easy for dessert" – adds an essential dimension. It acknowledges that difficulty comes first, that comfort follows struggle rather than precedes it, that transformation requires embracing challenges rather than avoiding them. This perspective has shaped my approach to technology development across Africa, where constraints often spark the most meaningful innovations.
In this reflection, I'll explore what this philosophy means in practice – how embracing persistent effort and resilience creates pathways through Africa's technology challenges, how continuous innovation emerges from necessity, and how maintaining purpose through difficulty transforms personal persistence into collective progress.
Technology development in African contexts frequently confronts limitations that might appear prohibitive through conventional lenses. From unstable power to limited connectivity, from capital constraints to skills gaps, the list of challenges can seem overwhelming. Yet within these very constraints lie the seeds of innovation – if we're willing to keep trying rather than accepting apparent impossibility.
My engineering training taught me to approach problems with systematic analysis, breaking complex challenges into solvable components. Yet working across telecommunications infrastructure, broadcasting networks, and now data centers across Africa has taught me something more fundamental – the need to regularly question assumptions about what's possible.
I've witnessed this repeatedly throughout my career. During my time at SENTECH, conventional wisdom suggested that delivering digital broadcasting to rural areas with limited infrastructure would require prohibitive investment. By questioning fundamental assumptions about transmission architecture and developing hybrid approaches combining terrestrial and satellite distribution, we discovered more efficient pathways to achieve nationwide coverage.
Similarly, at Intelsat, global models for connectivity deployment often failed to address African realities. Rather than accepting these limitations, our teams developed new approaches calibrated to actual conditions – creating flexible deployment models, adaptive bandwidth allocation, and contextual pricing structures that expanded access despite challenging economics.
This persistent questioning of assumptions continues in my current work with Africa Data Centres. Traditional data center models developed for environments with stable power and established fiber networks often prove impractical in many African markets. Rather than accepting these limitations, we're developing new architectures – from power systems combining grid, renewable, and backup sources to distributed deployment models balancing centralized efficiency with regional accessibility.
In each case, persistence meant more than simply working harder within established frameworks. It required willingness to reimagine possibilities, to question fundamental assumptions, and to believe that African-specific solutions could emerge from our unique challenges.
Persistence in technology development exists in creative tension with timeframes and expectations. The infrastructure supporting digital transformation – from telecommunications networks to data centers – requires substantial investment before yielding returns. Outcomes may take years to fully materialize, testing commitment through inevitable uncertainties.
I've learned that effective persistence requires balancing seemingly contradictory timeframes – maintaining long-term vision while creating short-term momentum. During infrastructure projects with multi-year horizons, this means designing implementation phases delivering incremental value rather than requiring complete deployment before benefits emerge. It means creating measurement frameworks tracking leading indicators of progress rather than focusing exclusively on ultimate outcomes.
This balanced approach proved particularly valuable during my time managing the R5 billion digital transformation project at SABC. The comprehensive transition from analog to digital broadcasting represented a multi-year journey with interdependent components across production, distribution, and consumption. By structuring the program with distinct value-delivery phases, we maintained momentum and stakeholder support through a complex transition despite inevitable challenges and timeline adjustments.
The patience paradox extends to human capability development as well. Building the technical teams necessary for Africa's digital infrastructure requires both immediate skill development and long-term pipeline building. Throughout my career, I've tried to balance addressing immediate capability gaps through targeted training while simultaneously investing in foundational education and mentorship programs developing the next generation of technical talent.
This balanced approach to timeframes allows sustained effort through inevitable setbacks. It recognizes that meaningful transformation occurs neither instantly nor indefinitely – that we must keep trying within timeframes that balance urgency with reality.
The phrase "necessity is the mother of invention" takes on particular meaning in African technology contexts. Constraints that might appear as limitations frequently become catalysts for innovation – forcing creative approaches that might otherwise remain unexplored. This necessity-driven innovation represents one of Africa's most distinctive and valuable contributions to global technology development.
Throughout my career, I've observed how seemingly restrictive constraints often spark the most creative solutions. During my time at MTN working on network planning and optimization, for example, limited backhaul capacity and inconsistent power challenged traditional cellular deployment models. These constraints drove development of more efficient network architectures, energy management systems, and traffic prioritization approaches that actually improved overall system resilience.
Similar patterns emerged in broadcasting infrastructure development at SENTECH and SABC. Limited spectrum availability forced more efficient encoding approaches. Coverage requirements coupled with challenging geography inspired innovative transmission configurations. Budget constraints drove development of multi-purpose infrastructure serving multiple services rather than dedicated systems for each application.
In my current work developing data center infrastructure across Africa, we continue finding that constraints drive innovation. Power limitations are accelerating adoption of advanced energy management systems, from sophisticated load balancing to hybrid renewable integration. Connectivity challenges are driving creative approaches to multi-path resilience. Capital constraints are inspiring modular architectures enabling incremental expansion aligned with actual demand growth.
These innovations emerge not despite constraints but because of them. The necessity to function within actual African conditions forces deeper examination of fundamental assumptions and creative exploration of alternatives that might otherwise remain theoretical. Keep trying in constrained environments isn't merely about persistence – it's about embracing constraints as innovation catalysts.
Constraint-based innovation connects directly to Africa's opportunities to leapfrog legacy approaches in technology infrastructure. When existing models prove impractical in our contexts, we're freed to explore newer approaches without the inertia of established systems. This leapfrog pattern has emerged repeatedly across telecommunications, broadcasting, financial services, and now data infrastructure.
During my telecommunications experience, I witnessed how limited fixed-line infrastructure actually accelerated mobile adoption, allowing communities to bypass copper-based systems entirely for more flexible wireless connectivity. In broadcasting, many African markets moved directly to digital and IP-based distribution without the intermediate steps that characterized transitions in more developed markets.
In data infrastructure development today, similar opportunities exist. Rather than replicating the centralized data center models developed for markets with different characteristics, we have opportunities to pioneer distributed architectures more aligned with Africa's geographic, connectivity, and application realities. Instead of traditional cooling approaches consuming massive energy, we can implement advanced systems optimized for Africa's climatic conditions.
These leapfrog opportunities represent more than mere technical possibilities – they create potential competitive advantages. Solutions developed for challenging African conditions frequently demonstrate relevance in other emerging markets and even in developed regions seeking greater efficiency and resilience. The mobile money revolution that began addressing banking limitations in East Africa now influences financial services globally. Energy management systems developed for unreliable grid environments increasingly apply to sustainability-focused deployments worldwide.
Keep trying in African technology contexts means recognizing these leapfrog opportunities rather than seeing our differences merely as limitations. It means understanding that innovation through necessity can create solutions with global relevance and competitive advantage.
Sustained effort through challenges requires more than technical problem-solving or strategic vision. It demands connection to purpose that transcends immediate obstacles and provides meaning even when progress appears slow. Throughout my journey from systems engineer to executive leadership roles, this purpose connection has provided essential fuel for continued effort.
My own sense of purpose has evolved alongside my career path. As a young engineer at CSIR conducting research on cognitive network systems, purpose centered primarily on technical problem-solving – developing algorithms and approaches that could theoretically improve connectivity. While intellectually engaging, this relatively abstract purpose sometimes proved insufficient motivation through implementation challenges.
Working at MTN planning and optimizing mobile networks connected technical work to more tangible outcomes – seeing how adjusted parameters and expanded coverage directly improved service for specific communities. This connection to actual user impact provided stronger motivation through technical challenges and operational constraints.
Purpose evolved further through broadcasting roles at SENTECH and SABC, where technology infrastructure directly enabled information access, educational content, and cultural expression for millions of South Africans. The public service dimension of these organizations created explicit connection between technical work and broader societal objectives beyond commercial metrics.
In my current role focusing on data center infrastructure development, purpose centers on enabling Africa's digital sovereignty – creating the foundation for locally hosted services, data protection aligned with African values, and digital ecosystems reflecting our priorities rather than exclusively external influences. This purpose connects individual projects and decisions to longer-term vision for Africa's technological self-determination.
Throughout this evolution, I've found that connecting to purpose beyond technical challenges or career advancement provides essential resilience through inevitable difficulties. When a particular approach fails, when a project encounters unexpected obstacles, when progress seems discouragingly slow – purpose provides reason to keep trying, to find alternative paths toward meaningful objectives rather than abandoning effort.
While personal purpose provides individual motivation, I've found that collective purpose creates more powerful and sustainable resilience. Individual effort inevitably encounters limitations, but teams aligned around shared purpose can maintain momentum through challenges that might defeat isolated persistence.
This collective dimension explains the shift from "I" to "we" in my personal motto – "The day I stop trying is the day I stop breathing. We will have easy for dessert." The first part represents personal commitment, but the second acknowledges that meaningful transformation requires shared effort and shared benefit.
I've seen this collective resilience repeatedly throughout my career. During complex broadcasting infrastructure transitions, teams maintained effort through technical setbacks and policy changes because they connected their work to the broader purpose of ensuring universal information access. At Intelsat, multinational teams navigated cross-cultural challenges and complex deployments through shared commitment to connecting underserved communities.
In my current work, this collective dimension spans organizational boundaries. Developing Africa's data infrastructure requires collaboration across technology providers, policy stakeholders, educational institutions, and service developers. No single entity can create the complete ecosystem necessary for digital sovereignty, but shared purpose creates resilience through the inevitable challenges of such complex collaboration.
This collective resilience extends beyond professional contexts to personal support systems as well. Throughout my journey as a woman in technology leadership roles, connecting with other women navigating similar paths has provided essential perspective and encouragement through challenges. These relationships offer both practical guidance and reassurance that difficulties reflect systemic patterns rather than individual limitations.
Keep trying means not just individual persistence but building and sustaining communities of shared purpose – creating collective resilience that can weather challenges beyond individual capacity while celebrating shared progress.
Moving beyond philosophical reflection, what does this resilience mindset mean in practical terms? Throughout my career journey, I've observed and tried to cultivate specific practices that translate the keep-trying philosophy into tangible approaches for both individuals and organizations.
Perhaps the most fundamental resilience practice involves relating productively to failure – seeing setbacks as essential information sources rather than endpoints or personal reflections. This perspective doesn't diminish the emotional impact of failure but creates constructive pathways through it toward continued effort.
I learned this lesson early in my engineering career at CSIR, where research inherently involved testing hypotheses that frequently proved incorrect. The scientific method explicitly builds learning through failure into its fundamental approach. Effective researchers don't question their capabilities when experiments disprove hypotheses – they extract insights from unexpected results and design better experiments.
Translating this approach to broader technology development requires deliberate practice. At SENTECH and SABC, we implemented post-project reviews focused specifically on extracting learning from elements that didn't work as expected. We created forums where teams could share challenges without fear of judgment, enabling collective learning from individual experiences.
In my current leadership role, I try to model this approach by openly discussing my own professional failures and the insights they've provided. When team members encounter setbacks, I focus conversations on what we've learned and how that learning shapes next steps rather than dwelling on disappointment or assigning blame.
This learning-through-failure mindset proves particularly valuable in African technology contexts where established models often require significant adaptation. When approaches developed elsewhere don't translate directly to our environments, these "failures" provide crucial information about our unique requirements rather than reasons to abandon effort.
The marathon nature of meaningful technology development requires sustainable approaches to effort – pacing that maintains progress through extended challenges without burnout. This sustainability dimension gives deeper meaning to my motto's second part: "We will have easy for dessert." It acknowledges that while easy doesn't come first, neither should difficulty become permanent state.
Throughout my career, I've observed how technology organizations often oscillate between unsustainable intensity and recovery periods – creating progress patterns resembling sprints rather than the marathon actually required. Projects begin with ambitious timelines demanding heroic effort, inevitably encounter unforeseen complications requiring schedule adjustments, then repeat the cycle with the next initiative.
More sustainable approaches involve realistic planning incorporating uncertainty from the beginning, explicit prioritization focusing effort where it creates greatest value, and workload management recognizing human limitations. During the complex digital transformation program at SABC, we implemented structured sprint and recovery cycles, alternating periods of intensive implementation with dedicated time for reflection, adjustment, and renewal.
In my current leadership role, I try to model sustainable pacing through deliberate workload management, explicit recovery periods after intensive project phases, and openness about my own capacity limitations. I've found that acknowledging these human realities creates more reliably productive teams than demanding constant maximum effort.
This sustainable approach doesn't represent reduced commitment but rather recognition that meaningful transformation requires extended effort beyond short-term intensity. Keep trying means maintaining effort through complete journeys rather than exhausting capacity in initial phases.
While resilience has individual dimensions, I've found that its most powerful forms emerge through intentional communities supporting shared persistence. Throughout my career journey, I've both benefited from and tried to cultivate these resilience networks that maintain collective capability through challenges.
During my early career, informal peer networks provided essential perspective when I encountered technical obstacles or workplace challenges. Sharing experiences with others facing similar situations helped distinguish systemic patterns from personal limitations while providing practical strategies developed through collective experience.
As my career progressed, these informal networks evolved into more structured communities of practice – groups deliberately sharing knowledge, providing mutual support, and developing collective capabilities. At Intelsat, we created cross-regional forums where teams facing similar challenges in different markets could exchange approaches and solutions, accelerating learning while distributing problem-solving capacity.
In my current roles, including board positions with WiTech Africa and the Christiana Folarin Abu Foundation, I focus specifically on creating resilience networks for women in technology fields and underserved communities. These structured communities provide both practical knowledge sharing and psychological support essential for sustained effort through challenges.
The most effective resilience networks span hierarchical levels, connecting experienced practitioners with those earlier in their journeys. My own persistence has been sustained through both mentorship received from senior leaders who navigated similar paths and the inspiration of mentees applying fresh perspectives to persistent challenges.
Keep trying means not just individual persistence but intentional cultivation of communities that maintain collective resilience, distribute learning, and sustain shared purpose through inevitable difficulties.
While persistence forms the core of my personal philosophy, effective resilience requires balancing continued effort with thoughtful adaptation. Keep trying doesn't mean rigid adherence to approaches proving ineffective – it means maintained commitment to purpose while flexibly adjusting methods based on experience and changing conditions.
Throughout my career, I've learned to recognize indicators suggesting when persistence should shift from continuing current approaches to exploring alternatives. These adaptation signals include:
At MTN, for example, we encountered situations where continued optimization of existing network configurations produced increasingly marginal improvements. Rather than persisting with diminishing-return approaches, we shifted focus to exploring new architectural models that could overcome the fundamental limitations of existing configurations.
During broadcasting infrastructure development at SABC, we initially pursued technology implementation pathways based on transition models from other markets. When these approaches consistently encountered obstacles specific to South African regulatory and market conditions, we recognized the need for fundamental adaptation rather than simply trying harder with misaligned models.
In my current work developing data center infrastructure across Africa, we continuously monitor these adaptation signals when evaluating deployment approaches. When particular models show diminishing returns in specific markets, we explore alternative architectures better aligned with local conditions rather than forcing standardized approaches where they don't fit.
Effective adaptation frequently involves strategic pivots – maintained commitment to fundamental objectives while significantly changing implementation approaches. Throughout my career, I've both led and participated in such pivots when persistence required directional changes rather than simply continued effort.
During my time at Intelsat, for example, we initially pursued connectivity models focused primarily on traditional telecommunications providers as partners. When this approach showed limited traction in certain markets, we pivoted to working directly with sector-specific organizations in healthcare, education, and agriculture – maintaining our fundamental connectivity mission while significantly changing implementation channels.
Similarly, in broadcasting infrastructure development, we pivoted from technology-centered transition models to content-driven approaches when we recognized that audience adoption depended more on programming availability than technical capabilities. This strategic shift maintained our digital transformation objective while fundamentally changing implementation sequence and emphasis.
My board work with WiTech Africa has involved similar pivots. We initially focused primarily on creating digital learning resources for women seeking technology skills. When feedback indicated that isolated learning without connection to opportunity produced limited results, we pivoted toward an integrated approach combining skills development with market access and funding pathways – maintaining our mission while significantly changing implementation model.
These strategic pivots represent resilience in its most sophisticated form – the capacity to maintain purpose while fundamentally adapting methods based on experience. Keep trying means sustained commitment to meaningful objectives, not rigid adherence to particular approaches when evidence suggests better alternatives exist.
As my career has evolved toward leadership roles, I've increasingly focused on how to cultivate resilience capabilities in others – particularly young professionals navigating technology careers and women confronting both technical challenges and gender-based barriers. This mentorship dimension extends the "we will have easy for dessert" philosophy from personal practice to collective capability.
Perhaps the most important resilience mentorship practice involves creating environments offering what I've come to call "safe challenge" – situations where individuals can experience difficulty, potential failure, and recovery within supportive contexts that encourage learning rather than generate fear. These calibrated challenges build resilience capabilities through direct experience rather than abstract advice.
Throughout my leadership roles, I've tried to create these safe challenge opportunities through project assignments stretching capabilities within structured support systems. During my time managing engineering teams at SABC, for example, we developed tiered responsibility systems where team members progressively tackled more complex challenges while maintaining access to guidance and resources.
In my current leadership role, I continue this approach through structured development assignments where team members lead initiatives beyond their established expertise areas with appropriate mentorship and support systems. When individuals encounter inevitable obstacles in these stretching roles, we focus reflection conversations on resilience practices rather than just technical solutions.
Through WiTech Africa and other mentorship initiatives, I've helped develop structured challenge programs specifically for women navigating technology careers. These initiatives create opportunities to develop resilience capabilities through actual experience while providing support networks that maintain confidence through learning processes.
Another powerful resilience mentorship practice involves helping others recognize and reshape the narratives they construct around difficulty and setback. The stories we tell ourselves about challenges fundamentally shape our responses to them – determining whether we experience failure as defeating judgment or productive learning opportunity.
I've found that one of the most valuable contributions mentors can make involves helping mentees recognize when they're constructing limiting narratives about their capabilities or possibilities. Throughout my career, I've benefited from mentors who helped me distinguish between genuine external obstacles and self-imposed limitations based on assumptions about what was possible or appropriate.
In my own mentorship practice, I focus particularly on helping women in technology fields recognize when they're internalizing externally-imposed narratives about their capabilities or proper roles. Many talented women I've mentored initially interpreted normal technical challenges as evidence of personal limitations rather than expected parts of complex work – narratives that undermined resilience by suggesting difficulty indicated lack of belonging.
This narrative reframing extends to how we interpret broader innovation challenges in African contexts. When conventional wisdom suggests certain technology implementations aren't viable in our environments, resilient thinking involves questioning whether these limitations reflect fundamental constraints or simply outdated assumptions based on conditions no longer applicable.
Effective resilience mentorship helps individuals and teams develop constructive narratives about challenges – stories recognizing genuine difficulties while maintaining agency and possibility rather than fatalistic acceptance of perceived limitations.
Perhaps the most powerful resilience mentorship practice involves modeling how to navigate setbacks productively – demonstrating through personal example that failure represents event rather than identity and that recovery pathways always exist. This modeling proves particularly important in high-performance environments where perfection expectations often inhibit the risk-taking essential for innovation.
Throughout my leadership roles, I've made deliberate practice of openly discussing my own professional failures and recovery processes. During team retrospectives at SENTECH and SABC, I would frequently begin by sharing my own mistakes and learning experiences, creating psychological safety for others to engage in similar reflection without fear of judgment.
In my current executive role, I continue this approach by openly acknowledging when initiatives I've championed haven't produced expected results and sharing my processes for extracting learning from these experiences. When team members encounter their own setbacks, I focus conversations on practical recovery pathways rather than extended analysis of what went wrong.
This modeling approach proves particularly important for women in technology leadership roles, who often face higher performance expectations and harsher judgment for failures than their male counterparts. By openly discussing my own imperfect journey, I hope to demonstrate that successful leadership involves effective navigation of inevitable setbacks rather than their complete avoidance.
Effective resilience mentorship shows rather than tells – providing lived examples of the keep-trying philosophy in practice rather than simply advocating its importance in abstract terms.
Reflecting on the meaning of "The day I stop trying is the day I stop breathing," I've come to understand resilience not merely as admirable personal quality but as essential innovation catalyst particularly suited to African technology contexts. The persistence to keep trying when conventional approaches prove insufficient creates the precise conditions where breakthrough solutions emerge.
This perspective reframes how we view Africa's technology challenges. Power limitations, connectivity constraints, capital restrictions, and skills gaps represent not just obstacles to overcome but innovation drivers creating solutions potentially more efficient, adaptable, and contextually appropriate than those developed in resource-rich environments. The necessity to function within actual constraints forces deeper examination of fundamental assumptions and creative exploration of alternatives.
Throughout my journey from systems engineer to executive strategy roles, I've witnessed this pattern repeatedly. Mobile money systems developed for environments without widespread banking infrastructure created more accessible and flexible financial services than legacy approaches. Broadcasting solutions adapted for limited bandwidth and diverse device environments demonstrated unexpected efficiency and reach. Data infrastructure designed for inconsistent power and connectivity shows promising applicability in disaster recovery and edge computing globally.
This innovation potential creates obligation to keep trying beyond personal resilience or professional accomplishment. When we stop trying in the face of apparently insurmountable challenges, we forfeit not just immediate objectives but the breakthrough solutions that might emerge from necessity – innovations with potential value far beyond their original contexts.
The dual parts of my personal motto reflect this broader innovation philosophy. "The day I stop trying is the day I stop breathing" represents essential persistence when conventional wisdom suggests something cannot be done. "We will have easy for dessert" acknowledges that innovation emerges through embracing constraints rather than waiting for ideal conditions.
As Africa continues its technological development journey, this resilience mindset becomes increasingly important. The fourth industrial revolution presents both extraordinary opportunities and complex challenges for our continent. Established models developed elsewhere will prove insufficient for our unique contexts. Only by keeping trying – maintaining persistence through difficulty while adapting approaches based on experience – can we develop the distinctly African innovations our future requires.
The day we stop trying to build these uniquely African solutions is the day we stop breathing. We will have easy for dessert.
