I am.
And this is choosing leadership.
A podcast for high performers, with big dreams at work and life.
This is a podcast for people who know deep inside that there is more.
Have you achieved a great deal of success?
But on the inside, you still feel empty and like an imposter.
Do other people see you as a strong leader?
And you wonder why it still feels so lonely and suffocating.
The aim of this podcast is not to provide you more content, but instead shift
the context under which you operate.
I dare to speak to the tremendous power, which you already have
rather than what you believe.
Are your strengths and limitations.
This podcast is called choosing leadership because that is
what leadership is a choice.
And this is the leadership journey, CDs.
I am interviewing leaders with an interesting story to learn how
they got where they are today.
We all have a lot to learn from each other's stories.
Of Viet.
We started very veer now.
And over successes and struggles on the V.
With this series of interviews, my attempt.
Is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us
to learn from their genders sharing
is the executive director of Africa, no filter, which is working to
shift the narrative about African people and Africa as a continent.
She has also worked with the bill and Melinda gates foundation previously.
And prior to that, she was a well-known TV, presenter, producer
auto publisher, and a successful entrepreneur, which she calls.
Jumps from one tree to another and the interview, she talks about her
trust in the universe and how that allows her to take risks and venture
into very different territories.
We talk about.
How growing up in Nigeria gave her such a boost of confidence that she doesn't
see failure as anything except learning.
She also highlighted how her parents never told her that she cannot do this or that.
And which allowed her to take big risks in her career.
Hi, Moky welcome to the show.
I am summit.
Nice to meet you.
Same here.
Wonderful to have your head under full, to have a habitat video and
to begin with, can you maybe share with our listeners a little bit
about who you are and what do you
do?
Okay.
I usually start my introductions saying I was born in Nigeria.
I went with educated in the UK and then about 25 years ago,
I moved to South Africa and I honestly feel that's where so many.
Big moments in my life happened.
So I'm I guess the best way to describe my career in terms of
describing me is I C I like stories.
I am a communicator and storytelling is a medium that I really work with.
And that is actually what I do now as a living, I have a job where
I'm the executive director of a non profit called African of filter.
Which is a an organization that was set up by a number of UK and us
funders to help shift harmful and stereotypical narratives about Africa.
And because we understand how narratives occur, which are through
stories, told persistently over time.
Our theory of change, is that in order to shift or change the narrative, you've
got to introduce new different stories.
So we fund storytellers.
So I'm very much in the storytelling space.
But prior to that I've written book.
I've written a book about Africans, greatest entrepreneurs I've done.
Documentary lifestyle series called living at about afterwards, which
famous I've published other books.
I did a series of books called Nali books, which were really trying
to get younger people to read.
And we turned them into films.
My hardcore jobs, prior to this role, I was at the bill and Melinda gates
foundation and heading up communications.
I'm still trying to figure out how to tell stories about
development, work on the continent.
And yeah, so I've done a lot, I'm old, but when I think about how best to describe
myself, increasingly I realize it's around communications and around storytelling
and wonderful.
I prefer to use the word wise rather than.
Yeah, I'd say the, I entered into, I entered one of these alcohols sites
unit says before you were allowed to go into the site, it would actually
the Johnny Walker and it pops up into the screen and you have to put your
date of birth in, and then it shoots you a quick screen grab that says
you are X and it tells you your age.
And I suddenly thought my God internet, doesn't let you forget how old you are.
You may call yourself wise, there's internet.
This website told me how old I was.
Yeah.
And as you spoke about story and narratives you, and you
mentioned briefly about living in multiple different countries,
what is the, what is your story?
Where are you coming from?
I'm Nigerian.
I was, like I said, I was born in Nigeria, but I spent a lot
of time outside of Nigeria.
But I think where it matters, where it counts in my heart.
And the way I.
The question.
I ask people who don't live, where they were born or where
their parents were born.
Where do you want to be buried?
And when I think about that, I won't be buried in Nigeria or my ashes
sprinkled in Nigeria that's home.
So I think first and foremost, I am Nigerian and second be I
am an African because I think I've lived a lot of my life.
Out of Nigeria but increasing a lot more of it in on the continent.
So I've, I live in South Africa now.
Through my career, I seen myself as very entrepreneurial and somebody
who just gets up and does things.
So I've done multiple projects and I used to have a talk about my career,
which is called jumping trees.
And the reason why I use that analogy was that I never climbed
the tree to get to the top of it.
I went to the top of one.
To the top of another, to the top of another.
So I was jumping trees.
It was D it's a different perspective on life.
And it requires some, to be brave because you don't have that experience
of, oh, I've been doing this for years.
You learn as you're doing it.
So I think when I think about myself Or when people think about maybe I'm brave.
I think I'm brave.
I step out.
I take risk.
I do, I believe in taking risks and I believe in doing it first.
And in fact, Nike's slogan just do it is the slogan that I live by.
Wonderful.
And there's a spoke about those jumps from one tree to another.
Can you share maybe a couple of those key jumps in your life and how has
that shaped you as a person and as.
Yeah.
The sort of things I've done.
I produced the, my first sort of documentary series.
I got a commission from, this Pan-African platform here called emanate.
I'd never done it before.
So I set up a production company and I went off.
Did this, that was jumping trees.
Cause most of the times you will work in a production company.
You'll work your way up.
I was the executive producer of this concept, so that was a tree I jumped on.
The first book I ever wrote got published and picked up by penguin books.
That was Africa's greatest entrepreneurs.
So I went from, not that I had a small title here.
I went to one of bleeding publishers.
All of a sudden I had a Bookout and all that followed with it.
I, what are the other things I've done?
I've done so many things.
Yeah, even when like I set up a publishing company I'd never
worked in a publishing company.
I just set it up.
So now I'm running a publishing company again, that was jumping
trees into a totally new industry.
I don't often talk about this, but I used to be an actress as well.
And in that I got asked because I was on TV presenting stuff.
I got asked to be in this drama series called Jacob's cross,
which was, it was like Dallas.
I don't know if you remember Dallas.
It was an oil sort of, dentisty Nigerian dentisty and then saw an African family.
It was very, and I got a lead role in it.
So I went from never being an actress to having been a lead on a what turned out
to be a really groundbreaking, a major drama series in Africa, on the continent.
So I went in.
Straight from never having gone to drama school, never hadn't been in
any drama productions to being in a top drama that required a lot of being
brave because I'd never acted before.
And I remember the producer the last day when the series ended and she
came on stage and she just reminded me when I was like the first day.
And, I remember thinking, gosh, you've just got to trust the universe that
when you do these things, when you jump onto a tree or you jump from one thing
to another, I just trust the universe, which requires a lot of confidence
in both yourself and the universe.
But I think I've been very good at that.
Knowing that I land on my feet
and I want to come to that.
Trusting the universe part, but before I'm very curious about what took you
down these very different looking pals, like from an being an actress to
being in to being what you do today.
And yeah.
So what has been the curiosity or the connecting threads between these gems
between, the book, the series of books, even the acting, there were
the thing that I think brings them all together is that they were all telling.
Stories about the continent.
It really bothered me.
I was I lived in England in 1985.
I was in my late teens.
That's when live aid the concert happened.
So I'm Bob Geldof and all these, superstars were talking about Africa.
It was very poor continent.
It faces of starving children and they needed to help, anybody who had one pound
could help an African, a poor African.
And I remember just being really angry.
I was African and that, that was not the African I knew.
And I thought, setting the world, this single image of the continent
and that was a really pivotal moment.
It really shaped a lot of things I did since, because I started writing, I wrote
articles about, I remember one of them, I saw it recently called three white men
that was Bob Geldof and Bano and I don't know who the third one was the one that.
Men who wanted to save Africa?
I started doing a lot of things like that.
The book I wrote Africa's greatest entrepreneurs.
It was really about saying, look, hold on a minute, that entrepreneurs who
are world-class on the continent, doing amazing things, making money running
businesses, but we didn't know about them.
They weren't.
And the internet is not, it was not as prolific, then as it is now.
So the book came about on, because of that the series living it that
I did was really about trying to showcase Africans in a different light.
The series was about lifestyles of the rich and famous in Africa.
And again, nobody was seeing those.
On the continent.
And I remember after the series was done, I approached a European, I
think actually somebody in Holland or Amsterdam to see if we could get
it on a station in Europe somewhere.
And I remember the response that I got was that, no, we can't take this.
We can't sell it because Europe is not ready to see Africans living with.
That was the response I got.
So it was this perpetual sort of battle against how the world sees Africa, which
was very different to how I saw Africa and how I saw myself as an African.
So a lot of the things I did and I'm doing, because my current job is entirely
all about, shifting narratives about Africa, all of the, that sort of feeding
has informed many of the things that.
Yeah it's been about, how do I present the continent in its best light?
That's what's been a driving force.
Yes.
And was that living in England and shoe and seeing that a narrative that
shaped you or that pushed you to to take those different jumps with w the
common thread of telling a difference?
I've got, like I said, I think that 1985 live aid concert was the trigger
moment that made me start thinking about what can I do to change the.
We do things, there's been many things that have happened many instances
in my life, I lived in the UK.
So you're faced with, people judging you.
I remember I'd applied for a job and I was sitting in a recruitment agents office and
he said, Mike, I think you're great, but I can't put you forward for this job because
they're not ready for a black woman yet.
There's another job I had where, was told that, you're not doing.
So there's no way you're going to, get further.
So yes, there was this image that, because you're black, you weren't as good.
And you were African, you were even not really not as good because I've
always said there's a hierarchy.
It's probably white men at the top, then black men, then white
women and then black women.
And then at the bottom of that is African women, so I think those couple
of ladders one has to climb up, but yeah, I think there's a lot of reasons.
Yeah.
How did you dealt with that?
Because that sounds like like very discriminatory or even racist.
And also as a young girl, as a teenager, how did you react to that?
And how has that shaped you?
Look, I think the first, most important thing is I, my formative years
were, spent in Nigeria and there was something about that continent that.
Us all such a boost of confidence.
I stepped out in the world as if I was in first class and the
world had to fall behind me.
So whilst it did happen, it wasn't something at the front of my
mind because I didn't grow up.
The eating.
I was second rate.
I grew up believing I was a proud Nigerian and still am, and that
makes a very big difference.
So I was coming from probably a different place to what, somebody who grew up
growing up there and had been faced with racism and right from an early stage.
And in fact, the first time I remember a racist incident was
when I was in boarding school.
And I'd been there for a couple of years and then they had south African.
Come to the school and white south African.
And I remember she walked into the room and saw me sitting there and
she said, who's that for that go.
And to be honest, I've never.
I heard myself described as a black girl.
So I even looked to see who she's talking about, who is this black girl?
Cause I'd never seen myself as that.
And ironically, they put us in the same room together and we had
that all mighty massive fight.
And that's the first sort of experience I had or, there were
people with racist attitudes and I must've been about 15 or 16.
Yeah.
. And now I want to come to that trusting the universe park.
As you connect these threads in your life, as you jump from one tree to another,
what does allowed you to actually sustain yourself and to maintain the level of
leadership requires to not just lead yourself, but also lead other people like.
I think one of the big things that I think I've been very happy and
blessed with is the innate sense within myself, but whatever I do, I can do it.
I think there's, you need to really first of all believe in yourself.
So to have other people believe in you.
So I have, and there's been a real strong sense.
Even if it doesn't work, what will I learn from it?
And I haven't been scared of failure.
If I was an entrepreneur, I started up a little fashion
business and it didn't work.
I started off at a restaurant business in London.
It didn't work, but it didn't stop me.
Starting other things, I got been once I forget what I know about
that, and I don't want to do that.
In, in my like dumb storage room, I have a whole lot of books.
I have a lot of books that I didn't sell.
And I remember asking my husband to fund this massive print run
because I needed to bring the price of a books to a certain point.
I needed to print a lot and he did.
And.
I've got a lot of them still because we didn't sell the volumes.
Failure is part and parcel of who I am, because I don't see it as failure.
I just see it as, the experience.
And I think that is a huge sort of difference in confidence
booster because I never failed.
I just learnt.
I wound up getting on that because that's such a profound
statement and then I never.
Uh, And I know that failure is, can be a very heavy word
for leaders and entrepreneurs.
And I just want to gain that.
That is not trivial.
That is that is key.
Or in fact that powers that those jobs and that trust with you mentioned.
. And as I just spoke about narratives, as you spoke about stories is that
also, is that a continental thing or is that something which you have from your
family or was that a family narrative or something growing up in, in in
Nigeria that you had this confidence or this sense about failure or taking.
No I don't think so.
I I was the youngest child and I think there's research that shows that the
youngest child in the family, because I do believe in birth order youngest.
Child syndrome is that they take, tend to take more risks because they grew
up a little faster cause they want to do whatever their older siblings done.
So yeah, I believe that and they probably get a lot of attention
because they're the youngest.
So I think, that's probably what I got.
And also just the fact that I had parents who never stopped me doing anything.
I don't remember ever being told you can't do this or you can't do that.
Yeah, I think, things like that.
There's an element of it.
It starts at home, starts with your upbringing.
But a lot of it, I think you acquire over time as well.
Yeah.
So is there something that people misunderstand about you?
Oh yes.
The angry black woman.
Yeah.
I've worked.
Various roles where, because I am quite strong and I have an opinion.
I remember the first time.
I was actually in South Africa where I had a job and I had to,
I advised a client on something.
I thought that he was doing.
I didn't think it was the right approach.
And I thought as my, as in my role, this is client facing person.
That was my role to advise them what to do.
And I remember him saying and telling, going to tell my boss at the time,
Moki does not understand my business.
And rather than think that I'd done anything wrong, I put it down
somewhere that he couldn't bear being told that he was wrong by somebody.
Quite frankly, I was black female, this was South Africa, apartheid.
We just ended.
And the only black woman he probably interacted with was it made, who
told, who he told what to do.
So there's always been that, you, people aren't necessarily ready to
hear certain types of people tell them what's right or what's wrong.
And again, I come from very competent race of people, Nigerians as do pre-made
competent, but, for good or bad.
And I'm very articulate.
I think I'm very well educated.
I'm very quick.
I speak very quickly and all of these things, can sometimes
where people up the wrong way.
And I think.
So when I say, when you ask me about, have I been misunderstood?
I think my intentions might've been misunderstood, but I think, a lot
of it to do is profile profiling.
It's unconscious bias.
It's a lot of things that people do inadvertently.
But yeah.
I, as I get older, as you have you call, as I get wiser, you become more
comfortable, in your skin and you, I learned to soften the edges and,
there's one thing that I was told in one of the organizations I worked with,
which has really helped, is assume best intent, before you get angry.
Seeing this person hasn't done this or whatever, assume that
they have a really good reason why they haven't assume best intent.
And that's really been a guiding force that, and the fact that I, because I
am older and wiser, I've done a lot.
I think I have a lot to give back.
So I positioned myself in my leadership as a coach.
So there are times when people have done things have failed or have gone wrong.
And so I don't get angry about that because I'm glad we did it, but I
always ask, so what have we learnt?
Can you see the lesson in this?
Because if you can't, then that lesson has been an expensive actual failure.
So I think failure is all about learning.
So yeah, that's something that I try to use to inform my approach
with leadership and my team.
That resonates very well with the kind of work that I do.
And I do see the role of narratives, which which occur in every business school.
In every team, whether it's about racism or whether it's about
two different industries or two different departments in a company.
And what you just mentioned about assuming best intent.
I think that's very powerful.
And now you're, you are actually working to shifting narratives.
So how do you, what, or what have you learned.
In shifting narratives because many times these narratives are invisible to us.
So when we misunderstand and when these narrative clash, they are in the
subconscious, they are not conscious.
So how do you shift, how do you consciously shift that narrative?
What have you learned and what can you share?
It was
when I had a similar conversation with somebody who was looking, asking me,
what would our approach be to shifting narratives around polarization,
which is a really big issue.
Now, the world is very polarized.
It's political polarization, it's ethnic, it's gender, and my approach
to that is that in order to shift narrative about any issue, you've got to
understand again, what are the stories?
What have individual beliefs people have because they lead up.
Narrative.
Summit, I could, believe that all, you're a terrible person.
I heard that you owe people money.
I've heard that, you've got multiple wives and, multiple children that you've
never really been in touch with them.
So the narrative around you would be that you're dishonest.
I don't trust you.
You know what you around, but in order for me to understand that narrative, I have
to figure out what are the things I've heard about you and in with any issue,
those are the things you go back to.
So for example, in our narrative work around Africa, there's sort
of five key frames that Africa has always been depicted as, so it's not
just the negative or stereotypical.
We know what they are, the lens, the framing of poverty.
Framing a poor leadership framing of corruption of conflict disease.
So it's, again, it's about going down to understand what are those
individual stories or individual issues that ladder up to a narrative.
Once you understand them, then you can address them.
The issue of conflict at the conflict actually came up quite
recently, when I think there was.
There's a lot of headlines in the wall street journal, financial times that Koons
were beginning to proliferate in Africa.
Again, Africa has 1554 countries in the last 10 or 12 years.
There had been only four Coons.
But when they asked people, how many based on reading the story, how many
coups do you think they have been on the continent of African last couple of years?
People would said they must have been 40 50 because of the.
It was written, right?
So you go back and you say actually, 54 countries, four of them have
had Coons, 50 of them happened, there's stability on the continent.
And that's how you address narrative, not necessarily by fact, but by storytelling.
So tell the stories of the other countries that haven't had crews.
And again, so that's the approach to, to, to shifting narrative.
It's about understanding the issue.
Underline those narratives and then changing them one story at time.
Yes.
Thank you for sharing that.
And I assume that you bump into those different narratives from time
to time or people who try to change that narrative, get into that because
as you said the world is polarized.
So there are very opposing narratives.
So when that happens, how do you or your teams manage that
pressure or that conflicting narratives and still stay ground.
Talk to their commitment towards shifting the narratives versus
getting lost in the debates and the polarization of two different matters.
I'll take it back to the thing I did at the beginning was that
because we understand how narratives evolve they're through stories.
We are essentially focused on storytelling.
Storytelling is powerful.
It has it's the single thing that can inform, educate, influence.
If you think about, for example, how.
You got your impression about America?
It wasn't probably because you went there.
It was because you watched the American movies, then you figured
out that's, you know who they are.
So it's a very, stories of very powerful and, media and films,
if very powerful platforms and increasingly now social media.
So we're very focused on our theory of change.
It's not about, fighting the issue.
It's about putting out stories that counter the issue, because
over, there's been research that's been done that shows that.
Change people's belief based on fact, because people's
beliefs do not come from fact.
It comes from perceptions and an ideology and all these other soft things.
So you can believe the sky is gray.
I could prove to you, the sky is blue.
I could show you all the data that shows that the sky, but your thing
is no, I still think it's gray.
And that's actually where the polarization.
So it, a lot of these sort of initiatives around misinformation and disinformation.
Th that you can present the facts, but it's actually the
stories that change people.
. Yes, indeed.
And I think realizing that is, is very important because facts can often lead
to do endless debates and stories, which touch people on an emotional.
Can actually allow them to shift their positions without feeling
like they are moving away from a narrative or from a position.
Yes.
So as you just create a new narrative for Africa and for the continent and
for its place in the world, can you share us, hear a little bit about that?
What does the future for Africa look like?
For me, I think the future is bright.
I think the future is very bright.
For a couple of reasons.
One is we have a very young population.
You have to think about young people and their attitude and what they bring.
I think about the fact that, creativity and innovation, the way the world
is changing those old dynamics for example, banking, you needed to have
a building and you need people to go in there and open an account.
Now you need a.
And you can have an equivalent of what a bank does, which is hold your money.
That opens up the world to, opens up Africa to leapfrog a lot of
the things that, more developed countries have had to go through.
So when I think about the digital revolution, I think.
Africa is where it's going to benefit us the most because we
have got, a big step to take.
So for me, when I think about the new narrative that I'd like to see
around the continent, it's around creativity and innovation, because.
There's just so much that needs to be done and we can't necessarily wait and
do it the right way, African problems, African solutions, that's I believe it.
And also the creativity one for me is critical because when you've got a
young population who don't necessarily have access to all the education
in the world or the best education in the world, and don't have access
to a lot of the infrastructure.
That supports entrepreneurship in America or, or governments that, support you
with, money to pay your rent, social systems, you have to be creative.
So I think creativity, resilience, those are things that I think
Africa has an abundance and those things don't cost anything.
So when you talk about, what future do I see for the continent?
I think we've got the tools we need to.
Amazing.
And and I'm not just saying it, I think when you look at where the next year,
everyone talks about emerging markets, Africa is where they need to come to
this is where this is the next frontier.
And I just want us as Africans to not wait for other people to come and,
do the rent seeking and, take from us, but let's be creative and start
businesses and, be innovative and be.
Yes.
And I wish you all the best for creating that.
I think the thing this was entering, maybe not in a few decades, we
will, I think the progress which the world would have seen, most of it
would have been driven from Africa.
I think that's where all the economic data is already showing that.
But as we speak about Africa, One continent as one word.
I also see threads of this in Europe, like with the European union and
in Asian countries with with two groups of countries coming to them.
But to take it a step further the question which I have for you is that, what will
it take for us to create like a really a global world we'll have one for, I think
there are, you mentioned about digital technology and I think that is already
allowing us to interact and share ideas much more freely without those boundaries.
Right?
There are no borders in this.
It's so amazing.
, What can we do or what message would you want to leave for leaders?
And this is personally very irrelevant for me also like instead of moving from
one Africa, one Europe, one issue, what can we do to really create a borderless
society, which is anyways happening in the digital world where we spend most of
our time, but it's still the narrative.
I think it's the borders are there in the marriage.
No, it's interesting because I don't know that the borders, the
physical borders are a bad thing.
I think there's research that shows that some of the most, interesting innovations.
Of diversity when there's people with different experiences in the room.
And I love that.
I think that, they put me a new and a white male and another white
female in a room, we'll all bring different perspectives to that idea.
So for me, When you say about one world and one, this it's sounds to me
like we're looking for a homogenous society and I don't want that.
I think freedom of movement, freedom of expression, freedom of ideas.
Absolutely.
But one something, no, I think we need to learn to embrace diversity because the re
the fact that we are not very good at it.
It's actually why there is so much polarization because people
want us all to be the same.
Nobody's allowing that truth that you live, let me live.
Let's all live, and I think, South Africa, for example, I think has
been one of the countries that's probably done it quite well.
There's a lot of, tensions here.
The different races, the living together not necessarily living together.
I always say there's a bit like a rainbow.
You can see lots of colors, but they don't necessarily merge.
You can distinctly see the different colors.
And so for me, it's really not about, one, anything it's about,
embracing the diversity of this globe.
. I think that it's a very important point that you make what real diversity is
what you just said, like to listening to different opinions, to seeing different
people for who they are and what they can bring to the table and not just trying
to have a set of people from different.
And then try to bring them in a unity.
So thank you for sharing that.
. So , before we end where can our listeners listen to you or find
out more about you and what you do?
So my.
Website addresses, www.africa, no filter.org.
So you'll find out all about the work we do there to shift narratives to Google
me, I do a lot of writing night brutal.
I write a lot of opinion pieces.
I have a regular column in new African magazine where I put my
thoughts down about African issues.
And yeah.
A lot of the stuff I do is on the internet.
That's why I like the internet.
You don't even have to keep it in your inbox.
You just Google yourself, Google me.
That's what I
say.
Wonderful.
And thank you for sharing all your insights and your story Moky.
I really appreciate your taking time for that.
Thank
you very much for inviting me on.
That's it for this episode of choosing leadership with summit.
I choose leadership every time I record this podcast and I
invite you to do the same.
I invite you to design a life of joy, meaning pride and satisfaction.
Not just for yourself, but also for those around you.
This is what I do most naturally to lovingly and gently provoke you.
To help you see your own light to help you see what you are already capable of.
I say what might be uncomfortable for me to say, or for you to hear.
To show you that all of our dreams which have been on hold are within our grasp.
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I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter@deployyourself.com
slash newsletter.
You can also reach out on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to share
any other comment or feedback.
I want to thank everyone who contributed to making the show.
At reality.
And thank you for listening.
Always remember that you are enough, you are loved and you matter, this is summit.
Until next time, keep choosing leadership.