On the 28th of March, 2025, I had the privilege of delivering a talk at the AGSA Conference under the theme “Narrating Africa Anew: Leveraging Global Research for Africa’s Success.”
As a Malawian researcher, entrepreneur, and storyteller, I shared insights from my thesis titled “The Entrepreneurial Opportunity in Africa’s Digital Transformation: Modelling Public Information Management Systems for Development.”
My talk — “As the World Livestreams Flowers…” — explored the realities of digital inequality, the power of African ecosystems like the Kwathu Kollective, and the critical need to not only implement digital solutions but also validate and document them through rigorous, context-based research.
It was an emotional and empowering moment — not just presenting data, but reclaiming the narrative. Because if we don’t tell our stories, someone else will.
Watch my presentation of the findings at the African Graduate Students Association 2025 Annual Conference
Or read my speaker notes below:
Mapping Possibility
I am the founder of the Kwathu Kollective — formerly the Ntha Foundation.
We are many things — a collective of creators, technologists, educators — but at our core, we’re a movement. One rooted in the belief that digital transformation in Africa is not a someday — it is a now.
In 2021, we received a $250,000 World Bank grant through a public-private partnership with the Government of Malawi. Our task? To train 500 youth in digital skills.
We ended up training 647.
And today, we’ve trained nearly 10,000 young Africans from over 20 countries.
What began as a program became a platform:
Digital Skills for Africa (DSA).
We built e-learning courses.
We created tech hubs.
We offered scholarships.
And we built a digital ecosystem:
Kwathu Kowork, Kwathu Kwacha, and DSA — working together to democratize access to skills, tools, and opportunity.
From Implementation to Research
But as much as we were doing the work… something felt missing.
We had impact — yes.
But where was the evidence?
Where was the academic validation, the frameworks, the data?
I looked for it — and I didn’t find it.
So I wrote it.
This talk is not just about implementation.
It’s about understanding digital transformation as a layered, complex, human process.
That’s why I wrote a thesis titled:
“The Entrepreneurial Opportunity in Africa’s Digital Transformation: Modelling Public Information Management Systems for Development.”
Because what we don’t document, we can’t defend.
And what we don’t define, gets decided for us.
What I Found: TOEI Framework
I used the TOEI framework — Technological, Organizational, Environmental, and Individual — and adapted it for Malawi’s context.
I applied a binary logistic regression model — because numbers don’t lie.
And what we found was profound:
- The decision to create systems is driven by three things:
Cost, innovativeness, and competitive pressure. - But the decision to adopt those systems?
That came down to just one: Perceived benefit.
In other words:
People don’t adopt what they don’t understand.
They don’t embrace what they don’t see value in.
No matter how technically brilliant a system is —
If people don’t feel the “what’s in it for me?”, they won’t show up.
And that’s the real digital divide.
Not just infrastructure —
But inclusion.
Perception.
Access to meaning.
Narrating Africa Anew
Africa has the youngest population in the world.
We are brilliant. Ambitious. Wired.
But we are still not narrating our own futures.
When I was growing up in Mangochi — a lakeside town in Malawi — I knew beauty.
Palm trees. Birds. Boats. Sand.
But when I went online, I didn’t see that.
I saw poverty. Suffering. War.
I saw a continent flattened into a cliché.
And I knew: If we don’t tell our stories, someone else will.
That’s why I started training creators.
That’s why I built platforms.
That’s why I stepped into research.
Because transformation is not just about tech.
It’s about narrative.
It’s about power.
It’s about voice.
The Ball Is in Our Court
As we gather here to talk about Africa’s future, let me say this:
We cannot transform what we do not understand.
We cannot wait for validation from outside.
We must build, research, critique — and share.
And so, in that spirit — I am making my thesis freely available.
You can download it. Share it. Use it. Teach with it.
And if you’re a researcher wondering how to get started online — we even created a course just for you on Digital Skills for Africa.
Because what good is knowledge if it dies in a drawer?
Africa is not behind.
We are becoming.
We are not voiceless.
We are rising in surround sound.
So to all the storytellers, builders, researchers, teachers, funders —
Let’s livestream more than flowers.
Let’s livestream futures.
from this new African researcher,
Ntha
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