2025-10-06

From Silicon Valley to Nairobi: What the Global South’s AI leapfrogging teaches tech leaders

When I write about the cognitive migration now underway, brought about by the rapid advance of gen AI, I do so from the perspective of someone who has spent four decades in the technology industry. My own journey runs from coding business applications in Fortran and COBOL to systems analysis and design, IT project management, enterprise systems consulting, computing hardware sales and technology industry communications. All of it has been centered in the U.S., although I have collaborated with colleagues and clients across Europe and Asia.

My writing carries an American, tech-industry vantage point, although I make attempts to see a broader perspective. Perhaps that is fitting, since much of the frontier development of AI remains clustered in Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston and a [...]