Steph Vermeulen — Afro Optimism

David Watts on Mix 93.8. - Mix 93.8, legendary radio, as we do each and every Monday night at this time. It is time for what's involved. And I know I say this every week, but my guest and I have been so looking forward to having a chat to again. So it's a very warm what's involved. Welcome to Steph and Melon. Hi, Steph. - I'm good, thank you, David. And this is indeed a privilege. - Well, it's my privilege, I must tell you, because, and again, this is one of those we've spoken before. And for me, it was like just yesterday, but it was a good couple of years ago. And obviously Steph has been busy in that time. So before we get into what the main topic of tonight's conversation is, and it's Afro-optimism. I love that. When we talked about it, I was like, we need some of that. But tell us a little bit about Steph. I mean, you are known at least amongst the people that are in the know as the queen of EQ, particularly in South Africa. And, but how did you get there? What was your journey? Tell us a little bit about that. - I started off, I was going to become, in the 1980s, I was starting to become a shrink. And then I was in my own therapy, as one has to be if you're going to be a shrink, and my shrink said to me, no, I don't think so, you're far too ambitious.

And I thought, well, I would be so good at this. And I'd been doing lots of volunteer counseling, et cetera. And then was quite lost in terms of what I was going to do. So the mind power guru, John Kehoe, came here in the early 90s. And he ran those mass seminars and charged a fortune at the time. I think it was about 1300 rand, which was a lot of money in the 1990s. And we just come through the worst recession. It was the announcements I don't think had been made yet. We were still in the doldrums of that really depressed time at the end of apartheid. And I watched him run these seminars and thought, well, obviously there's a need for training. And then myself went into training, particularly because of our transition, which was all happening then at the time. So I was doing a lot of personal growth training based on psychology, which has always been my subject and my field of great passion and personal development. And then in the 19, it was 1996, no, 1995, I was in one of the bookstores and I saw a book titled "Emotional Intelligence." And I just thought that answers so many questions because I knew all of the mind power stuff was playing very heavily on what we thought was the mind then, which we now know is actually not true.

None of that mind power stuff is true. Law of attraction and all of that is just nonsense. And apologies, I see your reaction. - People are sitting gossiping. - It has been totally disproven. And so it all sounds nice because it's magical thinking, but it doesn't have any basis in science whatsoever. Now I knew at the time that the NLPs and the mind powers and all of the things that were very popular at the time, neuro-linguistic programming, being NLP, all of that was actually had completely disregarded or mostly disregarded the emotions. And obviously my background in psychology was telling me that your emotions will override everything else. If you're in a bad mood, try and talk yourself out of it. It's almost impossible if something's really getting you down. So I knew that the emotions were an important part of had already been working with that. But the book I picked up was Daniel Goleman's first book. And I just saw the title and bought it. And then it took a while to read because it was written for academic psychologists or psychology students. The thought with emotional intelligence was it was just going to be another branch of psychology, academic psychology, nobody, including the Daniel Goleman's and Peter Salovey's and all of the original inventors of the term or those who promoted it ever expected it to go the way that it has gone.

But it was something that really worked for what I had been thinking. And so I started to develop my own training around it. And people who knew the book knew that it was very academic and not very practical. It was his first book. It was an academic book, as I've mentioned. And then said to me, well, why don't you then write a book because there's nothing practical around. And that was at the end of the 90s where there was no Google, there was no, we had a search engine, I remember, 'cause my husband is in computers. It was called Copernicus. And you literally would put in the term emotional intelligence and you'd go and make some tea and take some time and come back five minutes later. And you got three results. And you're going, wow, it searched the whole world. - And came up. - It has found a Time Magazine article on emotional intelligence. And this was remarkable at the time, but it was before all of the technology that we have today that supposedly, or does, certainly make our lives a lot easier. So what has happened since is the whole of neuroscience has exploded within this new millennium. And because of technology and the MRIs and fMRIs being able to have a peek into the brain, we can now start to see what the brain is doing.

And this has changed the whole of behavioral psychology. It's changed the way we see ourselves. It's changed the way we think about ourselves. And that makes this field really exciting. So the first book I wrote was launched in 1999 or published in 1999. And then I republished the same book, but it is a totally different book because of neuroscience in 2015. And that book I've called Personal Intelligence because it's a lot more than emotional intelligence on its own. - And that to me is absolutely amazing because you mentioned NLP, now I was initially a very, very big fan of NLP. And then I became despondent because I was like, yeah, I can see how it works, but there's no soul. And subsequently, I'm sure you've come across this as well. There has been this change to more neuro-linguistic psychology now because obviously this kind of stuff is coming in. And the emotions play a massive, massive role. What science now knows about our emotions is that our emotions literally run the traffic, the chemical traffic between our thinking brain and our physical body. And though that chemical traffic is neurochemicals in our body. So it's the same as neurochemicals in our brain, but we call them hormones when they run the traffic in our body.

Now, when we're feeling great and we're feeling in a state of flow, it's like you in a fantastic car, a really high performance car and you're on a great road, a brilliant highway where there's no other traffic. And that sense of flow is what we call happiness. And so we label these things which really have to do with our wellbeing. And so when we are happy, it's a message, a physical message about our wellbeing. It's saying everything in our system is running fine. As soon as something happens and we get angry or we get upset or the traffic starts to flow differently because the hormones release differently. So the commonly known stress hormone is cortisol and cortisol literally stops us from thinking straight, which is why if you're highly stressed, it's hard to think of people's names or to remember what did we do at that meeting yesterday? It affects our short-term memory. So all of this is literally about our wellbeing as human beings and our emotions are the things that speak to us about our wellbeing. So if we're off whack, we really need to do something about that and get back to being the default state of human beings is to be happy once again, because that's where we find our energy.

And if we have energy, some people talk about emotions, energy and motion, or some scientists talk about motivation as emotion, evoking motion. And when do we feel motivated? When we feel good. When we feel demotivated, we actually have no energy at all and we kind of drag ourselves through life. - And this is also where somebody would come up to you and go, oh, some people just push my buttons and very often it'll happen. There's certain things where somebody might speak to you in a certain tone, a certain way. And before you know it, you're angry. You're in a bad mood. And that's just the chemicals are going, okay, we're associating them, bang, am I on the right track? - You're on the right track. The thing that we need to know though, is it's not just a personality clash as it were. We've all got what I call when I'm training, I talk about good buttons and bad buttons. And we've all got good buttons if you say to me, I love your work and you're fantastic and amazing. And I say to you, and then we'll have this great party of acknowledging one another and those are our good buttons. Somebody may come along and I almost look at the bad buttons as a rawness, an open wound. And somebody comes along and all of these are connected to your history, the bad buttons.

So there's a big filing cabinet, let's say, of negative experiences and these connect to raw nerves, which I would call your bad buttons. Now, all somebody needs to do is come along and they just brush up against and we react. - There we go. - And but it's all to do with our history and we need to take responsibility for our bad buttons because when we take responsibility for our bad buttons, then we can heal them. And we can go, okay, I react when people do this, I tend to have an angry reaction. So lots of people would have an angry reaction when they're not seen or not heard because lots of people grow up not being seen or heard. - That was my biggest one for so, so long. When I felt I wasn't being heard, then that little boy would come out and stamp his feet and have a tantrum. - And so he went on to radio. - Yes. - To be heard. - Yes. - And I became a speaker for exactly the same reason. So it's something that lots of people will react to, but these are our raw buttons. And when we can heal those buttons, other people can come along and they can do exactly the same thing. But the button is no longer there. It will always remain as a scar. - Yes. - But it will no longer, you will react similarly, but you won't feel hurt inside.

- It won't trigger that exact, that raw emotion. - So feeling hurt inside is really a reminder that we've got more lessons to learn from the experiences that have happened to us. Now in my books, I have an emotional dictionary that decodes the meaning of emotion because all of our emotions, it's a language that we need to learn. And when we learn the meaning of our emotions, we can then start decoding and working with them and unpacking that big filing cabinet and going, okay, well, it's so still, what more have I got to learn about me? Not, I wish I'd never been in that circumstance. That's not learning. But lots of people, when you take them through these processes, like I would do in coaching, for example, and you take them through and you show them that because they managed that situation, they've now emerged a lot stronger than they actually thought they were before this thing happened to them. So life is about lots and lots and lots and lots of learning. And when we still feel emotionally hurt, it's because we've still got more to learn about those instances. - Which is what is so interesting about the main topic of our discussion tonight because we were talking about this and then I said, Steph, what are we gonna talk about tonight?

And you went Afro-optimism. And I thought, a bit of a contradiction in terms. But anyway, we are gonna be discussing Afro-optimism. My special guest in studio is Steph Vermeerlen. - David Watts on Mix 93.8. - What's involved on this Monday night? Lance just wanted to know who's on Mix FM right now. Well, the show is called "What's Involved?" And my guest in studio is Steph Vermeerlen. I'd like to call Steph the queen of EQ in South Africa. And we'll tell you all about where you can get hold of Steph. What we've been talking about is your journey so far. We've been talking about EQ. So how on earth did we go from EQ to this contradiction in terms called Afro-optimism? What is this about? Speak to me. - I have a great interest in the world and in seeing, making things transparent. And the one thing that is, or the things that are happening in Africa that we are very unaware of. So part of the neuroscience journey is learning to change our narratives. It's learning to look at the world differently. And it's learning to be more flexible in our beliefs and opinions about things because everything is changing so rapidly. So for me, it was really the start of this journey of looking at Afro-optimism was about change and change management, et cetera, et cetera.

And then I started to just put things together that were happening that I think are going to fundamentally shift where Africa is right now. And already it's happening. And one of those things is what's known as the X-Prize for Literacy. Now the X-Prize for Literacy is a $10 million prize that is put out by people, a consortium of people, our Elon, as we like to call him, we like to own Elon Musk. - Well, we have to, I mean, obviously. - That's it, he doesn't like to own us, but we like to own Elon Musk. Peter Diamandisen is a consortium of futurists that put out a competition, launched about two or three years ago. In terms of anybody or any group of people that could actually develop technology for African or poor children, rural children around the world, starting in Africa, for children to teach themselves to read using tablets. Now the tablets are being supplied by Google. The energy will be provided by, we're washing in sunshine, so it'll be by solar energy. And the idea is that when kids get hold of these tablets, they will play games or do whatever they're going to do. But the whole point is to see if we can make a continent literate within a few years. Now that prize is being tested currently in Tanzania.

The five finalists, their offerings are being tested currently. And the prize will be awarded in February. So if you haven't entered yet, you're too late to do so. But what will happen when this rollout starts is it's not only going to be children because all people in Africa are hungry for information. Now we're already seeing with just little bits of information feeding through to people, we're seeing an amazing mushrooming of creativity on this continent. I've given up completely on America, any group of people that could vote Donald Trump as their savior, I'm done, I'm finished. And because that's taking the world backwards, I think that Europe is also too comfortable. We don't innovate when we're comfortable. So I really do believe that the next place of innovation will be Africa and potentially India, because for the same reason, once the rollout has happened here in terms of literacy, it will go to the subcontinent of India as well. Now you've got a whole lot of people who have some very urgent needs that they are desperate to solve. And Africans are going to solve their own problems. They don't need technology from outside. - Oh yes, I so agree with you on that. - So all Africans need is information.

Now when everybody in Africa, almost 1 billion people are literate and can read, they also have devices which give people access to the world's repository of information. Now that's what education has tried to do. Education has tried to make us remember that world's repository of information, which we don't need to do any longer 'cause we have now, we've got devices, et cetera, that will do it for us. So I see within five to 10 years' time that this, if this technology works, if it's possible to teach people to be literate, if this technology works within 10 years' time, we're gonna see a very different continent. There are also moves afoot that are the, and again, it's going to rub up against a whole lot of people's bigotry about Chinese industrialization. Everyone, oh, the Chinese always bring in their own and they don't actually empower... - The Chinese are taking over, yeah. - And they're taking over, et cetera. The Chinese have always been traders. They've never been imperialists. I think what we're afraid of is that the Chinese will do what the Europeans have done. And the Europeans, literally the colonialists, et cetera, came and put in the infrastructure necessary to take out the goods that they have stolen from Africa, all of the wealth, et cetera.

Now the Chinese are not doing that. There is a book called "The Next Factory of Africa." And in that book, it's a woman who is a Chinese person who is an American national who lives in Africa and does research in Africa. And she's researched Chinese companies. And she says that the Chinese companies that she's researched, not necessarily in South Africa, but all over Africa, 94% of the employment is actually local. Now, what is estimated that every time industrialization happens, you've got it jumped firstly from the UK to Germany, funnily enough. And I mean, it's such a joke that Germany, in the days of early industrialization, looked with great admiration to British productivity, which today is completely the other way around, of course. But then it went, and obviously we know from our own lifetimes in the '90s, it ended up in the Far East, et cetera. And from '80s Japan, then it went to Taiwan, and then it jumped to China. Now, Chinese people who are here say that they are in Africa because they like Africa, 'cause it reminds them of the China they grew up in, totally unindustrialized. And then they moved to open factories now in Africa, and they're here because their own labor is too expensive.

So they're not bringing their own labor along. That is why they are in Africa. Now, everybody will go, "Oh, well, the same environmental problems." And yes, all of those things are probable. - They are here to exploit us, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. - With in 10 to 15 years, it's estimated that if through the Chinese industrialization of Africa, in Chinese factories employing African people, that in 10 to 15 years, if we can uplift just half the number of people who've been uplifted through Chinese industrialization in China, we will solve the problem of poverty in Africa, is what's estimated. - Well, let's be honest. I mean, you know, Western aid into Africa. - Yes, has been hopeless. - Has not really done anything. It's lined pockets of the few. But I mean, for the masses, it hasn't. So you reckon this is a possibility? This is, it's already happening. And so it's not about to happen. It is already happening and it is in process. And what happens around these big Chinese factories? There are, for example, she talks about denim factories in Lesotho. And there's a mushrooming of industries that are started by local people, cut, make and trim, CMT industries, that are then started by local people.

So because the demands of these Chinese factories are so huge, they can't be solved all in one factory. So you're starting to see factories are mushrooming around these big Chinese installations. - In order to feed that machine. - To feed that machine. But what is happening, it's putting the money into the pockets of Africans. And it's also putting the know-how. There's absolutely no way we will be able to educate the number of people, same as China. There's no way we'll be able to educate the number of forgotten adults in Africa. But this way, they can learn to be manufacturers. We can learn then to benefitiate the great wealth of Africa, which still exists. It hasn't, a lot has been stolen indeed, but there's a great wealth that still exists in Africa. People talk about in the Congo, the wealth that is under the ground in the Congo is just phenomenal. If we can, as African people, take this and benefitiate, instead of sending our raw materials out and then buying expensive product back in, which was the colonial model, and it's a disastrous model for Africa. - Do you think because of our history in Africa, that history of exploitation, number one, there is a fear that the Chinese are gonna do the same thing, but do you not think perhaps because of those lessons learned, Africans are gonna be even more vigilant about that and they're gonna go, hang on.

- I think what has changed everything is tech. So lots of youngsters all the way throughout Africa. There's a new book written, unfortunately, I came across it recently, but it's in French. It's not translated yet. And about the influence of tech startups in Africa, which is obviously younger people. Now, younger people are fed up with a militaristic model. They're fed up with the autocratic power model. In the same way as younger people in Europe, we're fed up with that, and then we saw a move to democracy after the Second World War. The same process is happening in Africa, but it's turbo boosted because of tech and access to tech. So you've got a whole lot of tech startups. This French person who's written this book, a young person who's written this book about tech in Africa, he came here to do research and he said he's never left. And he said that one of the big tech areas of enormous tech development is Ghana, and it's leading the way. Now, this is fantastic. This is not stuff that we are coming across. And this is not stuff that we are hearing because we're still hearing the same old narrative about Africa, which is not what is happening on the ground at all. So one has to search and one has to dig and one has to find out to be able to change our own narrative because this continent is where the next creative explosion is going to come from.

- You know what was amazing for me is when I was based in Nalsprite, living in Nalsprite, we used to train tour guides and field guides. And we were approached by the Department of Tourism and they said, "Here is X amount of money. Go ye forth and train tour guides for this influx of tourism." So we dutifully went off and we ended up literally in the corner where this Moro Michel monument is between Mozambique and Mpomolanga. And it was deep, deep rural Mpomolanga. - Yes. - And they now expected us to go out and train tour guides, but there was no plan. So we trained them and we said, "Okay, here they are. Now what?" However, what amazed me is that these people were, to all intents and purposes, illiterate. Yet almost every single one of them either had a cell phone or had access to a cell phone. - Then. - Yeah, and the uptake on that kind of technology has been absolutely amazing. - That is what is going to change Africa because instead of having to go to colleges or universities or sign up for UNISA or remote learning, almost learning will happen via tech devices. So most learning is going to happen on your cell phone. So instead of having to get a university degree, if you want to study something, you just sign up for a course on your cell phone.

Now obviously today it's important that people can read because it is all written. But with the influx of smartphones that are cheaper and more affordable and that technology is happening all the time, you can get an education by watching videos. So you don't need to read any longer and most youngsters are getting an education in terms of tech via watching videos rather than reading anything. - You look at the amount of searches for things done on YouTube at the moment. I was actually with an organization today and it was all about the Credit Act and they are looking to implement this training because the act says it has to be done. And instead of doing that, oh, yes, here we go, here's the book you learn, we've been asked to do videos, et cetera, et cetera. And it's in that gamification area, it's in this and it's all icons and it's point and click. Obviously it's gonna be in the various languages and we were like, okay, this we can do 'cause this is the space that we plan at the moment. But what I've noticed as well with a lot of people is the need to have this formal piece of paper from a formalized learning institution. The guys and particularly millennials, those kind of things again, yeah, okay, but I can learn this and I can do it.

Why do I have to waste five or six years of my time? Are we going in this direction? - We're going in the direction where pieces of paper won't matter any longer because as soon as you've got a piece of paper, that information is well outdated even if your degree was right up to date when you started it. Most degrees, I have degrees in psychology. I was learning about what Freud said and he was 100 years before. Now, you may want to know what the people who founded the field that you're interested in, if that is your area of interest. But it's not necessarily going to benefit us in applying what we know. Our generation of baby boomers and just after, et cetera, degrees were really important 'cause that's what separated us. There were so many of us that we needed some form of separation and that is what separated supposedly the wheat from the chaff as it were. And today, that's not the case because nobody's really interested in how many degrees you have 'cause anybody who can read can read books and get degrees. People are only interested in what can you do or produce. Now, when it comes to technology, our generation can risk falling behind completely if we don't keep up to date with what is happening.

- And it is, and that's a monster thing. I mean, progress happens so quickly these days. - And it's not difficult. We just need to be a lot more flexible, which is why with the advent of AI and all of that and the things that we're talking about, it's not impossible that we will produce the AI robots in Africa for the rest of the world. - I wanna talk AI and I wanna talk where women fit into this whole thing 'cause I mean, Africa's got this big thing and there's this big looming shadow of inequality. So when we come back, let's talk about that. - David Watts on Mix 93.8. - Legendary radio. What's involved that is chatting to Steph Vermeerlen and we are chatting about Afro-optimism, which is so good 'cause we need some good news. So we've talked about this. We've talked about evolution. We've talked about AI a little bit. So I wanna dig into that. You know, there's this concept you mentioned or very briefly about the concept of hyper-human, but where do we stand in Africa in terms of women and empowerment and stuff like that? 'Cause I've been of the opinion and I've often been ridiculed for this, is that women is where it's at, specifically in Africa. - You're correct. Oh, thank you, I have a woman who agrees with me.

Make a note for once. Tell me about that. - Yeah, the interesting thing about women in Africa is, or Africa in general, is Africa in general is a continent of mental toughness because everybody has had to be who lives on this continent to survive, and particularly the women. And if we look at what is happening in the future, there is no place for these stupid gender roles that really are a very modern invention in our world, and probably as modern as about possibly 50, 60, maybe 100 years, where we have this great gender divide. So if all human beings are just themselves in their humanness, there's no continuum of femininity, as it were, in a separate one for masculinity. There are women who show tendencies or strength that would be called that they are masculinized men or high-testosterone females, and you have men who would be highly, let's say, on the feminine scale of things. Now, where's this great divide that it's all on one continuum for heaven's sake? If you look at what women do in Africa, that women are the backbone, women are the strength, women are the doers, and a lot of the time-- - The nurturers, they-- - The doers, and they also are running, most of the small holding farms in this country are run and managed by women alone.

And so the big farmers in this country are actually women, but that's in South Africa, and probably for much of the continent. Now, you've got women who really do want more. Once they have the tech to be able to provide more, not only can they actually start to improve the farming methods so it doesn't require them to have to go and get wood, for example, every day. There was a comparison done in terms of energy. And when we have different forms of energy, which we really should have across the continent, we need the solar powered energy. And the contrast between a unit of energy in the UK and a unit of energy, the equivalent in terms of paraffin or wood in Africa, it was something like that it costs African women like $8 to sort of 20 cents for people to buy energy in the UK. Now, once we then can sort out the energy problem, we will start to see the strength of African women coming through. And because African women have had to be strong, they're not concerned in rural Africa about whether their fingernails are chipped or whether they've got a few wrinkles and they need some Botox at all. - They've got to survive. - And because they've got to be real and they've got to survive. So the backbone of Africa is women, and women raised children, and women raised children all over.

So much so that the world today is considered a matriarchal society because most people will be raised at some point by a single mother. And there's lots of other conditions that make us matriarchal societies as opposed to patriarchal societies. But we're straddling the nonsense of the patriarchy, which is saying that men are superior in what way? That we all have something to offer and we all have something to bring every single one of us as individuals, including somebody from deep rural Africa who may not have an education has lots to bring to the equation. So everybody has value. And what we're looking at in terms of new economies that is the Italian, he's the professor of economics at the University of Pretoria who has an American accent, so we're very global at the moment, who's written a book called "The Wellbeing Economy." And he's really talking about what we do so well in Africa is the human face of economics. So instead of having this ridiculous notion of growth, which can't continue and is unsustainable, has got us into the mess that we're in, he's talking about putting care at the center of our economies. Now, Africa is strongly poised, so is the subcontinent of India, to have care at the center of our economies.

Now, if we're looking at AI and what it's going to bring, AI can't do the jobs that human beings can do in terms of our humanness. So we really are starting to fulfill what Steve Biko said. He said that America and Europe or the Western world has brought a militaristic and industrial look to the world. What Africa will ultimately do is give us a human face. And this professor, he's written a book called "The Wellbeing Economy," is talking exactly about what we know on the continent of Africa is various versions of Ubuntu. Now-- - This is my point that I was going to make, is we've got this. This is something that is built into us, the spirit of Ubuntu, and then everybody else comes with their preconceived ideas and notions and screws it up. And I think it's because we've never-- - We Westerners come with our ideas and screw it up. - And we as Africans have never had that kind of pride in ourselves and in our abilities to stand up and go, hang on. - People did. It was badly screwed around by the colonial era because the colonialists who justify their pillage had to pretend that Africa was an empty continent. The African history is deeply rich. That places like Timbuktu in the Middle Ages were five times the size of London, had 120,000 inhabitants, 25,000 scholars at universities, and way outstripped Europe.

What we know to be the Zimbabwe ruins, for example, was the Empire of the, or the Monomatopin Empire, which mined gold from 1100s all the way through Southern Africa. So we come along and we go, well, you know, the white person found gold in pilgrims, race to whatever in the 1800s. It is just nonsense. - The actual history is different. - The real history, we need to regain African pride in our continent by actually teaching people the real history of what happened here. There was a ruler in West Africa called Mansa Musa, was his title as the ruler. And he's considered to be wealthier if you take the amount of gold that he had and had been mined in his empire, if you took that and converted it to today's money, he would be far wealthier than the Bill Gates and all the people that we consider to be billionaires today. So Africa has a very deep history that has been raped along with the continent in terms of colonial era, et cetera, to justify white superiority. So racism, sexism has no place whatsoever in our new world. And I do believe that Africa is going to show the way forward in terms of that. - I think we do, and I firmly believe that. So Steph, we're almost out of time again. Where to from here, what would you say we need in Africa to make these dreams become a reality?

- They're already happening. So we just need to actually have a look at what can each of us contribute? So what can we do to help education? And I'm not talking about the education systems. If you see a need and you can develop a product that could teach people to do practical things using technology, then do it. So all of us need to contribute and all of us also need to hear a lot more from people who are on this continent rather than tell people what they need to do, which is obviously the Western and the white way, which is what we've always done. So we need to hear people and we need to facilitate what it is that people need. If people need literacy, then we can facilitate that. If people need to have an understanding of our history, we can through technology facilitate that. But we certainly as white people and Western people need to do a lot more listening. - Fantastic stuff. Steph and Merlin, people can get hold of you at EQSA.co.za. Your book is available, book shops, you can get on Amazon in Kindle. Can you get it through EQSA as well? If people want to, if they're having difficulty getting it, they can contact me through EQSA, but it is available on Kindle, on Amazon, and the book is called Personal Intelligence, Future Fit Now.

- Okay, so well worth it, but also, if people want to get hold of you because I think this is the kind of thing that, and I'm hoping that corporates would jump on this and go, okay, we do have this emotional responsibility rather than this CSI thing that everybody throws around all the time. You do speak on that. - I speak on this, I speak on personal intelligence, I speak on the future, I speak on all of the things that we've been talking about, including how do we start changing people's minds by changing their narrative of themselves, of Africa, of what we see, because there'll be a whole lot of people who have been reacting to what we're saying, but who will be going at a bunkum, and that's okay. - Yeah, well, we're not gonna be popular with some people. Other people are gonna bind to it. Steph, you have written this whole article on the whole concept of, what do we call it, Afro-optimism. Steph, thank you so much. As always, it's been an absolute, I loved it. It's been great. - And thank you, I have two great opportunities. - There you go, until next time, this is What's Involved, we'll catch you again next Monday between six and seven. One more thing before I go, thanks for listening.

- David Watts on the next 93.8.