Out-of-the-Box Thinking in an In-the-Box World

by Philip Emeagwali (emeagwali.com)

Keynote speech at University of Alberta, Canada, September 23, 2006

I once believed that capital was another word for money, the accumulated wealth of a country or its people. Surely, I thought, wealth is determined by the money or property in one’s possession. Then I saw a Deutsche Bank advertisement in the Wall Street Journal that proclaimed: “Ideas are capital. The rest is just money.”

I was struck by the simplicity of such an eloquent and forceful idea. I started imagining what such power meant for Africa. The potential for progress and poverty alleviation in Africa relies on capital generated from the power within our minds, not from our ability to pick minerals from the ground or seek debt relief and foreign assistance.

If ideas are capital, why is Africa investing more on things than on information, and more on the military than on education? Suddenly, I realized what this idea could mean for Africa. If the pen is mightier than the sword, why does a general earn more than the work of a hundred writers combined? If ideas are indeed capital, then Africa should stem its brain drain and promote the African Renaissance, which will lead to the rebirth of the continent. After all, a renaissance is a rebirth of ideas. And knowledge and ideas are the engines that drive economic growth.

When African men and women of ideas, who will give birth to new ideas, have fled to Europe and the United States, then the so-called African Renaissance cannot occur in Africa. It can only occur in Paris, London and New York. There are more Soukous musicians in Paris, than in Kinshasha; more African professional soccer players in Europe, than in Africa. African literature is more at home abroad than it is in Africa. In other words, Africans in Europe are alleviating poverty in Europe, not in Africa. Until the men and women of ideas — the true healers of Africa — start returning home, the African Renaissance and poverty alleviation will remain empty slogans. After all, the brightest ideas are generated and harnessed by men of ideas.

The first annual report by J.P. Morgan Chase, a firm with assets of 1.3 trillion dollars, reads: “The power of intellectual capital is the ability to breed ideas that ignite value.” This quote is a clarion call to African leaders to shift purposefully and deliberately from a focus on things to a focus on information; from exporting natural resources to exporting knowledge and ideas; and from being a consumer of technology to becoming a producer of technology.

For Africa, poverty will be reduced when intellectual capital is increased and leveraged to export knowledge and ideas. Africa’s primary strategy for poverty alleviation is to gain debt relief, foreign assistance, and investments from western nations. Poverty alleviation means looking beyond 100 percent literacy and aiming for 100 percent numeracy, the prerequisite for increasing our technological intellectual capital. Yet, in this age of information and globalization when poverty alleviation should result in producing valuable products for the global market and competing with Asia, the United States, and Europe — shamefully, diamonds found in Africa are polished in Europe and re-sold to Africans.

The intellectual capital needed to produce products and services will lead to the path of poverty alleviation. Intellectual capital, defined as the collective knowledge of the people, increases productivity. The latter — by driving economic growth — alleviates poverty, always and everywhere, even in Africa. Productivity is the engine that drives global economic growth.

Those who create new knowledge are producing wealth, while those who consume it are producing poverty. If you attend a Wole Soyinka’s production of Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart,” you consume the knowledge produced by Soyinka and Achebe as well as the actor’s production, much like I consume the knowledge and production of Bob Marley’s through his songs. 

We will need wisdom, that which turns too much information — or information overload — into focused power, not only to process, but also to evaluate the overwhelming amount of information available on the Internet. This wisdom will give us the competitive edge and enable us to find creative solutions.

The following story illustrates the difference between information and wisdom. Twelve hundred years ago, in the city of Baghdad, lived a genius named Al-Khwarizmi, who was one of the fathers of algebra. In fact, the word algebra comes from the title of his book Al-jabr, which for centuries was the standard mathematics textbook. Al-Khwarizmi taught in an institution of learning called the House of Wisdom, which was the center of new ideas during Islam’s golden age of science. To this day we computer scientists honor Al-Khwarizmi when we use the word algorithm, which is our attempt to pronounce his name.

One day, Al-Khwarizmi was riding a camel laden down with algebraic manuscripts to the holy city of Mecca. He saw three young men crying at an oasis.

“My children, why are you crying?” he enquired.

“Our father, upon his death, instructed us to divide his 17 camels as follows:

‘To my oldest son I leave half of my camels, my second son shall have one-third of my camels, and my youngest son is to have one-ninth of my camels.’”

“What, then, is your problem?” Al-Khwarizmi asked.

“We have been to school and learned that 17 is a prime number that is, divisible only by one and itself and cannot be divided by two or three or nine. Since we love our camels, we cannot divide them exactly,” they answered.

Al-Khwarizmi thought for a while and asked, “Will it help if I offer my camel and make the total 18?”

“No, no, no,” they cried.

“You are on your way to Mecca, and you need your camel.”

“Go ahead, have my camel, and divide the 18 camels amongst yourselves,” he said, smiling.

So the eldest took one-half of 18 — or nine camels. The second took one-third of 18 — or six camels. The youngest took one-ninth of 18 — or two camels. After the division, one camel was left: Al-Khwarizmi’s camel, as the total number of camels divided among the sons (nine plus six plus two) equaled 17.

Then Al-Khwarizmi asked, “Now, can I have my camel back?”

These young men had information about prime numbers, but they lacked the wisdom to use the information effectively. It is the manipulation of information to accomplish seemingly impossible purposes that defines true wisdom.

Today, we have ten billion pages of information posted on the Internet — more than enough to keep us busy the rest of our lives, and new information is being added daily. More information has been created in the last 100 years than in all of the previous 100,000 years combined. We need the wisdom to sift through and convert these billions of pages into information riches.

The genius of Al-Khwarizmi was not in his mathematical wizardry or even his book knowledge: It was in his experiential knowledge — his big-picture, right-brain thinking; creativity; innovation; and wisdom. It was his wisdom to add a camel to make the total 18 and still get his camel back.

Prime numbers are to whole numbers what the laws of physics are to physics. Twenty years ago, I used an Al-Khwarizmi approach to solve a notoriously difficult problem in physics. I added inertial force, which enabled me to reformulate Newton’s Second Law of Motion first as 18 equations and algorithms, and then as 24 million algebraic equations. Finally, I programmed 65,000 “electronic brains” called processors to work as one to solve those 24 million equations at a speed of 3.1 billion calculations per second.

Like Al-Khwarizmi, I derived my 18 equations through out-of-the-box thinking in an in-the-box world, adding my metaphorical camel: inertial force. In other words, I applied wisdom to known knowledge to generate intellectual capital.

Unless Africa significantly increases its intellectual capital, the continent will remain irrelevant in the 21st century and even beyond. Africa needs innovators, producers of knowledge, and wise men and women who can discover, propose, and then implement progressive ideas. Africa’s fate lies in the hands of Africans and the solution to poverty must come from its people. The future that lies ahead of Africa is for Africa to create, after the people have outlined their vision. We owe it to our children to build a firm foundation to enable them go places we only dreamt. For Africa to take center stage in today’s economic world, we have to go out and compete on a global basis. There is simply no other way to succeed.

For the video recording of the above speech, visit emeagwali.com.

Philip Emeagwali was voted history's greatest scientist (#1) of African descent — and the 35th greatest African of all time — in a survey for the September 2004 issue of the London-based New African magazine. President Bill Clinton extolled Philip Emeagwali as “the Bill Gates of Africa” but his fans countered that “Bill Gates is the Philip Emeagwali of America.” Emeagwali won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, the Nobel Prize of supercomputing.

Born on August 23, 1954, in the British West African colony of Nigeria, Emeagwali was among the two million Igbos who fled persecution during the country’s 30-month civil war to the safety of Biafran refugee camps. One million people died during this war. Emeagwali was conscripted into the Biafran army at age 14 and migrated to the United States at age 19, on March 24, 1974.

Robot  # 1 | 05.10.2006 07:41

Read the full article.

GirlWifanAttitude  # 2 | 05.10.2006 08:45

"It is not good to eat much honey: so for men to search for their own glory is not glory." Proverb 25:27 Mr. Emeagwali, your brag brag is too mush! I'm from Missouri show me! What tangible thing have you done to better the technological abilities of Nigerians at home? What contribution have you made to the schools and establishments in Nigeria technologically to benefit Nigerian children and youth :mad: ? We have more intelligent and better qualified computer scientists in Nigeria, in the United States and UK doing great things to elevate Nigerians and narrow the digital divide in our country, and I have not heard them bragging so much, and toasting themselves as such, haba! Nice article I must say, but I am tired of these speeches here and there, talk is cheap!

cdimkpa  # 3 | 05.10.2006 09:13

=GirlWifanAttitude;133235>"It is not good to eat much honey: so for men to search for their own glory is not glory." Proverb 25:27 Mr. Emeagwali, your brag brag is too mush! I'm from Missouri show me! What tangible thing have you done to better the technological abilities of Nigerians at home? What contribution have you made to the schools and establishments in Nigeria technologically to benefit Nigerian children and youth :mad: ? We have more intelligent and better qualified computer scientists in Nigeria, in the United States and UK doing great things to elevate Nigerians and narrow the digital divide in our country, and I have not heard them bragging so much, and toasting themselves as such, haba! Nice article I must say, but I am tired of these speeches here and there, talk is cheap! Shwepps, Which kind seeming busy body be this one? Isn't life all about showmanship? About show me what you can do and I'll show you who you are? Why do you expect otherwise, when Emeagwali is not God? But, come to think of it, you have a genuine grievance if you have not heard of one tangible thing Philip did for his kinsmen, even if not for Nigeria as a whole (I STAND TO BE CORRECTED). But again, I for one, do not need hand-outs. I will rather that our resources are not stolen by our thieving misrulers but be used for our collective betterment, than to expect mere tokenism from anyone. One possible thing going for Philip; he may have not 'dashed' anyone some naira, but at the same time, like my humble self, he certainly has not contributed to the big MESS that Nigeria is today.

okoro1  # 4 | 05.10.2006 09:29

Emeagwali And his Suffocating Self-Promotion makes me Cringe. Please take a look at incisive analysis of him here on Chippla and on Wikipedia Nuff Said!!

katampe  # 5 | 05.10.2006 09:50

=GirlWifanAttitude;133235>"Nice article I must say, but I am tired of these speeches here and there, talk is cheap! GirlWifanAttitude, you are one of the real opiums out there! You care to say it as it is, but in this instance I disagree with you. Emeagwali's speech is classic. If all he does on his speech tours is motivating people, that is a good thing.I felt elated reading this speech.I earlier on one of the threads on industrializing mentioned innovators. Nigeria has all it needs,but what remains is how to appropriate knowledge and the mass of information out there.How can we start thinking and "outthink" the white man? The criminals amongst us are doing it (419'ners). Unfortunately, the educated people that should lead us out of the economic morass we have found ourselves aren't,and they helped caused the problem. America was found on audacity and hubris.People dreamt big dreams and had gargartuan egos.I have watched folks as kids talk about unimaginable dreams.I have grown up to realise these guys, the least talented and educated in my social group have gone to build wealth beyond my wildest dreams. We need girls and boys with an attitude that encourage ideas.It is ideas that brought some of us from the underdeveloped countries to the rub shoulders with the best and best and brightest in the west.It is time to kick it up a notch and take ideas to a place where we can conquer poverty collectively and as a people united on one mission to save Africa. If Emeagwali is encouraging us to dare, please do not kill his fire.It is like asking new money to be sedate in spending .It has to be all flash baby , all flash . Let us have the audacity to dream big dreams.And Phillip is giving us doses of that.

thumwood  # 6 | 05.10.2006 11:14

Whatever Emeagwali's failings as a philanthropist and contributor to the African experience, we should not loose sight of the essential content/meaning of his speech. Ideas, Wisdom and Knowledge. In Africa we have the raw materials but lack the application of these concepts right from the government down to businesses and the ordinary people. I'm not just talking about technology, I'm talking across board to tribalism, ethnicity, nepotism, management of resources, creation of wealth etc.. It pervades every thread of our socio-economic life. If for example if the powers that be realised that the current face of tribalism is firmly rooted in slavery, divide and rule, attitudes would change and we would view the world with different eyes. The riddle of the camel he is a very good example of the availability raw material and knowledge but lack of wisdom. The lessons should not be lost on us.

denker  # 7 | 05.10.2006 11:17

hi compatriots, ...as an inventor and scientist, there are a whole lot of things i wouldn't like to share with anybody here in france, it's just reserved for my people...once the conducive structures are there in nigeria... i, personally, don't see any restrictions making nigeria a great nation...all we need now is a good leader or would i say good leaders with LOVE FOR THE NATION OF NIGERIA/NIGERIANS...! ..all i know is that in normal circumstance, we have got everything to be great..i don't need chinese, indians, lebanese or europeans...the nature has bestowed upon us everything to be great. the only missing link is a focused and a good leadership..THAT'S ONLY PROBLEM IN NIGERIA...!

Odinaka  # 8 | 05.10.2006 11:27

It appears some folks aren't appreciating what GirlWifanAttitude is talking about. Emeagwali's speech is motivational, no doubt. The Gordon price he won is a good achievment, no argument. But he has pushed himself into a creditibility question by the numerous bogous claims surrounding him. He should be proud of his achievement without unnecessary exaggeration. Just last week, I was discussing about naija with a friend. We agreed that as a nation we have failed woefully even with so many intellectuals. Then we began to mention names, and my friend mentioned Emeagwali, the "computer wizard". I got completely turned off at that juncture, and had to tell my friend that Emeagwali was nothing but a myth as far as the talk about the father of internet, computer nobel, professorship, several patents, etc, were concerned. I am sorry to take this stand. We must realize that it doesn't help our course if we keep making some terrible claims. The colonial masters will have a field day laughing at our immaturity. I don't have any thing against Emeagwali, in fact, I consider the prize he won a good achievement (actually he won it as the second best because the first person already won a prize in another category). I only wish he remains simple minded.

Palamedes  # 9 | 05.10.2006 11:34

“Ideas are capital. The rest is just money.” Sir, you misinterpreted the advert: it is talking about tapping into the knowledge economy or making money with ideas (knowledge). This is in contrast to the traditional method of making money with money by banks. Money as we know is dependent on what it can buy. You can also read the advert as viewing ideas as 'intangible' and money as 'physical product'. The knowledge economy is the result of advances in Information Technology(IT), Biotechnology(BT), ideas etc. If ideas are capital, why is Africa investing more on things than on information, I don't understand what you mean by 'things' except to say that you don't invest in information in a vacuum. There is value to Information and this value is determined by what the information is acquired to fulfil. Therefore, you will always invest in things first and then in the mechanism of information to increase the value and effectiveness of the 'thing'. I agree that ideas are very important and it is one of the greatest riches of mankind but ideas without money is of less value than a horse manure. When African men and women of ideas, who will give birth to new ideas, have fled to Europe and the United States, then the so-called African Renaissance cannot occur in Africa. Don't be fooled: I have met some of these Africans who waste away in night jobs and other odd jobs, still claiming to be lawyers, scientists, artists etc. Of course, man must put food on the table but after a long while of not using your head, you forget how to induce ideas. I also agree that Africans in Europe and America should start returning home and stop kidding themselves that they are going to win the lottery one day. Then, there are others who are waiting to buy a new fridge, a new car, for the children to finish school, before they return home. There are also many success stories, but even the successful ones could do much, much better back home. We are in a habit of throwing the proverbial spanners into other people's good ideas. Some of our reactions to new ideas are as follows: (1) It can't be done, (2) Nigeria do not have X, and you are thinking about doing Y? (3)You don't know what you are talking about, (4) Some will show off to let you know that they have read bukuru like you have done, (5) Some will go as far as calling for structural change of Nigeria, of the world... before your ideas could be implemented. Others will make fun of your ideas, but if you persevere and become successful, you will have a million lazy copycats to copy your product or service. We need to go back home before the intellectual part of brain go into early retirement for lack of use. I am quite sure that there are very many clever IT and BT professionals in Nigeria and we need government effort to provide heavily subsidised industrial parks to enable these ambitious men and women to work in communities, exchange ideas and feed off one another, to create new things in the knowledge economy. It cost very little to set up a software company, and all a pioneer needs is a good idea and financial support.

omoba  # 10 | 05.10.2006 12:02

I see Philip emeagwali as nothing but a fraud. A classic 419 and a case study on why the world never take us serious as a nation. When they began promoting him, i committed the error of no cross-checking the facts before running with it. I made myself a laughing stock of my colleagues. His claims simply did not add up. How can you title yourself the father of the internet, when; - You never authored a single RFC - You are not mentioned in any of the over 4000 published RFC's - You have never authored a published journal/article in either IEEE or ACM - You compare winning a $1000 Gordon Bell prize to winning a nobel prize. I once wrote him to provide me with evidence of any relevant work he has undertaken in the last 10-15yrs beside the bogus claim on his website. I searched extensively and i cant find anything. As a grad student a couple of years back, i won more money contests in the field of optimized OFDM researches than his $1000. Does that make me the father of WIMAX, (4G mobile devices)?. This is ridiculous!! His speech remind me of Obasanjo giving lectures on his fight against corruption. (BTW, OBJ is also titled, "the Father of Modern Nigeria" - note the striking similarity in title). It stinks to high heavens. He is lacking in credibility and hence not qualified to lecture anyone on African Reinnasance. I will seriously advice him to go get a life!

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