From Ugandan Refugee to Successful Entrepreneur, CEO, and Renowned Human Rights Activist, Derreck Kayongo’s Journey Inspires to Dream Big
Interviewed By Maryan Aiken
Dr. Derreck Kayongo
Chair & Co-Founder
Africa Mbele
Founder
Global Soap Project
CNN HERO 2011
Winner of the MAX Entrepreneur Award
www.africambele.org
2625 Piedmont Rd. NE Suite, 56-487 Atlanta, GA 30244
(678) 650 0126
Instagram @derreckkayongo
LinkedIn Dr. Derreck Kayongo
“We plan to build a diasporic movement to leverage recoverable assets by investing these resources in innovate projects for the greater good of the most vulnerable in Africa.” Dr. Derreck Kayongo
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Africa Mbele (pronounced m-BELL-ay: Swahili for forward) was birthed out of numerous conversations among concerned Diasporans’ about these dire conditions facing Africa. Africa is full of vibrancy in its heritage, culture, resources, and unsurpassed natural wonder. Yet extreme corrupt practices and kleptocracy continue to plague Africa as an underlying epidemic. The UN estimates that Africa loses about $88.6 billion of its gross domestic product (GDP), annually due to illicit financial flows. We plan to build a diasporic movement to leverage recoverable assets by investing these resources in innovate projects to improve food production, energy access, communications, water and waste management, education, and health and wellbeing services for the greater good of the most vulnerable in Africa.
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ABOUT DERRECK KAYONGO
Derreck Kayongo is an entrepreneur and human rights innovator born in Kampala, Uganda, just before General Idi Amin Dada seized power in a military coup. As violence spread through the country and civil war erupted, Kayongo and his family became refugees in Kenya. With his trademark panache, Derreck Kayongo tells his courageous story of survival, social entrepreneurship, and humanitarianism, and the life lessons he learned along the way. From Ugandan refugee to successful entrepreneur, CEO, and renowned human rights activist, Derreck’s journey inspires audiences to dream big. Through personable and articulate storytelling, he shares his visionary ideas for harnessing the power of observation and creative problem solving, applicable to any organization or community. It’s all about taking responsibility while looking for opportunities to improve.
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Q: What was the game changer for you that catapulted your leadership?
A game changer is an idiom borrowed from sports, and it goes to something that upends or radically disrupts the status quo positively. To that end, after a long period of questioning "who I am and what I represent," I landed on doing something so radical and disruptive it actually sounded yucky and stupid at the time. But as I unpacked the stupidity and "yuckiness" of this revolutionary idea, I found that if I actually solved its "yuckiness" and redefined its absurdity into a clever idea that it would then disrupt a whole industry and, in the process, help me develop my leadership ethos, qualities and innovate myself into a real business opportunity.
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To do all of this, I was catapulted by my total lack of fear to try anything in life, however ridiculous it may sound. That fearlessness is one of the essential qualities that separates regular leaders from groundbreaking apogee leaders. In other words, not all leaders are created equal. The more complex, crazier, yucky, complicated, and stupid the idea is, chances are, the more critical and revolutionary it is. A good example is akin to the clarion call by President JFK when he implored the American spirit to go to the Moon!! That kind of audacious mettle and, frankly, lunacy is why we have satellite technology today and, therefore, vicarious technology advances like cell phones and GPS, which paved the way for the UBERs of this world.
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The idea-- The yucky and stupid idea was recycling partially used hotel soap! I had to figure out how to eliminate all the germs on the soap and recycle it into brand-new soap without altering its chemistry. The goal wasn't just to help humanitarian and natural disaster relief victims with soap hygiene; it was also to get the hotels to rethink and re-imagine their Corporate Social Responsibility strategy of protecting the environment by finding an alternative practical solution to waste.
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Impact and legacy--My innovation is why hotels today have switched from three bars of soap in the bathroom to three canisters mounted on the bathroom wall containing shampoo, conditioner and body soap. This has led to mitigating the throwing away of close to 800,000,000 bars of soap annually by the American Hotel Industrial complex. Now, that is what we call legacy work.
My motto as a leader is, therefore, S.E.L.F, which stands for service, education, leadership, and faith. Self goes to the notion that everything starts with you and nobody else. You are the alpha and omega of your journey. If you don't show up or step up, nothing happens!
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Q: What exciting projects are you working on? Please explain why?
Currently, I am the Chair and Co-founder of Africa Mbele (Swahili for forward). www.africambele.org
The idea is to mobilize, organize, educate, and agitate the 4.7 million first and second-generation Africans in the USA who are totally discouraged, antipathic, and frankly disgusted by the level of extreme dilapidating corruption on the continent by our leaders and the enabled corporations who usurp over one trillion dollars annually in the form of illicit wealth flight from our continent. This disgusting behavior leaves behind a trail of disillusionment and vestiges of embarrassing poverty. We want the whole world to know that Africa isn't poor and has never been poor. From Mansa Musa to Aliko Dangote, our motherland can prosper if we fight back.
The aforementioned injustice is due to a lack of competent leadership that doesn't love its denizens. We are all sick and tired of carrying around the moniker "shithole countries." This only happens because we are a quiet constitute here within the USA that hasn't spoken yet on the issue in an organized fashion. The time has come to build our movement against this chimera and internalized oppression that keeps our continent economically stagnated compared to all the emerged ones.
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Q: What are three things we should know about you?
1. All my life career, I've worked for social justice organizations because I hate the oppression of my fellow human being. Hence I am and will always be a social justice advocate.
2. I love fashion and dancing salsa with friends.
3. Lastly, I love capacious intellectual banter, especially if it concerns an expansion of completing an entire thought. I can't stand part-time thinkers and am sometimes guilty of part-time thinking.
In my aging days, I have taken to the Japanese practices of Ukeireru.
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Listening to Spotify Fair Trade Drake. Travis Scott
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