Meeting Roberto Quiroz II — Mandela Washington Fellowship

Meeting Roberto Head of Public Relations At The United States Embassy.

I have listened to many Ghanaian leaders speak about their desire to see many young people succeed, however, I had not met a white skinned American so interested and passionate about seeing young Ghanaians succeed until I met Roberto Quiroz II. Not only does he want to see the Ghanaian youth succeed, but every young African in all of the fifty four (54) African countries succeed. Roberto is the director of Public Relations at the United States Embassy in Ghana. This guy is full of energy and passion and commitment to that course.

Roberto and I

I met him in the embassy’s lobby right after my interview for a VISA to participate in the Mandela Washington Fellowship. This fellowship is organized by the United States Government. The Mandela Washington Fellowship is designed to bring together Young African Leaders (YALI) into America to connect and learn more about leadership in a six (6) weeks intensive leadership course. This program also enables leaders across Africa to connect with one another and drive the continent towards socio economic independence through the lessons learnt and the connections made.

A section of the Mandela Washington Fellowship members and myself.

At the lobby, he quickly recognized me and other team members and whisked us up straight into his office. He was eager and excited to share with us his passion for young African leaders on the continent. He spent about ten (10) minutes of his limited time explaining the impact our successes will have in our country and other African countries. Ghana and the other African countries have challenges that can be solved only by us. These problems (irrespective of how they were created and who created them) have solutions. When these solutions are found and implemented in just one (1) country, it will create a ripple effect of self sustenance and solution creation within African countries. This is true socio-economic and political independence. The exciting thing is that, many of these problems are already being tackled by young Ghanaians like myself, Dr. Patience, Wofa, Prince and many others on the Mandela Washington Fellowship.

Here are some of the few problems I’ve been working on with different teams in and out of Ghana.

1. www.growformeafrica.com is an Agritech platform that enables anyone who wants to grow a farm to do so from the comfort of his or her computer. The problems we are solving is providing food for the doubling population in Africa.
2. www.asoriba.com is a web and mobile platform designed to enable churches on the African continent to digitize their operations and connect all their members, while enabling donations to go digital. The problem we are solving is enabling a powerful organization that positively impacts the life of half a billion African christians to operate effectively and raise enough funds to build hospitals, schools and take care of the poor, needy and hungry.
3. www.cctcamlive.com is a cctv camera company that is building AI into regular CCTV cameras to identify and report criminals and terrorist. This will enable us crowd source video feeds to identify people who commit crime and enable the security forces to apprehend them.
4. www.mybusinesspay.com is a payment platform designed to enable businesses receive money from customers anywhere in the world into their Ghanaian bank accounts, at cost below market prices no matter the amount. The problem we solve is the high cost (7%) of money transfer into Africa.
5. Finally is Fusion Point, a business development company started by my wife and I, created to be an umbrella company to monitor and track our interests and involvement in all these great companies.

That seems like a lot to do for an individual. However, if you have multiple teams running these businesses well, guidance, investment and support is all that is needed to ensure that they become successful.

So back to Roberto, in his motivation session, he made us understand that, we can turn this continent around and impact millions if we will continue to pursue the solutions for the problems we have identified. It’s been really inspiring to know that the whole world is routing for us and believes we can solve the problems our countries are faced with.

To everyone reading this short article, I want you to know that “You Can Make It”, “Yes You Can” , “Yes We Can”. The whole world including Roberto and myself are routing for you.

Hi 5, Yes We Can!