Ade Adeyemi: ‘I doubt our political leaders will have the strength of leadership to successfully manage the disruption that tech has to offer’
We spoke with Ade Adeyemi, a Senior Project Lead within the NHS in Britain, working on a major project to improve healthcare in the London area. He is also a Consulting Fellow at Chatham House where he is developing fellowship programmes that support future senior health leaders across West Africa.
Ade is a member of the Davos World Economic Forum’s prestigious Global Shapers community of leaders, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) and senior associate member of the Royal Society of Medicine. He also serves on the National Executive Committee of the Fabian Society (Britain’s oldest political think-tank) and has been nominated as a 2014 ‘Rising Star’ of the NHS by leading publication Health Service Journal (HSJ). His main policy interests are health system reforms and advising government ministries on how to finance and implement national universal health coverage reforms.
How are you involved in the tech & social impact space?
I run an annual hackathon that focuses on creating solutions for real-life healthcare organisations across Africa. We also build up these startups and incubate them to scale up their solutions.
What does ‘social impact’ mean to you? How do you personally define it?
Social impact is a simple idea for me. It is doing any form of work which brings a measurably positive benefit to a wider community. I believe social impact firstly implies a sense of disruption to the present way of doing things and secondly is fundamentally about people. It implies a change in people’s daily conditions and their participation in economic and political life.
My self-defined duty is to first provoke what we hold to be true about our health, then to provide insight into how the systems and behaviours the define our current health systems came to exist — this will be achieved through the Kopfadeyemi Fellowship.
Which three social projects harnessing tech do you think are the most impactful right now?
- Digital Matatus is a cool collaborative Mapping tool for Public Transit routes in Kenya
- Giraffe is a free recruitment app tackling unemployment in South Africa
- Dot is a smart watch for blind people
What do you think the biggest challenges in this space are?
Organisations and startups collect and produce data, which they like to use to prove their worth to funders. Many want to take advantage of social media and interesting data initiatives, however, they can’t afford the capabilities needed to do so or don’t have the time. As the tech community’s social impact grows and their knowledge about us gets bigger, it must be strategic in how it does so or it runs a very real risk of strengthening a polarising elitist message.
As players in this space continue showing people value, they must be wary of furthering the perception they are profiteers, not world changers; that they are calling for equality while out-earning and displacing those who need it most; that they are building tools to benefit the privileged, not the underserved.
Do you believe tech has the power to positively transform the world?
No. I doubt our political leaders will have the strength of leadership to successfully manage the disruption that tech has to offer. The free market has not — and likely will never — solve social problems. Many of the powerful technologies can help good people achieve greater impact, not transform the world directly. Let’s hope that maybe it does.
What is your advice for someone hoping to start a health tech project?
Your network is your networth. Build relationships with people in the medical community. They are invaluable. You can never know too many people directly involved in health-settings
