Vanessa Kisowile 👸✨

The best lesson I have learned about Life and Destiny is that: "It's your story, feel free to hit them with a plot twist at any minute". #Destiny #purpose #vanessazbliss

A startup spent 18 months building a product for Nigeria launched it, got press, investors were happy, the team was proud then something happened that nobody in that office saw coming...

I GAVE CLAUDE MY SALARY AND IT GAVE ME A PLAN. Use these 15 prompts to turn your paycheck into a strategy:

Claude Cowork can apply to 50 jobs in under 30 minutes. Here's how to set it up.

Apply to speak at the 6th African Youth SDGs Summit 2026 in Accra, Ghana 🇬🇭 (June 23–25), open to passionate changemakers—including youth leaders, entrepreneurs, advocates, researchers, and creatives—committed to advancing the #SDGs across Africa apply at youthsdgssummit.org/speakers/

Today my heart is filled with deep joy as we announce the Expression of Interest for the National Digital Economy Research Clusters— a ₦12 billion research funding scheme designed to place ideas, evidence, and research at the centre of Nigeria’s digital transformation. This programme is being funded under Project BRIDGE, our initiative to deploy 90,000km of fibre optic backbone infrastructure across Nigeria to expand connectivity and enable a modern digital economy. As we deepen our digital infrastructure coverage , thoughtful evidence based approaches are required to be deployed in society to ensure everyone benefits from this significant investment. Too often, the ideas shaping digital policy come predominantly from markets and political cycles rather than from research, evidence, and long-term thinking. A quote that captures this sentiment comes to mind: “The state of a society is a reflection of the ideas that dominate it — when good ideas spread, nations prosper; when bad ideas prevail, nations decay.” Through this programme, Nigeria will establish six national research clusters across key pillars of the digital economy: • Connectivity, Access, and Meaningful Use • Digital Public Infrastructure and Digital Government • Digital Skills, Education, and Human Capital • Digital Economy, Jobs, and Livelihoods • Trust, Safety, Consumer Protection, and Online Harms • Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies These research clusters will be led by up to 36 distinguished professors, from 36 Nigerian universities working with international academic partners. Across the clusters, over 200 researchers, including Postdoctoral Fellows and PhD candidates will generate rigorous, policy-relevant research to guide Nigeria’s digital economy for years to come. For me, the goal goes beyond research output. We are looking for better policies that lead to stronger institutions and a more prosperous society. Despite the scale of the other initiatives we are delivering at the Ministry, this is one of the most meaningful to me personally, because it plants seeds that will grow long after any one administration. If you are part of an academic or research institution committed to producing rigorous, policy-relevant research, you can review the Terms of Reference (TOR) in the EOI we are releasing today here - b.link/EOI-NDULRC and submit proposals to lead and participate in these national research clusters. Because nations that lead the future are not simply those that deploy infrastructure — they are the ones that cultivate ideas. In the coming week, we will host a press conference to further elaborate on this announcement. I encourage Vice-Chancellors of universities across Nigeria to look out for detailed information and engagement opportunities. #NigerianExcellence

Today, the EU published the formal bill for EU Inc, a new legal framework that will make building companies across Europe a lot easier. I've seen firsthand how fragmented rules can hold back European talent. EU Inc addresses this directly with 48-hour online registration, zero minimum capital, and standardized stock options, making it simpler to get started and grow. When I started Lovable, my goal was to empower anyone with an idea to build. This new regulation aligns perfectly with that vision because it helps remove the hurdles and accelerate the journey for builders throughout Europe. It really opens up the opportunity to create a global company from anywhere in Europe. I'm incredibly optimistic about what this means for founders.

OUR ROBOT IS: MADE IN GHANA BUILT IN GHANA BUILT FOR AFRICA BUILT FOR THE WORLD BUILT FOR AUTONOMOUS FARMING BUILT WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BUILT WITHOUT GPS BUILT FOR GRAIN PRODUCTION BUILT FOR VEGETABLE PRODUCTION BUILT BY AFRICAN ENGINEERS AND PROUDLY GHANAIAN 🇬🇭

The EU wants to let you launch a company in 48 hours for under €100. 🚀 European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled EU Inc — a single set of corporate rules across the bloc to cut red tape, boost innovation, and help businesses scale across borders. #EUXL

We are introducing EU Inc. To make building and growing a business across the EU faster, simpler, and smarter. 🔸 Start a company in less than 48 hours 🔸 No minimum capital requirement 🔸 Fully online and borderless

How to make slides with Claude: 1. Task ☑ Define what you want & what success looks like: "I want to build a pptx presentation so that [SUCCESS CRITERIA]." No "make me a deck about X." ↳ That's how you get 10 slides of nothing. 2. Context Files ☑ Upload your expertise and rules as files: "First, read these files completely before responding: [filename.md] — [what it contains]." Stop re-explaining your brand, your audience, your standards every single time. Put it in files. 3. Reference ☑ Show what you're aiming for. Upload an example. "Here is a reference to what I want to achieve: [filename]." No short prompts and hoping AI figures it out. 4. Research ☑ Claude searches before touching a single slide: "Search the web using at least 5 varied searches (trends, data, expert opinions, case studies, counterarguments)." It saves a structured research brief, organized by theme, with source URLs and key data points pulled out. I like to add: "Prioritize 2025–2026 sources. Flag anything where sources conflict or data is thin." 5. Slide Brief ☑ Turn research into a slide-by-slide outline: "Each slide gets: a title, 3 key points, and any specific data/stats from the research that must appear on that slide." No full paragraphs. Gamma will write the final text. Just give it enough structure and data to work with. 6. Rules ☑ Don't jump into making slides (yet): "Do not generate slides yet." "Do not write full paragraphs." A step-by-step approach takes longer, but makes (much) better slides. If you want to be faster, just go straight to Gamma. 7. Generate ☑ Pass the outline to Gamma as a presentation: "Pass gamma-outline.md to Gamma as a presentation using textMode 'generate'. Use theme: [your brand theme name]." Claude connects to Gamma for you. Like magic. 8. Theme ☑ Make sure to use your Gamma theme: "Use theme: [your brand theme name]." If you don't know how, I made a guide for teams at how-to-gamma.ai (scroll to the bottom). After generating, review card by card: → Would I say this out loud? → Does this card earn its place? → Is the data right? 9. Alignment ☑ The prompt starts by asking YOU questions. "Start by using AskUserQuestion to make sure you have enough context from me before researching." Nothing starts until you're both on the same page. This replaces the old prompting era. I teach you how Claude works at claude-co.work. Copy the full prompt template + download my personal .md files for Claude by following this: Step 1: Subscribe for free → how-to-ai.guide. Step 2: You will have two choices: free or paid. Step 3: Choose the free tier. Don't pay for anything. Step 4: Open your welcoming email (wait 30 sec). Step 5: Access my entire prompt library & md files.

Ethiopia 🇪🇹 launched its pan-African media platform, Pulse of Africa (POA), in Addis Ababa. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said it was launched to counter negative media representations of Africa and to assert our agency in shaping our own narratives and reporting.

📣 Final call for young leaders aged 18–35 to apply for in-person participation at the World Bank Group Youth Summit 2026 in Washington, DC (11–12 June) under the theme #FutureWorks: Designing Jobs for the Digital Age—apply here bit.ly/46P2FoA by 11 March 2026.

This is HUGE! Are "Made in Africa" ready for China's super large market, also the world's second-largest import market? From May 1st,🇨🇳China will grant ZERO tariff on ALL products from ALL 53 African countries that have diplomatic ties with China.

I asked Claude to look at startups.rip the site with details of YCombinator startups that didn't make it and this was what it found: Here's what stands out when you look across the graveyard on startups.rip, combined with the broader failure research: 1. Premature platform ambition — winning a niche, then abandoning it Posterous is the clearest example: it launched with a genuinely elegant premise, drove 30% month-over-month growth, and hit 15 million monthly visitors — then abandoned its winning position to fight a social media war it was never built for. Feature accumulation eroded the product's clarity. By March 2012, monthly visitors had collapsed from 15 million to 1.33 million. This pattern — find a sharp edge, then blunt it chasing a bigger vision — recurs constantly across the list. 2. Timing mismatch (too early, not too wrong) Loopt is the canonical case: Sam Altman built what we now take for granted in apps like Google Maps, Life360, and Find My — but in 2008 the smartphone ecosystem, social norms around location sharing, and carrier infrastructure weren't ready. The idea was right; the moment was wrong. Looking at the startups.rip list, this appears repeatedly in the community/social cluster — Openland, Allo, Tress, Quest — products that might have found audiences at different points in the cycle but launched into a market not yet ready or already saturated. 3. The "feature, not a company" problem — especially brutal in the AI wave The W22–S23 cohort on the list is telling: Flike, Parabolic, Fabius, CoffeeAI, Dialect, Mercator, Demo Gorilla — almost all AI-wrapper companies doing one thing (AI sales emails, AI customer support, AI outreach, AI forms). When ChatGPT can do 80% of what your product does for $20/month, your margin for differentiation becomes razor-thin. These companies weren't solving hard problems — they were building thin layers on top of foundational models that rapidly caught up with them. 4. Marketplace leakage — the disintermediation trap Tutorspree's business model had a structural flaw baked in: once a tutor and student connected on the platform, nothing stopped them from cutting Tutorspree out of the transaction. The company was taking 50% of tutor fees, giving both sides a massive incentive to bypass it. This same trap hit many marketplace plays on the list — Gigster, The Muse, Creative Market — where the platform creates the match but can't hold the relationship. 5. Regulatory/compliance exposure in regulated industries Call9 (healthcare at nursing facilities), LendUp (predatory lending regulations), Argovox (healthcare billing), SimpleCitizen (immigration) — companies operating in highly regulated spaces ran into the same wall. They built genuine utility but couldn't survive the compliance overhead, regulatory shifts, or the cost of becoming legitimate at scale. LendUp in particular is interesting: it raised significant capital on a "socially responsible" fintech mission but ultimately ran afoul of the CFPB for the very lending practices it claimed to be reforming. 6. Over-dependence on a single acquisition channel Tutorspree was almost entirely dependent on Google search traffic for new student acquisition — any algorithm change could significantly reduce their traffic and in return their users. As resources dwindled and the traffic dried up, there was no alternative funnel to fall back on. This single-channel dependency is a recurring killer across the list, especially for consumer and marketplace plays. 7. The acqui-hire as soft failure — talent over traction A large chunk of the "Acquired" column on startups.rip aren't real exits — they're acqui-hires: Twitter buying Posterous for the Garry Tan/Sachin Agarwal team, Apple absorbing Raven Tech, Google absorbing Bump. About 40% of YC startups ultimately achieve an exit, but a significant portion of those are acqui-hires with very small outcomes for early investors. The acqui-hire is the startup world's equivalent of a graceful funeral — the company dies but the founders land softly, which obscures how common actual failure really is. 8. Community/social products without cold-start solutions Looking at the community cluster — Openland, Allo, Tress, BlackOakTV, Quest — none found a way to solve the cold-start problem. A community product is worthless to user #1 and only marginally useful to user #100. None of these had the distribution engine, the density play, or the content moat needed to get over that hump. At YC's early stage, companies fail because they give up or the founders don't get along, and another big reason is the company is not making what people really want. In the community sector specifically, founders often build for a demographic they believe in (Black women's hair care, neighboring families, audio career advice) without finding a sustainable engine for growth. 9. The "idea whose time came and went" — wave mistiming Escher Reality (AR backends, 2017), NeoWize (ML algorithms), Pit.AI (AI for investing), CrowdAI (vision AI) — these companies were building on technology waves that either didn't materialize at the expected pace or got absorbed by the foundational layer providers (Apple ARKit eating Escher Reality, for instance). They weren't wrong about the technology, but the value accrued to the platform, not the middleware. The meta-pattern across all of it What startups.rip reveals most starkly is that YC's selection process gets founders in the door but doesn't solve the three things that actually kill companies: finding a defensible position (not just a clever insight), building a business model with structural integrity, and surviving long enough for the market to catch up to the idea. Most of the dead companies on that list had real ideas — some of the ideas are now worth billions in other hands. The gap between insight and execution, between timing and readiness, between building something people want and building something that sustains itself financially — that's where the graveyard fills up.

God is a strategist. True faith always births an intelligent plan which you are to execute in the fulfilment of God's promise to you. If all you are doing is pray and wait on time, you are hoping and not in faith. Pray and search diligently through meditation until you observe to do according to what is revealed in the scriptures and then you will make your way prosperous and have good success When God was going to deliver the nation of Israel out of bondage he gave Moses a detailed strategy of what every family had to do that night. Kill a goat or lamb, sprinkle the blood upon your door post and sit within dressed up to depart but you must eat the flesh of the lamb mingled with certain things. God is a God of details desist from praying, hoping and guess work. Get into praying and meditating to hatch the plan. The lack of mediation to see what to do is what is killing the fulfilment of the vision.

I literally can’t believe Anthropic released this for FREE. A 33-PAGE CHEAT SHEET on how to master Claude skills. Bookmark this or get left behind in AI: resources.anthropic.com/hubfs/The-Comp…

Africa-Europe Youth Collaboration Programme Deadline: March 16 yeseurope.org/projects/afric…

How to set up your Claude Cowork. ✦ more infographics at how-to-ai.guide ✦ claude cowork guide at claude-co.work

The first time I heard people make $5,000 from a single venture, I thought it was a joke. Then I started seeing it happen… over and over… around me. Honestly, this is the type of knowledge that rewrites your reality. 
Read it by all means.