Likhwa Tech

Why do you do what you do? What motivates you? Well, I normally have two answers reserved for that question and both are true. One is glamorous, romanticized and maybe even dramatic. Revolutionizing an industry, inspiring people, changing the world and so on. The second is more personal, and you might even call it selfish. That's the one I'll be sharing in this article. Wish I could lie a bit, but I made a promise to myself and anyone who would read this, that I would be as genuine as I could. So this is my truth. We'll reserve the glamorous one for my Forbes feature someday. Deal? Great. Some years back, my country faced a devastating fuel shortage. It was hard to get transport to and from work, and so people would wait for hours just to get a ride home. Needless to say, there was always some shoving and pushing as people jostled to board the few vehicles that came by. As I stood in line at the bus terminus, I noticed a heavily pregnant woman. She was visibly weary, probab

How's it going with those resolutions? Have you taken any action? Are you happy with your progress? Or have you decided to wait till January next year to start afresh? Don't be too hard on yourself. We often start the year off with these ambitious goals, but after a few weeks, we find ourselves back at square one... and most of the time we aren't even surprised. We knew it was coming. Why most goals aren't achieved Most goals get neglected because they are: I. Too big- so we don't even know where to start. II. Too far ahead- so they don't seem immediate. A little nap won't hurt, I'll do this tomorrow III. Too vague- we aren't sure what to measure IV. Out of touch- the motivational speaker forgot to tell us to start small even when you aim big V. No one to hold us accountable- we leave that to ourselves... and who are we kidding?🙄 VI. We ignore the small wins- so it doesn't seem like we're making any progress This can be solved by setti

When people think of the risks associated with starting a business they think of losing money, low product demand, theft, loss or some other calamity befalling their enterprise. These are all pretty unfortunate events, but over the years my understanding of entrepreneurial risk has changed and in this article I'll explain why. Growing up, I wasn't one of those kids who had their path figured out. The most logical career path for me would have been a teacher like my dad, or a doctor(that's the response we gave to seem ambitious and impress whoever asked). However after cringing at the pictures of people with STIs during a sex education class, I was convinced I'd have to leave the medical profession to someone else. My first job was as a primary school teacher. I was 18, fresh out of high school and dating a girl 6 years my senior. Needless to say, our priorities at the time were much different. I was purely in love, and she was thinking of settling down. So she would alw

This is it. My first article for the Journal of an African tech startup founder. I've had this idea for a while but I've been reluctant to start. The first reason is because I am still new to this. I feel I haven't yet built much of a resumè (no fundraising, no successful exit, no Forbes mention etc.), so I wonder if anyone would be interested in my story. Like, do I really have something significant to say? The second reason is fear. I've found myself thinking: "what if I invite everyone on this journey, and then I fail?" I wouldn't want the world to see me lying flat on my face in a pile of sh..ame. However, I've also asked myself why I want to do this in the first place. This article will give some background and add some context to my motivation for writing. Let's start with some background. My name's Likhwa and I am a self taught programmer. I got interested in programming around 2004. At the time, I was in my sophomore year at varsity. Af

Well, today I thought let me talk to fellow aspiring developers, particularly those in third world countries. This is just random advice... so you are free to ignore it if it suits you. Some weeks back I wrote an article talking about how there is an average of 2 companies achieving unicorn status [ a billion dollar valuation ] every day around the globe. These are companies from everywhere except Africa. Africa has only had a handful of unicorns and these only account for 0.5% of the global total. One of the reasons for that, is simply a matter of probabilities. If you have thousands of people all actively building something then you're more likely to stumble upon at least one great company. Then when that company grows it can nurture and reinvest in more companies of its own. I've met a lot of great developers with beautiful ideas, but they sit on those ideas and soon, years pass without anything being done. With this article I'm hoping to provide some insights and more

Want to create something but aren't sure where to start? Well I wrote this specifically for you. With a combined total of over 4.5 million apps in the major App stores (Google Play, Apple App store, Windows app store, Amazon App store and BlackBerry world) it's easy to get overwhelmed. It's also easy to get disheartened and start feeling like all the good ideas have already been implemented. I recently came across some presentation where George Berkowski talks about app ideas and I thought I'd share this with you. The 67 HUMAN UNIVERSALS The following is a list of 67 universal items which affect and apply to people in all corners of the world, regardless of their geographic location, race, ethnicity, culture or social standing. What this means is that an app in any of those sectors is likely to appeal to a global population and this could be the billions of dollars that you have dreamt of. The ones I have made bold, are those where we already have billion dollar compani

One of the first tasks you will probably want to perform is to move from one activity to another or even to open other apps. This can be easily achieved by using an INTENT COMPONENT. This tutorial will cover  1. how to create a new activity(page) in Sketchware 2. how to use the intent component to navigate between activities(pages) Whenever you want to move, you will need to create an Intent component. Components can be found or created in the components section of your project. The above picture shows where components can be found. Click the circled red button(it's called a floating action button) to create a component. It is the first component on your left. You can give your component any name... for example "intent" or "i" or "homepage." Once you have created and named your component... you can then navigate back to your view or activity section so that you can find the right event to place the logic. Before doing anything we will also need to crea