yaw

read plutarch’s lives

[yaw @ejnbo]

consult the gods

[Nayib Bukele @nayibbukele]

The key to saving the environment is not looking backward, it’s moving forward.

I realized this the first time I visited Italy twenty years ago. Everything was clean and green. The rivers sparkled. The lesson for me was obvious: the answer is not underdevelopment. The answer is progress.

When China was poor, the air was so polluted that people could barely see the blue sky. Today, blue skies have returned to their cities. Development does not only create wealth, it also provides the resources needed to restore and protect the environment.

Some environmentalists want us to preserve every aspect of our biodiversity, including the mosquitoes for example, so that researchers can fly in once every ten years from their universities (which build particle accelerators and billion-dollar laboratories with their pocket money), study our ecosystems, and count how many people died from dengue outbreaks.

They want to buy our air through carbon credits. If carbon credits were such a great deal, they would be selling them to us, not the other way around.

Cleaning every river, lake, and water source in El Salvador, and ensuring they remain clean and sparkling, would cost roughly $12 billion. Where is that money supposed to come from without economic development? Carbon credits?

The path forward for our country is the path of Japan and Singapore, not the path of the Congo.

[yaw @ejnbo]

@MaameEsiGold @BeFreeBwoy @kwakuhelate1 obviously you didn’t. otherwise you wouldn’t call yourself half ashanti, an impossible identity. but, shalom ✌️

[yaw @ejnbo]

@MaameEsiGold @BeFreeBwoy @kwakuhelate1 it’s necessary for mother to be ashanti so that one can inherit their ashanti nationality. nationality is passed by blood (abusua) and we believe that moms transfer blood, dads the spirit. therefore dads’ nationality doesn’t matter, never mattered in fact. makes sense?

[yaw @ejnbo]

@MaameEsiGold @BeFreeBwoy @kwakuhelate1 small but important correction: there’s nothing like half ashanti. you’re either ashanti or you’re not. you can be half everything else though, just not ashanti. each one of us is whole in our allegiance to the golden stool

[yaw @ejnbo]

unrelated

[yaw @ejnbo]

ahenkyɛ 🧢 — yaw konadu yiadom

[yaw @ejnbo]

https://t.co/2lAgneYEn3

[DevCongress @DevCongress]

We’re looking for builders to showcase their projects at this month’s DevCongress Meetup.

Got something cool in progress or ready to ship? We want to see it.

Apply here:
https://t.co/vWGfgqdn7B

[yaw @ejnbo]

disclaimer: if you thought twice before upgrading your net ai subscriptions to >= $250/mo or so, this reminder ain’t for you. if it didn’t feel natural, if exhausting your tokens terrifies instead of annoying you, keep penny pinching aka human-supervised prompting. that’s how to split the workload

[Peter Steinberger 🦞 @steipete]

Here’s your monthly reminder that you shouldn’t be prompting coding agents anymore.

You should be designing loops that prompt your agents.

[yaw @ejnbo]

https://t.co/Xh4bjUpjiw

[yaw @ejnbo]

@KiddBubu chale, huge disappointment but we move

[yaw @ejnbo]

this @samgeorgegh guy is hell-bent on burning bridges.

(1) chief, you’re dealing with the truly independent and libertarian ghanaians. we’re not your average citizen. you’ll lose this fight. back out before we’re committed to your defeat.

(2) you’re messing with the real controllers of the ghana tech ecosystem. it’s us, not your ministry nor @NITAGhana that controls this space. stop fucking around because you’ll find out.

(3) here’s an olive branch, grab it

[Sam 'Dzata' George 🦁🇬🇭 @samgeorgegh]

Please do. Show me any contact to you from the MINISTRY. That was exactly what I said.

I repeat that NO ONE from the Ministry reached out to you to host an X Space.

NITA is not responsible for policy making. Bills are sponsored by Ministries and not Agencies. The X Space was organised by the Ministry and not the Agency.

Take your time and know the difference. Whoever you engaged was NOT from the Ministry and had no authority to hold an X Space on an issue emanating from the Ministry.

Thank you. 🦁🇬🇭

[yaw @ejnbo]

tl;dr—the document y’all were arguing about ain’t even valid. there’s a new one but we ain’t showing you. fees, fines, licenses coming soon tho 😎✌️

[Sam 'Dzata' George 🦁🇬🇭 @samgeorgegh]

The @MoCDTI will tomorrow engage in a hybrid conversation, in person and online, to address the issues that have been raised in response to regulatory action by @NITAGhana. I will also deal with issues of policy direction shaping our legislative reforms. Cheers. 🦁🇬🇭

[yaw @ejnbo]

unfortunately i’d rather have @attigs’ write-up in the room than the man himself. only god knows what happened to @attigs-the-author after his piece went out. man might be in the room under duress in fact. blink twice and we’ll send help

[Lion Nehemiah @attigs]

Check out my latest article: The NITA Bill 2025 is a Digital Straitjacket – Why Ghana Must Reject This Assault on InnovationS https://t.co/nS4HO8JP0W

[yaw @ejnbo]

@TheDumbTechGuy @koboateng @samgeorgegh sad chale. it feels more like ‘you’re angry because you don’t understand so let us explain to you.’

[yaw @ejnbo]

you see, people like @thedumbtechguy and @koboateng worked hard to publicize the atrocities in the draft bill. when it came time to discuss we didn’t prioritize getting them into the room. listening to the questions it’s hard to not assume that the minister @samgeorgegh and @NITAGhana board ensured that they were flanked by sycophants, or at least people asking the most irrelevant questions. tough!

[NITA Ghana @NITAGhana]

https://t.co/LpJMrsK4SM

[yaw @ejnbo]

listening to @samgeorgegh is listening to a man hell-bent on making a free people conform to arbitrary laws. he sees the laws as the finest expression of intelligence and therefore (1) they’re right, and (2) worthy of enforcement. for example he’s worried that a free ghanaian can call their venture a startup. that makes the tech space a bazaar. he doesn’t want that. he wants a cathedral instead.

[yaw @ejnbo]

unfortunately @samgeorgegh is becoming the face of this debacle. he’s taking a steep and dangerous fall for all his boards and advisors. here, they’ve set him up for failure, ridicule, foul criticisms. a betrayal of a man innocent and loyal to his team to the death 🤦‍♂️

[CITI FM 97.3 @Citi973]

Government has mounted a strong defence of the National Information Technology Agency’s enforcement of registration fees, certification requirements and compliance obligations for ICT firms, fintechs and digital service providers, as backlash intensifies across Ghana’s technology ecosystem over what critics describe as an aggressive regulatory push.

Read more ⬇️
https://t.co/6wXhMjc3mh

#CitiBusinessNews #CitiNewsroom #CitiFM #GhanaNews

[yaw @ejnbo]

happy to engage, privately and publicly, to provide necessary context and arguments in favor of alternative ways to achieve your targets. the laws in their current form are unhealthy and should be repealed. you, sir, don’t want to be the face and person responsible for this recklessness @samgeorgegh. recovery may be impossible ✌️

[yaw @ejnbo]

the issue at stake here isn’t about enforcement of existing laws but new text that has been introduced in the now infamous bill. if there are prior laws with the same intent, then they’re equally as bad, if not worse, and need informed reviews. the nature of the badness is making reasonable professionals nauseous and they’re wondering how these laws came about in the first place

[Sam 'Dzata' George 🦁🇬🇭 @samgeorgegh]

I have always reiterated that personally and officially, I am always open to informed and constructive criticism and opinions.

Criticisms that jump on bandwagon trends and fail to be based on fact are treated with contempt because they are not only mischievous but intended to misinform.

To all the 'IT Professionals' who all of a sudden are making all manner of spurious claims that the @MoCDTI through its Agency - @NITAGhana - is acting illegally, please read the National Information Technology Agency Act, 2008 (Act 771), Electronic Transactions Act, 2008 (Act 772), the Fees and Charges (Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations, 2023 (L.I. 2481) and the Fees and Charges (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendments) Regulations 2025 (L.I. 2512).

The Ministry is simply ENFORCING existing legislation that has been on our books since 2008, 2023 and 2025. The proposed new legislation has NOT even been laid before Parliament.

I welcome anyone to point out which specific action of the Agency is NOT backed by a provision under the stated legislation. We have a Country to build, and we will ensure enforcement and sanity in our Technology space. Cheers.

[yaw @ejnbo]

sadly, it is not clear what these laws seek to achieve. some of us have speculated that it relates to revenue generation (it doesn’t achieve that). others speculate that it’s in national security interests (there are better ways), while others are certain it’s a deliberate attempt to sabotage digital innovation in ghana (i think this is a mere by-product).

what disturbs me a lot is the new image we’re painting in the minds our international colleagues. they’re wondering why we’re eager to take the lead here when even communist and more authoritarian countries won’t. i wonder too.