Author: Favour Eteile

A potentially world-changing idea sprang from an excursion boat that got stuck for five hours on Lake Naivasha. From a frustrating encounter with water hyacinth, Joseph Nguthiru, then an engineering student at Egerton University on a class trip, saw an opportunity. He immediately jumped on it and started a project that involved finding a way to use this invasive plant, which chokes oxygen from lakes, affects aquatic life, disrupts navigation, and impacts the livelihoods of fishing communities, to make something useful while still protecting the environment. Instead of simply seeing the weed as just a problem to be removed, Nguthiru…

Many are dissatisfied with their lives, where they come from, and where they currently are. And the one thing that pokes at them is that they find their situation “not enough”: the satisfaction, not enough; the connections, not enough; the net worth, not enough; and maybe that job or business, not enough. But today, I was thinking about the body and how it functions, so intricately connected, with one organ wired to be dependent on the next. And I related it to how the system of success in the world works. For example, if the excellent nine-to-fiver doesn’t show up…

Exceptional leaders have an internal belief that reinforces their confidence in their own ability to accomplish what they set out to do. To others, it looks like audacity. But for them, it’s a voice in their heads that keeps saying: Maybe I can do this. Maybe if I change strategies, push harder, what will stop this from happening, and how can I go around it? They build patterns of positive maybes and what-ifs in their minds, paving a thought process their minds are bound to follow. They are as unsure as anyone gets, but they question every doubt and every…

We often talk about leadership in terms of vision, strategy and results, but today, we’ll talk about what it costs the person carrying it. The cost that no one takes attendance for. It doesn’t happen in a boardroom or a public handshake. It happens at 11 p.m., when the laptop is still open and the house has gone quiet without you in it. It happens in the missed recital or the birthday dinner cut short by a call that “couldn’t wait.” Leaders give in ways that never make it into their bios. This is the offering no one applauds. There’s…

Vincent van Gogh lived what many would consider an ordinary life and died young, never knowing that the world would one day recognise the extraordinary value of what he had created. He spent much of his life struggling, but through it all, he found expression and never stopped creating. His paintings were his escape, his expression, and his proof that what he carried within him was worth something, even when no one else saw that worth. He never stopped believing in his work, which is perhaps why he refused to change his style to fit the market, even when doing…

Money and relationships satisfy two of our deepest human needs: security and belonging. And while the relationship between the two is complicated, it is no surprise that the way we pursue one often shapes the way we pursue the other. When wealth is available to us, it can become easy to surround ourselves with the appearance of genuine connection. And when that option exists, the temptation to choose it over the work of building meaningful relationships is difficult to resist. The appeal of this shortcut isn’t simply that it’s easier. It’s that it can imitate some of the rewards of…

Success has many roads, but the one Tyler Perry travelled stands out as a blueprint for generations to come. In 1992, he staged his first play, I Know I’ve Been Changed, in Atlanta, but only 30 people showed up. The production wiped out his savings, and he ended up living in his car. But instead of seeing that setback as failure, he treated it as information to improve his work. He rewrote the play, staged it again, rewrote it again, and kept refining it. Six years and several seemingly unsuccessful productions later, audiences finally responded. What looked like repeated failure…

Every transformative innovation starts with someone seeing possibility where others don’t. Raheema Auwal-Panti’s work beautifully reflects that truth. At just 15 years old, the young Nigerian from Minna, Niger State, looked beyond the convenience of conventional sanitary pads and saw an environmental problem hiding in plain sight. Instead of accepting it, she imagined a better way. Her innovation, PantiPads, turns agricultural waste like cassava peelings, banana leaves, and corn husks into biodegradable sanitary pads. By doing this, she tackles two major problems at the same time: plastic pollution and period poverty. Unlike many conventional sanitary pads, which contain plastic that…

Consistency is one of the most powerful tools shaping the outcome of every successful person we admire and respect. It is a simple decision that shows up again and again, paying small but meaningful dividends that eventually compound into extraordinary results. But as ordinary as it is, consistency is often mistaken for a rare trait. People look at successful individuals and assume they possess something others don’t. When in reality, everyone is consistent at something, it’s the outcome of repeated choices, not a personality reserved for a select few. Make the same choice often enough, and it stops looking like…

David Beckham hasn’t kicked a professional football in thirteen years. Yet during the 2026 World Cup, he seemed to be everywhere, appearing in commercial after commercial for global brands. That isn’t luck or the result of one brilliant business decision. It’s the payoff of layers of deliberate decisions stacked over decades, one of which was how intentionally he shaped his personal brand and built his reputation. Today, those decisions have become one of his greatest competitive advantages, helping make him someone global companies continue to trust. For more than two decades, Beckham invested not just in trophies or business ventures,…