Afeez Awoyemi retweeted
This tweet accidentally explains one of the deepest problems with Nigerian education.
We have confused early literacy with early intelligence.
A 5 year old kid reading and writing before everyone isn’t impressive. Childhood development is not a race to finish the ABC. Those early years should be about building curiosity, creativity, problem-solving, communication and independent thinking.
Let them build things. Draw nonsense. Play games. Solve puzzles. Ask annoying questions. Learn to disagree and explain why.
Then reading, writing and maths become tools for a mind that has already started learning how to THINK.
And Twitter is probably the funniest evidence of what happens when we get this backwards 😂
Every day you meet people here who can read and write beautifully. Big grammar sef.
But comprehension? Omo.
You write A. They read B. They argue passionately against C. Then 4,000 people retweet aggressively 😭
That is the tragedy.
Literacy is not the same thing as education. Being able to read is useless if you were never taught how to think.
Canada 🇨🇦 thought my 5-year-old was special. Nigeria already prepared her.
One of my girls was 5 when we landed in Canada. In Nigeria, she would already have been in Primary 1. She could read and write simple sentences.
Her first months in a Canadian school shocked everyone. Not just because of her Nigerian accent. They were stunned she could actually read and write while her classmates were still learning letters and numbers.
She started winning awards. They made her read to the whole class.
As parents, we were not celebrating. We saw what was happening. They were slowing her down. Our biggest fear was that they would make her forget her maths.
So we did what many Nigerian parents abroad eventually do: we got a teacher from Nigeria and added IXL. Thank God we did. Years later, she is still ahead.
I still don’t understand why Canada waits until children are 5 before teaching letters and numbers.
Nigeria 🇳🇬 starts earlier. That early foundation is not “too much.” It is an advantage. Do not let a slower system erase what your child already has. Bring the standard with you.
Afeez Awoyemi retweeted
Like I always say using opportunity cost as my core argument, there was no need for the coastal highway and the Badagry-Sokoto superhighway.
Financialize to clear our debt with GENCOs, spend on tier 1 power plants like Tanzania & Ethiopia have done, and fix existing roads.
In other words, "buildism", a way of life where "builders" are earnestly worshipped and only fellow "builders" are allowed to criticize them in the face of obvious mediocrity.
Builders should always be held accountable, and most of the time, they are held accountable by people not in the arena.
The critique of Dangote’s execution is fair. The plaque was handwritten. The optics were off. I get it.
But the refinery is real. The cement is real. The sugar is real. The businesses are on actual stock exchanges.
You can hold both things at the same time.
What I actually want is more critics who have tried to build something. Doesn’t need to be big. Doesn’t need to succeed.
Just tried.
Because when you’ve been in the arena, even once, your criticism carries a different weight.
Makers vs takers is a useful frame but it’s not complete.
The ask isn’t silence. It’s for more people to cross the line. Try something. Fail at something. Then come back and talk to me about Dangote's plaque.
Btw, Private placements don’t go on billboards. They move through networks. That’s not low quality distribution. That’s literally the model.
Anthropic. SpaceX. OpenAI etc. All of these have circulated in WhatsApp groups and Telegram threads of private networks.
Nobody called those cheap gin in sachets.
When an African billionaire uses the same channel, suddenly the method is the problem.
Afeez Awoyemi retweeted
What it does:
Removes the extra space above and below text that comes from line-height. Your text sits exactly where you want it, without invisible padding.
The syntax is easy
ALT A code snippet shows a CSS class ".button" with a property "text-box-trim: trim-both;" on a dark background.
Afeez Awoyemi retweeted
Let me do a @bigbrovar style tweet
Currently charging two EVs, running a few three ACs, a few pumps, cooking and powering all the regular house load...fully off the grid...and my batteries are full.
So ignore all those ignorant posts about what you can and can't do with solar.
Afeez Awoyemi retweeted
Let’s forget about the white man, but isn’t it more embarrassing knowing you have to go through the same shit just to visit an African country
@chesscom, could you please show some obvious, difficult to miss visual when the player’s device is experiencing internet issues? How am I about to lose a game I’m obviously winning, due to internet issues and it’s not the most important thing you’re showing me?
Afeez Awoyemi retweeted
When I say I will never live in Nigeria again, it is not because of arrogance or pride. I can't live with people with whom I do not share the same values. I care too much about the little things that they do not care about, and this is what has messed Nigeria up.
Afeez Awoyemi retweeted
I once listened to a Chinese economist discuss corruption in China with Fareed Zakaria.
He explained that corruption in China was a "political problem", not an "economic problem" - i.e. that corruption in China undermined the integrity of the Government in power, but despite this corruption, economic growth happens.
Chinese-style corruption (which is similar to corruption in many places around the World), means that the project gets built, but government officials and their accomplices skim a tiny percentage of the contract sum. For example, Indonesian leader, Suharto's wife was nicknamed "Madam Tien Percent" for her corruption. The Indonesian economy still grew under Suharto - till the Asian Economic Crisis.
Xi has been cracking down on corruption, because he understands its corrosive impact on effectiveness on the Chinese Government and the Chinese Military. Lee Kuan Yew didn't even tolerate corruption.
Let me say this here, when we talk about corruption in Nigeria, we are not talking about the same thing. In those places projects are completed, despite corruption. In Nigeria, whether the project is completed or not, or poorly done does not matter - the entire point of politics in Nigeria is corrupt enrichment.
So corruption in Nigeria is both a political problem and an economic problem. To move forward, it has to be eradicated or reduced to the barest minimum. I am not sure telling the typical Nigerian politician to eat small, but do the work will work - he/she must be made to fear the consequences of corruption.
Afeez Awoyemi retweeted
Good piece. Short but captures a lot of what I would say I’ve seen in a couple of decades here. Something I would add - meritocracy is such an alien thing in Nigeria but in a country of 200m plenty of people are saliently primed for it. So when they change their environment …
Column, slightly off the news: How British-Nigerians quietly made their way to the top
| A story of modern migration has had extraordinary results economist.com/britain/2024/1…
Afeez Awoyemi retweeted
Introducing Neuecast — a beautiful, modern podcast app designed for the rest of us.
Made with love and obsessively crafted for a premium listening experience.
Now available on the App Store.
apps.apple.com/us/app/neueca…
I've anticipated the next expo SDK (49) release for some time now, and it's even much better than I imagined. 🤩
Some of my favourite features include:
- env vars support
- debugging improvements
- reanimated 3
Exciting!
Afeez Awoyemi retweeted
So many cool things planned for Expo SDK 49 👏 @expo
My favorites
- RN v0.72
- Expo Router v2 RC
- Reanimated v3
- Network debugging 🔥
- VS Code debugging
- React DevTools built-in
- Easy env var
- Local Expo Modules
- Fabric in dev-client, exp
blog.expo.dev/expo-sdk-49-be…
Afeez Awoyemi retweeted
I just published a new advanced TypeScript Workshop 🙌 🧑💻
We will create a type-safe query language using TypeScript's awesome type system!
It's completely *free* and should take around one hour to complete 😎
Link in thread 👇
