Zuckerberg is in Lagos, Nigeria, where he has taken a stroll through the streets of Yaba and jogged on the Ikoyi-Lekki link bridge.
On
Wednesday, he topped it up with expressing his undying love for
Nigerian jollof rice, Nollywood and pounded yam at a developer Question
and Answer session in Lagos.
Techies don’t come
any smoother than the American at the moment. Zuckerberg knows how to
work and charm a crowd and there was plenty of that on display during
this hangout.
It wasn’t just the charm offensive
and aura about Zuckerberg that struck me as he addressed developers,
techies and the media this week, it was his ambition and drive at
ensuring that the company he founded from a college dormitory at just 19
years of age, surpasses its current $350bn valuation and continues to
redefine the way we live, work and play.
“If
you want to connect everyone else in the world, making sure that
everyone has access to internet is a really important thing”, Zuckerberg said, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans—his signature attire.
“It
turns out that across the world, more than half the population don’t
have access to internet. And here in Nigeria, that’s true too.
So
whether it’s connecting people with their friends and family or helping
people start businesses, the internet is the most fundamental part of
infrastructure that needs to exist”, he added.
The
young billionaire has since acquired mobile phone app Whatsapp and made
it clear his vision is to kill the mobile text message as we know it.
“There
are about a billion people who use Whatsapp every month and there are
about 5 billion people in the world who have phones and we kind of think
that everyone who has a phone does text messaging”, he said,
pausing to ask if anyone in the room still communicated with the Short
Messaging Code (SMS). Only one hand went up: that of a member of his
staff.
“You work at Facebook… we’ll see after the session”, Zuckerberg joked, to plenty of laughter from the audience.
The goal is clear: Zuckerberg wants to replace the SMS with Whatsapp and at this rate, there appears to be no stopping him.
Zuckerberg
joked and laughed as he took the questions, intermittently expressing
how he’s been wowed by the energy levels of the average Nigerian.
He told the story of how, while sampling a Nigerian delicacy alongside friends, they stumbled on snails in the broth.
Apparently,
Zuckerberg’s friends didn’t fancy the snails and while they
contemplated their next line of action which included passing off the
Nigerian cuisine and asking for something else near Western, the
billionaire Facebook owner made it clear he was going to have as many
snails as possible because not only was this his first visit to Nigeria,
it was also his first to Africa and he was going to make every moment
and delicacy count, snails and all.
"Alright guys”, he recalled telling his friends, “I don’t come to Nigeria often. We’ll eat the snails!”
He recounted one Facebook success story that had everyone in the room in stitches.
On a stroll in a corner of the world, a couple ran into Zuckerberg, detailing the joy he’s brought into their lives. “This is my wife”, Zuckerberg recalled the husband saying; “and look, our son! I met my wife on Facebook thanks to you”.
Zuckerberg’s reaction was to grab the little Facebook offspring like his life depended on him.
Now
a husband, Zuckerberg boasted of his nappy changing skills and how he
keeps in touch with his little daughter back home through Facebook,
during his travels around the world.
It was also
part of the Zuckerberg charisma during the interactive session to hug
some members of the audience who asked questions, tell a guy he’ll like
to receive his business pitch and pass across his email; and motivate
young developers and entrepreneurs in Nigeria not to be discouraged by
failure.
He’s failed many times as well on his way to making the Forbes billionaire list, he reminded everyone.
Asked what he thinks of the future with Facebook playing an active role in it, Zuckerberg said: “One of my best quotes is this: ‘The best way to predict the future is to create it’”.
Nigeria
will have a say in what the rest of the world shapes into in the next
couple of years, Zuckerberg declared, thanks to the zeal, creativity and
energy levels he’s met everywhere he’s turned up during his stay in the
country.
Zuckerberg left the interactive session
to meet with some of Nigeria’s actors in the local film industry and
made it clear he’ll be a regular visitor to Nigeria in the years ahead
because he absolutely loves it here.
There were also instances when Zuckerberg suggested he’ll be investing in Nigeria in the nearest future.
There’s
an infectious aura about Zuckerberg that lifts the spirits. For a man
who’s connected billions of people around the world and whose ambition
is to see every human on earth sign on to his social networking site, I
left the interactive session even more certain that humanity will be
eating from Zuckerberg’s palms and those of his team for many more years
to come.
Let’s admit it already: we are all under a Mark Zuckerberg spell and we just aren’t in a hurry to exit that zone just yet.
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