Lessons Conversation

What Works? In What Context? Under What Circumstances? Why?

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Delve into Business and International Development with Nthanda Manduwi podcast.lessonsconversation.com

3 days ago

Book 1: Lessons

Your First [Free] Book Is Here! Welcome to a new chapter of The Lessons Conversation. I am most delighted to finally share the first book in the Lessons series with you, FOR FREE. If you’ve been following the podcast for a while, thank you for staying on this journey with me. And if you just recently joined us, welcome - I am genuinely glad you’re here. You may have noticed that this week’s post arrived a day later than usual. Typically, I publish the podcast first thing on Mondays, to start the week with you. I spent yesterday travelling to New York City for the 2026 United Nations High-Level Political Forum [HLPF], where I’ll be spending the week listening, learning, and engaging in conversations about sustainable development from around the world. Thank you for your patience. Last week, I had hoped to make the first book available immediately, but I ran into an unexpected challenge with Amazon. Kindle promotions aren’t quite as straightforward, and it took a little longer than expected to make everything work. The good news is that we’ve figured it out. From this week onward, every week you’ll receive one book from the series completely free. Rather than following a strict sequence, I’ll simply share whichever book feels most relevant or inspired by the conversations, ideas, and experiences of that particular week. Today that is Lessons. Other weeks it may be Systemic Nonsense, Impossible Economies, or another title entirely. I want each week’s reading to feel like part of an ongoing conversation rather than a reading list. One important thing to know: once you claim a Kindle book during its free promotion, it remains in your Kindle library permanently. Even though each giveaway lasts only a limited time [5 days to be specific], the copy you download is yours to keep forever. If you find a book meaningful, I have one small favour to ask: please share it. Send this newsletter to a friend, colleague, student, policymaker, or anyone else you think would enjoy joining the conversation. The goal has never simply been to publish books. It is to build a community that thinks deeply about what works, in what context, under what circumstances, and why. This Week’s Book 📖 Lessons [Book 1] The opening book in the series introduces the central question that connects every book that follows: What Works? In What Context? Under What Circumstances? Why? Drawing on experiences across international development, entrepreneurship, technology, government, and systems thinking, Lessons explores why good intentions alone are never enough - and why better questions often matter more than quick answers. How to Read To receive your free Kindle copy: * Click the Amazon link below. * Select the Kindle edition while the promotion is active. * Add it to your Kindle library. You do not need a Kindle device. The free Kindle app works on iPhone, Android, tablets, Macs, and PCs, allowing you to build your digital library wherever you read. Helpful Links 📚 Read this week’s book for free [search on Amazon or in Kindle for the book that is free for the week, and feel free to purchase the others]:http://amazon.com/dp/B0FQNJ61SB 📰 Subscribe to The Lessons Conversation: Africa paperback pre-orders:https://forms.office.com/r/RMRMKTNd1M A Small Update on the Podcast Over the past months, The Lessons Conversation has largely taken the form of Lessons Weekly: my personal reflections on current events, systems, and international development. For the next seven weeks, the podcast will take a slightly different form. Each week I’ll dedicate an episode to one of the books in the Lessons series. For the first time, these episodes will also be available as full-length videos on YouTube, so you’ll be able to either listen through your favourite podcast app or watch the conversations as they unfold. These videos are something I’ve wanted to create for a while - not simply to introduce the books, but to build a lasting body of work around the ideas behind them. Once we’ve completed this seven-week series, The Lessons Conversation will evolve again. We’ll move beyond solo reflections into conversations with remarkable people whose work is shaping the future of development, technology, entrepreneurship, public policy, and society. I’m excited for what comes next. As I spend this week at the High-Level Political Forum here in New York, I’m already finding myself inspired by the conversations taking place. I’m curious to see which ideas stay with me; and, perhaps more importantly, which book feels like the right one to share with you next week. Thank you for reading, thank you for subscribing, and thank you for being part of this community. Enjoyed listening to the Lessons Conversation? This post is public, so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit podcast.lessonsconversation.com
6 Jul

What Works? In What Context? Under What Circumstance? Why?

Today is my home country Malawi’s 62nd Independence Day. I desperately wish to say, “Happy Independence Day, Malawi,” but each Independence Day, I find myself carrying the weight of history, reflecting on how far we have come, where we are today, and where we go from here. I think about the histories that brought us to this very moment. I think about a country that has no history of war: a country that has been the subject of countless development reports, strategies, interventions, and well-intentioned efforts, and yet still finds itself among the poorest nations in the world. Over the past four years, while working with the United Nations at Headquarters and pursuing my Master’s degrees, I have attempted to make sense of these contradictions. Today, I am excited to share with you Lessons, a seven-part book series that brings together a decade of [my and other scholars’] observations from Africa, the United Nations, entrepreneurship, technology, and global development. Over the past two years, I challenged myself to write differently. Every few months, I immersed myself in a new question, spending countless hours reading, listening, researching, interviewing, reflecting, and writing. One book became two, then three, until eventually the project grew into a seven-part series. Each volume represents my best attempt, at that point in time, to make sense of some of the biggest questions I have encountered across development, entrepreneurship, technology, and public policy. Across the series, I explore failure, institutions, power, broken systems, impossible economies, long wars, and the futures we still have to build. These books are my attempt to understand the world as it is, and perhaps explain why outcomes so often diverge from intentions. They are also my attempt to suggest where we [can] go from here. At the same time, I am deeply aware that no single person can fully explain systems as complex as the ones these books explore. The ideas presented here are therefore not intended to be the final word. Rather, they are an invitation to begin a much larger conversation. Over the coming year, I will continue speaking with leaders, researchers, entrepreneurs, policymakers, practitioners, and readers from around the world, using those conversations to challenge, strengthen, expand, and, where necessary, revise the arguments presented throughout the series. For that reason, the books being released today are the Founder’s Edition of the Lessons series. They represent the beginning of the project. Every conversation, every critique, every disagreement, every correction, and every new piece of evidence shared over the coming year will help shape the definitive edition of the series, planned for release in 2027. My hope is that these books become not simply something to read, but the beginning of a conversation we build together. Perhaps that is what this project has always been about: it was always about engaging in better conversations. In many ways, this series marks the end of one chapter. It reflects on my lessons gathered over the first decade of my career working across development, public service, and international institutions. It also marks the beginning of another: as I commit the foreseeable future to entrepreneurship, and building meaningful technologies for the people who need them the most. From today through the end of my participation in the Big Bets Fellowship with the Rockefeller Foundation in August, I will be gifting you one book for free, each week. I will rely deeply on your insights, as we work collaboratively towards World 2.0. To receive the first book and instructions on how to access the other six, subscribe to The Lessons Conversation via podcast.lessonsconversation.com. If you are already subscribed, please feel free to subscribe with a second email address, to get the separate email with the instructions. Details will be delivered directly to your inbox once you do. Happy reading. 🩵🤍 Thanks for listening to the Lessons Conversation! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support this work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit podcast.lessonsconversation.com
28 Jun

10,000 Hours, and How Artificial Intelligence Can Get You There [Faster?]

This past week, I was delighted to join Dr. Vera Kamtukule - former Minister of Tourism in Malawi, as a guest on her new podcast: The Leadership Lab with Dr VK. We got into conversation about entrepreneurship, about innovation, and about whether Africa is truthfully prepared and ready to partake in the fourth industrial revolution. This is part 1 of a 3-part conversation. Have a listen, and please subscribe to her channel, so you do not miss the next episodes. Two Questions I recently finished reading two books: I Am Not a Robot, by Joanna Stern and Co-Intelligence by Prof. Ethan Mollick. I found the pairing useful because the two books approach AI from different but complementary directions. Mollick’s Co-Intelligence is primarily concerned with how people can work with AI. His framing is I find extremely practical: how to collaborate with AI, how to remain the human in the loop, how to use AI as a co-worker, tutor, coach, or creative partner, and how to adapt to tools that are still improving rapidly. Stern’s I Am Not a Robot approaches the question from the side of lived experience. Her work is less about AI as an abstract technical system and more about what happens when AI enters daily life: work, learning, intimacy, decision-making, productivity, attachment, automation, and the uneasy boundary between assistance and replacement. What I found interesting is that very little in these books felt completely new to me - this was a delight. I do not say this in any way to criticise these books. It is likely just [great!] evidence that I have become an extreme AI user over the past two years. Business school did that to me. The workload required reading, analysis, writing, presentations, strategy, modelling, research, and constant synthesis across different subjects. AI became part of how I managed that pace. This is what I think both books do well: they give language to patterns many heavy AI users already experience but may not have fully named. Mollick helps explain how to work with AI deliberately. Stern helps explain what that work may be doing to us. Ladder of Learning In I am Not a Robot, Stern discusses the Bloom’s Taxonomy. First developed in 1956, the taxonomy organized learning objectives in the cognitive domain into levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. It became one of the most widely used frameworks in education because it helped teachers and institutions think about different depths of learning. In 2001, the taxonomy was revised by scholars including Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl. The revised version shifted the categories from nouns to verbs and reordered the upper levels. The familiar revised sequence is: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. This revision matters because it reframed learning as active performance rather than static possession of knowledge. A learner is not simply expected to have knowledge, but to do something with it. Thank you for listening to the Lessons Conversation! Subscribe for free to receive new posts directly in your mailbox. Four Rules Mollick’s Co-Intelligence is useful because it frames AI not merely as a tool to be used occasionally, but as a collaborator that must be managed deliberately. The four rules he offers are quite practical in my opinion: always invite AI to the table; be the human in the loop; treat AI like a person, but specify what kind of person it should be; and assume this is the worst AI you will ever use. This is the balance I keep returning to. AI is powerful enough to help people learn. It is also powerful enough to help people avoid learning. It can accelerate mastery. It can also simulate mastery. Have a listen wherever you get your podcasts, or read the full article via my blog: Mastery. Enjoyed the listen/[read]? This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit podcast.lessonsconversation.com
22 Jun

Why SMARTER WORLDS Need smaller egos | Lessons Weekly

We find ourselves at a uniquely consequential moment in human history. According to the ITU, roughly 6 billion people are connected to the internet, compared to fewer than 400 million at the turn of the millennium. Three-quarters of humanity now participates in a shared digital environment where information can move across borders almost instantly. However, more than 2 billion people remain offline. Only about 36% of Africa’s population is online, meaning roughly 64% is offline. This is the real crisis: Africa accounts for roughly 43–45% of all offline people on Earth. The digital divide is what pushed me to pursue a Master of Science in Information Management Systems at the Malawi University of Science and Technology [research track], and specifically the entrepreneurial opportunities posited by Africa’s Digital Transformation. In present day, artificial intelligence is diffusing through society at extraordinary speed. According to Microsoft, roughly one in six people worldwide now use generative AI tools, while nearly 80 percent of organizations report using AI in at least one business function. Global investment in AI has reached hundreds of billions of dollars annually. As I pursued my MBA at the Michigan State University, I got deeper into the question of what kind of tech we can build for those who are vastly marginalized. Yet the technology itself is only part of the story. The amount of compute used to train frontier AI systems has been growing at roughly five times per year since 2020, dramatically increasing humanity’s ability to generate, synthesize, and distribute knowledge. Questions that once required teams of researchers and years of analysis can increasingly be explored in hours, days, or minutes. And yet, despite unprecedented access to information, the world’s defining challenges remain remarkably familiar: conflict, inequality, institutional distrust, climate change, corruption, political polarization, and uneven development. As our tools become more powerful, a more difficult question emerges: What happens when technological progress outpaces human progress? What happens when societies gain access to better evidence but remain constrained by the same incentives, assumptions, identities, and systems that shaped previous generations? That was the heart of my talk. WORLD 2.0: Smarter Machines, Faster Evidence, Same Egos On the 22nd of March, 2026, I and 8 other leaders took to the stage with TEDxMSU, and I delivered a talk on ‘Ego’. TEDxMSU is a non-profit initiative led by students of Michigan State University. This year’s theme was Sonder, and it celebrated the realization that every person you encounter is living a life and carries stories as vivid and complex as your own. This being my first TEDTalk, it was ideally a very brief synthesis of a broader body of work explored throughout the both the Lessons Books [publishing on the 6th of July, 2026] - a seven-part inquiry into international development as it is lived, practiced, and inherited, particularly from the vantage point of the Global South. That book series is my 4 year commitment, to preface this here podcast: the Lessons Conversation. From the first industrial revolution through imperialism, neocolonialism and development to artificial intelligence and global cooperation, I in this talk examine the tension between what we now know and what we are willing to do with that knowledge. The audio in this substack and the video on YouTube are similar, yet starkly different. I explain why and how at the beginning of the podcast. Watch Via YouTube Listen wherever you get your Podcasts [Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc] If you make time to listen to both, I’d love to hear from you what were the things I may have edited out, or just forgotten to say on stage. Feel free to email me your ideas, and stand a chance to win free copies of my upcoming books [if you get some things right!] Thanks for listening to the Lessons Conversation! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Episode 8: Mastery [Coming Next Week] 10,000 Hours, and How Artificial Intelligence Can Get You There In next week’s conversation, we get deeper into tech, as we explore artificial intelligence. I am currently reading two books: Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick, and I Am Not a Robot by Joanna Stern. I had a sit down with the former Minister of Tourism in Malawi, Dr. Vera Kamtukule, to discuss the future of technology in Malawi, and beyond. In that episode, we will dive deeper into how I personally use AI in my day to day life; how leaders like Ethan and Joanna use AI, and some best practices on how AI can help you advance in your personal work and explorations. As always, keep asking: What works? In what context? Under what circumstances? and… Why? Enjoyed the listen? This post is public, so feel free to share it with your community. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit podcast.lessonsconversation.com
15 Jun

A Generational Disconnect in African Education Systems | Lessons Weekly

I am reading John Cassidy’s Capitalism and Its Critics. The book is giving me a historical bridge between economic theory and the world that produced it. It has somehow succeeded at taking me back to being a student of economics, and connecting theory, yet again, to practise. The historical narrative primarily begins around 1770, marking the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It moves through merchant capitalism, colonial companies, slavery, wage labour, factories, industrialization, crises, technology, empire, dependency theory, globalization, and all the way to present day artificial intelligence. Perhaps my favorite part [biases considered]: the book includes women like Anna Wheeler, Flora Tristan, Rosa Luxemburg, Joan Robinson, and Silvia Federici. Cassidy specifically discusses female factory workers and Federici’s argument that unpaid domestic labour is essential to reproducing the capitalist workforce. African economies inherited systems shaped by extraction, fragmented production, weak industrial bases, imported curricula, interrupted political continuity, and young populations trying to enter a global economy already shaped by others. These conditions in present day still influence how African countries produce, trade, educate, govern, and imagine development. Rethinking economics in Africa therefore requires more than just policy adjustment. It requires a deeper rethinking of how Africans are taught to understand value, production, labour, history, power, institutions, and the global order. The classroom, the farm, the factory, the port, the household, the ministry, the market, and the university all belong in the same conversation. Economics is often introduced as the study of scarcity and choice. That definition has its place, but it narrows the field too quickly. Economics is the system through which societies organize value: who owns resources, who works, who is paid, what is produced, what is imported, what is exported, who captures profit, what the state protects, what households reproduce, and how a country sits inside the global order. Seen this way, economics becomes foundational knowledge. Every university student should encounter it, whether they are studying engineering, tourism, education, public health, agriculture, technology, arts, law, public administration, or business. Every profession operates inside economic systems. Every sector creates, captures, distributes, or loses value. A university education should prepare students to understand those systems with historical, institutional, and practical clarity. Africa needs people who can model policy and understand dignity. People who can read balance sheets and still care about the village. People who can build industries without reproducing extraction. People who can govern systems without forgetting humans. That, to me, is the real work. Listen to the full podcast, or read the full article via my blog byntha.com Thanks for listening to the Lessons Conversation! Subscribe for free to receive new posts directly in your mailbox! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit podcast.lessonsconversation.com
9 Jun

How Apple built Huawei and all other competitors and really... China | Lessons Weekly

Growing up in Malawi, the phrase “Made in China” suggested something cheap, something temporary, something that might break sooner than expected. If a product was Made in China, it was often viewed as an inferior alternative to goods from Europe, America, or Japan. The label became a shorthand for low quality. Looking back, that perception is remarkable. Today, China is one of the most important industrial and technological powers in the world. Chinese companies compete directly with some of the most powerful firms on earth. Huawei has become a global force in telecommunications and consumer technology. BYD has emerged as a serious competitor in electric vehicles. DJI dominates large segments of the global drone market. China leads in batteries, renewable energy manufacturing, and increasingly artificial intelligence infrastructure. The country that was once associated with cheap manufacturing is now associated with industrial capability. After reading Patrick McGee’s Apple in China, I found myself thinking less about Apple and more about how that transformation occurred. While the book is presented as the story of Apple’s relationship with China, it is ultimately a story about development. More specifically, it is a story about how countries learn. One of the book’s most important insights is that Apple did not simply use China. In many ways, Apple helped build China. Conventional narratives often describe the relationship as one in which China provided cheap labour and manufacturing capacity while Apple captured the value through design and innovation. There is truth in that interpretation, but it is incomplete. Listen to the full podcast, or read the full article via my blog byntha.com Thanks for listening to the Lessons Conversation! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and updates directly in your mailbox! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit podcast.lessonsconversation.com
1 Jun

Justin for Michigan State Senate [District 1] | Lessons Weekly

I had reached out to Justin Onwenu to ask how I could support his campaign, as he runs for State Senate. He was amenable, and invited me to join a canvass over the weekend. The team was meeting at Memorial Park in the City of Ecorse, part of Michigan State Senate District 1. I had shared that I do not drive in Detroit, and when I spoke with his campaign manager, Cal, he was more than happy to pick me up and bring me to Ecorse. It was a small logistical detail, but a make or break one, for me. In conversation with him as he dropped me back home later that day, Cal joked that there is roughly a 50% flake rate in volunteer organizing, which made him even more committed to making sure as many people as possible were able to participate. Campaigns are often narrated through the visible things: the candidate, the speeches, the endorsements, the policy platform, the fundraising numbers, the election results. But the day-to-day running of a campaign depends on the people doing the practical work on the ground: organizing volunteers, moving people, assigning turf, answering questions, solving problems, and making sure others are able to show up. For me, that was my entry point into the day. That was how the day started. Thanks for reading Lessons Conversation. Subscribe for free to receive new posts directly in your mailbox! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit podcast.lessonsconversation.com
6 Apr

The Economics of [re]Building a City | Lessons Weekly

After a month of living in the city, I attended a Detroit Economic Growth Corporation event where the City of Detroit was awards 13 businesses with grants amounting to $300,000. The room was filled with founders, policymakers, and ecosystem builders gathered around a shared objective: increasing the probability that companies are built and sustained here. I really like how the City of Detroit is approaching their entrepreneurship programming. It is quite deliberate: municipal grants, residency stipends, coworking access, and roles like Director of Entrepreneurship are all designed to reduce friction and create density. As someone who is both an entrepreneur and a policy analyst, I find myself more than curious. From the inside, the strategy feels coherent. Capital is being deployed, networks are forming, and leadership is aligned around making Detroit competitive for builders. But the city reveals itself differently once you leave that room. Moving through Detroit with the Director of Youth Affairs, Jerjuan Howard, the layers begin to separate. Institutional support, ecosystem energy, and neighborhood reality do not fully overlap—they operate in parallel. Jerjuan’s work—through debate programs, public space, and the Howard Family Bookstore—exists at the level where rebuilding becomes physical and immediate. His question at the end of the day to me, “Do you plan to stay?” left me reflecting on what I hope to gain from and give to Detroit. Read the full post Thanks for reading Lessons Conversation! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support this work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit podcast.lessonsconversation.com
30 Mar

What Happened to Detroit? | Lessons Weekly

Episode 2: Lessons Daily This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit podcast.lessonsconversation.com
23 Mar

Why there are no Apple Stores in Africa | Lessons Weekly

Episode 1: Run the Numbers | Lessons Daily This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit podcast.lessonsconversation.com

10 Episodes

Delve into Business and International Development with Nthanda Manduwi podcast.lessonsconversation.com

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What Works? In What Context? Under What Circumstances? Why?
Years Active

2026
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10
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Clean
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© Nthanda
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Lessons Conversation