Category: Personal

Technology. Spirituality. Change.

I’ve spent much of my life working at the intersection of technology and social good, something many of us used to call ICT4D. Over the years I’ve been involved in projects that use mobile phones to improve healthcare, increase access to education and give a voice to people often left unheard. But behind the code and connectivity something deeper has quietly shaped the way I approach this work – a sense of inner purpose, reflection and what I now understand to be a kind of spirituality.

I didn’t set out to bring spirituality into my work all those years ago. In fact, I probably would have fought back at any mention of the word earlier in my career. But looking back it’s clear to me now that the most meaningful, sustainable and human outcomes I’ve witnessed have come not from rushing into solutions but from slowing down. Listening, learning and connecting with something larger than myself. In the early days of FrontlineSMS I wasn’t trying to create a shiny tool. I was trying to solve a problem in the most grounded, respectful way possible. I built something small, free and adaptable because it felt like the right way to do it. That quiet intuition, that humble attention to the real needs of people on the ground, that’s where I now see spirituality showing up.

For me, spirituality is less about religion and more about values – empathy, humility and intention among them. It’s about recognising that the world is complex, that our actions ripple out and that we are not separate from the people we’re trying to help. These aren’t just nice-sounding words. They’re critical when working in communities where trust is everything and where well-intentioned outsiders have often done more harm than good.

Too often in the tech world we rush. We build before we understand. We act before we listen. We measure before we ask what matters. Spirituality, at least the way I’ve come to understand it, reminds me to pause. To reflect. To ask not just ‘How can I fix this?’ but ‘Am I the right person to be involved?’ and ‘What is my intention here?’

One of the things I’ve come to realise is that real change starts within. When we focus only on metrics and outputs we risk losing sight of the human journey – ours and others. But when we start with purpose, with a willingness to be transformed as we try to make change, we create space for something deeper. Something more lasting. I remember once visiting a project in rural Zimbabwe that used FrontlineSMS to improve maternal health. The technology worked, but what struck me most wasn’t the system or the data, it was the care. The community healthcare workers were deeply committed, personally invested and full of heart. The tech was just a tool to them. The real change was happening in relationships, in trust, in human dignity. That’s spiritual work, whether we call it that or not.

So, what does spirituality offer the ICT4D or tech-for-good worlds? It offers a way to slow down in a fast-moving space. A way to stay grounded when the problems feel overwhelming. A compass when the path isn’t clear. And maybe most importantly, it offers a reminder that our work is only as good as the care, awareness and humility we bring to it. In a world that often rewards speed, scale and shiny objects I still believe in small, quiet and purposeful work. I believe that asking the right questions – things like ‘Why am I doing this?’ to ‘Who am I doing it for? ‘ and ‘Am I genuinely listening?’ – are as important as any technology we build.

In the end, I’ve come to see spirituality not as something separate from social change work but as something essential to it. It’s in the pauses, the reflections and the relationships. It’s in the way we show up. And perhaps, just perhaps, it’s in recognising that making the world better starts with becoming better versions of ourselves.

You can read more about my philosophy in my latest book, The Little Book of Mindful Social Change. It’s available in paperback, hardback and e-book on Amazon, or as a free PDF here.

Sixty

I turned sixty this summer.

I’ve been sitting with that short sentence for a while now, not quite sure what to do with it. It doesn’t feel like a milestone so much as a nudge. A tap on the shoulder. Someone leaning over and saying, quietly, you know you don’t have forever, don’t you?

I did know. I’ve known it for years in the same way you know your car’s going to need an annual check-up. But there’s a difference between knowing something and having it sit down beside you at the breakfast table.

A few weeks ago I did something I’d never done before. I sat down and asked AI to write my obituary. Not out of morbidity, though. I’ve recently been working through a few ideas for a new ‘Little Book’ about mortality and impermanence, and the idea surfaced. Rather than wait until it’s too late to read it, why not actually try it? You know, draft an obituary and see what comes out.

So I did. FrontlineSMS was in there, of course. Nigeria, 2007. The Reluctant Innovator, Desmond Tutu, the National Geographic years. All the things you’d expect if you’ve followed any of this for a while now.

While I worked on it I kept coming back to a quote I picked up as a teenager and never quite let go of. In fact, I carried it around with me for years on a little piece of printed plastic card, a reminder of a time to come, casually tucked in the back of my wallet. Those words read:

I’ve quoted it so many times it’s practically worn smooth. But working on that obituary was the first time in a long time that I actually felt the second half of it. Not the passing through bit – the not again part. There’s a Japanese phrase, ‘mono no aware’, a gentle sadness at the transience of things and the strange gratitude that transience makes possible. I’d been exploring that idea for the mortality book, and I realised I’d spent years imagining sixty as ‘somewhere else in the distance’. I feel like I’ve suddenly woken up and found myself there.

I don’t say any of this to be gloomy. If anything it’s had the opposite effect. Writing my obituary made me ask a different question than the ones I’ve spent most of my career asking. Not what have I built, but what have I paid attention to. Not what did I achieve, but who did I make feel useful, or seen, or less alone. FrontlineSMS will get a paragraph, maybe two, in whatever gets written when the time actually comes, but nobody (not even AI) writes an obituary line for the hundreds of ordinary days in between. You know, the ones where nothing happened except a good conversation, or a walk with the kids, or twenty quiet minutes doing nothing in particular. And yet I suspect those days are what it actually felt like to be alive, far more than any of the headline moments were.

I don’t think I’m having a crisis for what it’s worth. If anything it feels closer to relief. There’s a kind of freedom in admitting, at sixty, that you’re not the centre of the story, that the tree you’re sitting under was there before you and will be there after, and that your job was never to own it, only to look after it for a while and then hand it over in the best shape you can.

Time is borrowed. All of it. So are the things we claim to own. I’d rather spend what’s left of mine paying attention and doing what I can to be the best kind of fellow human – a good ancestor, if you will. It’s all I’ve ever tried to do. Wish me luck.

Caught between Gaza and a hard place

It’s been a challenging week. Not as challenging, of course, for those who continue to suffer in Gaza, the West Bank, South Lebanon and beyond, but challenging for me in a different kind of way.

My LinkedIn posts, whatever the topic, tend to come from a place of genuine curiosity, compassion or concern. Anyone who knows me will be aware of my heightened level of sensitivity, my ‘empathy overdrive’ as I often call it. It’s something I struggle with, not rejoice in. So when I post about unimaginable human suffering that most of the world seems to be ignoring, I don’t expect to have to justify calling it out. I assume that the feeling of sadness, anger and frustration would be universal. Suffering is suffering, and it shouldn’t be necessary to debate whether some suffering is acceptable while some is not.

At least that’s what I would hope.

But defend myself I have. Over the last few months I’ve found myself repeatedly challenged by those who believe the deaths of 75,000 civilians in Gaza is somehow okay, that they deserved it in some way, and that any country should have the right to do whatever it likes in order to defend itself. It’s the same with Lebanon. The argument goes that the displacement of millions, the deaths of thousands and the levelling of entire towns and villages in the south is fine because the objective is self defence, even if those being killed and displaced have nothing to do with the conflict. “Our lives, and our right to live in peace, is greater than anyone else’s”.

AI generated image

From what I can tell there are a handful of ‘common justifications’ for the war, and the repeated violations of the ceasefire and humanitarian law, in Gaza in particular:

  • October 7th
  • Hostages (less relevant now)
  • ‘They’ want Israel annihilated 
  • Hamas must be completely defeated
  • Preventing future attacks
  • Buffer zones for security
  • Hamas uses civilian infrastructure for military purposes
  • Israel ‘has no choice’
  • Everyone in the strip is a terrorist and therefore a legitimate target

Some of my posts start with the words ‘Buts aside’ because I refuse to believe that anyone could be proud of what’s being done in their name. How anyone can’t feel an ounce of remorse or concern for any of this is beyond me. Because the numbers speak for themselves.

  • In Gaza there have been 72,819 reported civilian deaths and 172,894 wounded. Over 20,000 children have died, and 45,000 injured
  • At least 235 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, despite claims they are never targeted
  • The World Health Organisation has documented 735 attacks on health care facilities in Gaza, including 35 attacks on hospitals. This is not just immoral. It’s illegal under international humanitarian law
  • In Southern Lebanon, 16 hospitals have been damaged in recent weeks, and 147 ambulances have been attacked. Five hospitals have been forced to close. There are no tunnels under these hospitals
  • UN satellite analysis has identified 123,464 structures destroyed in Gaza with another 198,273 damaged. 81% of all structures in the strip have been hit
  • Roughly 60% of Gaza’s population – approximately 1.2 million people – have lost their homes
  • Tens of thousands of properties have been systematically demolished in Southern Lebanon since the ‘ceasefire’ in a 600 square kilometre ‘buffer zone’
  • Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir released a video of him taunting foreign flotilla activists who were bound and tied on the ground after their arrest and detention
  • UN Human Rights report that Israeli forces and settlers have killed 1,054 Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Over 760 settler attacks have been documented since the outbreak of war, the majority supported and encouraged by Israel’s far right government
  • The UN recently added Israel to its ‘blacklist’ for sexual violence in conflict zones, a significant international condemnation reflecting documented allegations of abuse by detained flotilla activists and broader concerns about the treatment of Palestinian detainees
  • Over 3,000 people have been killed by Israeli attacks on Lebanon in the past three months
  • Over a million people in Gaza remain in urgent need of basic shelter and humanitarian relief
  • The list goes on

People can agree with it or not, or feel it is justified or not, but these things have all happened, or continue to happen. The only thing that appears to be in dispute is whether or not the victims deserved it, which is a hard pill to swallow.

I truly get the anger and distress caused by October 7th, if we take just one justification for the war. What happened that day was horrific, barbaric and inexcusable. But so has been the response. Yet I don’t see a single comment from anyone sharing an ounce of regret or demonstrating any embarrassment or shame for the extreme actions of the Israeli government. None. Many just cheer on the IDF and say how amazing it all is, and what heroes they are. And then they wonder why the tide of public opinion is increasingly turning against them. But not to worry – just call all critics antisemitic and ‘jew haters’ and they’ll soon be scared into submission. That’s the tactic, anyway.

LinkedIn comment

On many occasions I’ve tried to respond honestly to supporters of the war in my effort to genuinely understand the mindset of those I don’t agree with. But so far it’s proved virtually impossible. On top of the killing, the suffering and the distress of everyone living in Palestine, Iran and Lebanon, my biggest disappointment is the lack of humanity shown by the aggressors – on both sides. I’m still waiting to have a conversation about all of this, one that comes on all sides from a place of genuine concern and acceptance that this level of suffering is wrong.

One day, as Omar El Akkad puts it brilliantly in his book, everyone will have always been against this. But right now it feels like much of the world is washing its hands of the whole sorry saga, and meanwhile the killings – and the arguments justifying it all – go on.

The Little Book of Mindful Social Change

It’s been nearly four years since I wrote my last book. Given I’m not a professional writer who makes a living from the art, that’s fine. But last week a book idea came to me out of nowhere, and in the spirit of not resting on my laurels I got to work on it straight away.

The universe delivered and I published it yesterday. The Little Book of Mindful Social Change is the first time I’ve written down my philosophy to social change – ideas and strategies and behaviours learnt over many years in many places.

If you care deeply, think carefully and wonder if helping might just add to the noise, this book is for you. It’s for people who believe deep down that change should be thoughtful, humane and grounded. Not rushed, performative or driven by ego.

Drawing on years of real-world experience with kiwanja.net and FrontlineSMS, the book looks at what actually makes a difference. And it’s not grand strategies or shiny tools but quiet adaptations, humility, deep listening and trust in local knowledge. The most meaningful impact often comes from letting go. Letting go of control, of certainty and of the need to be right.

Running through this short collection of observations is a gentle exploration of mindfulness, Buddhism and inner work, offering a steady counterbalance to the urgency and intensity that so often surround social change. The book speaks honestly about the risks of good intentions, the harm that can come from moving too fast, and the importance of acting with care, respect, love and humility.

In the spirit of collaboration, friendship and inclusivity, the book is available as a free PDF here. It is also available on Amazon Kindle here, and will soon be available in paperback and hardback.