For open learner Jerry Vance Anguzu, the lockdown during the Covid pandemic opened doors to computer programming, banking, and entrepreneurship.
They say every crisis also presents an opportunity. Open learner Jerry Vance Anguzu seized one such opportunity in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, when his native country of Uganda went into lockdown. Jerry was stuck at home, unable to earn a living, but that enforced inactivity gave him the chance to pursue new directions in his education. A few years earlier, he had discovered MIT OpenCourseWare and had seen what it had to offer; now he returned to MIT Open Learning resources in earnest, plowing through courses in data science and computer programming; soon thereafter he was accepted into the MIT Emerging Talent program, where he began to develop an interest in entrepreneurship. Now, just a few years later, Jerry has his own startup, Everpesa Technologies, a financial services platform that offers sustainable investment opportunities and financial literacy resources to people in sub-Saharan Africa. Along the way, he has become a self-described “OCW ambassador,” enthusiastically spreading the word to relatives and colleagues about the learning resources that are available online through MIT OpenCourseWare. “You don’t need to pay anything,” Jerry tells them. “You just need to have a bit of time.”
The Open Learners podcast is produced by Alexis Haut and hosted by Emmanuel Kasigazi and Michael Jordan Pilgreen.
Relevant Resources:
MIT Jameel World Education Lab
MIT MicroMasters Program in Statistics and Data Science
6.0001 Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python on MIT OpenCourseWare
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions
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To share your own open learning story with Michael and Emmanuel, send them an email at open_learners_pod@mit.edu.
JERRY VANCE ANGUZU: To me now, I believe if you ask me who I am, I believe I'm a lifelong learner. And that's what OCW introduced to me, being that idea that if you want to learn anything, you can simply go and look for the content. It's probably there.
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EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: Welcome to Open Learners.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: A podcast that tells the stories of learners all over the world who use MIT's OpenCourseWare.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: I'm Emmanuel Olimi Kasigazi, an open learner myself, from Kampala, Uganda.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: And I'm Michael Jordan Pilgreen, an open learner from Memphis, Tennessee. So Emmanuel, do you want to do the honors of introducing today's learner?
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: Sure. Today, we are going to hear from Jerry Vance Anguzu, an open learner from my home country of Uganda. Jerry is what I would consider a super learner. He took his first OCW class in statistics in 2020 while he was a student at Kyambogo University, a prestigious university here in Kampala. In the past four years, he not only graduated from Kyambogo University with a bachelor's degree, but he also completed his MIT certification in statistics and data science.
He also earned a certificate in computer and data science through MIT's Emerging Talent Program, which goes to show the kind of drive that Jerry has. He not only achieved the bachelor's during that time but went on to add on more certificates, more degrees, and OCW has been very crucial to that journey. So I can't wait to hear the episode.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: Wow, Emmanuel, so he's really done a lot of different programs at MIT. It's so impressive. For those of you who don't know, MIT's Emerging Talent program is a part of the MIT Jameel World Education Lab. It is formally known as MIT ReACT, and you'll hear us refer to the program as both MIT ReACT and Emerging Talent throughout the interview.
Calling the program by its current name, Emerging Talent develops global education programs for talented individuals living in challenging economic and social circumstances around the world. Emerging Talent is a year-long program of courses and workshops. Its goal is to give participants tools to advance their careers. Jerry was just one of 50 people to be accepted in the 2021 cohort, and he hasn't let the skills he acquired there go to waste.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: That's right, Michael. Jerry started his own business in September, 2023. It's called Everpesa. It's a banking and investment fintech platform that also provides financial literacy resources to people in sub-Saharan Africa. Jerry is going to tell us all about that during the interview. But I have to say he's really meeting a real need on the continent. How did you first meet Jerry, Michael?
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: It's funny. I think both you and I met Jerry through LinkedIn right after the COVID pandemic.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: Yeah.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: And we sat down and talked to him about his journey through COVID. And this was before he had graduated from the Emerging Talent program. And we were just so fascinated by his story and his drive to continue his education despite being the sole income earner in his household during the lockdown.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: This is such a great conversation, Michael, actually. He talks about doing online courses without a computer or Wi-Fi, which is very impressive and harder than it sounds. He talks about how the pandemic affected him and his family and how he grew from entering data to owning a business in just four years, which is impressive.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: Jerry's journey is really incredible, but let's hear from Jerry himself. Here is our conversation with Jerry Vance Anguzu of Kampala, Uganda.
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JERRY VANCE ANGUZU: Let me introduce myself in my mother tongue. There's a lot of cultural diversity in Uganda. Today, I think, if this is the opportunity I have, I want to say something in a different language-- a Ugandan language, but probably one many people around the world have probably never, never heard of. So that particular language is called Lugbara. I come from the northwestern part of the country. So let me introduce myself.
[SPEAKING LUGBARA]
[CHUCKLES] So what I simply said is my name is Jerry Vance. And fun fact, my last name, Anguzu, It's in the same language. And it simply means "long journey."
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: That's really cool, Jerry. In our first conversation we had when Emmanuel, you, and I met just kind of informally before this all became a thing, I'm interested to go back to before COVID when you were using OpenCourseWare, but before Emerging Talent and all that. Maybe you could tell us what your day to day life was like.
JERRY VANCE ANGUZU: I started getting-- when I was still in high school or towards finishing my high school, I knew I wanted to get a career particularly in the financial space. To be specific, I wanted to be a trader. I got to watch this documentary about the Black-Scholes model, which really got me so interested in the whole financial landscape. And from then I really started going down into that rabbit hole. And very quickly, if you're interested in finance, you'll get to learn about the 2008 financial crisis.
So I tried to read very extensively about any kind of information that I could actually get about that whole crisis. So question to me was, what do I then pursue after? Because I was then convinced I really wanted to be in the financial field. And that's really what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, there isn't a course of financial engineering in Uganda. So if you wanted to become a financial engineer, you will have to look for your way around and get something else. And I think, to me, the closest thing to financial engineering at that time was statistics.
Around that time, now, I started doing the math, trying to study, and all that. However, it very quickly became obvious to me that I might not be able to derive the kind of value that I really want from this particular course because it so happens that the course was very theoretical in nature. There were really very few practical ways to see how you can actually make an application of all these various concepts that you're studying. So from then, I started really looking for content-- looking for, can I get certain types of content which can supplement me-- supplement me so that, yes, I am doing this course because as a person I'd always been a very, very curious person.
So when I was really in this point, that is when I started looking around online what kinds of materials are there. And growing up as a child, I'd always known about MIT in particular because I was interested in physics a lot. So I kept on reading about famous physicists. And many times, if you read about physics long enough, you'll come across ideas from MIT. But you always had that kind of aspiration there that one day, maybe, I want to go to MIT and maybe study from MIT.
However, that didn't seem to be something which I could easily realize in the short term. So I started getting into what kind of material is actually out there. Is it possible to learn from MIT without necessarily going to campus? So that's when I started looking through and seeing what kind of content is actually out there. And very quickly, you come across, then, MIT OpenCourseWare. It's very hard because, on the one hand, I have all these classwork I have to do. On the other hand, I'm trying to learn something which is-- it is related, but then it's not particularly what I am studying at the university.
So you have to create your own time to do that kind of extra study, which was a problem because you have exams. They are examining you on what they are teaching you at the university, not necessarily what you're interested in learning. So I tried doing the course, but several times I couldn't manage it. You watch a couple of lectures. You're unable to follow, because you've never really programmed a computer. So you get lost in the weeds. You don't know what to do next, so you're burned on the course.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: What happened after you took that course? Lead us up to the pandemic and where you were during that time, too.
JERRY VANCE ANGUZU: The pandemic happened when I was towards my final years in the university. So now, remember what I had told you earlier-- that it was really hard to particularly study the course while I'm also having my classwork. So to me, in a way, the pandemic provided a very great opportunity because here we were. Schools had closed. University had closed, and we really had nothing to do but just literally sitting home. So this is the time I really started taking this course seriously because when I had time on my hand, and it was indefinite-- we didn't know when this was coming to an end.
Now, as soon as I finished the first course, which was Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python, I was immediately interested and got to the second course, which I also completed during that time of the pandemic. And like I mentioned, the reason why I believe that I was able to-- because, finally, I had time. I had a computer at that time. And I just acquired a computer. Then I get all the time I need to actually concentrate on this course.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: Oh, wow, that's amazing. You mean you are doing all these classes before without a computer first?
JERRY VANCE ANGUZU: Yeah.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: Give us some background on that.
JERRY VANCE ANGUZU: So I didn't have a laptop initially. What I had was a smart phone. So what I would do is-- I explicitly remember my smart phone, a Huawei Y330. So I love it because it was my first ever smartphone that I owned. So I used to download the content and keep it on because it was very hard watching it online. So funny enough, there used to be a place near where I stayed. It was a university-- not where I went, but it was a medical institute. So they had Wi-Fi on.
So you know internet is quite expensive in Uganda. So you wouldn't be able to download a file of 500 MB, at least in that time when you have no income. That's a lot of data. Only 500 MB-- don't even talk about 1 GB. And these courses are a lot of content. So what we used to do is we used to run to the institute outside because, of course, they couldn't let you in. So outside there the Wi-Fi could reach where we could stand.
So believe me, there used to be a line of people who are literally standing on the road. And we termed it as tapping the Wi-Fi. In hindsight, when I think about it, it might also be one of the reasons it was initially hard for me to complete the course because, yes, you go through these videos. But you have nowhere to practice it exactly. I used to download a number of apps-- a number of coding apps you can have on the phone. But those, I feel like, are not the most effective ways.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: Yeah, it's cool. So you mentioned you didn't have any background in any of this. What was your background like? What did you study in high school? And maybe as a follow-up question, I know in Uganda, most from primary, we are using English all the way. Was that the same case with you as well? Because most of OCW courses are in English.
JERRY VANCE ANGUZU: Yeah. English is the-- OK, I believe now it's not the official, but it's one of the official languages in Uganda, English and Kiswahili. So for me, English has never really been a problem. It's something which I learned from way back when I was growing up. So that was really never a challenge in terms of communication.
I'd always known how to speak English for as long as I can remember. During my high school in Uganda, you study a lot of courses, especially in lower high school. So when you get to upper high school, that's when you specialize. I particularly did physics, mathematics, and economics. Yeah, I always loved physics. Like I mentioned, I thought at one point I was going to be a physicist.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: I love physics, too, and chemistry. Chemistry didn't love me back, [LAUGHS]. So what a story.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: Yeah, and we do have a global audience. So I'm curious, Emmanuel or Jerry, if you want to talk about this. How was the pandemic in Uganda? How did it impact you? And then how did having access to online education-- and we'll get into it here in a bit-- but having access to that online community help you during that time, too?
JERRY VANCE ANGUZU: When the pandemic started out, all schools-- all institutes of education-- those were the first ones which ended up being closed. So now, when that happened, we all thought, I believe like everyone else, that maybe this is something which is going to take a week and this gets resolved, maybe two weeks at most, or whichever. Now, very quickly the situation starts to escalate. It's now not just schools which are closed. Businesses get closed down.
Now, this really, to us, from my experience, it presented a very big problem because, you see, in Uganda and maybe most of sub-Saharan Africa, particularly for our case, most people live hand-to-mouth, right? So you go to the market. You're probably selling something. So whatever income you're going to get from that particular sale of that day, that is what is going to feed you. You do not have any kind of social security net or anything which is looking out for you. So you don't have any savings. Basically, you need to work to be able to eat. You need to go to work to earn some money so that you can be able to buy food.
So when the pandemic comes and the economy is literally shut down, that became a very, very difficult period because getting food itself became very hard because there was now no kind of economic activities taking place. Remember, everything remains the same. There's still rent which had to be paid. Funny story, because during the time actually when the pandemic started, I was renting out a hostel-- the university where I was staying. But now, because of the pandemic, there was really no money to pay the rent. It was a really difficult and challenging times.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: Yeah, I understand you.
JERRY VANCE ANGUZU: That is when I saw that the online education-- it was really a savior, to say the least. One, you did have schools. It reached a point it felt like there was no other opportunities which are going to come around because, you see, you're betting your entire life and your entire career on this education. You're going to get this university degree. And then you start to know people who are sick. Then you start to know people who passed on. So it's something which starts becoming personal.
I also come from a family which has several people in it, which is really a typical African family. They're not really nuclear families. It's really an extended family. You have cousins of cousins of cousins all staying under the same roof. So everything becomes challenging. All these mouths have to be fed. So there was a lot of really strain. And to me, studying online seemed to be an escape.
[RHYTHMIC BEAT]
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: This is a very interesting journey. You went from just trying to do these courses on your smartphone. The pandemic happens. Then you get your own laptop. Then you do the actual courses on your laptop-- very, very powerful story. You mentioned you have many at home. Have you ever-- the things you are learning and this world that you have been exposed to-- have you tried to pass that on or any impact in your surrounding? Maybe your cousins at home-- you've introduced them to OCW?
JERRY VANCE ANGUZU: The person who I introduced to OCW is my brother. He was doing engineering, so I kept on telling him about, actually, there is this platform you could get a lot of content, especially from the engineering side. So as a relative, that is the one key person I believe I introduced. However, beyond that, here is something which is interesting that happened. I've done a bit of Python, and I now knew and understood a bit of Python or programming in general. So people-- many of my colleagues, actually-- didn't know what Python was.
So several times they kept on asking me, what are these things on your computer? What are these things that you're studying and all that? So that is when I kept on telling them, oh, you can actually learn this content online. You can learn this content online on this particular platform. And in a way, over time, I started becoming almost-- I like to call myself an OCW ambassador, telling people, actually, you can get this kind of education online. You don't need to pay anything. You just need to have a bit of time.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: Yeah, I was going to say that's really awesome. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you found out about MIT Emerging Talent. And after that, I don't know when in the process you decided to be a business owner, but maybe you could talk a little bit about founding a business and how that looks day to day, too, after the Emerging Talent.
JERRY VANCE ANGUZU: I remember that whole quote that learning from MIT is like trying to drink from a fire hose. So to me, I really got-- I got hooked to the whole MIT culture because I could see there's something I have actually learned, especially in terms of how they were explaining the various concepts to me. They simplified a lot of things, which I really love. So from that whole process of always wanting to see what kind of free materials MIT putting there-- what kind of resources can I gain from MIT-- one day I came across this program, which is called MIT ReACT.
So I started looking further into what MIT ReACT is, learning further more about it, and MIT ReACT, which is now MIT Emerging Talents-- learning further about it. And I realized that I actually fit the profile to be able to study under this program. So I write my application. I send it through. I remember it was a very daunting task because you had to do a virtually proctored exam before.
So I remember you had to wake up very early in the morning to try and do that. And after I did the exam, I kept on wondering if I am going to pass of if I'm not going to pass, waited a couple of weeks, and then I received that message that I had actually been accepted. It should be around 2022 when we are still in the pandemic.
Once I received that letter that I have actually been accepted, to me, now, this was it. I had always wanted to do MIT, and here now I had a really legit way to actually do this content. So it's a really comprehensive program, which gives you a lot of support. And the community is really very helpful and very welcoming to, really, anyone from around the world. We are part of a cohort which only had 50 learners. So that really gave me a lot of confidence boost, like, oh, wow, I'm part of only a group of 50 people who were accepted into this program.
From thereafter, we also had the entrepreneurship leadership bootcamp-- the MIT Bootcamps-- which was really very insightful, which started getting me excited about the whole entrepreneurship and what it was because we had a team where we came up with a proposal for a project which was called Unibuddy. Unibuddy was supposed to be an educational platform for young kids. Unfortunately, that didn't eventually come to become a real company. But I'd gotten the key principles in terms of what a company is, what a startup is.
I then knew for sure I really wanted to do entrepreneurship. And I really wanted to apply the skills I have, not just to really do a job, but really also to be an entrepreneur. So around that time, I needed a job. So I started really writing applications when I had also finished the MIT ReACT program. One very interesting thing that I really want to note out is I kept on emphasizing it in terms of my qualifications, putting forth all these various certificates that I had actually gained and my MIT ReACT qualification. And this is really what got me into the interview rooms.
I'll be frank with you. I managed to get a number of interviews, and I eventually landed on a job with M-KOPA. So what M-KOPA is-- it's a solar company. They have a pay-as-you-go model for retailing solar products and mobile devices. In a period of about two months or so, I went from being a data entrant to the BI department, which was really the data backend and the data analytics side of the business because that was the field that I was interested in, which, to me, really now puts me into the trajectory of this career in a technical field in a data science field.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: How do you see yourself now? Ever since you started doing OCW courses, how is your identity reflecting on your journey? How are you, Jerry, as a person, do you feel have changed because of OCW?
JERRY VANCE ANGUZU: I feel like OCW has helped me a lot, especially in terms of my career trajectory because I could literally attribute what I do now-- what the jobs I have done-- in one way or another, they have a direct link to me having to learn about OCW, whether that is through the first initial programs I took to simply learn programming, or through the Emerging Talent program. So to me, it really broadened my view about the world. I was living in a confined world of where I didn't know all this other things existed around the world.
So to me, that was really transformational. And I keep saying this. To me now, I believe-- if you ask me who I am, I believe I'm a lifelong learner. And that's what OCW introduced to me, being that idea that if you want to learn anything, you can simply go and look for the content. It's probably there. You can go and use online materials, and then you get to learn that. In my business, for example, we have to start doing accounting recently. And I just figured, wait, I'm not an accountant. I don't have background in accounting. But then there's online content for accounting.
So recently I took another course, especially in understanding the key financial statements for a business, which is the balance sheets and the income statement-- so learning what are they, how they function, and all that. So to me, that is really the eye-opener I got from OCW that if you want to learn anything, and if you're interested in anything, there's always content that you can refer to.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: All right, Jerry, I just want to give you time to elevator pitch your business and what it's all about since you got the skill set at your previous role when you were doing the data analytics.
JERRY VANCE ANGUZU: And maybe just to lead into that, after I do data analytics for a while, I almost start to get bored of that because I felt like I am being underutilized. I really wanted to be able to build my own products and to channel my own destiny. I wanted to do a switch into software engineering, which I successfully did. But I got a role as a software engineer, which really gave me a steep learning curve because I could already program. Now I just needed to fill those last gaps, especially in learning frontend technologies, JavaScript, React.
So when I did that for a couple of months, and I figured that I was now a bit comfortable enough, again, using online resources to learn how to code, how I taught myself-- when I figured that I will now do that, that is when I decided that I now need to be able to build my own products. I went back to my old childhood dreams of my interest in the financial field. Looking at the financial crisis and all that, finance seemed to be a black field no one wanted to go into. But when you go back to the basics of finance, it's really an enabler to help people. So to us, really, to how do we best help people, that is when we came up with the idea of Everpesa technologies.
In Uganda, the financial sector is still largely underdeveloped, which is true probably for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. Very few people have bank accounts, and majority of the population is still unbanked. So they're unbanked in the sense that they do not have access to the more formal financial institutions. However, there are informal financial institutions which are available in the country in which they actually are able to bank their money. Now, these are usually the village bank-- the local bank.
Now, one of the key challenges to these kinds of institutions because they are informal, a lot of their processes and methods are also very informal. For example, the bookkeeping is completely paper dependent. So what we decided to do with Everpesa is, how are we able to help and digitize these informal institutions? So how will we be able to bring in technology to help digitize them? So what we are simply trying to do is to digitize these institutions and bring them into the formal line with our core banking system.
And then what we are also looking to move into is to be able to provide investment opportunities, and not just any investment opportunities. But we necessarily want green investment opportunities so that people are able to invest in sustainable businesses using this platform. Investments have traditionally been an inaccessible field for most people.
Many people have been scammed. Many people have lost so much money because they do not know or they do not have ways in which they are able to make various investments because the clientele of [INAUDIBLE] ideally wants to grow. So we decided to build up a platform which can provide for them diverse investment opportunities so are they able to, one, learn about money-- they learn about financial literacy-- but they are not really stopped there. But they are able to take action.
[RHYTHMIC TUNE]
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: That was such a cool conversation. Jerry really is a super learner. From OCW to Emerging Talent, he has taken full advantage of what MIT has to offer. And he is now a business owner. What's your biggest takeaway from the conversation with Jerry, Michael?
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: I think for me the biggest takeaway from talking with Jerry is that, just as his name implies, learning and growing and discovering who you are as an individual is a very long journey. Jerry was willing to stand outside in the heat or the rain to download courses that a lot of us that have it freely available on our phones would never do. And that persistence paid off for Jerry. And I think it became a beautiful journey for all of us, and I hope his journey also inspires others to continue to persist. What about you, Emmanuel?
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: Yeah, I feel you. The persistence is what also got to me. He talks about having his first smartphone-- a Y3-- and I personally have this experience. I know those are not very powerful phones. But it goes to show that whoever you are with whatever resources you have, you can begin from anywhere and you will get to whatever goal, whatever stage.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: Thanks to everyone for tuning in to our conversation with Jerry Vance Anguzu of Kampala, Uganda. Don't forget to check out Everpesa. We will put a link in our show notes.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: And we'll be back in two weeks with another story from a different learner in the global OCW community.
Open Learners is produced by Alexis Haut. Special thanks to the supporters and donors who make OCW possible.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: To learn more about MIT'S OpenCourseWare and to check out the courses mentioned in this episode, visit the OCW website at ocw.mit.edu.
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