A radical step across continents

Photo provided to China Daily

YAPS is also a platform for young African professionals and students to talk about current China-Africa issues and promote Africa's "brand".

One mission is helping African students move on to employment by hosting resume-development workshops.

Thinking back on his college years five months away from graduation in China and seeing another unaddressed need, Negga founded Kiziga, which means a channel or circle in the Kignarwanda language of Rwanda.

"We've partnered with about 250 Chinese universities to accept applications on their behalf and built an online platform that an African student can come to and find all the information he or she needs to safely apply to a Chinese university as it's not easy to apply to them (directly) online," he says.

Is this son of a successful Maoist Marxist-Leninist guerilla fighter a capitalist?

"I do have a capitalist mind to a certain degree, but I am not so sure about my heart," he admits.

"I strongly believe that every country should be left alone to develop its own political model, as anything that is not internally driven and is prescribed from the outside is not sustainable and usually deadly."

Right now Negga is concentrating on a project he truly believes can change the world, especially Africa, using cloud computing and desktop virtualization.

"It's called Vingu, which means 'virtual cloud'," he says. "With one small Vingu box we'll be able to virtualize 50 to 100 computers. And we plan to put these in small African villages, schools, clinics and to sell them to SMEs there. Our technology dramatically reduces not only the cost of ownership but maintenance as well."

Negga hopes to make computing a human right.

"When you give people access, you are uplifting millions from poverty, and in five years this model will take over the African continent," he says.