From a D- to Harvard: Lessons from Joho's academic journey

Many Kenyans have expressed disbelief about Ali Hassan Joho’s KCSE D- and the fact that he is now a billionaire with a Master’s degree, and on the way to earning an executive qualification from Harvard’s Kennedy School.

This is a typical African mentality that gives some sort of entitlement to the academically gifted. After all, they are brilliant and society owes them a comfortable lifestyle, so they believe. If anybody wanted to understand why some brilliant people never made it in life, now you know.

The illusion of an enduring brilliance without effort to sustain it is one of the surest career killers. Intelligence is a latent attribute that needs to be sharpened continually in order for it to be useful. I have met people who were very brilliant at primary school but, either did not proceed beyond there or relaxed at high school and performed dismally. Whenever we meet, they keep reminding us how they used to perform better than us at primary school. Likewise, there are those who performed very well at secondary school but never proceeded to Advance level.

Some of them still believe they are better than those of us who proceeded beyond secondary school. This mentality is also common among undergraduate colleagues in Kenyan universities. There are those who obtained first-class honours degrees and those who graduated with a pass. Several decades later, some of them still believe the status quo has never changed despite the different routes that they took after college. In the history of University Education in Kenya, there was a celebrated Vice Chancellor of one of the top public universities. The gentleman graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree at the bottom of his class (BSc Pass), before he enrolled for a Post-Graduate Diploma in education, and excelled.

On the basis of that performance at Post-Graduate Diploma, he secured a scholarship to pursue an MPhil and later PhD at Stanford University, USA, from where he graduated at the top of his class. He later pursued an academic career in Methods of Teaching Mathematics, and quickly rose up the ranks to the level of Full Professor and Vice-Chancellor. Another well-documented story is that of Prof Ali Mazrui who did not pass his “O” Level exams well enough to enable him to proceed for “A” level education.

With determination and good benefactors, he ended up graduating with a PhD from Oxford, and in life, he was named as one of the notable “Global Intellectual Resource Persons.” The key lessons that we should pick from the examples of these two men, and many others across the globe is that success or failure is not an event. The mind requires to be continually exercised in order for it to realize its full potential, whether that is in academics, entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship. The past does not define the present. The constant factor is “continual effort.”

There have been cases of excellent students who allowed their minds to go to sleep because of complacency immediately they performed well in one exam or endeavour. They stopped trying. There are also people who performed awfully at the nascent stages of life, but turned their apparent failure around and rose to the top. Above all, there are human circumstances that place limitations on performance at one stage or another. Those circumstances do change, allowing the stumbling blocks to be removed from the path to success.

Ali Hassan Joho is a typical example of a man who has been able to turn around the circumstances of growing up in poverty to his advantage through focus and hard work.

The Joho who appeared for vetting for the CS position for which he was nominated by President William Ruto is definitely not the same person who scored a D- in KCSE. During the vetting, Joho demonstrated confidence, linguistic flamboyance and general knowledge.

The notion that there are people who cannot perform well in life because of a single exam has been debunked by many countries. For example, in Kenya, a student needs to have scored KCSE “A” Plain to be enrolled as a government-sponsored student in medical school.

In the USA, I have met two Medical Doctors of Kenyan extraction. One who had a “C” plain while the other had a “D+” in KCSE. How did they navigate it? One of them went to the USA as a practicing nurse having trained at the Kenya Medical Training College. On reaching the USA, he worked hard and completed the nursing registration exams, and started working there as a Registered Nurse. After a while, he enrolled for a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, which he passed.

While practicing as a Registered Nurse, he enrolled at a Medical School and successfully completed his Doctor of Medicine degree. He is now a respected doctor in the USA. The other one is a KCSE D+ student who went to the USA to join his parents. He started off as a Certified Nurse Assistant. He later enrolled for Associate and Bachelors Degrees in Nursing, and worked as a Registered Nurse. As of now, he has completed his MD and is undertaking residency at a Medical facility.

The journeys of these two men in the USA go to confirm that one-time exams have very little, if anything, to do with learners’ abilities. Examinations must not be used for social stratification. Kenya should abandon the examination ranking system, and instead encourage students to pursue their interests.

Professor Ongore teaches at the Technical University of Kenya. He is currently based in Colorado, USA.
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