An African lover judging ETHAccra: Santiago.
ETHAccra, Accra, and a judge from a long way away. “my name is Santiago, I’m from Colombia and I’m an African lover.” The interviewer says he has been everywhere, and the list backs it up: in Nigeria, “I was visiting the different hubs that you have in JOS, Kaduna,” Abuja, Lagos. In Ghana, “it’s always amazing to come here to the University of Ghana to interact with all the people and even more amazing to see how the people are increasing the projects and the teams from last year as well.”
His own role changed between editions: “last year I was part of the sponsors. I was doing workshops,” and “this year I was a judge and I was helping people and giving feedback.” The scale of it: “There were more like 60, 70 projects.”
Where he says the value actually is has nothing to do with judging. “That’s how, that’s actually where I found the most value, talking to people one-on-one in 10, 15 minutes, 20 minutes.” And the reason he keeps coming back is that he can measure it: “this year coming and seeing the growth of a lot of people, that’s what made me feel really happy and made me feel that what I have been doing personally is actually working.” He is also, by the channel’s own count, the only person in the ETHAccra set who spelled booyah correctly. The transcript below is from the original audio.