bloom: Jenny Ambukiyenyi Onya
Is it possible to have a fulfilling career in the arts and technology at the same time? With her thriving technology business and successful dance theater projects, proves Jenny Ambukiyenyi Onya that anything is possible with powerful ideas, hard work and dedication. 💻🤝🏾💃🏼
A born entrepreneur
You first displayed your entrepreneurial spirit when you started your first company as a teenager. How did that come about?
As part of my economics lessons at school I had the opportunity to take part in a contest for mini entrepreneurs organised by BNP Paribas. Together with some school friends, I registered a small company to sell picture frames. In fact, we went on to sell everything that we produced! My first entrepreneurial experience was rewarding.
This put the idea in my mind that this is what I wanted to do. So, after secondary school, I studied business management at university of Liège. My father isn’t an entrepreneur, he is an engineer with a lot of ambition, he always has projects in mind, and I think my entrepreneurial spirit comes from there. I have noticed that, as an adult, everything in my world is about creating something, fully furnished ideas coming from a blank piece of paper. And this creative process started with my first entrepreneurial experience.
Where do you think your ambition comes from?
Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a "boss lady". I think I saw it on TV or in a movie, a black woman with a big and innovative company that was respected by others for what she accomplished and contributed to society. It all started from this big idea, and I said to myself that I would like to do that too.
The women in my family are all really strong starting with my grandmothers. My maternal grandmother passed away five years ago. In Africa , she really took care of the family, she had nine children including my Mum while working as a schoolteacher. When I spent time with her, her strength shone through. And maybe that’s where my ambition also comes from, having such strong women around me.
Combining technology and art
You also call yourself an art-ivist thanks to your choreography work. Can you tell us more about this?
I write dance-theatre plays. The last one was in November last year, 2022. As with the entrepreneurial process that I practise, it all goes through the same creation process: starting from a blank piece of paper then creating a story, a context and a world around the characters. I find it really thrilling.
My work with the dance organisation can be called entrepreneurship because we have to manage a cast, as well as the places where we are going to rehearse in and perform in, and also the lighting, the costume, the music and so on need to follow an artistic direction. So, there is a lot of management behind the dance, theatre, or play, and that’s the area I’m now in.
How did you get into the tech side of things?
Dancing was a hobby when I was young. When it became a little bit serious, I had to choose: dance or study? I chose to do both. While I was always a bit more focused on my studies, I always had dance on the side.
My studies were focused on international strategic marketing at the University of Liege. I also spent my third year of my studies at the University of Murcia in Spain. While I specialised in marketing, my major was business management, which covered everything about managing different types of projects, and IT projects were part of it. So, at the end of my studies I asked myself if I should focus on marketing or go into general project management. I was then approached by a consulting company in Belgium. I signed because I was interested in working on different projects as I am a multi-interested and -tasking person. Also, the short project timings and the diversity that consulting offers were perfect for me to get started.
A lot of the projects I worked on were about Software Quality Assurance, Change and Digital Transformation . So even though I’m not a developer and I don’t work on the script, I’m managing and working within teams doing that, while respecting deadlines and meeting targets. Working in tech wasn’t a conscious choice, it was where project management took me. And now IT and Technology are an integral part of my life.
What is it about tech that interests you?
What fascinates me about technology is understanding, analysing, optimising and testing how data flows from computer systems to other computer systems. How technologically speaking computer models are interconnected, and how the data passing through them is collected, cleaned, transformed and displayed to an end user. This whole ecosystem is very exciting to me.
Quality Assurance and Testing are more concrete for me, because in project management you don't really have to understand the technology deeply, but for testing you do. You have to deep dive into the systems to test them properly. And I felt that this was my place because I really liked seeing how systems work together.
I learned how to do most of this on the job. Testing is really accessible, and that's why a lot of consultants start in this area. It's a good way to really understand how things flow and appreciate the language of it. But that doesn't mean it was easy. After eleven years as a consultant working in consulting companies, I was ready for a change.
"You have to deep dive into the systems to test them properly. And I felt that this was my place because I really liked seeing how systems work together."
Fit-For-Purpose Technologies
In December 2019 you co-founded Fit-For-Purpose Technologies together with your husband. Where did the idea come from?
After eleven years as a consultant, I had a feeling that I couldn't grow anymore in this area. Even though I knew I needed to change, I was a bit scared to make the jump. Life as an IT consultant is comfortable. So, why change?
But I needed more, I needed to give more meaning to what I was doing, to impact the society we live in. I needed to start something from a blank piece of paper. I needed to dive back into my creative process!
My husband has a Phd. in Artificial Intelligence with over 15 years of experience in the field. We decided to pool our strengths and experience to create Fit-For-Purpose Technologies. Our mission is to facilitate the adoption of new technologies to all, but also to boost the innovation process that we believe is the cornerstone towards the transformation and evolution of our Society. This ambition and the dreams we had might have seemed a bit crazy to those around us, but it was almost visceral for us to undertake and directly contribute to the world of tomorrow! We decided to take the plunge and to jump into this rewarding adventure that is technological entrepreneurship.
"But I needed more, I needed to give more meaning to what I was doing, to impact the society we live in. I needed to start something from a blank piece of paper. I needed to dive back into my creative process!"
We started as a consulting services and AI solutions development company. We have evolved and are now 4 in the company including 2 AI engineers. We currently have developed our own proprietary products, and we are looking at the international stage.
Our way of working is transversal, we have created a technology called HALISI, that can penetrate different markets. Because the other co-founder is a strong and highly skilled AI expert and also has worked with human face analysis a lot during his academic career, we started with biometrics for humans before thinking about biometrics for animals. We believe that, just like human beings, animals can also have unique features that can be analyzed.
After talking to different stakeholders working in the agriculture field in Africa, we decided to focus on cattle biometrics. African banks and insurance companies must be able to reliably identify the owners and their animals. However, current Livestock identification methods are invasive and unreliable because of the risk of loss, damage or reuse. At Fit-For-Purpose Technologies, we leveraged cutting edge Artificial Intelligence to create HALISI. An intangible and non-invasive Artificial Intelligence software that uses a simple photo to analyse a cow's face for robust identification. Today, enabling millions of smallholder farmers all over the world to qualify for micro-credit or livestock insurance coverage. After two years of hard work and testing, we now have HALISI , a working prototype. We are preparing a pilot of HALISI in Kenya and plan to extend it for other livestock animals, such as camels, goats, sheeps, horses, etc...
One way we’re looking at Africa for penetration of Deep-Technology in the region. Not just for cost reasons, but also for infrastructure. We’re making sure our algorithms work on smartphones because this is a standard device in Africa. Everything happens with a smartphone, even payments.
Where did the name "Fit- For-Purpose" come from?
It came from a discussion with my husband. We wanted to work on projects that really fit the needs of people, their environment and their context. That's why we want technology that works in Africa or other places in the world where there are less reliable electricity supplies and/or internet connectivity. In other words, technology that fits the context and serves a deep purpose. We want to facilitate the adoption of Artificial Intelligence for everyone, not just people that have money, but also people living in less developed countries.
"We want to facilitate the adoption of Artificial Intelligence for everyone, not just people that have money, but also people living in less developed countries."
What is it like being an independent AI entrepreneur in Belgium without investors, as opposed to being part of a larger group?
Personally, I recommend starting little on your own because it's very important to have your idea and vision really well established, including having a prototype before looking for investments. You never know, maybe your company should be valued at a billion, but you end up selling for less. Not only talking about business valuation, the fact that you can make a large part of your prototype yourself allows you to first learn or continue to extend your knowledge, but also to get to the bottom of all aspects of a technological product selling, including aspects regarding the business model, the market penetration strategy, the price, the maintenance, the scaling up etc... All these aspects should be well structured and make sense for you first as a solo entrepreneur. It is therefore very beneficial to bootstrap as far as possible, before eventually (but not necessarily) jumping into fundraising.
You also co-founded Neotex in Kinshasa (RD Congo) in 2021. What’s the idea behind this new company?
Neotex is an African subsidiary of Fit-For-Purpose Technologies, whose mission is to contextualize our Artificial Intelligence products and services in the African landscape. We are indeed looking for a global expansion of our activities. Still, we always keep an eye on Africa because we think it's a market with many opportunities and challenges that we can solve. Neotex gives a solid voice for Fit-For-Purpose Technologies on the African continent and impacts African life and society.
From the past to the future
From all your successes, what are you most proud of?
There are many things I am proud of. I am very proud of the first dance theater piece I wrote, Elikya Na Nga, which means "my hope" in Lingala. It was a dance theater play that I wrote and directed about the rape of women in RD Congo. In terms of management, I hired 18 artists. We started small and ended with a more significant piece touring in Belgium. We brought up a topic that is hard to discuss, and the message sensitised many people from different backgrounds.
I am also very proud that I jumped to create two Deep-Tech companies on a mission for Sustainable Growth Development all around the globe and hiring innovative and open-minded people.
As you have noticed, I mix the artistic and technological entrepreneur I have made. Indeed, I do not believe as human beings, we only have one talent, one role, or one position to play. I instead think profoundly that people have abilities in different areas. You don't have to choose. You have to discover them and make them grow. And if you search, experience, fall, and retry, you can combine them to create unique products, processes, and services for the next generations!
I advise everyone not to limit themselves, to dream big, and combine everything they are unique.
"I instead think profoundly that people have abilities in different areas. You don't have to choose. You have to discover them and make them grow. And if you search, experience, fall, and retry, you can combine them to create unique products, processes, and services for the next generations!"
What challenges are you still facing, or would you like to overcome?
I'm black. I'm a woman. I have kids. I work in Deep-Technology. Together, that's a challenge itself in certain contexts and environments. Whether at the customer level or from a talent engagement point of view.
Fortunately, these are not points that slow us down; on the contrary, they motivate us to move forward and to be models of inspiration for future generations. We want to be the people that a little girl or a little boy like us (Afrodoscendant) might one day be able to point out and say, "I want to do the same thing; they did it!". In the same way, we had also been inspired in the past, not only by other inspiring models resembling us.
I hope to have that effect on the next generation of enterprising girls in Belgian Tech.
