How Africa News
Julius Mwale, a Kenyan multimillionaire, is the founder of Mwale Medical and Technology City (MMTC), a $2 billion community-owned sustainable metropolis in Kakamega, Kenya, comprising a significant medical and technical complex.
Mwale, who lives in the United States, was born into a family of entrepreneurs; his parents were business proprietors who died when he was young. However, their deaths left him in a dire financial circumstance; Mwale even went to school barefoot, according to Motivation Africa.
He attended Mukumu Boys Secondary School and then college, where he received a diploma in telecommunications engineering at a period when it was not popular among his peers. Mwale anticipated a potential future market in the telecoms industry more than any other professional career.
Following an argument with officials after being accused of being involved in an intellectual property dispute with several influential Kenyans, he was forced to depart Kenya to Uganda. Mwale then moved from Uganda to Zimbabwe before relocating to the United States in 2002, as worries of his arrest intensified in Uganda.
“I knew by getting that (technology) qualification, I could compete with any person in the world. While being a dentist or a doctor is good, I knew being a doctor in Kenya would limit me to the Kenyan environment only. However, being a telecommunications engineer, I would be global; I would be able to access resources globally,” said the Kenyan US-based visionary tycoon.
Mwale arrived in the United States amid the 9/11 attacks, making it impossible for him to acquire political asylum. He finally became homeless and lived in a low-income shelter for about a year. According to Motivation Africa, he misplaced his laptop, which had a considerable amount of research material for projects he was working on.
He eventually worked his way up, relying on public library computers that only permitted one person to use them for 30 minutes. His problem was exacerbated by acute culture shock as a result of various languages, weather, and food.
“The homeless shelter is halfway off the people coming from jail; you meet people that are not mainstream people in the society, but my focus was to work on my technology – the environment wasn’t very important,” Mwale said.
Against all chances, he enrolled at Columbia University to study electrical engineering, and after graduating, he started SBA Technology. The need to address security concerns during online transactions motivated the SBA. The company depended on a two-factor biometric authentication technology, for which it was granted a patent in 2005.
After marketing the technology and hiring professionals from all over the world, Mwale raised $2 million in seed money. The company now employs 60 people. It also boasts notable clientele such as the Bank of New York and JP Morgan Chase & Co. His technology has also been extended to universities and researchers who have used his patents to build biometrics that are now used globally.
