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Meet Mika
Pan-Africanist, author, speaker, and host of the One Africa Podcast.
Founder of Swahili Nation, the One Africa Movement, the One Africa Forum, and Kairos Mega Investment, all dedicated to transforming the African mindset, promoting continental unity, and advancing a prosperous, borderless Africa.
The debut book
Freedom of thought and Africa's path to transformation. The argument in one line: Africa's future will not be imported. Africans will build it.
The journey
1993
Iringa, Tanzania
Mika Lucas Chavala is born in Iringa, in Tanzania's southern highlands. Raised in the region, he attends Tanzania's public education system, where his early experiences help shape the values, curiosity, and vision that would later define his work as an entrepreneur, author, and Pan-African thinker.
2000
Iringa, Tanzania
Seven years of primary school, and the shape of the man is already visible. Mika serves as class leader throughout, speaking for his classmates and standing between students and teachers — a role that teaches him responsibility, communication and the habit of serving others early. He does particularly well in Mathematics, a subject he grows to love under his mother, herself a mathematics teacher, whose encouragement builds the analytical instinct he still works with. Outside the classroom he finds music: a deep love of rap and songwriting, used to say what he thinks, lift other people up and entertain his friends. He writes numerous original songs in these years and performs them at school events — graduation ceremonies, student orientation, World AIDS Day. One of those moments is him on stage with his group, performing an original rap at his own primary school graduation. Even that young, he has the nerve to stand in front of an audience and communicate through what he makes; leadership, mathematics and music are the foundation the communicator, storyteller and visionary is built on.
2007
Iringa, Tanzania
In 2007, having finished primary school, Mika is selected by the Government of Tanzania to join secondary school — and finds the two things that will set the course of his life: music and leadership. He spends his first two years writing countless rap songs and founds a group with several classmates, MESADA, pictured here, built on the idea that music could push young people forward. In early 2008 he enters Lugalo Star Search, one of the biggest local talent competitions of the day, and rather than perform an ordinary song he writes about a tragedy the school was living through: after the death of a fellow student, he composes and performs a tribute carrying the grief, hope and unity of the students. It takes first place, and with it a deal from Flats Record, one of the leading studios in his hometown, founded by Fred Msungu — later his spiritual father and mentor. For two years he works at becoming one of Tanzania's most influential rappers. Then, at sixteen, at an Easter Christian conference, he has a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, commits his life to Him and is born again. He walks away from secular music and turns his gift toward preaching, encouraging other young people and growing spiritually: the ambition shifts from being a successful musician to being a man of purpose and character. The change shows in his leadership too — he serves as a student leader in his division and as an active leader in the Pentecostal Students Association, learning integrity, servant leadership, teamwork and leading by example. He keeps his grades up through all of it and graduates the second-best Mathematics student in the school, which opens the door to Advanced Level. He lists three preferred schools, is admitted to one of his top choices, and takes the Economics, Geography and Mathematics combination — the decision that eventually carries him to Economics in South Korea. These are the years that turn a young rapper chasing fame into a leader driven by faith, purpose and a vision to serve Africa.
Conversations with the founders, thinkers and builders shaping Africa's future.
Find out more
Mika has held rooms from the Pan-African Youth Summit in Addis Ababa to Seoul National University's lecture halls, in English, Swahili and Korean. Audiences leave with the argument for one Africa and one passport, and the feeling that it is theirs to execute.
National TV panels, university stages, creator workshops and conferences. Tell his team about your event and they will come back with availability.
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