...... but as a culture? A culture where businesses could still make money, governments could still grow economies, and people could still build, wealth, but not at the expense of human dignity. Because sometimes I look at the world we have created, and I genuinely struggle to understand humanity.

We live in a world where weapons worth billions are being manufactured while children are dying of starvation.

Think about that for a moment.

Somewhere in the world, a child is going to sleep hungry. Somewhere else, another child is running from a bomb. And somewhere else, intelligent human beings are sitting in boardrooms discussing how to manufacture more weapons, sell more weapons, and make more money from war.

As if we need war more than we need humanity.

Human beings are, in my opinion, the greatest visible creatures to ever exist on Earth. We have intelligence. We have empathy. We have creativity. We have built cities, cured diseases, connected continents, travelled beyond our planet, and created technologies that previous generations could never have imagined.

Yet somehow, we have also created systems that make life miserable for one another.

And the disturbing thing is that many of these systems are not broken.

They are working exactly as they were designed to work.

They just weren't designed with empathy at the centre.

We live in a world where minerals can be extracted from a poor country to manufacture batteries, electronics and chips worth billions of dollars, while the people living above those minerals remain desperately poor.

And when control over those resources becomes important enough, conflict follows.

Sometimes I wonder: Have we reached a point where we manufacture war for profit?

Are innocent children, mothers and fathers simply acceptable casualties as long as somebody's balance sheet looks good?

How did we get here?

Look at Africa.

We have countries blessed with incredible natural resources, talented young people and enormous potential. Yet terrible leaders get into power and destroy the very things ordinary people need to survive - healthcare, education, food security, jobs and basic dignity.

And somebody always gains.

Imagine a young girl missing school because she cannot afford sanitary pads while somewhere within the same system, someone is stealing millions meant for public services.

How can we accept that?

What kind of society allows someone to accumulate more money than they could spend in several lifetimes while another human being cannot afford something as basic as menstrual hygiene?

Then there is something even more ridiculous.

We hate each other because of the colour of our skin.

A human being can show incredible compassion toward a pet, feed it, shelter it, protect it and treat it like family and then look at another human being and decide that they are somehow worth less because their skin has a different amount of melanin.

Think about how absurd that is.

And then there is technology.

Access to information is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to humanity. It genuinely excites me to see smartphones penetrating almost every corner of the world.

A child who previously had access to only a few books can potentially access the knowledge of humanity from a device in their hands.

That is incredible.

Technology can democratize knowledge.

But then profit enters the conversation.

We now have companies doing what initially looks like something amazing: allowing people who cannot afford smartphones upfront to acquire them through instalments.

Beautiful idea, right?

Until you look deeper.

Some financing models charge daily rates that can eventually make a struggling customer pay close to twice the original cost of the device.

Think about who that customer is.

This is not necessarily someone buying the latest expensive phone because they want luxury.

This could be someone who needs WhatsApp to communicate with customers.

Someone looking for employment.

A student trying to access educational material.

A parent trying to participate in the digital economy.

A small business owner trying to receive payments.

Someone who simply wants access to information.

And because that person is poor and cannot afford the device today, we sometimes make them pay significantly more than someone who already has money.

Being poor becomes expensive.

That is the part I struggle with.

Why should someone's difficult financial situation become an opportunity for us to extract even more from them?

Why can't we make profit while still asking ourselves:

Is this fair?

Why can't empathy exist inside capitalism?

Why can't a company make KSh 100 million instead of KSh 150 million if that difference means thousands of struggling families keep a little more money in their pockets?

Why can't shareholders win, employees win, customers win and communities win at the same time?

Even something as simple as transaction fees makes me think.

To one person, a transaction charge might look insignificant.

But somewhere in a slum, that same amount could buy food.

It could buy sanitary pads.

It could pay for transport.

It could buy airtime for someone looking for work.

It could mean something.

I am not against profit.

Profit creates jobs. Profit drives innovation. Profit allows businesses to survive. Profit gives entrepreneurs the courage to take risks and build things that can change society.

But profit without empathy can become exploitation.

Maybe the question we should start asking ourselves is not simply:

"How much money can we make?"

Maybe we should also ask:

"How much good can we create while making it?"

Imagine businesses competing not only on revenue and valuation, but also on how much human suffering they reduce.

Imagine investors asking about social impact with the same seriousness they ask about returns.

Imagine governments measuring success not only through GDP, but through the dignity of the poorest person in society.

Imagine technology designed not only to capture attention and generate revenue, but to genuinely improve people's lives.

Imagine capitalism with a conscience.

That is what I mean by empathetic profit.

Not charity.

Not giving away everything for free.

Not destroying capitalism.

Simply making profit while remembering that the person on the other side of the transaction is a human being.

Because perhaps humanity's greatest achievement will not be artificial intelligence, rockets, skyscrapers, smartphones or trillion-dollar companies.

Perhaps our greatest achievement will be the day we become intelligent enough to realize that success means very little if our success requires someone else's suffering.

We have built an incredibly intelligent world.

Now we need to build a more human one.