Technology Systems Architect. Cloud, AI & Security Engineer. Writer. Systems QA - empathy at heart.

Howard is a self-taught technologist. His career began in Ndirande, a township in Blantyre, Malawi, where he worked and saved to buy his first computer - the starting point for a self-directed path into electronics that he later formalised through certificates, diplomas and on-the-job training. Those early electronics skills grew into practical research ability: unlocking and repairing phones, repairing TVs, and installing satellite dishes (VSAT), wireless antennas, UPS units, inverters and control systems.

Before his first formal job, Howard was learning electronics and earning a living at the same time - servicing and fixing the electronics items people brought into the school's open electronics lab at Blantyre School of Business Studies, led by our teacher Bra Bra. It was there he first became fascinated by the idea of the internet: he read Internet Explorer manuals and Windows 95/98 help files in free periods, then practised what he had learned at the internet cafe opposite National Bank on Victoria Avenue.

The internet became his doorway. He paid for time at another cafe - Pa Ziboli Boli - greeted by the sound of dial-up modems in the early 2000s. There he built real research skills, downloading notes onto floppy disks and printing electronics and digital electronics notes, because there were no books in those days. He spent most of his time walking from Ndirande, Safarawo to the National Library to study with his group of friends from Ndirande, Railways and Chinseu - walking and talking about diodes, impedance and logic gates, and eating nsima and mpunga wa nyama at Blantyre Market. When a subject was unfamiliar or had no learning material, they paid to study through the Malawi Polytechnic distance education programme.

Internet was super expensive, and he was lucky - his mother would always give him money. She departed before he could make her retirement, and it was all a dream. She lives on in the ones she loved. We are here to continue to build, support and train others from a background like his - to show the world it is possible without a college education and school fees. Access to knowledge - makani in Chichewa. Super makani, no mantha. We can do it. We can bump shoulders with the greatest and work with the world's forefront technology companies - fortunes like Amazon Web Services - straight from a township in Ndirande, Safarawo.

"Then Nathanael said unto him, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip said to him, Come, and see."

From there he worked across a series of technical roles in Malawi - electronics servicing, customer engineering, IT training and IT management - before migrating to South Africa in 2015. He joined Amazon Web Services in 2019 and progressed through four roles over seven years, becoming the team's EC2 Windows Subject Matter Expert (SME) and a contributing technical writer on official AWS documentation. He also served as an internal AWS mentor and trainer, mentoring AWS Graduate Programme and intern students from several South African universities - many of whom have since joined AWS or launched careers in AI, cloud computing and IT. Along the way he worked on AWS AI systems.

He is currently looking to bring that same combination - technical depth plus direct user impact - into Systems QA, an area he approaches with empathy at heart: quality assurance built around how real people actually experience a system, not just whether it passes a test case.

Today, alongside his engineering background, he is building Architect and SmartBwana / Bwana Khasu, and developing a public-interest advocate profile focused on digital safety and African technology access.