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THE VILLAGE HAD GOOGLE. THE GOAT STILL DIED.

Knowledge is everywhere. Being knowledgeable is another matter.

Uncle Rwamiti was sitting under the mango tree when Moses arrived carrying a dead goat.

This was unusual.

People normally brought Uncle Rwamiti problems. Moses had brought evidence.

“Uncle,” he said, dropping the goat under the tree, “this country has a knowledge problem.”

Uncle Rwamiti looked at the goat. Then at Moses. Then back at the goat.

“My son, before we discuss the country, perhaps we should discuss the goat.”

Three days earlier, the goat had stopped eating. Moses did what a modern educated man does when confronted by something he does not understand.

He removed his phone.

He Googled.

Within twenty minutes, Moses knew more about goat diseases than his grandfather had known after keeping goats for forty years.

He read about parasites. He read about pneumonia. He read about mineral deficiencies. He watched a veterinarian in Australia explain digestive disorders in goats. He joined a Facebook farming group. He asked ChatGPT.

By lunchtime, Moses had seventeen possible diagnoses. By evening, he had twenty-three.

The following morning, his cousin sent him a YouTube video entitled:

TEN REASONS YOUR GOAT IS NOT EATING. NUMBER SEVEN WILL SHOCK YOU.

Number seven indeed shocked Moses.

Unfortunately, it did nothing for the goat.

On the second day, Moses downloaded a 46-page PDF on small-ruminant health. He forwarded it to three WhatsApp groups.

Two people replied, “Very informative.”

One replied with praying hands.

Nobody examined the goat.

On the third morning, the goat died.

Uncle Rwamiti listened carefully.

“So,” he said, “you had Google?”

“Yes.”

“YouTube?”

“Yes.”

“Facebook?”

“Yes.”

“Artificial intelligence?”

“Yes.”

“A 46-page document?”

“Yes.”

“And twenty-three possible diagnoses?”

“Yes.”

Uncle Rwamiti pointed at the goat.

“And this fellow had the good manners to die surrounded by information.”

Moses frowned.

By now several people had gathered under the mango tree.

There was Sarah, who had a master’s degree in development studies. There was Kato, who had completed an online course in entrepreneurship. There was David, who had three certificates in digital marketing.

There was also old Ssemanda, who had never entered university but had kept goats since Idi Amin was president.

Ssemanda bent down. He examined the goat’s mouth. He touched its stomach. He looked at its eyes.

Then he asked Moses three questions.

“What had it been eating?”

“When did you last deworm it?”

“Did you notice diarrhoea?”

Moses became quiet.

Uncle Rwamiti smiled.

“Interesting.”

“What is interesting?” Sarah asked.

“The man with the least information has asked the first useful questions.”

Sarah objected.

“But Uncle, education matters.”

“Of course it matters. A knife matters too. But owning twelve knives does not make you a surgeon.”

There was laughter.

Uncle Rwamiti continued.

“We have confused access to knowledge with being knowledgeable.”

He picked up Moses’s phone.

“This small thing can access more information in one afternoon than many of our grandparents encountered in a lifetime.”

He handed it back.

“But information does not climb out of the phone and solve problems.”

Nobody spoke.

“So what makes somebody knowledgeable?” David asked.

Uncle Rwamiti leaned back.

“That is the interesting question.”

He pointed toward the road.

“Suppose there is a pothole outside your house. You know what a pothole is. You have read about road construction. You can explain government procurement. You can discuss infrastructure financing. You can even write an excellent LinkedIn post titled Why African Cities Must Rethink Urban Infrastructure.”

They laughed.

“But tomorrow morning, the pothole is still there.”

He paused.

“Then a man arrives with a wheelbarrow, studies the problem, works out what is needed, finds the right people, tests a solution and gets something done.”

Uncle Rwamiti looked around the circle.

“Which of the two knew more?”

Sarah answered quickly.

“The educated person.”

“Perhaps.”

He smiled.

“But which knowledge became useful?”

Silence.

That question landed differently.

Uncle Rwamiti had spent much of his life around educated people. He was one of them.

Degrees. Books. Conferences. Reports. Workshops. Certificates. Research papers. PowerPoint presentations with arrows pointing at other arrows.

There was nothing wrong with any of them.

The danger came when possession of knowledge became the destination.

A young person could graduate knowing theories of entrepreneurship and still be unable to identify one problem somebody would pay to have solved.

A manager could attend six leadership workshops and continue terrorising the office every Monday morning.

A government department could commission an excellent report, launch it at a hotel, serve samosas, take photographs and place the report on a shelf.

Everybody had learned something.

Nothing had changed.

That, Uncle Rwamiti thought, was the strange disease of the information age.

We had solved the problem of scarcity of information.

Now we were discovering another problem.

Knowledge could accumulate without activating.

Moses looked again at his goat.

“So all my searching was useless?”

“No.”

Uncle Rwamiti shook his head.

“That would be another foolish conclusion.”

He drew four lines in the dust with his walking stick.

“Information can become knowledge. Knowledge can become judgement. Judgement can become action. Action can become value.”

He looked at Moses.

“But these transitions are not automatic.”

The group became quiet.

This was no longer about the goat.

Sarah thought about her master’s degree. David thought about his certificates. Kato thought about the entrepreneurship course he had completed eighteen months earlier.

Uncle Rwamiti looked at them and smiled.

“My children, the great tragedy of our time may not be that people lack knowledge.”

He tapped Moses’s smartphone.

“Knowledge is everywhere.”

Then he pointed at the dead goat.

“The tragedy is that we sometimes stand in an ocean of knowledge and still cannot work out what to do next.”

Ssemanda stood up. He had goats waiting at home.

Before leaving, he turned to Moses.

“Next time your goat stops eating, call me before Australia.”

Even Uncle Rwamiti laughed.

But after everyone had gone, he remained under the mango tree thinking.

Perhaps the question facing universities, organisations and even nations was changing.

For centuries we had asked:

How do we give people more knowledge?

Perhaps the next question was harder:

How does what people know become useful action in the world?

The dead goat had no answer.

But Uncle Rwamiti suspected there was a PhD hiding somewhere under that mango tree.

Uncle Rwamiti is created by Dr Petero Wamala, DBA, Stanford LEAD Alum.

Making sense of change through ethical storytelling.