Nairobi, May 14 -- Gideon Kipyakwai once worked with mice. He made them glow. This is not a metaphor. At the University of Hawaii, he spent years in a laboratory learning how to introduce something foreign into a living system and watch it take hold. The protocol, he will tell you, was painstaking. You had to understand what the system wanted to become. Then you had to get out of the way. He has been doing the same thing ever since. Just not with mice. With people.

He has spent his career testing that theory. First in banking, then in county government. Today, Kipyakwai is the Group CEO of Metropol Corporation, one of Kenya's most influential credit bureau, with six subsidiaries, operations in two countries, and a mandate that decides wh...