Legendary software programmer, music executive and record producer David Nana Kwamena Bolton has revealed how he spent the GBP1 million he made when he was 17 years old.
He spoke, Tuesday, June 6, 2023, on Time with the Stars on CTV.
Host Larry Bozzlz asked Mr Bolton how he spent the GBP1 million he made from the software he created “between the late 80s and early 90s” to aid the British medical industry.
“That’s a question I ask myself: Where did it go?” he joked in response.
“I actually invested a lot of it in Ghana,” he said on a serious note.
“When I was 17,” David Bolton narrated, the Provisional National Defence Council’s (PNDC) Chairman Jerry John Rawlings invited him to leave the diaspora and “come serve my country so I moved from the UK and came to Ghana”.
In Ghana, where his mother was originally from, David recalled opening “a computer training school” where “we trained thousands of people”.
“That was in 1992,” he informed Bozzlz. “By that time, I was 19.”
He indicated also that he “settled in Ghana [permanently] from there,” explaining that “…even though my dad was Scottish,” and he grew up “outside” in the United Kingdom where “you can be successful” and “have everything,” it was inescapable to sense that “you don’t belong there”.
“When I came to Ghana, that’s when I realised that I was home,” he added.
The singer-songwriter clarified that he was not doing “all this for money”.
“The money just happened to come to me,” he noted. “…I felt that being in Ghana, I was achieving more than being outside. Even though I was getting far less money [being in Ghana], I was making a bigger difference here than I would have in the UK.”
Larry seemed unconvinced about how David spent the GBP1 million he made.
“First of all, I set my parents up,” David reacted. “So over there [in the UK, I] made sure they were comfortable. Bought my dad a car – my mom – sorted out everything at home – you know those days we didn’t have washing machines and microwaves so I bought everything, and you know, refurnished the whole house…”
He returned to “setting up a school here [in Ghana],” stressing that “it was expensive”.
For instance, the Odo Fofro hitmaker explained, “at that time, one computer was about 5,000 pounds and I had 20 computers, then we had to get the building together, we had to employ the staff, you know, and all of that, so it was expensive setting up the school.”
Another thing he did with the money, he indicated, was “investing into the business here and making sure that things were running properly. You know, in Ghana, it’s not easy making money so I had to subsidise for a long time from the monies I had and it all got finished.”
“Everything,” he said, refering to the money again, “was pushed here into Ghana and I don’t regret a single moment or single decision because today I have people walking up to me who are now directors of companies and heads of departments in IT companies and so on and they attribute it to the fact that they came to my school so that alone is, you know, enough for me.”
In 1999, however, Bolton said, “we closed the school”.
“There were a lot of schools coming up,” he revealed the reason. “That’s when the IPMCs started coming in… and I like to do something until I feel I am not being effective [any longer].
“When you do something for so long and then other people are coming in, and they are doing it better than you – because, maybe, they have fresh ideas – sometimes, it’s good to take a backseat and look at where else you can make an impact.”
He said he and his team, thus, “went on to do other things and I’d say, you know, better things from there”.
David Bolton’s latest song is Let Me Try with an animation for a music video.
Also, the Chief Executive Officer of the iconic D’Kaybee Studios of Hiplife’s heyday, Bolton is currently the Chief Operating Officer of the brand new record label Prime Media Entertainment headquartered at McCarthy Hill, Accra.
Source: classfmonline.com
