How to make the internet a social equaliser
[Music]
in a
traditional african villages
the drama was a center of communication
a drum beat could signify the start of
an attack a birth
a death and sometimes even the start of
harvest
each village had these designated
drummers
whose job was to ensure that they beat
the drums to the nature of the event
now i want to believe that this was a
very prestigious job
fast forward to present day time we have
the internet
but the question that i want to post you
this morning is how many people have
access to the internet
a few years ago five years ago to be
precise um i had this vision
i wanted to get everybody in zambia
connected to the internet
coupled with the fact that i had no job
this was something that i strongly felt
i could do
i went and registered a technology
company that would use data to address
some of zambia’s most pressing social
economic problems
and at the core of this company was a
desire to create
the biggest inclusive
and most interactive public engagement
platform
and nowhere else is this more manifested
than what we’re doing with the ministry
of health at the moment
we’ve created an artificial intelligence
chatbot that allows people
access to accurate and real-time
information on covet 19.
in addition to that we have set up
hotspots around the city
where each time somebody logs in they’re
reminded
about covet 19.
now i want you to
understand that this seemingly beautiful
story
hasn’t always been plain selling and
i was trying to give internet to
everybody
drag zambia into the digitally inclusive
society that
we ought to be but i soon realized that
internet
public internet access was very
expensive
and in typical zambian fashion house
consistently being reminded that this
had been tried before
i was trying to be santa claus for the
christmas as we say in zambia
but without the rudolph and his gang
and like i said i was consistently
reminded that this had been tried before
by people with
deeper pockets and gangs of rudolph
now this was a few thousand dollars into
this project and it wasn’t looking good
uh my my vision was beginning to look
bleak
i was losing money and i desperately
needed a game changer
then i had two lucky breaks one of them
was
in a township of lusaka called mutandere
we had this little pub where we spent
some time actually quite a lot of time
and because we wanted to attract more
clients
we set up an internet hotspot so that
every time somebody comes in
they would give them free internet but
there was there was a bit of a catch
there
they had to see a mandatory advert or
answer a few questions
these paid for adverts are what
subsidize our internet basically paid
for our internet
so one day this man walks into our
little pub
and as we did with every one of our
clients we
guided them through the login process
and as the advert was running this man
turns to me and says boss
if i’m a plumber if i put my advert here
where everybody nintendo see it
that was my eureka moment
this man in montandera had seen what i’d
been trying to tell
so many people but more importantly
this man had contextualized
my vision if i can place my advert here
if my advert can be seen within my
community
i could possibly have more business
now this man at that moment
was willing to forgo the traditional
ways of
advertising nailing a poster to a tree
for what we had just shown him
now it is not uncommon
in africa for anything to be a billboard
a tree somebody’s get somebody’s car
anything is a potential billboard
now as
exciting as the situation was
as exciting as seeing this man beginning
to play his own drum
within his own community was we knew we
couldn’t just survive on this one person
we needed to expand our network we
needed anchor partners
then came our second break an ngo that
was
promoting hiv aids information among
young people
and they continued to do that to very
very exciting and
interactive abilities so to speak
but they were looking for something
different we said talking
proposals were written and soon after we
had two sites
one university and another and a bus
station
and again all people had to do was
interact with the content
answer a few questions
see an advert and you’d have internet
for the rest of the day
at the university we went one step
further
we gave out the ad space for free
for anybody within the university who
wanted to communicate
anything whether it was a meeting or
just selling a book
thousands of logins our client is happy
the community is happy it’s a win-win
situation
now
only about 24 of zambia’s population has
access to
regular and consistent internet
and if this dream of giving everybody
internet access in zambia
is to become a reality we need more
drummers
because there’s an ecosystem that we
need to complete before we give
everybody internet and let me explain we
need the drummer that’s you and i
the tender plumber who wants his advert
to be seen the lady in chabod
who wants to sell chickens wants a
digital platform
you and i who are looking for cheaper
chickens looking for a better plumber
better mechanic
the isp is very simple they need to sell
data
there’s nothing more i can say about
that then you’ve got the content
provider
that ngo that’s promoting women’s rights
that once each time a woman a man
logging into our platform should be
reminded about gender rights
that farmers union that wants to sell a
better seed
or inform people about better farming
methods
the government that wants to promote
voter rights
by bringing all these parties onto this
platform
we can provide internet to millions
now we’ve set up hotspots
over over the last couple of years but
the two places
that really make me fuzzy really really
warm my head
there’s a bus station and there’s a
market
in these two places ordinarily nobody
would very few people would have access
to the internet
we’ve provided the internet there again
there’s a catch every time they log in
they have to see an advert on covet 19.
reminding them to mask up
reminding them to socially distance as
hard as it can be in some of these
places
but we believe we’re doing our part
i believe that no at no other time
in in history
has it become more important than
getting everybody connected to the
internet
i was hoping for a cheering crowd
but you just you’re watching me right
now because you’ve got access to the
internet
and this is because we keep leaving
people behind
we’re happy to play and listen to the
sounds of our own drams
let me give you another reason why it’s
important
for everybody to be connected
thousands if not millions of kids this
year have missed
a lot of time in class
time that they might never never recover
but the sad thing is that there is a
group of kids
who’ve been lucky enough to have
e-learning
extending an advantage that they’ve
always had over these kids that don’t
have
the internet is equalizer
it allows your kids my kids those kids
a level playing field i believe that the
same effort that is being made
in providing masks looking for vented
ventilators
should be extended so that as close
as possible to any community within
zambia
people have access to the internet so
that that woman who’s scared of leaving
a house
for the fear of contracting covered
can sell her chickens her kids can learn
the young man and woman who don’t know
what the future holds can look for
opportunities online
too often we’ve found
excuses i’m connected so what
i’m playing my own drum so what
i’m standing here testimony to the fact
that
this can be done
we’ve proven this it can be done we can
provide internet to millions
if we all start playing the drum if we
bring this ecosystem together
we cannot continue to leave people
behind
in traditional african villages we had
drummers
designated drummers we can all be
drummers now
we can provide internet to everybody but
this means that we can’t leave anybody
behind
anymore thank you