Technology cant fix inequality but training and opportunities could Gbenga Sesan
Transcriber:
I once watched this video of a relay race
at a primary school in Jamaica.
You see here, there are two teams,
the Yellow team and the Blue team.
And the kids are doing great,
working so hard and running so fast.
And the Yellow team has the lead,
until this little boy gets the baton
and runs in the wrong direction.
My favorite part
is when the grown-up chases him,
looking like he’s about to pass out,
trying to save the situation
and get the kid to run
in the right direction.
In many ways, that’s what it’s like
for many young people in Africa.
They’re many paces behind their peers
on the other side
of the inequality divide,
and they’re also running
in the wrong direction.
Because as much as we might
wish otherwise,
and aspire to build
economic and social systems
where it’s not the case,
global development is a race.
And it’s a race
that my home country, Nigeria,
and home continent, Africa, are losing.
Inequality must be seen
as the global epidemic that it is.
From the boy who cannot afford to dream
because of the disappointment
that could come with it
to the girl that skips school
in order to sell snacks in traffic,
just to fund her school fees.
It is clear that inequality
is at the center
of many of the world’s problems,
affecting not just the bottom
40 percent of us, but everyone.
Young men and women
who don’t get set on the path
of equal opportunities
become frustrated.
And we may not like the choices they make
in their attempt to get
what they think they rightly deserve
or punish those that they assume
keep them away
from those better opportunities.
But it doesn’t have to be this way
if we, as humanity,
make different choices.
We have the ability we need
to fill that opportunity gap,
but we just have to prioritize it.
I grew up many paces behind.
Even though I was a smart kid
growing up in Akure,
a town 350 kilometers from Lagos,
it felt like a place that was disconnected
from the rest of the world,
and one where hope
and dreams were limited.
But I wanted to get ahead,
and when I saw a computer
for the first time, in my high school,
I was spellbound,
and I knew I just had to get my hands
on whatever it was.
This was in 1991,
and there were only two computers
for the entire school
of more than 500 students.
So the teacher in charge said
computers were not for people like me,
because I wouldn’t understand
how to use them.
He would only allow my friend
and his two brothers,
sons of a professor of computer science,
to use it, because they already knew
what they were doing.
In university, I was so desperate
to be around computers
that to make sure
I had access to the computer lab,
I slept there at night,
even when the campus was closed
due to teachers' strikes
and student protests.
I didn’t own a computer
until I was gifted one in 2002,
but what I lacked in devices,
I made up for in drive and determination.
However, camping out in computer labs
in order to teach yourself coding
isn’t a systemic solution,
which is why I started
Paradigm Initiative,
to help all Nigerians
learn to use technology
to help them run faster and further
toward their hopes and dreams,
and help our nation and take our continent
great leaps forward in development.
You see, to put it as simply as possible,
my goal is for everyone in Africa
to become Famous'.
I don’t mean, like, a celebrity,
I mean I want everyone
to be like Famous, this guy.
When Famous Onokurefe
came to Paradigm Initiative,
he had completed high school,
but couldn’t afford college,
and his options in life were limited.
When I asked Famous recently
about where he would have been
without our training program,
he rolled out a list of could-haves,
including ending up on the streets,
jobless and homeless,
at the risk of doing things
he wouldn’t be proud of.
But luckily, Famous came
to Paradigm Initiative, in 2007,
because his friends, who were part
of a youth group I’d told about my plans,
kept talking about a free
computer training program.
And during his training,
Famous paid close attention and excelled.
When the United Kingdom
Trade and Investment team
at the UK Deputy High Commission in Lagos
asked us to recommend
a few potential interns,
we recommended Famous
and a few others to be interviewed.
He got the internship,
and while there, he heard about
an Entry Clearance Assistant job
at the [British] High Commission in Abuja.
He applied, even though,
without a college degree,
no one thought he had a shot.
He was starting behind,
but it wasn’t technology
that helped him get ahead,
it was the extra training,
training rooted in his community,
training that understood
his context and his challenges,
training that helped him
change his life for the better.
Famous got the job,
and then saved enough
to pay his way through university.
Famous, a Medical
Biochemistry graduate
from Delta State University,
is now a chartered accountant
and an assistant manager
with one of the world’s Big Four
professional services firms,
where he has won innovation awards
consecutively for the last four years.
But let’s be clear …
the computer didn’t do that – we did.
Without our additional
training and support,
Famous wouldn’t be where he is today.
Fairness is not giving everyone
a computer and a special program,
fairness is helping make sure everyone
has the same access
and training that can help them
make use of all these things
to improve their lives.
When people are further behind,
fairness isn’t giving everyone
the same opportunity to compete,
fairness is helping those who are behind
to get to the same starting line
with everyone else
and giving them a chance
to run their own race
in the right direction.
Yet there are millions of young people
who have not been as fortunate
as Famous and I,
who still don’t have the skills,
let alone the will,
to face similarly
insurmountable inequality.
As more workers and students
now have to complete tasks
or learn from home,
this inequality
is exponentially pronounced,
and with dire consequences.
This is why I do what I do
through Paradigm Initiative.
But just like many intervention programs,
there’s a limit to how many young people
we can reach through our three centers.
We’ve now taken the training
to where the kids are,
but public schools are so ill-equipped
that we have to bring devices, access,
and in many cases,
we have to provide power supply.
Since 2007, we’ve worked
with young Nigerians
in order to improve their lives
and that of their families.
To give just one example,
Ogochukwu Obi father kicked her,
her sisters and her mom out,
because he preferred to have a son.
But when she completed our program,
got a job and became
her family’s breadwinner,
her father came calling,
admitting that he was wrong
about the worth of the girl.
In addition to our work
at our training centers and in schools,
we’re now planning to acquire
mobile learning units,
busses equipped with access,
with devices, and with power,
and that can serve multiple schools.
Yes, we need better access to technology
and policies that facilitate
open internet access,
freedom of expression and more,
but the best computers in the world
could fall in a democratic forest,
but no one would hear them,
let alone use them,
if they were miles away,
hauling water from a well
or foraging for scrap metal
to pay school fees
in a school that can’t
even teach them computer skills.
Just like the fanciest
sneakers in the world
can’t help a runner
miles behind everyone else.
I’ll never forget being invited
back to my high school
while I was Nigeria’s Information
Technology Youth Ambassador.
It was 10 years after I had been denied
access to using the computer
in that very same school.
But here I was,
being introduced as a role model
who was supposedly shaped
by the same school.
After my presentation,
that teacher, who said I could never
understand how to use computers,
was quick to grab the microphone
and tell everyone
that he remembered me as a student
and he was sure I had it in me all along.
He was right.
He didn’t know it at the time,
but I did have it in me.
Famous had it in him,
Ogochukwu had it in her,
the bottom 40 percent have it in them.
Are we going to say
that life-changing opportunities
are not for people like them,
like that teacher said?
Or are we going to recognize
that centuries of inequality
can’t just be solved by gadgets,
but by training and resources
that fully level the playing field?
Fairness is not about giving every child
a computer and an app,
fairness is connecting them to access,
to training and to additional support,
for the need to take equal advantage
of those computers and apps.
That’s how we pass them the baton
and help them catch up
and start running in the right direction,
and change their lives.
Thank you.