Fixing digital literacy and access to the web

This transcript has been generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the audio.

Mikaela Jade, founder and CEO of Indigital: I'm fixing the lack of opportunity for First Nations people across the world to participate in the design of critical technologies.

Pavitra Raja, podcast host: Welcome to Let's Fix It, the podcast from the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and the World Economic Forum that speaks to leading social innovators and finds out how they're fixing some of the world's biggest problems.

On this episode, we travel south of the equator to South Africa and Australia to dive deep into the minds of two people who are tearing down digital divides and bringing the power of emerging technologies to their communities.

Luvuyo Rani, co-founder and CEO, Silulo Ulutho Technologies: I took a risk and I resigned and I started selling refurbished computers because I see the need of people having computers, using computers to enable them in their life.

Pavitra Raja: Subscribe to Let's Fix It on Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever you get your podcasts and make sure to like, rate and review us. I'm Pavitra Raja at the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Join me and learn how some of the world's brightest minds are quite literally fixing it.

If you're listening to this podcast, chances are you're using some kind of a connected device, perhaps a smartphone, a tablet or a computer of some kind. Well, can you imagine what your life would be like without a smart device? How would you get around? How would you keep in touch with your friends? What about the latest TikTok trends!? Unimaginable, right?

Well, get this, 37% of the world's population have never used the internet. That's nearly 3 billion people. In this episode of Let's Fix It, we hear from two social innovators who have made it their mission to serve their communities by tailoring technological solutions to bridge the digital divide. These initiatives are for the community, by the community.

When I say artificial intelligence, machine learning the metaverse, what comes to your mind? You see the future, right? But what if I told you that these technologies are key to understanding our past better?

My guest Mikaela Jade used to be a park ranger in Kakadu National Park in Australia. The park is home to ancient cultural landmarks – some rock paintings are over 20,000 years old. Michaela wanted to find a way to honour her culture and became obsessed with an idea to bring the stories of our ancestors back to life.

And she also gave me some excellent advice on staying resilient in the face of discrimination and disbelief.

Let's jump right into our conversation.

Mikaela Jade, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Indigital: I'm fixing the lack of opportunity for First Nations people across the world to participate in the design of critical technologies. And when I say critical technologies, I mean augmented, mixed and virtual reality, bridging technologies, which will lead us to the metaverse. I'm talking about machine learning and other types of artificial intelligence that will underpin how we understand data as we move forward. And I'm also thinking about blockchain and the opportunities for authenticity and provenance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nations knowledge, language and law.

So the big problem that we have at the moment is our underrepresentation in critical technology development and we're trying to fix that at Indigital by introducing these critical technologies to First Nations communities and working with decision makers in the communities around cultural protocols and what licensing might look like when we introduce our knowledge, language and law into these critical technologies.

Pavitra Raja: It was only 2007 that the Australian Prime Minister at that time, Kevin Rudd, apologised for the atrocities that Indigenous people went through. What was that moment like for someone who is Indigenous and Aboriginal like you.

Mikaela Jade: In 2007, and leading up to it, 2008, I actually wasn't very heavily connected to my Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. I grew up as a result of the policies that you're talking about, where the government forcibly removed children from their families, particularly children that were of mixed race heritage. So I didn't grow up grounded in my culture in the ways that I should have been because of those government policies. So obviously it was very emotional. I worked on country as a park ranger with lots of community, and I was very emotional when the apology happened. And it wasn't until 2012 where the gravity of that apology really hit me when I understood where I came from and who my people were and when I connected up with my own community.

Pavitra Raja: You went from not knowing where you come from to being a park ranger and then leading this company that not only caters to the first peoples as clientele, but also to their rights. And it's absolutely incredible. So tell me a little bit about your journey. How did you go from park ranger to tech pioneer?

Mikaela Jade: I was working in national parks in remote communities across Australia, and as part of my role in national parks, I managed visitors. So a lot of park interpretation and education, creating signs, creating opportunities for people to connect with both the landscape and the cultures on whose country those experiences are.

And there were a few kind of inflexion points in my career where I thought, 'Hmmm, we need to do this a bit better'. The first was seeing metal signs on cultural places. Putting a metal sign to talk about an Aboriginal perspective of like a rock art site, for example, the process in national parks involved in doing that work at the time was completely devoid of First Nations voices. It was the park rangers, the archaeologists. putting their perspectives forward on what happened in that place. And then it would be condensed down into a digestible chunk for visitors to come and look at the sign and go, 'That's a very old place'.

I kind of got sick of seeing people coming to these special places and walking away with the perspective that those people are no longer there or connected to their country. Imagine we could put our phones up to this cultural plates and our elders can appear in holographic format and show the right story at the right time, in the right place, in the right language, for the right reasons. And then we could build a business model around that.

So I set about doing that with no money and no support, which was incredibly difficult. So I was told I was crazy the whole time. I experienced a lot of racism too. There were a lot of people that said to me, 'Aboriginal people don't use technology. How are you making money out of this?' And there was a lot of focus on what the business model would be rather than actually building this technology and having it be of incredible use to both the visit as it came to the places and the community who owned the story of those places,

I was able to connect with an incredible man, Jason Higgins, who lived in the UK who said, 'Yes, I'll help you'. And he told me over Skype, over a two-year period how to do image recognition, how to develop the app, how to create the content, what the user experience should be like. And eventually we made a minimum viable product.

I was invited to the United Nations in New York. We were able to showcase the technology at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and then loads of First Nations people said, 'We want you to do this for our community'.

It was a very expensive way to produce stories. So even after we spent $200,000 building the minimum viable product, it was costing $10,000 for 90 seconds of content because we needed tens of engineers and animators and riggers and people who were graphic designers. So I had to go back to the drawing board and I was about to quit my company and I ended up meeting the most phenomenal person in Microsoft: Tianji Dickens. She saw the value in what I was trying to do. And then Microsoft were able to spend some time with me and really understand what I wanted to achieve and then marry that up with the technology that was available.

And that's the point where I got introduced to artificial intelligence and machine learning and we were able to create a platform where First Nations, or anyone really, can create 3D holographic content, can create audio stories, and then through our platform instantaneously generate augmented reality storytelling.

We've been teaching kids across Australia and New Zealand about how to create this content really well, as well as the elders. And we've formulated a process, I guess, that respects Indigenous cultural, intellectual property and moral rights, cultural protocols which are designed by the community. And then we take those cultural protocols and work with the communities shape educational curriculum that get sold into schools so the kids can learn how to do this, too.

Pavitra Raja: Incredible Mikaela. Wow! This woman is resilient and tenacious and broke down so many barriers, not just for yourself and then for the next generation of women, especially First Nations women. Tell me the exact moment that you realised that I can do this and I really want to do this, because that's like the triggering point for most social entrepreneurs. They go from you have this idea to, 'I'm going to do this'. What made you make that decision?

Mikaela Jade: I think it was a number of moments along the journey, but the first time was when the idea nearly ate me alive and I couldn't sleep. The idea came to me in the shower and it just wouldn't leave my head. And then I got more and more excited about it throughout the following weeks. And I just I just couldn't put it to bed and I couldn't switch my head off. So I knew something else is driving me to do this other than my own free will.

The second time was when I had my breakdown after realising the way that I'd put the technology together and the way that I was working with communities needed a reframe. It was when I was driving to what I said was going to be my last speaking engagement. And my daughter, who was 14 at the time, turned around while I was bawling my eyes out saying I can't do this anymore. She grabbed me and she's like, 'Mum, you have to keep doing this because I want to take over your company when I finish school.'

I realised I had the buy-in of my kids and the next generation into what I was trying to achieve and that that was important to them.

So they are probably the two moments that really compelled me to keep going even though the odds were stacked against us.

Pavitra Raja: At the Schwab Foundation, you are the first First Nations woman that we've awarded. How do we create more spaces for more indigenous women coming into global arenas?

Mikaela Jade: It's really about connections. It's been really hard for our people to make connections into the business community or into the technology sector or into banking, trade and finance and investment, because there are so many cultural biases about our capabilities in these areas.

Pavitra Raja: I think that's so important to have representation. It's powerful to see someone who looks like you up there. So I cannot imagine - your daughter would feel so much pride to see her to see her mum up there on stage, as with other young First Nations women and young girls.

Tell me a little bit about your education as well as you also educate young people with this technology. Why is that so important, especially in Australia?

Mikaela Jade: I failed school actually, so I didn't pass my end of year examinations. I got 36 out of 100. My mum told me she was going to sign me up to secretary school. I decided I didn't want to be someone's secretary and I walked up to the local TAFE [Technical and Further Education college], which is our vocational education system in New South Wales, and I signed myself up to repeat Year 12 at TAFE. So I did that and I met a phenomenal woman called Jodie Parker who just became this incredible mentor to me around what my possibilities would be and where I wanted to direct this passion that I had for country and connecting with our natural environment.

And it was through her that I really discovered that I actually could be a park ranger and that I should pursue further studies and ended up getting 89 or something like that in my high school certificate again. doing it again. So that was a bit of a confidence booster going from 36 to 89 and then being accepted into university to start my studies in environmental biology.

I still get so frustrated in some of the things that happened at school. I always got asked about where my heritage was from and I could never answer that. I kept saying Australia because I didn't know anything else.

And people had real biases about women's ability in computing, in mathematics, in engineering and in science. And I really love computers. I love doing computing studies. I had the textbook, Pavitra, and I was reading the textbook front page to back page about computing and about coding and about this new world of HTML. And I just really loved it. But I dropped out of computing in Year 9 because I was the only girl in the class and I just felt really unwelcome in that environment.

So reflecting on that, I thought, Wow, I could change that, but I got crushed two years ago when my daughter Amy was in Year 9 and she said, 'Mum, I'm going to drop out of computing because I'm the only girl in the class.' And that moment hit me where it's like, Oh my gosh, nothing has changed in the way that we educate girls and women about their ability in any of the STEM subjects.

So that kind of lit a fire in my belly once I pick myself up for being so thoroughly crushed about that and trying to convince her to stay. Because it's one of my regrets. I wish I had stayed in computing.

We really need more women and more First Nations women to talk about our abilities in this area. We're really great at pattern recognition, and machine learning is all about pattern recognition in data, and we're really, really great at that. I've spoken to First Nations people across Australia about this, and a lot of people say, Yeah, I'm really good at that too. Is that an innate ability? Maybe we can help foster that. We want to be 21st century Aboriginal people. So often we're typecast into the pre-contact way of knowing, being and doing, and our people always innovated. We always did engineering, we always evolved our culture as to what was available to us, all the bright sparks of imagination that we developed. Like look at all the stuff that we've invented boomerangs, fish traps, engineering structures that are the oldest known engineering structures on the planet still operational today. There's a lot of things that we have in our cultures where we have expressed this amazing ability in science, technology, engineering and maths and it's just not recognised.

Our elders our scientists, our elders are lawmakers, our elders are educators. We don't need a Western institution label on us to validate that kind of knowledge system. We are empowered people, we are very intelligent people, we're very capable people. What we're lacking is the systemic opportunities for us to get involved and start influencing the system. And I always think if we can get it right for our people, it's going to work for everyone.

Pavitra Raja: Doesn't matter who the person is, you're incredibly kind to them.

Mikaela Jade: Everybody deserves to be treated with kindness and respect and courtesy. And I don't know where this idea of dominant leadership generated from, but it's dead. Every time people see that behaviour played out in a boardroom or in an office or in the media, the majority of the population are turning their backs on that kind of behaviour. It makes me feel happier to know that the people I interact with leave that interaction feeling positive about themselves and their opportunity and their potential.

Pavitra Raja: I'm sure there's plenty because you talk very openly about your failures, but maybe one example of how you may have failed well?

Mikaela Jade: I've taken on projects in the past where the value sets of the two organisations weren't aligned, and as a hungry start-up founder, you need resources to keep your company going. And in the early days people presented opportunities to Indigital that probably weren't values-aligned. And I took the projects on because we needed the cash flow and we just needed to start demonstrating what our capability was. And in the early days, I wasn't paying enough attention to the importance of alignment of values between organisations.

And I think something that I did the last time that that happened was I fired a client. I stood up for myself and for the company in that moment for the first time. And when you just start a company and you're trying to establish yourself in the marketplace, it's a really brave thing to do to fire a client. I agonised over it for so long before I. But in the end, both parties are like 'Ah, finally, we've we've agreed that this isn't working and we've agreed on a way to go our different paths.' And that was ok. Are our values aligned? That's the most primary question. And if we can't answer that with a hell yes and it's a hell no.

Pavitra Raja: What is one piece of advice that you'd share with someone who wants to be a social entrepreneur or even with yourself, your younger self?

Mikaela Jade: I would probably say to my younger self, trust your gut. Every time I haven't trusted my gut, something's gone wrong. So it's those moments when no one else believes in you, that you really need to support yourself and believe in your vision and go and knock on those doors until your knuckles bleed until someone finally opens it. And then you need to stand in front of that person and say, I'm worth it. Developing that sense of self and developing the sense of confidence, even if you don't believe yourself at times, is very important on the social entrepreneur's journey, because if you don't back yourself, then you can't expect your community or partners to back you either.

Pavitra Raja: That was the wonderful Mikaela Jade, founder of In Digital. Now, don't go anywhere because after the break, we're going to hear from Luvuyo Rani, a social entrepreneur who's transforming the lives of township dwellers in South Africa. How? Stay tuned. We'll be right back.

Pavitra Raja: Welcome back to Let's Fix It, the podcast from the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship at the World Economic Forum. In this episode of Let's Fix It, we're hearing from people who are changing the way their communities benefit from the power of the Web.

I first met Luvuyo Rani in Cape Town in 2019 and was blown away by his compassion. This is a man who has lived through brutal repression under apartheid. He also knows what it feels like to be cut off and disconnected, and he knows how important digital skills are.

Luvuyo started by selling old computers from the back of his car, and today he runs Silulo Ulutho Technologies, an organisation that provides digital skills to thousands of people every year. I chatted to Luvuyo to learn more about his inspiring journey.

Luvuyo Rani, Co-Founder and CEO, Silulo Ulutho Technologies: South Africa is the country where it was probably 28 years now for democracy. So it was a country of segregation and apartheid where the black people were not able to run businesses. We had to work for the master. So what I'm fixing is fixing the problem of digital exclusion - digital gap, digital divide, where the masses of the people in the township, they can't access technology or the internet.

Even now, with COVID where it shows us how important digital transformation is for everyone, still people have been left out, not by their choice or their design. It's just a system now. And no one cares. Everyone thinks that people would just like be able to connect and able to access it. And it's something that I'm fixing to make sure that everyone's not been left behind.

Pavitra Raja: So, Luvuyo, why do you do what you do?

Luvuyo Rani: It's so important, so fundamental. Because when I started my first day at university, it was the first time that I touched a computer. Even today, there's still so many young people that they can't touch computers when they go to universities. They've got access to the phone and then they could use that. So that's that part of unfairness because for me, when I was doing accounting and teaching, instead of learning, I was struggling with computers.

That was a thing that I saw when I started to become a teacher that my former teachers, they were struggling to use computers. And I took a risk. And I resigned and I started selling refurbished computers because I see the needs of people having computers, using computers to enable them, their life.

But I never realised that the gap is so huge. That time it was just focusing on the teachers. But the gap in the community at large, they cannot access technology. They struggle to find employment. They are struggling to grow their businesses. They struggle in society further because of digital divide.

Pavitra Raja: They never touched a computer ever until they joined university?

Luvuyo Rani: Even today. Some schools in South Africa, they do have computers, but those computers are getting dust because there is no teacher who is able to teach the kids on computers.

Some schools don't have any infrastructure, any computers. Some schools, they do. They are sitting at 1,500 in the school. So at one computer, three learners do computing. So you [be] can't able to learn in that environment, it contributes to the unemployment, to the poverty, because you have been excluded to find work, because you do not have the skill to do the work.

Pavitra Raja: The Forum launched a report where they said that in the next five years, the most important skills will be digital skills. So if there are folks, especially in the Global South, who don't have access to the digital skills and the teachers don't have the infrastructure nor the understanding to teach, this is going to create more of that divide which already exists.

Luvuyo Rani: The biggest problem, it's three ways. It's a problem of skills. Digital skills are not that. So that contributes to the unemployment that we see with the young Africa, South Africa youth.

Two: the infrastructure. It's not there. So in the township and rural areas, there are no computer centre or labs where people can go after school, they could do their work, they could do their businesses. Because it's not there. So there's no space where they've got access, even if they've got the skill.

And then three: it's quite expensive. So if you've got it, it costs you so much money to buy one gig of data. It's cheaper to come to our centres than to have access to your mobile phone.

Pavitra Raja: Tell me a little bit about your organisation. How is it tackling the three problems, which is the problem with digital skills, the unemployment that that causes, and the fact that it's expensive?

Luvuyo Rani: Silulo kind of existed based on anger and frustration and also seeing the unfairness.

Before we came in, people used to go to Cape Town to access to the basics. So we bring the infrastructure in the area where they are. So we have a 40-seater computer centre that we divided into two - the back part is for training and the front part is for the access for many people in the township so that they can use it for looking for employment, they can use it to get tenders or they get their business, or can they use it for study further. So what do we do is we bring these access points where there's no infrastructure that comes in, and we build those centres.

Second, we've got a digital skills programme where we train young people. In a year we trained more than 5,000 young people coming in a day on the course which is accredited. They could find the employment in a call centre, retail space, government department, jobs in banking.

We've got a programme where a student comes two hours a day, recognised by the university. So we've got these centres which become career centres and business centres. So if I'm a youth or I reside in these areas and I want to know how to start my business, you come to us, we will assist you to raise your business, we'll assist you to able to link to the funders, we'll link you with the banks. So we've got services that assist jobseekers, that assist entrepreneurs.

So we've created these opportunities centres, driven from access to the internet. There are some using our space for learning. There are some using our space for business opportunity. There are some using our space for skill development. But others are using it for connectivity.

Pavitra Raja: I had the privilege of coming to visit you in Cape Town three years ago. What what struck me the most, seeing you in your element and seeing your students and seeing your stuff, was this trust within the community for you. How do you build this trust? How do you create this trust? And why is that so important?

Luvuyo Rani: It's very important for us. Without the people that we serve, we are nothing.

Five years back, criminals came at night. They stole 25 computers. The following day, a community member came to us and said, we know where are those computers. They took us with the police to pick up those computers. They will say to us, you are doing something different. We can't allow criminals to destroy what are you doing. And the community feel they're part of the business.

We understand the situation where we are. So our prices, our lowest prices, so people can be able to afford. Some of the former staff members, former students are opening franchises with us and they are coming from the same community that comes in. And some of these guys were not even funded by the bank. So we go to the funders and the bank and say that we fund 50% and we will take a shortage with them for three years until they're in the position to be self-funded on their own. So we can build a profile for the funders now. So we're actively driving the value to our community.

Pavitra Raja: Now I have two questions that came out of that. And one is around you being a social entrepreneur and what that means to you.

Luvuyo Rani: For me to be a social entrepreneur, it's something that I really live up to. Its intentional, it's deliberate. I regard myself as part of the preservation of the legacy of apartheid, that I'm able to create something for the community. There's so much at stake to continue to succeed so others can succeed.

In Africa, problems that we have, they can be addressed by social entrepreneurs. By the entrepreneurs who are selflessly working to the betterment the community, but whilst making money. Entrepreneurs who are driving sea change happening in the community. Entrepreneurs who are who are angry with the system that is there, that anger channelled to change the way things are. So my anger is being challenged to make sure that I create a system change.

Pavitra Raja: People often think, Oh, you're a social entrepreneur, you can't make money, you are dedicating yourself to something. I think it's possible to make profit. And exactly as you said, you can lift others, you can do good and you can make profit.

Luvuyo Rani: We never received any funding from anyone, from government, private sector. It's a self-funded model. But it's been driven from the social agenda to make change. And we want to build that kind of model where we are continuously making difference in people's lives but also continuously making revenue so that you can find this scaling us [to] where we will be everywhere in the country. The solution that we need now is a solution of the social entrepreneurs. Because it has the commercial aspect, but also it's got the impact aspect.

Pavitra Raja: I want to go back to you as a person, your entrepreneurial journey. What are some of the things that you've learnt and would like to impart to people listening?

Luvuyo Rani: One lesson I learnt, and I think people ask me who's made role model and it's my mother.

My mother used to run a tavern selling liquor at the time of the heartbeat of apartheid. It was illegal for women to sell liquor so the police used to come and arrest my mother and she would come back and [be] able to sell. So I learned resilience in my mother as I grew up.

What also I learnt? I learnt the part of humility and being humble so that you could able to be in a space to talk with the kings and queens, but also talk with the guys in the township. So I'm fortunate to be in that space, that I can operate in a different space and I could able to fit in and understand exactly how things are.

It's never been an easy journey. We had many robbers in the township, we had many fires in our offices. We had many kinds of serious challenges, but we overcame those challenges and we soldier on.

And I think what keeps us grounded, to be able to focus on the core - that we want to be changemakers in our communities.

Pavitra Raja: Resilience throughout, that's what I heard as you talked about your journey. You know, you also talked about that this is not an easy path. Failures. And there's a lot of challenges that come your way, but yet you tackle them with grace.

Luvuyo Rani: I realised that for the next phase was not going to be about me. So people that I work with, having the right people and are going to work with me and I will to take this to the next level. It's very important and it's a very painful journey for many social entrepreneurs to be told by the people that you employed that you are going in the wrong direction now. It's quite key to surround yourself with much more experienced people who are much more qualified than you so that they are able to be working with you to achieve your mission.

I think another part on people, it's very important to instil your DNA in people that you work with now, in terms driving the value, driving the culture, and to make sure that the people that you are working with are able to emulate and live the values of the organisation.

Pavitra Raja: That was Luvuyo Rani, co-founder and CEO at Silulo Ulutho Technologies.

Want to hear more ways social innovators are fixing it? Check out our website schwabfound.org.

Thanks to our guests today: Mikaela Jade and Luvuyo Rani.

Please subscribe to Lets Fix It wherever you get your podcasts and please do leave us a rating or a review.

This episode of Lets Fix It was presented by me, Pavitra Raja and produced by Alex Court.

With thanks to Amy Kirby and Jere Johansson for editing, and Tom Burchell for sound design. Special thanks to our partners, the Motsepe Foundation. And thanks also to our executive producers Georg Schmitt, Robin Pomeroy and François Bonnici.

Thanks for listening today and stay tuned for more inspiring stories.