Category: technology

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technology

Digital Resilience

In our digital age, the right to access information is not just a convenience—it’s a pillar of democracy and socioeconomic development. Yet, this right is increasingly under attack through censorship and internet shutdowns. While digital platforms like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and Twitter have improved how we communicate, sharing information across the globe with minimal barriers, they also face significant threats. Censorship and internet shutdowns can limit our access, silencing voices and stifling free exchange.

Reflecting on the broadcast era, our media landscape was confined to a few television and radio channels, with content curated by a select group of media houses. In contrast, the internet promised openness; anyone could broadcast their thoughts to the world. However, this digital freedom comes with new gatekeepers—algorithms programmed by powerful tech companies that decide what we see and what remains hidden. This concentration of control makes it simpler than ever to surveil and manipulate information access.

To fight this, we need tools dedicated not to profit, but to the fundamental right of information access. These tools should empower us to share and receive information freely, without data harvesting, surveillance, or compliance with censorship demands. By using platforms that prioritize encrypted communication and privacy, we can protect our digital rights and maintain open channels of information, even in restrictive environments.

A striking instance of such censorship was recently observed in Kenya during the national examinations. The government blocked access to communication apps like Telegram to prevent exam fraud. Below is a screenshot from the OONI app, which tests for internet censorship. On November 20th, 2023, both Telegram and Signal were inaccessible, showing how digital access can be curtailed.

As we use digital tools, the role of secure, non-profit driven communication tools becomes increasingly vital. These platforms are our means to access information and a safeguard against censorship.

Examples of Privacy Tools:

  • Tor Browser: This tool enables anonymous web browsing by routing internet traffic through multiple servers, masking users’ identities and location, crucial for circumventing censorship and surveillance.
  • Snowflake: As a pluggable transport for Tor, Snowflake allows users in censored regions to access the internet by turning regular users’ connections into bridges. It’s particularly useful during internet shutdowns or heavy censorship periods.
  • Signal Messaging App: Signal provides end-to-end encryption, ensuring that communications (texts, calls, and media) are secure from interception. This app is vital for maintaining private communication, especially in scenarios where surveillance and data interception are heightened.
  • Orbot: VPN for smartphones

As users and advocates for digital rights, supporting and promoting the use of these tools is not just beneficial—it’s essential for the preservation of our digital freedoms.

Categories
startups technology thoughts

AI & other technologies: Are we on the Receiving End?

In the book Prosperity Paradox, Clayton M. Christensen, Efosa Oromo & Karen Dillion bring up an interesting concept of “how to identify high-potential pockets of nonconsumption” with regard to solutions that you might be providing. They state there are four things to look out for: skill, wealth, access and time. This got me thinking about examples where this might have been used.

Facebook is a good example. They realised that a large number of people are not using their platforms because of a number of issues.

  • Lack of internet access – so they came up with platforms like internet.org to get more people connected and accessing their platform with the goal of getting more eyeballs seeing ads, their revenue model
  • Low end devices – sitting in San Francisco, you might not understand the low internet speed or low end devices that your customers are using. Facebook realised that access to Facebook is slow and devices had less storage, memory capacity in emerging markets. To solve the affordability challenge, they launched Facebook Lite. They even acquired a startup that worked on this, story here https://tech.facebook.com/engineering/2020/8/facebook-lite-made-in-tel-aviv/

Google is also an interesting example. At the core of Google’s model is selling ads. To address the lack of ad buyers in new markets they focused on the lack of digital marketing skills. They went on to launch the a campaign to train 1 million people on the African continent. Story here https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-africa/one-million-trained-task-getting-africa-digital-just-beginning/ This is very similar when you look at the Android ecosystem. Google has invested a lot in getting more people skilled to develop apps on the Adroid platform. Developer communities have been a success to drive more apps developed on the Android ecosystem.

There is an interesting discussion around emerging technologies on the African continent. It was blockchain technology a few months ago and now the hype train is on artificial intelligence. The question again is what’s our position around these technologies. There are those who are worried that the technology will be built outside and consumed on the continent. There are a number of challenges that can be looked at in the lens of what the book ‘Prosperity Paradox’ states as the reason for nonconsumption.

  1. Skill – do we have the skills to build using these emerging technologies. To solve this should we focus on building skills to build solutions using the emerging technologies? Will the skill remain or leave for better opportunities away from home?
  2. Wealth – do we have the capital to afford the expensive compute need to build artificial intelligence models? The compute needed is not cheap. Solution could be invest in the startups working on this. We need to remember startup success rates is low, are we willing to burn that money. Should academia focus our research efforts towards this? Is the government going to provide grants to academia to pursue this?
  3. Access – do we have access to data the raw material for artificial intelligence? For voice technology, languages like English have enormous digital ready data for training. Is the solution to build our own datasets? Should we make this datasets open for all of us to use? Will big tech take the data and use their readily available infrastructure to build tools for us to consume?

These are thoughts that have lingered in my head for a while and through my experience through my fellowship with the Mozilla Foundation building voice datasets for the Kiswahili language.

Please share your thoughts in the comment section 🙂

Categories
community technology

decentralization

Prototype of datacenter demoed by Ethio telecom during Internet Governance Forum in Ethiopia

Decentralization sounds like a great idea. Technically, yes but it brings about a whole lot of issues. Back in the day computing was expensive and communicating meant running your own infrastructure. For communities they had to set up their own forum softwares and have some volunteer run the servers to host the forums.

We got into an era where there hasn’t been a need to run your own servers as infrastructure became cheaper to buy, social media became a thing, hosting platforms and many other developments. The advertisement business model made it easy for folks to connect and communicate as platforms sold their engagement to companies in the form of ads. Ads model means the platform need to understand the users and this obviously brought about a lot of privacy issues. 

For some this centralization is the problem. To some extent I agree with this argument since you cannot tell a privately owned company what to do and without regulation they don’t really need to listen to you. The easy solution is to say lets just decentralize. The issue with decentralization is we are heading back to a time when you need to have some technical experience to run social platforms. For a community to keep engaging or do some any over the internet thing they need to buy and maintain infrastructure.

Decentralization would mean a whole lot of non-technical folks will need to find learn or jump onto some server. Apart from inclusion there emerges digital security and surveillance issues. Running a server would mean you need to be technical plus also need to be able to maintain & regularly update it. This opens up a whole lot of people to government surveillance as it’s easy to not properly follow server security measures.

When you come from communities whose first access to the internet was Facebook you would understand how running own servers and asking folks to install apps or only use a browser to communicate would be difficult to sell.

The other issue is that not everyone can afford to get off platforms they have spent a lot of time building engagement and have curved an audience for themselves. For most it’s hard to take time learn something new especially when it’s a little technical. 

This post doesn’t mean I don’t support or think decentralization can be a solution to a number of issues but I think we need to think of social issues like inclusion & existing threats like growing government surveillance. Decentralization is a great first step fighting use of personal data to sell ads and censorship that’s becoming common among the big social media platforms. 

Image at the top is prototype of datacenter demoed by Ethio telecom during Internet Governance Forum in Ethiopia.

Categories
audio technology

VPNs chat with Ivy

My friend Ivy runs Wavu Network. We did a Twitter space discussing Virtual Private Networks just before the August 2022 Kenya elections.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Here is the audio link to the discussion we had

Categories
community technology

Digital Literacy & Taxes

I have spent years working around digital literacy. I’ve had the privilege to support Pwani Teknowgalz’s work through Africa Code Week, Mombasa Girls in STEM, Google CS Clubs, CodeHack, Coders at American Spaces & many other programs. Through these programs we were able to get a lot of young ones excited about technology and the impact it can have in their lives, from simple Google search to find information, use of social media to boost your business, use of tools like canva.com to make stunning graphics. Some of these programs helped students get excited about science and mathematics subjects resulting in their exams score going up. There are those who got into careers like social media marketing, website and graphic design. It’s always amazing to see how one to two hour sessions can have an impact on one’s life.

The internet has enabled us to be able to go to remote places and do digital literacy sessions. There are areas where internet coverage was very low but we were able to make it work. Internet access is a huge challenge with regards to getting folks to participate in the digital economy. There are places where you only have a single mobile network provider because the others have not invested in getting those locations covered by their network. One is subjected to a single choice of network provider, in most cases you find this single provider charges a lot or has no internet bundle offers that are pocket friendly.

Besides internet access, devices are another challenge. In one program I supported we used the tablets that were supplied to schools by the government through the ICT Authority in the Ministry of ICT. Some of these tablets had not left the boxes they came with. The availability of these tablets was a huge plus. The challenge now is access to the devices outside the school.

The one challenge with digital literacy programs is sustainability of the trainings. Will the attendees be able to continue learning/practising when we leave? With the introduction of data and airtime taxes it will get harder for most to invest in learning through the internet and to access information. Beyond digital literacy there are a lot of young people who are self-employed through the different services they offer over the internet. When you cannot have people afford internet access it becomes harder for potential customers to see the importance of digital for their businesses. This increased taxation is implemented at a very wrong time, we are still in the covid-19 pandemic.

In a previous post, I wrote about how technology can play an important role in our country, this increase in taxation will make that difficult. The increase will grow the digital divide not allowing many to afford internet access. This is the time for open spaces and hubs that have funding or access to subsidized internet to play a critical role in providing this vital access. 

Bonus is a video of Kelvin driving us to a school in Malindi