The Uber driver told me his 80-year-old grandmother would only accept M-Pesa as payment. She sells bananas up-country. The Uber guy and I are sitting in the infamous Nairobi traffic, chatting about business, robbery and technology. It's safer for her, he explains, she tells all that she only accepts M-Pesa payments because it means she's less likely to get robbed. I think his grandmother must be a strong character.
M-Pesa is a mobile phone-based money transfer, financing and microfinancing service. It was started in Kenya, and the idea quickly spread across borders - and now M-Pesa is used in Tanzania, South Africa, India, Albania and Romania. Funds are transferred between accounts via mobile phone - any cell phone. The system is intuitive and in Swahili, so even basically literate people can use it. You can pay for your vegetables from the street vendor with M-Pesa (she prefers it); you can pay for your Uber driver via M-Pesa. EVERYONE in Kenya pays or gets paid with M-Pesa.
I was in Nairobi to support the filming of a Translators without Borders (TWB) video and to meet the TWB team there; TWB's only physical office is in Nairobi; we train translators in east Africa and beyond. I've been to Kenya dozens of times - mostly on holiday, but also for work - so I wasn't expecting to learn much about Kenya itself. I knew that Kenya has a cool tech side, but didn't think much about it.
I was blown away.
The woman we hired for the video, Jane, lives in a slum; she has M-Pesa. She also is confident and comfortable around smart phones, iPads, etc. Jane is functionally illiterate; she can't sign her name, but she was happy to read her lines from a script on an iPad, sign a receipt with a thumb print and accept money into her M-Pesa account. She is thinking about getting M-Kopa to affordably provide solar electricity to her home in the slum for her phone, lights and radio.
Jane knows how to use her phone. She can easily get information from it. Literacy is not a barrier. Basic menus in Swahili work for Jane.
Which brought me, later that day, to iHub (I missed Mark Zuckerberg's visit by about an hour). I was there to meet Ushahidi and to discuss our growing partnership; but I also wanted to meet the mobile systems providers' association to discuss developing mobile courses to train translators in very local languages outside of Kenya (TWB already has translators in 11 Kenyan languages). If TWB can develop a larger cadre of local language translators, then more information can be translated into languages that people actually speak and can understand. And, combined with some other projects, including Facebook's Free Basics, more information can get to more people in a way that they can access themselves.
That's the crux. Can Jane get the information she wants and needs in her own language? Or can she only get what information "aid agencies" and governments give her - what "we" decide is important to translate? The answer, sadly, is that vital information is mostly in English and what is translated may not be what Jane wants or needs. For TWB, our challenge is to turn that system on its head so that Jane can get whatever information she wants in her language, when she wants it.
After a week in Kenya - seeing it not just as a country with a huge refugee population, beautiful beaches and wonderful game parks - I am convinced. Nairobi is a vibrant regional hub where non-traditional business practices are developing rapidly to suit a population of 46 million people, 75% of whom live in rural areas, with 12 main languages and dozens of smaller languages. Kenya really can be the future of information exchange.
As I'm writing this in Istanbul airport, the electricity goes out. I can feel the tension rise. The electricity doesn't go out in airports. And the last time it went out in Istanbul there was a bomb. The security presence around me is palpable. It reminds me that there is also a lot of tension in Kenya because of recent attacks; there are security checks everywhere. You go through security to get into shopping centers and sometimes within them; security forces are on the streets; you walk through metal detectors to go into hotels and cars are searched for bombs before going into parking lots. The country borders on two unstable and insecure countries; bombings and other acts of violence are, sadly, not uncommon and make people nervous. Graft and corruption are ubiquitous. Kenya and Kenyans have a lot to overcome; but, if any country can do it, Kenya can.
Mobile savvy Kenyans aren't nervous about technology; new technologies pop-up every day and Kenyans (mostly) accept them - from Uber to M-Kopa to Ushahidi. Ordinary Kenyans, even low income Kenyans, have a sense of what the world outside of Kenya can offer; they know that information is there and that it can help pull the country out of some of difficulties people are mired in now.
I think Kenyans can lead the way in making the world available to Kenyans and, hopefully, the rest of East Africa - and they can make Kenyan ideas and thoughts accessible to the millions of others who can benefit from some of the models that they are developing. It's super-inspiring; I am excited about working with Kenyan language professors, NGOs, and tech companies to help transform how development happens - so that people themselves have the information they want and can make informed decisions about their futures.