How different would your life be without the digital services you rely on today? It’s a difficult question to consider, given how these modern marvels are so ubiquitous as to be taken for granted in our first world.
But that’s far from the case in developing countries, and digital literacy is a particular problem in the African Valley. Farmers there produce a significant portion of the region’s economic output, but still live in poverty. That’s what led Kume Chibsa, our guest on Episode 24 of the Public Sector Heroes podcast, to identify digital development as the public problem she wanted to solve.
“When you look at their social setup, the digital inequality scares you, especially in the covid-era. Some of them don’t even have analog phones, or lights, power, water. You’ve got all the social inequalities on top of the digital inequality. For me, that’s where I saw the necessity of my platform, where we can bridge these gaps all at once.”
As the founder and CEO of AfroValley, Kume has had to be creative in terms of how to solve this big problem in ways that first world citizens might not appreciate. “I used to live abroad, and I returned to Ethiopia after 20 years. The first thing I did was to visit the government, to understand how I can help them. Africa is very socialist, and the sectors are controlled by the government. I thought I could push the government for funding, but realized quickly that capital in Africa is quite expensive. So I decided to self-fund a feasibility study, and engaged the government to help me get data.”
