The RIA Podcast

On this 8th episode of the RIA podcast we are discussing COVID-19 contact tracing with Dr. David Johnson from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cape Town. David has recently conducted research on contact tracing which he will be discussing, as well as South Africa’s new contact tracing app, COVID Alert.

In it we talk about contact tracing at both technological and non-technological levels. First we will discuss what contact tracing is, then we will discuss technological approaches to contact tracing. We will then discuss both the technological limits of, and access barriers to contact tracing. We will also discuss South Africa’s previous mobile-location based contact tracing approach, and the WhatsApp and USSD based COVID information app.

Finally we discuss the Google Apple Exposure Notification (GAEN) protocol, as well as the new GAEN-based South African App, COVID Alert.

David is a telecommunication consultant and adjunct senior lecturer in the Computer Science Department at the University of Cape Town specialising in community network access models and RIA Senior Associate. He received his PhD in Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2013 and was recently a visiting IT policy fellow at the Centre for Information and Technology Policy at Princeton.

David has published more than 60 articles in the areas of computer networks, wireless connectivity and ICT for Development and has 15 years experience developing networking solutions for the African context using open source technology.He has led a number of connectivity projects in the area of small cell, mesh technology and edge-hosted services in Zambia and South Africa.

He has also led policy work on broadband expansion and spectrum management for the South African government, including contributing to South Africa’s finalised TV white space regulation and modelling future high demand spectrum for the new National Wireless Open Access Network. His current research interest is in Cellular White Space technology, blockchain, mesh networks and community network micro-clouds.

This podcast is hosted and produced by RIA Researcher, Alex Comninos.

Download the COVID Alert South Africa App on the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.

The music for this podcast is “Nobody Think Nomo” by Chimurenga Renaissance (feat. Mall Saint).

As the so-called fourth industrial revolution unfolds, gig work driven by technology companies in the platform economy, is being promoted as the solution for the unemployment crisis as it lowers the barriers to entry into the labour market.

There are a number of companies that have proliferated in recent years offering gig work or what’s come to be known as microwork via apps, where complexity is stripped away from projects, which are broken down into singular tasks distributed over the internet via platform companies. On the higher end of the skills spectrum people may engage in, for example, desktop publishing tasks via platform companies, such as Mechanical Turk or Clickworker, while on the lower end of the skills spectrum – and possibly most famous globally – people drive cars for the e-hailing taxi service, Uber.

There are, of course, a whole range of jobs in between in the platform economy, but the distinguishing feature of this gig economy, emphasized in its name, is that is part time work, and people are paid per task, which means that there is no job security or social protections offered by the companies, such as health benefits, sick pay, annual leave and retirement benefits. Gig workers are also often paid below minimum wage.

So, gig work has come to be associated with precarious work–and gig workers all over the world are taking these platform companies to court, as they find themselves exploited and experience rights violations.

Our guests are two lawyers that have defended gig workers, Prof. Darcy du Toit from the University of the Western Cape (UWC). And bringing us the international perspective is German Lawyer Dr. Ruediger Helm.

Prof. du Toit is an Emeritus Professor at UWC and former Dean of Law. He currently coordinates a new niche area in the Faculty of Law, Labour Law 4.0. His research focuses, amongst other things, on the impact of digitalisation on labour rights and changing forms of work. As a practitioner he has worked as a labour arbitrator and remains a consultant to Bradley Conradie Halton Cheadle Attorneys, a firm specialising in labour law, in which capacity he represented former Uber drivers in the first litigation against Uber in South Africa.

Dr. Ruediger Helm is a German lawyer who is also a research affiliate with the University of Cape Town’s Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU). Ruediger has spent more than two decades working in the legal and research fields. Amongst his achievements is the fact that he was architect of the “Mangold-Helm Case” to the European Court of Justice, which led to a new interpretation of Age Discrimination laws and other kinds of work discrimination laws in Europe.

This podcast was hosted by Fazila Farouk and produced by Alex Comninos.

The music for this podcast is “Nobody Think Nomo” by Chimurenga Renaissance (feat. Mall Saint).

Image by MikeDotta / Shutterstock.com

We apologise for the poor sound quality at the beginning of this podcast. It does improve a few minutes in.

Is South Africa’s digital economy continuing with existing patterns of extraction and exploitation? Or are there alternative models for economic development that foster economic and social inclusion?

These are the questions that RIA’s Fazila Farouk put to Prof. Barry Dwolatzky, founder of Tshimologong, a start-up incubator established as Africa’s answer to Silicon Valley, which is embracing innovation and entrepreneurship to deal with SA’s triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment; and Fairuz Mullagee, a social entrepreneur leading a team at the University of the Western Cape in the establishment of a platform co-operative.

In the 5th episode of the RIA podcast, we have a discussion with Research ICT Africa Senior Associate and Co-director of the Cybersecurity Capacity Centre for Southern Africa (C3SA) at the University of Cape Town on cybersecurity, cybersecurity capacity building and the African and South African cybersecurity terrain.

This podcast episode is produced and hosted by Alex Comninos, Researcher at Research ICT Africa.

The music for this podcast is “Nobody Think Nomo” by Chimurenga Renaissance (feat. Mall Saint).

We encourage others to re-use our work so we have given you upfront permission for uses of the podcast (other than the theme music) authorized by the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).

Next week South Africa is to phase from Level 4 to Level 3 of the national lockdown. In the fourth episode of the RIA Podcast we have an in depth discussion about contact tracing to combat the spread of COVID-19. We look at the technical basis for contact tracing, International examples of contact tracing, the new South African regulations on contact tracing, as well as the human rights aspects of contact tracing.

In many of the mature economies, the data protection aspects of COVID-19 contact tracing are managed by their Information Regulators. In South Africa, a designated COVID-19 judge, Justice Kate O’Regan, has been somewhat innovatively appointed to oversee this process by the Department of Health to ensure the protection of individual rights in the mass surveillance of the population. There’s been some confusion about whether this overrides earlier mobile data collection clauses from the Department of Communications and Digital Communications (DCDT), some which have been subsequently scrapped.

We discuss this, together with how these relate to the Information Regulator’s contact tracing guidelines, why she was not included in the management of contact tracing, how these regulations differ from other existing interception and surveillance legislation, and importantly, to the Bill of Rights.

This podcast episode is produced by Alex Comninos and hosted by Dr Alison Gillwald, Executive Director at Research ICT Africa (RIA) and Adjunct Professor at the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance at the University of Cape Town. It features as guests from the RIA team, Alex Comninos, Gabriella Razzano, Andrew Rens and Anri van der Spuy.

The music for this podcast is “Nobody Think Nomo” by Chimurenga Renaissance (feat. Mall Saint).

In the third episode of The RIA Podcast, we talk about #COVID-19, South Africa under lockdown, working from home in South Africa, digital inequality, alternative access strategies, lost opportunities in the communications landscape, why internet access is important during lockdown, advanced technologies and COVID-19, privacy and COVD-19, digital inequality and the 4IR.

For more on COVID-19, digital economy, and digital inequality, see the article “How COVID-19 exposes the defects in South Africa’s digital economy” by RIA Principal Researcher and Economist, Shamira Ahmed.

This podcast is produced and hosted by Alex Comninos and features Dr Alison Gillwald, Executive Director at Research ICT Africa and Adjunct Professor at the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance at the University of Cape Town.

The music for this podcast is “Nobody Think Nomo” by Chimurenga Renaissance (feat. Mall Saint).

Research ICT Africa’s Alex Comninos talks to Professor Joseph Cannataci, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy.

We talk about the challenges posed to privacy by AI, privacy as informational self-determination, privacy as an enabling right, privacy and security (can they be balanced or is it a false dichotomy?), South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act, and surveillance legislation in South Africa. We even talk about blockchain too!

Convention 108 (Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data)

The music for this podcast is “Nobody Think Nomo” by Chimurenga Renaissance (feat. Mall Saint).

Welcome to the first episode of the Research ICT Africa Podcast!

In our pilot episode, we dial in to Harare Zimbabwe during electricity time (22:00-05:00) to speak to cybersecurity professional and penetration tester Kundai Gwatidzo (@epicpewpew) about cybersecurity issues in Africa including the City of Johannesburg hack, penetration testing, data breaches, ransoms, DDoS attacks, and cybersecurity in the African public sector.

This podcast was produced by Alex Comninos, edited by Pablo Aguera, and with editorial assistance by Nils Berglund and Pablo Aguera.

Music by ModulationStation on Freesound https://freesound.org/s/389552/