Days in Africa
By Rahul
Prologue
After more than 24 hours of flying, I arrive on the African Continent. South Africa. Or as Bunty from Eaton refers to it ,” Africa – lite” . We arrived at Cape Town , via Johannesburg . I realized I had over a liter of water in my bag when I went through security, it turns out there is no liquid limit while travelling locally. Most of the travelers on our flight were bicyclists entering Cape Town for a 109Km bicycle race.
Too exhausted to do much on day one we decided to just check our the mall next door and it looked better than stores in the US. Johannesburg was going to be a different experience.
Days of JoBurg
Day 1 introduced the topic of investment , entrepreneurship and education. Talks with the partners team from Secha Capital showcased some of the efforts to increase domestic investment. Though South Africa has a wealth of natural resources and having the 2nd largest economy in the continent, it seems to have very little investment in SMEs. SMEs are required to build growth from below allowing people in the lower income brackets rise. The talks also highlighted how dependence on foreign investment is risky as the change of political situations or perceptions would cause a dramatic loss in investments.
The trip to Room to Read the speaker spoke about efforts made to increase access to book to improve the literacy of children in their native languages. This topic has been a major touch-point in my home country. Similar to India, there are around 11 official languages in South Africa. It is essential to preserve the culture of the local population, yet it is also important for people to be able to communicate in a common tongue for business. Starting in the mother tongue and moving to English seems like a logical progression but I still question the viability of teaching every child in his/her mother tongue. The minimum cost of setting up a library and its maintenance may be too much for the villages where it is needed. Additionally the cost to procure books once the trial period is over may be quite large considering the authors have to write books for a very small customer segment. Additionally the local language books I saw were very high quality and colorful , which is required to interest children, but this adds to the cost.
With all this in mind, it is a very good attempt at trying the customize the development of children rather than a mass education system.
Day 2 was spent on energy. In my time in South Africa, I noticed so many buildings running solar electric and heating panels. I was under the assumption that there wasn’t enough usage of solar energy which was how we went about the project with Eaton. The issue seems to be more on the side of funding.
South Africa in the past five years has been facing drastic increase in electricity tariffs with shortage of electricity leading to power outages /load shedding. This is due to the aging infrastructure which has seen no investment to maintain, the political motivation to keep the tariff artificially low and the corruption within the state owned power company ESKOM.
Our team presented its findings to the client and had a conversation with the those involved in the project as well as some of the vendors . Though our models were interesting it seemed like they already employed various software to make instant sophisticated models. They asked us to look more into how to make the technology more acceptable to their customers.
Day 4 was used to highlight South Africa’s attempt to show progression away from its apartheid days. Mandate Molefi’s founder Nini Molefi spent time talking about understanding the unconscious biases that managers have while hiring or working with someone. With every country and company facing different issues, a company can only grow if it has ideas and voice from different views. Companies such as mandate Molefi attempts to analyze the work culture of companies , offices or political parties. They use this information to provide an outside view and corrections for it. They even have a game to show diversity in schools where students form groups that exclude others causing a harmful environment.
Visits to SoWeTo and the apartheid museum show us how bad the situation was in the 70s-90s. It is hard to believe such segregation existed in a post war society. But it is also partially visible in some parts of many countries in more subtle forms. Preferential job treatment to those of similar race, depiction of colored people in movies, feelings towards people of different religions and caste based issues in India are still experienced today. Apartheid was just an extreme government form.
Looking at how the formal segregation started, i.e. loss of jobs to certain communities causing a nationalist uprising, the right wing movements in the US , Europe and other nations should be watched else history may repeat itself.
A talk with out driver Martin towards the end of our trip painted a less than rosy picture. With initiatives to help the black community, BBBEE prevents white sole ownerships of companies and forces workforce and ownership to be primarily black. It becomes harder for the white minority to find jobs. Additionally in a personal situation to him, it is common for the police to side with a black person in a physical confrontation. This was what he termed “reverse apartheid”. EFF party leader Julius Malema openly campaigns with his views that whites and possibly colored people should not remain in south Africa. His posters paint the city billboards in blood red.
Our final Day was focused on healthcare with trips to WHO and Wits RHI( Reproductive health Institute)
Representatives of the WHO South Africa office spoke the efforts made by WHO to improve overall health not only physical but also mental and social. Though this is a holistic approach, I believe that it may dilute efforts and focus. Though all the sustainable development goals are important, some may be more important than others and may overlap with other organizations. The speaker also spoke about how governments should try to improve their tax models to include healthcare to promote equality and eventually the economy.
The other speaker spoke about jobs and internships at WHO. Though very interesting, many of these internships are non funded.
The final speaker spoke about TB and how HIV gets the most amount of attention but TB is just as dangerous. Luckily South Africa uses rapid testing technology to quickly test for TB and that has helped identify those in need. Additionally TB care is free for all in South Africa. This is needed to improve the community immunity.
TB may be the next major disease that the world will focuses to eradicate as it has with small pox and polio.
The Speakers at RHI were more highly focused on HIV. With improving access to HIV tests and clinics, they have identified over 90% of the HIV population. This is a great feat but is only useful if they can get this population into treatment. With the social stigma of HIV , much of the population especially males avoid treatment centers. This makes it harder to control the spread of HIV. HIV in South Africa is a major problem as with much of Africa. Improved access to drugs and efforts from the government have improved the survival of those infected but much effort has to be made to reduce its numbers. Setting goals such as 90-90-90 may be a great idea to motivate researchers and government efforts along with funding but it is far from enough.