Why Kikasha is so important, timely, and unique

There are several reasons why the world—particularly Africa and other parts of the global south—needs the Kikasha App.

To begin with, Kikasha App is the only one dedicated expressly to the promotion of good governance. Its stated mission is "Making the world a better place," and its design and features are targeted at enabling citizens—both ordinary and elite—to engage or communicate with leaders with a view to promoting good governance and citizen-centered leadership.

This contrasts with other apps or social networks that are mostly used in Africa and in most parts of the global south. For example, Facebook, by far the most popular social network, primarily focuses on enabling people to connect with their friends and family.

Instagram enables users to post photos showing where they are and what they are doing. Pinterest, on the other hand, is for enabling users to share beautiful and inspiring visuals, while LinkedIn is for people who want to talk business. This is not to forget YouTube, which is primarily for sharing video. Twitter, as explained in its user base description, is a forum primarily for media, government officials, celebrities, journalists, as well as brands—making it rather elitist.

Clearly, Kikasha stands out as a governance platform dedicated to making the world a better place. Kikasha seeks to promote good governance and make the world a better place in several ways.

First, it provides a channel through which citizens can expose or share information on corruption and other forms of crime with the public institutions mandated to deal with such vices. It is important to note that citizens can report corruption and other crimes openly or anonymously. Anonymity is intended to protect users from possible reprisals or harm from those they expose.

Secondly, Kikasha is the only App that avails a two-way channel of communication between citizens and government leaders. In this way, it helps government leaders to obtain feedback from the public on their work. It also helps leaders to obtain insights into the preferences of the people and, crucially, benefit from divergent ideas on various issues from the public.

Thirdly, Kikasha enables citizens to conduct opinion polls and create petitions, all for free. Opinion polls and petitions are important in a democracy as they help the people to not only influence the actions of their leaders but also determine the direction of public policy.

Finally, Kikasha promotes good governance by empowering interest groups, from Teachers Unions and Matatu Owners to small-scale farmers, vendors' associations, and Student Unions, to organize and communicate more easily, cheaply, and conveniently. It does this by enabling interest groups, or users with shared interests, to form their own forums. This helps interest groups overcome logistical challenges and other issues that undermine the ability of interest groups to organize and promote their interests.

Besides promoting good governance, Kikasha provides a much-needed, if belated, escape route from the veritable dangers and risks associated with over-reliance on foreign tech companies. Two dangers are particularly noteworthy.

The first is digital colonialism. In the past, empires extended their power and territory via the control of key assets, ranging from trade routes to oceans, and from railways to precious metals. Today, we are having technology empires that control data and computational power to dominate the world.

Africa today, and the global South in general, is running serious risks with respect to the control of data. This is because in these parts of the world, foreign tech companies have effectively acquired the power to mediate, monitor, and process all user communications in countries where they operate—giving rise to a new form of imperialism—only this time spearheaded by tech companies, not nation-states.

The second risk concerns the control and power that these foreign tech companies have acquired over the citizenry. What the millions of people in Africa and other parts of the world who spend most of their time using these foreign-owned social media networks do not know is that these platforms are, in reality, smart apparatuses for extracting behavioral data from their users.

By analyzing the behavior of users on their platforms, the operators behind these platforms are able to extract packets of data that, when stitched together, generate what is called user profile information. When these packets of information are run through natural language processing and other highly intelligent analytic algorithms, what finally comes out is a report that catalogs everything from your personality, your likes and dislikes, your interests, your health status, your financial situation, and even protected status information, etc.

Armed with this information, these operators are able to predict the behavior of users and, by extension, to control them. In what is today commonly described as surveillance capitalism, the user information so extracted is prefabricated into what are called prediction products that are sold to advertisers (for use in targeted advertising) as well as other markets that pay for prediction products.

In light of all this, the need for Africa and the global south as a whole, to promote, nurture, and embrace homegrown social media platforms need not be belabored. Kikasha is clearly an important, timely, and unique platform that pioneers the way for Africa to begin taking control of its own data and minimizing the power of foreign firms over its people.