East African techpreneur Neema Iyer works at the intersection of data, design and digital to eventually enable products, policies and programs that take into account the needs of African women.



ARE GENDER DIFFERENCES AS RIFE on the world wide web as in the real world? When technologist Neema Iyer returned home to Africa after graduating from Emory University in the United States with a degree in epidemiology and statistics, she was bent on addressing gender from a technology perspective. 



Born to Tanzanian and Indian parents and raised in Nigeria, 34-year-old Iyer is today running Pollicy, a firm she founded in Kampala, Uganda, as a civic technology organization that works at the intersection of data design and technology and understanding how data can be used most effectively for improving service delivery through research, digital literacy, digital security and products. 



When she first touched down, she took up a job in Uganda where she worked in the ICT sector, but under predominantly white, male founders from the West. There was also a lack of touch points in governments with the African context. So Iyer decided she needed a fresh perspective using a gender lens.



“When you really look at it like a lot of technology, a lot of data, the systems are developed in Silicon Valley and I don’t feel that African women are particularly the end users when they design different technology,” says Iyer. 



Pollicy, funded mostly by grants from big tech like Facebook and Mozilla, more broadly focuses on gendered data and feminist data, that takes into account power dynamics and the person researching. 



“If you don’t have this kind of data, then it would be very difficult to make platforms or policies of programs that really take into account the needs of African women and what are the challenges and what are the gaps,” she says. 



For instance, field research or product development would usually involve talking to the head of the household or people in authority, which would usually be men. There are many other situations where women may not be allowed to take part in research, and Iyer thinks challenging this status quo is more important now more than ever. 



“Women in Africa are least likely to be connected to the internet, so there’s a very big digital gender gap. And they tend to have lower digital literacy, they tend to have lower ownership of mobile devices, they tend to have lower access to information. So, when you take all of these things into account, you can’t just have a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone.” Iyer notes cultural differences in even who can answer a phone call or who can own a phone. 



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These restrict women’s voices and participation. And even those can be online, as substantiated by online violence and gender disinformation. “It basically leads to the censorship of women, it leads to them leaving online spaces…if you don’t really think about these issues from the gender nuance, then you can replicate a lot of the discrimination that already exists in the physical world.” 



For her, these aspects need attention to meet the different needs of people, and to build products accordingly. Iyer is also interested in combining art and data. 



“So, moving beyond just spreadsheets and trying to make data more accessible to people.” 



For example, her team worked on a project in Uganda called ‘Create Your Kampala’, where they collected data from local communities on different social services, and then worked with them to create wall murals as a way to share back their data and get people involved in the conversation. 



“[We wanted to say] ‘you own this data; this is your data; how are you going to use it to improve your situation’?” 



But the challenge is that a number of African countries are not moving as quickly as they should in using, supporting and protecting data. Data collection is expensive, there are many administrative hurdles, and it needs a lot of trustbuilding. Pollicy is about four years old and Iyer had hoped it would have made more headway in this time, thinking there would have been be so many competitors in the space by now. 



“When I look back, I don’t feel like so much has changed, like we’re still very much lagging in the conversations. A lot of the artificial intelligence conversations are dominated way more by other countries, and even though funders are trying to do more in the African context, there is just not enough happening. So, I would love to see more organizations coming out and doing much, much more work on everything from collecting data, to analyzing it, to processing it, to getting value from it… with a feminist lens.” 



Iyer asserts that data will really help drive innovation and improve services, because if people know where the gaps are, then they can improve business, creativity and products. There is, of course, the fear that governments could use these systems to oppress dissenting voices. 



“Everything we do is grounded in ethics and equity and inclusiveness, so that when you do build technology, it’s not used to harm marginalized people… we need to come together now to think about that and to come up with solutions… I feel like there’s this urgency that we need to come up with better laws that work for everyone.”



Another challenge Iyer notes is the need to make data as intersectional as possible. 



“You don’t want power to be concentrated… so really thinking about power dynamics when you use data, I think it’s that intersectionality of gender and class and tribe and ethnicity, so that you can really make equitable products from the data.” 



Iyer also hopes to expand beyond Africa’s borders and continue working with government and civil society to create a better world. “You know, crafting our futures together in a way that works for everyone; that’s equitable and that’s inclusive and we want to make our own decisions for ourselves; so I really want to push that narrative.”



BY INAARA GANGJI

Ninnojackjr 2

Driving Feminist Data For Change

William Duk had every reason to be pleased with himself as he strolled along the lovely, long pristine beach at St Lucia in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. He had celebrated the spectacular turnaround of his once-doomed business, by hiring a hotel, inviting 110 guests and marrying his bride, Briggie, in wild and convivial weekend in Umzumbe on the
south coast.
“We had a record sales month in April and I thought, ‘Great, I can I get married and have a honeymoon in peace,” says Duk.
“It was a nightmare. The honeymoon, wasn’t really a honeymoon.”
As the scores of guests clinked glasses in a final farewell at the hotel in Umzumbe, on the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal, little did Duk know that tens of thousands of transport workers in ports and depots across South Africa were going on strike for more pay. For thousands of business people like Duk, who rely on imported materials, this was going to prove a cut to the jugular.
It had been a short career as an entrepreneur for Duk, who had graduated in accounting from the University of Cape Town in 1999. He left to cut his teeth in the one of the world’s liveliest financial markets.
“I went to London for two years to work with South Africans, Kiwis and Australians in banking at Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). We were all on contract and partying every night, you had to have a South African passport to get into Fulham and Putney in those days. On bank holidays we would spend five hours in traffic just to get to the M25,” he says.
“At the end of the two-year holiday visa I was marched out of RBS—they had a change of human resources and they said I had worked longer than my time. On these holiday visas you are only meant to work 50% of your time in your chosen profession. So, I got a part-time contract in a small technology services company. I was meant to leave the country after that, but my new employers convinced me to stay for another six months and then another six months and then I rolled out four- and-a-half years later. That time was pivotal; the London business was going into Europe, employing 200 people, and I was financial director. I was opening offices in Madrid and Paris for voice and data services like PABX and call centers.”
Duk flew home to Cape Town in 2006, with a pocket full of pounds, determined to invest in his future. He had always wanted to be an entrepreneur, like his father and grandfather, this was his chance and in many ways it bore out the Chinese proverb: Be careful what you wish for.
It all began with an investment in property. Duk went to Atlantis, a small town a short drive from Cape Town, to buy a factory from the Plantation Shutter Company, which made wooden louvered shutters for windows out of rare imported hardwood. The company was going into liquidation.
“I bought the building and spent the next few weeks looking for a tenant. I got a phone call from the silent partner, who I bought the building from, he said he was coming to Cape Town and wanted to meet. I looked through the financial information he showed me and thought this shouldn’t have happened. Working in a European company, you know how much working capital can be stretched. It was down to mismanagement, more than fundamental problems with the business,” says Duk.
“I bought in for a rand and took over the debts and liabilities. I didn’t have any cash—that was all tied up in property—I used the cash I had paid into the business for the building to finance a rescue plan. This was February 27, 2006: the doors of the business had been closed; 40 people hadn’t been paid for three months; suppliers were in the courts trying to get their money; there were 49 clients who had paid 50% of their deposit and expected their shutters to be installed before last Christmas. The business was a million rand in debt. It was as bad as it can get.”
It got worse from day one, as Duk tried to salvage what he could amid angry customers. He needed every ounce of his affable nature.
“My first job was phoning my clients and saying, ‘Hi, I am William from the Plantation Shutter company’ and they were saying, ‘Have you got our lawyers letters?’ I calmed them down and said, ‘Let me explain.’”
Duk was encouraged by the fact that 39 clients still wanted shutters, even though they had already waited for five months. It took nearly six months to placate the angry 39 and fulfil their orders. It took 18 months to turn around the business and by April it was selling a 1,000 sets of shutters-a-month and turning more than R40 million-a-year ($4.6 million). It was a dramatic turnaround that helped Duk win the Sanlam Business Partners Entrepreneur of the Year Award for 2012.
So Duk could be forgiven for feeling replete as he walked on the beach in St Lucia, on his honeymoon, on a sunny May afternoon. This warm feeling evaporated in a heartbeat as the strike by tens of thousands of dock and transport workers, in support of a 15% pay rise, hit home.
“I got an SMS saying we have got a problem with our timber supply,” says Duk.
In many ways, timber was the Achilles’ heel of the business. The shutters have to be made from durable Obeche hardwood, that will not warp, from the forests of Ghana. It has to be shipped from Accra to Cape Town and then transported by truck to Atlantis. In 2010, this supply line proved highly vulnerable in the face of a strike that was to cost South African business an estimated R7 billion ($803 million).
The upshot was that the factory in Atlantis ran out of wood and angry customers once again lurked in the wings. So, Duk was on the phone, on the beach, day in day out, in a frantic bid to keep the wheels of his business turning.
“So, it was all about buying time and putting a plan in place. If we were a smaller company we could have gone down the road to buy, but we were no longer a small company. We were consuming 320,000 kilograms of timber a year. I spent the entire day phoning timber merchants and suddenly the price had gone up 25%. I ended up negotiating with a few of these, but we couldn’t get enough, soon enough. We are a 21-day turn around operation. I ended up trying to juggle production and speaking to my clients around the country. I spent the entire day on the phone trying to put a plan in place. The worst moment of that day was realizing that everything we had worked for to restore credibility, in an industry not well known for its reliability, was at risk. We couldn’t afford to make excuses. For us it was going out and getting whatever timber we could at the best prices, paying 20% more than usual,” says Duk.
To make matters worse the supply of wood that Duk needed so badly was so near, yet so far. As the strike wore on, three 40-foot containers of hardwood from Ghana bobbed in Cape Town harbor, with no one to unload it. An email from the clearing agent said it all.
“Wait, hope and pray…. Here’s hoping the comedy of errors turns into that romantic comedy with a happy ending,” says the email.
The strike ended on May 27, 2010 but that wasn’t the end of the troubles for Duk and his timber. There was a scramble to see which of the tied-up freighters was to be unloaded first on the docks of Cape Town, as frustrated customers gathered on land. Duk says the problem was that the clearing agent didn’t have the captains’s cellphone number, so there were more delays as he had to wait for information through the shipping line.
“It went from bad to worse, the strike broke on the 27th and then we had to wait another two or three days for our containers to arrive on land,” says Duk.
“After two-and-a-half weeks of uncertainty. It was absolute relief. The ball was now in our court so we could put a plan in place….”
Duk took his wife to their favorite restaurant that night, a little older and wiser than they had been when they married just a few weeks before, after the strike that could have pulled down the shutters on his business.

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Driving Feminist Data For Change

Wait, Hope And Pray: How A Strike Can Ruin Your Honeymoon