The apps that are helping organise civil action across South Africa
Despite South Africa’s long history with civil action in the country, the shifting political and economic climate has made it more difficult for the country’s protesters to focus their efforts on a singular cause.
However, a new app and mobile service – Grassroot – along with platforms like WhatsApp, are emerging as a new way for social group to organise and manage civil action in the country.
Speaking to BusinessTech, Grassroot’s executive director, Luke Jordan, said digital platforms give individuals and communities access to new channels through which they can mobilise.
According to Jordan, among low-income and marginalized communities, social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter are not very important, and have limited reach.
“However, WhatsApp is extremely important and is very widely used,” said Jordan. “For example, ward councillors or committees will generally use WhatsApp groups (not FB pages or Twitter accounts) to post messages or spread information.”
“WhatsApp has its limitations – it does not reach everybody (especially if background data is switched off, which is common) – and WhatsApp groups are subject to being overwhelmed with trivia and personal disputes.”
“However it is far more prevalent than the other platforms.”
To tackle the limitations of digital reach, the Grassroot app works on smartphones and feature phones, without data, through a USSD interface – similar to recharging airtime – or via an Android or web app customized for low-end phones, Jordan said.
“Users set up groups, recruit people to them using a unique four digit ‘join code’, and then send out meeting notifications, take polls through automatically tabulated votes, or record decisions and actions with deadlines.”
According to Jordan, the app is already proving to be popular – over 34,000 people have been reached by the app, with roughly a third (just over 10,000) active monthly, and roughly 4,000-5,000 weekly active users, he said.
“Other measures are meetings, votes and actions called through Grassroot, which has just crossed 7,000 (current rate of ~200 per week), and total notifications (in effect users x activity) over half a million in total in the last 18 months,” noted Jordan.
Loading ...