Page 112 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 23
P. 112
Community
tilling the land. The plants grow the process, they just change the manufacturer will come to do
because they have soil, water jembe. capacity building on how to
and sunshine, not because you use the new jembe. They invite
used a jembe to break the land. The jembe will be more you to a workshop in a hotel,
We have to understand digital expensive, and it will be a with some decent per diem.
tech in the same way. nightmare to use because it will You stay the whole day there,
Imagine if someone comes to become slippery. It slows you but remember, the rains are not
you and says: I am going to give down your work, and the rains waiting for you.
you a jembe with a handle made are not waiting for you to get And then after some days away
of steel instead of wood, and used to it. What you’re not told, from the shamba in a hotel, you
your food will no longer need of course, is that the maker of return home, and you discover
water, soil and sunlight to grow the steel jembe is pulling strings that the steel wasn’t high
because the jembe was posher.” from behind the scenes. quality. It rusted and broke.
That’s what we are being told The maker of the steel jembe Now you need a new handle.
about digital tech by GoK went to politicians to pass So you now spend an extra day
(Government of Kenya), on laws making his steel hand going to the shopping center to
the encouragement of the mandatory. His companies get a new handle.
manufacturers by the same tech. got government tenders to
How are they able to sound monopolize the sale of jembe Na bado hujalima.
logical? handles. His foundation, built
on that wealth, gave grants to That’s how the entire GoK has
The genius of Western stealth civil society to raise concerns been gaslighted about tech and
and trickery is not to oppose about whether minority groups is gaslighting us about tech. We
what you say. It’s to remove have access to the steel handled want to plant seed and build
small elements of it and jembe. He then went to Davos from the ruins of our economy.
introduce cause-effect fallacies and in an interview by your Instead of letting us do that
that require you to stop doing top journalist, he said that steel work, they are replacing the
what you’re doing to spend time jembes are modern, the best jembe handles, and paralyzing
trying to find where the problem thing that happened to you, now us with regulation and fees. GoK
is and refute it. It’s so insidious. you Africans have embraced has also bought lies about tech.
Let me explain with farming. modernity and come closer to They are incapable of offering
So, the process of growing food his level. social services (incapable of
is this: helping you till the land), but
1. Till the land But remember, you are still they are telling us that we will
2. Plant the seed struggling to use his jembe to get better services if we have
3. The seed grows from the soil, plant. The jembe is slowing you digital IDs, (ie. your food will
rain and sunshine. down and the rain isn’t waiting. grow because you used a steel
What the West does is to mess Soon an NGO funded by the handled jembe).
up with no. 1. They don’t stop foundation of the steel jembe
112 | we tell the true afrikan story
