Memory Kachambwa on knowledge justice in Africa

by by the Whose Knowledge?

Youlendree Appasamy: Welcome to the Femininja Podcast. This series was co-curated and co-hosted with our friends at Whose Knowledge? These episodes were recorded during the Decolonizing the Internet, East Africa gathering in Lusaka, Zambia. Welcome everybody to today's podcast. I'm Youlendree Appasamy, from Whose Knowledge? I'm the Communications Associate for the VisibleWikiWomen campaign. And with me today we have…

Kerubo Onsoti: Kerubo Onsoti from the African Women's Development and Communications Network, and I'm there as the Digital Media Officer.

Memory Kachambwa: And I’m Memory Kachambwa. I'm the executive director for FEMNET, African Women's Development and Communication Network. So happy to be in this space!

Kerubo Onsoti: Welcome! Thank you, Memory!

Youlendree Appasamy: So let's start off with some broader questions, so our listeners could maybe be a bit more familiar with the work you're doing, as well as where do you think decolonizing comes into your work at FEMNET?

Memory Kachambwa: So FEMNET, as the word says, we are also a communication network and our work is really centered around information sharing. It's around movement building, it's around disrupting the colonial agenda. It's about advancing feminist principles and supporting the feminist movement. We have centered our work around power, voice, feminist solidarity, and building an organization with a soul. So when it comes to the whole conversation around decolonizing the internet, decolonizing the digital space, it's actually one of the things that we really feel is important to partner with organizations with movements like Whose Knowledge?, Wiki Women projects, and like-minded organizations. It is part of our feminist agenda to say, as feminists, we've always talked about how do we start dismantling this hegemonic power, this capitalist way? How do we start making sure our voices, African women's voices, African women's stories are told by Africans themselves? They're also documented. We are almost invisible. Our histories have been erased and are dominated by a very patriarchal colonial. Who is telling our stories as women? Where is my grandmother in her contribution? Even from the whole liberation, the whole colonial, no one talks about it. So there's so many layers that need to be dismantled. There's so much power in getting our stories out there. So historically we've been excluded. Historically we haven't been the ones who tell the stories. They're told elsewhere. So when we come into the digital space, which is so dominant, we don't see ourselves, there's a particular narrative that is out there. We look for it, we don't get it. So as FEMNET, our work is to really get the lived realities of women and girls on the continent to be out there, to be heard, but for them to also start creating and getting that validation. Their stories are valid, their experiences are valid. They need to be heard, they need to be out there.

Youlendree Appasamy: So you were talking about what would your grandmother think about these things? Where's the space for her? If you were to use that as a conceptual tool for the work you're doing, how would you conceive of an internet where your grandmother would feel safe or welcome? Right? That's a very esoteric question, but what kind of internet would that look like?

Memory Kachambwa: I think that's really interesting because when we talk about internet, I think we have sort of defined the internet, definitely something which has come with a new millennial century. But when you think about how my grandmother used to interact, how they used to communicate within their communities, amongst the family, within the communities, within the different geographic location, that's really the internet. They had an internet really because they were communicating and when imagining how she would've loved it to be safe, I think it to be where it's really accessible, where she is, if she is wherever she's located, she has access to it, she can use it and not be, there's no bias, there's no profiling, there's no one feeding with algorithms of what, because maybe she looked for something and then that's all that's coming. It's not bombarding her, but it's giving her the leeway, the freedom, the expression.

There's no trolling, that violence is not there, but it's a way of a means to get information, to input information and a way to reach out and to express who she is with the different communities. Even across the continent, I think I would imagine this whole internet that she can't wait to eagerly go there and start doing the whole storytelling. I think we grew up having what we used to call every goodnight bed night stories. So bed night stories were not invented; the whole Cinderella, Rapunzel, that Western, but we had them also. We’d gather around the fire at night, we’d hear amazing fictitious stories. Stories; romantic stories, stories of adventure. So that's the internet there, right? Because it was being passed down, being passed down in a way which was affirming. In a way which also allowed the expression of dance, the expression of lots of forms, poetics.

So we have that, but that has not been captured in a way where it’s acknowledged as a knowledge, but we had it. So it's been erased and what my children really consume and what they are getting online are things which hardly cannot even connect. They cannot connect to. We had stories of - I’ll say it in my language - Tsuro Na Gudo - because that was, and that's the hare and the monkey. So they were the main characters in our storytelling. So they would do all these notorious, think of, we had Tom and Jerry stories incredible, really fun. And every other form we had it, but it's not there. It is like it didn't exist. And what we get fed, it's really something that a bunch of people are out there who have the resources we have captured, who have colonized, and they want us to think, they want even our generation to think in a certain way to visualize the world in a certain way.

And I think this is where there's so much disconnect in terms of what is being fed is not connecting with the realities of us on the continent. And we're still for us feminists to say, how do you then connect? That's the world, the very capitalist, very extractive, having no space for you just to be. No self-care in it. No switching off. It's a fast-paced because there's an algorithm that is not human, which is feeding into you, into your consciousness. But our way of being, our way of being, I think our rootedness is much more caring. It's much more slow, it's much more intentional, it's much more human. And I think there's been that diversion. So back to your question, which was like what is happening now and why it's so important to bring that back in, but to even acknowledge that it existed. And for me, when we look at everything that is really happening, even with a crisis, how is our digital way of being ecologically balanced with our way, with our environment?

So there's so many things that I feel this is the time when we talk of the bigger decolonizing agenda of the internet and feminists leading in that. Because as feminists we have always seen where is that disconnect, where is the power line? Why we need to dismantle this, because we have our feminist eyeglasses and lens which look at all these sources of power that wants to dominate our way of thinking, our way of being. And that whole system is really built on this neo-colonial, patriarchal - you can say all the words - heteronormative, misogynistic, power there. And so when we start dismantling everything, it's because that has been our fight. So we know our tools are able to see way ahead. And for me, this is why I'm like, yes, the decolonial agenda is an agenda which the feminist has really been leading on. The feminists have really it’s been part of our struggle and still continues to be our struggle. So even if it's in the digital space, in the economic, in the social space, in the psychological space, our agenda is feminist.

Kerubo Onsoti: I'm really happy. You've mentioned, you've taken us through a history of growing up our grandmothers or mothers. And I'm just curious to know for you as memory, do you have a personal experience or a story where you feel like you experienced a colonized internet?

Memory Kachambwa: Oh wow, I did. So I'll just tell you a little bit. So I'm a natural. I studied natural science and when I was in uni, it was just the onset of cell phones. I remember, I think we had a computer lab with maybe 10 or so or 15 computers. So you'd have a computer lesson where you would be shown how to be on email there. So that's the era where we were starting to, of course, there was the whole computer science, computer engineering, but for other departments, internet and access was very limited. Maybe two or three people would have cell phones. So that's the era, just the beginning of 2000. That's when I was in college. So one of the things that really struck me is I was studying geology. One of my majors was geology and I was interested in remote sensing, which it was just a course, but I was so much interested in it. So I pursued it and it wasn't being offered in other, it was just like a course which I just ran. I mean it wasn't even on something we are being examined for. So actually it was a graduate student who was doing his, I think Master's in remote sensing. So I got so much interest in it and I then pursued to do Geographic Information Systems. So my first job really out of college, my first job was with an IT company, all men, all from the engineering department.

So I was, I think we were two ladies who came in, but from my stream it was just me. And I remember we were selling software, so we are selling Geographic Information Software. So now we do all these Google maps, we just whatever, it was not there before. And it was interesting because we were selling software for mines for de-mining part of Zimbabwe and Mozambique during the liberation war had a lot of mines which were put in. So we were selling the software to detect that. So that was one of our main projects. But we are also selling a lot of software for mine for geological modeling to see what's underground and the like. And then we did the whole training. So I was so fascinated and I remember one of the guys who was more like our manager, he was saying to me, listen, “when you go and you want to troubleshoot with someone has a problem, just go into the MS-DOS.”

So back then there was MS-DOS, which was more like the programming language, very old language. So he said for you to confuse the client, just go in, you look so sophisticated, maybe the client just needed to restart their printer, something like that. But I marveled at the whole confidence around it. So every other day we are creating just little macros. You're just creating new things, you're learning, so I enjoyed that. It was just my first sort of experiences, like brush. But then what I also found out is how that information was not accessible. So in our department, in the geology department, all the professors or whatever, they were all white. And most of them were from Australia, the UK. We even had Russia, as well from all these countries. And it was so interesting because they were doing amazing projects. They were really doing a whole geological mapping of the country using remote sensing technology. And that information was not even available at our National Geological Survey Center. So where it was being stored, I have no idea, but we were using old information, archived information, but they were way, way, way ahead knowing exactly what is the deposits. So for me, that was sort of my first sort of awakening moment. I was like, how is it that the information, first of all, we are not even being taught in terms of getting that information. Our sophistication is going down in the basement. All these old journals, we were not even digitally astute. So you'd finish college, but you have no digital astute yet you have a department which is being led by white men, or foreigners, or professors and what they're getting out of the system and out of the country, the surveillance that they have is something which you have no access to. It is only now you're like, oh my goodness, with all this technology, which has they knew already. So they knew where every deposit was. They knew, I mean they've done, they've done so much more. I mean, so if this whole linking around the whole extractive nature.

Youlendree Appasamy: So Memory, we were talking about your journey as a natural sciences student and how that kind of feminist techie awakening. And I want to bring it back to our sessions at the DTI East Africa conference, and where do you think we're at now and how do you think that compares to where you were at in the mid-2000s working for this geography surveying organization with the software?

Memory Kachambwa: I think we have gone leaps and bounds to even talk about feminist internet principles. I think for me that's amazing, amazing. Just having a collective of feminists who can really think they could, there's need for freedom of the internet. There's need to challenge all this hegemonic, and also to say, “Hey, stop. Whose knowledge are you consuming?” So for me, I think we've come, wow, a long way. There's definitely been an increase in terms of awareness of how the digital space cannot be a safe space. I think we've seen and we've watched how it has taken over. And with the pandemic, I think the pandemic just coming out of the pandemic, which we have not yet really come out of, it just really shows why it's important to have these conversations. For me, just coming from this DTI, it’s actually my first Decolonizing the Internet meeting, and actually coming out of this conference I'm just thinking. “this is what we need.” We just don't need it as an isolation. But we need it in all our spaces, in all our social justice struggles. We must be alert to say “what sort of knowledge is there?” I mean the issue around knowledge justice did not exist before as evidently as we have seen it. So I think that coming up as an issue to say “there's an injustice, the internet is not neutral as we are made to think it is. It is not neutral at all.” So I feel we have the warriors, who are just coming up and saying, “Hey pause, we need to watch. We need to do our research. We need to start really thinking, what are we consuming? Why are we being fed? What we are being fed? Where are the women? Where are the African women? Where are the women of color? Where are the voices?

Who are they? Why is it that we never hear? We never see.” So I felt having that sort of realization, but building a movement around that is so powerful. It is so timely. And I think more than anything, we need to put more of our ideas and to start making the intersections with other movements because our future is digital, but we have no space to be thinking about what we want it to be. There are people who are shaping that for us. They're not on the continent, they're not feminist, they're not human rights conscious. But it's to feed and to say what should the future look like to ensure that they maintain the status quo to ensure that they maintain their power, they maintain their influence, they maintain their circle, and they continuously erase us. So I am thinking, “Wow, we need more DTI, we need DTI to be really centered”, because who is talking about self-care and the digital space? So much about the digital economy. Who is breaking it down for us to really understand the whole sophistication? But to go in there and to know who is in there. How do we influence from within, how do we influence from outside? How do we collectively learn and get to do something? So for me, what I like about it is we are doing something. It is beyond just doing the protest, but I think it's having moved forward to say yes, we are going in, we are going into Wikipedia, we are going in, we are going to change, we're going to create the content, we are going to shift the narrative. We are going to document the unheard voices and we are going to code. We are going to create what works for us, what we want. We are going to challenge, collectively come together and say we want the space, the digital space to be safe. And when we say we are not feeling safe, it's valid for us to say that we need the protection from obviously from the governments. We need the policies, but this is what we mean. So it's one, what I like about it is to say we can actually demonstrate to say this is what safety should be like. If we want to have solutions, this is what the solution should be like. And then we code it and then we use it. So I think for me that's a way of organizing, but very timely because the digital is real. Artificial Intelligence is real, it's here. And we cannot afford because of the rat race, to have that space to dream, to imagine, to talk and to put it. And the owners who obviously make sure that we stay that way. We stay busy, we stay disrupted. Our work is not validated. So they will never invest in us. You can never dismantle the master's house with the tools. Like what Audre Lorde always says, but we need to have our own. But just having that, I think for me I'm like, wow, how can we just be, and be allowed to have a space where we can really start thinking. Because there are people way ahead of us, millions. And they'll say, oh no, we just take his, it's not even about the money, but they're creating a future where we will be there and if we are not careful, it'll be even worse in terms of the injustice and the inequity that we are feeling.

Kerubo Onsoti: I think you've really mentioned something important because we can't constantly talk about the digital inclusion without also factoring in the digital safety. Because we've realized that the internet is not safe for especially women of color. So even as we continue to decolonize the internet, I feel like we also need to highlight these challenges that women of color are facing on the internet and how can we protect or even have laws that punish people who make the internet space unsafe for women. So maybe that's a discussion we can continue to have and continue talking about it. Because like I said, it's not a one week discussion, it's not a one month discussion. This is something we'll continue to talk about as long as the internet continues to grow. And it's already making the world a very small place. So that's my addition to this.

Youlendree Appasamy: I actually just want to go back to some of the things you're talking about in terms of dreaming up what a feminist internet could look like and be like. Especially looking at how the space has grown in leaps and bounds since you were talking about it before. And maybe you could give our listeners one or two clear takeaways. Just small things, big things, medium-sized things that you would be taking away from the DTI conference, the conversations, the lunchtime laughter, the after conference drinks. Any small or big things you would be taking away from here.

Memory Kachambwa: I think for me it's the solidarity. Just knowing that we have the power, we still have the power within and just to connect our struggles. So I think from here I'm taking out a lot of comfort just knowing that I can always reach out to you. I can reach out to Kerubo, I can always reach out to even my sisters across in Latin America, our sisters organizing in North America, doesn't matter whether the geographic distance. But I think just having that sense of community. To say there's a community which is seeing what we are seeing, but also a community that is working to make us see what is invisible. I am taking away the avatar. I really love that avatar to say our imagination should transcend our fight for daily bread. Just having that space to say one day I should be sleeping and thinking, oh this avatar, this feminist avatar in this digital space, this is what it's doing or this is what we wanted to do. So I just also take out that space just to expand and just allow us to say, listen, you can do this. So I think for me, those are the small little nuggets that I'm saying like no matter your community, no matter where you are, you still have the power to say, imagine what an app or what sort of information we could give for young girls to find safety or to reach out or to get information who can do it.

Youlendree Appasamy: So Memory, some of your takeaways speak so beautifully to the conversations happening at DTI, especially around how through colonialism, a function of it was to remove us from a sense of community. It was a divide and conquer rule where different ethnicities, different language groups, different races of people were made to be enemies and not in community with each other as we were possibly perhaps during pre-colonial days. And how a kind of individualism has developed as a result. So spaces of connection such as DTI are even more important just by being together, by sharing the work we are doing, by laughing together, by having that sense of solidarity that you are not alone in this and this is a community that does exist and that you belong in the fullness of all your identities is such an important way of also decolonizing. It's giving substance to that term where it's not just a buzzword but it's something you do through practice as we've been doing for the past few days.

Memory Kachambwa: Absolutely. I think in the recent days we've heard a lot of decolonizing this, decolonizing that. But I think in the past two days with DTI, it has been the practice of coming together and just having that sense of this is what we can do, and actually doing it. And I think it's, well what is interesting is this is something that I really feel Whose Knowledge? has been doing for a long time in terms of this has been the agenda and working together with FEMNET and bringing us collectively into the space. I think for me it's been phenomenal in terms of having that way of being. because I feel the colonial agenda still persists in ways that may not be as obvious to us, but it's still insidious because its rules have not been uprooted. In fact, we are talking about the undersea cable, who owns them, the satellites. So if the whole infrastructure is still owned by the colonialist and there's no impetus for that transfer. So people talk about justice, yes, you've had your independence, but what is happening to this whole new way of being colonized again? I ways which are insidious, they might not look obvious, but the whole issue around how our minds are being trained, our minds are being programmed in a certain way which has no much respect or space for who we are as Africans for who we are as women in all our diversity. That we are being fed to like something, to like a certain way of living to crave for that. And for me, when we talk about decolonial, how do we decolonize that? Our diversity, our creativity, our colors, our culture? I mean look at how our languages and no way. So there's going to be a whole population which will be forced to speak the language that the internet speaks.

No translation, nothing. So that's already excluding. And how do we start thinking of still preserving that? Because it's so important for us to still say “this is who we are as we are”. But if there is an agenda to have that as it was pre-colonial. So we know pre-colonial, everything that we practice was all being centered to be it's either evil, or this is not the way it should be. This is the culture that we should all thrive to be. So it's the same way where we think this is how you should dress, even our bodies. This is how our bodies should be. As women, you should aim to have this Eurocentric, slim, but our bodies are not like that. They're so different. But we are being fed to a certain way of dressing. This is how you should dress, this is how you should talk, this is how the language you should use and everything.

Where is that diversity? Where is that richness that we embody, and where is that Ubuntu that we are? How do we continuously preserve that and authenticate that? So I think the last two days has given us re-energized us to say, hey, if we are talking about it, if we are practicing, we are demonstrating it, then we are up to something really big. So for me, DTI is really, it's a continuum. I think Sylvia mentioned it, we are continuing in terms of really impacting, really moving forward and being more aware. I think there's nothing as beautiful as coming out of a space where you feel “I've learned so much”. Where you have that anger inside of you still to say, I need to continue with this struggle. I need to stand in solidarity. But just understanding certain things has been amazing. I mean the statistics are just like, what? The statistics which exist of how women of color are not even there online yet.

We don't even have data in terms of out of those women of color, how many are Africans. So there is still huge data gaps in terms of even the analysis that we need. So it's one thing to be erased. It's also another thing to say there's actually no information. The analysis probably just guess to here, but there’s still need for deeper analysis and also really knowing. So yeah, it's that sense of - I know this is why I'm fighting for knowledge justice. This is why we do the things that we do. This is what keeps us awake. This is what we know we are contributing to. We go in, we put in a woman on Wiki and here they will be remembered. They will be known. We are building the knowledge, our knowledge.

Youlendree Appasamy: Thank you so much, Memory, for sharing with us your experiences not only at DTI, but just all of the journeys you've taken to get to this space. Is there anything else you'd like to add to the conversation to let our listeners know?

Memory Kachambwa: Well, I think to say feminists techies are human, amazing beings, and that digital tech is something that we should embrace. We should really lean into knowing more about. But I also wanted to say how the pandemic really laid bare some of the widening digital gap in terms of how most of us were being forced to recalibrate to embrace the use of digital platforms. So this is something which we now know. Despite the, it's something that is a reality for us, but we know that we still have a lot of challenges like unstable connectivity, unreliable, the limited electricity access, the how is very expensive, the very unsafe platforms with targeted online violence against women and girls as well. Issues around cyber bullying and also just the privacy breaches as well. How unsafe the digital space and the digital platform. I think this was really exposed and still continues to come out.

And also not to mention that close to 3 million people of the global population still remain unconnected in the digital world, including persons with disability whose access to some of the information still remains as a huge, huge, huge gap. So I think for me, DTI being here in Lusaka, the two and a half days, we've been able to deeply reflect, to have candid conversations, to be unapologetic in terms of debunking what it will take to decolonize the internet. And that this is for us, and for all of us, for our community in all our diversities. How do we make sure that we include marginalized communities? We also include those whose voices are silent, those whose voices and traditions and way of being is not recorded anyway. And I think as FEMNET, we have also strengthened our partnership with Whose Knowledge, but with the amazing feminists from East Africa, from Southern Africa who were here for this DTI in terms of coming together and really persistently challenging the neoliberal, the patriarchal culture in the technology industry, including together coming and saying, let's do this collectively, let's decolonize the internet collectively. And I think I just want to end and say we should continuously ask ourselves “whose voices, whose faces, whose stories are missing from the internet?” Whose knowledges, not knowledge, but knowledges are being represented on the internet and whose are not? Whose internet, whose rights, whose freedoms are we really defending? And what does decolonizing the internet mean for us all as African feminists? As feminists who are there to fight for the injustice, knowledge injustice, fight for access, and fight for equality in terms of the digital space. Thank you, Asante, Len, Kerubo, great conversations.

Kerubo Onsoti: Thank you, thank you. Thank you very much for joining us for the Femin Ninja podcast. We really believe and trust that you have enjoyed our conversations and they have pricked some thinking, some kind of wanting to find out more about feminism, about patriarchy and what is the role for each one of us in detonating the patriarchy, and proudly and boldly claiming ourselves as feminists. So stay tuned, keep following us and engage with us on FEMNET website, www.femnet.org. Thank you.

Youlendree Appasamy: You can follow Whose Knowledge? on Twitter, at @whoseknowledge.