# Irene Mwendwa on language exclusion and coloniality online

Len Appasamy
Welcome to the FeminNinja 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.
Kerubo Onsoti
Hi everyone. This is yet another episode on Decolonizing the Internet, and I'm still your host, Kerubo Onsoti from FEMNET, and I work there as the digital media officer. And I am here with my co-host.
Len Appasamy
I'm Len Appasamy, and I'm still your co-host. I'm the communications associate for the #VisibleWikiWomen campaign that the wonderful Whose Knowledge? runs. And today's guest is...
Irene Mwendwa
My name is Irene Mwendwa and I work for Pollicy with a double L.
Kerubo Onsoti
Oh, that's so unique. That's very unique. And today, I know I'm going like 10 minutes ahead. I liked the digital safe-tea game?
Irene Mwendwa
Digital Safe-tea.com [https://digitalsafetea.com/]
Len Appasamy
Digital
Kerubo Onsoti
Safe-tea. Digital safe-tea
Irene Mwendwa
Safe chai. Safe chai.
Kerubo Onsoti
Know when you say chai, when you say chai in my head I'm like, not everyone knows what chai is.
Irene Mwendwa
Chai is global. Everyone understands what Chai is.
Kerubo Onsoti
Like. Chai? Yes. Okay, okay. Okay.
Len Appasamy
Clearly not in Zambia because when you ask for tea, you're not getting it. You're not getting it.
Irene Mwendwa
I'm so sorry for that.
Len Appasamy
In any case.
Kerubo Onsoti
Okay. So nice to have you here, Irene. Thank you. Thank you so much for honoring the invitation. Thank you. And we'll just get straight to it. Please tell us a little bit more about Pollicy with the LL.
Irene Mwendwa
Okay. We celebrated five years today, guys. Yay. Not today. Sorry, I meant this year.
Len Appasamy
Still [laughter]. Yes.
Irene Mwendwa
Anyway, Pollicy is a feminist, civic tech based in Kampala, Uganda. We have a physical office because by registration you're supposed to have a physical address, but from the get go we've always been a remote and nomadic workforce. You can work from anywhere you wish. You can do your deliverables from anywhere because we believe in the power of the internet in connecting human beings and in providing knowledge for you to be able to work and in also really making life fun. So I'm sure everyone is wondering why Pollicy with double L.
Kerubo Onsoti
For sure.
Irene Mwendwa
We consider that as adults, we make very critical decisions that affect our lives. And one of the biggest decisions you make in your life is the exercise of polling. And polling is voting and polling and policy making. And we created the [...] I keep missing this word, I'm sorry, but it's a combination of the two words and hence Pollicy. So voting, that's polling and policymaking, and you get the name Pollicy. We work on the intersections of internet governance and data governance. In terms of internet governance, of course it cuts across several issues, the design of it, just the governance of it, and also just the spread of it into our lives and in terms of data governance, just to see how marginalized groups, women and youth are included. And this will be of course, again on the issues of design, legislation, marketing, use and issues of your data.
Irene Mwendwa
Just understanding the power of data in our daily lives and so forth. And we do this in a very simplified manner of programs is research because we collect a lot of data that informs our work. And the way we put out our work is in very simplified versions because technology can be technical, the terms can be too technical. So we try to synthesize that and we try to make them into reports that are at least readable and very brief for us to put their points across, really. We do this of course through [...] in terms of dissemination. We do, of course, trainings. We do small groups, we invite people in small groups. We go to marketplaces to just share and ask. We put, do you know what AI is? Do you know what this is? Do you know this is coming in the parliament up for discussion. And we've been doing this through different modalities and collaborating a lot with many organizations, with many community groups in Uganda.
Irene Mwendwa
And it's spreading in the rest of Africa through a lab which we call the Digital Human Rights Lab, DHRL. And this lab is really a conglomerate of different organizations in Uganda, out of Kampala, just across the country. And people are able to share information under these matters, digital human rights or rather digital rights. And we've seen successes because there's an awareness that our young people straight out of high school and universities are coming out of and they're sharing with their parents with their loved ones, and we are appreciating it and just continuing to broaden that. And they're in a nutshell, that's us.
Kerubo Onsoti
Oh my goodness, that's a lot. And that's some really, really, really good work. And so I would like to ask you about colonization. What does colonizing on the internet mean to you?
Irene Mwendwa
Well, for me, I'll go to what I'd like to address for the whole recording or podcast. The fact that I'll type something on my Facebook in English, and if my auntie from the village is trying to understand some bits of my statement is not able to because of the translation, then that's definitely a form of colonization, lack of access to knowledge, lack of communication in a sense, because you're not able to communicate with them just because a language is missing on the internet or because some bits of your local language is not important enough to be added on this platform. So for me, that is modern day colonization, which is really, to be honest, annoying and very, very discriminatory. And it continues to divide us, really. Yeah, because it separates us on the basis of the haves and the have nots, the literate and the illiterate. And unfortunately it's just really forming a basis of more division in our communities, in our societies as opposed to bringing us together.
Kerubo Onsoti
Would you say you've had a personal experience that for you felt like it really hit you that this is definitely colonization?
Irene Mwendwa
Well, actually, to be quite honest, it's really on my daily use of the internet. Sometimes some features that come to me on these wonderful platforms that we use, I wonder, it's asking, it's giving me the price in dollars. Is my currency in dollars?
Kerubo Onsoti
Wow. Yeah.
Irene Mwendwa
If I'm shopping online on some sites that are actually called international sites, so are you quoting in dollars? Yet, I pay in Kenya shillings. I need to start converting. I'm already marginalized or just separated with the next crop just on that basis. And that is, for me, who is quite privileged. So you can imagine for education purposes only, you are asked to join different learning management platforms. And they're very detailed in terms of the developers who may be from different countries who developed with their education system in mind. So when you're exploring these wonderful learning management platforms, their user experience really does not give room to an African girl or an African woman. And sometimes when you say, you know what? It's a new thing to me, let me learn. But you don't have to learn everything they need to make most of these products or products that they're put with us in mind. So those are some of the forms of colonialization I have experienced as an individual. And this is my own personal experience.
Kerubo Onsoti
I feel like I've always wanted to say this, I hate how hate is a strong one, but that's how I feel.
Irene Mwendwa
You can feel hate.
Kerubo Onsoti
Hate. We have all these types of English online that we have to choose from. Don't want to use a letter Z, do I want to use a letter S? Which one is more accepted worldwide? But no one takes into consideration all the languages that we speak. So we just have to choose between British and American [English], all these things. For me, we don't have to.
Irene Mwendwa
My response to you for that is why can't we have the internet in Swahili? And then they all have to learn Swahili. Yes. Because Africa alone has almost 300 million Swahili speakers, because those are enough people to form a constituency for the big tech to develop their products in Swahili.
Kerubo Onsoti
Yes. And it's like how you get so excited when they learn Swahili like, oh my God!
Irene Mwendwa
Oh yes.
Kerubo Onsoti
But no one gets excited when they learn Chinese.
Irene Mwendwa
No. It's like another person coming to steal from us. But yeah.
Kerubo Onsoti
Colonization, I think that's also colonization of the mind as well. But then we'll discuss that on a much later date. So for the past two days, we've had interesting sessions on decolonizing the internet. What would you say are your biggest takeaways from the sessions that we've had?
Irene Mwendwa
Well, specifically for the FEMNET-led session and FEMNET and Whose Knowledge? session is, we got a chance to understand the knowledge points and who provides knowledge, the knowledge available on the internet, who really is the owner and who provides those knowledge sets. And African women, unfortunately, and girls continue to be marginalized, but at the same time, we also got to understand that it's not therefore that they're marginalized, it's by design. We launched a paper last year called “Inclusion, not just an add-on”. It's a very simplified paper that developers, product developers and techies and computer scientists, data scientists and anyone in the tech ecosystem can use to improve how they design the products for an African girl. For an African woman that…
Kerubo Onsoti
That's amazing.
Irene Mwendwa
Yes, yes. It's very simplified. And we collaborated with one of the big tech, Meta, and they were able to understand, you know what, we'll be able to put some of these recommendations to our designers, to our engineers so that they can have this in mind when they're developing some of the solutions on our apps.
So it's really a clarion call for us to continue and for you, FEMNET and Whose Knowledge?, to continue to bring out this disparity so that unfortunately many men working on these products can give room for women and also can always have proven their designs. Then the second thing I can go into would be in terms of just understanding and the clarity I got as to how mainstream human rights organizations and development organizations altogether have always been working on the tech ecosystem or the digital development, digital transformation ecosystem as a guest program in their work. This would be, and FEMNET and Whose Knowledge? you've started this or your adding into what is happening to really be a clarion call for anyone working in any sector. May it be public health, education, agriculture, to just think about the digital issues that arise. I know there is a prioritization of needs in Africa when you're doing climate justice, agriculture, environmental justice, and everything in the spectrum.
There is a need to understand the role of technology as a solution driver in all this and how it can just add on to what human beings are doing the human resource is doing, because it's always going to be, technology cannot replace human beings. Technology cannot replace human manpower. But how can it also add on to the efforts that we're already doing? Because we need to simplify some of the things that we do, some of the things we need to work smart. So we need start, we need to really adopt some of the technology coming our way. We know that many people with disabilities are able to do gigs online now, and they're able to get work and enjoy a full job and have a high paying job. Just sort of having a laptop and being able to stay at home and work from your house. That releases them from the challenges of going into the very minimal, very inaccessible, many inaccessible places we have in our cities. So it's really for us to look at how to compliment what human beings are already doing with technology. So those are the two areas I can go into about the past two days,
Kerubo Onsoti
I'm just thinking about how even small things like electronics, how they get into, they're manufactured in those European and American countries and whatever, and those manuals that they come with English or some try and have Swahili, but it's like English and –
Irene Mwendwa
Show me the one in Swahili though
Kerubo Onsoti
I have seen a manual in Swahili, honestly, I have…
Irene Mwendwa
You need to tweet that
Kerubo Onsoti
I have seen a…
Irene Mwendwa
We need to know what equipment was that'll, was it a – HP laptop?
Len Appasamy
Then we must buy hp.
Irene Mwendwa
I need to see Swahili on a manual.
Kerubo Onsoti
So for me it's those small things, those very, very little things are you seeing and sanction that I will take this to my uncle, say, I dunno, in the village who probably the most he understands is Swahili, but now he has to call his little children…
Irene Mwendwa
“Help me understand…”
Kerubo Onsoti
…or nephews…
Kerubo Onsoti
And be like, yo, come and read this for me. Come and help. It's all those little things just coming together and they have to be stopped. If we are your market, tailor your products to fit into our market, learn our language or employ local people to be able to translate this for you because that's how it starts. So that's what I was thinking about.
Irene Mwendwa
And just to tell you, do you know there are only 29 languages with digital language vitality?
Kerubo Onsoti
Out of the 8,000 plus; you told 8,000.
Irene Mwendwa
That means that almost all their words are available on the internet. And an example that is going to shock you further, I don't know, between Sweden and Netherland, I keep confusing the two. And I'm sorry for my listeners. For the listeners, there's a language that's spoken by about less than a million people that all of its language is full on our digital platforms. Yet, Swahili with 300 million speakers, we are still waiting for some words. It's crazy
Kerubo Onsoti
Seeing the depths.
Len Appasamy
Yes. And those things with the fine print. The fine print is always in English, and if you are signing away your data, your privacy, your consent through those user agreements and it's in English, then what are you doing? It's just, it's ridiculous how even in the kind of ways to use certain infrastructure in your kind of consent and your privacy, you have to interface through a language that is not yours. You have to get other people to help you and then those people can also tell you maybe what you want to hear. It's not properly informed consent. Exactly. So how is that ethical to be giving out tech to be not incorporating Swahili into your user agreements?
Irene Mwendwa
We conducted a study in three countries, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda just this year. And in our case studies, we were just looking at access, usability, and safety. In terms of access, we asked ourselves, are certain languages prioritized over others in the digital space? So this way then you're able to know why your Swahili was not prioritized over another language that's fully available. And we also asked ourselves, is there a social capital associated with using particular languages in the digital space? So it means,...
Len Appasamy
That's a great question.
Irene Mwendwa
…you get... So it means you must be in the who's and the who's. You must be speaking the premium language, like there's a premium language and are not... So unfortunately, we also asked ourselves, are speakers of non-dominant languages able to publish, interact, and promote the use of these languages in digital spaces? What you have been presenting in the last two days on the sheer knowledge available online, that's very little from, first, African women. And if we even go with knowledge points on Wikipedia alone, there are few African women, even just a small percentage of African women Wikipedians and Wikimedians who are contributing to different knowledge sets. We also asked ourselves, are certain languages policed or censored more or less than others? This is a political issue. This is true. And are certain stereotypes or assumptions of language reproduced in digital spaces? We already know that a lot of stereotypes continue to follow when you use some languages.
Yeah, and if I just go straight into some of the findings for Ethiopia for instance, we found that Ethiopia as a country has over a hundred million people, and has five official languages. Amharic, Oromo, Somali, and Tigrinya, and Amharic dominates English. English for them is known as the language of science and technology and they are associated with professionals and professionalism. So you can see they will not use it in casual setups or in family setups. We also found that in Tanzania, Swahili of course being the national language, is spoken by the majority and English was really imposed as a tool of education because when you're employed, you'll need to be speaking English and working in English and also for social mobility. You can't move from that country to another if you're not able to communicate in one global language that's considered to be English. Then we found that, in terms of safety, there is limited information available.
Though social media remains a political forum for Swahili speakers greatly. And then Uganda on the same front of usability we found that in Uganda, Luganda and English dominate despite having 41 more than 41 tribes and languages. And then Luganda remains majority spoken in the central region. So then it's also really not widely spoken, but many mix their mother tongue with English. But national media, both alternative and legacy media will always produce their knowledge points in English and Luganda. In this study that we conducted, some of the relevant information we found is that information and language inequality continues to reinforce colonial era patterns of information production and presentation.
Len Appasamy
Pollicy are asking all the right questions with this report…
Kerubo Onsoti
And you're making me think about the little things again and how people assume just because you know English, you're the most literate person to ever exist on this earth, which is so weird because in places like Tanzania, even mathematics, they learn in Swahili.
Irene Mwendwa
And chemistry and biology, physics.
Kerubo Onsoti
In Swahili, because that's their national language.
Irene Mwendwa
In Italy as well, everything is taught in Italian. In Poland, if you're doing anything it's in Polish. It's Polish. So it's –
Len Appasamy
In India. Exactly. It's Tamil, it's Hindi.
Kerubo Onsoti
So why do we take it as if, just because I can't speak fluent English, then it means...
Irene Mwendwa
Exactly
Kerubo Onsoti
…I'm dumb…
Len Appasamy
You're less than.
Kerubo Onsoti
Yeah. Oh my goodness. I'm just thinking…
Irene Mwendwa
Now, you see, you have to respect everyone in whichever forms they communicate in. Because what happens is that many African speakers in the Global South, majority really, we speak more than one language. So you'll always think with your original language and express with the other language that you learned or that is commonly used. Sometimes when someone is not so clear, it's not their fault, they're not dumb –
Kerubo Onsoti
They're just thinking in their non-dominant language…
Irene Mwendwa
… it was possibly in my Kimeru that we speak in Kenya, possibly, I'm just thinking in my Kikuyu, in my Kikamba just thinking, oh, that I want to communicate something to Sylvia, but I'm not getting that English word.
Then Sylvia would be like, ‘Ay this girl’. No, it's just my Taita [language spoken in Kenya], just my non-dominant language, which is not widely spoken, but I'm able to express myself in my language before I'm able to express myself better in English. So those are some of the challenges that continue to really undermine how we communicate effectively using the internet. And sometimes I feel the global majority is always, some of our information is misconstrued. You may have so much data sets to evidence some of our work, to evidence some of our challenges, to evidence some of our successes, but the way we've expressed ourselves in English is not coming out that you've done all that work because it really, it's not our first language. So we are just trying to professionalize or to put it in a very simplified manner because we don’t know how to brag or we don’t know how to package it for the who's and the who's. We learn this in school, but for someone whose first language is English, they will use all the pompous words. They'll know how to construct the sentences direct and just communicate well on the internet. And they look like they've done the biggest thing, so…
Kerubo Onsoti
I know…
Irene Mwendwa
Yeah. Are you seeing the difference?
Kerubo Onsoti
Yes, I am.
Irene Mwendwa
If our banks are operating in our mother tongues...
Kerubo Onsoti
They would never con us.
Irene Mwendwa
Are you seeing these challenges? The fine print that many people don't read, especially in our service industry, just all the things that are, it's just because you have that fatigue. If it was in our mother and dominant languages, many people will be able to really imbibe this information and understand what it's truly meant in this fine print. But yeah, so it's really important that we see these languages. We contribute to having these languages online and challenge tech walk with… to hire! So they need to hire African women who are local translators. There are many! There are so many and they have the money, they have the resources. So it's really something that you can also really recommend as you go on with your work, beyond just getting the challenges that we have a bunch of translators here. Hey, we need to see our languages there. Just direct that kind of direct recommendation to them. And you see some uptick.
Len Appasamy
I mean the work that you're doing with Pollicy around language and colonization is so close and so reminiscent of the work that Whose Knowledge? has been doing with the State of the Internet's Languages, right? And I think just in Africa alone, there needs to be an Africa edition considering how many languages that are spoken frequently are not found anywhere online at all. And there are certain social capital reasons for it. There's certain big tech reasons for it. There's certain, maybe government repression reasons for it that you really need to kind of delve into to find the real story about what is going on with our languages and also how can we live differently as people if we center or de-center English and center another language in our regions, in our countries, in our areas. So Irene, you were talking about your findings from the report. So to kind of move us over to DTI [Decolonizing the Internet], what were your findings from the convening? What were your findings from the gathering? What would you like our listeners to know? The listeners who weren't at the convening, what is the takeaway for you to give to them?
Irene Mwendwa
The tech ecosystem, the digital ecosystem is not for technologists alone. We all play a part in building a feminist technology because we'll be able to share our grievances as women, number one, as African women and therefore designers are able to ensure better products are developed and then organizations will be able to inform some of the government policies for better technology and for better protection in our countries. And then for DTI really decolonizing the internet. It's really, really a wonderful space where you can have different communities just sharing their grievances for people to understand how each and every one of us uses the internet because we all have different needs. Some use it for pleasure. Do you know this?
Len Appasamy
Feminist porn.
Kerubo Onsoti
Yes, exactly.
Irene Mwendwa
Pleasure to relieve yourself from some pain points that you think no one else will ever understand. Even if you're seeking professional help. Some people just go and watch the cartoons online, the memes, the “meh-mehs”...
Len Appasamy
The “meh-mehs”, yes.
Irene Mwendwa
And they're able to go on with their day. So it's really important for everyone to just share their individual experiences so that it can inform better design, better use, better marketing of the internet. Yeah,
Kerubo Onsoti
You've said memes, I feel like I'm just getting triggered all the time. I am just like how someone can just look at it and say “meh-meh” and then all of a sudden they're the most dumb people. I just hate how English is like…
Irene Mwendwa
The…Yes. You see. I know. Or “jif”. Or gif.
Kerubo Onsoti
I usually say “jif” and then I hear cartoons and people saying gif. “Jif” sounds…
Len Appasamy
… “jif” sounds better. Yeah.
Irene Mwendwa
Well who told you it sounds better?
Kerubo Onsoti
In my head. It does.
Irene Mwendwa
There you go. Even the person saying Gif, it sounds better. They're saying the same.
Kerubo Onsoti
Yeah, but for me it's just I feel like this has to be talked about. This has to be… discussed.
Irene Mwendwa
You're getting there.
Kerubo Onsoti
Not just here.
Irene Mwendwa
Exactly.
Kerubo Onsoti
And not just today and not just this week, but until systems get it right.
Irene Mwendwa
Yes. You go to a teacher in a school in remote Kenya, remote Zambia, just speak to them about how they use the internet. Just ask them that question and then we'll hear how different it is from you who may be living in an urban area. That alone will show you some of the challenges that they experience even while using the internet and some of the challenges they experience with telcos who provide internet to them and the challenges they experience with the government who regularizes the telco [telecommunications] to provide the internet and accessibility to them. And then from the government, you'll be able to connect how the government is getting frustrated or just singing the song of the big tech. You'll see how interconnected it is.
Len Appasamy
Yeah, the ecosystem you've charted out right now, you can see it, the case study of the whole narrative there.
Kerubo Onsoti
Yeah. This is amazing. I feel like you need to put it out there. You need to really distribute this information.
Irene Mwendwa
Guys, our website is pollicy.org, our twitter is policy.org, our Facebook the same. We have an Instagram as well. We try to simplify. I told you, are you finally getting it? We try to simplify the information for any ordinary person to just understand because there's no use of doing this work if the next citizen or a government official does not understand, they'll not be able to debate better. They need to understand what is data protection. They need to understand what is cybersecurity, digital safety, how they're different. They need to understand why are you saying feminist tech all the time? Why are you saying decolonizing all the time? And I think I'll end on that note.
Kerubo Onsoti
Yeah, sure. I'm so happy. I feel like I am the basic person. I am.
Irene Mwendwa
There is no basic, darling.
Kerubo Onsoti
No, when you use the word basic like laymans, you get, because have you seen how many triggers and short points I've had during this session?
Irene Mwendwa
And yet it was a very short
Kerubo Onsoti
Yeah. But thank you. Thank you so much, Irene. This is amazing work that you're doing and we cannot wait to see how and where this goes. Thank you so much for honoring my invitation.
Irene Mwendwa
You are very welcome. And please read the terms of use on the websites, read the privacy policies, understand what bills are coming in your parliament on data and internet governance.
Kerubo Onsoti
Thank you, Irene.
Outro
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for joining us for the Femininja 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 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. You can follow Whose Knowledge? on Twitter, @whoseknowledge.