Audrey Tang: We can carry on the discussion knowing that our readers will already have read of our earlier transcript. We can move on to more substantial discussions on how to collaborate.

Mariéme Jamme: Absolutely.

Audrey Tang: Would you like to explain a little bit for the context how does the champion, ambassador, partner, and the various role do in the iamtheCODE?

Mariéme Jamme: Yes. That’s a very good question. As I told you, iamtheCODE, I created it. The idea was to mobilize government, private sector investors, but also philanthropic foundations to start looking into SDGs, looking into the sustainable development goals.

Mariéme Jamme: Nobody had this sort of multi-stakeholder approach. Everybody is doing their own thing. Everybody is working silo. Everybody’s trying to raise fund by themself. Everybody’s just trying to do by themself.

Mariéme Jamme: I realize I was a recipient of aid in all of these big UN conversations. I just realized that it’s time for us to sit down and work together, collaborate. In my country, in Senegal, in Africa, they say, "If you want to go far, you need to..."

Audrey Tang: "Go together."

Mariéme Jamme: [laughs]

Mariéme Jamme: I believe that if we really put our heart into it, then we can all work together. When I started to put this together, I said I needed to find people. iamtheCODE is based on people, products, and processes.

Mariéme Jamme: Real, clear, tangible ways of measuring impact. I believe that if you have the right people...We all have connections, between you and me and...What’s your name again?

Aurora Tsai: Aurora.

Mariéme Jamme: We have probably 400, 500 followers, all friends of people we know. [laughs] Just you, by yourself, you can fill the room. People is not a problem. People is really not a problem. People buy into things if they see that it’s working.

Mariéme Jamme: We need real products. Products that are expensive can’t reach the poor or the marginalized communities or people with different languages, different skill sets, different gender, different race. We need to think about empathy when we building solutions.

Mariéme Jamme: As I putting processes together, what are the processes we need to put into place to make this work? We need to have clear, tangible, measurable M&Es impact to do that. We start putting processes together, meaning lesson plans, the right curriculums, the right technology companies, the right companies to fund it, the right government to put the money into it. Real clear processes that help this to happen.

Mariéme Jamme: The processes like how do you make it happen? Once we put these together, we need to find people to do it. I want to find champions, people who really care about situations, not just for publicity’s sake or for press op, but people who really cares.

Mariéme Jamme: They need to care about the situations. Then I try finding ambassadors, people who can go and talk about this. We don’t put money into PR and marketing because I believe if you are doing something good, it will talk for itself. [laughs]

Mariéme Jamme: That’s what I believe, and that’s why iamtheCODE for the last two years we never had any PR stuff, no PR. People just are going and talking about it. People always say to me, "Oh, why don’t you talk to ’WIRED’ magazine? Why don’t you talk to ’Guardian’? Why don’t you talk to these people?"

Mariéme Jamme: I think that if they want to find us, they will. I think if somebody goes and say, "Have you seen iamtheCODE?" They will come to us. That’s what I believe.

Mariéme Jamme: I believe that blowing your own trumpet without having any impact doing anything, it doesn’t matter because at the moment, anybody can go and say, "Fake news." What I want you to do is, tomorrow when you say to me, " Mariéme, show me your work," I want to look at you in the eyes and say, "This is my work."

Mariéme Jamme: I don’t want you to come and say to me, "Show me your work," I say, "Maybe. I don’t know." I don’t want to do that.

Audrey Tang: We had that during the dot-com already...

Mariéme Jamme: I want to make sure when you say, "Mariéme, show me this. Where is my money going? How is impacting people?" I want to make sure I show that you that clearly.

Audrey Tang: OK, so your "ambassadors" are in fact people who send these messages?

Mariéme Jamme: Yeah. Send clear messages, and then we invite people on our board. If in fact we understand who they are, we invite them on the board so they can see how iamtheCODE is working.

Mariéme Jamme: They can give us their ideas, but they can also help us shape iamtheCODE because we don’t know everything, and that’s something we’re very humble and vulnerable to know that we don’t know a lot of stuff.

Mariéme Jamme: I personally don’t know a lot of stuff, so I have people who I ask advice all the time, "How do you think we should improve this? How do you think we can write this? How do you think we can raise funds? How do you think..."

Mariéme Jamme: People always advise us. When I see people like that, we invite them on the board, and so they are part of the organization themselves, and then finally, we just have people who literally like talking about iamtheCODE and based on my story as well, because it’s a very unique rare story.

Mariéme Jamme: Where I come from, everything I suffered in my life to arrive here is very rare, so some people go and say, "You should talk to Mariéme, you should help her," and so that’s how iamtheCODE came about. Right now, that’s what we’re following. We’re following our truth.

Mariéme Jamme: We’re not diverting into any social media hoo-ha or hype. We’re focusing on the context, what we’re trying to do here. We have a very big mission. By 2030 we need to show one million women and girls to learn how to code. We need to show this. This is our credibility on the line.

Mariéme Jamme: We need to show this in a very systematic way and contextualize it, make people understand what it is. That’s where we are right now, and I think that we want people to understand this mission. It’s very rare that for an African person, but also an African organization is leading the way like this.

Mariéme Jamme: They’re mini coding programs, mini-mini programs trying to do things, but I think we’re in a unique position right now, where whoever join iamtheCODE, whoever support iamtheCODE, there is no way you will not see the impact, because you can see that.

Mariéme Jamme: You can see the girls who are 11 years old. In 2030 they’ll be 24, 25, and there’s no way you can’t see the return on investment. There’s no way. If you really put the heart into and say I will do this, you can see the results. You can do this with businesses, businesses can employ the girls. Remember, we’re targeting marginalized communities, communities that are forgotten.

Mariéme Jamme: If the slogan in the United Nations is "Leave no one behind," this is it. This is what you need to back. You need to back organizations like this that will not leave anyone behind, because we are not scared in going and meeting gays and lesbians, the marginalized, the disabled, the blind.

Mariéme Jamme: We’re not scared of meeting those people, because we think they are the future. We think that they’ve been forgotten for many decades. So many millions of dollars and billions of dollars. People are making money out of poverty, seriously. Now, if we want to be sincere with the sustainable development goals, we really need this.

Mariéme Jamme: We need to go and tell them, and I want to go to the United Nations and tell them exactly what I just told you. If I have to drag myself one day to stand in that podium and tell them, I will because I don’t think they’re hearing this message. I’m talking with everybody’s like, "Oh, Mariéme. You should go and talk to them. You should go and tell this."

Mariéme Jamme: No, I want to go to talk to the government, to the private sector, to investors, and so we can stop this narrative of leave no one behind, but there is no action because they do micro-actions, small conversations, write a report about it, a small partnership, or give funding to an organization that is known.

Mariéme Jamme: Why do you think Bill Gates and Melinda Gates are taking on the global goals. Because they have a reach, they have a platform, and they’re moving from the aid industry...If you look at it -- I was thinking yesterday -- it’s the same process.

Mariéme Jamme: They’ve working in the aid industry for how many years, and now they’re thinking that if we grab the global goals, we can change the narrative. We can make it better. That’s what they’re trying to do right now, and I think it’s a good cause for them to use their platform, but also I’ve learned from the mistakes.

Mariéme Jamme: Learned that maybe in the past we didn’t know that much, but now we’re giving voices to people. I’m a goalkeeper. I was the first one last year, that’s why I came here. This year, they’re going to have more goalkeepers, so I think that we need more people to do this work, but we need funding to do it. We need good partnerships, we need credible organizations.

Mariéme Jamme: I refuse partnerships, I refuse money, I refuse people dumping me their money, because I don’t want to be anybody’s slave. I don’t want to jump into a bad partnership. My credibility’s very important, so I want to make sure that I want people who will help me. When they give us their money, they can help us, help other people. That’s what my mission is right now.

Audrey Tang: What about your "champions"? Are there partnership programs in African countries? Which countries are you working with and which countries are you planning to expand it?

Mariéme Jamme: The way Africa is working for us, we have technology hubs, as I mentioned. They are tech hub, they’re 442. These tech hubs, I’m just going to record myself a little bit, because sometimes I say something and I forget what I said. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: I will send a copy of this transcript to you.

Mariéme Jamme: These 442 hubs, they were created around 2007, 2006 times. Kenya was the first hub. They are creative spaces just like C-Work in, was it in Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Mariéme Jamme: Many of them, creative spaces, co-working spaces.

Audrey Tang: Which program was that?

Mariéme Jamme: This program, in 2009 when President Obama became president, he was the first president to actually help Africans to understand about...to help us tell our message because he’s Kenyan.

Mariéme Jamme: At the same time, he doesn’t want to just show that, "Americans, actually I just care about you guys," but he also wanted to show that he cares about Africa as well, and he was understanding his culture, where he came from.

Mariéme Jamme: This is sort of apps for Africa started. I travel in many, many countries to go and find the next African innovator. I did some work on climate change issues, business challenges. These created this tech ecosystem, and now we have 442 across Africa where it’s self-run by people.

Mariéme Jamme: What we do, we don’t reinvent or replicate. We go and add value. That’s what we do. All these organizations, for example in Uganda, in Madagascar, all of these countries, we go and add value. We go and tell people, "What do you think is working? What do you think is not working? How can we add value?" We just add value.

Mariéme Jamme: We add value physically by either helping them find funders, we look into the solution they’ve actually build, if this could be replicated or customized for Taiwan, or for China, or for whatever.

Mariéme Jamme: People like Jack Ma, for example, he’s been benefitting from this network. Facebook is the same. Many organizations are benefitting from this tech ecosystem.

Mariéme Jamme: 10 years ago, if you asked me if people could have done that, would they care about Africa, I don’t think so because Africa was not ready to showcase impact, but now we have amazing solutions, African inventors who are building solutions.

Mariéme Jamme: What is missing is the understanding of social issues because when you live with social issues, you don’t see outside. What we’re trying to do at iamtheCODE is actually to come in and organize hackathons. They are two-days events...

Audrey Tang: They’re themed on SDGs?

Mariéme Jamme: Themed SDGs because we don’t want people to just go and organize SDG hackathons. They may not know how to do impact, but we bring the value in there. We bring the computer kit with Raspberry Pi, we have eight technologies we use.

Audrey Tang: OK. Do you have a formal partnership with the LEGO company?

Mariéme Jamme: We have formal partnership with LEGO. LEGO, the digital director, he’s just left now, but he used to invite me to LEGO offices. He used to sit on our board. He still sit on the board, and so LEGO don’t create partnerships but what they do, they can give you products, so they gave us products.

Audrey Tang: It’s like product donation?

Mariéme Jamme: Yeah. They gave us products to use. When I went to Japan, I met SoftBank. They are interested in working with us to do the Pepper, the robot, so I went to see them. I had discussion with them.

Mariéme Jamme: They have a nice curriculum, but I would like to go again in Tokyo to see if we can actually have a corporate curriculum for Pepper.

Mariéme Jamme: We have the Kano Computer Kits, as you know. We work with them. We’ve been using their product for very long time now. I’m part of the conversation with them all the time, and I have a share within Kano.

Mariéme Jamme: The idea.org, as you know, is done by the palace, so all of these technologies are free. They’re being used, but we have now decided to create our own content, our own curriculum, the blended curriculum we want, and we want to put this on a Raspberry Pi, either Raspberry pi or another board.

Mariéme Jamme: It doesn’t have to be Raspberry Pi because what we think, in the next two, three years if we have this, it will be the biggest breakthrough in history on how people are learning really, because not only you have the young girls and the young boys from these communities, these marginalized areas of the world while learning, but also doing amazing work.

Mariéme Jamme: In Liverpool, I had a young girl who came. She was very sad the first day she came, so she came and said to me...We invited her to come to the hackathon, and she was having some conversation, and then I said...I found her very shy. She put her glasses on, she didn’t want to speak to anybody, she was with her dad.

Mariéme Jamme: I said to the dad, "What’s happening?" He said, "Well, she’s been having identity crisis for quite a long time." I said, "OK, no problem." She sat down and I start talking to her.

Mariéme Jamme: She built an application for anti-bullying, but also to tell the world how you can actually have an identity without people bullying you. She created this solution by herself within two days, 24 hours.

Mariéme Jamme: What I learned from this exercise is that with iamtheCODE, we can impact people within 24 hours. This young lady sat down, she built her own solution, she had this in her heart, this issue of identity. She wanted to come out as a young girl and she couldn’t do anything.

Mariéme Jamme: She built a solution. I said to her, "What was the catalyst of for you to do?" She said, "Because in my school, I’m being bullied all the time. At the same time, people don’t like me because I’m very shy," but she’s very smart, very clever, and I said, "Why do you want to do this?"

Mariéme Jamme: She said, "I want to create a safe space for young people to go in to code their identity, and I have got the solution right now, and I want to develop this solution because you see, Donald Trump’s wife is talking about anti-bullying but she’s not doing anything about it. You know?" [laughs]

Audrey Tang: What’s the solution?

Mariéme Jamme: She built it herself. I’ve got it on my system. It’s the solution she built, and so she hasn’t found a name for it yet, but it’s beautiful website design.

Mariéme Jamme: She wants to take this further, and so I think that we should use solutions because not only that solution is addressing reducing inequality goal number 10, but also creating conversations around these situations.

Mariéme Jamme: She was like, "That’s why we have many young girls who are committing suicide, and boys, and things like that, because we’re not addressing these." I’m trying to use the SDGs as a way of not only educating people but informing them but also transforming.

Mariéme Jamme: We have something I always talk about in my talks. We try to educate, inform, and transform because I think that if you educate people, you can transform their minds in making an impact. That’s what the solutions are right now, and it’s very exciting. Whoever wants to do this with us, it’s very exciting.

Audrey Tang: As I mentioned in our previous conversation, I have a regular column in Taiwan’s "Business Weekly," where every three weeks I write about something that I want to call the business leaders to attention, and to take some action.

Audrey Tang: For example, the last one was about...We use machine learning to stop water leakage by allowing people to detect water leakage early.

Audrey Tang: That’s a partnership with the Taiwan Water Corporation and the president’s office through this three-month event we call Presidential Hackathon. The people in New Zealand discovered this work, and then the team is now in New Zealand helping them to combat climate change by using AI to detect water leakage.

Audrey Tang: The one before that was a partnership with MIT Media Lab. They have those self-driving small vehicles that are tricycle, the PEVs. It’s all open source, so we co-organized a hackathon in my office. My office looks like this, where we can just have orders. This is my office in Taipei. It’s built by a hundred or so social entrepreneurs.

Mariéme Jamme: You can have a hackathon here.

Audrey Tang: This is drawn by people with Down syndrome. It turns out they’re great artists.

Mariéme Jamme: I can tell you, because we’re working with ADHD. Have you seen them, the organization?

Audrey Tang: No. The ADHD foundation?

Mariéme Jamme: Yeah. I should connect you with them. They are a big organization called the...They are helping not children with Down’s syndrome, but they’re creating some people’s superpower for...I’ll show you, too.

Audrey Tang: Digital superhero academy?

Mariéme Jamme: Yes, superpower. You know that. I’m sure you know that ADHD. ADHD, they are...

Audrey Tang: They are attention deficient.

Mariéme Jamme: Yes. They’re a big organization in Liverpool, and they’re helping children do exactly this.

Audrey Tang: That’s great.

Mariéme Jamme: Because they are very smart. They’re very, very smart. I should connect you with them.

Audrey Tang: No, it’s great. This is, for example, how the partnership looks like. You just see those PEVs roaming in the Social Innovation Lab.

Mariéme Jamme: That’s really cool. This like a children chair?

Audrey Tang: Yes, it’s called a PEV. [laughs] They’re self-driving. The point is that it’s open source.

Mariéme Jamme: Self-driving?

Audrey Tang: It’s a self-driving tricycle. People can just go crazy with them and change, for example, to add emotion, to add where it’s looking, to allow people to understand this new species better.

Mariéme Jamme: That’s amazing.

Audrey Tang: Like co-domesticate each other, like we and wolves co-domesticated into dogs and modern human, and the idea, the call to action was for business leaders in Taiwan too, when they think about AI, think about extended intelligence that the crowd in AI can learn from each other instead of the usual narrative of AI replacing jobs, and things like that.

Mariéme Jamme: It’s amazing.

Audrey Tang: It’s like machine intelligence co-living with collective inteeligence. I would love of course to...

Mariéme Jamme: You are the minister of digital economy?

Audrey Tang: I am minister of digital affairs...

Mariéme Jamme: Have you met some African Ministers, digital economy ministers?

Audrey Tang: I just attended two meetings. One is in Edinburgh, it’s called Social Enterprise World Forum. It’s co-hosted by the Scottish Government and the British Council.

Audrey Tang: Next year, I’m going to be in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, so I talk with many people who works in that region.

Audrey Tang: There’s a guy called Howard who works in... His company’s called Solar Ear, solar as in solar panel, and ear as in hearing aid.

Audrey Tang: He started in Botswana, and they teach people with hearing loss using sign language to teach them electronics so they can build their own hearing aid, and it’s solar-powered so they don’t have to pay for the battery ever again, and so it’s very reusable.

Mariéme Jamme: It’s amazing.

Audrey Tang: The people did assembly themselves, just as you said, that the people own the technology. They set the agenda as I attended...

Mariéme Jamme: You know that in Africa we don’t have any sign language, one of the things I’m trying to get people to invest. You know that we don’t have our own...

Audrey Tang: Sign language.

Mariéme Jamme: Yeah. I went to Brazil, and I met...some of the girls came to our hackathon. They don’t have the normal sign language so they use different sign language. We are leaving people behind, because they cannot understand...

Audrey Tang: Yeah, Howard was talking about that, because they have to build translators between the different sign languages.

Mariéme Jamme: They can’t understand, so they can’t...I’m just going to show you. They can’t understand anything, because they don’t have actually the right software. People are not even including them in the conversation, so they’re left behind in Brazil.

Mariéme Jamme: My girls are using...They came to the hackathon, they’re using all these sign languages, but they’re being left behind.

Audrey Tang: That’s something I would love to work on as well.

Mariéme Jamme: So interesting, ADHD.

Audrey Tang: We are also talking with the people in the SDGs for... It’s a think tank, SDG for Africa. They do the SDG index for Africa and...

Mariéme Jamme: How do you read that?

Aurora Tsai: It’s SDG Center for Africa (SDGC/A) with the support of University of Columbia.

Mariéme Jamme: Where are they based?

Aurora Tsai: Here in New York?

Audrey Tang: Actually it started in Rwanda; the headquarter is in Kigali.

Mariéme Jamme: All right, because I know them all.

Aurora Tsai: Do you know Dr. Belay Begashaw?

Audrey Tang: Belay Begashaw. That’s the name.

Aurora Tsai: He should be the former minister of agriculture or something like that.

Mariéme Jamme: Which country?

Aurora Tsai: Ethiopia.

Mariéme Jamme: Addis Ababa. There are key organizations right now who are working on SDGs. I was going to show you this. There are key organizations, hundred percent you should speak to, and then I’m happy to make the connections for you.

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Mariéme Jamme: They are the data people. I don’t know if you know, but what iamtheCODE does on the data side is tracking the data for some of the part of the data.

Audrey Tang: Yes, I’m aware of that.

Mariéme Jamme: Their organization is built around the data. It’s the data...how do you measure all the impact of SDGs or how do you create your national roadmap. I know at Taiwan you guys are being advancing in doing that.

Audrey Tang: Yes. The way we’re helping is largely on the SDSN so far. I went to Vatican for SDSN meeting with Jeffrey Sachs and friends, because it’s academic, so Taiwan has no problem attending.

Mariéme Jamme: We have key Africans in Kenya who are really amazing, super amazing. From the data collection to the visualization of it. You absolutely need to speak to them, and if you do any funding or anything, you can see the impact because they are there for them.

Audrey Tang: Do you know anyone working in eSwatini?

Mariéme Jamme: In where?

Aurora Tsai: eSwatini. Swaziland.

Audrey Tang: Previously called Swaziland.

Mariéme Jamme: In Tanzania?

Aurora Tsai: Near South Africa.

Audrey Tang: It was called Swaziland.

Mariéme Jamme: I know Swaziland.

Aurora Tsai: They’ve changed the name of the country. Now it’s eSwatini.

Mariéme Jamme: I know the minister of ICT in Swaziland.

Audrey Tang: They’re Taiwan’s only diplomatic ally in Africa right now...

Mariéme Jamme: Really?

Audrey Tang: ...so any work we do physically, we need to start from there.

Mariéme Jamme: From Swaziland?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, because we don’t have embassy anywhere else.

Mariéme Jamme: Why did you choose Swaziland? You can choose my country, Senegal.

Audrey Tang: We’d love to!

Mariéme Jamme: This is the foundation. It’s called the ADHD Foundation, and so they help children with ADHD, and they’re based in the UK. They’re super amazing. They just won an award, and so they help children with ADHD.

Mariéme Jamme: They give them superpower. They don’t call it disability. They call them superpower, and so they are smart, and so right now, they want us to do a hackathon with the smartest people in the room.

Mariéme Jamme: I think they will be interesting in your program, but for Swaziland, I know people in Swaziland, but Swaziland, Lesotho, all those small countries are very interesting in partnering.

Mariéme Jamme: Taiwan is a country that Africa likes, but the Chinese government have scared them a lot about Taiwan, and so many African governments are scared in taking Taiwanese money because they’re scared of Chinese withdrawal.

Audrey Tang: I understand that.

Mariéme Jamme: We’re not scared because we don’t get any funding from China. [laughs] It’s a bit political but people like Jeff Sachs, they don’t have a good brand in Africa. Their aid is very top-down, talking down to Africans, and so now you have Africans, people like us who are coming and saying, "We’re the intellectuals."

Audrey Tang: I really think Africa needs to set your own agenda.

Mariéme Jamme: We’re setting it now. We have really amazing people but I think you need to speak to Philip Thigo. I don’t know if he’s here. I’m going to see today. He’s from Kenya. The president of my country is great. The president of Ghana is also good. He’s here.

Mariéme Jamme: They’re countries where you can really find a small partnership, and iamtheCODE could be the route for you, a small route. Usually, they don’t like doing...The way Japanese work in Africa, I think that’s how you guys should work.

Mariéme Jamme: Japan, they don’t like big publicity, but they are doing, for example, they invest into small organizations, and then they will let everything spread slowly, like TICAD, they have a big fund for Africa, but they don’t give the money.

Mariéme Jamme: The money is not yet into the African government bank account, but what they do, they will find a partnership with UN Women, or iamtheCODE, or things like that to help those people with specific projects. That’s how the Japanese, very serious people, that’s how they work.

Audrey Tang: The way we have been working now, we’re not so much with Africa but with the ASEAN countries and New Zealand and so on. It’s a model which I call warm power, meaning that we solve a local issue like the water leakage with some people there.

Audrey Tang: We open innovation. There’s no patents. There’s nothing like that. We make sure people they own the technology, they can either upgrade it without connecting back to Taiwan, and then once they own the technology, of course they brand it themselves.

Audrey Tang: We’re totally OK with that, and of course we hope that they keep contributing back on GitHub or whatever. I think that’s the...

Mariéme Jamme: I think that’s a good idea.

Audrey Tang: That’s the main idea because it’s in the SDGs. I mean, the...

Mariéme Jamme: 17th.

Audrey Tang: ...the goal, in the 17th, is about to make sure the innovation is accessible to all, and I think this is based on...We choose partners very carefully by their ability to produce reliable data. Once they show the ability to produce reliable data, now we just transfer whatever local solutions we have.

Mariéme Jamme: What is good about what you’re saying is important because the Europeans and Americans what they do, and this has been the big mistake they’ve made for the last, I will say 15 years, they haven’t educated data scientists. They haven’t created a pipeline for data scientists.

Mariéme Jamme: We want to create...We have 75 people who are data scientists in Africa today, so when they come to Africa, they want to talk about data collection, but Africa has got a data, plenty of data. They have metadatas everywhere. Africa is data. Everywhere. I was data when I was young.

Mariéme Jamme: The data exists but what doesn’t exist is, who’s going to teach them? Who’s going to teach people Excel? Who’s going to make the open data for people? Who’s going to help them understand what data is? They own information. We don’t have these sorts of schools.

Audrey Tang: Taiwan has been the top one on Global Open Data Index for a few years now, so...

Mariéme Jamme: I know, but I’ve been saying this to people. I’ve been saying Taiwan. They say, "Taiwan." I said, "Yeah, Taiwan."

Audrey Tang: I think this is really in line with our value because we believe that only when the people themselves own the data, like this, all the Taiwan Air Quality, these are collected by more than 2,000 people each using the air quality sensor in their home balcony and so on.

Audrey Tang: None of this paid by the government. It is entirely citizen science, and because of this, in other places in Asia, people will want to suppress this from the government because it threatens legitimacy.

Audrey Tang: For our government, we just join them and so we say, "In the places where you’re missing, we going to set up in the offshore wind turbines where there’s no way that the home makers can go there. We will set up our complementary systems there."

Mariéme Jamme: This is fascinating. I don’t know if you know, but I sit on the board of the World Wide Web Foundation?

Audrey Tang: Yes, I know.

Mariéme Jamme: One of the biggest work right now we’re thinking about is how do you get Africa connected in the next 12 years to the SDGs. Citizen data scientists, that is why we organize hackathons, to help them understand how do you collect the data.

Mariéme Jamme: The biggest issue for us, in Africa, is how do we make sure the national statistics of government -- all the national statistics in 54 countries, Africa -- how do you educate them to understand data collection, number one? Number two, how do you have them open the data so they don’t feel scared?

Mariéme Jamme: Like in Uganda, in some countries, they see data information, fake news, all of this, because no one has done a workshop or training, even send them to Taiwan for five days for you to teach them about...

Audrey Tang: We’re seeing a lot of adoption of IT, but in the terms of Digital Transformation, as you can see, the communities are really key.

Mariéme Jamme: Nobody has ever done that. We have some data conferences now and then, but it’s just telling. It’s not like teaching them.

Audrey Tang: It’s about empowering people to co-create.

Mariéme Jamme: Yeah, it’s just empowering. I think one of the things we should think about is to have even a hackathon, or an event in Taiwan, or somewhere in Africa. Ethiopia is good or Swaziland, where we have an event, and where we invite Africa data champions -- I know them a lot -- to come. That would be something great.

Audrey Tang: That’s great. I tried to doing something like that in an event in Burkina Faso, but I had to appear as a pre-recording, because Burkina Faso...

Aurora Tsai: Cut the ties.

Audrey Tang: ...allying with Taiwan just a week before I’m scheduled to talk... [laughs]

Mariéme Jamme: [groans]

Audrey Tang: ...so we’ll have to start again. [laughs]

Aurora Tsai: We’re now talking about Swaziland.

Mariéme Jamme: No, but you have me now. Don’t worry.

Audrey Tang: That’s great, so let’s make that happen.

Mariéme Jamme: The reason why they cut ties, sometimes, is because they’re scared. There’s no representative for you. Because I know Taiwan. I know how to talk about Taiwan in a more scientific and technologic way. That’s what I do.

Mariéme Jamme: African government, they haven’t been to Taiwan. I don’t want them to see Taiwan as just like a funding country...

Audrey Tang: I know. But what we’re now saying is that...

Mariéme Jamme: It’s more the technology...

Audrey Tang: ...we can be all all working on the 17th global goal.

Mariéme Jamme: They need to understand the potential.

Audrey Tang: The potential is this: Because Taiwan is not a player within the UN dashboard, we can be the referees.

Mariéme Jamme: Exactly.

Audrey Tang: We can work with you on collaborative governance, for example, around distributed ledgers.

Mariéme Jamme: That’s true.

Audrey Tang: We can also be of assistance in accountability mechanisms, so that everybody keeps his word in a fair way.

Mariéme Jamme: The other interesting thing I think we can also do is -- one of my thinking right now is that I’m trying to speak to some people here -- hopefully by the end of the week, we can get something. Is to focus on the blockchain.

Mariéme Jamme: The reason why I love blockchain is because you can bring so many people to create their own blocks without nobody claiming credit for it. Remember, these African presidents, they like claiming credit for things they haven’t done.

Audrey Tang: I know.

Mariéme Jamme: If we create our own blockchain platform -- and I think this is what we need to do, urgently -- to create a blockchain platform on SDGs.

Audrey Tang: The project of air measurement that I just mentioned is called Airbox, and it’s integrated with IOTA blockchain system, so that whenever they store in the super computer that Taiwan government offers, if they take a snapshot, store it in a public chain so people will know that government will not change the number the day before the election.

Audrey Tang: This is very important because there are so many different sources going on. With people like the Distributed Ledger Technology Laboratory, that’s Taiwan, the Cheng Kung University. They work on Tangle identity, they worked on distributed environment data storage, they’re working on many other things.

Audrey Tang: I’m sure that it can be extended into statistics tracking, mineral mining, whatever.

Mariéme Jamme: We need the blockchain. Right now, it’s very important that if we can get a blockchain platform on girls’...The reason why we need the blockchain platform because even girls’ education...Let’s take girls education. Very simple topic.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, you need to have those paths into blockchain systems for governance to work.

Mariéme Jamme: 40 years, Audrey. Nearly 50 years, girls’ education hasn’t worked because I was one of them. I’m 44, so girls’ education, nobody in the world cannot tell you why girls’ education is not working. There’s investment, there’s awareness, and Michelle Obama, Malala, all of them, "Let’s invest on goal number four, SDG Four, girls’ education."

Mariéme Jamme: You ask them, "Why do you think girls are not learning? Why do you think STEM education, why do you think girls are not going into classes? Why do you think girls are dropping out?" Nobody can answer you. Where is the money going? The classrooms? Is it for curriculum? Literacy numeracy? Nobody knows.

Mariéme Jamme: You go to government, remember, we’re talking about macho government who don’t understand girls’ education is important, literacy numeracy, getting the girls into a school. They don’t understand the social issues, so 45 years now... I’m nearly 50 years old.

Aurora Tsai: No, I don’t see you.

Mariéme Jamme: It’s true. Nobody can tell you where is money going in girls’ education, so I decided that this week, wherever I’m going to go, I’m going to tell them, "Stop talking about girls’ education, to either fund girls’ education or do something about it."

Mariéme Jamme: I need to understand one block, which is the investment, the second block is the curriculum, and the practitioners, the teachers. How do we get girls to learn? There’s no need for Malala Yousafzai to stand up and say, "There’s 130 million girls who don’t have access to education," if you can’t give me the solution.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Mariéme Jamme: At the moment, you’re going to hear this a lot this week, like, "Girls’ education, girls’ education," and then on Friday when we leave... forget about it.

Audrey Tang: There’s a platform I want to show you. It’s called Dodoker. It’s a Taiwan social enterprise. For example, they had a partnership with Yunus Social Business Center in NCU. Basically, what they do is that they use either the Ethereum blockchain to track international fund.

Audrey Tang: For example, this is Nepal after the flood. People really want to donate, and if it’s just any other crowdfunding platform, it would just be in bar with people talking and things like that.

Audrey Tang: Different thing that they do, the value proposition is that they use the blockchain to track where exactly has the money has gone and flowed, and it’s not in cryptocurrency. They’re still tracking fiat money, but it’s just they require the accountants in many different points to obey some very simple protocols.

Audrey Tang: The point is that nobody has to bear this very expensive KPMG audit or things like that. They just follow some multiparty protocols, and you end up with pretty pictures like where the money has flowed, where did it go, where did it pass?

Audrey Tang: Even if the website goes away, you can reconstruct it very easily in a few lines of code where it’s going. Very importantly, they cannot change the record. They cannot go back and say, "I did that," or, "I did not do that."

Mariéme Jamme: I think that’s what is important. For example, if you look at one of the things I’ve been checking for the last couple of years, UNESCO, they’re the only organization, it’s not credible.

Mariéme Jamme: If you google UNESCO now and ask how many children don’t have access to education, the same data, 130 million, they’ve been using this for nearly five years.

Audrey Tang: It’s like a clock that stopped?

Mariéme Jamme: It hasn’t changed.

Audrey Tang: So it’s right twice a day.

Mariéme Jamme: The data hasn’t changed, and so I ask them, I ask the minister, I met her, I said, "So who is collecting this data? Are you sure? Until now? 130 million?" It’s the same data. Bill Gates use it. Melinda Gates use it. UNICEF use it.

Mariéme Jamme: Everybody is using the same data, so I went and challenged them. I said, "Are you sure? Surely can I have a look at this data? How is this collected? How did you make up this number?" None of them can tell me, and I don’t think they’re trying to cheat or anything.

Mariéme Jamme: I just think that no one has ever planted this seed in their head to say, "Actually, it could be maybe 160 million. It could be maybe less than that," but there is no system.

Audrey Tang: Do you mean there’s no accountability mechanism for people to answer where the number comes from?

Mariéme Jamme: I sincerely believe from my heart that the blockchain platform will be the best way to show if the number has gone up or down. We need to have a conversation about this 130 million because it’s going everywhere, on infographs, on the reports, everywhere.

Mariéme Jamme: It’s been happening for the last...Every year. It’s like the World Economic Forum Gender Report. Every year they had...It’s all the 10 years, another 5. I sat with the lady who’s writing it. I said, "What is the methodology behind what you say? Because sometime you said to me it’s gonna be like this year, and then next time it’s gonna be like...You’re scaring people. Is this like a mechanism of scaring people?"

Mariéme Jamme: She said, "No, but we collect the data to the consultant and to the countries." I just think that if we have a blockchain platform to track and then to help these people understand, the 130 million will go up or down.

Mariéme Jamme: At the moment there’s no mechanism for this to go down, and if you google it right now, if you go to UNESCO website, it’s the same data, over 65 million. I have no idea where this data is coming from, and I think this...

Audrey Tang: The reliable data partnerships, I think this really is it.

Mariéme Jamme: It has to come from an organization, credible organization, like our organization to get this done. We see the girls everywhere, but I don’t think those girls are...I was a missing data. I’m part of the missing millions. I never had a birth certificate, so I don’t think you can really count me in if I didn’t have a birth certificate.

Mariéme Jamme: I’m part of the missing millions of the data, that’s why I don’t understand where the data’s coming from, from UNESCO. But they have this missing million report done by the...I think it’s an organization. It’s not OECD, but there’s an organization in London.

Mariéme Jamme: I went to see the lady. I said to her, "Missing millions? How many are we missing now?" [laughs] That’s why I think it’s very urgent that we actually put a blockchain platform together about these topics. Urgently.

Audrey Tang: When I was in Vatican they also talked about this issue, because people will not actually voluntarily build such a system if not for the fact that they know everybody else will recognize it.

Audrey Tang: With Africa, it seems to me that everybody need to join in a fair fashion, like forced open innovation, so it will not be dominated and changed by some people.

Mariéme Jamme: Also, these people...For example, in my country it’s not mandatory to register your child. You don’t have to, because some women have 13 children or 10 children in some remote place of Africa. They only start thinking about birth certificate when the child is maybe 17 or 18, but it’s too late.

Audrey Tang: This is one of the goals. I thought people agreed to change that situation?

Audrey Tang: They don’t have the motivation to?

Mariéme Jamme: [laughs] No, they don’t have a motivation, but also there’s no mechanism. My learning about the whole thing is that if you don’t have the eggs, you can’t make omelet. This is my thinking. My thinking is if you don’t have the eggs, you cannot make an omelet.

Mariéme Jamme: These people, they have the talk, they have the platforms, but they don’t have the eggs to make anything. Then the ego is so big, and also the lack of empathy and compassion that are also relating to people is not there, so all they think about, "You know, OK. Maybe it’s gonna work."

Mariéme Jamme: Senegal don’t even have a census. Every 10 years in the UK we have a census date, but in Senegal, it’s not even mandatory to do the census. I took this to the government of Kinshasa. If you go to Kinshasa, how many millions of people are you? One guy said 87, the other guy said 67, the other guys 57.

Audrey Tang: It depends on who does the counting. [laughs]

Mariéme Jamme: I said to him, "Who’s counting?" and I said, "OK. Who is the minister of planning?" I said, "Minister of Planning, est-ce que vous faites...?" "Oui, mais, you we doing this, we doing this." I ask these difficult questions. It’s not because they don’t know how to do it.

Mariéme Jamme: At the ministry of planning there’s no system into place to do this, or they’re not asking the Africans, the young people who design the census app. When I went to help Kofi Annan and did the apps for Africa, what I did is that I helped them understand about census, and so we designed our own census app. How do you take the census app to give it to the government?

Mariéme Jamme: Why do you think human trafficking is high in Africa? It’s because a young girl can be taken from their country without nobody knowing. That’s how I was trafficked as a young girl. Traffickers, they can traffic easily if you don’t have a identity or birth certificate.

Mariéme Jamme: I said to my government, "If you have an SPCC in the UK of somebody missing, a data somewhere, you can track people but they can’t track anyone. That’s why there’s millions of people missing around the world, because there’s no tracking system.

Mariéme Jamme: If you don’t have a passport, you don’t have ID card, you don’t have address, who knows? You are homeless, you’re walking on the street.

Audrey Tang: Sans-papiers.

Mariéme Jamme: At African Ministers of the Digital Economies...We used to call them ministry of ICT, and now the African Ministers are called African Ministers of Digital Economy. I know two who I should connect you with. They’re really amazing. One of them is in Belgium, Alexander De Croo. I’m sure maybe he’s here. He’s from the ministry of Belgium.

Mariéme Jamme: Also, Cina Lawson from Togo, she’s a woman. A brilliant woman. She is now bringing a new solution like mapping census. She’s trying to start slow, because that’s a whole process, and she doesn’t have the funding for it. I think she’s looking for funding to do those typical big projects in her country...

Audrey Tang: I’m happy to get to know them.

Mariéme Jamme: Things like that. She’s a minister of digital economy in Togo. Brilliant. She used to live in the US and used to work for the World Bank, and she’s now gone to Togo to take that post. They have these ideas brooming and they want to do that, they want to do this. They have these ideas small projects that will help them. It’s not there yet, but they have all these ideas.

Aurora Tsai: One is from Togo, and the other gentleman is...

Mariéme Jamme: From Brussels, but he’s doing lots of work now on SDGs in Africa, in Francophone Africa, because we have a...

Aurora Tsai: He’s not African.

Mariéme Jamme: He’s not African, no. But I know minister of ICT, minister of digital economies in Africa, I know most of them. If you need contact with them to either learn from them or suggest some ideas...

Audrey Tang: As I said, all we want is to, for example, start a conversation about the real people need there and also empower people. This movement that I refer to over again, which I’m a part of, is called g0v, and you can check the story. I think it’s in g0v.asia, but the idea is very simple.

Audrey Tang: It’s that if we say anything in government in Taiwan that is not doing well, for example, the budget, or legislation or whatever, instead of complaining about a service or website, we just go and put our shadow version by changing "o" to a zero, so you don’t have to google. It’s very easy to find.

Audrey Tang: For every government service you can change o to a zero and get to the shadow government which is always open data and interactive. This is the first g0v project. It’s a visualization of the national budget so that people can click through each one of them and have a real discussion among themselves.

Mariéme Jamme: It’s so easy.

Audrey Tang: The great thing about g0v is that because most of our work is creative commons, meaning that we relinquish most of our copyright, so by the procurement cycle comes, the government just merge it back, so it just become government service.

Mariéme Jamme: It’s amazing.

Audrey Tang: This year...

Mariéme Jamme: The website is what, gov...

Audrey Tang: g0v. You can go to g0v.tw, but there’s many other chapters, g0v.asia...Yeah, g-0-v. Yeah, it’s a 0, .asia, and also .tw of course.

Mariéme Jamme: We should have this .africa. We should have this for Africa.

Audrey Tang: Yes. Whenever we travel, like when I go to Italy there’s now g0v Italy, [laughs] because as you can see, you don’t need a license from us. The logo is not trademarked. This is just a idea, and you can basically join however you want.

Audrey Tang: This summit has 23 countries coming, and they all share in the same way of -- what we call -- forking the government, taking a government service, making it better, relinquish the copyright, be the government.

Mariéme Jamme: This is amazing, because we had Kenyans. They did something where they develop a solution where they can check the salary of the ministries in Kenya. The lady who used to do that, called Ory Okolloh, she used to be the Google Policy Manager, a very, very good lady.

Mariéme Jamme: Now she’s working for Omidyar Network doing some investment. She was the first tech activist to talk about the expenditure of every month parliament.

Audrey Tang: The Omidyar Network people will also participate in the g0v summit.

Mariéme Jamme: That’s good. That’s very good.

Audrey Tang: In the 2017 World Congress on IT, actually g0v had its own track inviting Stephen King to come over to talk about how to spread this methodology.

Mariéme Jamme: This is good.

Audrey Tang: So they were aware of the community.

Mariéme Jamme: They’re aware of it. That’s fantastic. Omidyar is good. I met him on the plane the other day.

Audrey Tang: That’s great.

Mariéme Jamme: This is fantastic. How can I help with this one?

Audrey Tang: Basically, this message is very easy to spread, because this is literally just a domain name hack. Anyone in any country who is willing to improve how their country does better accountability, they can just start registering a domain name by their own.

Mariéme Jamme: If we want to do one in Senegal or in other countries, how do we do that? We just register a domain name?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, you just register a domain name. You don’t even have to ask me. You just register a domain name, and then we make sure that your work becomes very visible in the international platform.

Mariéme Jamme: One of the thing we focus on mainly for the government sector of iamtheCODE is designing policies. Most of these African government -- they’re going to come here, you’re going to hear them out -- they have probably frameworks, you call them. Or they have wishes, I call them.

Mariéme Jamme: They have wishes to improve girls’ education or climate change.

Mariéme Jamme: If you really look into the implementation, it’s where the problem is. Then, the money that goes in sometime get diverted. What we want to do with the government, mainly, is to help them design the right solutions.

Mariéme Jamme: We design many of them. We want to design the right solution, but also bring accountability into girls’ education.

Audrey Tang: That’s the most important thing.

Mariéme Jamme: If we can do that, that would be perfect.

Audrey Tang: I think we can empower, because that’s your message. The student will think, with iamtheCODE, I am the one to make changes. I don’t have to wait for the government to build a code.

Audrey Tang: IamtheCODE, which is why I think this resonates with the g0v message, which is always when we find ourselves complaining "why nobody does it?" We can remind ourselves that we can be that nobody. Just go and do it. That’s the main idea.

Mariéme Jamme: This is a wonderful idea. This is great. I don’t know if I’m free on the 7th. I’m going to...

Audrey Tang: Maybe one of your friends can come, or you can get someone to visit Taiwan.

Mariéme Jamme: I’m going to Kenya, but I will...

Audrey Tang: Maybe you can ask one of your acquaintance to come and visit.

Mariéme Jamme: I will see if they can come. This is going to be very, very good. If I can come to Taipei, I will definitely come. I don’t need a visa to come to Taiwan, so I came already. This is wonderful idea.

Mariéme Jamme: This is good.

Audrey Tang: Through this civil sector and social sector collaboration, we don’t have to be institutionalized through, for example, the Taiwan government or the Taiwan Foreign Service. It could be entirely empowered by the grassroots people.

Audrey Tang: We make sure that the right people, the right technology, the right open-source projects appear there just in time, but it’s all for you openly to use or not use. I think this is one of the best way that we can do this kind of collaboration is around digital decolonization.

Mariéme Jamme: No, I understand. I think it’s fantastic. I think for us this week...

Mariéme Jamme: Are you leaving today?

Audrey Tang: I’m leaving tonight, yes.

Mariéme Jamme: You’ll be leaving tonight. That’s fantastic. I think there are ways of working together. I’m happy to make intros for them to know that there’s another side of the conversation.

Mariéme Jamme: Cina Lawson, she’s brilliant, from Togo. I think she will like this because she’s very well respected now by the president because she’s very transparent and very tough woman. Also, the minister of education in Kenya. Have you met her yet? Amina Mohammed?

Audrey Tang: No.

Mariéme Jamme: She’s also a brilliant woman, and so they all like iamtheCODE. They try to help us raise funding and get the conversation going.

Mariéme Jamme: They’re always sharing the examples of iamtheCODE, so she’s also now the lady to...She used to head the World Trade Organization, Amina Mohammed, and then she was the Foreign Affairs Minister. Now she moved to becoming the Minister of Education in Kenya. Brilliant woman.

Mariéme Jamme: I think they will love to...My advice is always to find a way of having a conversation between yourself as a minister. That’s probably best conversation, and then talk about tech.

Mariéme Jamme: My advice is, wherever you go and meet African minister, focus on the technology you can bring, not on the relationship of Africa and Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: I understand.

Mariéme Jamme: The technology, that’s what Africa need now. That will give you a door to be part of the conversation and help them design solutions because they’re very desperate. We have innovation in the continent. Slow innovations are starting up, but mainly, like I said, the processes are always a struggle.

Mariéme Jamme: The ideation is there, the wishes are there, they all want to do something big. The Rwandese government for example, they want to digitalize all the birth certificate. I helped the Mozambican government with e-government solutions.

Mariéme Jamme: They all have projects like this they’re working on, or they want but sometimes the just don’t have an example, a very simple example, not too much, not too expensive to do it. Usually it’s just big ideas and they don’t have...If you can come in, if Taiwan and yourself can come in as a tech partner...

Audrey Tang: A facilitator really, and just facilitate the local people, local girls to understand the technology and maintain it.

Mariéme Jamme: My advice is to always have a partner who is non-governmental, not just NGOs, but some of the NGOs are partner with government. The reason why people are partners with us because we’re not scared in saying no to government.

Mariéme Jamme: Always try to find an organization that is independent thinking, they can do their own thing. Sign NDA and MOU always before. Make sure that everything is clear before.

Mariéme Jamme: Unfortunately, there are some occasions where African government sign a partnership with a Chinese organization, and then if they hear Japan or Taiwan or Malaysia is getting involved, they give up the deal.

Audrey Tang: I know.

Mariéme Jamme: You lose money.

Audrey Tang: I know.

Mariéme Jamme: You need to be careful on that. Those are my advice. For us, we’re happy to partner with you as soon as possible. Like I said to you, we would like to double up our curriculum. Anything you can help us with, we’re ready to work with you.

Audrey Tang: I will relay the message. You or someone you trust, if you attend a g0v summit, I will introduce personally to the people to meet on the technology front.

Mariéme Jamme: We want to partner with Taiwan on the tech side. I’ll be very proud to have some of our solution designed with Taiwanese investment. I’ll be personally happy with that.

Audrey Tang: I will also write, in my future Business Weekly columns, a little bit more about the collaborative nature of the Taiwanese civil society.

Mariéme Jamme: They’re very nice people. I think they are doing amazing work, but when we went to do the SDGs in Taiwan, they were very impressed with us. If you can talk to them, by all means.

Mariéme Jamme: I think this could be a great partnership. I think it could be a very good example for an Africa tech ecosystem to show them that they need to get out of their comfort zone to learn from...

Mariéme Jamme: I think Taiwan is very, very well-positioned to have a footstep in the continent, because the relationship China has with Africa is not what China could have. It will not be a conflict of interest. For us, it’s mainly if the African government can look into the technology you guys have and SDGs and double up them software and hardware.

Audrey Tang: The SDGs is this neutral collaboration zone. We’re not competing against anyone.

Mariéme Jamme: No, I agree. That’s great.

Audrey Tang: That’s great. It’s very good meeting you.

Mariéme Jamme: Thank you. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Thank you.