Emerging Social Capital of Virtual Africa

“Increasing evidence shows that social cohesion is critical for societies to prosper economically and for development to be sustainable” (The World Bank 1999):

Social cohesion in virtual worlds and online communities are no different from those in the communities that we serve in Africa, and certainly no less essential to sustainability. We discovered just how true this is for our own project the past two weeks, and are still surprised at how a renewed community participation ignited without much (or any) of our own prompting, and the social cohesion of our small global community showed its face: Within days, open communication led to several loosely connected initiatives that caused an unexpected and collective energy – preventing our region from being shut down on Friday 11 December 2009. This would have been the sad but reasonable outcome after our third notice from Linden Lab – due to our organisation, Uthango Social Investments not being able to raise enough funds for tier fees during 2009:

Unfortunately, if you can not get the islands funded by Friday, 11dec09, you will need to remove the content that you wish to keep so that we can take down the islands…. We wish you success in future Secondlife endeavors and hope to see you back again, thank you for your work, time and effort. (Ticket #4051-7106595)

I felt like giving up, but a stern Skype call put me and self-pity in its place – ‘get on with it’. Now OF COURSE it is embarrassing at a professional and even an organisational level to admit an inability to raise the necessary finance for Linden Lab land tier fees. And no, we have not asked for special treatment because we are African – most NGOs globally are having a tough time with fundraising and we are all in the same boat. And it would be irresponsible and short sighted to utilise funds from one project (read donor) to subsidise another.

Holding out hands to raise virtual currency inSL has also never been our main objective or activity inSL and certainly are not the strengths of the founders of Virtual Africa in Second Life. But community building and social cohesion call on transparency and collaboration and not on private organisational ego, and in the words of a wise supporter: “if others believe in your idea and want you to succeed, you will know it now, if ever…“:

The comments after final notice to the community and tenants to remove their content from our African MarketPlace and campsites came in fast and concerned (resulting in daily IM caps): “We did not know. We did not see how serious it was in the notecards. You are too subtle and diplomatic. Nooooooo, do not get rid of the open spaces! We did not know about the bandwidth problems. I did not realise what was happening and so quickly. You need to tell us stuff. We cannot believe it”, and then the numerous encouraging IMs, basically all with the same message, “we should not let this happen or we must DO something”: And so, they did:

Social Cohesion. Kindness. Good-will. Sympathy. Call it by any name, it is still sweet and empowering: Two community builders and landowners offered to organise a benefit each. Another came back after two years to volunteer full-time inSL. A PHP coder headed our call for a special donation script and then waivered the fees. Some people donated directly to Wilberforce Rau (our record keeping avatar) and some tenants suggested we rezz a poster and tracker that could show the outstanding fees for the year, and did so at the Rangers’ Hut at Virtual Africa inSL (calculated at 885 USD for each full sim and 399 USD for each homestead), or 2568 USD for a period of six (6) months for the entire region of four sims – just about 705 000 Linden Dollars or 20 000 ZAR every six months, excluding connectivity, human resources and bandwidth costs (which is about four-times that amount). It remains more costly from Africa than from any other place on earth to be in a virtual world, resulting in less than 0.5% of a billion people accessing virtual technologies.

Virtual Africa has been around since early 2008 in Second Life. It was launched after nine months of quiet research in terms of approach, and since then the region had just more than 40 000 visitors interested in our bit of 3D Africa. Most avatars are interesting people that come in and out for the odd balloon ride, or romantic walk-about and leave for greener pastures. However, some stay a bit longer and become as inspired as we are with the project and vision of bringing African content to virtual worlds, and construct their own bit of Africa as part of an ever-increasing network. They also see the potential of sharing conversations, good practices and ideas from/with people from the continent via this platform. And in the process, Uthango inSL nurtured some social capital that we have not recognised or fully appreciated – that is, until the 10th of December 2009 when the hover text at one poster inSL (beneath) showed how donations ticked over into 70% of our 2009 fees (to date) and Linden Lab could be paid in-part. THANK YOU! We are almost there, …

Poster for Land Tier Contributions at Virtual Africa inSL

“Social capital is defined by Robert D. Putnam as “the collective value of all social networks (who people know) and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other (norms of reciprocity)”.

The idea and concept of ‘social capital‘ has been strongly introduced to academic circles in early 2000 and was adopted by the World Bank as an useful organising term for stakeholder influence on development. To bend all things of societal value to economic terminology like ‘capital’ is problematic in its own sense, but more about that another time. About the same time as when the term was being debated globally; in South Africa in 2001, the now leaders of our own development company (Uthango Social Investments) were building and embracing social capital practically as the engine of our development work in communities via the Uthango Micro-Enterprise project described here by Harvard University and linked to marginalised and very poor urban areas. Uthango designed a participative engagement instrument, called iPekx (Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledge Exchange) and linked the information directly to economic and societal development programmes – resulting in an award-winning approach to sustainable development.

We now analysed what exactly happened and realised that our online community (especially in Second Life) is stronger in social capital than we realised and that – when informed openly about our reality – the community of affected people demonstrated both collective social cohesion and individual good-will leading to renewed community participation in our project. As a community in virtual worlds with an affinity for Africa we recognised we are facing collective challenges, expressing aspirations and values, as well as sharing the same space and having equal opportunities that result in a ’sense of togetherness’ (a glue) – the fabric of healthy communities.

As a development agency based in South Africa, that emerged from a local development project, the Uthango’s team intimately knows and understands the value of open conversation and social cohesion as enabler for change and creating healthy communities. There is no substitute for spending time with clients in pro-poor projects and building trust via listening and fostering long-term mutually beneficial relationships.

Building Individual Relationships in Community in South Africa

So Social Capital is NOT tangible, but it is woven into the fabric of life itself; into the interaction we have with each other on many platforms, and recognisable in communities in all its forms:

Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to the properties of individuals, social capital refers to connections among individuals – social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. In that sense social capital is closely related to what some have called “civic virtue.” The difference is that “social capital” calls attention to the fact that civic virtue is most powerful when embedded in a sense network of reciprocal social relations. A society of many virtuous but isolated individuals is not necessarily rich in social capital.

There is definitely scope to connect some ‘isolated individuals’ and smaller communities into a loop and strenghten our network. This will become more possible when we require the resources to spend more time in our virtual world’s projects, and build on educational, enterprise and entertainment initiatives.

In my opinion, building social capital is closely linked to developing appropriate technologies furthering social cohesion and socio-political eco-systems that in turn enable citizens to access these technologies. Maybe a technosocial approach to development, then? It is, afterall, already in the DESIGN of technology that social capital could be called upon on raised (or even deliberately and short-sighted excluded). This point is made strongly by Richard Sclove in his book, “Democracy and Technology’ so well reviewed and commented upon by John Carter McKnight (Kaseido Quandry in Second Life) in his latest blog entry: 10 Big Pieces: Sclove, Democracy and Technology and although there are elements in the quoted book that one could strongly argue against, this one stood out as true in our experience:

“Competent citizenship, moral development, self-esteem, and cultural maintenance all depend on extensive opportunities… to participate in producing, contesting, disseminating, and critically appropriating social knowledge, norms and cultural meaning.”

So, what exactly is SOCIAL CAPITAL?

And why do we believe that our project in Second Life (R) is showing promising signs of growth – inviting us to remain a bit longer – even though it has not reached a break-even point financially? Simply because we place a value on social networks for our development and advocacy agenda, and not merely look at monetary Return on Investment. Nothing else than ‘Social Equity’ or ‘Social Capital’:

The very first definition that jumps from Google is also the one I like best: ’social capital’ referred simply to “‘those tangible substances [that] count for most in the daily lives of people’ according to Lyda Judson Hanifan in 1916. He was particularly concerned with the important place of good will, fellowship and sympathy that make up a social unit and contribute to a meaningful life. Significantly almost a 100 years later, a study published by Dacher Keltner, director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory, suggests that human beings are genetically ‘wired’ to be good and he (too) places KINDNESS towards others central as prerequisite for a meaningful and successful life. The corresponding article, “Forget Survival of the Fittest: It is Kindness that Counts” suggests that giving and gratitude relate to lasting wellness and a better society. If the impromptu exchange of KINDNESS is an indicator of the existance of social capital, then Virtual Africa inSL has growing social capital based on our experience of kindness.

The concept of social capital implies that face-to-face encounters and shared experiences are needed to build trust and community. Ages ago a ‘community’ with social capital would be defined around the physical place where people live – a village or hamlet, where they share daily life. Nowadays the definition is much broader and rather refers to the space (even virtual) where people have a sense of belonging. Or is it a matter of virtual places that provide the same medieval sense of being present in the same place to grow and participate as community?

This has been a testing year for Uthango, and our focus has NOT been in Second Life. Yet, our fragile community continued without regular group engagement and ‘in-world events’ and demonstrated social cohesion when it mattered most for our Virtual Africa. Imagine what is possible if we have the equal opportunity and connectivity to be more active in a fair trade environment … The reality is that we have discovered that Virtual Africa inSL and Uthango inSL have social capital in its community that is an invaluable outcome of a three-year systematic investment to the best of our abilities and capacities. We do not have the funds for the next round of land tier and direct costs in 2010, but we DO HAVE a renewed faith that it is possible. And OH! how we thank you for your part in our journey to this discovery… we will not forget you…

With reference to beautiful poem and South African-themed movie INVICTUS, we too “thank whatever gods may be… for (our) unconquered soul”…

67 Minutes in Second Life (Mandela Day)

It is middle July and it is winter in South Africa. It is also an important day on 18 July in Africa and in the world – a celebration of and for Madiba: “Mandela Day is an annual celebration of Nelson Mandela’s life and a global call to action for people to recognize their individual power to make an imprint and change the world around them”, according to the campaign website.

A year ago, myriam Martinek (inSL) visited our Africa in VirtualWorlds blog and posted this fascinating reply to our blog entry, Mandela’s Freedom in Virtual Worlds:

But tomorrow will be far more than a worldwide birthday celebration; it is ultimately a time of reflection about the values that he represents – undefinable in its influence to (still) move people to do what is just and humble – the “right thing”. He is a person shaped by Africa, saying about himself: “I am what I am, both as a result of people who respected me and helped me, and of those who did not respect me and treated me badly”. We think of other political leaders in the world that are simply unable to respond with grace and wisdom in the face of adversity, and often feed a climate of collective distrust and violence from their own personal fear.myriam Martinek, Africa in Virtual Worlds, Jul 2008

You should read the whole article. Incidently, it is STILL the blog entry that is one of the most popular ones in this journal of our experiences. But more importantly, it is important to know that when it turns 18 July 2009, it is President Nelson Mandela’s birthday. He turns 91 and leaves us a legacy, which is now honoured globally with the first annual MANDELA DAY. Uthango inSL also brings this day to Second Life – like last year – and gives virtual worlds’ users the opportunity to be part of the campaign.

Commit 67 minutes of your life to make a difference in the world. So we all ask ourselves the question: What am I doing to add value to the world beyond self? Please join us in Second Life and pledge your action – it will only take a few minute and then you can venture forward to the grand opening of the Relay for Life at noon on the same day. It is so appropriate that this successful nonprofit has their main RFL fundraising event inSL this weekend.

On a personal note: For me (Alanagh Recreant inSL) it is simple and very real: I have disappointed someone by not prioritising her desire to make a tangible difference to a young girl’s life in Africa. I was busy with an organisational vision, personal challenges and …. well, life. And ironically I truly know the possibilities of one individual changing the living conditions for another. I see it every single day. I hope for more of it, and wish for more people with such hearts and minds. In spite of it, one such golden opportunity slipped through the cracks of my rushed life. It saddens me. I am wondering how to change it …. That is my personal quest today and tomorrow. No bells and whistles; just reaching out in the right direction for one person.

Africa UnPlugged for the Future – President Obama in Ghana

There is not only one Africa. There are at least two – one where Africans are confident, and young professionals  speak boldly about their ability to contribute to economic growth and  then – another Africa where desperate, forgotten people are surviving in the worse possible conditions and human rights violations are part of  the ‘givens’ in their lives.

Today, Saturday 11 July 2009, President Barack Obama makes his first official visit to the continent of Africa and selected Ghana to make a stop amongst avid supporters – acknowledging the ties between the USA and this beautiful country that shows the two faces of Africa so clearly. But it is more than a visit to Ghana, his talk will undoubtedly set the tone for the relationship between continents across the Atlantic ocean – North-America and Africa.

The campaign of Obama (with respect) was followed closely by most Africans and many entrepreneurs have made the most of the people’s obvious adoration for the President – before and after election. Products are still sold in African shops and songs are recorded to carry the message of hope beyond the moment.  “The Hooray President’ features on fabric and bags and – more importantly – in peoples conversations when they talk with new-found respect about America.

For our organisation, Uthango and our ‘Virtual Africa inSL’ project, today is a red-letter day at many levels, but mostly and significantly! because the White House administration has chosen THIS moment in Africa to add virtual worlds’ to its list of social networking avenues. It effectively recognises the value of virtual worlds as powerful medium to reach and mobilise people. In an indirect way it gives our team new inspiration that virtual worlds have a meaningful role to play in the future and we have not ‘wasted  more than two years’ even though we have not yet been able to secure financial support for our bigger metaAfrica (TM) vision. CBS writes,

Since entering the White House in January, the Obama administration has made use of a myriad of social networking and Internet communications tools, such as blogs, the YouTube video service and Twitter, to interact with the public. Come Saturday, you can add a virtual world appearance to the list.

In Second Life, representatives from Uthango Social Investments were invited to join the University of South California Centre for Public Diplomacy to be part of a conversation during the screening of the President’s talk in Ghana, Africa.  We have always had the utmost respect for the efforts of universities inSL to use the virtual worlds platform in innovative ways. We hope, in the future, that we will be in a position to assist African-based universities to use Second Life  and participate in these initiatives. You can also join the conversation at Interval in METAPLACE (by registering and without downloading any programme).  From our side, we feature a SPOTLIGHT ON GHANA event in our Virtual Africa region to share more about the country and its people.

Uthango team members participated in the text message invitation from the USA government to Africans and sent the following question to the President on the 8th of July – “Mr. President, What role could African civil society organisations play to further investment and responsible development?” implying that ‘Africans are responsible for Africa’. A day later, his comments ahead of the Ghana visit were therefore music to our ears:

Ultimately, I’m a big believer that Africans are responsible for Africa. I think part of what’s hampered advancement in Africa is that for many years we’ve made excuses about corruption or poor governance, that this was somehow the consequence of neo-colonialism, or the West has been oppressive, or racism – I’m not a big believer in excuses.

Ghana understands this philosphy. It was the first African country to gain independence south of Sahara and therefore an iconic gateway to Africa to celebrate democracy. The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre also describes itself as the golden gateway to Africa, but it is the voices of the people talking about their country that actually sells Ghana best:

In his book, AFRICA – Alterted States, Ordinary Miracle, the renowned journalist Richard Dowden makes a powerful statement about the continent with its many facets:  “In the past outsiders imposed the wrong things on Africa in the wrong way at the wrong time…” and in another part, “Apart from economic growth, the future of Africa will depend on very different factors: climate change, population growth and identity”. It appears that it is especially through his respect for, and embracing of identity that President Obama has struct a cord with the African people – and with the world. Who am I? And then, who can I become?

In my opinion, ingenuity during adversity and richness of cultures are two of the greatest gifts that Africans could share with the world. Both grow from the nurturing soil of having an identity and dignity.  So when someone ran into me in Second Life that Obama now formally recognises as social network and asked, “What do you think will be the key elements of his talk in Ghana on Saturday?” I can speculate with a fair amount of confidence that it will probably be two anchor messages bouncing off the central theme of hope: I respect your indigenous knowledge and solutions. I support you on conditions of democratic process and accountable governance. (And remember, democracy is not alien to Africa – it is however rarely implemented exactly the same as in other western countries and based on the practice of reaching consensus through discussion rather than debate). There may be a surprising other theme in his talk, but my money is on those… and a reference to the beautiful flag of Ghana… and we will be delighted.

Now what this means for the world in practical terms  needs to be unpacked – to set the tone for the way development is  facilitated and investment is driven in Africa. One can hope that there will be a mindset and operational change towards including Africans an integral part of the DESIGN of a solution – be it in sustainable development, aid, business (base-of-the-pyramid 2.0), educational programmes and yes, virtual worlds and new media solutions as well. One case study of BOP 2.0 implementation that recently won an award from the BOP Learning Lab actually also hails from Ghana, and addresses land titling through an innovative loan scheme. (After all,  “In its 2007 and 2008 “Doing Business Report,” World Bank cites Ghana as a “Top Ten Reformer,” demonstrating that the country clearly recognizes the private sector as an engine of growth”).

To use the above analogy, if the private sector is the engine of growth in Africa, and governments the cars, then surely President Obama and this moment is the ‘spark plug‘ providing another spark that is having an electrifying effect throughout Africa and indeed the world.  Wikipedia says these little contraptions are some times also referred to as ‘flame ignators‘ and there is not a better description for Mr. Barack Obama and his energising approach at this time in African history.

African leaders realise the importance of leading responsibly. At the recent World Economic Forum on Africa, held in Cape Town, one of our Directors was invited to share a round table with leaders from across the continent. Intention to lead honourably and accountably was evident and leaders take their responsibility serious. At the closure of the forum, the newly-elected President Zuma of South Africa replied: “The challenge comes back to the leadership: Are we able to see those opportunities and are we able to utilize the appropriate structures to take advantage of them”.

Many people question the election of President Zuma with a tainted personal life as the President of one of the leading African countries and time will tell what legacy he will leave. One thing is absolutely clear about him though and that is that he, too,  creates a spark of hope to those Africans that known only the one face of Africa – living without shelter, education, clean water, food and survive from day to day. These leaders are needed to harness local intelligence and solutions to local problems. President Zuma understands the importance of spending time with citizens in their huts, at their ceremonies, in their institutions, at funerals and to listen to people via social networks that are so much part of African life – even though they are not always fueled by technology, but mostly by oral traditions and connectedness of communities. The ‘kraal’ (also known as ‘uthango’) is the traditional ceremonial space where important decisions are made and where the chief is respected for his (and in modern days, her) wisdom.  We will be streaming live from Ghana radio stations – which have now for days been filled with ‘Obama excitement’ -  as these remain the key source of information on the other side of the digital divide.

Today, we have the extraordinary opportunity to be part of a first in virtual worlds and a first in Africa.  We are honoured and excited that this opportunity has been seized to place a flashlight on Second Life’s potential and we await the time that the investment in broadband connectivity with initiatives such as SeaCom will kick start access to more Africans to events such as these! For now, we invite you to join us in Second Life in our kraal to celebrate the visit of the first African-American president to the first African country that gained freedom to have its own solutions.

We welcome the President of the United States of America to Africa, and thank the White House administration and USC Centre of Public Diplomacy for making history in virtual worlds. And we anticipate a passionate talk about Africa taking responsibility for Africa with African ingenuity. It will be interesting to see how we are surprised when the spark hits the engine…

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