By Cat Pritchard
What do most South Africans have daily access to? Cellphones. What do many more not have access to? Employment. Could the one be used to help alleviate the other? Txteagle (www.txteagle.com) seems to think so. In fact they call it “ empowering the largest knowledge workforce on earth”.
Txteagle targets the more than 2 billion literate mobile phone subscribers in the developing world creating “mini employment” by connecting corporations with small tasks to be completed—common ones include translation into local dialects for companies like Nokia—with local people who can complete them in minutes by cellphone.
Okay so it’s not going to solve unemployment and the jobs are small fry, but in places like Kenya where it operates via Mobile Planet and Safaricom, it provides a small incomes to struggling communities. And that’s the point. (Txteagle will soon be launching in Rwanda through MTN Rwanda and in the Dominican Republic through Viva.)
How it works is that tasks are sent to multiple phone users by text message—"translate the phrase, 'address book' into Giriama," for example,—and answers are accepted as accurate when the majority of users provide the same response. Compensation is determined by the number of times an individual’s response agrees with the consensus; penalties are imposed for wrong answers, while "don’t know" responses make no contribution. Over time the system learns a particular user's expertise, and can actively select the most appropriate tasks for them.
Payment is made either to a bank account connected with an individual's phone number—accessible at any post office or local kiosk—or via airtime credit transfers.
So what about massively unemployed SA?
We know that over 10 million adults (33%) in South Africa own cellphones, but that the percentage increases dramatically when you consider how many households own cellphones – 60%. So here’s an opportunity for households and communities to share the cost and the profits (which they often do anyway).
Apparently, additional partnerships are being consolidated in Africa and South America, so we can only hope that our esteemed telecommunications suppliers are all over it.
Just a thought.