Today’s Executive Column guest is Eshetu Abebe, He is an IT professional and a cofounder and Co-CEO of Sewasew , a Silicon Valley company that was founded in 2016 in the USA by a team of likeminded individuals aiming to address the content disparity between Africa and the rest of the world. Eshetu has earned M.Sc. in Information Technology and B.Sc. in Computer Science.
Herald: Would you brief our readers about Sewasew, what is it all about?
Eshetu: In the midst of the information age where it is being claimed that humanity’s knowledge is documented and ready to be accessed by people online, indigenous knowledge of Ethiopia and Africa at large is literally missing from the Internet as we know it now. It is either not documented at all or it is not digitized.
As a result of this, fellow Africans spend a lot of time on the Internet trying to find little to no content about any aspect of life around their community that is written in a language they understand. This mostly proves to be a wasted effort – as the saying goes, “you can’t find a black cat in a dark room especially if the cat is not there.”
Sewasew is an online platform that aims to address this huge content disparity currently existing between Africa and the rest of the world on the Internet. It is a crowd-sourced indigenous knowledge platform where people from all walks of life contribute content and learn from one another. Sewasew is a Silicon Valley company that was founded in 2016 in the USA by a team of like-minded individuals who have lived and witnessed the problem first-hand.
Herald: What is the main aim of Sewasew? Let’s start from its naming what does it mean/represent?
Eshetu: Borrowing its name from an Amharic word for ladder to prosperity, Sewasew aspires to live up to its name and act as a way to prosperity by creating information affluence and keeping the linkage between generations. It envisions to be the< goto> site for anything that’s Africa!
Existing big content platforms like Wikipedia and Quora do not recognize the market potential of Africa and, as a result, they do not apply concerted efforts towards building platform tools supporting many African languages. The same is true in the area of mobilizing Africans to create and consume content about any aspect of life in their community.
Herald: Can we say Sewasew is the first platform on its kind to Ethiopia? How?
Eshetu: There have been attempts by individuals and companies alike to address the severe shortage of local content about Africa in the form of personal blogs as well as dedicated platforms. Individual efforts can only go so far and efforts by companies have been limited to only certain knowledge areas and only available on certain access surfaces, not to mention the lack of robust tooling support as well as limited mobilization strategies.
Sewasew is built by a team of passionate individuals who have lived and witnessed the problem first-hand, and as such, it is the only platform of its kind in Ethiopia. It is built from the ground up to address existing limitations of similar platforms by providing users an easy to use yet powerful platform that is operable in several local languages – currently supporting Amharic, Afan Oromo, Tigrigna, Geez, and English but can easily be extended to support many other languages. Apart from operating in multiple languages, it is also equipped with more language related innovations.
Herald: How many members or readers participate in Sewasew be it local or
International, tell us about that?
Eshetu: Since its launch in 2016, Sewasew has been enjoying an encouraging number of traffic across major access surfaces – mobile and desktop. We also have a presence on major social networking platforms and people get to us through these platforms as well. In terms of diversity, the majority of our users originate from Ethiopia, followed by the USA, Europe and Arab nations.
In numbers, close to 40 thousand articles have been contributed spanning multiple categories. More than 15 thousand registered users, the majority of whom have active participation in the platform. We have around half a million monthly page views across all access surfaces, more than 250 thousand Facebook followers and more than 10 thousand telegram channel members.
Seasew’s popularity is continuously increasing and we predict this trend to sustain in the coming future as we engage in concerted awareness creation campaigns and forge important relationships with key government institutions having a huge amount of content related to indigenous knowledge.
Herald: How many people operate as an admin?
Eshetu: The team here at Sewasew, at its core, believes in the greatness of community contributions towards curating content and the platform itself is built based on this foundation. The power of platform tools does not stop at empowering users to create content only. It also has tools for users to moderate platform activities so that they report malicious activities and offending content to moderators.
In a way, every platform user is an administrator as well even though they are not able to take final action on reported articles as well as other users. For this, we have a designated group of power users (also known as administrators) who take final actions of reported items. For the time being we have five administrators overseeing different aspects of the system including content moderation.
Herald: How did you further develop its content? What feedbacks did you get from participants and members?
Eshetu: When Sewasew reaches its tipping point, almost every new content shall be contributed by the platform users themselves. That is our aspiration. In the meantime, however, we recognize the need to get involved in content production to meaningfully bootstrap the platform with highly objective and undocumented local content.
In order to achieve this, we have identified key government institutions hosting piles of paper based documents collected throughout the years spanning many areas and, in fact, we have already signed multiple memorandum of understanding notably between the National Archives and Libraries Agency of Ethiopia (Wemezekir) and AAU’s Academy of Ethiopian Languages and Cultures. In addition to these, partnerships between the Ministry of Culture and Tourism as well as Oromo Cultural Center are well into their final stages.
We also went ahead and have already started ingesting content from these institutions. The amount of traction generated off of these articles has been very encouraging and a proof that there is a need for content related to local indigenous knowledge across a variety of topics.
After we started ingesting content from these institutions and made them available on our platform, the amount of positive feedback we receive from people aware of our platform has been very encouraging and the number of people who follow us via different channels have also been significantly increasing and, in fact, we have partnered with a well-known local FM radio station to use content from our platform that is specifically sourced from the above institutions.
Herald: How do you verify history and information’s, how well researched are the information posted in Sewasew?
Eshetu: This is a very important question and thanks for asking. As much as we want users to create content of their likings on the platform, we also strongly believe in closely moderating specific categories of content created by users – sensitive categories such as history. The team here at Sewasew believes by heart that Sewasew must not be another online platform where unfiltered content goes wild and hurt existing good relationships between societies.
And in order to address this, we are in the process of setting up different specialized teams in collaboration with institutions like AAU. These team of professionals will be engaged in filtering and validating content before it gets published to the general audience. In addition to this, when it is called for, offending contents as reported by platform users shall be run by these teams for accuracy before administrators take action on them.
In addition to this, the beauty of Sewasew lies in how it organizes content. Users can comment or give alternative facts/views about a specific topic no matter who created it in the first place. This is very important because it addresses the issue of covering a given topic from one side only and end up being factually inaccurate and biased. As a result of this, poorly organized content will be met by a better version of it from other platform users. The final judgement lies on readers themselves as they will have a better understanding of a given topic being discussed.
Herald: What kinds of issues are grabbing attention more in Sewasew or what are the most discussed topics?
Eshetu: There are several categories on Sewasew ranging from simple facts for “the curious” to home remedies for the “needy” to jokes for the “bored” to historical events for the “researcher” and many more. Every category and every article have their own audiences but articles from the following categories have a particularly high rate of contribution as well as readership by majority of platform users. Health and nutrition, articles including those curated around symptoms of common diseases in Africa, taking a home remedy to tackle these diseases, and preparing healthy and nutritious foods at home. Also, Parenting and Education, from children’s fairy tales, curated in local languages, to articles that describe rare linguistic phrases that could immensely help bring about personal developments to the future generation of Africa.
History and religion in which History and religious content in different local languages as they were authored in originally. This category especially attracts readership from the youth as it helps them know about impactful historical events and biographies. Arts and culture, Articles that explain arts and cultures of various ethnic groups in their native languages. And also, Business and economy a content helping the general public accomplish their day-to-day tasks in effective ways – things like what documents are needed to get a trade licence in Ethiopia, what’s the best kindergarten in Addis Ababa, etc…
Herald: Do you think you are addressing all issues and do you think you are impacting the intended number of the society?
Eshetu: Sewasew is not a solution for a fancy problem. For a society to grow and prosper, proper education is key and including indigenous knowledge developed in a language one understands in the process is the first step towards creating such a society. Developing content is one part of the equation and to complete the whole process calls for the finding of effective ways to avail them for the larger public.
Sewasew is an attempt to just do this. We believe that with the right platform offerings and mobilization efforts, the majority of issues as it relates to indigenous knowledge can be covered sooner than later thereby creating a lasting impact on societies.
Herald: Tell us about your experience in blogging, what was your first blog about? How was the feedback?
Eshetu: I don’t consider myself a blogger, but I am one of the active participants on Sewasew. In addition to attempting questions asked and addressed to me by platform users in areas of Information Technology and general knowledge, most of the time I usually ask questions for others to attempt them.
The knowledge sharing process on Sewasew has been very exciting. People applaud your contributions no matter how small you think it is, they write your personal notes of encouragement, they share your contributions amongst their network, and when necessary, they also fiercely refute your article which it the more interesting. To me and the entire team, every day here at Sewasew is another opportunity to learn new things from others regarding different aspects of life. I am sure the same applies for others as well.
Herald: Do you think blogging is very important to our country?
Eshetu: It is not an exaggerated claim to say that the power of the Internet for individuals probably lies in the ability to share one’s life experience among millions of others which otherwise is nearly impossible using traditional communication channels. Blogging is one of the pioneers in this regard.
Done properly and with the right intention, I do think that blogging is a very important aspect of the Internet. Personal blogs have their own limitations as it relates to reaching a significant reader base because they are technically bound by how well connected that specific blogger is. I do believe platforms like Sewasew are highly advanced versions of blogs which continue to dominate the content production and consumption ecosystem in the foreseeable future.
Herald: Do you think Ethiopia have enough bloggers? Why do you think blogging is not a trend or the number of Ethiopian bloggers are very few?
Eshetu: The beauty of Ethiopia essentially lies in its diversity – be it in terms of culture, language, educational background, and life experience in general. We are a country of more than 100 million people. If equipped with the right platforms and mobilization strategies, I believe we have more than enough number of bloggers in Ethiopia.
In my opinion, the reason behind the perceived “small number” of bloggers in Ethiopia lies in the fact that blogging in Ethiopia is highly scattered across a plethora of blogging platforms and have been marred by lack of coordination between the bloggers themselves.
Herald: How important is Sewasew in bridging the lack of online blogging platform gap in the country?
Eshetu: There are a number of online blogging platforms people use to spread their thoughts amongst the Internet population. Different people use different blogging platforms and their individual efforts so far have not been particularly effective because of lack of coordination from the side of the bloggers as well as lack of concerted efforts from these platforms to mobilize these bloggers for the greater cause.
Sewasew is meant to create that ecosystem through the provision of easy to use tools across multiple technologies for content curation, discovery and dissemination. In addition to providing users with powerful platform tools, we also strategically work towards mobilizing content authors as well as create readers and aspire to become the goto site for any local content that’s Ethiopia and beyond.
Herald: What are the challenges you have been through regarding initiating Sewasew?
Eshetu: Sewasew was founded and funded, until recently, by a team of like-minded and motivated individuals who happen to have lived and witnessed the acute shortage of local content in Ethiopia and beyond. In building Sewasew and bringing it to where it is now, the team has gone through a number of phases and executed many activities.
Our resources so far were mainly invested in building the platform and articulating the problem, and as a result little was done to create the awareness amongst our target users. And that is our main focus going forward now that our world class platform is erected and prototyped successfully in the region.
Keeping the momentum of content production as well as readership intact is another challenge emanating from intermittent Internet shutdowns in the region. The fact that the cost of the Internet being relatively high in the whole region is also another challenge. But current trends show that it is dropping at a faster rate and we see a promising future for us.
Herald: What should be done to curb the problems?
Eshetu: As I have tried to mention above, the challenges we are facing right now and will possibly face in the future are multifaceted and addressing them properly calls for the involvement of different parties including governments.
On our part, in an effort to address some of the challenges, we have recently conducted a successful fundraising campaign from the community. This funding will certainly help us address most of the challenges.
Herald: What plans do you have down the road?
Eshetu: Ethiopia is not the only country suffering from the extreme lack of local content on the Internet. In fact, the problem gets even worse when Africa as a whole comes into the picture. For example, studies show that there are more articles about Antarctica in Wikipedia than articles about any country in Africa; and more than twice Wikipedia articles exist for topics related to France as for the whole of Africa.
Our aspiration here at Sewasew is to be a reputable and goto platform for all and any local content related to Ethiopia and beyond. To arrive at this goal, we will be following a three-phased approach.
Phase I is to accelerate platform adoption by the Ethiopian target user, Increase platform awareness via aggressive promotion. Catalyze crowdsourcing of platform-showcasing local-content (oral lores, non-digitized content that are under the custody of various institutions such as Ethiopia’s National Archives and Library Agency, a.k.a Wemezekir). Also, increase curation of actionable content such as how-tos and tips related to health remedy, personal and economic developments, and others.
Phase II, to Drive platform adoption by users of other selected African countries by selecting targeted users in one or two other African countries and replicate (customize) execution steps to drive adoption within target users.
Phase III, to drive to scale and reach to platform’s tipping-point and to scale execution to become the de facto go-to online platform for the enquiry of local content about any aspect of life in Africa.
Herald: At last, is there anything you want to add to our readers?
Eshetu: Thank you! Here at Sewasew we take the “ሃምሳ ሎሚ ለአንድ ሰው ሸክሙ፣ ለሃምሳ ሰው ጌጡ” saying by heart. It is tantamount to saying sharing is a pleasure. We know that everyone has a story to share among his/her fellow Sewasew users or a question to pause about any aspect of life in general.
I, therefore, highly encourage readers to visit Sewasew at https://www.sewasew.com, download one of our native applications from the App store…. (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ sewasew/id1440945772?mt=8) and play store (https://play. /store/apps/ details?id=com.sewasew.client), register and start contributing. I also encourage readers to reach out to us via our team email at team@sewasew.com for all other forms of engagement with us.
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday Edition 10 November 2019
BY FASICA BERHANE
