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By George Z Goliati

Whilst maintaining operating as a social enterprise and maintaining our vision and mission to challenge inequalities, we’re rebranding to a more commercial perspective.

We’re eliminating 99% of non-profit-oriented terms and statements in our verbal communication.

What was referred to as the “Internet of Rural Communities” is now referred to as “Village Internet” or the “Internet of Villages“. It’s no longer defined as “rural data collection platforms and cyberspace“, it’s now “rural cyberspace and informatics“.

In the villages, it’s just “internet” services just like you would describe and access the internet services at a cafe in the city. We’ve used phone bureaus when we had no phones of our own, now we, including rural communities, go to mobile money agents for services that we can’t do on our own, so why not internet services for the rural masses who have no access to?

We’re trying to build human-assisted digital interface, a little village Google, that accommodates even the most elderly village women (azigogo) into the global [digital] village with a very friendly, soothing and magical experience.

On the other end, donors, development services providers, traders, entrepreneurs and tourists will be able to connect with or reach out the most targeted groups or individuals and fully “be there” to get more details at a cost of half liter bottle of water. With that, the community becomes a digital village.

Since the internet services will be provided at free of charge, they will be accompanied – but superseded or overshadowed – by some kind of “Kabanza“, a new-but-very local small business service to be disclosed upon launching in December 2022.

There will also be other online business services including agro-marketing, cultural arts and/or eco-tourism marketing and labour services, accessible to everyone in the rural areas.

Why Rebranding?

In October 2022, we discovered that we could overcome our biggest barrier by wearing a commercial face.

What’s our biggest barrier towards progress?

Even though discovered in 2015, we finally concluded that “traditional approach to community development” is almost everywhere and is a hard-to-uproot culture, in August 2022. We thought some players like independent community-based organizations (CBOs) could be easily redirected. We were wrong.

What’s this culture?

It’s a very tricky subject to talk about. It’s common problem that almost everyone is aware but is hardly admitted to exist. It has become a norm and critiques are perceived as envy and jealousy.

This is the tendency to focus on immediate benefits from community development solutions where beneficiaries expect to receive free items just to satisfy immediate needs and stakeholders expect to cash in for “being there”, without contributing to long term progress.

It is the major challenge to development itself and the worst thing is that almost everyone thinks it’s the way to go, making it to become permanent and fortified.

We eliminated engaging experienced community development practitioners. It has worked. Now we are eliminating 99% of apparent community development features on our brand.

We realize that we cannot achieve our goals using the traditional approach to community development employed widely by 99% of practitioners. According to Albert Einstein, you cannot solve a problem using same ingredients and methods that create it.