Esther: I grew up in not the wealthiest of places, but I have seen how
communities have been able to support each other through collaborative
mechanisms that they create.
And this is something called village banking in Zambia or Chilimbas.
So, village banking is where you put money together with a group of trusted friends.
You come together and put money towards savings.
So, each month you're depositing something.
So, there are different concepts.
Some of them are profit making.
Others are simply for savings.
And there are others which are more geared towards ceremonies, uh,
like births, funerals, marriages.
So it's really a communal way of supporting each other and it's
centered on trust and it's centered on decentralization and it's also Focused on
a bottom up approach where everyone wins.
Lawil: Welcome to the Future Money Podcast presented by the Intellectual Foundation,
where we invite people of all backgrounds and disciplines to imagine what a
financial inclusive future might be.
I'm Nawal Karama, the Program Officer of the Intellectual Foundation.
Hollis: I'm Hollis Wong Ware, a community ambassador with
the Interledger Foundation.
This season
Lawil: we're focusing on the creative arts and in this episode we are
in conversation with Esther Mwema.
Hollis: She will be sharing about her project Sekula Sonke, Living
Archives of Afrofuturist Village Banking, which she created together
with John Adam Chen in three different communities in Zambia and South Africa.
We will discuss with Esther how this artwork shaped her vision
of a financial inclusive future.
Her pathway towards becoming an artist and how moving around the
world has influenced her today.
Lawil: Hey Esther, welcome to the future money podcast.
So we're so glad to have you So one of the first questions I wanted to
ask you is about Your presence in the tech sector and the fact that your
first job was at an internet cafe Could you tell us more about your entry
Esther: into this field?
It was a very funny experience because there was no real job description.
I was just like managing the place.
I was sweeping, I was being a typist, and also considering at that time, uh,
that was like 2010, 2011, the internet wasn't as widespread in the small town
that I was living in at that time.
I was in Zambia.
And so a lot of people would come to internet cafes to get their
work typed, to, to go online.
And so I think I was one of the earliest people to actually have a.
Facebook account because that was when Facebook was becoming popular.
And I'll see that the internet cafe either typing someone's, uh, assignments or
dissertation and managing the different computers and I'll be on Facebook
making friends all over the world.
So, you know, it was a time.
That's so
Hollis: cool.
And yeah, I think early days, I'm sure it felt just Like sky's the limit in terms
of the Internet, but I'm curious how, like that initial experience working at the
Internet cafe, learning about the web and kind of being at a hub, like a physical
hub of your community, how that kind of led towards your interest in and passion
for Internet governance and understanding Internet inequity, especially given
all the places that you've studied and
Esther: lived.
Yeah, I think the immigrant experience is quite crucial.
To my journey because you're looking for routedness and so having had access to
the Internet at that time, I was exposed to different ideas to different people
from different communities and one of the most important topics to me at that
time and still today was about safety of girls and so because I had time and
I Not a lot of commitments at that age.
I started a blog called Safety First for Girls, and I was writing about
understanding why the world works the way it does, but from a context of feminism,
from a context of gender equality.
And that was also at the time when feminism was not viewed in the way that
it is today, where it's more accepted and people can easily identify as that.
So using the Internet as a platform to share my thoughts, I was able to connect
with other young girls from across the globe, and that's how I decided, oh, I
don't want to be the face behind this work, but to just put it as a name where I
hold a space and different girls can share their safety experiences, safety tips, and
that's how it came to be that I started engaging online and building communities
online and offline and this work built up when I studied my BA in journalism and
from then on I have had the opportunity to apply for different experiences.
Um, I would have to say it's It was a very challenging time in thinking about career
and also thinking about my place in the world in terms of what I was supposed to
do, it was easy to to choose a role that perhaps I'll just work at a TV station or
at a radio station, all which are good.
But I didn't feel like that encompassed my entire expression,
what I wanted to express.
And that's how I started my journey in using the internet.
But there is more to that, of course.
Hollis: Obviously, like the Internet has transformed several lifetimes
since the, you know, couple of decades that we've grown up with it as well.
Do you remember kind of a moment where that intersection of the Internet and
equity was really like highlighted to you or what made you interested
in a type of activism in that space?
Esther: Yeah.
So I was going through different things.
I worked for advertising firms.
I worked for real estate firms in copywriting.
Uh, but at some point I got, I saw an opportunity to learn about the history
and futures of internet governance.
Through Internet Society, and that was the first time that I actually
heard the term Internet Governance.
And I was like, Oh, what does this mean?
And through that fellowship, I was able to attend the 4th Internet
Governance Forum in Geneva, Switzerland.
And that really opened my eyes to the disparities, to the difference between
what happens at the grassroots level and at the high level, because we, um, when
I say we, I'll say that the fellows from Who were selected by Internet Society
were one of the few young people to attend that global forum, and this was
through that experience that I and other young people decided to co create another
organization called Digital Grassroots.
We decided to get more young people and create pathways for young
people in marginalized communities to engage in Internet governance.
And looking back, obviously, starting two organizations, I'm like, oh, that is
a lot of my childhood gone trying to do advocacy work, but at the same time, I
recognize the importance of being there in the room when people are talking about.
What our digital future looks like, and that's really when I started, um,
understanding the role that I can play as an individual and also by collaborating
with other young people through this.
experience.
I was also able to get a fellowship to study my master's at the
London School of Economics.
And my main focus of study was technology and justice.
Because, um, there is a big gap that we don't really talk about when
it comes to the digital ecosystem.
So my journey as a digital inequalities practitioner started in that way, and
throughout that experience, I had always used art as a way of expressing myself.
Could you tell us more
Lawil: about your experience and of course your focus on digital
Esther: inequality?
When you grew up in Zambia and you're trying to receive money.
For your work.
It's difficult.
Even today, you could have a paypal account, but you would not be able
to receive money simply because you're in Zambia and as an open
internet leader for democracy.
Through my work, I believe that we all need to have autonomy and the initial
design of the internet was built to be open, interoperable, and this is
something that is not really reflected in payment systems because it's really
exclusionary and I really experienced that in see in running a global platform.
organization that is based from Africa in terms of receiving grants, in terms
of paying people, in terms of the trust that we are able to receive that is
given to others simply based on where they're located or their nationality.
So this also
Lawil: makes me curious as to what role art played into your focus on digital
Esther: inequality.
I've been doing art for the longest time and what really helped me was
recently I got an opportunity to like the dream job with the United Nations,
UN Women, and it was a time to learn, as well as to find myself and see
who do I want to be in the world.
Do I have to give up a part of myself in order to succeed?
career wise, or is there a way to combine what I love?
And so actually this, this year, I set out to say I want to do art and technology.
I don't want them to be separate, but I want them to be combined and Opportunities
like the Future Money grant helped me to do that because I was able to combine
my technology and art, and I also was able to get another opportunity with
the SeaChange Creative, um, R& D Lab.
Where I was able to work with Digital Grassroots, my organization, to digitize
our digital rights monopoly game.
So, we are demystifying digital literacy, so that was exciting,
and also an opportunity to be a Prince Claus Speed Award grantee.
And so I was like, well, I guess.
This is the right way to go.
I
Hollis: love that.
Big congratulations for all those accolades.
And I think that's a very relatable sentiment.
I know Lowell and I both really feel that is just the, um, external
pressure to compartmentalize yourself under the auspices of achievement
or, um, making yourself almost more intelligible because sometimes it feels.
It's chaotic, both internally and externally to be both a practicing
artist and somebody who's working in the spaces of whether it's tech
policy, equity, financial innovation.
And yeah, I mean, to that end, I would love to shift towards
talking about the project that you and your collaborator developed.
As part of the future money grant and would love for you to share with our
audience what the origin and initial thoughts of that project were, and then
we can talk about what it looks like
Esther: in practice.
Yeah, that is exciting.
Actually, I had a great opportunity to collaborate with john out of 10 on supply.
So, okay, which means we grow together, leaving archives called afrofuturist.
I grew up in.
not the wealthiest of places, but I have seen how communities have been
able to support each other through collaborative mechanisms that they create.
And this is something called village banking in Zambia or Chilimbas.
So village banking is where you put money together with a group of
trusted friends to come together and put money towards savings.
So each month you're depositing something, so there are different concepts.
Some of them are profit making, others are simply for savings, and there are others
which are more geared towards ceremonies like births, funerals, marriages.
So it's really a communal way of supporting each other and it's
centered on trust and it's centered on decentralization and it's also focused on
a bottom up approach where everyone wins.
It's open in that way and being able to collaborate with John Adams who
has had experience in South Africa has lived there, studied there.
We were able to think about village banking as an Afrofuturist concept.
What does it look like when our financial systems are modeled on practices that
we've had for centuries, practices we've had pre colonial times, and so that was
really the essence, but before we could imagine, we had to build those archives,
and that was the essence of creating living archives of village banking, and so
we had to Perspectives from rural township and urban setups just to collect stories.
And what was really fascinating, and it wasn't really intentional
in that sense, was that this was a predominantly women led initiative.
All the groups we reach out to were predominantly led by women, and
I think all of them were women.
And so it's not like we set out only to We've reached out to women,
but it's like, we just wanted to know who's practicing this and how
has it benefited their communities.
And I really loved our approach, given that we wanted it to
be centered on the community.
It's really easy to create an art piece where you know the concept, so you just
make the art based on what you know.
But for us, it was about bringing the communities as co creators.
And that's where the music comes in.
That's where the constitution comes in.
Hollis: What do you feel like springing from the realization of
this project and its installation at the Interledger Summit?
Um, I mean, just so that folks Um, who haven't seen it.
I can just paint a picture like you essentially created a round table,
um, with a tapestry hanging down and, um, it was like a really warm.
It was like we were coming to the table, like almost to come to eat or to hang out
or to have conversation and you featured, um, the audio of these conversations
paired with photographs on tablets.
Um, and I also witnessed that you and John had many conversations
with interledger summit attendees.
Um, and I'm curious what was kind of sparked there that you might
understand as being like, Oh, okay.
This was a conversation maybe I didn't anticipate, or this gave me
an idea for how to either deepen this art piece or something else
I'd like to explore in my next
Esther: work.
As with every exhibition, you only know if it's the message
is clear until you put it up.
Many of the conversations we had was just the feeling of being at home.
Someone saw the artwork and said, Oh, that reminds me of my grandmother.
And others came in and said, Oh, this place looks similar to
what we use in our community.
And it just shows the interconnectedness of the global majority.
Because some of the things that I thought was unique to Zambia or
unique to South Africa actually had resonance for people who have never
been in that part of the world.
And it showed that we have a similar concept when we think about wealth,
when we think about well being.
And that's what really those conversations were about, creating.
a healing space because most of village banking is about ceremonies and so
this is a place where we come together to think to talk to share and that's
why that table was there where people are coming sort of to have a meal to
listen to stories and that's that's how we lived um a sort of um centeredness.
And rootedness, uh, where you're rooted in your community, you're centered on
the stories that have carried us from generations to generations, stories of
resilience, um, stories of empowerment and stories of feminism in a culture where we.
It's highly patriarchal.
So that was very powerful.
Um, part of the experience for us was also learning that there is need for
different village banks in different communities to communicate with each
other because we have similar concepts.
But if we're not.
Communicating, then those nodes, I'm putting it in quotes, the
nodes, the intelligent nodes, those nodes are not communicating.
There needs to be that communication and that trust built to show that
this system has been supporting our communities and Also, recognizing what
the shortfalls of that is, it's not always a happy story when trust is
broken and money is lost, um, there is no reinforcement or how can we support
our communities when that happens.
So that knowledge exchange for us is something that came up that needs to be
done and also importantly is creating the virtual exhibition because we
want it to be accessible to everyone and make sure that even those who,
who, Cannot see it, are able to read the transcript and also read the
constitution, which I thought showed democracy in a very interesting way.
Each village bank creates their own constitution and governs themselves.
So self governance.
How was it for the
Lawil: community to participate within your art project?
Because it reminds me of something I saw from an African architect.
I believe he's from Mali and he built buildings within, uh, with his village.
So he saw how that type of agency, kind of like changed how they
viewed his profession, but then also how they participated within
the build of certain structures.
Like even children helped moving bricks because they were like,
now I have agency within this structure that we just put down.
I'm kind of curious if kind of like you had the same experience
while working with these
Esther: communities.
I love to, my practice always takes an African feminist and colonial approach.
So it can be very easy to fall into an extractive practice
where you say, I'm the artist.
I know what I'm doing.
And so give me your existence and I'll present it.
Um, and so taking a decolonial approach in this project was really
about stepping back as an artist.
And listening.
So I knew that we had to exhibit something and we wanted to tell
stories and to create an archive.
But it was really a discipline to not decide on behalf of the
communities what that would be.
And so when we're reaching out to people in our communities, it
was really tell us your stories.
You're inviting us into your homes.
You're inviting us.
into the practice you have created, something that has
been sustaining your community.
And so that's how we went about it.
But this method takes time.
And as I always mentioned, it takes trust because they have to trust you as well,
to invite you into their, their homes and to share how they do village banking,
because it's also finance and people.
Sometimes I'm not the most comfortable talking about money.
So that's how we we set out to do it.
It actually took a lot more time to get the meetings.
Because we wanted it to be really a safe space on a free open space for sharing.
Um, John Adam went to Kylie child where he has roots there and we were
able to get stories from the township setting and I was able to get stories
from Lusaka, Zambia, where I grew up and one of my grandmother's allies and
friends from the fellowship I was in was able to invite us to the Eastern
Cape, Kiskamaho, and connect us to her community simply because she heard of it.
And it was really amazing because that took a different approach than I
expected because it was focused on she is a healer and she heals through music
and using using the Calabash as well.
So getting that connection to How people see wealth As a cultural
context was really a stroke of luck and also just meant to be and
their community was very welcoming.
So part of our exhibition included the music that was sang as we were
being welcomed into the space.
The prayers that were put in as before they shared.
Food with us.
And also the objects that were part of the setup
Hollis: there.
I love that.
And yeah, I'd love for you to just talk about that a little bit more.
About how your own personal understanding of what wealth means and how to define
wealth was transformed through this project and also to kind of like expound
on the metaphor of the calabash and like the significance of Of the gourd
and also what you see it representing within this, this model of village
Esther: banking, having grown up in this system and understanding village banking.
For me, it was about how can we ensure that what happens?
are in our local communities is presented in a way that has agency and
autonomy because many times when people come into our communities they have a
preset mind on who we are and how to present it Usually presented as people
who need saving or people who are not technologically advanced, when ultimately
technology is about making life easier.
It's about solving a certain problem.
And so for me, um, being part of this, it made me realize that, well, It's
in our context is not individual.
It's not about my savings alone.
It's about our community growing together.
And that's why we called it sequel.
A song came, which is supposed to for group together.
So participating in that sense, um, and encountering the color brush or.
The calabash seed helped me to learn about the qualities of resilience
because village banking is something that has been part of our generations.
1 of the oldest people was close, who we interviewed was close to 80 and was
talking about their grandmother practicing village banking or in South Africa.
It's called.
stock files, and there are different names for it.
So it shows that even during times of oppression and suppression, we created
systems that could be replicated in our communities and still have Long longevity
and still be inclusive in that way.
So I think that was the most amazing part of it.
And it made me imagine what would it be if village, if those village banking between
our countries in Africa with our financial systems look different because our
countries are right now heavily in debt.
And that shapes the policies.
And that shapes the quality of health care, the quality
of food, the quality of life.
It shapes the life expectancy.
So for me, it was not just seeing money as a currency, but seeing
it as a system, a way of life.
I
Lawil: also find it, cause I thought it was interesting that you
mentioned the fact that you keep on mentioning how important agency is.
I always feel like within our society, or let's say modern society.
And especially if you look at, uh, African countries or other regions in
the global south, that's the savior complex, or what is it, modern society
drives the savior complex because we can't understand previous animistic cultures
that were on like European soil or Western
Esther: soil.
And it's also, it's a very large contra into.
Lawil: Experience like experiencing
Esther: life as well.
Yeah, it's very true because the reason these archives are important
is that it's easy to forget that these qualities that we look for in
technology of openness, decentralization, inclusivity have always existed.
They have been refined in our own way, in a way that fits the way of life that is.
Uh, respectful to other humans, but also respectful to the
environment that we live in.
And so it's really all connected.
And I really saw this project as enlightening and seeing the
openness that people had to share, even when they will be perceived
as poor in our economic terms.
So yeah, it was, it was enlightening.
Do you believe like village banking could kind of like change the
Lawil: epistemic
Esther: culture or knowledge base?
It exists in many parts of the world, and one thing that the Open Studio
at the Intellectual Summit opened for me is that it exists in not only in
Southern Africa, it exists in West Africa, it exists in India, and even
in the Western world, it exists as GoFundMe, though that's a different,
different style, but it is crowdsourced financing in that sense, right.
Um, so these systems have existed for a long time, but it's really about
giving them the credit that they deserve, uh, and not thinking that we
need to create new things or create payment systems based on things that
do not exist or based on Silicon Valley's dream of what the world is.
And this project was very important.
These archives are important because They are reminding us of what is and they're
giving us an opportunity to imagine what could be an imagination, I think, is one
of the most powerful tools in shaping the future because our current economic
system is based on something that was decided in 1944 by some countries who
decided, let's make the World Bank.
Let's make the IMF.
And since then, we've been a global economy.
Trying to our countries have been trying to recover economically, but
it's like fighting a battle that you're not going to win because it
was never built with us in mind.
And so really, this project, the aim is to start our thinking because what
we imagine is what is going to be.
And if we don't imagine as being economically independent as.
Country or if we don't imagine that we can have financial systems that are open
and inclusive, then it would not happen.
Hollis: I think that's so beautiful.
And I completely agree with you that we have to be able to imagine what is
possible for it to come into being.
And I think that's like really the beauty of all of the
projects of the future money.
Open studios was these initial seeds of possibility and what can they inspire
in conversation with technologists.
So I am curious, like whether it was at the interledger summit or otherwise, if
you had any initial seeds of like, Yeah.
Oh, what could this look like in practice?
Like, what would this model village banking look like?
Obviously, like you cited the ways in which we see it
kind of pop up organically.
Like I, so true.
Like GoFundMe is not only a type of like collective crowdsourcing, but
it's often filling in systemic gaps.
Right.
So at least pretty consistently.
And so, yeah, I just curious about like what came to you in terms of like the
interaction between the digital and the more kind of like analog in person.
tangible community building.
Esther: I think what I appreciated about the method that we took, that
Jonathan and I took to do this project is that we went in with a blank slate.
Of course, we did research on what exists in what do people say about
village banking, but we also went very open to learn from the communities.
And I'll share two stories.
The first one is from, um, Professor from Zekas, which is an accountancy
university in Lusaka, Zambia, and this professor called Prudence.
She is working on using village banking and adopting machine learning for
village banking to see its viability and also trying to, she has a prototype
to build a tool for village banking and see how can people use technology
to do village banking and what that.
opened for me is that solutions are being made.
They're being prototyped on the ground.
People are using technology, uh, shaped by our own ecosystems.
And the opportunity that I had to speak with her to learn about her research and
her practice really showed me that art Always reflects what is being practiced.
So even though it could be in its early stages, it means that the idea
is already out there and it's just waiting to be captured and implemented.
So that was one of the stories.
And the second story was also with my colleague who is a healer and she uses
healing to bring her community together.
And a lot of the.
community she brings together, also practice village banking, and it was
seeing how she uses music as a tool and uses the calabash as a tool to create
music, uh, to bring healing, how it connects us to our past and shows that
Wealth is not only tangible things.
It's also the intangible things.
It's reminding us of our culture.
It's reminding us that we don't have to rely on different systems for things like
healing and mental health when we actually have those systems in our culture.
So filling in those systemic gaps in unconventional ways, it already exists.
It just needs.
Visibility, uh, and it needs to go into the mainstream narrative as
well, because it is just as valid.
Hollis: Yeah, absolutely.
So I'm curious, based on this project, what's next for you?
And how are you thinking about transmuting this experience into future work?
Esther: Yeah, that is a good question.
In terms of the next step for this project, obviously, the
virtual exhibition is a big one.
And part of our Our commitment was also writing a long form article that, uh,
expands on these ideas and just shares more deeply what the lessons were.
So that's something that we're going to be doing.
And for us, it's always also going back to the communities and telling them, this
is the work that you co created with us.
And this is how you can replicate it.
So editing the photos, putting them together, sending them back to the
communities and obviously always collaborating with the community liaisons
that we work with, who were amazing with translations are amazing with.
Bringing the community together in one space, the village
banks groups that we work with.
They have existed for many years.
So I believe those to be existing for many years going forward.
So thinking about what comes next is always about going back to the
community and seeing support looks like for them and also seeing how
that can build into what we think of.
open payment systems from an Afrofuturist perspective or Afrocentric perspective.
You
Hollis: know, as we come to the close of this conversation, I would love to
hear any final thoughts you have about financial inclusion and thinking about.
The communities that were part of your piece, the conversations that
you had, the possibilities there.
And what is your vision for a financially equitable future?
Esther: A lot of the people we work with are somewhere in between formal
and informal and formal engagements of interactions and informal methods
of interactions with their banks.
So it's really thinking.
How does financial inclusion connect to the wider open Internet principles
in terms of accessibility, in terms of security, privacy and security,
and in terms of freedom, freedom to be forgotten or permission to be forgotten,
a lot of our financial identity is tied to our history in the Western
world, it could be credit scores, Um, in our part of the world, this
could be credit bureaus or, or banks.
So it's thinking about what does financial freedom and financial
inclusion look like without surveillance?
What does it look like in a democratic sense where I get to choose where
I keep my money and where it goes?
And also thinking about is a future possible where the amount of
money you have does not equal to.
Having your basic needs met and how can technology make that possible?
People talk about a universal basic income.
Uh, and my view on that is money is not the problem because money exists.
There's enough money to solve hunger right now, but it hasn't solved it.
So it's really about thinking about how are we as human beings supposed to meet
the needs of the ones who are not in the.
Formal system.
Uh, immigrants are persons with different abilities or simply
people who have been left out.
We're not in education or in schools or do not have their certificate.
Uh, that's really what inclusion looks like.
We could create an open system that works if you have a phone, but
not everyone is able to have that.
So maybe changing the system, what would that look like?
And can we start that imagination now?
So at least maybe in 10 or 15 years, we could have something different.
I'd be excited for that.
Yeah, me as well.
Lawil: I can't wait to be honest for that to happen.
And that's kind of like how we continue and how new models are
created, but we're still doing the same thing over and over and over again.
Yeah.
For a couple of generations, you just get
Esther: tired of it.
Yeah.
And the poor get poorer and the rich get richer and it
just brings more social ills.
It does very much.
Yeah.
But I think the change is happening and to see like the intellectual foundation
what you're doing is already a big sign that things are changing, people's
minds are changing, and it's just about getting it into the main narrative.
So, um, one thing I realized it's in life when, when things are changing, there's
always a pushback because people are very comfortable with the status quo and
saying, well, I, the risk is too high.
Maybe we should continue as we are, but really.
We, we are doing that push right now and just having this conversation
is a push in that direction.
And I'm hopeful.
Hollis: Thank you, Esther, so much for all of your thoughtful work.
And thank you also for modeling what it looks like to not.
Restrict or mute or compartmentalized parts of yourself and your
curiosity and your imagination and your desire for innovation.
And I think it's really inspiring to see you move forward in a space where
you feel empowered by both your arts practice and your tech policy and equity
Esther: lens.
Thank you to Intelleger and to all of you who are working hard to make this
possible because it's about also getting.
people to agree to hosting a space like this, a space where imagination
is possible and where trust is given.
And I felt a lot of trust in this space and I really am grateful so much for this.
We did it.
We
Hollis: did it.
You're right.
We
Esther: did it.
Yeah.
Okay.
Thank you.
Amazing.
Hollis: Awesome.
Thank you both so much.
This was great.
Lawil: To learn more about the Interledger Foundation, visit our
website where you can find all of
Esther: the published episodes
Hollis: and more information on our guests, grant programs, and
our resources at interledger.
org.
Thank
Lawil: you for listening.