A seed of change

A seed of change

South African Young Global Leader - Dr Mmaki Jantjies - is using technology to make a difference

By planting a seed, a landscape can be changed. Peo ya Phetogo, Sotho for ‘seed of change’ is the name academic and social entrepreneur Dr Mmaki Jantjies chose for her non-profit organisation, with the intention of using digital skills to make a tangible difference for young South Africans. Speaking to Public Sector Leaders, the Group Executive of Innovation and Transformation at Telkom explains her mission using an apt analogy: a light candle should not be placed under the table - it should be placed on top, for the light to be shared.

Lighting the candle

Dr Jantjies’ first passion was racing - formula one racing to be exact. “I was crazy about F1 racing and I was set on landing somewhere in Germany to be part of the Mercedes Benz team,” she tells Public Sector Leaders. She hails from the North West province, in Mahikeng, and her journey in the world of technology started when she had the privilege of attending a former Model C school which offered computer studies as part of its curriculum.

Did you know?

Dr Jantjies was one of five South Africans chosen as part of this year’s cohort of Young Global Leadersan initiative by the World Economic Forum which has created a community of young leaders who are able to effect positive change. She was also South Africa’s delegate representative to the G20’s W20 digitisation group in 2017 and 2018.

Her dream of becoming a mechanical engineer changed when fears of the ‘Y2K bug’ were stirred in the late 90s. The Y2K bug, also known as the ‘millennium bug” was an issue which arose from the two-digit code programmers used to identify the year. The fear was that, on the 1st of January 2000, computers would interpret “00” as the year 1900, rather than the year 2000, which would have a widespread impact in areas such as interest rate calculations.

Ultimately, the impact of the Y2K bug was limited, but it had another, more significant impact: it led Mmaki to the world of computer science. “And I decided that that’s actually what I was going to study because there was a huge skills shortage and continuous messaging at that time that that’s the key area,” says Dr Jantjies, who now holds a PhD in computer science.

After completing her junior degree, she spent some time as a consultant before returning to her studies “as I was studying further I became quite passionate about the research and innovation space because I enjoyed having a budget that allowed me to explore different experiments.”

From her parents, she learned that her degree was as useful to her as it was to her community. Education had opened doors for her, and she wanted it to open doors for others too. This, she describes using the candle analogy: “Take it out from under the table so that everybody else can benefit from it.”

What makes this analogy a poignant one, is that the candle is perhaps one of the most significant technological advances in human history. With the advent of candles came the ability to see better in the dark, which allowed more work to be done at night, accelerating the development of humanity. Dr Jantjies is using newer forms of technology to shed light on the potential of millions and, like her parents, she is giving back to her community.

“I spent a lot of time engaged in projects that looked at building learning applications, particularly maths and science; spent a lot of time looking at what are the reasons why children fail,” says Dr Jantjies. She realised that learning in a language which is their “second, third or fourth language” hinders the progress of many South African learners.

“And then I said, ‘okay, how do we build mobile applications that can leverage transition capabilities and allow children to be able to navigate between them.”

“My key area was how do we make maths much easier to learn? How do we enable resources, access to resources through maths and leveraging the mobile phone?”

One of the projects she got involved in was one focused on skills development through an immersive technology project.

“We looked at how we can bring in augmented and virtual reality skills and build products that look at the challenges of South Africa.”

They realised that augmented and virtual reality could have the greatest impact on professions which carried risks that could be avoided with experiential learning and began training miners and dentists.

In 2021, Telkom formed a new innovation and transformation office, which Dr Jantjies came in to lead. “We have a research and innovation function which in essence partners with research institutions around the country to look for innovative products.”

The office runs a product incubator, where products are tested out before they can be sent out into the world, for Telkom and other businesses to use. They also invest heavily in startups and SMMEs.

You’re educated - now what?

As an adjunct professor at the University of the Western Cape, and the beneficiary of the leverage education can provide, Dr Jantjies understands that access to opportunities can be opened up through education.

“I’m passionate about education, right? But I’m passionate about access,” she says, before offering a breakdown of why education is merely a starting point. “First of all, education unlocks so much. But once you’re educated, is that enough? No, you need finance. How do we leverage off platforms to enable access to finance?”

“I work on products that enable access to a better living for South Africans.”

Her position as an adjunct professor means she teaches less, mostly supervising students in emerging research fields, which she enjoys doing but being an executive at Telkom also offers an opportunity to teach. “I feel like even if you’re in the corporate world, education becomes your mentorship and leadership role - it’s not necessarily just in class. But how do you translate that to making sure that your mentorship within your leadership role trickles and cascades to anybody you work with and anyone you touch? You don’t have to be teaching to be standing in front of a class.”

Planting a seed

Dr Jantjies’ non-profit organisation, Peo ya Phetogo, is her effort to bring the power of technology to more people, particularly students and teachers after she noticed the lack of diversity in the technology sector. She sees technology as an “enabler in solving problems.”

“And sometimes it’s not always necessary to use high-end technology to address the challenges we face. We can achieve this just as much as we were able to leapfrog in certain sectors and enable access.” She cites mobile money, and the positive impact it’s had on the African continent, as an example of how technology can be contextualised, allowing for greater access to financial systems.

That’s not to say that South Africa, and the continent at large, should not be more involved in the development and use of high-end technologies. “I believe that we should have a voice in the higher-end technology [conversations], in the global community. But I think that in everything that we do when we’re using technology to solve