Rising Pyramid is proud to introduce guest author, Josiah Filler, through his interview series on mobile solutions in South Africa.

The Praekelt Foundation is the non-profit arm of successful Johannesburg technology consulting company Praekelt Consulting. Founded by Endeavor-sponsored “high-impact entrepreneur” Gustav Praekelt, this non-profit organization is focused on using its for-profit expertise, especially mobile-based technology, to raise awareness about issues like AIDS, domestic violence, and good parenting for the bottom of the pyramid in South Africa and the broader African continent. In December 2010 The Praekelt Foundation received an $825K grant from Omidyar Network demonstrating that people around the world are starting to appreciate the tremendous social innovation this organization is pushing forward.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Praekelt Foundation’s Chief Engineer, Simon de Haan, a couple of weeks ago and talking about his experience with the organization. Here are the highlights of what I found to be a wonderfully enlightening conversation:

Josiah, Rising Pyramid: Hi Simon, thanks for meeting with me today. So what gets you excited about using mobile technology to reach the bottom of the pyramid?

Simon: I like really big technical challenges, to know that what I’m building could impact and improve the lives of people all around me. I just find that really valuable.

Josiah, Rising Pyramid: How did the Praekelt Foundation get started?

Simon: I think it was Gustav, he was running Praekelt Consulting and I think he watched some tech talk or something about a foundation distributing AIDS messages on bottle caps and he thought “I can do that.” He said “we build so much technology for distributing airtime to people and we have all this awesome stuff that we can use for social good as well.”  That’s how the foundation started. From that came “TxtAlert” and a whole bunch of other projects.

Josiah, Rising Pyramid: Could you comment a bit on why you chose mobile as your channel?

Simon: We chose mobile because this is Africa! For example, in my computer class I put a bunch of kids in front of a computer and tried to get them to understand gmail and applications, and they really struggled. Two weeks later they were on their phones running the same applications, no problem. For some reason mobile just fits into their mindset much better. Mobile is so much more practical, many people hardly have power so they are barely able to charge a phone much less a desktop. If your target market is Africa then you’d be insane to not go mobile.

Josiah, Rising Pyramid: Is there any cross-pollination between the for-profit and non-profit arms?

Simon: Yes definitely, right now as a foundation we are building messaging platform called “Vumi”, which is completely open-source. Because it is open source it allows for anyone, including the for-profit side, to build commercial applications using that platform. I think there is a really healthy cross-pollination between the two, not only in relations but also technical skills, so that’s exciting. We are quite a bit smaller than the for-profit side so they’ve run quite a few non-profit projects for us.  But we are growing as a team and we do have get-togethers as developers every once in a while just to say “ok what are our core platforms and how could you benefit from them?”  The for-profit side is working on a core platform called “Panya” which will allow you to build rich mobile portals really quickly. We as a foundation use that stuff from them because it’s open-source. At the same time we are working on “Vumi” and they are using it. We also have developer days where we just exchange our experiences on how we build stuff and what we can do with them.

To continue reading, check out part 2 in which Josiah and Simon discuss Praekelt’s innovative solution for increasing health awareness in South Africa.

Tags: Africa, mobile, Non-profit, Omidyar, Praekelt, technology