WEF Leader Series: Mark Surman

Mark Surman is the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation. Picture: Supplied

Mark Surman is the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation. Picture: Supplied

Published May 13, 2016

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Mark Surman, the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, chats to Business Report about Africa and the Internet...

Q: Sum up the opportunity that the Fourth Industrial Revolution holds for Africa.

A: The digital revolution holds tremendous opportunity for Africa. With access to an open internet, African entrepreneurs, educators and makers can build digital ventures that are from Africa, for Africa. (And also for the world.) This is not to say there aren’t challenges within the digital revolution.

Mozilla and UK think tank Caribou Digital recently produced a report titled, Winners and Losers in the Global App Economy. A key finding: The open web is under threat from privately-managed walled gardens. (Think: App stores and tech monopolies.) As a result, we’re seeing lower rates of participation from producers from marginalised geographies and socio-economic backgrounds. When we fight for a more open, equitable web, individuals in Africa and in the world, can truly experience the opportunity of the digital revolution.

Q: Specifically looking at the open source philosophy, what other areas of life aside from the internet can be improved using its principles?

A: Open source is about taking advantage of head starts others have created. It is also about sharing your head start. In tech, we see this manifest in open source code. Open code is a building block that has enabled amazing progress – look at how Linux initially empowered the likes of Google or Amazon.

Head starts work offline, too. When we share innovation in the realms of education, or science, or journalism, society benefits. Progress becomes routine.

Q: You write a lot at the moment on the health of the internet: What are the greatest challenges to this health?

A: Right now, there are a number of threats to the internet. Increasingly, digital monopolies are placing control of the internet in the hands of a few major tech giants. And surveillance is becoming a routine practice by governments and profit-motivated companies.

We’re also seeing walled gardens and the app economy disenfranchise users in emerging markets. In the report, we uncovered polarised opportunity between high- and low-income countries, with the latter only earning an estimated 1 percent of global app economy revenues. But there’s much happening to combat these threats. The open internet movement is getting stronger. And its mission is to cement the internet as a place of freedom, creativity and opportunity.

Q: What single breakthrough of the past twelve months has given you the greatest hope for the future of mankind?

A: More and more, we’re seeing the growth of core internet infrastructure that’s connecting Africa. It’s a breakthrough I’ve been following throughout my career.

I was the founding director of telecentre.org, a $26 million (R393m) initiative connecting community technology centres in more than 30 countries. During this time, I witnessed the dearth of connectivity across Africa. Undersea cables, investments and infrastructure were springing up in Europe and North America, but not locally. Today, we’re seeing the rise of a connected Africa – and all the opportunity that entails.

Q: Why will you be participating and what do you hope to achieve at the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa?

A: Mozilla believes web literacy needs to be a mainstream issue. Access is only part of the equation: To realise the internet’s full potential, new users need digital skills. At WEF Africa, I’ll be discussing how we teach these skills. It means: encouraging companies and governments to launch web literacy initiatives; ad campaigns and training programmes; and integrating web literacy into school curriculums.

* Mark Surman is the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation.

BUSINESS REPORT

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