As South Africa looks back on 30 years of democracy, it has founder and entrepreneur Prof. Eldrid Jordaan to thank for several of its important technological developments. His contribution to civic tech (also known as government technology) has been intertwined with some key technology trends over the past few decades. In this regard, however, his progress has been somewhat different to that of many other tech entrepreneurs.
From Activism to Technology
Jordaan’s upbringing could well have led him into politics. Growing up in Belhar (Cape Town), he was surrounded by political figures. His father, Paul Jordaan, was an activist and secretary-general of a teachers’ union in the 1980s.
Apartheid policies and the country’s political climate saw many families become politically active. From a young age, Jordaan was exposed to debates about political matters when activists – many who would later shape South Africa’s future –would gather at his home.
Several of them, including the late Jakes Gerwel, went on to serve in the administration of President Nelson Mandela. Despite his exposure to politics, Jordaan chose a different path, focusing on how technology could empower the new government and drive societal change.
His journey in civil tech began with his role as a board member of Mxit, an entity that was at one time a leading social network platform in South Africa. At Mxit, Jordaan played a key role in influencing and shaping the civil tech part of the platform’s business. He understood national and government concerns and was able to translate these into technology solutions. He ensured Mxit could align with government’s aim of keeping young people away from harmful social media, while at the same time ensuring they could access educational materials.
His time at Mxit inspired Jordaan to pursue his dream of using technology to advance society. He would later establish an entity that became a key enabler of government services through technology: GovChat. This official technology platform allowed easier communication between government and people through various well-known messaging services. GovChat became an especially important tool for government communications during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In South Africa at the time, engagement with government departments was often time consuming, with people having to stand for hours in long queues to access services. During the pandemic, this was obviously not a good idea, and the government was in desperate need of a solution.
Among these and other pressing issues, people had great difficulty accessing government grants. The process involved lengthy waiting periods, including trying to get an appointment for a medical assessment at the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) office, which could take weeks or even months. GovChat stepped in to digitise these social grants during the pandemic, and as a result, was able to assist over 10 million economically vulnerable citizens through the distribution of over R66 billion in grants.
Following the introduction of GovChat, getting an appointment with Sassa could be achieved in mere days. The platform was also designed to deliver Covid testing results to over 7 million South African citizens to access their covid results. The number of monthly active users totaled 13 million citizens at a time.
GovChat also stepped in to help Sassa manage its frequently asked questions (FAQs) site, which was established at a time when thousands of South Africans were contacting Sassa’s call centre with a variety of enquiries about government’s newly-established Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant.
GovChat became the official communications platform for government, with people accessing government services through WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, SMS and USSD channels.
While Jordaan was developing critical solutions for government’s challenges, he was also confronted with challenges of his own. GovChat was using a Meta owned platform, WhatsApp, to enable government communications. According to Meta, this practice was in breach of their contract with GovChat. The US tech giant claimed that GovChat went beyond what they were allowed to do on their platform. Meta was concerned about how government data would be used by a private company.
According to Jordaan, this was just an abuse of power by a tech giant. He maintained his work was fully supported by the South African government as its official partner, and that collaboration was one of the cornerstones behind his approach to working with government.
The wisdom of such an approach is evident from the success of the GovChat platform, which allowed millions of South Africans to engage with government departments.
None of this, however, stopped the legal battles. The disagreement between Meta and GovChat eventually came before the SA Competition Commission, which ruled in favour of GovChat, vindicating Jordaan.
The battles, however, did not sit well with GovChat shareholders, resulting in Jordaan stepping down from the company he founded.
Despite this, Jordaan’s vision of enabling government to benefit from technology innovations remained intact.
He would later move on to help establish – with co-founder Goitse Konopi – something more than GovChat: An information technology and artificial intelligence company called Suppple.
The company focuses on public-private partnerships, collaborating with governments, private and academic institutions, as well as commercial entities. Jordaan announced its provisional listing on the prestigious Luxembourg Stock Exchange (LuxSE) as recently as May 2024, marking an important milestone in its journey towards further expansion and growth, with an initial market cap of £200 million, and a price of £2 per share. The provisional listing enhances Suppple’s capital availability and investment attractiveness, and aims to facilitate its growth prospects and fuel its expansion into new markets and sectors worldwide.
One of Suppple’s latest government technology interventions came with the recent launch of its AI health bot, which is aimed at providing digital healthcare assistance to the 54 member states of the African Union (AU).
According to Suppple, this is “a move to support the establishment of a new public health order for the African continent”.
These technological solutions are underpinned by Suppple’s mission to help government departments become more interoperable, with the ultimate aim of improving the delivery of services to their citizens.
This undertaking forms part of the company’s vision to mobilise technology in a manner that empowers
people to provide governing authorities with the data they need to deliver services more effectively across different communities – thereby championing the benefits of democracy, in the years that span between elections and ballot boxes.
Through Suppple, Jordaan continues to help develop solutions for both the health and retail sectors, with more projects under development today. The solutions developed by Suppple are groundbreaking -- and garnering the attention of several governments worldwide.
The company has also developed a suite of APIs (application programming interfaces) to power its clients’ digitisation, process automation, data modelling and integrations, at all levels.