IT means democratising of information

Wael Ghonim

Interview with internet and education activist Wael Ghonim

Wael Ghonim, 32, became an international figure in 2011 for his role in the pro-democracy revolution in Egypt as co-creator and administrator of the Facebook page that helped spark the revolution.

He was named one of the 100 most influential people of 2011 in Time Magazine’s “Time 100” list. He also received the JFK Profile in Courage Award on May 23, 2011 and was ranked the second most powerful Arab in Arabian Business’s annual Power 500.

Ghonim was born in Abha, Saudi Arabia and grew up there until he was 13 years old, when he moved back to Cairo.  He received his BS in computer engineering from Cairo University in 2004 and MBA in marketing and finance from American University in Cairo in 2007. Ghonim joined Google Middle East and Africa as regional manger in 2008 and became the Head of Marketing in the region in 2010.

The AsiaN had an interview with Wael Ghonim at the 63 Building Convention Center in Seoul, Korea on May 28, 2013. Ghonim has visited Korea to attend the Smart World Peace Forum 2013 hosted by The Cheonji-ilbo.

Where are you based now and what kind of work are you doing now? 

I spend most of my time in Cairo, but I still have work in Dubai. I travel a lot.

I am currently on a leave from Google. I took a leave right after the revolution. I started an NGO, called Nabadat, which means “pulses” in Arabic. The NGO’s mission is fostering community-based learning and promoting the culture of knowledge sharing.

We are trying to build an online platform, whereby Egyptians who are privileged with education can help others who are not. We provide an online education platform like massive online educational content providers such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), Coursera, and Khan Academy, which are basically using the internet to help educate the masses.

I founded this NGO in June 2011, a few months after the Arab Revolution and I sit on its board as the chairperson. A good amount of my time goes into supporting the team and working on it. We have published about 150 educational videos until now, which have been seen by 3 million people so far.

The targets of the material are basically young Egyptians. We target people from 13 years old to 24, but with the internet, we get a lot of feedback from everyone including people in their 40’s and 50’s that they enjoy our content. Our product is called the Tahrir Academy. Most of our videos are rich in graphics, engaging, and could be classified as edutainment. We have a lot of fun and geeky content.

We want to activate volunteers to make content. We could pay people to create content, but instead, we go after those who are enthusiastic about sharing with others. So we have a team of about 50 people now and it is growing. We also have hundreds of volunteers, but the active ones are 40 to 50 and they help us with the content creation. These people volunteer to come and present, explain or design graphics.

All the volunteers are Egyptian. We are focusing more on Egypt, but we find out that our content is also viewed throughout the Arab world since it is in Arabic. People love our content. Some days we have almost a half a million views on Facebook.

I am actually very passionate about education and during my visit here, I plan to visit an education research center, a government facility and a school. I would like to get a deeper view of the educational system here in Korea because I believe that a big part of Egypt’s problem and developing countries’ problems is education. If you fix education, a lot of things can be fixed.

I am trying to use my online experience and brand name to get a lot of people excited about fixing education in Egypt. I am not doing this in the traditional way. I am not really involved in the traditional and official educational initiatives, but I am trying to work on ways that support that current system. Our initiative is not replacing traditional education, but just supporting it by for example, online content.

Most people in Egypt do not have the Internet. The government says there are more than 20 million Internet users, but I would say there are for sure more than 10 million active users. On Facebook, there are 14 million accounts. Even though there are a limited number of Internet users, the number is big enough to make an impact. So, good initiatives can actually make a big difference in the country.

During my stay in Korea, I will be visiting a school to talk to the teachers and to get to know more about the way they see education. I am interested in learning from the experiences of other nations. I do this everywhere I go. I talk to teachers, educational institutions, NGOs that focus on education such as people at Khan Academy. I was inspired by Salman Khan because he created an online YouTube channel that has 4,000 educational videos with over 270 million views. Bill Gates mentioned that he was one of the best teachers of the new era of the 21^st century.

How do you self-evaluate your participation in the Arab Spring?

Even though I am sometimes misquoted as being the leader of the Arab Spring, which I am not, I started the Facebook page that was one of the first calls. But, it is unfair to give credit to individuals in this revolution as it was more of a leaderless movement. There were many faces, and many people who went to the streets and their efforts are important and critical. So, it was not a leader based revolution where people should go out and take credit for it.

Anyway, as Egyptians, what we aspire for is to see Egypt progressing and to have a democratic nation where people are empowered to make choices. Most importantly, since democracy is not a goal by itself but a means, it is important to see that people are more educated, happier, have better services and that their lives are much better than before, which is going to take time to happen.

From an outsider’s perspective, Egypt still seems very unstable. There does not seem to be much difference before and after the revolution for democracy. Why do you think this is?

I think we are paying the price of dictatorship at the moment. One of the main things I believe is that the revolution is a process, not an event. So, the event happened. It is going to take time before we truly become democratic.

Right after the revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the most organized group of people, managed to get in power through the elections and many people are frustrated because of that. More on a macro view of the situation, I believe that eventually we are going to have a better democratic situation. Those who took to the streets on the 25^th of January, a lot of them were not pro any ideology. They just wanted to see their country better and they did not want to impose their ideologies on others. What people will eventually realize is that the government’s role is to govern us, not to lead us to a certain belief system. What is required is better health care, better employment rates, better services, education, and so on.

So, with all the challenges we are facing now, I am quite optimistic that going through this hard time is needed. There has not been a revolution that has stabilized on its own. Revolutions by definition are closer to instability, which on the short-term makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable and get stressed. I understand this and I believe it is our role to not let this situation drag too long. We need more stabilization that gets people more passionate and ambitious about their futures.

Egypt is a country with a great Arab population and it is a traditional country representing the Arab world. What can be done to raise Egypt’s potential?

Well, the country has a lot of potential. First, geographically, it is in a very strategic location between Europe and Asia, the Arab world and Africa, and even connects the Mediterranean and the Red Sea through the Suez Canal. Historically, it is very rich. There are also a huge number of well-educated Egyptians. So, I believe Egypt has very good potential to rise and shine and be one of those developed countries. In order to do this, we will first have to ensure that the ingredients of civilization are there: openness, transparency, freedom, democracy, respect of human rights, etc. This is our current struggle. I think eventually we will get there and with the help of patriotic Egyptians especially in the country as well as outside the country, we can have a very interesting position.

Most of the Arab world countries actually look up to Egypt and it was very obvious during the revolution time as the Egyptian revolution got most of the attention internationally as well as regionally. This gives us lots of opportunities as well as puts a lot of responsibilities on us. I remember many Arabs that said they did not want the Egyptian Revolution to fail because they are aspiring for a better Arab world through Egypt.

I heard this was your first time to visit Korea. Korea is relatively advanced when it comes to the IT sector. What does IT mean to you?

First, IT means communication. I love the fact that the barriers of communication are banishing over time. Twenty years ago, it was very hard for individuals of different countries or different cities even to communicate with each other. By bridging the gaps of communication, we get to be more productive and tolerant. We respect the fact that we are different and get to understand that we have a lot in common.

Second, IT means collaboration. It is very inspiring to see how people from different parts of the world share the same things and work on developing them. Look at a project like Wikipedia, which I think is a very positive side of the internet. You could be sitting down in Korea and writing a wiki about a certain monument or event, Korean leader and write it in English so that people from other parts of the world can read and learn from it. The Wikipedia idea is amazing as different people who did not know each other sat down on this platform, collaborated and made up the largest encyclopedia that humankind has ever come up with. And, it is not owned by anyone, but by everyone.

Third, IT represents the democratising of information. Exclusive knowledge is not good because it gives privileges to some people over others and creates power distance where the knowledgeable can misuse their knowledge. So, democratizing information, making sure that information is equally accessible is to everyone, everywhere in the world is very empowering. It is good for our race, for humankind and helps us to progress at a much faster pace.

So, as I said, IT brings communication, collaboration and the democratizing of information. There are so many great things that could happen through the internet due to IT. We have seen so many initiatives such as the Khan Academy, where an individual was empowered to reach millions of people just through his cable and teach them. Or Kiva, I call it the web world’s bank, crowd funding where individuals can contribute to others. If I need a couple of hundred dollars to come up with an interesting project, people can give me the money I need. I can get a loan from individuals, not the bank. Wikipedia, YouTube are great examples that show us the positive side of the Internet.

These days, the polarization and disparity of the world’s capital and finance is quite grave. Is there anything that IT can do to solve this issue?

I think IT is already helping to close the gap by allowing people to be aware of the data. For example, a lot of us get shocked when we see videos or read articles about the poor people in the world or the status of a specific city or country. So, being informed and recognizing the problem is the first step. I think there is much effort in progress to reduce the disparity between the rich and poor, but it is unfortunate and shameful that we still live in an era at the beginning of the 21^st century where people die from hunger and are struggling to find their basic needs.

I believe there are many initiatives going around the world now. Not only is the communication gap being solved, but the transportation gap. We are emerging into a more united world where a problem in one city or country can reflect heavily on another place. We are becoming more interdependent and that will eventually and hopefully lead to more serious solutions to the world’s problems.

What do you think the strengths and drawbacks for SNS are?

I think that just like every communication tool, there are ways where you can use it positively and negatively. I think some of the positive aspects are empowering people by allowing individuals to share their thoughts and hear different points of views and bringing like-minded people together to speak louder, be heard and create calls to action.

I think part of the negative side of SNS is being over-informed through an overflow of communication that so many times makes us think less strategically, less long-term, and focus on the short-term, leading us to become more reactive than active. It also could be a source of frustration, where if the overall mood is negative, it just creates more negative vibes and feelings, just like how it is on the positive side. But, again, SNS is becoming a fact of life and we have to deal with it and see that the positive side overweighs the negative one.

The AsiaN is working for the development of journalism in Asia, its solidarity, communication, peace and humanism. What do you think the biggest problem of the media in Asia is and what are some solutions?

I do not think I am in a position to make specific comments in this area, but in general, one of the most important things I think we all should be doing is ensuring that information is being democratized, and that people have access to legitimate information, which puts responsibility on the media. One part of the decentralization that is taking part in our world is that there is a lot of noise and much non-trustworthy news that flows here and there. There are serious efforts behind some news stories to ensure they are credible and much work done to spread them.

I believe that media and technology are the new agents of change that can contribute significantly. The media exposes the problems and the challenges by talking about the good examples, not just the negative ones,  and highlighting the positive things that are happening in the world whereas technology facilitates and helps us to progress and solve our biggest challenges. So, both are very critical in tomorrow’s world and today’s as well.

What do you want to convey most by being here in Korea?

First, I came here to learn more about Korea because it is my first visit here and even though I have read a lot and watched many documentaries, it is also important to make the physical connection. So, I am here more to learn about the country and the culture and to learn as I mentioned earlier more about the educational system.

Second, I came to share experiences, something good that we all should be doing in the world. We should learn from each other. I was inspired by so many people and I would like to share my experiences and ensure that people are benefiting from them in a positive way.

Also, I want to show support of the idea of peace between North and South Korea.

Lastly, I want to stress the importance of free access to information and the Internet in today’s world, which is something we should all protect, and ensure that every citizen in this world can have free access to speak out their minds as well as to read whatever they desire without censorship.