The Interledger Community 🌱: Esther

Sikhula Sonke: Living Archives of Afrofuturist Village Banking — Future Money Final Grant Report #2

Esther — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 20:50:23 +0000

How do we define wealth?

Sikhula Sonke: Living Archives of Afrofuturist Village Banking is an audio-visual art project to document the practice of rotating savings and credit association (ROSCA) in Southern Africa, specifically in Zambia and South Africa.

'Sikhula Sonke' is a phrase from the the South African Xhosa language which means 'we grow together'. ROSCAs take different terms according to each community and can be called 'Village banks', 'Chilimba', 'Umgalelo' or 'Stokvels' depending on the community or type of credit or saving association.

Check out the project on www.sikhulasonke.net

Project Update

Following our progress report, Sikhula Sonke is now available online through our website made for community members to connect with the village banks in Southern Africa.

The creation of this living archive has shown us that village banks are:

inclusive systems in southern Africa that promote economic and cultural resilience by collectively encouraging and self-regulating savings and wealth generation.
defining wealth beyond exclusively financial terms. Wealth is relational and rooted in community rather than exclusively individual.
advanced, inclusive, and feminist systems that are supporting communities to care for themselves.
"Afrofuturist" in nature because they serve as a sight of colonial resistance because they promote autonomy and dignity of those excluded by financial institutions.
democratic in nature, allow for self-governance and the creation of their own constitution.

Progress on Objectives (KPI’s) (progress on project)

Sikhula Sonke project's related activities stayed the same since conception, mainly because we took a reflective approach to shape the artwork according to the contribution of the communities we collaborated with.

In this regard, we were able to achieve:

3 Impactful Stories: The mixed audio from all communities was edited into three parts on the following topics:

The complete unedited archive is available in English and isiXhosa from all the six communities we spoke to. This has been transcribed into English.

Visual Artwork: The project was presented at the Open Studio at the 2023 ILP Summit in Costa Rica.

Article: A summarised version of the longform article is available on the new Sikhula Sonke website.

Website: A 1 pager website to experience the exhibition here.

Short video about Sikhula Sonke conceptual process

What’s Next?

Sikhula Sonke has always been a community led and community centered project, so this work ultimately returns to the communities who weaved their beautiful stories to imagine and redefine wealth as we know it. This is done by sharing the virtual exhibition without different communities and knowledge sharing through an in-depth article that analyses the systems thinking fundamental for village banks.

The fundamental thing is to show that this concept is practiced in cultures across the globe, and has been so for centuries.

The best next step is for village banks to speak to each other, share knowledge, and find ways to use technology to model these concepts without leaving anyone behind.

Community Support

This amazing work would not have been possible without the support from the communities and community liaisons in Zambia and South Africa - who opened up their lives to share a deeply held tradition for us to share with the world.

This project was done in collaboration with:

Empowered Women Village Bank group in Lusaka, Zambia
Three Stokvel groups and Umgalelo's from Cape Town and Eastern Cape, South Africa
Mthwakazi for the beautiful music made with the traditional uHadi instrument which uses the calabash

Express gratitude to the wholesome ILF team - Lawil and Ayesha are superstars. Thank you to Hollis and Kokayi for your visions of this space. And to the beautiful people of Costa Rica who shared the ethos of Pura Vida with us.

Technical Aspects

The project was in two parts - archiving and art.

The archiving was done through the use of ZOOM recorders and headsets. Adobe editor was used to editing and mixing the audio. In addition, Obsidian was used as a secure tool to record ideas and make connections between different concepts. A transcription tool was used, and we hired a local expert to trascribe the text in isiXhosa.

The art was achieved by collecting commonly used objects in the communities we spoke to - and a common thread was the calabash, plates, and fabric. It was amazing to witness the commonalities between Zambian and South African traditional culture, and ways of thinking about money.

Position Statement

We need to start thinking and living differently, to make the ideas we are shaping a reality. Our imagination must translate into action for us to create a world where the amount of money in your bank is not reflective of your value as a person or having the basic nutrition and housing necessary to live in dignity and peace.

Relevant Links/Resources

Future Money Podcast: Sikhula Sonke - Living Archives of Afrofuturist Village Banking

Full unedited archive and transcript under the open license CC-BY-NC

Sikhula Sonke: Living Archives of Afrofuturist Village Banking — Future Money Progress Grant Report #1

Esther — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:48:48 +0000

How do you define wealth?

Sikhula Sonke: Living Archives of Afrofuturist Village Banking is a mixed media artwork and storytelling project that documents informal savings groups as a way of understanding inclusive financial models in Southern Africa. In recognition of the wisdom that already exists within local communities and is little understood outside of them, the project focuses on documenting "living archives" of village banking that redefine the meaning of wealth.

The focus is on women that hold a wealth of knowledge on inclusive open financial systems. These women have created their own financial practices that support resilience and are responsive to their communities' needs. The project spotlights stories, or "living archives," of women who engage in village banking from six groups in three communities including Keiskammahoek (rural) and Khayelitsha (township) in South Africa; and Lusaka (urban) in Zambia.

These communities were selected based on the project leads' connection to them; and also to highlight financial inclusion centring Indigenous knowledge and feminist values within the historical context of colonial and patriarchal norms.

Archiving Village Banking Practices

Project Update

As part of the project, we have been able to:

Interviewed 6 communities The audio component of Sikhula Sonke included stories and music from local communities we connected to. The audio featured the audio divided in three main themes including:

Village Banking
Empowered Women
Resilient Families

Exhibited at the ILP Summit The practice of informal saving groups predates the colonial era and served as a practice of resistance and resilience of oppressed communities in Southern Africa. The artwork shows the relationship between rural, township and urban communities in the practice of village banking or informal savings groups. The artwork combines objects from the six informal saving groups we interviewed in South Africa and Zambia.

Their relevance are outlined below:

Calabash
South Africa Zambia
The planting season in the Eastern Cape of South Africa includes the planting of the gourd. Once haversted, the gourd provides food and is turned into a multi-purpose Calabash, but especially used in ceremonies to pour drinks and to drink from. One of the informal savings groups involved in the project focused on collectively saving and preserving seeds to plant in the rain season as a goal for their village bank.

Calabash seeds
Zambia
The seeds used in the artwork were sourced from the 6th annual ‘Zambian Traditional Seeds and Food Festival’ in Lusaka. Local women collectively held a site of resistance against corporate control over indigenous seeds and food so as to achieve food sovereignity so that no one in their communities goes hungry. The anticolonial movement was celebrating traditional seed for food and the economy.

Plates and Clothe
South Africa and Zambia
The dining room setup using objects that would be found in a village bank meeting, which usually starts with singing, praying, and the sharing of food.

Padlock & keys
Zambia
Some practices of informal saving groups include keeping money in a safe with three different locks, all kept secretly by different members of the group for security purposes. Some researchers in Zambia took it a step further and are prototyping village banking on blockchain for security.

Constitution
South Africa, Zambia
Informal savings groups are governed by a constitution that is unique to each group and agreed upon by members.

Progress on Objectives (KPI’s) (progress on project)

The audio-visual art exhibition will build an imagery that shifts mindsets about wealth and how it is defined as. The living archives will present stories of elders whose knowledge can inform Afrofuturist village banking that is not centred on capitalism.

The output planned was:

3 Impactful Stories
Audio recordings of from rural, township, and urban communities in Southern Africa who have used informal banking systems, also known as village banking. The recordings feature stories (living archives) of existing parallel financial models that center humanity and equality.

Prior to collecting these stories, we undertook archival research on the same topic so that the stories we collect are a continuation of archives, hence the stories will be living archives shaping Afrofuturist financial systems.

We anticipated the stories might not be fully in English and did for translation and audio editing.

Visual Artwork
Along with the audio, we presented a mixed media visual artwork to depict the alternative systems we have heard in the stories. This will take an Afrofuturist imagining of financial systems based on village banking. The visual artwork will reflect the stories told by the elders.

The form of visual artwork determined by each of the communities we interacted with – including the object, illustrations, or tapestry. The important thing is that this visual form was representative of the stories of the communities we were working with.

Article
We will write a longform article to explain the concepts outlined in the stories and how the artwork interprets this.

Website
A new website will be developed to host the stories.

Short video (3-5 minutes)

Please watch the video where we are describing the conceptual thought around the process.

What’s Next?

Our next step is building an online archive so that the exhibit is accessible, and that there's a cross exchange between all the communities that are practicing village banking in some form.

Community Support

We are eager to hear how you connect to this project, and how it informs how you view wealth.

Additional Comments

The ILP Summit was a great space to share and connect with other artists and those creating a fairer world. Thank you to the entire team for the support to make this project possible.

Relevant Links/Resources (optional)

We will update our website here soon.

Introducing Sikhula Sonke

Esther — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 22:11:29 +0000

By Esther Mwema, 2023 Future Money Artist

Sikhula Sonke is a phrase in isiXhosa (a South African language) that means 'we grow together'.

Sikhula Sonke project will reimagine afro-futurist banking based on the financial model called village banking that is prevalent in South Africa and Zambia. Through these informal credit unions between trusted members of a community - particularly among women - people are brought closer to their labour and are more connected to their local resources and areas of knowledge.

Village banking is used widely among rural and peri-urban township communities in the region and many parts of the global south and provides intergenerational knowledge about saving, lending and meeting community needs. The goal is to learn from societies in which resources are shared for the purpose of meeting the needs of community members, rather than for extracting profit. These lessons can be shared through living archives from the global south.

The Afrofuturist living archives will explore the existing financial structures and systems that shape the way that communities in Southern Africa access financing to understand the Afro-futurist possibilities based on the existing system of village banking. We will document Living Archives through audio-visual documentation of real-life stories from elders, then juxtapose this knowledge with the reality of the current global financing ecosystem.

The project is being done by Esther Mwema, an artist and digital inequalities practitioner from Zambia; and Jon Adam Chen, a Canadian communications specialist who considers South Africa as his second home.