Marshal McLuhan coined the term ‘global village’, which has since become a recognized metaphor for the internet and its unifying effect; making us all global citizens, able to interact with each other across time and space, participate in virtual communities, and become aware of our global interconnectedness.

But while reveling in our ability to have instantaneous knowledge of the value of the Zambian kwacha or the Hong Kong dollar and multiple, first-hand, by-the-minute accounts of revolutions as they unfold, when we’re stuck in Modimole with no clue where to find a trustworthy motor mechanic, we certainly understand that the ‘global village’ has not gone local – yet.

This is an issue that Roger Layton, founder of XTownX, understood first-hand. Living and running a guesthouse in Champagne Castle in the Central Drakensberg region, he struggled to find contact information for service providers and skilled individuals through a central directory. Newer businesses in the area didn’t even have telephones, and no online directories carried information for such small regions. “I saw it as important to identify the smaller businesses and skilled individuals who can perform a service, but who have no way to access the customers, other than to advertise themselves by writing their names onto boards and tying them to tree and lamp posts.”

Layton developed an economic theory of places called ‘Locanomics’, which models the economic activity within a small town and its rural areas with the view to increasing economic activity within the town by replacing external service providers with internal ones. In the process of developing the model and getting to understand the businesses and customer needs in a town, XTownX was born in 2007 as the core database model that was used to record economic activity within a local area, in particular small towns and rural communities, and to support interaction between the various businesses and skilled individuals.

Pilot learnings: usability and sociability

The portal software was developed during 2007 and 2008, and 2009 saw it being tested out informally. In 2010 Layton launched the pilot version to Tzaneen, Rustenburg, and Central Drakensberg, and thanks to funding from SAFIPA, was able to deepen support for ‘implementation on the ground’ around the Tzaneen pilot. A local partner, CEC in Tzaneen, was chosen as the ‘XtownX agent’ who was responsible for gathering data, marketing and building capacity in the community, while XTownX conducted training, capturing the data and preparing the system. (more…)