Since last talking to the SAFIPA editorial team, the Socio-Tech: Made in South Africa project has made great strides towards reaching its objectives.  Recently, a mobile application has been created that is one of a group of digital applications, which have been developed following the applied research process that the project utilises.

Introducing Kujali – ‘to care’

Kujali, which is a subset of the greater SocioTech project, focuses on research and the practical implementation of solutions to meet the problems as identified through the research. Kujali, which is a Swahili word that means ‘to care’ currently includes development of a mobile application as one of its key areas of work.

In general, Kujali’s objectives are to support and improve home-based healthcare in both rural and economically-disadvantaged communities in South Africa, by gaining a deeper understanding of the complex nature of the problems that are faced both by the caregivers in home-based healthcare and the communities themselves.  It is thus necessary to identify at the grassroots, the challenges experienced by caregivers – many of these not previously articulated – and to not only find solutions that directly meet these challenges but to ensure that the solutions are relevant to, and workable within, the care giver’s daily practices.

When Retha de la Harpe, the project leader at Socio-Tech, originally spoke to the SAFIPA editorial team just over six months ago, she described the in-depth research process that was utilised to identify problems and challenges.  Working with community members, research specialists, health informatics post-graduate students from CPUT and NNMU, and technology developers and designers, the process was intensely collaborative and consultative.  Retha now says, “We have obtained a good understanding of the care givers’ needs, but since we use a co-design approach we are continuing with the interaction with the users.  We are currently testing the different applications in practice to establish if it now works as expected.”

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