And we start the year with the first episode of the second building block of our new season, in which we will discuss the issue of registration. How is digital technology helping to include informal workers into social protection schemes or how is it creating new barriers for these people to access protection? What are the risks and opportunities? What is the role of informal workers organisations in building more inclusive registration systems? 

These are some of the questions we will try to answer by looking at some cases of programmes and policies countries are implementing to expand their social protection systems to include informal workers.

We start this new block with the case of the Social Relief of Distress Grant in South Africa. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country, the government expanded the SRD to reduce the impact of income loss, targeting a much broader population than the ordinary social assistance programmes were covering. The second new aspect is that this policy was that it heavily relied on digital means to register new beneficiaries.

To understand how the implementation of the SRD was rolled out, how digital forms of registration contributed or hindered access of informal workers to the grant, we talked to Hoodah Fayker.

Hoodah holds a Law degree from the University of the Western Cape, and she is the National Advocacy Manager for the veteran human rights organisation Black Sash, which advocates for the right to social protection in South Africa.

*Our theme music is Focus from AA Aalto (Creative Commons)

References

A Digital Bridge to Social Support https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/social-programs-for-informal-workers-must-bridge-digital-divide-by-laura-alfers-2021-06?barrier=accesspaylog 

R350 Covid grant is too little and excludes too many, research report finds https://www.groundup.org.za/article/r350-covid-grant-too-little-and-excludes-too-many-research-report-finds/

Social Protection in a Time of Covid: Lessons for Basic Income Support https://socialprotection.org/discover/publications/social-protection-time-covid-lessons-basic-income-support 

Black Sash report reveals extent of issues experienced by Social Relief of Distress grant recipients https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-05-17-black-sash-report-reveals-extent-of-issues-experienced-by-social-relief-of-distress-grant-recipients/

SOCIAL PROTECTION IN A TIME OF COVID: LESSON FOR BASIC INCOME SUPPORT https://www.blacksash.org.za/social-protection-in-a-time-of-covid-lesson-for-basic-income-support/

The Social Relief of Distress Grant: how it stimulated local economies https://www.econ3x3.org/article/social-relief-distress-grant-how-it-stimulated-local-economies 

COVID-19 Crisis and the Informal Economy: Informal Workers in Durban, South Africa https://www.wiego.org/publications/covid-19-crisis-and-informal-economy-informal-workers-durban-south-africa

#36 Digitization and Registration In South Africa

Data Joe - Datagreed

"We think Wingstop is a category leader with a strong moat. That combination of strong same-store growth, durable unit growth and asset-light franchise model really exemplifies what we look for in Small Cap Focus." Alger Small Cap Focus Portfolio Manager Amy Zhang discusses why she thinks Wingstop is really a technology company that happens to serve chicken.

A Recipe for Investing in Wingstop

In this episode, we start a new building block of our social protection solar system with the first episode on the topic of governance. We have invited two guests to lay the groundwork for this block, to help us understand social protection governance, as well as the new concerns and potentials brought by digitization. We start with Tony Roberts. Tony is a researcher based at the Institute of Development Studies on the campus of the University of Sussex in the UK. He has worked on the use of digital technologies in social justice organisations since 1988. As a founder of the African Digital Rights Network his research focuses on the human rights implications of introducing digital technologies. He will share some of the findings of his report on digitization and social protection.

On the second part, we talked to Gbenga Sesan. Gbenga is the Executive Director of Paradigm Initiative, a non-profit organisation that works with digitization and data protection rights in Africa. He will bring some concrete cases of how digitization affects informal workers.

#39 Governance And Digitization Of Social Protection

In the second episode of the governance building block we continue to discuss the issues surrounding digitization and social protection. This time, we take a political economy perspective to understand the interests, ideas, actors and policy implications of digitization. To help us understand this complex issue, we invited again Ruth Castel-Branco, 
Ruth is a Senior Researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of Witwatersrand. Her research is focused on the casualization of labour, worker organizing and the redistributive role of the state. She has studied the case of Mozambique, and shared some of her findings with us in this talk.

References

Improvising an E-state: The Struggle for Cash Transfer Digitalization in Mozambique, by Ruth Castel-Branco. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/dech.12665

#40 Political Economy Of Digital Social Protection In Mozambique

Emmanuel Daniel discusses the great financial transition and how America is leading the way in globalizing cryptocurrency by digitizing the dollar and how debt will play a key role. He comments on everything from memecoins, gold, and asset tokenization to the AI Arms Race (e.g. DeepSeek, OpenAI), DOGE, the BIS, and more! 

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Websites
Emmanuel Daniel https://www.emmanueldaniel.com
The Great Transition: The Personalization of Finance is Here https://www.emmanueldaniel.com/the-great-transition

About Emmanuel Daniel
Emmanuel Daniel is an author, advisor and a global thought leader on geopolitics, the future of finance and their impact on business and society. He was listed as a top 10 global influencer in the “Fintech Power50” list for 2021 and 2022. He is also a model train enthusiast.

He has served, or is serving, in advisory or consulting roles for various public or private sector institutions and is a well regarded mentor and confidante in leadership circles.

In his first book, “The Great Transition – the personalization of finance is here” published in September 2022, Emmanuel outlines how the banking industry will evolve from being focused on platform technologies to a level of personalization never seen before. He describes the roles of cryptocurrencies, blockchain, gaming and other technologies in this transition. The book was written to help disruptor technologies in finance chart their course.

His writings are also based on his extensive travel, now across 130 countries and counting. He posts regularly on his blog and is working towards his second book which is tentatively entitled “The Winning Civilization” and due for publication in 2024.

Emmanuel was trained as a lawyer, has degrees from the National University of Singapore and the University of London, and attended a course on economics at Columbia University in New York. He divides his time between Singapore, Beijing and New York when not traveling extensively.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Emmanuel Daniel: Moving Toward the Digital Financialization of Everything #523

Understanding human resistance to change is critical for successful AI integration within organizations. The article emphasizes that resistance is a natural and expected part of technological evolution, not necessarily a sign of failure.

AI Adoption_ Learning from Human Nature

The digitization and literal disembodiment of every sphere of human reality advances with terrifying rapidity—from the Social Security system to the New York subway system. Rather than dropping swipe-cards and bringing back tokens, returning to what was a manifestly superior and more rational system, New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority moves to a still more dystopian "contactless" credit system. Similarly, rather than phasing out automobiles, our corporate overlords are now imposing driverless cars, a further step toward making the human race redundant altogether and portending the ultimate abolition of humanity. In Episode 270 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues his Spring ritual of reading the George Orwell essay "Some Thoughts on the Common Toad"—which brilliantly critiqued technological hypertophy, and articulated an imperative for humanistic revolution and scaleback of the mega-machine way back in April 1946.

Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

Production by Chris Rywalt

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Yet further thoughts on the common toad

Strategic attacks targeting critical infrastructure such as power grids, data networks, and water supply systems have become a significant threat. The ability to monitor and protect these assets continuously and comprehensively is crucial for maintaining national security.

The author, Jyri Kosola, is the CEO of Pathfinder Solutions and the former Research Director of the Finnish Defence Forces.

Defending the Homeland: Continuous Multi-Domain Surveillance

The story of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation and its Historical Committee—and its fifty-year fight to recover and rewrite its history—is the focus of Rose Miron’s award-winning book Indigenous Archival Activism. Miron’s research and writing are shaped by materials found in the tribal archive and ongoing conversations as part of her more-than-a-decade-long reciprocal relationship with the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation. Miron is not Mohican and is careful to consider her own positionality and reflects on what it means for non-Native researchers and institutions to build reciprocal relationships with Indigenous nations in the content of academia and public history, offering a model both for tribes undertaking their own reclamation projects and for scholars looking to work with tribes in ethical ways. Here, Miron is joined in conversation with Jennifer O’Neal.



Rose Miron is vice president of research and education at Newberry Library in Chicago and author of Indigenous Archival Activism: Mohican Interventions in Public History and Memory, winner of the National Council for Public History Book Award and the Book of Merit Award from the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Jennifer O’Neal is assistant professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon.



Praise for the book:

“A necessary volume on the intersection of Indigenous knowledge loss, recovery, and production in the context of settler colonialism.” 
—Jacki Thompson Rand, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“a must-read for archivists, researchers, and tribal historians working with/in Indian Country.”
—Shannon Martin, Lynx Clan, Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians; former director, Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways


Indigenous Archival Activism: Mohican Interventions in Public History and Memory by Rose Miron is available from University of Minnesota Press.


Public history, memory, and building a tribal archive.

As artificial intelligence continues to reshape how organizations access and apply information, many companies are overlooking one of their most powerful resources: corporate archives. Chris Juhasz, senior director of archives at History Factory, explains how archival collections—when properly digitized, structured and made accessible—can serve as a trusted foundation for AI tools and enterprise-wide knowledge systems. These records hold critical context, institutional memory and source-verified data that large language models often lack.

The AI Data Gap: Why Historical Assets Matter More Than Ever

The Geopolitics & Empire Podcast conducts interviews with prominent international experts on a wide-range of topics.

Past guests have included diplomats, government officials, whistleblowers, soldiers, spies, economists, academics, scientists, wealthy investors, dissidents, journalists, and musicians.

The broadcast seeks to gain insight from guests who come from the left, right, and beyond. It should go without saying that the host does not always agree with beliefs espoused by podcast invitees, but maintains an open mind, and believes it important to respectfully listen to a multitude of voices and let listeners come to their own conclusions.

*Music used in podcast intro is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Focusing on security and defence issues. Audio version of the publication: https://nordicdefencereview.com

Globally, 2 billion people work in the informal economy. This means that 61% of workers rely on work that offers little pay and few protections. Women informal workers, such as domestic workers, home-based workers, street vendors and waste pickers are at the base of the economic pyramid with the highest risk of poverty.  Public policies and social protection schemes often do not consider these  workers, leaving them vulnerable to income losses and struggling to cope after an event or shock. In this monthly podcast we will discuss some of the most pressing issues related to social protection from the perspective of informal workers, including debates around the future of work, demographic changes and the informal economy, as well as  social services, like child care and health that can protect informal workers’ incomes. Subscribe to the “Informal Economy Podcast: Social Protection” to learn more about WIEGO’s cutting-edge research and hear from informal workers organisations about the debates, policies, successes and challenges they face in accessing and reforming social protection systems.

The Alger Podcast features Alger Investment Professionals and Industry Experts, giving timely market and sector updates. For more information, visit: www.alger.com

Support my work on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/countervortex

Join us on the digital airwaves with The History Factory Podcast, which takes a refreshing look at the rich and sometimes provocative heritage of major U.S. and global organizations. Host Jason Dressel, Managing Director at History Factory, and his guests explore current events and other topics related to business heritage. Company history comes alive in this engaging, thought-provoking show.

New tracks tagged #digitization