BuildRSA chat platform is new South African technology initiative that aims to give South Africans a chance to air their views on developmental issues facing the country, and provide tangible solutions to resolving them before they cause degenerative damage.
Over the years, technological advances have meant we can easily access transport on cellphone apps, shop online, have virtual meetings from anywhere and everywhere and so much more. ChatGPT, one of the latest developments in artificial technology, is fast gaining popularity and enables users to complete various tasks, including but not limited to, text generation, text translation, question-answering as well as sentiment analysis.
BuildRSA aims to use technology to get South African society to put their talent and ingenuity to work to make the country run more efficiently.
The platform gives users an opportunity to collectively and constructively problem solve through dialogue to tackle South Africa’s myriad of challenges and move the country forward. It aims to promote active citizenry, develop winning mindsets and create a culture of focus, determination, hard work and excellence.
BuildRSA was developed by Priority Performance Projects, part of the black-owned Plus 94 Research. It is local product specifically focused on discussing and solving the problems holding South Africa back.
Dr Sifiso Falala, CEO of Priority Performance Projects, says BuildRSA is targeted at building our country – which means building it at all levels: building the culture, excellence and performance in South Africa. “We have benchmarked the work that we do on four very important values namely, problem solving, which we believe is one of our biggest challenges, global competitiveness, self-love and patriotism,” explains Dr Falala.
“We believe the BuildRSA chat forum should be used to collectively, through dialogue, solve our problems constructively. It allows citizens to set the agenda on what’s important and come up with ways to fix our challenges. Leaders can then take a cue from the contributions of society to develop policies and programmes to empower our nation.”
The BuildRSA platform has already garnered scores of followers, with users regularly commenting on a variety of issues, from our energy crisis, gaping inequality and joblessness, right through to gender-based violence, corruption, African proverbs, lack of infrastructure maintenance and so much more. With posts on a range of important, interesting topics, it offers engaging conversation for comment and reflection. Whenever someone posts on a topic, users are notified via email and can choose whether or not to receive notifications.