Dacod Magagula grew up attending an under-resourced school in the rural outskirts of Mbombela. Having experienced the power of access to a laptop and an internet connection, Magagula was inspired to create a platform that could improve the quality of education for disadvantaged students.
Dacod Magagula grew up on the outskirts of Mbombela and attended an under-resourced public school.
When he was in grade seven and eight, however, he went to a school which had computers. It was here that Magagula, who refers to that time as the “Windows days” and recalls how people used computers to pirate music, discovered his love for computers.
This new-found passion drove him to save all his allowances to purchase his own computer. This would become a wise investment; by matric he could use it at an internet café to download exam papers from previous years. Thanks to this access to past papers, – and hard work – he managed to graduate with the title of class valedictorian
From top in the class to UCT drop out
In 2014, Magagula became the first student from his school to be accepted into the University of Cape Town (UCT), where he enrolled for BSc Computer Science.
“The brochure said ‘Computer’ and ‘Science’ and I like computers and science, so I picked it out,’’ he says.
But his transition into the university space made him aware that he was underprivileged. Life as a university student became especially hard when funding through the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) dried up. Magagula faced financial exclusion.
“Appealing for financial aid is weird, because you have to tell them how poor you are,” he says.
Then came 2016, when the #feesmustfall protest against the increase in the cost of fees resulted in a month-long shutdown at UCT. Magagula used the time to do an internship at Lumico in Cape Town.
Here he built and maintained websites on WordPress, for small- to medium-sized businesses that moved online. He also started applying for junior jobs that December.
“At this point, I did not like being at UCT and felt that continuing with the degree was not worth my while,” says Magagula. “I decided that I did not want to continue with UCT, and working was a clear out.”
Although despondent, Magagula did not leave university abruptly. He returned to campus to write his deferred exams in January 2017. Then he dropped out and started working at a company in Cape Town, where he worked as a full-stack engineer. His job entailed developing and maintaining online stores. He also assisted the company’s chief operating officer in putting together proposals, quotes and project scopes and project plans.
Finding solutions
Magagula’s former physical science teacher, Moses Mlombo, remembers him as a hardworking and gifted student who was independent. Despite Magagula’s success at school, what stayed with him was that his peers lacked the very resource that allowed him to succeed: access to computers.
Last year, Magagula decided to bridge this gap by using the application programming interface (API) that WhatsApp introduced in 2018 to change the situation of learners who still lacked access to computers.
Using the API’s feature of automated responses, Magagula created a basic bot which sent past papers over WhatsApp, on a designated number, to whoever requested it. The past papers could then be downloaded onto one’s phone. FoondaMate was born. Students who did not have access to wifi, computers or textbooks, could now use FoondaMate during the lockdown when schools were closed.
Dacod Magagula, co-founder of FoondaMate, also writes a blog where he articulates his opinions about issues in South Africa. PHOTO: Supplied/Tao Boyle
Magagula also added features to FoondaMate that solve mathematical problems (including linear, quadratic and cubic equations), search Wikipedia and find word definitions requested by the users, explained FoondaMate co-founder, Tao Boyle.
The basic bot is currently used by over 100 000 students in more than 10 different countries. The user base expanded due to word of mouth. “We have never spent any money on marketing,” says Boyle.
Tao Boyle co-founded FoondaMate with Magagula. Her work on FoondaMate resulted in her being listed as one of the 50 most inspiring women in STEM in South Africa. PHOTO: Supplied/Tao Boyle
An alternative qualification
For Magagula, founding FoondaMate was a meaningful accomplishment which he believes was built on his ability to qualify to study at UCT, and his experience of having had access to a computer and the internet.
Having walked this particular path, Magagula warns that people often overvalue qualifications. For him, official qualifications might be proof that you have done something. But, he says, you don’t always need that proof.
“You can prove that you have done things differently. You can be like, ‘Oh, here’s this online store I have been building on my computer’. Which is what I did,” he says.
In the computer science industry, it is never about what the qualification is, says Magagula. What is more important is whether you can do the job.
“You may be qualified to do the job, but be bad at doing the job. And you might be good at doing the job, but not qualified,” he adds.
Magagula views the university’s primary role in society as a filtering system to filter out those who have potential and those who do not. But, from his own experience, he believes that a person with potential, according to university standards, could make it in life by applying for jobs that do not require experience rather than a degree.
From rags to kind of middle class
While many of his friends are still financially dependent on their parents, Magagula currently earns more than his mother. He is still getting used to that idea. Growing up, he did not see many examples of children who – starting out – had already achieved more career successes than their parents, he says.
“There is something about that which I find weird. It does put you in a very different position from the average person who is just starting out,” he says.
Finding your identity in South Africa
Given his background as a learner in an underfunded school and a student facing financial exclusion, Magagula never saw himself as privileged. Yet, people do sometimes call him privileged. He says he would then respond by telling his own story of humble beginnings.
Eventually, however, he came to accept that the opportunities he had were a result of his academic aptitude. This, he says, is a privilege in itself. He therefore no longer feels the need to defend himself.
Yet, he says, when people see where he currently is in terms of economic status, they either assume that he is from a rich family or that he has been adopted by a rich white family.
“These categories were imposed on us, legally, in South Africa,” says Magagula. “So, everyone expects us to be neatly black in a way that you would need to fit in a black person box. And they expect everyone to be white and fit neatly into a white person box. And that’s not the reality of things.”
Magagula, in his spare time, writes a blog to share his opinions and personal experiences that he believes can be useful to others thus affecting change on both an academic and social level.