Finland's peacetech industry could be the best in the world – Aape Pohjavirta tells us why it's not

Aape Pohjavirta spends his days talking about peacetech and his company Funzi to the UN and EU leaders. He believes that the Finnish peacetech industry should take responsibility for its own success.

The Finnish peacetech industry has to perk up, believes Aape Pohjavirta, the director of Funzi, a company specialising in mobile-learning applications. He has been speaking for peace technology for many years in different forums. He claims the industry is at a standstill, even if the Finns have everything that’s needed to take the leading role.

– We have the CMI, we have very high level of technology and our government is focusing on peace mediation processes as part of their development cooperation goals.

What’s missing would be some kind of peacetech collective, which Pohjavirta has been calling since the 2017 Peacetech Forum.

– All the different actors working in peacetech need to get organised and express what each can offer and what they need. The abilities and the lacking elements need to be identified. After this we can sign for joint goals and start to develop the industry.

According to Pohjavirta, the actors have become inactive. Peacetech projects have got lost in bureucratic processes and funding problems even before they have a chance to begin.

– We need to help each other out. We need to join forces and start doing something. If something needs to be fixed, we need to stop thinking about it and go and fix it.

Faster decisions for more innovation

Pohjavirta himself prefers to make swift decisions and move quickly. A good example is a project born out of the corona crisis, where Funzi got involved with a procedure to reach 3 million South Africans and offer them information about Covid-19 through a mobile phone application. At first Pohjavirta thought about doing a similar project in Finland.

– However, no Finnish authority even replied to our contact requests. Our experiences about the refugee crisis and Covid-19 show that when a society is in a crisis, the ability to make innovative decisions is zero in a developed country like Finland, because here people think through existing processes. In a developing country like South Africa they understand that a crisis could be an opportunity to learn something new. Innovations don’t often happen in well-functioning societies.

“When a society is in a crisis, the ability to make innovative decisions is zero.”

Pohjavirta believes that Funzi could have never reached such fast results in South Africa, if they would have involved bigger actors.

– The project was self-financed and it was based on our own decisions. That’s the only way to act efficiently. If we would have taken the project somewhere, we would still be waiting for decisions.

Pohjavirta thinks that societies would benefit from forward-looking decision-making process.

– Most of the problems in our society stem from the fact that we rely on a managerial decision-making mechanism.

Pohjavirta refers to the Nobel-winning decision-making theory by Herbert Simon.

– Managerial decision-making involves making a plan and executing it. The other way is to make decisions in the present moment and solve the problem in the moment and with the abilities and tools that are available. The first decision-making process looks into the past, while the second looks into forward.

The managerial style is often used by public funding bodies. Nobody dares to fund innovative projects, that would leave the decisions to be made during the process. This is why innovative peacetech projects can be hard but not impossible to finance. Social impact bonds could offer a way. The projects could also be build upon already existing technologies and attached to products that can be sold.

– There is too much money in the world. It’s all about how we distribute it. If peacetech developers are unable to build financially viable mechanisms, it’s completely our own fault.

Which means that we need to forget about excuses and get to work. Peace technology could have a massive impact on the humankind.

– The biggest achievement would be to use peacetech to make people understand that they hold their future in their own hands.

“The biggest achievement would be to use peacetech to make people understand that they hold their future in their own hands.”

Let’s return to the role of Finland. Why this should be the place to develop peacetech?

– Finland is the happiest society in the world. We know how to be content with what we have, which leads to the absence of discontent. We also know how to be transparent which raises the level of predictability. We follow directions and care for each other. We have many behaviours that make our society the most trust-based society in the world.

This trustfulness on the individual and societal level is the basis for lasting peace. It doesn’t hurt that nobody is scared of the Finns.

– Very few people have something negative to say about us, because they haven’t had contact with us. We are neutral, agile and small, which could enable us to become the world leader in peacetech. The only thing preventing us from taking this leadership is ourselves.

Peace Invaders is a Finnish NGO working to harness the power of technology and media for conflict transformation.

We want peace. We mean business.

Finland’s peacetech industry could be the best in the world, but it’s not making progress – ”The only thing preventing us from taking this leadership is ourselves”

Aape Pohjavirta spends his days talking about peacetech and his company Funzi to the UN and EU leaders. He believes that the Finnish peacetech industry should take responsibility for its own success.

Peace Invaders blogging crew