App that outruns Eskom

There’s an app many of you haven't heard of lately.

- RICHARD CHEMALY

Out of the wet coal, diesel-soaked ashes of Eskom came the app that capitalised on our energy provider’s failures.With a schedule more complicated than a private school’s nine-day rotation, somebody had to make sense of load shedding and a 30% matric wasn’t going to do the trick. Enter EskomSePush (ESP) for those who find satire vulgar.

Pretty much like any innovation, it addressed a problem. In this case, the problem was not knowing when the power would be off. Nobody expected ESP to start generating electricity but it still gave us something useful.

And as long as the power kept cutting out, people had a reason for keeping the app. If anybody had an incentive for the lights to keep going off, it would be them. What good would the app that tells you when the power is being cut be when the power doesn’t get cut?