Platform · qwerk.c3data.africa
Start a data cooperative as easily as a group chat
The collective’s shared infrastructure runs on qwerk, an open-source app for groups. In qwerk a community gets a hub: its own space to talk, keep records and run apps — and the keys to its data stay with the community, not with us.
In a hub you can
Chat
In groups, in threads, and one to one.
Write things down and keep them
Docs, sheets and forms that the group owns, with their history kept.
Follow what matters
Feeds for news and notices, and events members can add to their own calendar.
Keep private things private
Health records, money, members’ details: encrypted on your phone, read only by the people you choose.
Add apps
Forms, tables, games and research tools from the Data & Apps Commons.
Work with no internet
Everything opens on your phone without signal, and catches up when it returns.
Let guests in
A link lets someone read and comment without an account, and only where you allow.
Analyse privately
Let someone add up a doc’s numbers without reading a row; only the key holders open the answer.
The apps are listed in the commons.
What it means for a data cooperative
A data cooperative needs a place of its own before anything else: somewhere members meet, agree their rules, and keep the records they govern together. A hub is that place.
Starting one takes minutes. Name the hub, invite members with a link or a QR code, and give them roles. What the cooperative chooses to share, it describes in the commons — the rows stay with the cooperative that holds them.
Open source
qwerk is free software under the AGPL-3.0 licence. If anyone changes it and runs it for others, they share their changes, so nobody can fence off what a group built together.
Alpha, said plainly
qwerk is in alpha. It changes often and things may break — the Support button in the app reaches the people who build it. Its security has not yet been independently audited, so keep real patient or bank records out until it has.
Today it syncs through a service called Jazz. When NextGraph is ready, qwerk moves to it, and a group can run its own server.
qwerk is made by Wamoja, a community with African roots. The same app runs at qwerk.wamoja.africa.