Pakistan - Malala and Apple

Apple has joined hands with Malala. We hope this will not be a tale of forbidden fruit.

The objective, according to the company, is to donate an as yet undisclosed sum to the Malala Fund with a view to doubling the number of grants to finance secondary education for girls in India and Latin America. According to the company website, the initial target is to help more than 100,000 girls. This is said to come in the way of assisting with technology, curriculum and research into policy changes needed to ensure that girls will have the right to 12 years of free, safe, quality education; as provided by the Malala Fund.

That one of the world’s best known brands and an established market leader wants to work with the girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for daring to exercise her fundamental right to education serves to underscore the outreach of Malala’s sincere activism on this front.

We just hope that Apple is as honest in its intentions and not out to get a free ride on someone else’s coattails. After all, here in Pakistan we have seen how certain mobile phone networks have partnered with the local NGO sector to work on, say, literacy retention for the girl child at a time when the telecom industry had reached saturation point.

Naturally, a company like Apple doesn’t need to focus on its global market share. But it may have to work on its appeal. Especially considering that last year the EU Commission had ordered it to pay 13 million euros in back taxes to Ireland, where until very recently its European base was headquartered. Indeed, Dublin was singled out over offering it “fiscal optimisation”; which is essentially illegal tax breaks by another name. This was followed swiftly by the news that Apple was trying its best to skirt the issue by setting up shop in the Channel Island of Jersey, a well known tax haven.

We say this not to malign Malala. But to warn Apple not to take ‘our girl’ down with it.  For this incredibly courageous young woman continues to be a source of pride for Pakistan. She has already taken on those hurly burly armed macho men of the Taliban and won. What she doesn’t now need is the extra hassle of being painted as a capitalist stooge. Not when nothing could be further from the truth.