Hanah Lahe in a nutshell; she is a young energetic lady who eats potatoes for breakfast, is vegetarian, doesn’t own a car, is not AI enthusiastic, still is a student, and dreamed of being a singer, and now has become the youngest Member of Parliament in Estonia.
It was a remarkable experience to spend half a day with her because she shared her visions, ideas, impressions, and much more with us.
So, ready, steady, go dear friends…. Get your coffee ready, bring something small to eat from your fridge, and sit comfortably while enjoying listening to „Future Young Voice “ which is really willing to make an impact in a „big – small country“.
The interview with the crucial question – Is Estonia the Northern part of the Baltics or the southern part of the Nordic? The Hanah´s answer is clear. Estonia is being itself. Each country is unique. Kate, the host, explains and talks more about common issues that we have the same. Czechia and Estonia are rather small countries, both were occupied by Russia and had problems with their neighbors. Czechia has the Velvet Revolution and Estonia has the Singing Revolution.
And, for us, unfortunately, that’s where similarities end. The big political changes came to Estonia in 1991 when it began to be an independent country. In 1996 the Ambassador to the US Toomas Hendrik Ilves and former minister of education Jang Kovig had the idea to make Estonia a digital country. And they made it happen thanks to their experience and visions. Therefore welcome to the Silicon Valley of Europe.
What was the first step for this big plan? Hanah talks about 17,000 computers which were set up by these two great guys and brought Estonia to the 21st digital century. The idea was backed up by President Lenard Merry and one year later, in 1997, it was part of the national planning for the national budget. The computers were spread to the schools, each computer had internet access, and the digital „mindset“ was spread to the children and became part of the digital „transformation“.
Then a switch; Hanah starts to talk about her own story. She was born in 1999 so she is in the generation growing up with computers in class. So she played all these pc games such as Sims or Need for Speed as a Kid in kindergarten. The digital „era“ has always been part of her DNA. She had never voted on paper, everything she does is online. Which shows the fact how fully digital Estonia is.
Estonia is covered by 50% of the forest and 99% of the public service is available online. And guess, what are two things which are not fully online yet? As Hannah explained, it is getting of driver’s license or calling an ambulance, but, it is still all saved in the cloud, and every citizen of Estonia has their own personal code, and the Operator in the Ambulance see who is it, which medicine is she or he taking, etc.
Probably everybody knows that Estonia has the highest number of unicorns in Europe per capita and, what is probably more „crazy“, the internet is available almost everywhere even in the forest, villages, and the whole country. And, now, maybe a small paradox in comparison with it, they do not fight for the green topic or climate crisis. Why? They could not see the concrete impact – no floods, no tsunamis… So now it’s a topic for Hanah, as she explains: „Well, it comes to market competition, so we have a very good minister of climate and he says our economy is supposed to fit inside of nature and it is a good concept. We need to look at the economy… People think about the weather and not the climate. We need to talk about more practical things.“
Part of the reason why Hanah decided to be a politician is to make an impact. She remembers how she felt frustrated for working on something that would be written on the paper at some politician’s table and probably nobody would read it. One thing is to fight in your free time and be an activist or a „change-maker “.
One of the „shock“moments was how politicians – and populists behaved in front of the camera and plenary hall and behind the camera but Hanah says: “For me, it is just a game.“ And the last „bite“ of these podcasts is what is the weirdest food she has ever eaten? As a vegetarian from childhood, it is a sausage from moose that her neighbor had.
