Last week the World Bank published a new book titled “Protecting Mobile Money Against Financial Crimes: Global Policy Challenges and Solutions” which serves as a practical guideline for relevant industries and governments to regulate mobile money transfers.

Banking services on mobile phones for both domestic and international transfers in developing regions has become a huge industry. Companies and project such as Global GCASH and SmartMoney in the Philippines América Móvil in Mexico; Wizzit in South Africa; Celpay in Zambia/Tanzania/DRC; and Safaricom’s infamous M-Pesa in Kenya, have emerged with viable banking solutions for the world’s poor. According to GSMA, over 1 billion customers have access to a mobile phone but no access to formal financial services and over 80% of mobile banking services are taking place in developing markets.

However, the demand for guidance and technical assistance in creating a legal framework to make these transfers secure is equally profound. Regulatory regimes consistent with the international anti-money laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) in new mobile money phone financial services have remained vague.

Written by Pierre-Laurent Chatain, Andrew Zerzan, Wameek Noor, Najah Dannaoui and Louis de Koker, the book’s provides sensible guidance for jurisdictions and internal systems to draft regulations and guidelines in order to comply with the AML/CFT standards with the mobile money transfers. The guidelines are flexible enough for their mobile money to continue to grow.

In particular the paper aims to :

1. Assesses the new AML/CFT regulations and practices and their relation to mobile money;
2. Cultivate guidelines for drafting AML/CFT regulations that cover mobile money, and:
3. Provides examples of best practices within the industry to include AML/CFT in their own business models

This is a great resource for anyone in the mobile banking industry, or government agencies, who want to include the standardized measures of AML and CFT in their business models, or in their regulations, for customer’s transfers.

During the 1970s, missionaries would walk around the towns in Haiti distributing radios to spread the message of the church. Haitians would accept them freely—not for the religious messages, but so they could tune into the Creole news services. Forty years later, a new wireless tool allows them to access news but with one fundamental difference: now they can participate in the conversation through their mobile phone.

Last week during World Press Freedom Day in Washington D.C., the sentiment that mobile phones serve as a catalyst for a two way flow of information between governments and citizens in the developing world was continuously echoed.

For the 77% of the world’s population who own cell phones, it is like a modern printing press in the palm of their hands.

Michèle Montas (Photo Credit: Richard Patterson for NY Times)

Michèle Montas, Senior Advisor to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General to Haiti, United Nations Stabilization Mission, Haiti, observed that the widespread availability of cell phones began with a heavy push from the private sector but has resulted with an increased demand from the people. “We could find them (mobiles) in the countryside, in the slums of Port au Prince, in the hands of a street market woman, in the hands of a small shop owner.” she commented.

This extensive accessibility paves the way for citizens to use mobile phones as a tool to contribute information and express their opinions to the public sphere.

Ms. Montas alluded that although cell phones aided in humanitarian assistance after the earthquakes, mobile phones have also altered the way Haitians can now lend their relevant perspectives, notably by calling into radio talk shows they play an active role in public discourse.

“There has been an explosion of meshing of media, of journalists, and of people that just want to speak out,” she stated, “If you gave them a microphone they would just speak out on the microphone, today they would do it on a cell phone.”

Mobile phones are dramatically changing the landscape of how citizens can actively access and contribute information to the public sphere; they boost the morale of citizens in societies where the voiceless can finally be heard by the majority and inform governments of what their citizens need.

Please view the video of Ms. Montas during the past World Press Freedom Day on the Panel “Accessing the Digit Benefit”:

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa celebrates after winning the country's referendum.

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa declared victory this past weekend on a controversial referendum for social and government reforms, clearing the path for what critics claim is an attempt to garner more power and hinder press freedoms.

On May 7, 2011, Ecuadorians voted on ten unrelated issues and the proposed referendum could drastically alter judiciary processes, restrict media ownership, outlaw casino gambling, and prohibit killing animals for entertainment.

Analysts claim that the the win is a huge boost in power for President Correa.

“Today, we made an important step toward peace, democracy and a new motherland,” he said after the first results came out.””They’ve been saying it’s totalitarian… [a word] used for a state in which things are done by force. We’re doing this democratically.”

According to a Cedatos Gallup poll only 16 percent of the respondents knew about the substance and effects of the proposals, but all ten were approved.

The restriction of media ownership is one of the most contentious issues and has drawn a large amount of criticism from Ecuadorian and international human rights activists alike.

If approved, one measure would prohibit media companies from making investments outside of their industry, preventing the formation of large private media/ entertainment conglomerates like Time-Warner or News Corporation in the United States.

The second measure would establish a council to regulate content that was deemed discriminatory, sexual, or violent. “The language of the provision appears to allow the council to unilaterally set potential penalties,” writes the Committee to Protect Journalists. “We believe that vague provision would open the door to government censorship”.

President Correa has always had a controversial relationship with the media (Photo Credit: Dolores Ochoa)

Correa’s relationship with the media had already drawn international attention. He publicly vilifies those who question his policies of bias and inaccuracy on a regular basis:

Correa told Reuters last week:

Our greatest rival in this plebiscite is not the opposition. Our biggest rivals are the media, who come up with a fresh scandal on a daily basis

Last month, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued a statement condemning Correa for suing the newspaper El Universaro for slander. Correa sued the directors of the newspaper and its opinion editor Emilio Palacio in March over a column entitled “NO to the Lies,” which referred to Correa several times as a “dictator.”

He demanded a $50 million fine for El Universo executives Carlos, Cesar and Nicolas Perez and by Palacio. Correa also wants these four men to spend three years in prison as punishment.

Censorship and restrictions on media are frequent in Latin American countries, where the move from historically based dictatorships to democratic rule has resulted in a rise of media related oppression.

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez Photo Credit: The Economist

Consider Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez told cable companies last year to abandon RCTV International because it refused to air his speeches. Chavez has also refused licenses to two small TV channels and 38 radio stations — four of them the same week in March that Argentina’s University of La Plata honored him for journalistic excellence. He also prohibits Venezuelans from publishing the Bolívar-dollar exchange rate.

The effects of the hemispheric government restrictions on media was explored by Frank La Rue last week in Washington D.C. during UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day.

Mr. La Rue, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, discussed how the plurality of media sources permits citizens to accurately draw conclusions on their government.

Frank La Rue, U.N. Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression

“The press is accountable to society and to the readers on what they choose they should believe in and (also) what they analyze,” he stated.

By controlling and censoring new information and communication technologies (ICTs) governments contend the Declaration of Principles of Freedom of Expression, Mr. La Rue argued. The Internet is an amazing tool for citizens to express legitimate grievances and to demand reforms, democracy and transparency.

He compared the use of ICTs and the vast reach of the Internet to public squares found in most Latin American communities known as ”la Plaza Pública”.  ICT’s power and broadness can serve as a public space to encourage the facilitation of open conversation about governments—alternatively, it can be used by politicians to heighten censorship and defamation.

Mr. La Rue asserted:

I would like to remind all States that the strongest governments are those that allow democratic participation of citizens, and diverse views to be expressed openly.

President Correa’s recently approved referendum to restrict media ownership could violate the constitutional and international guarantees for press freedoms discussed by Mr. La Rue and others, disadvantaging the democratic values inherent in Ecuadorian citizens.

An Egyptian rice farmer shows his drought damaged rice crop in a village near Balqis on June 14, 2008. REUTERS/Nasser Nuri 

LONDON (AlertNet) – For African farmers struggling to cope with increasingly erratic conditions linked to climate change, there’s good – and bad – news.

The good news is that in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, scientists can now issue reasonably reliable seasonal climate forecasts a month or more in advance of the planting season, giving growers a chance to opt for different kinds of crops or other measures to adapt to upcoming conditions.

That has the potential to improve food security in many climate-vulnerable parts of Africa, and reduce the impact on some of the world’s poorest people of droughts, floods and temperature surges.

The bad news is that those forecasts, and other historical weather information farmers need to judge risk and make good decisions, still are not reaching most growers, in part because meteorological data in many African countries is available only at a cost.

Weather information “is an essential resource for adaptation (to climate change) and development,” said James W. Hansen, a researcher on climate change, agriculture and food security at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and lead author of a new report on seasonal climate forecasting and agriculture in Africa.

But “as long as these (data) are seen as a revenue source for Met services rather than as a public good for development, the people who are most affected by climate change, climate variability and poverty won’t have much access to innovations,” he said in a telephone interview.

Growing climate variability is making life increasingly difficult for farmers throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Some areas, particularly in southern and eastern Africa, are seeing extended droughts and high temperatures that can make growing staples like maize a challenge. Other regions, including parts of West Africa, have struggled with extreme rainfall.

Altogether “dependence on uncertain rainfall and exposure to climate risk characterize the livelihoods of roughly 70 percent of (sub-Saharan Africa’s) population,” notes the study, published in the journal Experimental Agriculture in March.

SOME PREDICTABLE REGIONS

But scientists are getting increasingly good at predicting seasonal climate conditions in advance, largely because of growing understanding of how Pacific Ocean temperatures – linked to weather phenomena like El Nino and La Nina – influence rainfall in sub-Saharan Africa.

While it is still very difficult to predict seasonal conditions in some parts of Africa – including across the Sahara and the northern parts of the Sahel – other areas are showing potential for predictability, at least in some seasons. They include much of southern Africa up to southern Zambia; a swath of East Africa centered on Kenya; a wide band of West Africa reaching from the Atlantic coast across to Sudan; and a stretch of west-central Africa from the Atlantic coast into the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Already, “skillful forecasts can be produced more than a month before the normal start of the growing season for the short rains in eastern Africa and the main rainy season in southern Africa,” the study noted.

Just as important, the regional forecasts can be “downscaled” to provide more specific local forecasts with only “modest” loss of accuracy, the study said.

So why aren’t seasonal forecasts yet reaching farmers, particularly given that studies show most are eager to get and act on the information?

Largely it’s the result of communication failures, Hansen said. Meteorologists in many regions tend to oversimplify forecasts, telling farmers there will be higher rainfall, for instance, rather than a 60 percent chance of higher than normal rainfall.

That has led to a lack of trust, particularly when oversimplified predictions don’t come true.

“If I were a smallholder farmer and a climate scientists said it would be more or less rainy, I’d be extremely skeptical. A lot would depend on how much I trust that person,” Hansen noted.

The reality is “farmers understand probability very well. Their lives depend on it,” he said. Leaving the probabilities off forecasts undermines trust and reliability, he said.

But perhaps the most severe problem, he said, is that many African meteorological services see weather data as something to be sold to paying clients – airports, insurance firms, development organizations – rather than released as a public good.

That view is in part the result of structural reforms driven by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, aimed at reducing the hand of governments – often seen as corrupt or inefficient – in services including meteorology, Hansen said. The reforms left many meteorological services dependent on commercial sales of data for funding, he said, a model that is providing difficult to change.

CHANGING THE FUNDING MODEL

Still, efforts are underway. An initiative in Kenya called WIND – Weather Information for Development – aims to help Kenya’s meteorological service find new sources of revenue and make better decisions about what data should be commercialized and what made publicly available free.

In other countries, researchers hope to tempt government meteorological services into releasing satellite data free in exchange for access to information from ground weather stations runs by research organizations.

“If we can get one or two (countries) to break out, and they get new visibility and funding, maybe there can be a domino effect,” Hansen said.

Better seasonal climate forecasts won’t help ease surging food prices around the world, because the surges are driven by rising demand, the scientist warned.

But in some of the poorest parts of the world, good seasonal climate forecasts have the potential to help curb hunger, protect incomes and get some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable people through bad years.

“The ability to anticipate climate fluctuations and their impact on agriculture months in advance should, in principle, enable… opportunities to manage risk,” the study noted.

By now you’ve probably heard of Sal Khan, or at least his Khan Academy. The former hedge fund manager turned education guru has been featured on PBS News Hour, CNN, NPR, NBC News, and most recently, was invited by Bill Gates to speak at TED.

Photo Credit- CNN

There is no question that the Khan Academy’s approach is innovative. And it certainly has the potential to change the way people think about education. Sal Khan mentions in his TED Talk his desire to “flip” the classroom – where students learn the materials at home, then come to school to get extra help with the problems and mastery.

But many of the news reports on the Khan Academy stress the usage of these videos around the world – so what kind of impact could it have in developing countries?

The Khan Academy is an example of an Open Education Resource (OER), free to use teaching and learning content. Like all OER the Khan Academy has incredible potential in the developing world, while facing extreme challenges.

Benefits of OER

1. Reduced costs – online, digital resources can be significantly less expensive than text books, and they can be changed edited easily to accommodate changes in the curriculum. Examples include CK12 FlexBooks and Lulu.com .
2. Continuous improvements- the usage patterns of many digital products can be monitored and used as feedback. The Khan Academy is a perfect example of this- Khan found that students stopped watching some videos at certain points, so he went back and changed the content in those spots, resulting in decreased drop offs, and increased course (video) completion.
3. Learning Efficiency- students can learn at their own pace by stopping and starting the videos, going back to cover ground they may have missed, or skipping material they already know
4. Accessibility- videos can be captioned as well as translated into other languages. Youtube now provides captioning, and dotSUB can translate captioned material into multiple languages.
5. Localization/Personalization- in many cases digital material can be created or customized to fit local culture and context. Teacher Education in SubSaharan Africa (TESSA) is one example.

But while these benefits are amazing and transforming, getting this content to students in the developing world is tough.

Challenges:

1. Infrastructure – it goes without saying that students must have access to the equipment and connectivity to access materials.
2. Discoverability – finding out about various materials online can be difficult.
3. Quality – not all OER are created equal!
4. Accessibility – although the very nature of many digital product makes it possible to be fully accessible (closed captioning for videos, screen readers for text, multiple language support, etc), not all producers think of these things, nor do all end users have the right equipment
5. Interoperability – being able to use materials on any operating system, platform or device is vitally important in the developing world
6. Sustainability – not only for the producers of the content (how will they stay in business) but for the end users (What kind of personnel are needed to implement a program? What happens if the resources they are counting on stop being available?)

We are just beginning to see how OER can impact students and teachers around the world. Some traditional systems and institutions may be slow to adopt, while others may see these resources as innovative solutions to long standing problems.