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A Framework to Extending Financial Inclusion throughout Africa via ICT

Cover for the eTransform Africa: Financial Services Sector Study

Photo Credit: Vital Wave Consulting

A report was recently released, through the eTransform Africa initiative, explaining and outlining a framework to leverage ICTs to increase financial inclusion across the continent. Written by Vital Wave Consulting and entitled eTransform Africa: Financial Services Sector Study – Sector Assessment and Opportunities for ICT, it was released as a part of a larger initiative that was commissioned by the World Bank and the African Development Bank (and supported by the African Union) to explore how ICTs can improve business models in key sectors in Africa. The sectors include: agriculture, climate change adaptation, education, health, ICT competitiveness, public services, trade and regional integration, as well as a report on cross-cutting issues.

The goal of each sector report is to share knowledge and provide an actionable framework for how ICT can be utilized by traditional and new organizations in the for-profit and social sectors, including African Governments themselves and members of the international development community.

For the Financial Services Sector Study, the creators of the report decided to focus specifically on how ICT can improve financial inclusion. This focus was driven by the fact that less than 20% of households in Africa have access to formal financial services. The reason for these low numbers includes the high percentage of population who live rural regions, poor transportation infrastructure, and limited communications infrastructure.

Opportunities and Challenges

The report identifies three major challenges areas to the utilization of ICT to expand formal financial services to the unbanked: 1) Consumer/End User, 2) Governing/Regulatory, and 3) Market Maturity and Underpinning Infrastructure.

For “Consumer/End User”, the challenges include: transient and remote populations; understanding of consumer needs; general and financial literacy of consumers; increasing trust in banking institutions; and, small and medium enterprise (SME) access to capital. In order to combat these challenges, the report states that initiatives have already started which include mobile payment systems, the development of products specifically for the local consumer, and innovative solutions to expanding capital to SME.

For “Governing/Regulatory”, the challenges are: lack of identification documents; moveable assets; fragmented collateral data; and, corruption. Currently there is a push to battle these challenges by increasing identification through SIM registration and developing collateral registries.

Finally, for “Market Maturity and Underpinning Infrastructure”, the challenges are focused around: the implementation and use of IT banking information systems in microfinance institutions (MFI) and high interest rates. To solve these challenges, the report states that SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) can be utilized to cut down IT costs and increasing the amount of credit bureaus can offer lower the interest rates offered to members.

Recommendations

Given the goal of the report to assist government agencies, policy makers and donors – the recommendations were classified into two areas: 1) Market Maturity and 2) Addressing the specific challenges listed above (by consumer, government, and private sector). Since Africa is such a diverse region – with wide variance in terms of culture, socio-economics, governmental structures, and infrastructure – the authors smartly classified their recommendations. Government agencies and donors can locate the appropriate segment and then seek the relevant advice.

The authors created three segments – or categories – to classify recommendations based on degree of market maturity: 1) Formative State (new and developing market with limited adoption and competition), 2) Scaling State (adoption rates starting to pick up and regulation being implemented in order to generate competition), and 3) Desired State (mass adoption of products/services and a competitive environment). Agencies and donors then can see which opportunities are available in their current state to increase financial inclusion, such as: mobile banking, product diversification, identification, SME access to capital, backend systems, credit bureaus, and collateral registries. It gives them a framework to analyze their current financial services industry and access where the gaps of inclusions are.

While the policy recommendations focus on how governments should move forward strategically in each country, the donor recommendations focus on these actors’ greatest resource – money. The donor recommendations use a similar structure (formative, scaling, and desired states), but there were a few opportunities that continue to show up throughout the research. These include: “reducing private sector risks by underwriting the risk of ‘first mover,’ reducing shared costs by underwriting supporting systems that are common among all financial service players, and leveraging limited donor resources to drive private and consumer action towards desired financial service sector goals.”

A Must Read

This report is a great read, especially for those who are interested in how ICT can be leveraged in financial services in developing countries. The report’s appendixes are especially interesting as they include extensive information about policies and products currently in use in mobile banking throughout the continent.

But, the best aspect of the report is that the authors truly understand the complexity of both the financial services sector and the diversity of African nations. Having read and written about many similar reports, there seems to be a lack of understanding that there are countless variables that must be accounted for when providing recommendations. Simply because an idea or best practice worked in one region does not mean it is the universal truth.

Vital Wave Consulting did a great job developing a framework for government agencies and donors, who are both experts on the regions, to analyze their own markets and see which opportunities they have not taken advantage of yet or where the possible challenges are. Instead of giving detailed advice, the report builds a framework for government agencies and donors to analyze their markets and gain insight into how ICT can improve financial inclusion in their country.

April 23, 2012/by actualize

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Slums, Youth and the Mobile Internet in Urban India: An Anthropological Case Study for ICT4D

Photo Credit: www.dailycontributor.com

Omar, 19 years old and living in an urban slum in India, is an early mobile internet user who repairs mobile phones in his brother‘s store. “This is magic in my palms,” he says valuing the weight of his mobile phone, not only in his hands, but in his day-to-day life. “God knows what I would do without this. I download songs and listen to them all day, I download movies and watch them in the night when I get back home, I play games in between servicing client, I change my internet plans as and when I come across a great one that gives me the most for the least.”

Omar is certainly not the only teenager in his slum who is fascinated with mobile technology. It’s this appreciation for ICT and its various uses for finding comfort — a way of managing and building personal technology infrastructures as an important element in conducting one’s own life — that Microsoft researchers wanted to portray in a new report, Anthropology, Development and ICTs: Slums, Youth and the Mobile Internet in Urban India. The report aimed to bring awareness to the ICT for development (ICT4D) community of the important insights that be gained from anthropological studies within an understanding of what drives a specific user population to adopt technologies in specific ways: even if the latter is only for entertainment purposes.

Researchers observed how twenty underprivileged teenagers living in a slum used ICT in their day-to-day lives by employing a variety of qualitative methods, including open-ended interviews, observations of community life, and semi-structured baseline surveys. They focused their findings on:

1) Investigating everyday entry points for internet use

2) Identifying ways the internet is understood, accessed, used and shared in multiple ways among the user population

3) Qualifying the social paths sustaining the persistence of internet use among teenagers in a constrained infrastructural environment — specifically that of an urban slum.

The report offers a fascinating anthropological view of how ICT could, and perhaps should, be seen by the ICT4D community:

“If constrained technology environments such as urban slums or how youth use ICTs are legitimate interests for ICTD research, such concerns could pave way for a subtle yet vital exchange between the domains of anthropology and development with the aim to expand a utilitarian notion of ICTs and their role in human progress.”

With so much focus being given to ICT for education initiatives, this leads us to wonder: Should technology be introduced into communities where ICT has not yet been adopted? Or is it better that we first observe how technology is already being used, such as use of mobile phones, and structure our education programs around these pre existing uses? The report suggests the latter and encourages ICT4D developers to consider all of the ways technology is already being used even if it doesn’t have the direct effects that we anticipate or fit a preconceived definition of “development”.

“Indeed, this may require us to broaden our view of how we think about what underlies a good ICTD research project and how we view a range of human behaviors as incremental to development. Rather than using the internet to search for educational material, the youth in our study search for music and Bollywood teasers. These are hardly developmental in any conventional sense, but more akin to behaviors of youth in any part of the globe! No doubt what begins as entertainment can lead to more serious activities.”

The report is certainly a welcome and valuable resource to developers in the ICT4D community. The full report can be accessed here.

April 23, 2012/by actualize

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Technology Salon: IATI, NGOs, tech and aid effectiveness

The Technology Salon (TSNYC) on the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), held April 13th, offered an overview of IATI as a coming-together point for aid transparency. It also stimulated discussion on opportunities and challenges for organizations and institutions when publishing information within the IATI standard and shared some available tools to support publishing NGO data.

IATI Background

Simon Parrish from Aid Info explained that IATI aims to provide information that meets the needs of a number of diverse groups, is timely, is ‘compilable’ and comparable, improves efficiency and reduces duplication. Simon explained that IATI arose from the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and was launched as part of the Accra Agenda for Action in 2008 due to a strong call from civil society to donors, multilaterals and northern NGOs for greater transparency.

Organizations felt they were already working hard to be transparent; however governments, journalists, tax payers and others looking for information were not able to find what they needed. Rather than each organization creating its own improved transparency and accountability system, the idea was to use an open data approach, and this is where IATI came in. Since Accra, transparency and accountability have gained global traction and IATI has been a key part of this movement for the aid sector.

Donor agencies, the World Bank, the EU, the US Government and others have already signed on to IATI and have started to publish basic information. INGOs are also starting to come on board and schedule their dates for publication to the IATI standard. It is hoped that over time the quality and amount of information published will improve and expand. For example, ‘traceability’ needs to be improved so that aid can be followed down the supply chain. Information from international and local NGOs is critical in this because the closer to the ground the information is, the better it can be used for accountability purposes.

Opportunities and Questions around IATI

To complement Simon’s overview, I shared ideas on some of the opportunities that IATI can offer, and some common questions that may arise within INGOs who are considering publishing their information to IATI.

For example, IATI can help catalyze:

transparency and accountability as core values
better coordination and program planning (internally and externally)
reduced reporting burden (if donors agree to use IATI as a common tool)
improved aid effectiveness
collective learning in the aid sector
improved legitimacy for aid agencies
an opportunity to educate the donor public on how aid/development really works
‘moral ground’ for IATI compliant aid organizations to pressure governments and private sector to be more transparent
space for communities and ‘beneficiaries’ to hold aid agencies more accountable for their work
space for engaging communities and the public in identifying what information about aid is useful to them
concrete ways for communities to contest, validate and discuss aid information, intentions, budgets, actions, results.

Concerns and questions that may arise within NGOs / CSOs around IATI include:

Is IATI the right way to achieve the goal of transparency and accountability?
Is the cost in time, money, systems, and potential risk of exposure worth the individual and collective gain?
Is IATI the flavor of the month, to be replaced in 2-4 years?
What is the burden for staff? Will it increase overhead? Will it take funds and efforts away from programs on the ground?
What is the position of the US Government/USAID? Will implementing agencies have to report in yet another format (financial, narrative)?
Much internal project documentation at NGOs/INGOs has not been written with the idea of it being published. There may be confidential information or poorly written internal documents. How will aid agencies manage this?
What if other agencies ‘steal’ ideas, approaches or donors?
What security/risks might be caused for sexual or political minority groups or vulnerable groups if activities are openly published?
Isn’t IATI too focused on ‘upward’ accountability to donors and tax payers? How will it improve accountability to local program participants and ’beneficiaries’? How can we improve and mandate feedback loops for participants in the same way we are doing for donors?
Does IATI offer ‘supplied data’ rather than offer a response to data demands from different sectors?

ICT Tools to support NGOs with IATI

Ruth Del Campo discussed some of the different tools that are available to support INGOs and smaller organizations with IATI reporting, including Open Aid Register (OAR) which she created to support smaller organizations to comply with IATI. The Foundation Center has created a tool to support Foundations to enter their information into the IATI Standard also. Aid Stream is being used by many UK organizations to convert their data to the IATI Standard. Geo-visualization tools include CartoDB, AidView.

IATI awareness in the US

Although tools exist and awareness around IATI is growing elsewhere, Ruth noted that in the US many organizations do not know what IATI is, and this is a problem. Another issue Ruth brought up is that most existing charity raters do not rate program effectiveness or program transparency. Instead, charities are judged based on overhead rates, growth, financial statements, and whether they are publishing certain information on their websites. These measures do not tell what an organization’s program impact or overall transparency are, and they do not trace funds far enough along the chain. Linking charity rating systems with IATI standards could encourage greater transparency and accountability and help the public make decisions based on program accountability in addition to financial accountability. (For background on INGO overhead, see Saundra Schimmelpfennig’s “Lies, White Lies, and Accounting Practices”).

Because many INGOs are not familiar with IATI, a greater dissemination effort is needed for IATI to be of optimal use. If only 20% of the aid picture is available, it will not be very helpful for coordination and decision making. Many INGOs feel that they are already transparent because they are publishing their annual reports as a .pdf file on their websites and they have an overhead rate within a certain percentage, but this is not enough. Much more needs to be done to gain awareness and buy-in from US INGOs, government, charity rating systems, donors, media and the public on transparency and IATI.

Discussion…

Following the 3 discussants, TSNYC participants jumped in for a good debate around key points:

Carrot or stick approach?

NGOs place great importance on their Charity Navigator rankings and Better Business Bureau reviews, and many donors select charities based on these rankings, so it will be important to link these with IATI. The Publish What You Fund index, which tracks the transparency of different organizations, has been helpful in getting countries and institutions on board. The Foundation Center lists transparency indicators on their site GlassPockets as well. The Brookings and CGD QuODA report was mentioned as a key reason that the US Government signed onto IATI at Busan last November, since the US was ranked very low on transparency and saw that they could bring their ranking up by signing on.

Consensus at the Technology Salon was that it is not likely that the US Government or USAID will make IATI compliance mandatory for their grantees and implementing partners as DFID has done. Rather, the existing dashboard for collecting information would be used to report into IATI, so the dashboard needs to be improved and regularly updated by US agencies. One concern was whether in this scenario, the information published by USAID would be useful for developing country governments or would only be of use to USAID Missions. On the bright side, it was felt that movement within the US Government over the past few years towards greater openness and transparency has been massive. TSNYC participants noted that there seems to be a fundamental mindset change in the current administration around transparency, but it’s still difficult to make change happen quickly.

Some members of the US Congress have latched onto the idea and are pushing for greater transparency and this could impact whether the IATI profile increases. Transparency and accountability are of interest to both major US parties. Liberals tend to be interested in the idea of being more open and sharing information; and conservatives tend to focus on value for money and stamping out corruption and lowering inefficient aid spending and waste. IATI can support with both and be a win for everyone.

Making IATI mandatory could, some cautioned, backfire. For example there are foundations and corporations that for a variety of reasons do not openly share information about their giving. If pressured, the tendency may be to shut down totally.

Showing what positive things can be done with IATI and how it can benefit CSO information management and coordination internally as well as externally was thought to be a better approach than positioning IATI as “we are being audited by everyone now.” IATI should be emphasized as an opportunity to join data together to know what everyone is doing, visualize the data using new technologies, and use it to make better program decisions and improve coordination as well as accountability. Some examples of vibrant and informative uses of IATI data include Mapping for Results, Interaction’s Haiti Aid Map and the Foundation Center’s comparison of Foundation giving and World Bank funding.

Transparency as a ‘norm’

Many organizations are investing in transparency for reasons that go far beyond IATI compliance. Three kinds or organizations were identified at the Salon session: those who comply because it is mandatory; those who comply because it’s inevitable; and those who comply because they believe in the inherent value of transparency as a core principle. Even within organizations, some teams such as Democracy and Governance, may be much more interested in IATI than, say, Education, Health, or Arts teams, simply because of the themes they work on and their competing priorities. It is hoped that in 5 years’ time, it is no longer a question of mandatory or inevitable compliance, but rather transparency becomes the norm and it starts to feel strange to work in a space that is not transparent. Leadership is important to get an organization on board.

Challenges and opportunities in IATI compliance

Challenges to IATI compliance were discussed in depth at the Salon, including questions around the amount of resources needed to report to IATI. It was noted that the biggest challenges are organization, coordination, and change of attitudes internally. Some of the core obstacles that Salon participants noted include:

Time and resources

Some pushback might be seen around IATI because investment in IATI compliance may not be seen as providing an immediate return to individual organizations. TSNYC participants felt that rather than a constraint, IATI provided an opportunity for organizations to better manage their own information for internal sharing and use. IATI can help improve program planning, reduce time spent gathering program information from colleagues and across countries, and support better internal coordination among offices and partners. It was noted that when governments started publishing open data, the people who most used it were government employees for their own work. IATI can be seen as an investment in better internal coordination and information management. Once the information is available in an open format it can be used for a number of data visualizations that can show an organization’s reach and impact, or help a number of organizations share their joint work and impact, such as in the case of coalitions and thematic or sectoral networks.

Project document quality

Concerns may be raised in some organizations regarding the state of project documents that were not originally written with publication in mind. Organizations will have to decide if they want to work retroactively, invest in quality control, and/or change processes over time so that documentation is ready for publication.

Losing the competitive edge

TSNYC participants worried that without USAID mandatory compliance, some INGOs, and contractors especially, would not be motivated to publish information for fear of losing their competitive edge. It is feared that getting contractors to report to any level of detail will be difficult. This, the group discussed, makes peer pressure and public pressure important, and mechanisms to encourage broader transparency will need to be found. One idea was to create a ‘5 star system’ of IATI compliance so that organizations with full compliance get a higher star rating (something that Aid Info is already working on). Another angle is the hope that IATI reporting could replace some other mandatory reporting mechanisms, and this may be another entry point.

Accountability to whom?

It was recognized that IATI was initiated as a top-down approach to accountability. The question remains how to make IATI information more useful for ‘beneficiaries’ and program participants to track aid flows, and to contest and validate the information. What complaints mechanisms exist for communities where aid has not been effectively implemented? One point was that IATI is designed to do exactly that and that when it is more populated with information, then this more exciting part that involves playing with the data and seeing what communities have to say about it will start to happen.

Simon noted that there is a huge emerging civic hacker and ICT for social change movement. Access to aid information can be hugely liberating for people. At some aid transparency workshops the focus has been on what national NGOs and governments are doing. Young people are often angry that they don’t know about this. They often find the idea that the information is available to them very exciting. Much of the conversation at these meetings has been about ways to reach communities and about who can be involved as intermediaries.

IATI is still top down and the information that people need is bottom up. However the conversation is starting to happen. Infomediaries need to be multiple and varied so that there is not only one source of IATI data interpretation, but rather a variety of interpretations of the data. Social accountability processes like community score cards and social audits can be brought into the equation to extend the value of IATI information and bring in community opinion on aid projects and their effectiveness. Platforms like Huduma are examples of making open data more accessible and useful to communities.

* * * * *

A huge thanks to our discussants Ruth Del Campo and Simon Parrish and to all those who participated in this 3rd Technology Salon NYC!

Contact me if you’d like to get on the list for future TSNYC invitations.

The Technology Salon™ is an intimate, informal, and in person, discussion between information and communication technology experts and international development professionals, with a focus on both:

technology’s impact on donor-sponsored technical assistance delivery, and
private enterprise driven economic development, facilitated by technology.

Our meetings are lively conversations, not boring presentations – PowerPoint is banned and attendance is capped at 15 people – and frank participation with ideas, opinions, and predictions is actively encouraged through our key attributes. The Technology Salon is sponsored by Inveneo and a consortium of sponsors as a way to increase the discussion and dissemination of information and communication technology’s role in expanding solutions to long-standing international development challenges.

April 23, 2012/by actualize

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GLOBE: Connecting Students Worldwide

Science teachers, looking for an engaging way to get students acquainted with inquiry-based investigations? GLOBE is an evolving worldwide network of schools and scientists interested in expanding enthusiasm for environment and earth system learning.

The Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) mission is to promote the teaching and learning of science, enhance environmental literacy and stewardship, and promote scientific discovery. The program desires to enhance awareness, contribute to scientific understanding, connect and inspire the next generation, and promote student research in environmental and earth science.

GLOBE began in 1995 by numerous governmental agencies and other partners. Since then it has expanded through U.S. government bilateral agreements to over 100 other countries. Since its inception its received numerous awards including the 2004 Goldman Sachs Foundation Prize for Excellence in International Education. GLOBE is believed to have reached over 24,000 schools and 1.5 million students worldwide.

GLOBE allows students, teachers, and program partners to:

share data with others via the Internet
publish the results from research projects
create maps and graphs of GLOBE data on the GLOBE website
collaborate with other GLOBE students and scientists around the world
professional development workshops
Teacher’s Guide, “how-to” videos, and curriculum materials
Train-the Trainer workshops

GLOBE has been found to increase student scientific awareness of their environment through numerous hands-on local research projects that involve measuring, analyzing data, and participating in research in collaboration with scientists. GLOBE hopes to inspire potential future scientists and researchers for industry, academia, and government through its worldwide community of students, teachers, scientists, and citizens working together to better understand, sustain, and improve Earth’s environment at local, regional, and global scales.

April 23, 2012/by actualize

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Where to Turn When Researching: A Database for Innovative Global Health Initiatives

Photo Credit: Results for Development Institute

While working on a mhealth project that expanded across three countries, I was tasked with researching both the public health and mobile sectors in each country. Having worked on a number of strategic plans to implement mhealth, I knew what technology was being used in the field and the challenges that mobile technology can solve. But I had less knowledge about the public health challenges and the innovative, non-mobile health projects in these nations. In need to fully understand these two areas, I came upon the Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI) website. CHMI has an extensive and straightforward database to research the numerous innovations going on in developing countries. I was able to customize my search and focus on the three nations as well as the health focus (ie maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, chronic diseases, etc) and its technology (ie mobiles, GPS, radio, etc). It gave me knowledge of the specific health challenges in those nations as well as how mobile technology could be leveraged in existing programs and policies.

About CHMI

The origins of CHMI were born out of a study in 2008-2009 entitled “The Role of the Private Sector in Health Systems.” It focused on further understanding how the private sector participated in the health care sector in the developing world. CHMI was created as a continuation of the initial research through funding from the Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. The goal was to expand on the research in order to support the advancement of health markets. CHMI’s role is to identify and analyze programs and policies that improve private sector health care delivery and financing for the poor. These include mHealth programs, health franchises, health savings programs, consumer education programs, and many more. By developing this database, governments, NGOs, and social entrepreneurs can include their own innovative health programs as well as search for others. To date, there have been 978 completed programs with 117 still in the pipeline, all across 104 countries. As mentioned above, the database allows users to customize their search based on the categories below:

Profile Status (completed or not)
Program Type (type of innovation)
Health Focus
Country
Target Population
Legal Status (private, nonprofit, government, etc)
Target Geography
Reported Results
Source of Funding
Technology Used

Along with researching innovative programs, the database allows users to connect directly with organizations running these programs and provides content about new programs and update others already in it. It is also downloadable so users can play with the data for their research. The ability to discover and develop profiles of the programs has been primarily done by both partner organizations and CHMI staff. But recently third parties with no CHMI affiliation, such as researchers or program managers, have also submitted profiles. By having a community approach, the database has the most up-to-date information and data. CHMI also takes responsibility to verify information with the organizations on the ground when possible. If this is not possible, the CHMI staff tries to be as transparent with this knowledge. This includes rating the quality of the information source. Here is how they break it down:

High: Interview with high-level employee of the organization and/or a site visit.
Medium: High-quality website or contact with a high level employee of the organization, trusted secondary source (e.g., a report published by a collaborating organization)
Low: Secondary online sources or other publicly available resources

In the end, CHMI wants to increase the information available about recent health innovations, assist donors/investors in identifying new models to fund, give policymakers greater knowledge about designing health policies, connect implementers in order to share lessons and knowledge, and provide data and impact evaluations submitted by partners or third parties.

With information about innovations in development (mostly around mobile technology) spread throughout the internet, CHMI has taken the reigns to promote and show the ground-breaking health market innovations. The partnership approach and focus on gathering the most accurate information gives the CHMI an extensive and trustworthy database of knowledge for practitioners, policy makers, and donors to learn the most innovative approaches.

If you have any questions or would like to include an innovative health program in the database, please contact CHMI at chmi@resultsfordevelopment.org.

April 23, 2012/by actualize

New news

Broadband Partnership of the Americas

President Obama, seated at a panel discussion at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia In April 2012, President Obama announced the creation of the Broadband Partnership of the Americas, an effort set to improve internet access across the Latin America and Caribbean region. The President was in Cartagena, Colombia, for the Sixth Summit of the Americas.

The Broadband Partnership for the Americas (BPA) is designed to improve access to broadband and the Internet and other communications technologies in the Americas. It will serve as a voluntary and flexible framework through which the governments of the Western Hemisphere, multilateral organizations, the donor community and the private sector can collaborate to increase access to broadband and the Internet across the Americas.

The BPA is supported by USAID and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and will be managed by the Global Broadband and Innovations Program, of which Integra is an implementing partner.

Eric Postel, Assistant Administrator for USAID’s Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade Bureau, said in a joint statement with the FCC, “We are very excited about this rich partnering opportunity within our own hemisphere- where we can mobilize public and private resources toward achieving more equitable access to broadband and the Internet as a key contributor to development.”

The financial and technical resources mobilized through the BPA will be used to help interested countries advance a range of information technology initiatives, including:

– developing and implementing national broadband strategies;

– creating or upgrading universal service funds to finance the expansion of mobile and broadband technologies to rural communities;

– improving international and regional connectivity by linking existing broadband networks;

– collaborating on a regional effort to harmonize the use of digital spectrum; and

– sharing best practices.

For more information, please visit GBI’s Broadband Partnership of the Americas page.

April 19, 2012/by actualize

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ICT for Cholera Prevention and Outbreak Management in Haiti

Photo credit: www.vaccinenewsdaily.com

With the rainy season off to an early start in Haiti this spring, can technology help stave off the rising cholera epidemic?

That’s what several international aid and health organizations are considering now that the advantages of ICT — innovation, efficiency, fast-response time — are needed to meet the impending rainy season which promises to bring flooding and ultimately more cases of cholera. Since the earthquake in 2010, more than 530,000 Haitians have fallen ill with cholera, and more than 7,000 have died — staggering numbers when considering the amount of international aid and health projects that have descended upon the country within the past two years. ICT in all of its forms and all that it enables — low-cost mobile devices, open data and access, social media — could improve the response time and efficiency of health initiatives in the cholera crisis if properly implemented.

One example of how ICT is already being utilized to prevent more cases of cholera is a new vaccine campaign by GHESKIO, a health organization based in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in collaboration with Partners in Health, a non-profit healthcare organization that is well known for their efforts against the spread of cholera. In order to identify recipients for the vaccines as efficiently and quickly as possible within a country where travel is difficult, community health workers went door-to-door collecting information about the potential recipients via smartphones. The information was then aggregated into a database to locate and distribute the vaccines to the 100,000 chosen recipients — a process that has just begun after a series of delays.

Utilizing mobile technology to combat the spread of cholera is not a new concept to Partners in Health. In a campaign started just last year, community health workers have been using specially programmed phones to help track information about cholera patients in isolated communities throughout Haiti’s Central Plateau – an important step in gathering up-to-date infection data that could prevent more deaths. “Receiving real-time cholera information from community health workers is crucial,” says Cate Oswald, Partner in Health’s Haiti-based program coordinator for community health. “We need accurate and up-to-date reports in order to best prevent more cases and respond to quick spread of the epidemic.”

Social media has also played a large role in detecting and tracking the incidence of cholera outbreaks. A study released in January by the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene reported that Twitter actually provided data that was faster and more accurate in some cases than traditional methods in tracking the cholera epidemic. Not only does social media provide a fast response time, it “is cost-effective, rapid, and can be used to reach populations that otherwise wouldn’t have access to traditional healthcare or would not seek it”, said Rumi Chunara, a research fellow at HealthMap and Harvard Medical School in the US, and lead author of the study.

Image from haiti.mphise.net

HealthMap, an automated electronic information system for monitoring, organizing, and visualizing reports of global disease outbreaks according to geography, time, and infectious diseases, has been an important tool in helping inform Partners in Health and other health organizations about the spread of cholera in Haiti. Not only does HealthMap track the spread of cholera, it also identifies new safe water installations, health facilities, cholera treatment centers, and emergency shelters.

April 15, 2012/by actualize

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Will Western Union Be the Catalyst for Mobile Money in Latin America and the Caribbean?

The most well-known mobile money implementation in Latin American and the Caribbean has been in Haiti. But with a large and diverse population of mobile phone users (460 million!) in Latin America and an estimated 35% of adults with an established bank account, it would seem clear that mobile money (or mobile financial services – MFS) should have taken off. Yet, besides Haiti, MFS have been almost none existent.

Photo Credit: insightVas.com

Many arguments have been made for this. Back in 2010, the GSMA interviewed Serge Elkiner, President and Founder of YellowPaper. YellowPaper developed technology for users to access MFS in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Haiti, and Panama. He mentioned that one of the reasons for the lagging of MFS in Latin America is government regulation. Other reasons include a lack of desire by MNOs to launch MFS products, money transfer services not adopting mobile transfer platforms, the already well-established financial service sector in the region, and the size of the many of the economies throughout the region.

Recently there have been movements in MFS in the region. As mentioned before on this blog, Red Cloud Technology along with BlueOrchard and other has invested $1.2 million in Nube Roja, Bolivia’s first mobile money platform. Telefonica has teamed with MasterCard on a joint venture last year to expand financial services in 12 Latin American countries. Finally Western Union has entered the mobile transfer market in Latin America by partnering with Tigo in Paraguay. Customers using Giros Tigo (Tigo Cash) will be able to receive money from other countries via their mobile phones. The service will begin in Paraguay and then be implemented in other countries in the region on a rolling basis. Giros Tigo has been providing MFS for over 18 months and the partnership with Western Union is an addition to the services provided to customers.

But MFS move forward in the region, what will be the catalyst to move it to wide spread adoption? In Haiti, the catalyst was the investment made by the Gates Foundation. Clearly there was a need for the people in the country to access formal financial services. But until there is a business case (ie profit can be made), the private sector will not move quickly enough to provide products and services that can scale and are user focused.

With remittances playing such a large role in the economies of Latin America, the ability to receive them via mobile phones could be the spark. On annual basis, Latin America and the Caribbean receive more than $60 billion in remittances. But it has continued to be processed through the traditional practices of Western Union and MoneyGram. Western Union has been making a push mobilize their services (as seen above), but time will tell if it can create the spark for individuals to start adopting MFS in Latin America.

April 15, 2012/by actualize

New news

Alerta MINSA: The First mHealth Project in Latin America

Photo Credit: rcrwireless.com

In the news and blogosphere on ICT4D, there is a heavy focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, mostly because mobile phones have exploded across the continent. But we have missed many of the innovations that are going on in Latin American and the Caribbean. In an effort to reach back to the history of mHealth, I was able to connect with one of the first individuals to work in mhealth, even before the term mhealth had been coined – Ernesto Gozzer, currently working as a Researcher and STC with the World Health Organization and is an Associate Professor at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia.

While he could not confirm that the project was the first in the world, Alerta MINSA was the first in Latin America. Originally launched on February 6^th, 2001 in the Cañete Town Hall Auditorium (in the southern part of Lima), Ernesto admitted they had no idea they were pioneering mhealth. “We thought we were helping to improve the health information systems for critical health issues. The aim was using available technology to connect the unconnected, to help to reduce the digital divide.”

Alerta MINSA stands for Alert Ministry of Health and was initially funded by InfoDev. The tool allowed for disease surveillance to send via text messages and through the internet. The information is then consolidated in a database. Alerts can then be sent when thresholds have been surpassed as well as automated reports and compiling data in tables, graphs, and maps in dashboards. Currently Alerta is the “official disease surveillance system” of the Peruvian Air Force, Navy, and Army. It also has been used in other countries including Ecuador, Panama, Tanzania, Rwanda, Colombia, and Paraguay.

My favorite idea that Ernesto talked about was the following: “So, this was not a pilot but what I call a local innovation that expanded beyond borders.” I love this quote because an innovative solution was created to solve a specific problem using mobile phones. Instead of it being the sexy thing to do, it was done out of necessity. The developers use the power of mobile phones to provide a solution to a problem. This is an important lesson that has been mentioned before in the mhealth space. Start with the problem first and then develop a solution around it. This is as true today as it was 11 years ago.

April 14, 2012/by actualize

New news

AGRONET: Connecting small producers to information in Colombia

Photo Credit: Agronet-Colombia

AGRONET, a National Agricultural Information and Communication Network was developed with the goal to connect small producers in Colombia and reduce the digital divide through public private partnerships and growing broadband penetration in rural municipalities.

A Government of Colombia’s initiative under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in collaboration with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The main aim is to provide information and knowledge on new techniques for sustainable food security and for the diversification of crops in order to improve productivity and opportunities in the market. While the network is aimed at policy makers, other stakeholders in the agricultural chain including small producers are expected to benefit through the platform.

Agronet platform helps in standardizing and integrating resources to offer value-added information and communication services for the agricultural sector using modern and traditional ICTs. The platform also has alliances with several actors in order to integrate other systems of information into the network and expand the content offered.

In order to serve producers with relevant and targeted information, Agronet has developed user profiles of all users based on needs assessment and users’ particular productive activities. Taking advantage of the penetration of mobile technologies in the rural users, new agricultural innovations – technologies and methods are introduced to producers systemically through SMS. Producers receive updates on Agronet’s platform, including changes in its databases and other news and events pertinent to agriculture.

Agronet offers a dedicated space for the agribusiness to view supply and demand, and to publish notices of products and services related to agriculture and agribusiness. The platform also has a digital library, policy documents related to agriculture and food security and other statistical bulletins for students, researchers and policy makers within the agricultural field. Agronet also gives its users the opportunity to train virtually from online courses available on the website. The platform also allows small producers to search for credit information for their farm inputs, market for their produce, and information of other stakeholders.

Over the medium term, Agronet plans to provide a greater wealth of content and information services to producers by adding capacity in digital television. For more information, visit Agronet.

April 14, 2012/by actualize

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