Originally posted on the GBI Portal – Page 31

Airtels’ mMoney Market for Ghanaian: An ICT4D Model

Photo Credit: Airtel

The Sales Director of Airtel Telecommunications Mr. Luck Ochieng ‘outdoored’ an advanced form of mobile banking in Ghana on Wednesday by stating that “this innovative mobile service would help customers to overcome many challenges the public go through when transacting business in their daily lives.”

The mobile money service in Ghana will allow customers to pay their postpaid and DStv bills; pay for goods and services; contribute to their loans and savings; send airtime to themselves, to friends and to family on Airtel or other networks; send money from their Airtel Money account to other Airtel money customers; send money from their Airtel Money account to people on other networks; receive money on their Airtel Money account; and perform Cash-in and Cash-out activities i.e. buy or sell Airtel Money and much more.

This is a huge move in the area of information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) in Ghana, which is expected to impact lives from the ordinary citizen through the corporate sector to the national government. With an estimated 80% of Ghanaian being “unbanked”, this opportunity could not have come at any other better time than this. The caption of the news at the Ghanaweb site tells it all “Airtel subscribers can pay ‘trotro’ fares with phones.”

Mr Ochieng emphasized the importance of the service to enhance public safety through a ‘cashless society’ where one could make direct purchases with e-money instead of the actual exchange of cash from one source to another. The Ghanaian society is on high alert in recent years with the rise in attack by armed robbers on market women who carry huge sum of money across the regions for payment of goods and services. In addition to the cost of human lives that are lost in some of these attacks, the indirect consequences on businesses, primary producers, and the transport sector is unbelievable.

Ghana has gone through the various stages of information and communication technology development (ICTD) over the years. This is seen in the significant progress being made in terms of i) developing national ICTs policy to guide the deployment of the technology across the country; ii) the setting-up of an independent regulatory body that is overseeing the overall process to ensure free and fair competitive market; iii) the presence of multiple telecommunication operating companies in the Ghanaian market; iv) revolving funds such as the universal service and access fund (USAF) and other private-public-partnership activities that are in place for financing broadband extension to remote area; v) the development of the physical infrastructure of ICTs in Ghana ahead of a number of its neighboring countries; and vi) the sound environment for developing the technologies associated with the infrastructure for effective functioning are being created.

It is time to look more into information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) – the application of the technologies to improve lives and reduce poverty. So is is time for the implementation of services such as e-governance (connecting all local and central government departments with functioning websites and email addresses); e-agriculture (connecting rural farming communities, empowering them to use the technologies and linking them to market); e-education (connecting scientific and research centers universities, colleges, secondary schools and primary schools with ICTs); e-health (connecting health centers and hospitals with ICTs, especially the rural ones with the urban centers), e-democracy (enabling ordinary citizens to have their voices heard through community access points, connected public libraries, cultural centers, museums, and post offices); and the m-banking services.

Juniper Research predicts that active users of mobile money services will double in the next two years, exceeding 200 million worldwide by 2013. This is an opportunity that no one would like to miss. Airtel is in the right position to take the mobile money industry in Ghana with their “Best Mobile Money Product or Solution” award during the 16th Annual Global Mobile Awards at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year.

October 20, 2011/by actualize

Connectivity, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Bringing Global Broadband to the Doorsteps: Who is Doing What in Africa?

US-Africa Summit

Since the field of information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) has been cautioned not be a standalone sector but rather integrated into the existing areas of development, successful projects have seen a number of collaborations among development partners. The recently ended 8th Biennial U.S.-Africa Business Summit organized by the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA) in Washington, DC epitomized such collaborations.

One of the workshops at the summit on “Talking to the Future: Bringing Global Broadband to the Doorsteps”, brought together panelists from the World Bank, Microsoft, SEACOM, the Island of Tenerife, and the Nigerian Identity Management Commission to discuss efforts that are being put in place to deliver broadband Internet to remote communities. Areas covered include infrastructure development such as data centers, fiber optic cables and Internet exchange points; regulatory environment; identity management to ensure safe use of the Internet; innovative technologies and their applications in education, health, agriculture, and other sectors; and local content development that includes Africans themselves.

Image Credit: GBI

The discussion took off with an intellectual introduction from the moderator – the immediate past CEO of Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization (CTO), Dr. Ekwow-Spio Garbrah using the acronym “PROFIT” to describe the broadband Internet environment. A sound Policy environment to ensure availability and accessibility to the net; the Regulatory environment by national countries to allow for free and fair competitive market; a smooth Operating environment by the companies; the Funding or Financing of broadband to accelerate infrastructure development; development of the physical Infrastructure itself; and the Technologies associated with the infrastructure for effective functioning. This opened the ground for each panelist to fit their areas of operation into one or more of these “PROFIT” areas.

The World Bank

The presentation by Mr. Doyle Gallegos from the World Bank seems to cover almost all the areas of broadband deployment under the ‘PROFIT’ acronym. According to the Bank, ICTs are the most significant tools that can be used to fight poverty right now and the bank is doing everything possible to deliver low-cost value added service to the population. The bank’s primary role is to provide finances for infrastructure but at the same time, it gives technical assistance to governments to promote right enabling environment, assists its clients to create legislation, right national ICTs policies, and right regulations in order to promote private sector development. Over the last 5 years, the World Bank has invested an amount of USD 700 billion into the ICT sector through private investment guarantees and ICT is one of the best performing sectors in the World Bank Group’s portfolio, both in terms of returns and development impact

The bank is also ensuring that people learn how to use the ICTs, and how to use digital computers. Also in the area of infrastructure sharing through open access, lowering the cost of use of these technologies to ensure the access to broadband, open access legislation, and pricing mechanisms. The World Bank is also concern with the issues of spectrum management and considers it as a biggest potential problem in the growing area of data communications, and data traffic in the future. It is therefore doing everything possible to ensure that spectrum become available to entrepreneurs, mobile operators, new emerging operations that we haven’t seen through simple sharing blocks. It is also involved in innovative Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) to invest in regional networks in Africa – East, West, Central Africa, etc.

Mr Gallegos stated that national governments in Africa have to open up and partner with private businesses. Other areas touched by the speaker include data centers, IXP, e-legislation, – e-commerce, e-documents, m-banking, etc. It concluded that a lot have been done but the bank still need to put in more.

SEACOM

Mr Brian Herlihy from SEACOM – a privately owned and operated pan-African ICT enabled company that is driving the development of the African Internet also emphasized the company’s efforts in infrastructure development projects in East Africa that is being replicated in West Africa through the development of the fiber optic cables. The company is also involved in a number of innovative commercial solutions to exploit other commercial relationships. SEACOM is known to have financed and developed the first broadband submarine cable system along the eastern and southern African coastlines, bringing with it a vast supply of high quality and affordable Internet.

The Island of Tenerife

Mr. Carlos Alonso Rodríguez, the Vice President of the Island of Tenerife – the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, agreed with the previous speakers about the fact that mobile Internet services may not be the answer to Africa and other developing nations even though it is having significant impact across. As a result, the government of Tenerife is investing in infrastructure development through fiber optic cables and data centers.

The Island is also using a publicly funded approach to developing the state of the art data centers across the country, a model that the representative argued, could be used in the continent of Africa and the Latin American countries. This approach brings the issue about the pros and cons of publicly funded infrastructure projects in the ICT sector in the developing nation. In order to benefit from these investments, the Island is also investing in the services sector through the use of e-education, e-governance, among others to benefit the ordinary people and to be able to generate revenue from the investment.

Through the ALiX Project, Tenerife is expected to enhance its competitiveness in the global telecommunications market. The project will become a Neutral Access Point for West Africa and the Canary Islands, developing cable connectivity between new and existing African and Latin American submarine cables and creating the southern gateway to Europe for telecommunications.

Nigerian Identity Management Commission (NIMC)

Mr Chris E. Onyemenam, the Director General of Nigerian Identity Management Commission (NIMC) narrated the country’s experience in terms of the application of ICTs – that is the content for development. He recounted the weak experience of Nigeria in the ICTs sector for some years back but through the leadership of the former military leader, General Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria has made remarkable progress through the development of national telecommunication policies and the focus on ICTs. He argues that the Internet communication is till low in Nigeria with the mobile sector moving very fast and efforts are in place to “leapfrog”.

In order to leverage on the mobile and broadband Internet penetration in the country for positive impact on the various sectors, the national identification efforts was introduced in 2007 across government agencies to optimize the use of the scarce resources. Prior to NIMC, the various identification schemes, including the database and issuance of identification cards both in private and public sectors, resided with the respective organizations. There has been no unique set of principles, practices, policies, processes and procedures that are used to realize the desired outcomes related to identity.

The NIMC program started with the registration of all citizens of Nigeria who at the commencement of the Act have attained or who thereafter attain the age of 18, and issuance of a National Identity Card (NIC). This was aimed at controlling illegal immigrations to the country, validation of other civic documents like passports, setting up a reliable personal identification system for the purpose of secure commercial transactions with financial institutions, etc.

Instead of waiting till 18 years, the NIMC is in the process of registering Nigerian at birth to address issues such as fraud and multiple identities. At the moment, the national identification database is being established and will be maintained and managed by Nigerians. Other steps that are being taken include, assignment and issuance of a unique National Identification Number to individuals who have been registered, introduction and issuance of General Multipurpose Cards, undertaking of data harmonization, administration and provision of secure connectivity to existing systems, and provision of card acceptance devices and other identity services alone or in partnership with third parties.

With the issues of ‘419’ in Nigeria i.e. identity fraud, theft issues, and misrepresentations, the system is designed and based on the assumption that ‘if you cannot stop them from illegally acquiring the passport, then you can manage the process”. And this is being done through the registration and issuing of ID for legal residents and at birth. This will make it difficult for individuals to engage in future fraud activities.

Microsoft

Dorothy Dwoskin, Senior Trade Policy Director from Microsoft stated that, as a technology developing company – hardware and software, the company believes that technology could act as an engine of growth and development. The company believes that access to market is great but we also need the goods and services to be able to get to the market. As a result, the company has a priority to make the good and services get to the final consumer across the finished line. Microsoft works with local entrepreneurs to ensure market through business information centers, and digital literacy.

Microsoft is also working with AECOM on a USAID program to help find some very important solution to simple problems that ultimately facilitate trade. AECOM has been implementing the Trade Facilitation and Capacity Building Project in a number of African countries including Malawi, Namibia, and South Africa to effectively manage the Southern Africa Trade Hub that was established to assist Southern African businesses to take greater advantage of the global trade initiatives. The Hub is designed to function as a central point where local enterprises can gain access to US markets through business linkages, capacity building services, and problem-solving trade facilitation.

At the moment custom information and data has to be entered manually at each post or each country thereby giving chances for fraud and delay in the clearance process as good and services are traded between countries. It is believed that a days’ delay in goods and services from one country to another has a negative impact on the overall GDP of the country. But at the moment with the manual custom clearance activities, Botswana has about 28 days of delay, Namibia has around 29 days delay, and South Africa has 30 days for clearing goods and services at the customs.

“So if we can automate the activities of custom and clearing agencies, it will be good for business and trade for governments by increasing competitiveness and revenue stream of companies and governments,” Said Ms Dwoskin. Automating information to reduce these long days of clearing goods and services at these ports will facilitate trade. Microsoft is therefore helping to create a single unified approach so that transactions between these countries is automated so that by the time the good moves from one country to another, the information/data entered at one points is already available at the other end. Connecting all computers so that once the data is entered at one point, information is shared among all others on the network.

According to Ms. Dwoskin, Microsoft is also concern with local content and therefore ensuring local software development in wherever it goes, and in Africa the company has strong base by using the local people to develop local content or local software that are relevant to Africa’s economy.

Other questions and responses led to the “5As” acronym of broadband Internet namely Access; Affordability; Availability; Adoptability; and Adaptability. Also in terms of relevant content with broadband utilization, instead of ‘3G’ which some refer to as ‘Girls, Games and Gambling’, Africa needs ‘4Es’ – Employment; Empowerment; Education; and Enterprise.

In all, the discussion centered around various ways of innovating upon traditional broadband capabilities in order to aid in the development of growing markets, the possibility of introducing e-commerce solutions for micro-financed businesses, and the feasibility of streamlining/optimizing regulatory frameworks to work in favor of spectrum coordination in times when rapid deployment and cross-border mobile and wireless communication may be needed to deal with emergency situations.

Broadband in itself is not a business, and therefore investing in broadband requires that services and applications are implemented after building the infrastructure.

October 20, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Health, Health Systems, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Will Nigeria Turn to mHealth to Achieve its Healthcare Goals?

Nigeria may be joining a number of African countries in prioritizing mHealth as a way to improve the country’s troubled healthcare system. At a recent mobile Health workshop in Nigeria that was put together by the African telecommunications company MTN, stakeholders voted for the nation to adopt a mobile healthcare system.

Omobola Johnson, Nigeria's Minister of Technology and Communications

According to some, Nigeria is among the countries leading the way in using mobile health services. Several mobile companies operate there, with MTN serving the largest population percentage followed by Globacom, Zain and Etisalat. The Nigerian Communications Commission estimates that around 105 million of the country’s 155 million people were subscribed to a mobile service provider in August 2011.

Nigeria faces many challenges in expanding its healthcare system, such as a lack of infrastructure, a shortage of trained healthcare professionals, high illiteracy rates and unreliable power sources. The nation’s government has made some efforts to address these challenges in order to meet the Millennium Development Goals. The National Primary Healthcare Development Agency operates under the Health Ministry to promote and support the development of a high quality primary healthcare system.

Photo credit: eHealth Nigeria

But is the Nigerian government prioritizing mHealth as a means to improve healthcare delivery? Omobola Johnson, Nigeria’s recently appointed Technology and Communications Minister, has been pushing toward nationwide mobile coverage as well as the implementation of emergency call centers and phone lines. However, when Johnson revealed the Ministry’s mandate at the end of August, the use of mobile devices for improved healthcare was not mentioned specifically.

Many individuals, private companies, civil society organizations, and aid agencies feel that Nigeria should embrace mHealth as a mechanism for repositioning the country’s healthcare system. Through fuller adoption of mHealth into the healthcare delivery system, many more people could be reached. But the government will need to place mHealth at the top of the agenda and support mHealth initiatives should the emerging field succeed in improving Nigeria’s healthcare.

October 19, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Mobile Money Service: An Innovation for Rural Women

Photo Credit: Africa News

I remember vividly carrying bundles of millions of Cedis (Ghanaian Currency) in my car about 9-10 years ago, and driving from Tamale (the Regional Capital) to the remote rural communities to pay local farmers for their seed cotton during marketing. You can imagine all the risks involved in carrying such a huge sum of money across districts with no security – the danger of being attacked by armed robbers, the chance of loosing the money, the risk involved in counting and paying individual farmers accordingly without over or under-payment, the challenge with safe handling of these money by the local farmers themselves, the temptation of overspending the money by the rural farmers immediately after receiving their payments, and the risk associated with “banking” the money in their thatched houses.

Don’t forget about my earlier view of a typical ‘rural’ community – lack of basic social facilities such as credit union or banks. I saw my own mother ‘banking’ her money in some special plastic bags and hiding it from us (the children) and later discovering that the value of the money has depreciated such that she could not use it – don’t forget about the skyrocketing inflation rates in Ghana in the mid-late 80’ after the military coup. I also remember interesting stories of my cotton farmers about ‘banking’ their money in the home under mattresses and being discovered by their children; hidden in a pots and being destroyed by red ants and other insects; buried in the ground and forgotten or swept away by a flood; kept under the roof of their building and being destroyed by fire, among others.

Basically, rural women who are mainly farmers, have the challenge of banking or storing the money they obtain at the end of the farming season safely and inaccessible from others as well as from themselves. These rural women also at some point of their life, need to either send some of this income to their relatives outside their village or receive money from their children in the cities. This ability of transferring money to others, or location-shift one’s own money is also an issue. It is also important for the rural women to have sufficient money (or credit) available in the right format or currency when it is required, especially at the start of a new farming season or the beginning of school year where they have to spend on their kids. Finally, the challenge of actually making saving for future use and for purchases of more expensive farm equipments cannot be ignored.

How did the story change with Mobile Money Services?

Mobile money service is seen as one of the world’s fastest growing industries, following the success of the growth of the ‘mobile’ industry over the past two decades where billions of transactions are done using mobile devices. With leadership from M-PESA in Kenya, innovative mobile payment solutions that enable customers to complete simple financial transactions including person-to-person money transfer have been emerging and transforming rural lives. Mobile money services has its presence already in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Benin, Cameroon, Guinea Bissau, Swaziland, Uganda, Zimbabwe, South Africa in addition to Kenya with Liberia being one of the newest countries across Africa to adopt this innovation.

Rural women all over the world are now using mobile money services to facilitate their work. When asked about the mobile money service being provided to her by Lonestar Cell MTN and Ecobank Liberia Limited, a market woman has this to say:

“In trying out the Mobile Money service, I have been able to send money to my son in Buchanan to pay his fees at the Grand Bassa Community College where he is a student and not worry whether the money I sent would reach him. I found the service very effective, convenient and affordable. Clearly, this is better than any other money transfer service I have ever used” (Woman from Liberian Rural Community).

Within the mobile health sector, the application of mobile money service is seen in the use of Medical Smart Cards that allow people who have no access to medical plans or insurance cover to save money through the use of M-PESA transfers. Savings are used to pay for primary health care, specified laboratory tests and drugs at pre-contracted prices. A combination of mobile banking, public information, and free treatment are used in Kenya to give women access to fistula repair. Women can call a free hotline, and if money is needed for transport to a fistula unit this is transferred via M-PESA. Using mobile money services make treatment a reality for women who otherwise would not have been in the socio-economic position to get an operation.

A study conducted on the use of mobile money services in “Kenya Case Study: Who Is Using Mobile Money?” shows that slightly more than half of the mobile money market (56%) live in rural areas and 51% of the users of mobile money services are women. Another study conducted in Kenya in 2009 about the impact of mobile money on the rural people revealed that M-PESA is boosting their income through cheaper, more accessible, and safer money transfer options. The research also shows M-PESA is empowering rural women because it makes it easier for them to solicit and receive money from their husbands and other contacts in Kenyan cities. Remittances through M-PESA relieve many women in rural areas of the burden of traveling by bus to cities to receive money from their husbands, a process that for some could take as long as one week. Also the M-PESA mobile money transfer system is used in Tanzania for example to pay for the transport of women suffering from fistula, children with cleft palates and other disabilities.

The potential of mobile money in the Ghanaian market is so huge with an estimated 80% of Ghanaian being “unbanked” – meaning they conduct their transactions outside the banking sector with no access to financial services. Mobile money is reducing the transaction costs of financial services for Ghanaian in rural areas, saving the cost of travel and time spent visiting the nearest town to access financial services, providing people with a way to transfer money safely and keep (or even increase) their savings.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the USAID-funded project in Haiti, Integrated Finance for Value Chains and Enterprises (HIFIVE) announced the launch of the Haiti Mobile Money Initiative (HMMI) to stimulate the development of mobile money services in Haiti in 2010. The following two stories show the outcome of this project:

In a cybercafé in downtown Port-au-Prince, Jean Yves deposits money into his TchoTcho Mobile account. Michel, his brother who owns the business, recommended that he register for this mobile money service so that he doesn’t have to carry money across town and risk being robbed. Taking his brother’s ad-vice, Jean Yves deposits cash at the cybercafé and withdraws it via his phone when he arrives at his final destination.

One hour away in the busy port town of Saint Marc, Carmen receives a text message saying that Mercy Corps has deposited US$40 of food aid into her T-Cash account. She picks up her bag and heads off to her local merchant to purchase rice and beans using her phone.

The USAID’s Fostering Agriculture Competitiveness Employing Information Communication Technologies (FACET) project which helps USAID missions and their implementing partners in sub-Saharan Africa to use information and communications technology (ICT) more successfully — via sustainable and scalable approaches — to improve the impact of their agriculture related development projects including Feed the Future projects, shares its experience with the use of mobile money in agriculture in “Using Mobile Money, Mobile Banking to Enhance Agriculture in Africa”. Also with the setting up of the mFarmer Initiative Fund, there is the hope that more rural women will have access to mobile phones and be able to utilize mobile money services to improve their lives.

A recent report “Mobile Money Transfers & Remittances: Markets, Forecasts & Vendor Strategies 2011-2015” by Juniper Research predicts active users of mobile money services to double in the next two years, exceeding 200 million worldwide by 2013. The principle behind mobile services including mobile phones and mobile banking with the structural support from information communication technologies is something that has come to change lives in rural communities in particular. Mobile money services have come to stay. Different models, applications, and innovations will evolve over the years for simplicity, ease of use, less costly, and more compatible to a variety of mobile devices across the developing world.

October 14, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Health, Maternal & Child Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

How to Disseminate Maternal Health Information to Rural Women

There are numerous ICT projects that focus on maternal health, many designed to reach women in rural areas where there is a severe lack of healthcare services. Mhealth in particular – the use of mobile phones to improve health – has taken off as a tool for providing critical information to pregnant and new mothers. In USAID’s MAMA project, for example, pregnant women in Bangladesh receive weekly information updates via text or voice message.

Photo credit: Open Ideo

But what is the best method for disseminating health information to rural women? How can the women learn and interpret the information in a way in which they can understand its value, making certain behavior changes if needed? Vikram Parmar, a professor at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, attempted to find this out through research conducted in India with 120 women from seven different rural villages. Parmar wanted to know how to motivate users of a Primary Health Information System (PHIS) to adopt positive health practices through designing and developing a Health Information System that maximized information dissemination.

Parmar wanted to explore how to improve information dissemination where health ICT projects had fallen short in three areas. First, he was concerned with the limited impact of Health Information Systems in educating rural users, as well as ICT-based health interventions such as film showings and radio program broadcasts that had not improved the health practices of rural target audiences. Secondly, the typical content and design of Health Information Systems did not encourage regular use due to the “non-persuasive setting of health interventions,” resulting in an information gap between rural women and primary health information. Finally, HIS deployed to rural users were based on content developed for urban users, resulting in a mismatch between the information given to rural women and the information they actually needed. In particular, maternal health and other personal women’s health issues had not been addressed.

Parmar proposed addressing these problems by employing a user-centered design framework to develop ICT interventions (see framework in full below). He tested this framework in the context of the PHIS. The results of his exploratory research indicated that the rural women’s knowledge had improved after interacting with the PHIS, signifying the importance of understanding user needs, taking into account existing social beliefs and practices related to health issues. Using this framework could improve information dissemination, resulting in positive change in rural women’s health-related practices.

October 14, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Environment, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Boosting women’s shea nut businesses with smartphones

The shea nut industry has come a long way since I was a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa from 2006-2008. In fact, despite researching ICT4D initiatives on a daily basis, I was still baffled when I read the Economist article about a shea project in northern Ghana that provides personalized barcodes for women to stick to shea nuts sacks as they sell them to buyers.

Photo credit: The Economist

It’s one thing to read or listen to others talk about the use of mobiles to improve maternal health or apps that help grain buyers manage transactions from small-scale farmers in the developing world. It’s another to really consider the impact that various ICTs are having on the people of an area where one has lived or worked before.

Shea, a product that grows on trees as a fruit and whose nut is pounded into butter to be used for cooking, confectionary, and cosmetics, has long been referred to as “women’s gold.” That’s because traditionally women are the primary ones to gather the fruit from the ground after it has ripened and fallen. The nuts grow only in the semi-arid zone of sub-Saharan Africa from the Gambia to Uganda. Because of the rare properties of shea, the worldwide demand for the product worldwide has grown, some sources estimating that 150,000 tons of dry kernels are exported every year from Africa. Various non-profits, NGOs and aid agencies have taken advantage of the large shea demand to create projects that empower women by increasing their income and providing access to markets.

When I volunteered in Mali, shea production was hot on the development agenda. USAID was supporting shea projects through its Small Project Assistance grants, as well as organizing trainings on improved shea production methods through the West Africa Trade Hub. Since shea trees were abundant in my rural site of Kamona, I was able to work extensively with the women on shea projects; we formed a cooperative, acquired solar shea nut dryers and connected with nut buyers.

Christy and Nema from Kamona village, mali

Walking with shea producer in Kamona, Mali

For our shea projects, contacting buyers on cell phones was about as far as ICT use went. Records of the sacks that women brought were kept in torn notebooks using barely-working pens. If someone told me then that cell phones (what’s a “smart” phone?) would be used to keep track of the weight, price, and quality of nuts and sacks, I would not have believed it. Then again, volunteers who had been in Mali just a couple years before me never had access to mobile phones and were envious when us newbies could keep in touch with our families in America on a daily basis if we wanted.

Women in Kamona, Mali, making soap using shea butter

The project in Ghana is being implemented by the German company SAP alongside the NGO PlaNet Finance and is both a social and business investment. A smartphone scans the barcode on the shea nut sack during delivery and talks to a server in Germany, tracking each bag as it is weighed and loaded onto a lorry. Another part of the project has had the women form a federation called the Star Shea Network, which allows the women to offer a reliable supply of nuts and gain bargaining power with buyers. The women have also received training on nut quality improvement and how to act on market price information received through mobile phones. Eventually, SAP hopes that the women will be able to pay for the services with their increased income rather than relying on grants to sustain the project.

ICTs have been used to improve the work of shea producers in other ways, such as creating a directory of shea butter buyers, and marketing shea products through picture and videos. Though the smartphone project is nascent and is not yet being implemented elsewhere to the best of my knowledge, I cannot help but wonder if similar initiatives will reach the shea nut collectors in Kamona.

October 14, 2011/by actualize

Economic Growth & Trade, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

ICTs making big changes for rural women

Rural Women's Day

Mrs. Flora Emilia lives deep in Tanzania’s mountainous region. Owning a mobile phone has helped her access the latest market prices, and therefore get better rates for her crops, rather than being taken advantage by the middlemen.

She can now contact buyers on her own and search for market prices in town, none of which should could do before being involved with the Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS), a small grants fund initiated in 2002 to support work on gender-related issues in ICTs for the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific regions.

“I am a better woman now,” she says with pride.

By being able to search for market prices, she can now bargain and is looking into ways of increasing her crop production and expanding different crop types.

Emilia is a beneficiary of the Mikocheni Agricultural Research Institute (MARI) GenARDIS funded project, which distributed mobile phones to a group of women from the village of Peko-Misegese in Tanzania.

Small grants making big changes

According to Jennifer Radloff, Manager of GenARDIS project for Association for Progressive Communications (APC), women living in rural areas must overcome multiple barriers, relating not only to their location but also their gender, to access information and communication technologies (ICTs).

GenARDIS recognizes the constraints and challenges encountered by rural women–lower levels of education, cultural attitudes preventing women from visiting public access points without being accompanied by men, caregiving responsibilities, to name but a few– and has disbursed small grants to diverse and innovative projects in order to counter these barriers, to document the process and results, and to contribute to more gender-aware ICT policy advocacy.

For instance, radio (and increasingly the mobile phone), are perhaps the most ubiquitous communication devices in many rural areas, are often not accessible to women since men control and usually own the radio and the mobile phone in the household.

“With all the GenARDIS-supported projects, ICTs are only a means–albeit a very powerful means to an end in themselves. Access to information is the tool that allows women to envision small advances in everyday life and more monumental strides over time,” said Keane Shore, an Ottawa-based writer and editor.

Women play a central role in the agriculture economy and centralizing ICTs adds tremendous potential for improving rural livelihoods.

By demonstrating in tangible ways women’s huge contribution to agriculture and household income and the positive increase in livelihoods, gender relations are improved and women’s role in communities more valued.

“The love has increased in my house,” added Emilia whose new found financial independence has made space for more equality, respect and harmony in the household.

October 14, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

ICT Center Project To Educate Women in Rural Ghana

The international NGO Camfed, the Campaign for Female Education, has collaborated with Google to set up a network of three ICT centers that will reach some of the poorest and most remote rural areas of Ghana.

Photo of woman in Africa from Camfed website

Photo credit: Camfed

The women-run ICT centers will act as “hubs for learning, communication and entrepreneurship.” They will be located in the northern region of Ghana and the first will open later this month in the town of Bimbila.

Camfed’s mission is to fight poverty and HIV/AIDS in Africa by educating girls and women so that they can become leaders of change. The organization’s head of enterprise and leadership, Catherine Boyce, explained to EWeek Europe that because women in Ghana have few employment opportunities and are pressured to marry young, the female center managers will serve as “powerful role models” to the center’s clients.

Photo credit: Blackstarcommunications

Google has pledged to fund the ICT centers during the first two years of operations and while the centers get established with computers, printers, photocopiers and digital cameras. Though Camfed originally thought it would need to rely on solar energy to provide power to the centers, and may explore solar options on a case-by-case basis, the project will likely be able to use electricity since the power supply in Ghana has improved in recent months.

Development projects aimed at educating rural women through the use of ICTs are becoming more prevalent and take many forms. A successful Gates Foundation farm radio project taught women farmers about a drought and disease-resistant rice variety which greatly improved the income of farmers in the area.

Studies have shown that rural women in Africa face many challenges in gaining access to ICTs, such as affordability, distance, and time. Thus simply providing ICTs such as computers and Internet alone will not improve the lives of rural women. Rather, projects must provide low-cost options that contain a strong capacity-building component, such as education, in order to be successful. The Camfed/Google project in Ghana hopes to see success in improving the lives of rural women by providing free access and training in ICTs.

October 14, 2011/by actualize

Asia, Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Where we work

Solomon Islands: radio mail drive peace & development

Rural operators on discovery training into connecting with the rest around the globe

Frequency radio and e-mail maybe “simple” technologies but they are driving peacebuilding and development efforts in the Solomon Islands.

The People First Network (PFnet) is a UNDP funded project set up in 2001. PFnet promotes rural development and peacebuilding by enabling affordable and sustainable connectivity and facilitating information exchange between communities across the Solomon Islands.

PFnet has established a growing rural communications system based on wireless e-mail networking in the HF band, which enjoys full community ownership.

The PFnet community e-mail are the only link to the outside world, providing communities with access to information regarding health, public services and education, and enabling essential contact with family and professional peers.

Gender equality & rural development

PFnet plays particular attention to gender equity and democratic governance, helping women, especially disadvantaged rural women, to network, access services relevant to them and connect with women’s group.

A network of rural community e-mail stations is located on remote islands across the country, usually hosted in secure public facilities. The stations are pretty basic and consist of an old laptop, radio and modem, powered by a car battery, which runs off a solar panel as in most areas there is no electricity. The total cost of the equipment runs to around $8,000.

At the heart of the operation is an Internet café in the capital Honiara, which connects to the Internet via satellite. The connection speed is around 2Kbps, meaning a typical text e-mail sent by rural villages takes about 10 seconds to transmit.

“We are using old technology but it is robust,” said Joe Rausi, staff on the PFnet project.

“This laptop is quite old but it does the work. In the end we have to look at what is affordable in villages.”

“The People First Network is not about technology. It is about improving the standard of living of people in rural areas,” added Rausi.

Peace promotion

In a country where the only means of communication with the outside world for most remote areas consist of unreliable short-wave radios, and expensive statellite telephones, the PFnet project helped overcome the legacy of fear and mistrust created by years of fighting between rival ethnic gangs.

“We thought that by connecting people together, they would know more about each other and bring peace to the country,” said Rausi.

Map of the Solomon Islands

The Solomon Islands consist of roughly 850 islands and is one of the least developed nations in the South Pacific region. A quest for land and power fueled ethnic violence between 1998 and 2003 where hundreds were killed and thousands made homeless. Australian-led forces arrived in 2003 to restore order. Since then the country has enjoyed relative stability.

PFnet project illustrates how information and communication technologies (ICTs) can play a role in developing rural areas and driving peacebuilding initiatives. The project hopes to move beyond e-mail and explore using the system for distance-learning and e-commerce but bandwidth remains the biggest hurdle to this goal.

October 14, 2011/by actualize

Connectivity, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Providing Connectivity doesn’t Guarantee Women Have Access

Despite efforts over the past several years, to bring ICTs to rural areas of Uganda, assessments show most of these initiatives have been dominated by men. In the Rwenzori Region of Western Uganda, Toro Development Network (ToroDev) works to make sure women have access to this connectivity as well. More gender sensitive intervention is needed to enable the local population generate and exchange reliable information in a relevant local content on their own, enhance gender advocacy and sensitization programmes that target to improve the status of women and share knowledge by building an electronic community and networks, especially in the agricultural and agro-business sector. Over 80% rural women depend on small-scale agriculture and agro-business sector in the region.

Many gender, social, cultural beliefs marginalize women in all aspects of positive livelihoods in this region including access and use of quality information. ICTs cannot sustainably impact the Rwenzori rural community of Western Uganda (Kabarole and Kyenjojo districts) unless the women, who make up 63% of the total population, are given special attention. Customized ICT-enabled production, capacity/skills building and marketing tools that empower women in the agricultural sector are therefore imperative in this case.

What Toro Development Network (ToroDev) does to address this issue:

ToroDev is a community based NGO established in 2005 to promote the use of appropriate ICTs for sustainable and gender sensitive socio-economic community development of both men and women in the rural Rwenzori region of western Uganda. Its current operations cover the districts of Kabarole and Kyenjojo. For the past two years, ToroDev has been involved in community ICT4D awareness programmes using two community radios, holding sensitization workshops and writing ICT4D articles in local newspapers and bulletins with special attention on building the lobbying capacity of the marginalized youth and women to access and use relevant community information on their own[4] and communicate their development needs to local leaders – Local government and eventually influence ICT policy formulation at central government level.

At the beginning of 2006, after a community Information Needs Assessment survey, ToroDev embarked on a campaign of establishing of an ICT4D Research and Resource Centre in the Toro community (Kabarole and Kyenjojo districts) of the Rwenzori Region. The centre would later support its research, documentation, lobbying and advocacy, train rural men and women and facilitate knowledge sharing for best production practices among small-scale farmers and help them to access quality marketing opportunities at local, regional and international levels. This project was nominated and selected finalist in the prestigious Stockholm Challenge Award 2008. The project has so far brought together ten (10) main community based NGOs in the region to contribute resources and establish a bigger community owned telecentre facility “Kabarole Information Centre” whose one aim, among many others, is to train 700 women community development workers by 2011.

ToroDev approaches the improvement of small-scale agricultural production in the region using customized, affordable and relevant Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D). These are tools that efficiently facilitate cheap and instant access to information from community, regional, national and international level streams. Through the partnership with instititutions like SATNET (Sustainable Agricultural Trainers Network) IMARK (Information Management Resource Kit) group in collaboration with FAO, CTA and APC, ToroDev is piloting the strategy of “Building Electronic Communities and Networks” through training community workers how to use simple modern Web 2.0 Tools[5] to produce and manage agricultural information in the two districts of Kabarole and Kyenjojo. This information is needed by local small scale farmers to improve their production practices, add value to their products and have opportunities to access regional, national and international markets. Over 80% women living in these two rural districts make their livelihood out of small scale farming. Effective use of simple ICT4D (Web 2.0) tools reduces production and post harvest costs like transportation of agricultural produce to nearest market places, increase rural women farmers total revenues and therefore, improve their livelihoods and those of their community members.

Johnstone Baguma-Kumaraki, the Author is Executive Director, Toro Development Network (ToroDev)

October 14, 2011/by actualize