Originally posted on the GBI Portal – Page 34

MTN Nigeria, Safaricom Kenya, and Vodacom SA are influential African telecom operators

It may come as no surprise that the majority of African telecom operators have Twitter accounts. To succeed in an increasingly competitive marketplace, every companies must ensure a positive user experience. What better way to communicate with customers than through social media, most notably Facebook and Twitter? Twitter feeds can supply news and product information. In turn, consumers can act as PR vehicles. Moreover, no force in business is greater than the power of one – the consumer. Personal interaction between company and consumer not only spurs immediate user retention, but seeds word-of-mouth recommendation.

That said, some telecom operators in Africa are more involved in social media efforts. Not surprisingly, the most influential hail from Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa. All of these nations have substantial online user bases where customers are engaged with social media. Essentially, these companies have a greater chance of having their message spread and adopted throughout the Internet.

Klout believes that every person who creates content online has influence. Their goal is to understand what they are influential about and who they are influencing. Klout analyzes interaction among 10 networks including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, with more on the way. They look at how many people you influence (true reach), how much you influence people (amplification), and the influence of the people in your reach (your network). Then, the algorithm assigns a single score from 10-100 indicating how meaningful/trustworthy/awesome an account is.

Klout scores for African telecom operators, based on @oafrica/african-telecom-operators Twitter list. {Klout}

Using a Twitter list, sourced from the Wikipedia List of mobile network operators of the Middle East and Africa and a list of operators from Africa & Middle East Telecom Week, Klout is able to run each account through its algorithm to determine how strong of an influence the brand has across the Internet.

According to Klout, MTN Nigeria, Safaricom Kenya, and Vodacom SA are the most influential telecom operators in Africa. Impressively, Orange Kenya, Tigo Tanzania, and inwi Maroc all have Klout accounts. The PR teams at these telecoms are certainly ahead of the game in Africa, let alone globally. Also:

Nigeria: MTN leads with a score of 78. Etisalat and Glo are near equals in terms of influence (64 and 60, respectively), with Airtel and Starcomms behind (38 and 29, respectively)
South Africa: Vodacom leads with a score of 69. Cell C and MTN are nearly equal (59 and 55, respectively), with Virgin Mobile back at 41.
Kenya: Safaricom leads with a score of 71. Orange is at a healthy score of 57.
MTN clearly has a social media strategy in place. The company’s Twitter accounts for Uganda and Rwanda are considered influential (having a score over 40). Even more impressively, MTN Sudan yields a Klout score of 24 – very strong considering the small user-base of Sudanese Twitter users. The account only has 48 followers!
Less influential, but active accounts include Telecom Namibia, Airtel Tanzania, Malawi Telecommunications.
Other accounts have the lowest Klout score possible (10). Most of these were created but have sat dormant for at least a few months. They include Orange (Madagascar, Niger), Airtel (Niger, Uganda, Malawi), Comium (Gambia, Ivory Coast), and Sonatel (Senegal).
Orange Niger actively Tweets, but only has 16 followers, suggesting a lack of social media users in Niger.
Comium Gambia (3rd GSM operator in the country) Tweets a few times per month, and has 123 followers, but the influence appears nil.
MTL (Malawi) has fairly low influence (16) despite a decent number of followers given the prevalence of Internet in Malawi (170).

September 27, 2011/by actualize

Video: SEACOM cable upgrade

Standard Group Kenya’s KTN Business recently aired a video segment on Seacom’s planned upgrade of its undersea cable to cope with growing demand on the eastern seaboard of Africa. Mark Simpson, the new Chief Executive Officer at SEACOM, says that the advent of 4G services will mean that additional demand for broadband will flourish in the near future. He also adds:

a major challenge of SEACOM is reliability of the fiber-optic cable
partners must understand maintenance and security challenges of fibre
Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania government & private consortia should be watched closely – could be promising example for others

September 27, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Health, Non-communicable Diseases, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Arogya World announces diabetes prevention mHealth program in India

Arogya World, a US based NGO, in association with Nokia, will be launching a large-scale diabetes prevention mHealth program in India. The diabetes awareness program aims to reach one million people over the course of the next two years through the use of text messages, which will be translated in multiple languages, catering to the diverse population in India.

The announcement was made at the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting in New York City.

For more information, read the official press release here.

September 26, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs): The low hanging fruit for mHealth

As the New York UN meeting on Non Communicable Diseases NCDs draws to a close, one big takeaway that everyone seems to agree on is that NCDs are reaching epidemic proportions worldwide. This may be bad news; however it does present some tremendous opportunities for mHealth in developing countries. NCDs include cardiovascular conditions, some cancers, chronic respiratory conditions and type 2 diabetes. These conditions account for 60% of all deaths worldwide, with 80% occurring in low and middle-income countries[1]. It’s time we put as much funding and emphasis on NCDs in developing countries as we do with infectious diseases. NCDs have twice the number of deaths than infectious diseases (including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria), maternal and perinatal conditions, and nutritional deficiencies (nature link). [2]

There is no refuting the fact that there are significant problems to overcome. The fact is Global health is challenging, but not all challenges are equal, some challenges are more challenging than other. Let me elaborate: If you are attempting to find a cure for HIV or a vaccine for malaria. This would be difficult from a scientific perspective; it would also be expensive and will likely take a long time to achieve. On the other hand, if you attempt to educate a population on diets, lifestyle changes, encourage exercise and reduce smoking; then you will likely prevent an epidemic of extreme proportions that is on the way to developing nations.

There are some low hanging fruits that can be tackled right now with existing mobile technology and know-how that would make a significant impact on the future of Global health. The traditional model of NCD episodic care in clinic and hospital-based settings is inadequate in developing countries due to scarce resources. The low hanging fruit could be plucked by using a mHealth diagnostic and monitoring platform to diagnose health conditions and address the common risk factors, such as smoking, diet and sedentary lifestyles. There are a multitude of studies that show how cellphones can have a positive impact on lifestyle and behavior changes, tying this notion to medical diagnostics and monitoring (continuous or periodic)could have a profound effect. There is a need for diversity in the funding criteria to allow funds to be diverted to develop viable and sustainable innovations in urban areas to address NCDs, there seems to be too much emphasis on rural health in developing nations. Yet there is strong evidence the urban dweller will be far worse off in the future due to the growing obesity rates.[3] Mobile operators in the developing world are in a great position to use their 3G networks to exploit the new health data and services that will surely be unleashed.

[1] World Health Organization Preventing Chronic Diseases: A Vital Investment (WHO, Geneva, 2005).

[2] Nature 450, 494-496 (22 November 2007) | doi:10.1038/450494a; Published online 21 November 2007

[3] Overweight and obesity in urban Africa: A problem of the rich or the poor? http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/9/465

September 26, 2011/by actualize

Connectivity, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Internet Connectivity Options and Status in Rural Kenya

I am David Scanell and I would like to describe the Internet access landscape in Kisumu and Nyanza from my personal experience. Now this just Western Kenya, so I can’t comment on the rest of rural Kenya, though I imagine it’s pretty similar.

There are a few terrestrial and wireless ISPs in Kisumu – KDN, Africaonline, Orange Telkom and Swift Global spring to mind. I think a few more may arrive soon once the fibre optic cable installation marathon that’s currently under way here is finished.

Right now, I know a couple of people using Orange ADSL and a few others using KDN’s WIMAX. I only know a single person (through their business) using fibre but I think quite a few more homes and business may switch to fibre soon; maybe even more will move to wireless services from resellers. I’m pretty sure that far more people will start use mobile data over the same time frame though – coverage in Kenya is very good and the spread of mobile ownership continues apace – and there are a few drivers for mobile growth that are no where near exhausted yet.

Since I last lived here in 2007, there has been a noticeable influx of new, cheaper low- to mid-range phones to the market. Whereas before I saw high street shops full of second hand phones, today I see quite a lot more selling good looking branded phones from China such as Tecno – which has a broad range available here – as well as a Huawei and ZTE who also have a few products. There’s also a pretty high volume of KIRF stuff for sale here too. Lots of weird and wonderfully specced Noklas, Samesungs and the like.

Huawei’s IDEOS (android) phone has had a huge media push here of late, though it is still way, way out of the average person’s reach though at it’s current KSH7,999 price point. The Samsung brand seems to be going from strength to strength here and, as ever, Nokia has a big (though noticeably falling) high street presence.

Nearly all these companies offer mid level phones that have EDGE capability at least – some of them also have 3G (the cheapest one in Safaricom’s shop right now is KSH3,999). High level stuff is available here too – PhoneExpress have my Desire Z on sale – but the prices are as high as you’d expect with, for example, a Samsung Galaxy S (i9000) setting you back KSH42,999.

For a mobile 3G modem, prices range from KSH1,999 for the Huawei E173 to KSH12,199 for the Huawei E5 (which is a portable wifi hotspot) and most come with a bundle of free data.

As for mobile data coverage and pricing, there may not be much 3G outside of major towns just now, but EDGE seems to be almost everywhere else, at least in the parts of Nyanza, Western, Central and Coast I’ve traveled to in the last 9 months (including some very out of the way places around Lake Victoria here).

The end user cost is relatively low – standard unbundled MB price on Safaricom is currently KSH8 – and the bundled prices seem to be dropping all the time. The main players Safaricom, Orange and Airtel are cooking up new, lower-priced data bundles. There’s currently a new set of bundles being marketed by Safaricom as “affordable Internet for less”. These daily bundles are priced from 5MB for KSH5 up to 25MB for KSH20.

I’d say the number of Kenyan’s going online via mobile will continue to increase rapidly for a good while yet.

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September 26, 2011/by actualize

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

Scalable and Replicable: ICT4Health is Chosen Theme for UN South-South Awards

Digital Health 4 Digital Development was the theme of choice for the 2011 South-South awards that took place earlier this week. The United Nations-supported awards ceremony, held September 19th, honors governments, organizations and individuals accelerating progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and this year awards were given for utilizing ICTs for the advancement of the MDG health goals.

Prime Minister of Bangladesh receives South South award from

Photo Credit: thefinancialexpress-bd.com

The awards were organized by South South News, a digital media platform launched by the United Nations General Assembly High-level Committee in 2010. The platform disseminates development news and allows countries in the global South to share best practices in advancing implementation of the MDGs. As health remains a high priority within the international development field, with three of the eight MDGs calling for health improvements by 2015, this year South South chose the “catalytic and unifying force of ‘digital health’” as its focus.

Awardees were recognized for policies, programs and projects that address global health using ICTs as a mechanism for “scalability and replicability of the broad development agenda.” Awards were given on health categories such as Women and Children’s Health and HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria with special consideration given to achievements in the fields of mobile, broadband, Internet, medical, and pharmaceutical applications.

Among the winners was Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina who received recognition for the use of ICTs in addressing women and children’s healthcare. The government of Bangladesh has made increasing the use and availability of ICTs a priority over the past decade, declaring IT a “thrust” sector and implementing a national ICT policy in 2002. The prime minister has been a catalyst for ICT development in Bangladesh, launching the Digital Bangladesh 2021 program, reducing taxes to make computers and other electronics more affordable, and giving free internet services to schools. This is not the first time she has been recognized for her ICT work in the country. The PM noted during the ceremony that most of Bangladesh’s 11,000 community health clinics have been digitized, allowing for free treatment of diseases like malaria and AIDS and reducing maternal and infant mortality rates.

Use of PDA by the nurses at ICDDRB hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Photo credit: Bytesforall "ICT4Health" Network

Other development agencies and UN-affiliated organizations are also choosing to give awards to those using ICTs to advance public health initiatives. The Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation, rising from the work of UNAIDS High Level Commission on HIV Prevention, has launched a competition to find innovative start up projects that use social media and mobile phones for HIV prevention. The competition is taking applications until October 1^st and the winners will receive up to $10,000 to implement one-year projects.

As global health becomes a pressing priority, it is essential to utilize, innovate, and increase access to ICTs within the healthcare sector. The South South awards have set a precedent by recognizing the success of ICT4Health in accelerating the Millennium Development Goals and could encourage Global South countries to follow in the footsteps of nations like Bangladesh.

September 22, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Humanitarian Assistance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Shah: Cell Phones Could Provide Famine Relief

This article by Andrew Quinn originally appeared on Reuters.com.

A Somali resident purchases a cell-phone handset at a shopping centre in Mogadishu, November 4, 2009. Credit: Reuters/Feisal Oma

Cell phones may bring relief to famine victims in parts of Somalia controlled by al Shabaab insurgents as donors seek new ways to circumvent the hard-line militants, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.

Rajiv Shah, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, said that despite al Shabaab’s ban on foreign aid in regions they control, progress was being made to reach about 2.7 million people desperately in need of help.

“It is difficult to provide large-scale commodity support. Food convoys have been attacked, so we’re trying a number of more innovative approaches,” Shah told Reuters on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

Cell phone networks and the traditional “hawala” money transfer system used in many Islamic societies are two such routes, Shah said, while aid groups from Gulf Arab countries and elsewhere were also making inroads.

“We’re trying cash distributions through the hawala system and through mobile phones and then concomitantly flooding border markets with food so that traders can then make the connections,” Shah said.

Al Shabaab, a hard-line Islamist group linked to al Qaeda which controls most of the southern part of Somalia, banned food aid last year and kicked many groups out, saying aid creates dependency.

Some 3.7 million Somalis are at risk of starvation in the worst drought in decades, including some 2 million in rebel-held regions were most major aid agencies cannot reach.

Some local agencies are allowed to deliver aid to these areas, but this is not enough for all those who need it.

The rest of Somalia is expected to slide into famine by the end of the year as the drought gripping the Horn of Africa affects more than 13 million people.

Shah said U.S. efforts to improve agricultural techniques and technology in the region, coupled with economic support programs to make local communities more resilient, had helped to prevent the famine from broadening into a wider crisis as it did 1984-85 and again in 1998-2000.

But he said the situation remained critical, and new strategies aimed at enabling people to secure food supplies close to home were aimed at forestalling a broader flood of refugees to already overburdened camps.

“People leaving their communities going on these treks where they almost certainly will be assaulted, robbed, often raped,” Shah said. “The risks of participating in humanitarian action in the place they are is probably considerably lower.”

EXEMPTIONS NOT ENOUGH

The United States in August said it would not invoke anti-terror laws to prosecute nongovernmental groups working in southern Somalia if some aid falls into the hands of al-Shabaab, which is on the official U.S. terror blacklist.

But Shah said the exemptions had had little effect as most foreign aid organizations continued to have almost no safe access to al Shabaab-controlled regions.

The United States has contributed about $600 million to famine relief efforts in the Horn of Africa, more than half the total global response.

But Shah said he was worried that future efforts could be hobbled as U.S. lawmakers try to find a further $1.2-$1.5 trillion in budget cuts to trim the huge U.S. federal deficit.

“I am extraordinarily worried because that would be very counterproductive,” he said, saying a further destabilization of Somalia and strengthening of al-Shabaab could have direct security consequences for the United States.

September 21, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Agriculture Markets, Extension Service, Food Security, Livestock, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

ICT4Ag ShareFair Next Week!

Credit: ShareFair

Agriculture professionals will converge at the Headquarters of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) next week in Rome for the 2nd Global Agricultural Knowledge Share Fair.

As I write this, it is days away from kick-off of the 4-day event in Rome from the 26-29 September. With all the excitements that ShareFair brings, participants will be expecting to discover and share new creative and innovative learning and sharing opportunities; and equipping themselves with tools to better influence future agricultural development activities. With the advent of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs), the approach to agricultural knowledge sharing has evolved enabling people of all background to participate and contribute. ShareFairs present unique opportunity for participants to share and discuss the ways in which they have applied new methods of communication and knowledge sharing to improve the effectiveness and impact of their work.

Being the fourth ShareFair and the second of its kind with global focus, participants are expected from all regions of the world with over 160 presenters. This includes farmers, students, academicians, researchers, practitioners, journalists, entrepreneurs, politicians, and policy makers. They will be sharing their knowledge on a variety of rural development and agriculture related topics such as food security, climate change and green innovations, gender, ICTs, mobile technology and social media, new technologies and innovative agricultural and farming practices, markets and private sector, water, livestock, young people, networks and communities of practice. These presentations will take forms such as TedTalks, market place, world café, chat shows, peer assist, fish bowls, and open space.

Knowledge fairs are face-to-face events in which participants set up displays to share their undertakings. Share fairs are interactive events that employ various knowledge sharing formats such as market stalls and booths, and workshops and presentations designed to encourage discussions. They are “free-flowing,” open, flexible, and non-hierarchical. The aims of knowledge share fairs are to provide opportunities for multiple parties to broadcast their achievements, exhibit their products, and market new programs to donors, policymakers, other institutes and potential partners; facilitate face-to-face networking and promote South-North exchange on common agendas; help people benefit from each other’s experiences; and stimulate interest in future collaboration and the development of new programs. ShareFairs can be internal to an organization or open to partners and the public.

Since 2009, the ICT-KM Program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has helped organize three Share Fairs: ShareFair 09, Rome; ShareFair Cali, Colombia in May 2010; and AgKnowledge Africa Share Fair, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia October 2010. This fair is being jointly organized by Bioversity International, FAO, IFAD, WFP, CGIAR, and CTA.

To follow events:

Live webcast of the keynote addresses, plenary sessions and sessions to be held in the Italian Conference room and Oval room via: http://sharefair.ifad.org/

Other social media channels include:

Conference hashtag: #sfrome

Twitter: http://twitter.com/sharefairs, http://twitter.com/ifadnews, http://twitter.com/faonews

Blog: http://blog.sharefair.net/ and http://ifad-un.blogspot.com

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/sharefair

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/sharefair09/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/KnowledgeShareFair

“Daily Corriere” – the Share Fair daily newspaper – will feature blogposts, tweets and stories from the event.

September 21, 2011/by actualize

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

Mobile Operators as Clinical Service Providers?

Mobile Health Live recently held a live broadcast webinar from Kuala Lumpur to examine the role of mobile operators in the delivery of mobile health services.

The webinar was moderated by Richard Cockle of the GSMA and featured contributions from Claire Margaret Featherstone of Maxis, Irfan Goandal from Qtel, Dr Mubbashir Iftikhar from KPJ Healthcare and Craig Friedrichs from the GSMA.

The panel discussed the opportunities open to operators working within the mobile health sector, and highlighted a number of specific areas of interest where operators can provide tangible benefits to healthcare partners and their patients. According to the panel, support for a stretched public sector and the remote monitoring of patients with lifestyle diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension, are two key services that mobile operators can provide for the mobile health sector

The panel recognised the complex nature of the healthcare industry with multiple stakeholders and country specific regulation affecting local markets and discussed some of the work being undertaken to help facilitate the integration of mobile services into existing value chains.

If you weren’t able to tune in live to the webinar, you can now watch it on demand.

September 21, 2011/by actualize

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

Tobacco control and mHealth

A decade ago, around half of the people in the world’s richest countries had a mobile phone. Mobile penetration in Africa was under 2%. Today there are more than 5.3 billion mobile phone subscriptions globally. Penetration in a number of African countries is now over 40%. More than half of households in majority of developing countries including in rural areas – have a mobile phone. Despite the vast outreach of this technology, the potential has not been fully tapped by the public health or tobacco control community.This is due to a number of reasons, the most notable being an absence of well documented studies/demonstration projects to show the population wide impact in a cost effective and sustainable fashion.

For the last six months WHO has been researching the mhealth tobacco control market and looking for possibilities to leverage m health and tobacco control. The challenge we see are few studies or projects that are currently using mobile phones and tobacco.

The few studies we have found have focused on sms for cessation in developed countries but the results are impressive. From the sms cessation projects in the UK, New Zealand and now the US, we see that using sms for cessation is highly effective. As we know, the spread of tobacco use is moving to the developing world and we could have the same impact in developing countries.

Of course it is not just about individual smoking behaviour and cessation. Our research and outreach has pointed to the possibility of using mobiles for individuals to access quit services, raise awareness and communicate about the dangers of smoking. Mobile networks can give WHO and our partners access to the largest market in the world, this is very important for anti smoking messages which can have a far greater reach than through TV, print or other media campaigns. Mobile phones can be used as a geotagging mechanisms to provide advice on smoke free places and to improve compliance of smoke free laws, to provide a platform for social networking, gaming and competition, and to monitor and collect data on the tobacco epidemic.

With approximately 6 million tobacco attributable deaths very year it is critical that we move quickly, leveraging technology such as mhealth, to build awareness, improve enforcement/compliance of tobacco control laws and to help existing tobacco users to quit.

As the space for tobacco control and mHealth is relatively empty we have a unique opportunity to bring together tobacco control and mHealth players to develop successful interventions that can be used both by developed and developing countries in their tobacco control work. WHO is looking to engage with interested organizations and foundations to partner with us such as mobile associations, telcos, academics, application developers, foundations etc.This is a public health intervention where there is an opportunity for you to develop appropriate public-private partnerships with governments.

We hope that we can connect through this HUB – form new partnerships, share lessons learnt and best practices, validate what works and what doesn’t, monitor existing projects and create new ones, and spread the word on effective mhealth solutions for tobacco. Eventually we plan to create a matrix of population wide cost effective solutions for our member states detailing the top mHealth solutions for tobacco control.

Image credit: Matthias Weinberger (Flickr)

September 21, 2011/by actualize

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