Originally posted on the GBI Portal – Page 41

Citizen Journalist? Consult the Mobile Media Toolkit

The recent rebellions in the Middle East and North Africa have shown to the world the power of recording and disseminating revolutionary events often denied by oppressive regimes; and the proliferation of mobile phones has proved to be a necessary piece of media weaponry for these citizen journalists.

How then, can mobiles be used to maximize the efficiency of their citizen journalists?

The Mobile Media Toolkit created by MobileActive, clarifies problems that may arise while using mobiles in media and assists citizen journalists in their endeavors to deliver their own perspectives of events to the rest of the world.

The Toolkit—available in English, Spanish and Arabic—provides how-to guides, wireless tools, and case studies on how mobile phones are being used for reporting, news broadcasting, and citizen media.

Citizen journalists often report out of necessity so mobile phones are a rapid, covert, and cheap communications channel to suits their needs. In hostile regions where journalism is censored or banned altogether, citizen reporters must be prepared for reacting to quickly changing situations and security measures.

MobileActive’s online resource has information relevant for varying prototypes, from the basic Java phones to the latest smartphone. The tool kit has five main components consisting of:

Creating the Content—Knowing how to capture multimedia enables reporters to capture breaking news and information at a moment’s notice. This section discusses capturing content (like photos, video, audio, and location information) on phones, both smartphones and otherwise; editing that content; (briefly) sharing that content online.
Sharing Content from Mobile to Media—Explores content platforms that let mobile phone users (including trained journalists, untrained content producers, or even “readers”) easily upload content to various mediums. This section also looks at blogging, microblogging, and uploading multimedia.
Delivering Content Online from Media to Media—Covers how to make content (text, audio, video, and more) accessible to a mobile audience in various ways, including text message alerts, audio channels like phone calls and radio, mobile web, mobile apps, and location-based services.
Engaging the Audience—This section articulates how to engage audiences on their mobile phones to make it more participatory. Since social media has become an important conduit for engagement, understanding mobile social media, “listening” to the audiences are saying, and thinking about audiences as participants and content creators rather than passive recipients of content. The section focuses on helping media organizations see their mobile-using audiences as participants in the media process.
Making Sure Information is Secure

The Mobile Surveillance Primer helps identify and understand the risks involved with mobile communication in citizen journalist’s work. The Primer goes over basic mobile surveillance, and acknowledges what kind of information can be transmitted by or stored in your phone.
The Tips and Tools section discusses specific use cases
Mobile Active’s Security Risk Primer—to help activists, human rights defenders, and journalists assess the mobile communications risks that they are facing, and then use appropriate mitigation techniques to increase their ability to organize, report, and work more safely.

MobileActive’s new Mobile Media Toolkit covers all the bases in what citizen journalists should know about reporting with their mobile phones.

Hopefully this how-to initiative will encourage more citizen journalism efforts beyond the Middle East and North Africa to all repressive governments, enhancing efforts for citizens to hold their government’s more accountable and transparent.

August 3, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Democracy & Governance, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Texts and Balances: Nigeria’s 2011 Election

Photo: MobileActive

In Nigeria’s presidential election this April, election observers sent over 35,000 daily text messages to document validity or corruption of the election counting and results. The theory behind Project Swift Count 2011 was that having election observers at voting locations around the nation equipped with mobile phones could immediately report foul play. The theory worked—statistically significant samples by independent organizations verified the published election results from the Nigerian election bureau—indicating that corruption was minimal or nonexistent.

The National Democratic Institute worked with the government of Nigeria to hire 8000 election observers to monitor 4000 voting stations. A parallel vote count was collected and corruption monitored and reported. The observers documented peoples votes, whether they were pressured by anyone, and if all the candidates were listed. Then, the observers each sent a minimum of five text messages during the course of voting to verify the following events:

Photo: NDI

1. Voting accreditation booths opened on time

2. Closing of accreditation booths on time

3. Close of voting booths

4. Starting time of vote counting

5. Accurate reporting of final votes at verified time the next day

Subsequently, political corruption was stymied and the election results were accurate in terms of the sample NDI collected. President Jonathan Goodluck was elected in a fair and clean democratic election.

The project cost around nine million dollars in total, including an independent evaluation of the funds. A group of independent researchers, including Katrin Verclas of MobileActive, carried out the evaluation, and found that nearly all the money could be accounted as originally proposed. These clean results have motivated other countries to utilize this system as well. NDI is currently working with Zambia to monitor their next elections with a similar plan.

Given the high use of mobile phones and the live stream of communication possible via SMS, mobile phones present another solution to promoting democratic elections. And with the spread of mobile satellite service around Africa, this project is scalable in other nations.

August 3, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

E-agriculture…Let’s look at projects in the Caribbean

Credit: Radio Toco

E-agriculture typifies the shift from struggling industrial economies to a knowledge-based entrepreneurial economic landscape driven by rapid technological innovation.

ICTs, which are increasingly viewed as tools that can enable farmers to work smarter and boost their returns, have functioned as a source of empowerment, boosting and building capacities, through highly efficient knowledge sharing processes.

Here are two ways in which e-agriculture is helping to transform the Caribbean’s agricultural sector.

AgriTalk: An initiative of the Caribbean Farmers Network (CaFAN)

Objective: To facilitate a community of knowledge network of practice for Small Farm Holders and Farm associations and stakeholders across 16 Caribbean Islands by probiding cheap network communications using innovative digital technologies (VOIP) to facilitate timely agriculture related information (market prices, information about fertilizers, crop varieties etc.)

Approach: Partner with Mobile Telecom & VOIP Providers to create a closed user group service at a low cost to members of the network.

Regional-CaFAN- VOIP (ATA Adapters)-Peer Network & Gateway-Pilot

Internet Access- Low cost Edge Service -(Data Cards) Modem and Router – US$20/month

Local Level- CUG with Local Mobile Network -(Digital or C&W) -US$5/month (Free SMS)

VOIP Gateway – At each Network Contact Point (using SMS or code)

Beneficiaries: Nearly 1 million farmers

Benefits to community: Better prices, reliable information, Ease in selling their products etc…

Driving Agency: CaFAN, Farmer Associations

Rural Radio-Radio Toco 106.7FM, in Trinidad and Tobago, South-Eastern Caribbean

Objective: Aimed at serving the community and broadcasting community programs to alleviate poverty through information and ICTs.

Radio Toco came on stream in November 1997, with UNESCO/UNDP assistance within the framework of UNESCO’s special program “Women Speaking to Women”, and has gone from strength to strength since then.

Approach: A radio station and multimedia center, offering training

Beneficiaries: Rural Community

Driving Agency: Toco Foundation with the help of volunteers

Key lessons from these two initiatives

Technology is secondary to preparing and aligning people and processes
Effective community participation is vital
Strong leadership from village up is essential for success of any ICT4D project (e.g Agri-Talk)
Leveraging ICTs is not necessarily about changing lifestyles in rural communities. In many instances, they will introduce new methods of doing the same old activities.
Agricultural information is a complex process (information infrastructure—access and costs)
Knowledge sharing and strategic content development will be vital

Find out more about e-agriculture projects around the globe here.

August 3, 2011/by actualize

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

Grad students build novel tool in fight against malaria

Photo Credit: geardiary.com

A new faction has joined in the war against malaria: graduate students. A group of students developed a malaria diagnostic tool that will be rolled out in India and Ethiopia this summer. Called, the Lifelens project, the tool uses a micro lens on the camera of mobile phones that can ultimately test for and diagnose malaria.

Created by Harvard Business School student Cy Khormaee and UC Davis doctoral student Wilson To, the lifelens product attaches a $50 micro lens to the camera of a Windows 7 enabled smartphone.

With the camera in place, the phone can then capture high-resolution images of the cells in a drop of blood that is placed on the micro lens. Windows 7 software quickly analyzes the images, confirming the presence or absence of malaria. Once the images are analyzed, the results can be sent to public health workers and other health professionals via SMS for further assessment and data collection.

Current standard practices in malaria diagnosis involve administering a rapid diagnostic test (RDT). This method takes a blood sample, usually off of the finger of the patient, and then exposed to a cotton swab containing a solution that reacts with malaria antigens that may be in the blood. However, this method is inefficient and produces many false positives, with only a 40% accuracy rate.

Photo Credit: springwise.com

The lifelens tool acts as a powerful microscope and can easily be sterilized for further immediate usage. It is also more accurate than RDT since it detects malaria cells directly. To and Khormaee say that in the long run, the lifelens tool will be more cost effective than current RDT detection methods.

However, there are some obstacles. The lifelens tool only operates on a Windows 7 enabled smartphone. These phones cost hundreds of dollars and may be affordable in resource poor areas. Also, the lifelens tool is not the only novel technological tool in the malaria detection space. Disposable tests are already in wide use, and others are developing diagnosis technologies, including a DNA-based one that could, like Lifelens, test for malaria and other illnesses.

The lifelens project received an award in the Microsoft sponsored Imagine Cup competition that featured innovative technological tools that use Microsoft software. With this award in hand, To and Khormaee plan to roll out a testing phase for their tool in India and Ethiopia.

Virtually all deaths from malaria occur in the developing world with 90% occurring in Africa. Any advancement in malaria diagnosis is highly valued. The lifelens project is aiming to change the way infectious disease diagnosis is handled. “Malaria is just the beginning,” says To. “We’re building a platform.”

August 3, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Health Systems, Infectious Diseases, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Army of mothers set to fight malaria in Mali

It was recently announced that an initiative called Mobiles Against Malaria will be launched in Bamako, Mali. The initiative will be executed using mothers who are community health workers in an effort to use mobile phones to prevent, diagnose and treat malaria in a more effective way than it has been.

The project is being funded by Akvo, a foundation created in 2008 that uses open source web and mobile software to attract funders to a spread of projects being done in the developing world.

CHW's at work. Photo Credit: Akvo

Mobile phones will be used by the mothers who were recruited as community health workers(CHW) to record data from neighborhoods on malaria. The CHW’s will visit each household in a particular neighborhood ready to ask pre-formulated questions.

The answers to the questions will be gathered on the mobile phones. For example, some of the questions asked may be ‘how many people live in the house’ and ‘how many people are ill’ and ‘what is the number of newborns’.

After gathering all of the necessary answers, the data will be sent via SMS to a central database located at a local hospital. It is hoped that NGO’s and local organizations will take advantage of the databases to analyze the trends and assist households in need of help. Officials hope the SMS data collection system will shed light on estimating how many insecticide-treated nets are needed in the poor areas in Bamako.

These community health workers will travel to malaria impacted areas around the capital city of Bamako to administer a revamped program. An older version was implemented using CHW’s who tested 2,796 children for malaria with a finger prick test after visiting nearly 100,000 households. That framework will be enriched by the introduction of the SMS-based frontline data collection.

The use of mothers as the CHW’s is a hallmark feature of this program. That along with using the SMS based frontline data collection sets this malaria detection program apart from other ones going on in Africa. Using mothers presents several advantages:

mothers are trusted in the community
they easily gain trust from other women from whom data is being collected
they can persuade women to visit hospitals using that established trust
they often have insider knowledge to the neighborhoods they work in
they ensure use of treated mosquito nets
they support treatment adherence

Along with attaining malaria specific data such as households using insecticide treated bednets, officials hope the program will create easier access to information on the burden. They also hope the cell phone-based application will improve patient management via a cell phone risk assessment and triaging tree, strengthen patient history documentation in the field, enable clinical communication (text, image, audio) between community health workers and clinics, and provide access to previously unrecorded health information.

The program aims to use mothers and cell phones to decrease costs of malaria detection and treatment while improving the access to treatment and treatment adherence. The program will train and utilize 50 CHW’s and 2 hospitals over the span of a year. It hopes that using mobile phones will build off of prior success.

August 2, 2011/by actualize

Connectivity, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

MTN rolls-out rural mobile broadband project

South Africa’s second largest mobile operator, MTN plans to roll out over 1 000 Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems (UMTS) base stations in rural areas for the next two years.

MTN SA’s Chief Technology Officer Kanagaratnam Lambotharan (image source: file photo)

During an interview session with ITNewsAfrica today, MTN Chief Technology Officer Kanagaratnam Lambotharan says his company’s vision was to provide mobile broadband connectivity throughout South Africa, citing the huge investments in solar powered radio transmission and Base Transceiver Station (BTS) sites.

MTN plans to bring the much-needed broadband capacity to millions of its subscribers in the country and its operations across the continent and the Middle East. The company has made significant broadband investments in the West Africa Cable System (WACS), and in East Africa Cable System (EASSy) undersea cables.

“These investments in undersea cables have already decreased the cost of Internet connectivity, further giving consumers an enhanced customer experience,” says Lambotharan.

“Broadband access will need to come from other access networks, such as mobile. For many consumers, their first internet experience is via a mobile handset, and MTN is working tirelessly to ensure that every customer has access to the World Wide Web,” says Lambotharan.

He says many studies have proved that access to broadband helped to contribute to socio-economic development and lead to a significant increase in a country’s GDP.

Lambotharan said Africa was still lagging behind in terms of broadband penetration, but was quick to point out that MTN was confident that when the undersea cables and fibre optic cables were operational they would spur socio-economic development and help the continent address the challenges of under development.

“The key limitations to rolling out infrastructure however remain the availability of high capacity transmission and in some cases grid power, which requires additional investment from telecoms players such as MTN.”

“As a company with operations in emerging markets, the availability of reliable energy sources in rolling and maintaining a reliable network is crucial.

“The unavailability of reliable energy supplies makes network rollout very expensive, thus dissuading potential investors from investing,” says Lambotharan.

Lambotharan says the cost of purchasing hardware such as computers and modems was the key factor that derailed universal broadband access.

“It is with this in mind that MTN launched Internet TV. The purpose-built keyboard provides customers with Internet access without the need to purchase computer hardware,” says Lambotharan.

Savious Kwinika

August 2, 2011/by actualize

Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

China Train Crash News Brought by Netizens on Weibo

Chinese rescuers work around the wreckage of train cars in Wenzhou in east China's Zhejiang province, Sunday, July 24, 2011. A bullet train crashed into another high-speed train, killing dozens of people and once again raising safety concerns about the country's fast-expanding rail network. (AP Photo/Color China Photo)

Photo Credit: Color China Photo

Twitter’s Chinese counterpart, Weibo, has been the primary channel to inquire how the tragic high-speed train accident occurred last week.

The July 23 collision of two high-speed passenger trains near the eastern city of Wenzhou killed 40 people, left 191 injured and is proving to be an ailing political problem for Beijing.

Within the past week, the government’s growing dichotomy is wearing on Chinese citizen’s patience, as authorities have pledged transparency but suppressed the cause of the incident.

Premier Wen Jiabao, in a rare news conference last Thursday at the site of the deadly train wreck, promised an, “open and transparent,” investigation of an accident, which has incited questions on the safety of the country’s new high-speed rail system.

This comes in lieu of the Communist Party’s propaganda office instructing the media to play down coverage of the accident and emphasize positive news in their weekend reports. Chinese citizens have turned to Weibo to try and uncover what happened.

Weibo is the company Sina’s version of Twitter, and has over 100 million users.

Last week, there were ten million messages about the crash on Weibo and twenty million on Tencent’s QQ.com Weibo, the other major Chinese microblog. When combined, these two microblogging sites have more users than Twitter has worldwide.

When the crash first occurred, survivor Yangjuan Quanyang’s Weibo account broke the news by posting a plea for help at 8:47 pm local time. According to China Daily, she wrote, “Our train bumped into something. Our carriage has fallen onto its side. Children are screaming . . . Come to help us please! Come fast!”.

In ten hours, Yangjuan’s plight for help was reposted more than 100,000 times and the criticism continue to grow.

Chinese public opinion and doubts about the accident are all filled with anger. In user-created polls with hundred of thousands of votes, netizens illustrate that are wholeheartedly dissatisfied with how the government handled the crash.

Online poll on how the government handled the wreck

Photo Credit: Penn Olson

Some of the questions they demand answers to are:

What is the reason of the accident? What equipment was destroyed by lightning?
Why the train body was buried, is it to cover up the evidence?
Why give up the rescue work for early reopening? Rescue the little girl can be considered a miracle?
Is the new Shanghai Railway Official competent? He was once demoted three years ago due to railway accident.
How many deaths are there?

The CCP Propaganda Bureau has tried to control the media about reports on the incident, in an attempt to bury this information. After covering information on the crash all week, the Beijing News had an image of the weather forecast on its front page Saturday.

The Hong Kong Journalists Association condemned the Bureau’s efforts, saying it “is appalled by such a move and demands that the CCP Propaganda Bureau withdraw this directive and allows the media to report the truth freely.”

Instead of relying on the reports of these journalists, the citizens are reporting their own news to each other—usually more timely and accurate, still, than those of traditional sources.

Similar to citizens reporting on the Arab Spring uprisings, or recent photos and stories from the apocalyptic scene in Syria, civil society from around the world recognize the power of social media to hold their government’s accountable and circulate information to one another.

The Chinese working knowledge on the interworking of their communities, cities and country are slowly slipping from government control, and falling into netizens hands in 140 characters or less.

August 1, 2011/by actualize

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

Millions awarded for maternal health innovations

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah. Photo Credit: USAID

The Saving Lives at Birth program held its DevelopmentXChange event last week in Washington DC. The event was hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah and was sponsored by USAID, the Government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, and The World Bank.

The program called for scholars, researchers, doctors, and entrepreneurs to develop innovative prevention and treatment approaches for pregnant women and newborns in rural, low resources setting around the time of birth. There were over 600 applications from around the world, and 77 finalists were chosen to attend this 3-day event held in Washington. At the end of the 3-day event, $14 million in grants were awarded to 25 of the 77 finalists.

The 77 ideas and projects fell into two categories: seed grant finalists and transition to scale finalists. The former were completely innovative and fresh ideas while the latter were already existing ideas that were calibrated to fit for maternal health purposes.

The projects and ideas highlighted gadgets, treatment schemes, prevention methods, health centers, strategic plans and a plethora of mobile phone related solutions. Finalists came from all over the United States and from over the world including Bangladesh, Kenya, India, Uganda, Pakistan, Switzerland and Australia.

Some of the 25 award nominees. Photo Credit: USAID

Many of the ideas that had mobile solution components used mobile phones as an ICT. One innovative project was from Kenya called mAfya which aimed to set up health specific kiosks that would offer basic medical services for free for maternal health issues. There was another project from Kenya that aimed to provide pregnant mothers vouchers to use towards health services through mBanking called Changamka.

Among the awardees, one project from Save the Children provided a mobile phone monitoring system for recording maternal and neonatal deaths. This, along with an electricity-free fetal heart rate monitoring component aims to give communities in Uganda better intra-partum response services. Another project originated from Healthpoint services in India that has already set up rural health clinics and provides water, and is looking to expand its maternal health services using an integrated telemedicine and mHealth system.

Saving Lives at Birth, the first program in a series of Grand Challenges for Development led by USAID. The Grand Challenges is an attempt to bring science, technology and innovation to the field of development, lowering the cost of helping the world’s poor and, in the process, saving lives, said USAID administrator Shah.

“Especially in these very difficult economic times … coming up with more innovative, more local and sustainable ways to make it cheaper and easier to help mothers survive child birth and help children survive the first 48 hours of life is what this program is all about,” added Shah.

Maternal and child health issues still need a lot of attention. A woman dies every two minutes in childbirth, and 99% of the deaths are in the developing world, according to the World Health Organization. Also, about 1.6 million neonatal deaths occur each year around the world. Additionally noteworthy is that only a handful of countries are set to meet Millennium Development Goal 5 of reducing maternal mortality by 2/3 by 2015.

August 1, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

ICT Training for Guyanese Sugar Workers…

Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud addressing an audience

Credit:Guyana's Ministry of Agriculture

Sugar has been the mainstay of Guyana’s economy for over two centuries. But the sector has been contracting since the abolition of the 1975 Lomé Convention, a special arrangement under which the South American country’s famed Demarara sugar was allowed duty-free access into the lucrative European market.

The changing global trade environment forced many neighboring Caribbean countries, including Trinidad and Barbados, to shutter their sugar industry. Guyana, on the other hand, is holding firm. The government increased investments in the ailing sector, safeguarding the economy and livelihoods. Sugar is the largest single employer and contributor to the economy. So important is the sector to the country that the largest sugar producer, Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc. (Guysuco), puts more people to work than any other entity. Guysuco is also the country’s main source of foreign exchange, bringing in revenue that accounts for as much as 13% of GDP.

An economy so dependent on an industry prone to speculation, with a productive capacity outranked by other producers and alternatives, begs the question: How can this highly indebted poor country, with a per capita GDP hovering below US$1, 500 revitalize this crucial economic activity?

The Caribbean Farmers Network (CAFAN) points to Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) as a crucial set of tools in a mix of solutions. A view I share, as ICT is crucial for economic development. According to the World Bank, an increase of 10% in mobile phone penetration results in a 0.8% expansion in economic growth. The potential benefits of ICT expansion, especially to rural areas where farming is a mainstay, is wide-ranging. Farmers, irrespective of their crop specialty, are exposed to vital new information services that improves/enables a culture of enterprise.

Although Guyana is a slow starter in the ICT space, the government’s commitment to develop and promote ICT countrywide is strong. Earlier this year, Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud commissioned the second of eight ICT centers for the benefit of sugar workers and their families. Far too often states consider ICT expansion solely a matter for schools, ignoring the wider society and key aspects of the economy. Improving the ICT skill base among Guyanese sugar workers will better prepare them for planned improvements in sugar facilities, such as the new Skeldon Factory.

August 1, 2011/by actualize

Connectivity, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Egypt’s mobile users on the rises

Mobile service providers in Egypt said their number of subscribers has risen (image: stock.exchng)

The three mobile service providers in Egypt announced that the number of subscribers has risen in the second quarter of the current year to reach 78.153-million subscribers, an increase of 10.7 percent.

The percentage of mobile market penetration in Egypt has reached almost 91.94 percent of the country’s population of 85 million.

Vodafone Egypt came out in the top spot with 33.74 million subscribers through the end of June, with a market share of 42.2 percent, followed by Mobinil with 30.583 million subscribers and a market share of 39.1 percent.

Etisalat announced that it is nearing a market share of 17.7 percent with some 13.83 million subscribers.

Vodafone Egypt said that its subscribers used 18.363 million minutes in the second quarter of the year. The company added that its subscriber base picked up an additional 1.913 million customers the second quarter of 2011.

The released data from all three companies said that there are 1.384 million customers using monthly contracts with an approximation of 161.2 EGP per customer. Pre-paid card customers reached 32.361 million subscribers and spent each around 22.4 Egyptian pounds.

Manar Ammar

August 1, 2011/by actualize

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