, , ,

Innovative “Internet Suitcases” to Bypass Government Censorship

 

boy with binoculars and man with mac computer in afghanistan

Photo Credit: NYTimes

The State Department is financing the creation of external wireless networks that would enable dissidents to undermine repressive authoritarian governments trying to censor or disable telecommunication networks, according to a New York Times report.

According to the Times story released on Sunday, Internet and mobile phone networks are being created so they can be deployed in an area independent of government control.

The State Department-led project involves the building of a $2-million prototype “Internet in a suitcase”, and independent “shadow” phone networks by a group operating out of a building on L Street in Washington, D.C.

This comes to light after the U.N. and the U.S. proclaimed Internet access and Internet freedoms as central to free speech and human rights.

“We see more and more people around the globe using the Internet, mobile phones and other technologies to make their voices heard as they protest against injustice and seek to realize their aspirations,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote to the Times.

The new technologies made to circumvent oppressive regimes are currently in development by the New America Foundation under their nonpartisan think tank, Open Technology Initiative (OTI). The D.C. entrepreneurial engineers are cultivating both new technologies, and finding ways to utilize the tools from the previous uprisings.

The State Department, for example, is financing projects to create stealth wireless networks, including a $2 million grant to develop the “Internet in a suitcase.” The networking access points are designed to look like regular suitcases that communicate with each other to create mesh networks connected to the global Internet.

Diagram of a stealth network and wireless mesh network

Photo Credit: NYTimes

These suitcases, which contain all the necessary hardware, could be smuggled into a country and deployed over an area to create a service independent of government control in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya, according to participants in the projects.

The other project is even more ambitious, the article states, where the State Department and Pentagon have spent $50 million to create an independent cellphone network in Afghanistan to offset the Taliban’s ability to shut down the official Afghan services.

This all comes after the “Arab Spring” uprisings over the past several months, which have drawn attention to network shutdowns and censorship conducted by regimes under threat like the Syrian and Egyptian governments. They attempt to stifle citizens’ ability to communicate with each other and to inform the outside world of what’s going on in the protest zones.

“The implication is that this disempowers central authorities from infringing on people’s fundamental human right to communicate,” recounted Sascha Meinrath, project director of the OTI, who is leading the “Internet in a suitcase” project.

However, Meinrath cautions that the cultivation of these independent networks also have can have a negative aspect:

Repressive governments could use surveillance to locate and arrest activists who use the technology, or persecute them for simply bringing hardware across the border.

Others believe that the risks are outweighed by the potential impact. “We’re going to build a separate infrastructure where the technology is nearly impossible to shut down, to control, to surveil,” says Meinrath.

The Times specifically discusses the foreign policy implications of these U.S. financed projects. After a decade long struggle in fostering media to evade hostile regimes like Voice of America, these ambitions are grandiose in scale.  Alternatively, the creation of these new tools could be the next step helping to empower civil society.

 

/by
, ,

New telemedicine center in Nigeria aims to keep patients at home

A new telemedicine center opened last month in Lagos, Nigeria with the purpose of providing healthcare to local Nigerians. Designated as the Glo-Telemedicine Center, located on Victoria Island in Lagos, this center is a product of the collaboration between Nigeria’s Global Resources and Projects and healthcare providers in India, U.S., Egypt and other countries.

Photo Credit: Onche Odeh

The center is designed to minimize transportation concerns for Nigerians, especially those in isolated areas, to bring them expert healthcare from abroad. According to the executive officer of Global Resources Dr. Wale Alabi, “the Glo-Telemedicine Centre would bridge the gap between the poor and good health services by creating a simless [sic: seamless] communication between them and those with the expertise and facilities to help them.”

Dr. Alabi cited the high prevalence of Nigerians using life savings, and even taking out crippling loans to travel to foreign countries seeking expert healthcare. Dr. Alabi also claimed that over 60% of those who go abroad for services can get those same services in Nigeria, but often go abroad due to incorrect diagnoses.

The center will be used as a medical tool to reduce medical costs and substantially increase range of access to patients. The center is designed to offer specialty treatments to Nigerians at a low cost. It will also offer Continuing Medical Education to health professionals as a means to keep them informed of latest trends in health services.

The center’s capabilities are dependent on broadband fiber optics supplied by a Nigerian Telecommunication firm called Globacom. Their services take advantage of advances in ICT to transmit text, sound, video, image and other information from one location to another location.

Telemedicine is an application of medicine that takes advantage of electronic communications to transfer information from one location to another, often between health provider and patient, or between two health providers. Dr. Alabi noted that the success of telemedicine in African countries such as Kenya and Ghana is “transforming those countries.”

Similarly, Dr Alabi hopes the center will ultimately transform the way Nigerians think about accessing healthcare. However, this is not the first telemedicine project in Nigeria. Several years ago, the Nigerian government through the ministries of science and technology and health, commissioned a pilot telemedicine project that used satellite-based technologies. That project, called the NigComSat-1 Telemedicine pilot, was labeled impractical due to high costs and inapplicability. The Glo-Telemedicine center however, took note and addressed those issues, which is why it is now fully operational to Nigerians.

/by
,

Fiber Optic Cables To Extend to 3 More East African Nations

In today’s headlines, African Telecoms giant Seacom announced that it will be laying fiber optic broadband cables in the coming year in three African nations: Burundi, Somalia, and Southern Sudan.  Fiber cables will first be laid in Burundi with the assistance of a $10.1 million dollar grant from the World Bank, and later in Southern Sudan and Somalia.

Attempting to connect all of East Africa together, Seacom has successfully completed fiber construction in Uganda, Djibouti, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Kenya, which is the headquarters of the region.  East African governments have been key partners with Seacom and other private telecommunications companies, including Korea Telecom in Rwanda.  In fact, the East African Community (EAC), a group of five nations, will invest a combined total of $400 million in laying broadband cables in the coming years.  With the undersea and terrestrial fiber cables laid, the groundwork will be in place for all of East Africa to be connected directly.

African Undersea Cables — A History

View more presentations from Steve Song

 

In Burundi, the reported plans include laying 1,300 kilometers of fiber optic cable, partially funded by the World Bank.  The funding for Southern Sudan and Somalia, however, is less concrete at this point, as governments and private sector players are only at the formation stage, with Seacom leading the way.

Seacom’s announcement came despite the spread of land fighting on the border of North and South Sudan this past week, where reportedly more than 53,000 Southern Sudanese citizens fled their homes.  Despite the fighting, Seacom spokesman Julius Opio remained optimistic.

However, Mr. Opio has expressed other concerns, including the low portion of the Internet community that is owned and produced by Africans.  Establishing broadband infrastructure in Africa, Mr. Opio argues, will increase African ownership and power in the Internet sphere.

“Today, the majority of internet content consumed in Africa is non-African, flowing from Europe and North America into Africa. …We believe that the growth of the African ICT market, including mobile penetration and the eager adoption of social networking, coupled with the development of cloud services will result in a rapid increase in content on African soil.”

Slideshow from Steve Song, and video from Seacom and CreamerMedia.


/by
, , , , , , ,

A West African ICT Hub? Ghana’s $10 Billion Legacy Plan…

The Ghanian government will spend $10 billion to realize its potential as a major ICT hub in West Africa.

Last week, Ghana said it “initiated the establishment of an innovation center that will promote export-oriented ICT products and services and generate employment opportunities.” The center will form part of an ICT Park to be built in Tema.

The West African nation notes that these plans are part of its drive to build a knowledge-based economy. The “Communications Minister, Mr Haruna Idrissu, said ICT parks worldwide played a critical role as intermediaries that supported knowledge-based economies.” The minister cited the Smart Village in Egypt, Innovation hub in South Africa, Software Technology in India and Technology Park in Malaysia as models for Ghana.

The establishment of ICT Parks may also strengthen the link between Ghanian research institutions and industry. This may engender a culture of commercial research funding, instead of the state-based framework currently used.

Mr. Idrissu says the project is a collaboration between Ghanian businesses, and the Ministries of Trade and Industry and Communication, which will stimulate private sector-led investment in ICT infrastructure. The proposed park is expected to promote technology development and diffusion, and stimulate the formation of new technology-based firms, which will boost wealth creation and provide jobs.

He says efforts are underway to build consensus for the project. Stakeholders were invited to a meeting to view the proposed design of the ICT Park. Ghana has instituted a range of measures to boost its position as a leading player in Africa’s emerging technology sector. Its eGhana project is slated to create over 7, 000 high-end jobs.

 

/by
, , , , , , ,

Tackling Poor Access to Farm Extension Services with ICTs

Poor access to farm extension services is still a major impediment to agricultural productivity and the improvement of rural livelihoods. But, increasingly, ICTs are playing a central role in enabling and facilitating the provision of demand-driven extension services. This marks a shift from highly inefficient public sector extension delivery models, under which farmers and rural communities had little/no opportunity to articulate their own needs.

Despite the ICT-enabled shift towards more democratic/pluralistic, demand driven and efficient extension services in some places, there is still a far way to go before game changing impacts are made.

A silver laptop with a blank screen and black buttons on bright green grass

CTA/ARDYIS Facebook Photo

Although the use of conventional technologies such as radio and television, and even new ICTs, is commendable, many “model projects” reach too few people and are unsustainable.

But the emergence of multiple players in the evolving extension services landscape—NGOs/CBOs, private sector actors, and farmers as extension service users and sharpers, among others—presents broad opportunities. The main opportunity I foresee is that of a firmer platform for articulating the need for better telecommunications policies, which will benefit extension services and the broader range of development objectives that hinge on access to ICTs.

Consequently, agricultural planners and policy-makers ought not to be particularly concerned with  specifically enabling the integration of ICTs into pro-poor extension service delivery. While that is a desirable objective, it ignores the broader picture—poverty reduction.

Strategic agricultural planning recognize that ICT-based solutions for agricultural problems are not all sector specific. In much the same way that the major agricultural challenges operate on a macro-level, by cutting-across sectors, the solutions must stem from holistic observations and responses.

Indeed, any ICT intervention that improves the livelihoods of the rural poor is likely to have positive (direct and indirect) impacts on agricultural value chain management—planning, productivity, and marketing. This is true to the extent that rural economies are largely agrarian. So, any challenge to improving the general livelihood of the rural poor will adversely affect agricultural productivity— be that challenge inadequate health services, poor resource management, natural disasters, anthropogenic shocks, minimal access to education, financial services and poor infrastructure, etc.

So, strengthening extension services will require tackling more systemic problems… seeing the forest and not just the trees.

 

/by
, , , ,

Make Aid Funds Transparent

 

”]make aid transparent banner- one cartoon with money the other two with nothing

Last week, Publish What you Fund launched their Make Aid Transparent campaign, which calls on aid donors to publish information on what they are doing with their development aid.

Over forty civil society groups from twenty countries around the world, pledge to call on governments and other aid donors to publish more information on how, when, where and why their budgets are being spent.

At the center of the campaign, whose members include Oxfam International, Transparency International, ONE, and eighteen groups from developing countries, is a petition aimed at donor governments to make their aid more transparent.

The message after signing the petition clearly illustrates their overall mission:

Your action will remind donors to keep their promises to make aid more transparent. And this in turn will help citizens around the world to benefit from better aid and hold their governments to account.

All of these organizations have been working to improve the transparency on how aid money is distributed and should be mindfully spent, as any scope for corruption and inefficiency should be diminished and eliminated.

One of the best ways to do this rarely costs a thing: transparency.

Last December, the State Department and USAID launched a Foreign Assistance Dashboard that helps U.S. citizens know more about how their taxes are being spent on foreign assistance. It provides a visual presentation of, and access to, key foreign assistance budget and appropriation of data for the Department of State and USAID.

The Make Aid Transparent campaign has a similar aim, but targets the spending of civil society groups to enhance transparency and accessibility for their donors.

Making the information available can also help citizens of developing countries know how much their governments are receiving and can push for it to be spent it in ways that really meet their needs.

The first petition handover is planned to present in Paris, at a meeting of Working Party on Aid Effectiveness (WP-EFF) in early July hosted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The organization has other activities and actions that will take place through the year, with the campaign culminating at the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, Korea from November 29 – December 1.

/by
, , , , , ,

HP plans to provide mobile technology to tackle malaria

Nurse using app on Palm Pre 2 smartphone in Botswana. Photo Credit: HP

On June 6th, Hewlett Packard (HP) announced it will collaborate with a non-profit organization in Botswana to provide technology to monitor and treat malaria outbreaks. HP announced it will begin a yearlong clinical trial that will equip medical professionals in Botswana with Palm Pre 2 smartphones designed to collect information on malaria outbreaks.

HP will supply the technology to the non-profit group Positive Innovation for the Next Generation (PING) who will train health workers to collect the data on malaria outbreaks. The data will be collected and stored through an application on the smartphones provided. The application can store photos, videos, audio files as well as GPS information which can be used to generate a geographic map of the areas affected by outbreaks, which has never before been done in Botswana.

The program hopes to increase the rates of mosquito net distribution and provide advanced warnings to regions at risk of an outbreak. Within a day, health workers can achieve results that would normally takes weeks to produce.

Malaria is one of the most widespread infectious diseases, and according to the World Health Organization (WHO), takes nearly one million lives every year, mostly in Africa. WHO has predicted as much as 10% of the African population is under the threat of malaria. Therefore, controlling outbreaks and being able to predict devastating malaria epidemics is crucial to alleviating its burden.

What’s also noteworthy here is that HP is plunging into the mobile health monitoring market, one example of HP’s plans to contribute to global healthcare. Instead of putting money into pockets, HP is aiming to contribute technology and other innovative solutions to tackle challenges that are hindering healthcare around the world. This shouldn’t surprise anyone however, since HP was one of the founding members of the mHealth alliance.

This program indicates the rising importance of mobile health technology as a key player in tackling health burdens in developing countries. Using mobile technologies, whether to collect data from isolated populations or to monitor disease prevalence presents an avenue for NGO’s and governments to reduce health service costs and increase accessibility. HP hopes to scale up this program to all of Africa, contingent upon success in Botswana.

[wp_geo_map]

/by
, , , , ,

Aidmatrix: A Model for Safeguarding and Fostering Global Food Security Gains

Terri Hasdorff, Vice President of Aidmatrix (at the middle, wearing pink), at the AID & International Development Forum, Washington, DC

Terri Hasdorff, Vice President of Aidmatrix (Center), at the AID & International Development Forum, Washington, DC

Getting the right aid to people when and where they need it most, logistics, is still a major challenge for the global humanitarian sector. But, Aidmatrix, an Irving, Texas based non-profit that employs logistics technology to tackle systemic challenges in the highly complex aid sector, is making major gains.

According to Scott McCallum, President & CEO of Aidmatrix, “more than 35,000 corporate, nonprofit and government partners use our technology solutions to move more than $1.5 billion in aid annually, worldwide, which impacts the lives of more than 65 million people”.

The ‘humanitarian technologist’ reconfigures widely used applications in the private sector for humanitarian causes, including disaster, hunger, medical, and transportation relief. According to McCallum, Aidmatrix is akin to a wedding-registry, as it provides a one-stop shop for the “registry of needs and donations”. Last year, Aidmatrix Foundation was awarded a contract with USAID to provide $1.3 million worth of technology for efforts in Haiti, 90% of which was financed by the non-profit’s partners—Accenture, UPS, AT&T, among others.

Although more widely known for its expertise in disaster relief needs assessment and donations management, Aidmatrix’s aid sector-sensitive and technological approach could help foster and safeguard gains in global food security, if deployed contextually on a broader scale. Food insecurity is caused by a wide range of factors, including declining yields, inadequate investment in research and infrastructure, and increased water scarcity, but it is also brought about by immense waste.

Logistical woes is a key cause for much of this waste. For instance, a third of crops reaped in India, a food insecure country, never gets to market in edible fashion because of poor value chain management and practices. Aidmatrix’s technology could aid in efficiently warehousing and transporting these goods to places where they are needed most. The highly subsidized nature of Aidmatrix’s development of technologies tailored to contextual problems limits implementation costs because of it vast network of major backers in the food and technology industries.

Aidmatrix’s current hunger relief programs gives a glimmer of hope of how its efforts could transform global food security management. “Through partnerships with Feeding America, Global Foodbanking Network, United Nations World Food Programme, and other global food bank and hunger relief programs, Aidmatrix enables more food to be connected with the hungry through our hunger relief solutions.” This is done by improving communication between food banks, suppliers and agencies, as it did with the Feeding America initiative.

Deploying Aidmatrix’s technology more broadly in international development work  is likely to reduce global hunger, by matching appropriate chunks of the billions of pounds of foods wasted annually with many of the 850 million people suffering from hunger every day. Nearly all charitable food in the US already goes through Aidmatrix, through its partnership with Feeding America. The non-profit has also gained a toehold in Europe, where its largest partner is the UK-based FareShare, and Asia,  through vibrant partnerships with organizations such as Second Harvest in Japan. On a smaller, yet increasing scale, Aidmatrix is making inroads  in South America and Africa.

The opportunities are immense. Aidmatrix is certainly a model for safeguarding and fostering global food security.

/by
, , , , ,

Leaders Education During Humanitarian Crisis: Aid & International Development Forum 2011, Day Two

Photo Credit: Teachers Without Borders

At the last workshop session of the AIDF 2011, international educators gathered to share lessons learned about education during humanitarian crises.  The synthesis and common ground between the presenters was clear—education should continue in full force during humanitarian crises, and ICTs can help that happen.

Citing statistics that crises can last for decades during war-prone areas, the presenters repeatedly emphasized the need for education to continue despite the common excuse that “now’s not the time.”  Given that we don’t know when crises will end, education should begin as soon as possible and continue during humanitarian crises, they argued.  Additionally, the presenters explained that when education stopped, nations lost enormous amounts of human capital, which is essential to overcome crises in the future.  Limiting education during crises, then, creates a poverty trap due to a lack of human capital.

Some of the best ways to continue education during a crisis include utilizing ICTs.  Distance learning, accessing Open Educational Resources (OER) online, and radio-based educational programs all become increasingly relevant during crises.

Panelist Fred Mednick, of Teachers Without Borders, spoke on the importance of local cultural contexts in educational models.  During natural disasters or military crises, international educators often forget about the ever-present cultural context that they must take into account in their curriculum and approach.  This lessens the impact of their efforts.

Sergio Ramirez-Mena, Senior Program Director at AED’s Global Education Center, highlighted partnerships between NGOs, governments, and businesses to provide schools and education during humanitarian crises.  The collaboration with businesses is especially innovative during a crisis, and, given that many crises extend for years, is quite helpful in terms for financial sustainability of programs, bridging the gap between humanitarian and development efforts.

Last, Lori Heninger from the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies, discussed the need for collaboration between organizations in the humanitarian education space.  The materials are out there, thanks to the rise in OER, Heninger explained, but getting the right information to the right people is a pressing challenge.

 

/by
, , , , ,

Apps4Africa Finalist Uses Mobile to Fight Corruption

 

”]Kleptocracy Fighters logo eyes with KF on the forehead

 

Announced last week, an application won second place in the Apps4Africa competition allowing citizens to record and report real time information on government corruption.

Launched last July in Nairobi, the Apps4Africa competition funded by the U.S. State Department, united the brightest African developers with social problems that could benefit from innovative mobile technology.

The competition attracted 20 entrants – each offering a unique approach to improving life in the region.

The second place winners, Kleptocracy Fighters Inc., developed a mobile application empowering citizens for fighting kleptocratic government officials using mobile technology. They received $3,000 USD and a Nokia N900 for the innovation.

Kleptocracy is a term applied to government authorities taking advantage of power positions to extend their personal wealth by appropriating public funds and goods through corruption, impunity, and political power.

Government corruption runs rampant in Kenya amongst other Sub-Saharan African countries. According to the 2010 Corruption Perception Index, Kenya received a score of 2.1—on a scale from 10 being very clean, to 0 being highly corrupt.

Kleptocracy Fighters (K Fighters) seeks to offset this by lending the crowd souring potential of SMS service, mobile phone applications, and web-enabled applications to report and record real time incidences of corruption.

 

picture of the apps for africa logo with the continent in the background [Photo Credit: App4Africa}The citizen’s reports include audio, video, as well as text recordings, and are meant to report both positive and negative issues of public governance. The aggregated data reports are forwarded to legal and media partners to help publicize the cases of corruption, and lead to possible persecution.

 

 

 

 

This mobile application aims to help build trust, accountability, and transparency for those in developing nations lacking a trustworthy outlet.

K Fighters is an international organization headquartered in Delaware. The four founding members are from East Africa, the U.S., and Latin America, all choosing to remain anonymous for their personal integrity until the platform is finalized.

They have started pilot projects in Latin America and Africa to see if the platform is a scalable and sustainable model that can bring corrupt governments to justice.

/by

Case Studies

Global Health: Cross-Bureau Budget Analysis

The Bureau for Global Health’s (GH’s) cross-bureau budget (CBB) allocates funds to activities that...

Read more

Economic Analysis of the Conservation & Communities Project in Madagascar

Madagascar is widely recognized as the home of some of the world’s most exceptional biodiversity...

Read more

Funding the Future: Navigating Private Finance in Education

Finance is a critical input to a country’s education system, yet partner country education systems are strained...

Read more

Contact Details

  • 1156 15th Street NW
    Suite 800
    Washington, DC 20005

  • info@integrallc.com

Quick Links

Sign up for Updates

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Copyright © 2020 Integra Government Services International LLC