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A Shift In Rhetoric At The WSIS Forum 2011: Incorporating ICTs Into All Aspects of Development

On May 16-20^th, world leaders gathered in Geneva for the annual World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum. Speakers emphasized the role of incorporating ICTs into all aspects of the MDGs as opposed to the previous goal of providing ICT access.

This type of rhetoric respecting the role of ICTs is different than previous global summits and conferences. In 2000, when the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were first released, the eightieth goal – Global Partnership – included a specific target to “make available new technologies, especially information and communications.” Subsequently, the 2010 MDGs Report included measurements of ICT availability and number of users. In this report, ICT usage was the primary goal.

However, more recently, the ITU and UNESCO announced the establishment of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, which embraces ICTs as “uniquely powerful tools for achieving the MDGs.” One of the commissioners, Bruno Lanvin, boldly explains: “Broadband is not just about infrastructure…it presents the opportunity for a quantum leap. …We may soon discover that Broadband has been the biggest absolute accelerator in our efforts to realize the MDGs.”

The shift in rhetoric surrounding ICTs is now beginning to affect international measurements. For example, last month the World Economic Forum released The Global Information Technology Report 2010-2011, and announced new changes to the Network Readiness Index. The WEF acknowledged that the original index “falls short in looking at the impacts of ICT usage,” and in their revised index elements such as business innovation, governance, citizens’ political participation, and social cohesion are incorporated, demonstrating the acceptance of ICTs as important development tools in all sectors.

A keynote speaker at the WSIS Forum, Mr. Mohammed Nasser Al Ghanim, Director General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority in the UAE, explained that ICTs are crucial for “every sector of the economy and contribute to areas so diverse as health, education, and public safety.”

Other forum sessions at the conference further emphasized the importance of ICT utility in achieving all of the MDGs, including “Better Life in Rural Communities with ICTs,” and “ICTs as an enabler for Development of LDCs.”

The second day of the conference, May 17^th, was the annual World Telecommunications and Information Society Day. In a public video celebrating the event, ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun I. Touré states: “It is time for global action to connect rural communities to the opportunities offered by ICTs.”

The WSIS Forum 2011 verified the need to utilize ICTs to accelerate the completion of all the MDGs. This change in rhetoric and measurements regarding ICTs will likely affect public policy in the short future. The WSIS Forum 2011 was an important marker in the history of ICT4D. ICT access and connectivity is the means to making sustained impacts in all the MDGs, but is not the end goal in itself.

June 1, 2011/by actualize

Closing the Urban-Rural Digital Divide: Connectivity Success in Mongolia

A rich dynamic taking place within the telecom sector is the emerging of new, low-cost solutions more suitable for delivering cost-effective solutions to remote, low-density rural communities. Studies have shown that there is considerable untapped demand in rural areas. However, until just recently the cost of delivery relative potential revenues, has limited carriers from making the needed investments to service those living in these rural communities.

Photo Credit- Mongolian Artist

USAID’s Last Mile Initiative (LMI) undertook a number of projects to explore the potential for identifying and exploring potential solutions. One of these was the Mongolia LMI project. The project was launched in mid-2005 with an initial Assessment that explored opportunities, including holding discussions with the government and discussion private-sector firms interested in becoming involved. Discussions were also held with the World Bank who at the time was exploring an initiative to support for a universal service program and to undertake some limited rural demonstration deployments.

During this early phase the most promising approach that surfaced was to form a partnership between the Khan Bank who has approximately 300 rural banks throughout Mongolia, and Incomnet, a local ISP with a satellite network providing connectivity to a growing number soum-center branches of the rural Khan Banks. The preliminary focus was on leveraging this satellite investment by adding a community-wide extension through the deployment of community-WiFi networks, with voice services provided through a low cost Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution set. In many ways this VoIP approach served as a forerunner to the now-emerging lower-cost commercial solutions entering the marketplace.

In late November-early December of 2006, the USAID-funded team returned to Mongolia to design a workable network using Incomnet’s satellite network and to develop a detailed project plan. This design and project plan put forward an approach consisting of three key elements;

the development of a detailed business-financial plan showing financial viability of rural access,
the support of technical assistance for the deployment of wireless networks in four rural communities that would provide broadband and VoIP services off the back of Incomnet’s Dial@way satellite network, and
a modest amount of risk capital required to install these four rural community networks.

The project was executed from mid-2006 through mid-2008, with full operations beginning in mid-2007.

The implementation took place in four rural communities: 1) the Saikhan soum of the Bulgan aimag, 2) the Tsengel soum of Bayan-Ulgii aimag, 3) the Chuluut bridge of the Ondor-Ulaan soum in the Arkhangai aimag, and 4) the Tsagaannuur bagh of theTariat soum in the Arkhangai aimag.

The implementation focused predominately on providing voice services via satellite-WiFi-VoIP, with PSTN interconnection. A final phase provided Internet access by placing a limited number of PCs within each of the four communities. For the initial installation an estimated 20-30 WiFi phones were distributed across the rural communities, with more to be added based on local demand.

The Mongolia LMI provided a valuable test-bed of experience, rich with lessons in several key areas for application well beyond Mongolia, including;

Even those living in the most remote areas are capable and willing to pay for telephony services,
The satellite-WiFi-VoIP solution sets is a viable, low-cost approach for delivering voice services into these remote areas, with the added advantage that the network can also deliver broadband Internet access,
The revenue from these rural communities is sufficient to pay for the network, its operations, and interconnection cost, making these profitable business ventures even without universal service funds,
Maintaining these systems in harsh conditions is a significant challenge requiring constant attention, and
The technical & business-financial model is replicable to additional rural communities throughout Mongolia as well as other countries.

The Mongolia LMI project also positioned Incomnet, through the capacity building gained through execution of this project, to aggressively pursue subsequent roll-out of yet additional rural communities being funded in part through the World Bank and the newly established universal service fund.

In many ways the experiences in Mongolia pushed the envelop of both technology and a viable business-financial model, with the conclusion being that there are viable solutions for both. Fortunately there has been significant advancement in lower-cost technical solutions since this project was concluded, that provide even more stable and replicable rural solutions to meet the needs of rural Mongolia, as well as other remote rural communities.

May 24, 2011/by actualize

Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Accessing the Public Sphere Through Mobile: Haiti

During the 1970s, missionaries would walk around the towns in Haiti distributing radios to spread the message of the church. Haitians would accept them freely—not for the religious messages, but so they could tune into the Creole news services. Forty years later, a new wireless tool allows them to access news but with one fundamental difference: now they can participate in the conversation through their mobile phone.

Last week during World Press Freedom Day in Washington D.C., the sentiment that mobile phones serve as a catalyst for a two way flow of information between governments and citizens in the developing world was continuously echoed.

For the 77% of the world’s population who own cell phones, it is like a modern printing press in the palm of their hands.

Michèle Montas (Photo Credit: Richard Patterson for NY Times)

Michèle Montas, Senior Advisor to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General to Haiti, United Nations Stabilization Mission, Haiti, observed that the widespread availability of cell phones began with a heavy push from the private sector but has resulted with an increased demand from the people. “We could find them (mobiles) in the countryside, in the slums of Port au Prince, in the hands of a street market woman, in the hands of a small shop owner.” she commented.

This extensive accessibility paves the way for citizens to use mobile phones as a tool to contribute information and express their opinions to the public sphere.

Ms. Montas alluded that although cell phones aided in humanitarian assistance after the earthquakes, mobile phones have also altered the way Haitians can now lend their relevant perspectives, notably by calling into radio talk shows they play an active role in public discourse.

“There has been an explosion of meshing of media, of journalists, and of people that just want to speak out,” she stated, “If you gave them a microphone they would just speak out on the microphone, today they would do it on a cell phone.”

Mobile phones are dramatically changing the landscape of how citizens can actively access and contribute information to the public sphere; they boost the morale of citizens in societies where the voiceless can finally be heard by the majority and inform governments of what their citizens need.

Please view the video of Ms. Montas during the past World Press Freedom Day on the Panel “Accessing the Digit Benefit”:

May 12, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Climate Change, Extension Service, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Seasonal climate forecasts possible in Africa but not helping yet – study

An Egyptian rice farmer shows his drought damaged rice crop in a village near Balqis on June 14, 2008. REUTERS/Nasser Nuri

LONDON (AlertNet) – For African farmers struggling to cope with increasingly erratic conditions linked to climate change, there’s good – and bad – news.

The good news is that in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, scientists can now issue reasonably reliable seasonal climate forecasts a month or more in advance of the planting season, giving growers a chance to opt for different kinds of crops or other measures to adapt to upcoming conditions.

That has the potential to improve food security in many climate-vulnerable parts of Africa, and reduce the impact on some of the world’s poorest people of droughts, floods and temperature surges.

The bad news is that those forecasts, and other historical weather information farmers need to judge risk and make good decisions, still are not reaching most growers, in part because meteorological data in many African countries is available only at a cost.

Weather information “is an essential resource for adaptation (to climate change) and development,” said James W. Hansen, a researcher on climate change, agriculture and food security at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and lead author of a new report on seasonal climate forecasting and agriculture in Africa.

But “as long as these (data) are seen as a revenue source for Met services rather than as a public good for development, the people who are most affected by climate change, climate variability and poverty won’t have much access to innovations,” he said in a telephone interview.

Growing climate variability is making life increasingly difficult for farmers throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Some areas, particularly in southern and eastern Africa, are seeing extended droughts and high temperatures that can make growing staples like maize a challenge. Other regions, including parts of West Africa, have struggled with extreme rainfall.

Altogether “dependence on uncertain rainfall and exposure to climate risk characterize the livelihoods of roughly 70 percent of (sub-Saharan Africa’s) population,” notes the study, published in the journal Experimental Agriculture in March.

SOME PREDICTABLE REGIONS

But scientists are getting increasingly good at predicting seasonal climate conditions in advance, largely because of growing understanding of how Pacific Ocean temperatures – linked to weather phenomena like El Nino and La Nina – influence rainfall in sub-Saharan Africa.

While it is still very difficult to predict seasonal conditions in some parts of Africa – including across the Sahara and the northern parts of the Sahel – other areas are showing potential for predictability, at least in some seasons. They include much of southern Africa up to southern Zambia; a swath of East Africa centered on Kenya; a wide band of West Africa reaching from the Atlantic coast across to Sudan; and a stretch of west-central Africa from the Atlantic coast into the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Already, “skillful forecasts can be produced more than a month before the normal start of the growing season for the short rains in eastern Africa and the main rainy season in southern Africa,” the study noted.

Just as important, the regional forecasts can be “downscaled” to provide more specific local forecasts with only “modest” loss of accuracy, the study said.

So why aren’t seasonal forecasts yet reaching farmers, particularly given that studies show most are eager to get and act on the information?

Largely it’s the result of communication failures, Hansen said. Meteorologists in many regions tend to oversimplify forecasts, telling farmers there will be higher rainfall, for instance, rather than a 60 percent chance of higher than normal rainfall.

That has led to a lack of trust, particularly when oversimplified predictions don’t come true.

“If I were a smallholder farmer and a climate scientists said it would be more or less rainy, I’d be extremely skeptical. A lot would depend on how much I trust that person,” Hansen noted.

The reality is “farmers understand probability very well. Their lives depend on it,” he said. Leaving the probabilities off forecasts undermines trust and reliability, he said.

But perhaps the most severe problem, he said, is that many African meteorological services see weather data as something to be sold to paying clients – airports, insurance firms, development organizations – rather than released as a public good.

That view is in part the result of structural reforms driven by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, aimed at reducing the hand of governments – often seen as corrupt or inefficient – in services including meteorology, Hansen said. The reforms left many meteorological services dependent on commercial sales of data for funding, he said, a model that is providing difficult to change.

CHANGING THE FUNDING MODEL

Still, efforts are underway. An initiative in Kenya called WIND – Weather Information for Development – aims to help Kenya’s meteorological service find new sources of revenue and make better decisions about what data should be commercialized and what made publicly available free.

In other countries, researchers hope to tempt government meteorological services into releasing satellite data free in exchange for access to information from ground weather stations runs by research organizations.

“If we can get one or two (countries) to break out, and they get new visibility and funding, maybe there can be a domino effect,” Hansen said.

Better seasonal climate forecasts won’t help ease surging food prices around the world, because the surges are driven by rising demand, the scientist warned.

But in some of the poorest parts of the world, good seasonal climate forecasts have the potential to help curb hunger, protect incomes and get some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable people through bad years.

“The ability to anticipate climate fluctuations and their impact on agriculture months in advance should, in principle, enable… opportunities to manage risk,” the study noted.

May 4, 2011/by actualize

Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Workforce Development, Youth Development

Are holistic and contextualized efforts the key to rural youth economic empowerment?

In my last 2 posts, I wrote about reality (how rural youth in Africa are currently harnessing ICTs to generate income), and possibility — some new technology uses and concepts that I learned about at the “Can youth find economic empowerment via apps, m-payments and social media?” Tech Salon, hosted by ICT Works and the UN Foundation Technology Partnership.

This third and last post of the series explores some of the broader aspects that need to be in place or considered when looking at youth economic empowerment and the role of ICTs.

During our Tech Salon conversations, someone reminded the room that a large population of well-educated youth with no prospective jobs (think Tunisia or Egypt) is one thing. A large population of (rural) youth with low education levels is another.

Francis Fukuyama kind of sums this up based on Samuel Huntington’s ‘Political Order in Changing Societies,’ written some 40 years ago: ‘increasing levels of economic and social development often led to coups, revolutions and military takeovers rather than a smooth transition to modern liberal democracy. The reason, he pointed out, was the gap that appeared between the hopes and expectations of newly mobilized, educated and economically empowered people on the one hand, and the existing political system, which did not offer them an institutionalized mechanism for political participation, on the other. He might have added that such poorly institutionalized regimes are also often subject to crony capitalism, which fails to provide jobs and incomes to the newly educated middle class. Attacks against the existing political order, he noted, are seldom driven by the poorest of the poor; they instead tend to be led by rising middle classes who are frustrated by the lack of political and economic opportunity….’

So if the behaviors of these two basic groups (for simplicity’s sake let’s assume there are only 2 basic groups) are quite different, also the approaches to supporting the two groups are quite different, and their views of and reactions to economic crises also tend to be quite different. The first group (the newly educated middle class) is in a better position to access ICT-fueled economic opportunities, whereas the second group likely needs to strengthen its knowledge of things like savings, basic skills, and assets. Context, as always, is critical, and there will not be one single recipe that addresses the economic and development needs of the ‘youth bulge’.

: Youth bulge. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Some would say that economic opportunities created for the newly educated middle class will mean eventual trickle down opportunity to the rural poor — in which scenario app development, Facebook, microtasking and such might be seen as key enablers for economic empowerment for certain youth. But how can we more immediately support those who are not part of this newly educated middle class. And what about the countries that don’t have a large population of well-educated middle class tech-savvy youth? What are some key things for supporting economically disadvantaged rural youth?

Financial Literacy

Financial literacy for both children and adolescents is one key element. Financial literacy helps drive reasoning, conceptual skills, and leads to better engagement later with formal and informal sectors. At an early age, say around 8 years, financial literacy should include basic skills like counting, math, logical reasoning, value. Later on, financial literacy needs to move into understanding loans, down payments, interest rates, credit. In terms of ICTs, yes, mobiles could offer tools for youth to save and to build assets, but youth need to know the importance of building assets in the first place. Aflatoun is one example of programs that focus on financial literacy and the importance of saving. The educational children’s program Sesame Street also does its part. As background, this very interesting mPesa report says that around 21% of mPesa customers use the service for saving/storing money.

Life skills

A colleague at the Tech Salon noted that financial literacy and financial education need to be wrapped up into youth life skills education, also covering aspects like reproductive health, hygiene, emotional health. Youth need financial literacy but they also need basic literacy and increasingly media literacy. They need to know more about career development and to get help making good career choices; help understanding: What is real? What are their realistic expectations for a career? What does the current labor market look like? What do they need to do to prepare for a particular career or job? What are their real options? ICTs could be educational tools here, and not necessarily new ICTs. Television or radio can be just as, or more, effective.

Local Context

It’s also critical that program designers and implementers who want to improve the economic outlook for youth ensure that their program designs and interventions fit with the reality on the ground. Eg, what are the language, literacy, connectivity and gender considerations? What tools are readily accessible to the population they are working with? Who is left out? What tools and information channels do people trust? (Radio is still probably the most widespread ICT for educational purposes in rural areas). We need front-end research, participatory user input, and contextual analysis. We need to talk to actual rural youth where we are planning programs, and incorporate their thoughts, aspirations, realities and suggestions into program design. We need to consider long-term sustainability and local partnerships. We need to think about how the different approaches support the building up of sustainable local economies. All this hard work up front is the most important in program design. And, as several people noted, often agencies only have 30 days or so to design a good proposal for funding.

Opportunities

Preparing up individual youth is still only one side of the coin, as another colleague added. At the end of the day youth need jobs to go into. So yes, there need to be programs that help youth develop (skills, assets, access) but there also needs to be economic development at a broader scale that allows youth to either become entrepreneurs or to work for others, formally or informally. What are the broader job markets or the financial systems and services that youth can access?

There is also the question of whether youth want to be self-employed. A Tech Salon participant commented that informal employment and entrepreneurship are not always the most desirable future for youth. Many youth would prefer a steady job with benefits and security — this is still the measure for success and prestige in many countries. The issue however, as another participant pointed out, is that there are simply not enough steady jobs for youth, so they are forced to be entrepreneurs.

Forbes refers to this with reference to Haiti: ‘In countries with high structural unemployment, entrepreneurship has less of an impact on growth than development economists previously thought. In Haiti, where 75% of the population is unemployed, people turn to entrepreneurship as a last resort. In Port-au-Prince and throughout the country, the term “entrepreneur” has a different meaning than it does in the developed world. Entrepreneurship is borne out of necessity, not the desire to act on business opportunities.

In the absence of a formal economy, Haitians become “necessity” entrepreneurs and must take to the streets and markets to earn their living. The road outside of Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture airport is lined with salesmen pushing a variety of products, from loaves of bread to toiletries. Children sell sugar cane, produce, and potable water while women walk from market to market selling products along the way. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a non-profit research organization, economic growth is not driven by these “necessity” entrepreneurs, who decrease in number as the economy develops. The key to fostering growth is to support “opportunity” entrepreneurs, who choose to start new enterprises in response to market needs.

Barriers

Urban and rural conditions and access to technology and employment in the two contexts are drastically different; this needs to be remembered in the ICT and youth economic empowerment discussion. It often gets overlooked amidst all the tech hype and tech incubator excitement. The difference between the fast-paced urban tech scene and a more remote rural community is vast. And not all countries possess a fast-paced urban tech scene. In addition, it can’t be assumed that just because a developer is from Nairobi, he or she knows the context well enough to develop applications or create opportunities that are fitting for youth in, say, Kilifi. Co-design and participant input are still critical. Urban developers could better understand rural contexts by spending time there.

Girls’ access to opportunities. We know that girls have less access to technology and typically less access to education. How can we support STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education) and other opportunities for girls? How can we convince parents to allow girls to participate in programs and access technologies and other opportunities? How do we find more women role models for girls, both in technology and in work and other areas that take girls outside of the home and allow them access to income, which will also allow them to have more power? How do we create safe spaces for women and girls to access technologies? Often they do not feel safe in Internet cafés or are not permitted to frequent them. In addition, less girls and women own their own mobile phones than men. How can we work to help overcome all the barriers that girls face?

Access to information about existing opportunities. In some countries, Kenya for example, there are government-supported initiatives for youth employment and entrepreneurship, but many youth don’t know about them or how to access them. ICTs can play a role in connecting youth to information about opportunities for jobs, financial services and further education. Different media (radio, television, print, SMS and other) can be used for public education and financial literacy. In addition, media can help inform the population of what governments have promised by way of programs and opportunities for youth employment, and in this way support governance and accountability around youth employment.

4 basic ways…

By the end of our hour-long conversation at the Tech Salon, we mostly agreed that there are 4 basic ways to think about the intersection of youth, technology and economic empowerment:

Technology as a job unto itself
Technology to facilitate asset building
Technology for learning and skill building
Technology to access info about employment opportunities

We agreed that if they are to support youth economic empowerment, ICTs need to be contextualized and they need to be one part of a broader, holistic, and sustainable system. And I think that about sums it up. In case you missed them, check post 1 on ways that rural youth are currently generating income through ICTs and post 2 on some of the newer ways that ICTs could enable economic empowerment. If this topic is of interest, check out the Making Cents conferencethis September.

Update: A colleague just sent me this report which gives great insight: Workforce Development Initiatives for Out of School Youth – What Works? A Participatory Research with Youth and Communities in Southern Philippines.

May 3, 2011/by actualize

Economic Growth & Trade, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Workforce Development, Youth Development

Are apps, Facebook and mPayments the key to rural youth economic empowerment? Reality check.

Last week’s Tech Salon, hosted by ICT Works and the UN Foundation Technology Partnership, was on the topic ‘Can youth find economic empowerment via apps, m-payments and social media?’ Fiona Macaulay from Making Cents and I gave some of the opening remarks to get the conversation started (and Wayan Vota kept things lively as usual).

The premise of the Salon was that ‘today’s youth population is the largest in the history of the world, and 90% of these young people live in developing countries. The global youth unemployment rate is the highest on record, and we’re seeing discontent and disenfranchisement play out on the news each day. In fact, the revolution in Tunisia started with an under-employed youth committing self-immolation in frustration…. Technology-based models hold great promise for increasing and improving economic opportunities for young people: low barriers to entry for youth-built apps, the widespread use of Facebook and its promise as a marketing platform, the ubiquity and ease of m-Payment systems like MPESA – these should be a recipe for youth economic empowerment.

During the Salon we explored 3 key questions:

1) How are youth starting businesses or getting jobs in growth-oriented ICT sectors around the world?

2) How are organizations and programs utilizing technology to reach and engage young people?

3) Where should we be cautious or enthusiastic with technology with respect to youth economic empowerment?

This is the first of 3 posts on those questions, starting with Question 1:

How are youth starting businesses or getting jobs in growth-oriented ICT sectors around the world?

I was pretty skeptical about the potential for apps, Facebook and m-payments to resolve the youth employment/income crisis, at least in the context of the rural communities in Africa where I’ve worked over the past several years. So leading into the Salon, I did an informal survey among some colleagues working in Africa to find out how they observed youth making money using technology, and to see whether the idea above had any legs. My thoughts were pretty much confirmed – in the places we are working, some youth are using technology to generate income, but not so much apps, mPayments and Facebook.

In Egypt, colleagues said that youth are repairing cell phones, serving as DJs at wedding parties, setting up photocopy shops and internet cafes, selling phone calls and airtime, running shops that provide children and young people with the opportunity to play games, and using computers to make flyers and posters for certain producers and products in the communities. They also provide satellite connections for poor families to access national and international TV channels – this service is not legal but generates good income for young people.

In Kenya you’ll find youth managing Mobile Phone Kiosks popularly known as ‘Simu Ya jamii’ (community phones). These double up as phone charging points. Pirated music is big business for some youth and phone unlocking services are increasing. One colleague noted that youth are not really creating applications, but in some of our programs, they are involved in piloting new applications, and thus influencing their development. In Zambia, you don’t see much of this type of activity in rural areas, according to a colleague there. But there are village telcos being operated by youth groups and some village groups are setting up banks of solar chargers to support solar lighting. (Cool result: When they set them up at a schools, encouraging women to come each day to charge their lights, they found that school attendance increased).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTAbe35YCLY]

In Burkina Faso it’s common to see youth selling telephone scratch cards, renting out their phones, offering video services to film at private events, charging up phones for a price. In Senegal, some take phones from one area to another to charge them up for a fee. All over Africa you see video pirating and movie houses, video game houses, video downloading to mobile phones, music on flash drives and flash drives that plug into radios in cars and in collective transportation vans and busses.

There is ‘negative’ business also

Some would place ‘pirating’ and stolen satellite connections here. There is also transactional sex by girls to obtain mobile phones, which are a status symbol. We hear in some communities that adolescents with mobile phones are ‘bad.’ In Cameroon girls said that some boys only use phones to scam people and to steal. Mobiles can also facilitate prostitution. One colleague commented that in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) she has seen girls on motorbikes offering themselves by presenting their phone number on their back. We heard from youth in Cameroon that mobiles are commonly stolen and traded. Some parents in various countries do not like movie and game houses, associating them with porn and western culture.

Are youth in rural areas creating ‘apps,’ using ‘apps’ or tapping into ICT development or programming opportunities?

Not really, from what I have seen and what colleagues tell me. There are some shining stars here and there, but this isn’t very widespread yet, and the youth who are developing apps and such tend to be well-educated urban youth. This 2009 study on how the African Movement of Working Children and Youth (MAEJT) uses ICTs is quite interesting in this regard.

: How do youth obtain and use mobiles? (MAEJT study, 2009)

In Egypt, colleagues said Facebook and Twitter groups around specific issues are common among young people in communities. But using ICT specifically for generating income is not. There is inadequate awareness among poor communities on how to make this happen. Although many youth have access to cell phones, ICT is still expensive and non-affordable for many others. Most of the families who have phones in their houses do not have a direct line, which means that they cannot get access to internet through cheap lines. Internet is still very expensive. Getting jobs through the internet is only common among advantaged, well- educated youth, not disadvantaged youth.

In Nairobi, Kenya, iHub and NAiLab have a big pool of developers and there is a lot of action. In rural Kenya, however, access is limited. There is a lot of interest from the youth who have started to catch on though, so colleagues felt it was possible that there could be some type of rural-urban mentoring or connections to help rural youth get on board. In rural Zambia, according to colleagues, sheer poverty means that very few additional resources and capital are available to take on new ideas. There is still very poor mobile phone coverage in some areas, and many young people have already left for urban areas. My colleagues in West Africa did not report seeing any youth developing apps or using Facebook combined with mPayments to generate income. In Kenya, Cameroon, Uganda and some other places, innovation hubs and labs are generating opportunities, but these again seem to be available to secondary- or even more often university-educated youth from urban areas and capital cities or large cities outside the capital.

So, is this bit about apps, mPayments and social media all hype? I’ll explore that a bit more in post 2 of the series. In post 3, I’ll cover the longer term considerations for ICTs and youth economic empowerment and some broader aspects that need to be kept in mind.

May 2, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Farm Extension Services: an Update

Photo Credit: Mr.S.Vithiyatharan

Two weeks ago, USAID held an event on the current initiatives using ICT to strengthen Farm Extension Services (FES). Judy Payne, ICT Advisor at USAID, was joined by Chris Locke, Managing Director GSMA Development Fund, to update the ICT4D community on new initiatives, approaches, and challenges in FES.

To start the discussion, Judy Payne provided an overview of some promising examples under USAID’s Fostering Agriculture Competitiveness Employing Information Communication Technologies Project (FACET). Some of these include Reuters Marketing Light, Mali Shambani, Community Knowledge Worker, Manobi, and Digital Green. She did not linger on the technicalities of these projects, opting to focus on how new technologies can complement traditional tactics for the most sustainable use.

The combination of the “push” and “pull” information allows a feedback loop from the farmer to the organization, crucial for monitoring and evaluation. “Push” services are those are those that are being used to provide the farmer with information, such market information through SMS or voicemail. “Pull” services consists of the feedback from the farmer, such as their queries on demand in the market via SMS.

Ms. Payne asserted that the combination of new ICTs with more traditional tactics, such as face-to-face training and verbal feedback, are necessary for the most efficient implementation.

She also explained that collaborative new business models, such as sponsor mobile network operators (MNO) and farmer pay services, are non-agricultural components of FES that ensure well-defined distribution channels and access to users.

Chris Locke, Managing Director, GSMA Development Fund

Chris Locke of the GSMA Development Fund echoed the importance of leveraging the private sector and combining ICT channels for FES in current e-agriculture projects.

The Development Fund works with mobile operators to accelerate mobile solutions for people living on under US$2 per day. They have been working with the Gates Foundation and USAID on a new e-agri initiative called mFarmer in Kenya and India.

Currently in its second phase of the project, the goal of the mFarmer program is to work with MNOs and partners to support the launch of quality agricultural value-added-services accessibly to over 2 million smallholder farmers. The program aims to provide a sustainable way for farmers to obtain critical agricultural information that can help them improve their farm productivity and income.

The role of GSMA in this program is to develop this content database for ICT-enabled farm extension services to share and create, but building alliances with local MNOs is equally important.

Mr. Locke discussed how partnerships with local MNOs play a major role in disseminating information in developing areas. Local private sector involvement allows organizations to tap into previously established distribution channels that are culturally relevant and have widespread reach.

Unlocking the power of MNOs provides potential nation wide scalability. He argued these are distribution channels where:

Operators have the capacity to spread it across at a national level

Post-discussion, it was apparent (as it always is) that there has to be more than just the use of ICTs to help rural farmers in FES projects. ICT channels should be complemented with traditional tactics to heighten impact and sustainability; and organizations should establish alliances with local MNOs to leverage their local distribution channels.

April 25, 2011/by actualize

Connectivity, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

BBC News – Afghan Taliban threat shuts Helmand mobile network

Here’s a good indicator of the role of ICT in development.

BBC News – Afghan Taliban threat shuts Helmand mobile network.

March 24, 2011/by actualize

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

Using cell phones to improve pregnancy in Herat

A community health worker shows a visual aid

Photo credit: Dimagi

With funding from USAID, World Vision and Dimagi will conduct operations research to test if the use of CommCare will increase the uptake of healthy actions, improve knowledge of important information points, and improve communications and coordination between community health workers (CHWs) and higher trained workers.

CommCare is a phone-based application to strengthen community health programs. CHWs use software running on a phone during each client visit to improve quality of care and data reporting. When the CHW is within range of a cellular network, data is automatically submitted to a central server for use in program management, monitoring and health surveillance.

World Vision’s study will focus on improving the uptake of a list of identified “Healthy Actions” and knowledge of key “Important Information” points. It will also study the improvement that the phone make between the CHWs for coordination with midwives and other health experts. World Vision expects the following:

Utilization – increased percentage of healthy actions taken by pregnant women
Knowledge Access – increased knowledge by pregnant women of the important information points
Access- increased use of midwives and expert services via phone calls

The primary CommCare module the study will focus on promotes essential care during and immediately after pregnancy. The module reinforces the training the CHWs will have received based on the American College of Nurse-Midwives Home Based Life Saving Skills. The module is designed to quickly bring a CHW through key points of identifying and responding to emergency signs including difficulty breathing, low birth weight, and hypothermia. The module then helps the CHW promote simple but effective hygiene and preventive care to reduce infections such as infected cord stumps, pneumonia, and tetanus.

A key challenge World Vision encountered was that the CHWs in the Herat region are low-literate. CommCare was, therefore, adapted for low-literate users by including audio prompts and images. These multimedia prompts have been found to also help engage the client more, as the CHWs play the audio clips and show images to their clients.

The following video demonstrates how the CommCare application works:

CommCare-Sense House Visit 1 from Derek Treatman on Vimeo.

Click here to learn more about this project.

March 8, 2011/by actualize

Connectivity, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Access and Applications for Development

For the past several years there has been a virtual explosion of mobile networks across both developed and developing countries. According to a recent ITU Report, Measuring the Information Society – 2010, at the end of 2009, globally 67 out of every 100 people were mobile subscribers. For developing countries the numbers are 57 out of every 100—and growing. The following graphic extracted from this ITU report shows the growth since 1998.

Within these numbers lies another somewhat hidden dynamic;

Worldwide there are already more mobile Internet subscribers than fixed Internet subscribers, and
This is supported by the market moving towards “smart phones.” For developed countries the computer has been the dominant Internet access device. For developing economies it is rapidly becoming the smart phone.

And with these dynamics come a number of rich opportunities for USAID as well as the larger international development community—opportunities for the most part that are just now starting to be explored. These include:

Micro-Small Business Entrepreneurship—this mobile-smart phone-Internet ecosystem provides a rich opportunity for USAID to support the launch or strengthening of a local mobile application development industry. This is replicable across countries, has low entry costs for entrepreneurs, is quick to market, and has near-instant countrywide market scale. By its nature, it favors local development and content, with strong employment opportunity for youth.

Local Content Development—typically mobile applications are not only localized with regards to native languages, but also local with regards to content. This creates an even a broader opportunity for local entrepreneurs and job creation—for both applications and content.

Public-Private Partnerships—the rich mobile-smart phone-Internet ecosystem is made up of handset manufacturers, mobile carriers, development toolset companies, hosting firms, etc.—all with local and international engagements. Adding USAID and local government participation simply expands this ecosystem faster, further, and places a targeted focus socioeconomic development.

Sector-Specific Applications—for USAID’s various sectors, be it health, education, government, agriculture, etc., this ecosystem provides a rich low-cost platform for developing highly targeted solutions with rapid nationwide scale and with this, expanding USAID’s impact.

These, along with other dynamics reflect an expanding opportunity currently being explored by USAID where the Agency can provide a critical catalytic role to accelerate adoption. A growing number of related blogs and documents posted on the GBI Portal provide additional information and examples of this exciting dynamic and its potential within the Agency’s development portfolio.

March 2, 2011/by actualize

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