Category — Development

Kubatana.net – a Zimbabwean NGO who work to strengthen the use of email, mobile and the Internet among local NGOs and civil society organisations – were the very first FrontlineSMS user way back in October 2005. This initial contact lead us to work together on an early prototype of “Dialup Radio”, an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) service they’re now about to fully launch as “Freedom Fone”. As the service nears release, Amy Saunderson-Meyer – Media and Information Officer at Kubatana – talks about the tool and how they see it helping civil society in Zimbabwe and beyond.

“Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) strategies are viewed in many contemporary business circles as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. BoP refers to the 2.6 billion people who live below the $2 a day breadline and many business strategists argue that if targeted correctly, these consumers can offer businesses a main line into one of the fastest growing markets. Even if the price of products and services has to be reduced, profits can be made up and surpassed in volumes sold.

A more neutral view of BoP strategies is that they are not simply a means to make millions, but a pragmatic appreciation that through commercial profit making activities, sustainable solutions can be developed that help alleviate poverty. With thought, the poor can be incorporated into the system in a mutually beneficial manner – not only as consumers but also as producers, partners, entrepreneurs and innovators.

Freedom Fone’s BoP strategy focuses on building and promoting an open source software platform for information sharing that is intuitive, cost-conscious, internet independent and ultimately targets all kinds of phone users. Deployers of the Freedom Fone platform can be small or large NGO’s or service organizations – even individual information activists. The goal is to broaden the base of audio information providers and facilitate the development of two-way communications with communities which have traditionally been underprivileged, marginalized and sometimes even stigmatized.

The Freedom Fone platform can be used to assist with education, learning, healthcare and medical support for chronic diseases like HIV/Aids, TB and malaria. Voice menus conveniently provide information on demand services, making them a useful additional channel for community radio stations and emergency response initiatives. It can be used to provide information on the full spectrum of issues including sanitation, the environment, agriculture, fishing, business, finance, marketing, community, arts and culture news. Its ‘leave-a-message’ and SMS functionality can be leveraged for citizen journalism.

Essentially Freedom Fone is a simple but novel medium for addressing social development. The currency we are working with is knowledge, the tool we are using is the mobile phone and the mobile function we primarily leverage is audio, through Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

Freedom Fone has focused on knowledge sharing because in a globalized information age, access to relevant information is pivotal to development and vital for survival. Content is king and knowledge is power! However the people who need information the most are often the ones at the bottom of the pyramid, and they tend to remain on the fringes of our society. For instance, in developing countries, information flow is often blocked by restricted infrastructure, lack of resources and limited unreliable access to computers, email and internet. Other factors such as language barriers and low literacy levels exist, and in certain developing countries this information alienation is further compounded by restrictive and authoritarian governments.

Freedom Fone has focused on the mobile phone as the medium of communication because according to a UN report, 60% of the world’s population has mobile phones. By 2009 there were already over 4.5 billion mobile phone subscriptions in circulation and developing countries account for over two thirds of these mobile phones. In contrast only 25% of the world’s population has internet access and in Africa there is only a 6.8% internet penetration rate. Thus the wide use of mobile phones bridges the chasm between the haves and the have nots. Their use cuts across the ‘digital divide’ and they have the potential to act as information access equalizers. For example, in Zimbabwe, barely 5% of Zimbabweans have access to the internet but there are over 3 million mobile phones contracts in a country of 11 million, which represents a penetration rate of roughly 27%. In South Africa – which offers a good indication of future development patterns in Africa – only 7% of the population has internet access, but there are approximately 36 million active cell phone users, which is roughly 80% of the population.

To address the limited access to and the high cost of internet connectivity in many developing countries, Freedom Fone has been designed so that it does not require any access to the internet to function. The Freedom Fone server can be connected to mobile phone SIM cards, landlines and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) numbers. Callers can phone in from a landline, basic mobile phone, or soft phone like Skype. If uninterrupted power is provided, the system can be available to callers 24 hours a day, providing a valuable information on demand channel, as well as a vehicle through which the public can contribute information or queries 24/7.

A number of Freedom Fone’s core features focus on interactive voice menus and callback functionality. By consciously marrying the mobile phone with IVR, Freedom Fone extends this previously business-oriented tool, into the arena of social development and social media. By simplifying the user interface and minimizing the technical alternatives, we predict that information providers will find building voice menu-based information services intuitive rather than intimidating and cost-effective rather than costly.

Providing an alternative to the limitations imposed by the 160 characters allowed in an SMS is likely to be liberating. Freedom Fone provides a do-it-yourself platform for increased two way communication, facilitating the contribution of rich audio files by both the operator and caller. Its audio orientation offers similarities with radio programming – however there are dramatic differences in the start up costs, required technical know-how and government regulation. It is interactive as it enables end users to become information providers by contributing questions, audio content and feedback in response to the voice menus. Audio files also have the enormous benefit of surpassing the issues of literacy, going beyond language differences, as people can create and manage information in their own dialect. For deployments in Africa, audio is also strongly aligned with the oral traditions of story-telling.

Importantly, Freedom Fone has been designed to run on and with low-powered equipment to facilitate its deployment using solar power.

As Freedom Fone services the BoP, it is essential that deployments offer affordable, cost-effective access to information. Sadly, in Zimbabwe the cost of local mobile calls is $0.25 per minute making call-in costs a major challenge for local deployment. The same hurdle does not exist for deployments in East Africa where competition exists between mobile network providers and call costs are minimal. In countries where Voice over IP (VoIP) is legal further opportunities pertain, as VoIP cuts costs and facilitates scalability.

The Freedom Fone platform offers the potential for cost recovery through advertising which can be incorporated into the voice menus as short audio clips. Another option are premium numbers which can be negotiated with mobile network operators. In time we hope to source funding to build features that facilitate micro-payments for accessing voice menu content or receiving SMS updates.

Freedom Fone aims to put information in the hands of the public by simplifying and popularizing information outreach via IVR and SMS. It is a tool for content creation, by the people for the people. It shifts BoP solutions beyond profits, by giving the punch of informative power to the people”.

Amy Saunderson-Meyer
Media and Information Officer
The Kubatana Trust of Zimbabwe and Freedom Fone
www.freedomfone.org

Better late than never, I’m about to start reading “Dead Aid“, Dambisa Moyo’s much touted book. I’ve already read a few blog posts and reviews – some about her, some about her book – and the Guardian’s “An evening with Dambisa Moyo” seemed worth a look. In an otherwise downbeat review, one statement stood out a mile.

“Africa is to development what Mars is to NASA” – the ultimate development studies essay question. It certainly got me thinking. To what extent is Africa development’s playground, a place to ‘try things’, to experiment? Often with so little accountability – see Bill Easterly’s “White Man’s Burden” – it’s easy to see why it’s thought of as an easy place to pilot, to test, to try out. “And if it goes wrong, well, let’s try something else, somewhere else”.

During a workshop at IDS a couple of weeks ago, I commented that the development sector in Africa was littered with the carcasses of failed projects, a kind of ‘elephant graveyard’ for the well-intended.

I’d love to see an ICT4D/African technology conference pick up on the “NASA, Mars, Development, Africa” theme. And I’d love to be in the audience. Any takers?

Although I find myself intrigued by the convergence of computer science, human computer interaction (HCI) design and international development, it’s not often that I find myself in a room of experts. They’re just not places I tend to mix, most likely because I have no professional IT qualifications, let alone a computer science degree, and I’ve done most of my own software design off-the-cuff, much to the dismay of people who hoped there was a robust process behind it.

Last August I got my first taste of the very real challenges that the computer science world faces when it comes up against the equally real challenges of international development. The meeting – convened at UC Berkeley – was an eye-opener for me to say the least, and as I left I blogged about how thankful I was that it wasn’t me who had to come up with the answers. You can read that post here.

A little later in the year I was invited to speak at the First International Workshop on Expressive Interactions for Sustainability and Empowerment, held at one of Vodafone’s London offices. The topic of conversation was similar, but here the focus was on how to build mobile tools that work in difficult, challenging, ‘foreign’ environments. Following my talk I was invited by the Editor of Interfaces, John Knight, to contribute an article to the next edition of their magazine.

For the article I teamed up with Joel Selanikio, co-founder of DataDyne.org and the creator of the EpiSurveyor mobile data collection tool. It made sense working with Joel for a number of reasons. Not only have I known and admired him and his work for some time, but Joel is first and foremost a paediatrician. For him – like me – understanding the problem takes priority over the technology, consideration of which should always come last. FrontlineSMS and EpiSurveyor have both evolved from time spent in the field – observing, experiencing and understanding before designing, developing and building.

You can read our thoughts on the process – “Ten things you might want to know before building for mobile“ – in the current edition of Interfaces magazine (PDF, 2.5Mb).

For further posts on the subject see the “Mobile applications development” section of this blog, which includes a 10 minute video on the topic.

After three workshops on three continents, conversations and meetings with countless NGOs, academics, researchers and technologists, and many hours of conference calls, W3C this week released their “Mobile Web for Social Development Roadmap”, a comprehensive document which sits at the heart of the wider work of the Mobile Web for Development Interest Group (MW4D).

According to the Roadmap document, its purpose is to help:

“… understand the current challenges of deploying development-oriented services on mobile phones, evaluate existing technologies, and identify the most promising directions to lower the barriers of developing, deploying and accessing services on mobile phones and thereby creating an enabling environment for more social-oriented services to appear”

The Roadmap is split into two distinct sections. The first covers challenges and issues in developing mobile tools for social development, and the second looks specifically at technology options. The primary audience are individuals, organisations and entrepreneurs interested in social mobile; the mobile industry itself; academics; international organisations and, finally, policy makers and regulatory bodies.

The Roadmap is very much a work-in-progress, and the MW4D Interest Group welcomes comments, recommendations and suggestions to help shape it as the work moves forward.

Find more in the best practice series here

The timing of this article could not have been better, given the discussions last week on the merits of mobile-based “cloud computing” and the clarification of our position a couple of days later. Despite advances in mobile devices and data connectivity, the need for mobile tools to also be able to work in less than optimal conditions is still as strong and as relevant as ever, as this use of FrontlineSMS by Telecoms Sans Frontiers in Nicaragua shows us all too well.

“TSF – No Bugs In This Software That Fights Disease”
(re-printed with the kind permission of SatNews.com)
November 5th, 2009

“Since the beginning of October, Nicaragua is facing a huge rise of dengue cases, which has become a major public health concern in the country. The Health Ministry of the Central American nation (Minsa) has a crisis unit (SILAIS) which currently focuses its activities in response to both the dengue and H1N1 plagues. An Internet monitoring system has previously been set up to control the health situation in the country; nevertheless access to computer is often difficult in some regions where only few health centers are equipped.

Due to this serious situation, and the necessity to improve the collection of information, TSF, in collaboration with PATH (an international non-profit organisation that aims at enabling communities worldwide to break longstanding cycle of poor health) is reinforcing SILAIS’ capacities in Information and Communications Technologies.

In order to monitor the spread of the dengue in Managua and to conduct mobile health actions, TSF has been implementing for the first time a very innovative system based on a widespread, cheap and solid technology, GSM.

To set up the program, TSF uses FrontlineSMS software. Developed by a TSF partner NGO, FrontlineSMS is free, open source software that turns a laptop and a mobile phone into a central communications hub. Once installed, the program enables users to send and receive text messages with large groups of people through mobile phones. Thus, GSM technology is used to reach as many geographical zones as possible to control health issues in those areas. The server in SILAIS is connected with the 32 health units in Managua.

Each health unit has been delivered a mobile phone by TSF, so that they can send different kinds of information through SMS to the server. Hospital and health centers fill in predefined forms from their mobile phones and send them by SMS to SILAIS. Designed by PATH and the SILAIS, those forms provide data about the classic and hemorrhagic dengue cases, about the H1N1 2009 ones and the need for medicines when the stock nearly runs out. Once the forms received, the server stores information and puts them in databases in order to facilitate statistical analysis, on Excel format for example.

TSF provides two-way communication to health units enabling SILAIS to receive a daily report and gather messages from the health units and will have an updated situation in each center. At the meanwhile, SILAIS will also be able to communicate important information to them through SMS (such as an alert or a warning about coming meetings for example) or give them automatic answers to predefined questions sent by the health units.

By providing communication links between health structures and the SILAIS, TSF will allow the Health Ministry to have more accurate information about the diseases spread within Managua and quickly survey and assess the needs in affected areas. TSF helps health professionals use advanced methodologies such as smart phones and open-source software. Mobile devices are great tools to track and transmit crucial data in order to detect an epidemic threat at an appropriate time. Through this program, TSF participates in strengthening health systems in Nicaragua.

Following the installation of the system, on October 24th, TSF organized training for all the beneficiaries of the project. The health units and SILAIS staff were trained on the application’s functionalities and available services”.

For a related article on FrontlineForms, the FrontlineSMS data collection tool used by TSF for the project, go here.

As a keen cyclist for most of my life, I’ve always been shocked at how little many car drivers care or care to understand the challenges of two wheels in heavy or fast moving traffic. This lack of respect is not only frustrating – it can also be dangerous. In my younger days I thought I had the answer. Force all learner drivers to spend a month on a push bike before issuing them their licence. There’s no better way than learning by experiencing, after all.

As I’ve got older I realise that my bike riding solution may not have been the most practical, but the “learning by experiencing” point is as strong and relevant as ever, particularly in the world of international development. You can’t beat experience. Pretty-much everyone I respect and turn to for guidance – both spiritual and practical – has got their hands dirty in the field at some stage. I feel at times that a stint in the field should be compulsory. How else can you truly understand the problem?

One of the down-sides to a discipline which doesn’t insist on “compulsory” fieldwork is the rise of a culture of politics. Losing sight of the bigger picture and becoming embroiled in competitive, overly critical behaviour can be a huge distraction and hugely destructive. Development suddenly becomes a battle of “a versus b” or “x versus y” and not about the alleviation of poverty and suffering that it should be. I steer well clear at every available opportunity, and draw on much of what I’ve seen and experienced over the past sixteen years to do so.

I also have my “War Dance” DVD. One of the toughest films I’ve ever seen, “War Dance” – based in the camps of Northern Uganda – puts everything into perspective. For those of us who have seen this kind of suffering it’s a stark reminder – and a cry – to remain focused. Get a copy and watch it each time you need reminding why you’re doing what you doing. Politics has no place in a world like this.

It doesn’t have a place here, either. Whether you agree or disagree with the approach, this recent Medecins Sans Frontiers video drives home a message not a million miles away. It may be messy, it may be challenging, and it may be confrontational – but if this is the reality for everyone on the ground then we need to be having these conversations.

Be warned: It’s difficult to watch (well, listen to), as is “War Dance”. But it’s powerful, and it’s a reminder to all of us that we need to focus on what matters, where it matters. Poverty is not about politics, and should not be driven by it. It’s about people. Every single one of them.

“Our best decisions are made when we take not only our current needs into account, but when we consider how they will be affected by the state of the world in the future”. Or so says Gustavo Montes de Oca, an intern at London-based Forum for the Future. In this guest post, Gustavo takes us through four of his key ‘development future’ thoughts, and invites you to add more by joining their ongoing discussion

The global development community is particularly focused on the future (for example, the MDGs, or Millennium Development Goals) working to future targets of poverty reduction, health improvement and equality. But what are the factors working with or against these aims, and how will they pan out in the next 20 to 30 years?

Four trends which I think will play an important part in shaping the future of development are:

First, massive growth in ICT and applications: ICT has arguably already done more for Africa than aid. With the arrival of fibre optics this will continue. $100 dollar computers in every house eclipsed by device in every pocket, serving individual and group needs. (Further information on ICTs are available in this Database of mobile applications)

Second, the “Reaspora”: People whose origins, however defined, are in the countries of Africa and southeast Asia but who live in the West have seen where that model of development leads and are taking an interest in helping their countries and regions avoid the pitfalls – and seize on the opportunities – ahead. (See sites such as the Reaspora Blog and BarCamp Africa)

Third, South – South cooperation: Cooperation between people in different low-income regions is increasing. Since they live in the same context as each other it is easiest for them to come up with solutions, including the adaptation of technologies from the developed world

Fourth, Girl effect and women in power: A woman – or girl – will reinvest 90% of her income in her family. A man will reinvest 30% – 40%. This sense of stewardship combined with growing power (two-thirds of the Rwandan Parliament is made up of women) could see women play a growing part in leading their countries down alternative, more sustainable development paths

These are my four for starters. What am I missing?

Forum for the Future is a charity committed to sustainable development which focuses on the root causes and connections between big issues such as climate change, social inequality and environmental degradation. If you would like to find out more about their work, and join in with this (and many other) discussions, visit them online at www.forumforthefuture.org

During one of my many epic walks around Palo Alto last week, I stopped and tapped this into my phone:

Let me explain.

When I started out in mobile almost seven years ago, there were very few people working in the space, which meant there were very few people to turn to for support, guidance or advice. In fact, there were so few people with any meaningful experience I was offered my first major piece of mobile work based on my IT knowledge and conservation/development experience alone. Today, there would have been dozens – if not hundreds – of applicants for that job and it’s unlikely I’d have stood a chance.

But getting a chance is what it’s all about. When kiwanja.net officially came into being towards the end of 2003, it took me almost four years to get any serious traction, let alone funding. Emails went unanswered, requests for charity-rates at conferences were snubbed, begging letters to mobile operators and handset manufacturers were blanked. It may be hard at the top, but it’s harder at the bottom. That’s why, today, I never forget what it was like when I started out. And that’s why I never take anything for granted, and why I never forget to make time to help students, researchers, NGOs, organisations – anyone from all walks of life, in fact – who find themselves working their way off that first rung of the mobile ladder.

Last Friday I attended the UN Youth Assembly in New York. If there’s one thing I love – other than having my own name plate, of course – it’s talking to a room full of fearless students. I spent the best part of this morning following up on their emails, the fallout of my short talk on kiwanja.net and FrontlineSMS.

If we can help anyone on their journey, then we should. Whether that be giving advice or a positive critique on an idea, helping raise awareness through blog posts, giving tips on fundraising, making introductions to other projects and people with the same interests, or offering to be a future soundboard as their ideas grow and develop. These are all things I didn’t have when I started out, and using them productively now that I do is one of the biggest contributions I believe I can – and should – make to the future growth of our discipline. Our legacy shouldn’t be measured in the projects or tools we create, but in the people we serve and inspire.

In the mobile world we talk a lot about project sustainability, but little about human sustainability. If we’re to have any chance of ongoing success then we need to attract the brightest young minds to the “mobile for development” field, and then give them all the support they need to keep them there. Empowerment isn’t just something we do in a distant land. There’s plenty we can be doing on our own doorstep.

It’s a different kind of empowerment, but that doesn’t make it less valuable. If anything, it’s more so.

What happens when you put computer scientists, user interface (UI) specialists, human-computer-interaction (HCI) designers and non-profit work together? You get ICT4D, surely? Well, maybe not as it turns out. I just spent the weekend trying to help figure out that very question at a gathering at UC Berkeley, where people from all backgrounds got together to discuss the role of computer science in global development.

I particularly enjoy workshops which bring together a mixture of people who might not ordinarily get together. On the one hand there were out-and-out computer scientists, techies and members of academia from universities all around the world, but on the other a range of people who occupy something of the middle ground. People such as Gary Marsden, Mike Best, Nathan Eagle, Kieron Sharpey-Shafer, Jonathan Jackson and others.

It was a fascinating two days. Here are a few thoughts on the tweets, tensions and takeaways from the event.

It became apparent early on that there were ‘tensions’ between high-tech implementations and a need for solutions to be ‘appropriate’, i.e. simple to adopt, use and maintain. It was noted that many computer scientists – given the choice – prefer to tackle problems that are more complex, but this didn’t mean that the end solution had to be.

One of the bigger obstacles was the lack of developing country experience among many computer science students and graduates, and this was seen as a major problem for the discipline. To be fair, this situation exists in the wider ICT4D and mobile fields, too. It was noted that some of the more interesting work originated from people with field experience, and that many computer science students soon realised that their earlier ideas were doomed to failure once they’d had a chance to visit the places where they hoped to implement.

A question that didn’t end up being asked openly, but one that Kieran whispered to me during a wider discussion. It turns out there are all sorts of loaded terms in ‘ICT4D’ – should it be ICT in development or ICT for development, for example, and how are we defining ICT and how are we defining development? This is one I’m happy to let others thrash out.

One of the more fascinating and probing questions, this time from Tapan Parikh, one of the workshop organisers. It wonderfully encapsulates one of the bigger ‘computer science for global development’ dilemmas. Does it chase down the best and smartest technologies, or simply go for solutions which promise the biggest and widest impact?

Anyone who knows me will know why I make that choice. There are too many organisations spending significant amounts of time trying to stay alive and relevant, and it detracts from where their real focus should be – impact on the ground. Many of the people I know in the NGO world have dedicated their lives to their work, and they’d gladly stuff envelopes or flip burgers to keep on track. As soon as funding and ‘ownership of a space’ become higher priorities than the work itself, alarm bells begin to ring.

One of the more fascinating people at the workshop was Anil Gupta, who runs the Honey Bee Network (an Indian version of AfriGadget, I guess). Anil gave an inspiring and passionate speech about the importance of grassroots innovators, and among many of the takeaways was his challenge to the proponents of scale. (If enough of us say it, maybe people will take notice).

You can generally tell when things are beginning to seriously drift off-topic when people call for more conferences as the solution. I think we need to learn how to make more of the ones we’ve already got, thank you.

Towards the end of a very productive two days, a topic which I expected to be deep and complex turned out to be deeper and more complex than even I expected. Just like a babysitter who hands the baby over at the end of the evening, I was grateful not to have to deal with some of these issues as I headed out the door. Sometimes it felt like there was never going to be an easy fit, but there were some very smart people in the room.

If anyone can work through these problems, they can.