On my travels it’s not unusual for me to find a dozen or more Village Phone operators in a single village. It’s also not unusual to find them with pretty-much the same phone, quite often the same price plan, and the same signs and posters. And just to rub it in, their shops and kiosks … Continue reading Restricted mobility
Tag: Uganda
Mapping medicine availability via SMS
Medicine stock-outs are a potentially lethal problem in a number of African countries, yet governments insist they don’t occur. What could be more powerful than a map which contradicts this claim? Last week activists in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia started surveying clinics in their respective countries, checking stock levels of essential medicines, including: First-line … Continue reading Mapping medicine availability via SMS
Grameen’s AppLab comes of age
Today is a very exciting day for many colleagues in Uganda, a day which sees the launch of a suite of new services from Grameen’s AppLab project. I was fortunate enough to be involved in the very early stages of the initiative, spending a month on the ground studying a mixture of geography, culture, challenges, … Continue reading Grameen’s AppLab comes of age
Conservation friends win Award
I’ve been friends with Lawrence and Gladys Zikusoka – founders of Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) – for a few years after meeting them in Stockholm at an ICT4D conference. Our meeting was particularly exciting because of our shared interest in technology and primate conservation, and because of my previous conservation work in Uganda, the … Continue reading Conservation friends win Award
Let there be light. And water. And education
At first glance you’d be forgiven for thinking it was another UN Millennium Village, part of the Geoffrey Sachs poverty alleviation experiment. It’s not, but it does sound strikingly similar (you know, take a village of poor, impoverished Africans and bring them ‘development’). Whether you agree with the approach or not – and there’s been … Continue reading Let there be light. And water. And education
And the winners are…
Most of my ideas come on trains and buses. nGOmobile was no exception. The 1645 Kings Cross to Cambridge train was responsible this time around, after I’d spent the day getting ‘processed’ by the American Embassy in London. It only seems like yesterday that we launched the competition, and yet here we are, five months … Continue reading And the winners are…
The charging challenge and the entrepreneur
In “Mobile Telephony: Leveraging Strengths and Opportunities for Socio-Economic Transformation in Nigeria” (a book which I blogged about last year), Christiana Charles-Iyoha sheds some fascinating light on the barriers to mobile ownership among Nigerian market traders. Erratic power supply, and difficulty charging, came top with a staggering 87%. Users in many African countries – and … Continue reading The charging challenge and the entrepreneur
When a phone is not just a phone…
Taken in Uganda last week, a great example of adaptive product development. In other words, giving customers what they want. Maybe this explains why Nokia does so well in emerging markets. Ka-torchi, anyone?
Blog timeout: Abort, retry, fail?
Over the next few weeks this Blog will take a short summer break while I work with the Grameen Technology Centre in Uganda on their mobile applications ‘AppLab’ project. The next couple of months are exciting – and busy – times. In addition to the Grameen work, I’ll be making the keynote presentation at the … Continue reading Blog timeout: Abort, retry, fail?