Mobiles. M-agriculture. Telcom. How Freedom Fone Helped Create Participatory Radio in Africa. Two years ago, Bev Clark, the co-founder of Kubatana.net, was awarded a large grant in the Knight News Challenge for Freedom Fone, an open-source software platform for distributing news and information through interactive voice response (IVR) technology. Freedom Fone was officially launched (version 1.5) in late February of this year and has since been downloaded about 200 times, according Amy Saunderson-Meyer of Freedom Fone. (She blogs for Idea Lab and her most recent post, about Freedom Fone version 1.6, is here.) Freedom Fone leverages audio as a mobile function using IVR, a technology that allows a system to detect voice and keyboard input. IVR allows a user to call, enter or say specific numbers, and listen to or contribute audio content. Since launch, Freedom Fone has provided support to specific organizations, including Equal Access in Cambodia, Small World News TV, TechnoServe, One Economy Corporation, and Africa Youth Trust.
Freedom Fone in Tanzania and Ghana. Oxfam and Nokia Partner for Mobile Donations App. Oxfam International and the world's largest cellphone manufacturer, (still) Nokia, have developed an app that allows users to respond to charity requests directly from their phones. While Oxfam Donate is only the latest in a long line of mobile apps for social good, this one could be especially useful in times of instant natural disasters--and the fundraising updates are visible in realtime. It's not exactly clear yet what the buzzword "realtime" implies for the scope of mobile donations in this case, but so far the words "progress reports" and "fundraising levels" have been uttered.
We do know that there will be a choice of five Oxfam programs to donate to from the phones--emergency work in Pakistan, an children's education project in rural Tanzania, a climate-change-focused initiative in Haiti, an HIV program in South Africa, and another HIV program in Thailand. By making mobile payments easier, donations may actually increase. [Image by Jane Beesley] Cow farming program wins Apps 4 Africa competition. 8 October 2010Last updated at 10:40 The competition had entrants from Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania An application which tracks the fertility of cows has won the first ever Apps 4 Africa competition to find new talent as smartphones become increasingly popular in Africa.
Offering a prize fund of $5,000, the competition asked developers in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania to come up with a mobile application that is widely accessible, easy to use and simple. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote I want to thank you for lending your innovate spirit and creativity to the enterprise of building a better future for your communities.” End QuoteHillary ClintonUS Secretary of State The competition, funded by the United States government, hoped to unite the brightest African developers with people who could benefit most from innovate mobile technology. Launched back in July in Nairobi, the competition attracted 20 entrants - each offering a unique approach to improving life in the region. Mobile2.0@BOP. Mobile 2.0 is a term used to describe the use of mobiles for “more-than-voice”. Mobiles are increasingly becoming payment devices which can also send/process/receive voice, text and images; it is envisaged that in the next few years, they will also be capable of information-retrieval and publishing functions, normally associated with the internet.
Whilst the dominant narrative in developed economies with regard to telefutures is of a “fat pipe” (coaxial cable, fiber or even wireless) coming into each household carrying entertainment and data (including Voice over IP), a different path is being followed in less developed economies, where everyone may not necessarily own a phone but many have not even heard of the Internet. People at the BOP, especially in countries that are exhibiting rapid economic growth (like India) are coming out of poverty. Horizontal issues are the basic competitive and regulatory conditions that affect the emergence of Mobile 2.0@BOP. Horizontal aspects. Can You Hear Us Now? – Science and Technology. Back in the mid-1990s I was living in a semirural area on the slopes of Mount Meru, just outside Arusha, Tanzania. Now and then I had to make a phone call back home to America. This was not then an easy thing to do.
I would venture out to inquire about using one of the few phone lines at neighboring houses. Often, these lines would be broken, or working spottily, and it could take weeks to arrange a repair. Usually, I would end up knocking on the door of a business in town (owned by friends of friends), trying to be unobtrusive as I listened to the crackly sound of the voice of the woman I would later marry. Our words seemed to run into each other, and we each had to wait a minute to be able to hear the other. In the lag, the distance seemed tangible. These days, when I’m in Africa, I tell people this story and they laugh. Last year I took a bus across West Africa. I may have been the only passenger dialing America, but I was far from the only one with a phone. Developing (and developed) countries embrace the mobile internet. Fast-forward 15 years and it would appear that so-called developing countries are emulating the Lebanese example and bypassing their landlines again, but this time eschewing PCs to access the internet on their mobiles.
According to research (see footnote) from mobile survey company, On Device Research, more than 50% of African and Asian internet users do not access the internet on a PC. In some countries such as Egypt the figure is as high as 70% and what gives the On Device Research statistics credibility is that the survey of more than 15,000 was conducted directly on the mobile internet. While the report’s findings are not surprising, especially in India where in a country of 1.1 billion people, more than 600 million people own mobile phones and only 40 million have fixed-line access, it is developed countries such as the UK and the US where another story is unfolding.
This segment of mobile internet users in the UK is a demographic that is likely to be targeted by operators in 2011. M4D Overview: an Introduction to Mobile Phones for Development. The “M4D Overview 1.0: the 2009 Introduction to Mobile for Development” report aspires to provide an overview of studies on mobile telephony in a developing country context. It aims to give a broad picture of the phenomenon ‘m4d’ by using three different types of sources, namely research papers, reports from different UN (United Nations) organisations, as well as interviews and reports from the industry, including mobile operators, mobile producers and network producers.
The intended readers for this report are three groups of people ‘d-people without mknowledge’, ‘m-people without d-knowledge’ together with everybody else who is interested in this new field but lacks both m- and d-knowledge. Why m4d is worth considering The answer is “It’s all about information”! Information is vital in any activity, private or business; it makes it possible to make more informed decisions. The mobile has become the entry point for LIC into the information society (UNCTAD 2008). Our Solutions. Mobile Phones for Social Transformation. Mobile phones in tough places: Wireless carrier-pigeons. A Low Cost Mobile Service For Remote Regions. Range Networks, a Silicon Valley start-up, is developing a mobile communication infrastructure that will offer extremely low cost voice, messaging and data services. The system works with the Universal Software Radio Peripheral to present a GSM air interface to any standard GSM mobile phone and uses open source Asterisk VoIP software to connect calls.
The company says that their OpenBTS system, as it is called, needs very little power to operate, making it a great alternative for far-off, inaccessible regions in developing and underdeveloped countries. Some of these systems are already operating in the post-earthquake Haiti. Range Networks [via Springwise] Image by Veer. Veer has recently relaunched its site, Veer.com, with a simplified, easy to use interface allowing for enhanced and simplified image search.
Mobile enrolments – a key step towards KGFS mobility. - By Anupama Joshi, CEO, Sahastradhara KGFS and Advait Behara, IFMR Rural Finance In an earlier post on this blog, we mentioned that ‘Mobility’ was going to play an important role in enabling access to KGFS’ products and services in remote rural locations. In the district of Tehri Garhwal in Uttarakhand where Sahastradhara KGFS operates, physical access to KGFS branches is made challenging by an inhospitable terrain. With much of the district located at and between the foothills of the Himalayas, access by road is limited. For many villages access is restricted to un-motorable roads which are often sealed by landslides caused by torrential downpours – a frequent occurrence during the monsoons. The monsoons are particularly fierce in these hills and continue from June until late September. Winter doesn’t make things easier. It’s no doubt then that Sahastradhara makes an ideal case for mobility solutions that tackle many of these access restrictions.
Where would we start? Could this be done? Venn Diagram Location of m4D and Apps4D in ICT4D - Wayan Dot Com. Recently, Ken Banks put forth an interesting question in his post "Mobile community: The holy grail of m4d? " He essentially asked "Who is the mobile community? " and hinted that there is a lack of clarity in the definition and therefore the need for a specific mobile community.
Taking his hint, Nate Barthel suggested we think of a Venn diagram of the m4D community as overlapping the ICT and development communities, with Prabhas Pokharel creating this one so we could visualize a m4D community. I'd like to present my own Venn diagram of m4D, adding in Apps4D: Now here is each category explained, along with its placement in these respective communities: Now this does not mean that m4D should not have its own community - it should. Jugaad: Questions for Santosh Ostwal. In (mid-year) Review: Yes, We are Highly Mobile and Hyper-Active.
Posted by admin on Feb 25, 2011 With close to 6 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, two thirds of the world's population now has access to mobile phones. The ubiquity and widespread use of mobile technology presents a unique opportunity for civil society organizations and communities by increasing access to information for and interaction with people in countries around the world.
Our mission - to provide resources to and connect a global network of people who use mobile technology for social change - has been the core of our work during 2010. We've built up our comprehensive mDirectory , hosted more than a dozen events worldwide, conducted bottom-up mobile surveys in multiple countries, and ran several large technical assistance projects.
We've received attention along the way, both from the press and in the form of contracts and grants, while expanding our portfolio and adding (finally!) Paid staff to our team of now four hard-working people and two amazing m-interns. Our Mission. Africa cell phone boom beneficial -- but schools, roads, power, water remain critical needs. Where many people lack the basic human necessities — has made headlines worldwide the past few years. The surprising boom has led to widespread speculation that cell phones could potentially transform the impoverished continent. But new research by economists Isaac M. Mbiti and Jenny C. Aker has found that cell phones — while a useful and powerful tool for many people in Africa — cannot drive economic development on their own. Mbiti, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and Aker, at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., say that while there is evidence of positive micro-economic impacts, so far there's limited evidence that mobile phones have led to macro-economic improvements in African countries.
No magic bullet Cell phones only can do so much, say the researchers. "It's really great for a farmer to find out the price of beans in the market," says Mbiti, who has seen the impact of the cell phone boom firsthand while conducting research in his native Kenya. Boom improves daily life. STC for Mobile Applications Community of Practice | infoDev.org. Happy b'day 2 u SMS! May u live long and may u cont delivering on what matters most. SMS is a text-only message delivery system on mobile phone networks. As a compliment to voice calls, text messages travel through the wireless service provider’s network, routed and delivered much like a voice call.
The messaging server for SMS or text messaging routes all messages to the appropriate mobile phone or application based on the number in the destination address (source: CTIA). Nowadays, SMS has gone far beyond people-to-people (aka person-to-person or human-to-human) communication. From an interactions perspective, the communication path can fall into the following categories: person-to-person (P2P), person-to-machine (P2M), application-to-person (A2P) and machine-to-machine (M2M). I will talk more about that in another post. SMS for development: There are a growing number of projects taking advantage of the widely available SMS technology to provide practical solutions to communities and to deliver social change.
The Mobile Wedge - Digital Citizen Pulse. EPROM - Entrepreneurial Programming and Research On Mobiles. Mobile-based livelihood services in Africa. Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Africa - Working Paper 211. Jenny Aker and Isaac Mbiti examine the growth of mobile phone technology over the past decade and consider its potential impacts upon quality of life in low-income countries, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa. They first provide an overview of the patterns and determinants of mobile phone coverage in sub-Saharan Africa before describing the characteristics of primary and secondary mobile phone adopters on the continent. They then discuss the channels through which mobile phone technology can impact development outcomes, both as a positive externality of the communication sector and as part of mobile phone-based development projects, and analyze existing evidence.
While current research suggests that mobile phone coverage and adoption have had positive impacts on agricultural and labor market efficiency and welfare in certain countries, empirical evidence is still somewhat limited. Preview. Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Africa - Working Paper 211.