Facebook, a leader in ICT development in Africa?

I came across an interesting post by Wayan Vota*, an ICT in developing economies expert. He was responding to a question posted on Twitter about whether the growth of Facebook usage in Africa has any implications on development? ... perfect topic for this blog, right? His response highlights three areas in which he believes Facebook has effected: ICT Adoption, Literacy, and Community.


Read the full (straight to the point) post here 
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*Wayan Vota is a technology expert focused on appropriate information and communication technologies (ICT) for rural and underserved areas of the developing world. He is a Senior Director at Inveneo and is the editor of ICTworks

Esoko: Empowering farmers through text messages

Many African leaders are working to elevate their countries to knowledge-based economies, however, the current dependence on agriculture can’t be ignored. In most cases, more than 40% of the country’s income comes from agriculture. In an effort to empower farmers with information, Esoko, found an opportunity in the increased saturation of mobile phones. The initiative utilizes mobile phones (SMS based) and computers (Internet based) to communicate daily commodity pricing, as well as quantities to farmers in Ghana, Mali, 

Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Mozambique, Madagascar and Malawi.

The platform pulls market information from users and agents that upload daily data through computers. Once that information is available, the platform then pushes this information through SMS to farmers based on previously specified alerts*. 

In addition, this information is easily searchable on the online application. With such small margins on commodity items, a farmers business can often be hurt by a middleman. This service empowers farmers with market knowledge to make better informed decisions, and at the same time eliminate the middleman. A helpful feature of the system is a library/resources area where individuals can locate news content and weather information.

One major challenge of using esoko is literacy, many of these farmers may know how to use a simple cell-phone to make calls but may not know how to read. This is a challenge both in taking advantage of the SMS pushes and the online resources. Also some of the esoko applications, like mapping prices and quantities of a commodity on a cell-phone are too sophisticated for the regular farmer's phone. Indeed the company is developing them for smartphones such as Android (read a story about a developer here). Instead they are better used by government and tracking agencies.   

This program is possible in the countries listed above through partnerships with IFDC, FAO, IFAD, Technoserve, USAID, MTN, ZAIN, Sudani.

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*mobile alerts can be setup for individuals, groups, or for entire Networks. You can specify days, markets and commodities to receive prices from, or commodities and locations from which you'd like to receive offers 

NASA and USAID collaboration

Exciting news! NASA and USAID announced a 5 year agreement today to advance international development efforts through science and technology.

According to the announcement, the agreement is supposed to "formalize ongoing agency collaborations that use Earth science data to address developmental challenges, and to assist in disaster mitigation and humanitarian responses."


The two organizations have collaborated in the past in the LAUNCH program, which supports problem-solving innovations to global challenges like water scarcity and energy .... It will be interesting to see what type of programs come out of this new agreement. 

Samsasource: transforming the culture of hand-outs with technology

I recently came across a really interesting organization called Samasource, which uses information and communication technologies to provide work for individuals in developing economies. The founder and CEO, Leila C. Janah recognized the need to provide sustainable jobs for women, youth, and refugees by connecting them to digital work. This idea came as a result of her travels through Africa and India, she recognized the lack of economic opportunities in those areas and knew that a culture of hand-outs is neither sustainable nor will help develop these economies. She saw an opportunity in the availability and growth of computers and internet. Here is how it works:


On the back-end Samasource recruits Service Partners in developing economies that meet certain criteria, both social and technical. They then provide training to these partners in core areas, like technical skills and project management. Once they are done with the training and due diligence, they delegate projects to them.  


On the front-end Samasource receives projects from companies, they break it down into micro-work and allocate it to Service Partners in developing economies. Once the work is completed, it is sent back to Samasource where experts there compile and assure quality. At the end, the company gets a completed project while helping reduce poverty, providing economic opportunity, and empowering individuals. 

I think the idea is very novel. One difficulty they may have faced in the beginning is having to invest a lot of time in training/quality control. But as they continue to grow and build stronger relationships, the individuals will grow with them and learn. They will also have to invest heavily in building relationships with companies, as their success depends on having continuous projects from them.   

Here is an inspiring TEDx video of the founder, speaking about her experience and the birth of Samasource

WorldReader Kindle initiative: Update

As I promised earlier .. I followed the Worldreader.org  initiative to distribute Kindles to children in rural schools in Africa. And I have to say I was impressed by their triall report and impact measurement.

Here is what went great:

• In the pilot study in Ghana, the organization used wind energy to generate the internet. Using satellite internet connection they were able to download books in 45 seconds 
• Students were very used to using cell-phones that they easily adapted to the new device
• To charge the Kindles, WR used solar-powered car batteries

Here are the challenges

• Durability! the device is quite delicate and can easily break in a harsh environment. I noticed in their videos that they started providing students with Kindle protective sleeves, which i'm sure is helpful in the short-run. But in order for this to be sustainable going forward, WR has to form some partnership with Amazon to provide a special version of the device
• Lack of local content providers 
• In my opinion, scalability will be an issue going forward as well. WR has been doing a good job in slowly implementing and learning from the experience. Just because this process worked in Ghana doesn't necessarily mean it will work the same somewhere else. They have to be strategic in their expansion and adapt to the different environments. And most importantly, learn from the training and implementation challenges of One Laptop Per Child going forward.

To read the full trial report go here, progress report here

Here is a short video of their trial in the village of Ayenyah, Ghana

Sunday links

A blog post in Tech4Africa about the growing movement toward smart phones in SA. It will be interesting to see the growth of complementary technologies in response to this trend. For example smart-phone applications ....

Coders4Africa an organization seeking to provide high quality training to African programmers and developers. GEOSEEK.ME An application they hope to launch by the end of May will help displaced and lost family members reconnect with each other through a location-based application

An interview with Eyram Tawia, Founder of Leti Games

One Kindle Per Child ?!

We all heard about the One Laptop Per Child initiative and many of us participated in it. Now WorldReader, is implementing a "one kindle per child" program by distributing eReaders to children in developing economies. I'm both fascinated and skeptical of this initiative, is it a solution looking for a problem? or is it really helping in literacy and education? Part of my skepticism comes from engaging with individuals that were responsible for rolling out OLPC in Rwanda, they expressed the challenges they faced with both training and durability. Adding to that, we saw boxes of unused laptops in a rural school we visited. I'm not trying to say that OLPC is not a successful initiative, with the right training and infrastructure it has achieved tremendous success in places like Paraguay.

However, is this eReader project revolutionary? or is it another initiative that looks cool from our homes in the US but holds no value on the ground? I'm going to follow its progress and report back my thoughts

A photo from the school we visited

A Photo of Students with eReaders (from Worldreader's website)