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)

RapidSMS

In my opinion, one of the major challenges people face in developing economies is lack of information. By using communication devices such as cellphones, ID organizations are able to deliver critical information to individuals, whether it's commodity prices to farmers or vaccine availability to health clinics.

One of the communication platforms that is highly used in the developing world is RapidSMS, which is a free open-source framework that utilizes text messaging to "manage data-collection, complex workflows, and group coordination using basic mobile phones". UNICEF is large supporter of this framework and has customized it to meet the needs of the various countries they operate in such as Malawi, Ethiopia, and Rwanda.


In Rwanda, it all started with the government awareness of the critical health problem the country faces in the area of maternity and child mortality. Rates were growing not only because of lack of medical care but also because of lack of education, awareness, and timely treatment. President Kagame distributed 60,000 cellphones to Community Health Workers (CHW) which are volunteers from the community responsible for the front-line care of a number of patients in their area, 15,000 of these cellphones were solely designated for maternal and child health. UNICEF took this opportunity to employ RapidSMS in aiding the CHWs and patients.
Here is how it works: CHWs would register women in their village as they become pregnant. These women are then tracked and monitored during check ups by using a variety of codes (see example below). In the case of emergencies, medical professionals and ambulance would be notified. All the information submitted by CHWs is stored in a central database that aggregates reports for the Ministry of Health to create nation-wide monitoring of diseases and epidemics.

Since it's roll-out in 2009, this technology has had great impact in reducing maternal deaths. One of the doctors we met with in Rwanda said that his hospitals has experienced zero maternal deaths in the year they implemented RapidSMS, compared to 10 in the previous year. However, there are still challenges that prevent this technology from being very effective. One of those is lack of electricity, CHWs are struggling to charge their cellphones. Some have to walk 2 hours on average to a charging station, these stations are very chaotic (photo below) and phones are often lost or stolen. One solution would be for the government to partner with local renewable energy providers such as Great Lakes Energy which produces portable solar panel phone chargers to supply CHWs. I believe this will lead to both sustainable and effective work in rural areas where electricity is scare and disease is high.

A photo of a cellphone charging station

Intro

Last winter while in Rwanda, I was fascinated by the amount of people that own cellphones, even in rural villages where everyone struggled for food and basic healthcare. International development agencies such as UNICEF took advantage of this wide-spread in monitoring maternal and child mortality issues. While others like voxiva employed cellphone applications and the internet in tracking HIV/AIDS. As I researched this field, I realized that many more technology driven initiatives exist in the developing world, some more effective than others.
my fascination continues .... so in this blog I plan to discover more of these initiatives and analyze the impact of ICT in international development efforts.