There are more than 1.2 billion young people aged between 15 and 24 years in the world, accounting for about 18 per cent of the world population, but living thousands of miles apart, rarely engaging with one another.

Multimedia platforms, like video, help the young, bright leaders of tomorrow engage in intercultural conversations—speaking beyond language barriers to provide a subjective youthful view of their countries and reducing cultural tensions for future generations.

The United Nations Alliance and the International Organization for Migration has united to celebrate the International Youth Day’s theme—Our Year, Our Voice—with their PLURAL+ Video Festival.

The video festival is an empowering tool for young people aged 9-25 to speak out about their opinions and experiences with migration and diversity.

“My video is about how I see diversity,” said 10-year-old Aarohi Mahesh Mehendale, winner of the PLURAL + 2010 International Jury Award (Age 9-12).

It would be amazing if we could live in peace and harmony and accept differences. I chose to do the video because I felt strongly about the topic

Through five-minute films, the applicants use their own views and voices to explore subjects about migrant integration, inclusiveness, identity, diversity, human rights and social unity, in an effort to foster globalized social harmony.

Developing countries are home to 87 per cent of youth who face challenges of limited access to resources, healthcare, education, training, employment and economic opportunities.

The PLURAL+ Video Festival is a form of video advocacy, a means for youth from developed countries to explore the challenges experienced by those in developing countries, and empathize with their struggles.

Although this project has good intent, the logistics of the equipment and details on how to film are largely inaccessible and problematic.

The PLURAL+ project intends to engage youth in video advocacy to foster understanding, but is missing a vital element—providing the actual video cameras and training on how to use them.

Although there are “useful links” on the website, this project should really consider partnering with an organization like WITNESS, who specialized in video projects in developing regions.

Having an alliance with an organization in this area of expertise can help prevent problems that PLURAL+ may encounter—making the project more useful for those youth in developing countries whose perceptions should truly be seen and heard.

One the biggest issues in mHealth and mobile campaigning in the developing world is the lack of evaluation. Well, the Lancet published an article last week that measured the effectiveness of mobile phone text message reminders on Kenyan health workers’ adherence to malaria treatment guidelines.

What the study found was that text messages can be a cost effective way to improve the care for malaria treatment in African children. Even though the study focused on malaria treatment, the results of the study suggest that using text messages can be an effective weapon to fight many different health burdens with.

According to the study, half of children received the correct treatment at the end of the study, more than double the starting figure. At the beginning of the study, 20.5% of children were correctly managed, this increased to 49.6% after the six month study.

The effect appeared to persist after the texts stopped. Six months after the trial ended, 51.4% of children were receiving the correct treatment due to the text messaging.

Professor Bob Snow, who headed the research group, said, “The role of the mobile phone in improving health providers’ performance, health service management and patient adherence to new medicines across much of Africa has a huge potential.”

Despite the positive numbers, the authors acknowledge that “we do not fully understand why the intervention was successful”. They speculate that the presence of the texts themselves serve as a reminder and reinforce the importance of the message itself.

One of the conclusions in the study is that “text-message reminders should be used to complement existing interventions—which themselves should be qualitatively improved—to target weak points” in health management practices.

The study however, sheds light on the importance of evaluating an mHealth campaign. Through evaluations, stakeholders can figure out whether a program is meeting its goals and how much of an impact it is making on the health issue it was designed for.

Currently in the developing world, numerous mHealth programs are being implemented on a small scale basis without monitoring and evaluation components. This not only leaves the project unfinished, but it is irresponsible as well. If a given program is appropriate to scale up to a wider population, we would never have the statistics to prove it. Then again, that hasn’t stopped NGO’s and governments before.

Evaluating mHealth programs is not a complicated task. Perhaps stakeholders are afraid to discover that their programs are not actually producing the impact they envisioned in the board room. This study has shown that positive results can indeed manifest from text messaging campaigns, and it is worthwhile to evaluate such campaigns.

The world needs to know what works and what doesn’t for the sake of the populations that are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the programs they are involuntarily thrown into. Otherwise, stakeholders are shooting in the dark with the well-being of innocent people.

Google’s Sub-Saharan Africa office is funding a project by Steve Song to create a comprehensive map of all terrestrial broadband fibre-optic cables in Africa.  Using crowdsourcing methods and contacts within the ICT4D space, Song is spearheading an effort to convince governments and telecoms that it is in their own interests to make public where they have laid terrestrial broadband cables.  The project is named AfTerFibre (Africa’s Terrestrial Fibres).

AFterFibre, which started in June, is currently building its network of contacts, engaging governments and telecoms in conversation regarding the location of their cables.  In an effort to be as public and open as possible, Song has organized a public google group to collect the information.  As the group makes agreements and collects data, they will incrementally publish an updated map of Africa’s terrestrial cables, hopefully one about every two months.  Then, next summer, they hope to publish the completed map.

After creating the preeminent map of the undersea cables surrounding Africa last year, the next logical step was to make a map of Africa’s terrestrial fiber, explains Song.  “The undersea map has inspired a lot fiber infrastructure construction.  It gave people a sense that there is something to build to.”

The terrestrial cables map hopes to extend that vision to people in rural areas around Africa.  Song imagines the mayor of a secondary or tertiary town in Botswana or Rwanda who sees the map and says, “we are only 100 km away from a terrestrial fiber.  Why don’t we make our city the broadband hub in the region and transform our economy with this high speed fiber-optic connection?”

Photo: Steve Song at ManyPossibilities.net

“We hope that the map is more than just a reference tool, but a sign of inspiration.  When you see all the connectivity in the region, you can’t help but feel that something is about to happen,” Song said.

Presently, most operators in Africa are not publicly announcing the location of their cables, so people don’t know where they are.  Song’s goal is to convince operators that they stand to benefit by releasing this information to the public, just as the operators arguably have after Song published the undersea cables map.  Some operators have been skeptical about publishing the exact location of their cables, for fear of someone cutting them.  Song assured the operators that the map will not be absolutely accurate, but simply accurate enough to spawn additional connectivity to previously unconnected areas.  “So you won’t be able to locate the cables like you would locate a restaurant on your smart phone,” Song explains, but you will be able to locate the general area so that as a business or a local government you can make an educated estimate about how far you are to a connection.

The government of Kenya has been particularly resourceful in gathering the location their cables.  The permanent secretary of the Ministry of ICT, Bitange Ndemo, committed his staff to gather and supply the information for the AfTerFibre project, effectively relieving Song from all of the logistical work.  Ndemo’s commitment reflects Kenya’s recent move to make government data public and usable.  Contrarily, in South Africa the process has been slower.  Song contrasts the countries: “Everyone seems on the same page in Kenya.  In universities, industries, and government there is a strong sense of ‘let’s transform Kenya and a strong sense of digital enterprise.’  Whereas in South Africa there is more finger pointing than creating a sense of common cause.  In South Africa, we run the risk of losing information and the advantage that we started with.”

Photo credit: Millenium Villages

Last week, renowned development economist and special advisor to the UN secretary for the millennium development goals, Jeffrey Sachs, wrote a series of public articles advocating for use of “cutting-edge technologies” to fight the current epidemic and to create sustainable solutions to avoid famine in the first place.  He said that the Millennium Villages are a good example of ways to use technology in order to anticipate and prevent drought and famine from spreading.
What technologies are the Millennium Villages using?  How do these technologies inform and assist villagers to mitigate potential food insecurity and the affects of climate change?
As listed on the Millennium Villages website, the main goals that for ICTs include:

• Establish and improve mobile telephone and internet connection

• Greater access to energy, improved transport and information and communication technologies (ICT)

In addition, each village has individualized goals and projects, depending on their circumstances and resources.  Many of the villages have implemented mHealth initiatives, computer laboratories, other ICT-related projects.  Just a few have organized ICT projects to ensure energy and environmental sustainability.  Those few include:

• Dertu, Kenya – In 2008, in partnership with Ericsson, Dertu received a cell tower and Internet connectivity; Sony-donated laptops provide Internet access at the school

• Ruhiira, Uganda – Schools and clinics now have access to electricity through low-cost solar technologies

• Ruhiira, Uganda – Partnership with Zain and Ericsson has increased cell phone coverage through the construction of cell towers

Perhaps additional ICT-based projects are underway to ensure environmental sustainability and avoid the long-term effects of drought, but they are not listed on the Millennium Villages website.  Sachs’ claim that ICTs have decreased famine and anticipated drought in the Millennium Villages, then, is possibly true, but is not verified by documented evidence available on their website.  A more detailed evaluation of the villages is needed, or a report synthesizing the lessons learned from the ICT projects completed.
As many have pointed out over the past few months during the famine and drought in the horn of Africa, famine is preventable when the circulation of goods is active and well-planned.  Stable distribution of goods, and monitoring of climate change and weather patterns is key to ensuring food security, environmental sustainability, and consistent agricultural production.  ICTs can aid in all of these practices, but their effectiveness is in need of additional documentation and review.

Credit: Google

Food security in the Horn of Africa hinges on greater investment in ICT infrastructure and capacity building. In large part, this will depend on the transfer of technology. But experts note that even a modest increase in technology transfer and information, through the agriculture value chain, could improve yields, distribution and ultimately strengthen food security.

The World Food Program (WFP) backed an initiative in March this year that is a step in the right direction. WFP provided US$45, 000 worth of ICTs for a Food Security Graduate Program at Addis Ababa University. The ICTs provided the institution with the tools and facility needed to boost efforts to develop a local hub for knowledge generation and dissemination for food security. A weak policy and financial environment has led to inadequate research, a lack of appropriate technologies and weak dissemination of existing smart tools. So, lowering food insecurity in the region requires greater effort.

Improving food security is a key development challenge for the Horn of Africa, the world’s most food insecure region according to the FAO. Over 45% of the 160 million strong population remain food insecure, higher than the average even for Saharan Africa. The World Bank says the region must attain a 4% expansion in GDP and similar growth in agricultural expansion, along with lower population growth rates, to become food secure in the medium-term. This all seems like a catch-22 situation for an already difficult political and economic landscape. Where do we start?

According to USAID’s analysis, The Magnitude and Causes of Food Insecurity and Prospects for Change, improving the economic policy environment—and a host of other structural problems such as security— is key. So, while ICTs can help to improve the region’s precarious food security situation, much more must be done to create an ICT enabling environment— further evidence that ICTs are merely tools.

One structural challenge is the cumbersome nature of intra-regional trade. ICTs, particularly logistics technology and applications used to speed up cross border movement, could help to better move food surplus from country to country (and region to region). At various points in recent time countries in the lower part of the Horn of Africa, including Kenya and Tanzania, have been in a position to shift their surplus to neighboring Ethiopia, and other northern states that are perennially food insecure.

However, the food security and ICT discussion in this region, as I have contended, is very complex. One must consider all the systemic domains and even broad issues of income distribution, which slants the distribution of food in Kenya and Tanzania, even in times of food excess on a national scale, in the favor of a few.