Muhammad, 27, fled his home in the port city of Latakia last March, and deserted his job as cameraman for the Syrian state television network.

He now opts to use his acquired skills for media activism.

Similarly, Osama, 22, is a soldier for the state army who refuses to shoot at his fellow Syrians in protests.

He now arms himself with a brand-new-video-equipped smartphone, instead of a gun.

These two cases exemplify a recent transformation from Syria’s previous state media and soldiers, to activists who are “bearing witness,” to the atrocities being committed by the Syrian government.

The Syrian government uses their state television network as a medium to propagate images of citizens attacking soldiers during protests, when the opposite is reality; and airs images of peaceful demonstrators at pro-Assad rallies, instead of showcasing dissidents.

Civil society wants to achieve social change by recording what their eyes and ears see and hear.

Muhammad is rectifying his work on the state channel, arguing that the station “threatens people’s lives,” by refusing to film the violence against protesters, or blaming them for soldiers deaths.

He is making amends through his work exposing the true stories of Syria’s pro-democracy uprising, with a great combination of technical skill and secrecy.

The true stories of Syria’s revolution are unreported, he says, because the intelligence community, called the Mukhabarat, control everything projected outwards. “The world does not know what is happening here,” he says, “The Mukhabarat are killing people without any media attention.”

“Syrian media lies, lies, lies,” Muhammad states. “I had to leave my job to protect the Syrian people, here in the valley and everywhere else.”

Muhammad is part of a group of cyberactivists who clamor to obtain footage of military forces as they roll into towns. There are also Syrians within the military itself engaging in the cyberactivist movement, despite personal costs.

Military service is compulsory in Syria, unless they are the only male child or pay a heavy wage, and lasts almost two years. In 2010, army regulars were estimated at 220,000 troops, with an additional 300,000 in reserve.

22-year-old Osama is a Syrian soldier who obtains footage while serving since he bought a brand-new video-equipped smartphone in the Syrian tech capital of Bahtha.

“They told me that Israel had occupied Daraa, and some people there were siding with Zionism against our president, so we had to go and liberate the city,” he says. But “there was no Israeli occupation there. We were actually occupying the city, there was nobody else”.

According to an article in Wired.com, Osama frequently takes days off to visit a friend’s house with a satellite link. The individual coordinates these teams of so-called video soldiers, taking their full flash cards and gives them back empty ones. He has recently been uploading and distributing the mobile camera footage on Youtube and Facebook.

One clip, posted online in the beginning of June and shared on a Syrian activist Facebook page, was supposedly produced by one of the shabiha, the militia loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

This featured activist’s video shows heroic music over images of heavily armed men in uniforms smiling and laughing as they chat near the bloody corpses of two men in civilian clothes.

“I decided to start filming and documenting the truth when I realized the amount of lies we are forced to believe at the army,” says Rami, who is another Syrian soldier interviewed by Wired.com.

“This will be my weapon,” Osama asserts, and wonders: “Maybe one day, when this is over, I will throw my gun away and become a video reporter. Inshallah.”

While the outside world has been watching video clips of barbarism, Syria’s state-controlled media has repeatedly published and broadcasted violent images that the government maintains stems from protesters. It seems, however, both state media and shabiha are taking initiatives to show the reality of the situation, one video at a time.

 

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A French firm says it is manufacturing biodegradable SIM cards. This is the latest in a series of innovations in the global telecoms sector, but the environmentally conscious intent sets Oberthur Technologies apart—most SIM cards are made from plastic, which do not degrade.

The firm touts its latest product as ‘an eco-friendly high-tech solution to meet our 21^st century environmental challenges.” Head of Product Marketing, Mobile Product Line-Cards and Services Stephane Girodon says the product has already been distributed in Europe, but it is yet to be introduced elsewhere.

Oberthur Technologies is the world’s second largest provider of security and identification solutions and services based on smart card technologies for mobiles.

Throughout East Africa, many SMEs struggle with record-keeping, processing large requests, and consequently, attracting foreign investment.  OII’s study aims to measure the economic consequences for SMEs when they pay for and regularly use Broadband Internet.

In an interview, Dr. Graham explained the study questions to me in more detail.  First, is paying for broadband Internet connections worth the cost for SMEs?  Second, how do Internet connections change companies’ business practices?  Dr. Graham and his research team have observed SMEs in both the tourism and business processing operations (BPO) sectors.  They found that nearly all businesses have some sort of Internet connection, since, as Dr. Graham explained, “it would be difficult to compete with your rivals, who would all have connections, if you aren’t connected yourself.”   Furthermore, “almost every type of business seems to be investing in connectivity, from one-person entrepreneurs to large companies.”

Whether these investments lead businesses to increase profits and to what degree, however, is still unknown.  The results are highly anticipated, as many have speculated regarding the impact of broadband connectivity, but few studies have shown its impact, and none have focused specifically on SMEs.

In an applied effort to help SMEs utilize the Internet for their advantage, USAID funded the West Africa Trade Hub.  The Trade Hub operates under the mission statement and ideal that “with appropriate software and hardware solutions, companies can track their operations and activity much more effectively.”  In their own research and experience assisting SMEs in West Africa (see a case study video from Ghana here), the Trade Hub finds that foreign business owners investing in the West African BPO sector want to be able to monitor where their product is and when it will be finished.  They need updates—are the materials in the sewing process, packaging, or shipping processes?  Chinese factories, on the other hand, historically have Internet access and the human capacity to keep the online systems updated, so many investors turn to China and not Africa.

Without high-speed Internet connections, many African businesses are unable to process large orders from foreign investors, leading to “lost” products.  And western businesses prefer to make agreements with BPO agencies that have their own domain name; they are less likely to trust anyone using a gmail or yahoo account, for example.

These findings are explained and applied in the SME Toolkit Africa, produced by the West Africa Trade Hub.  The toolkit is available as open-source advice for Africa businesses, and contains guides such as the how-to set up online websites, email accounts, computer accounting programs, and other business-oriented items.

Both the efforts of West African Trade Hub and the Oxford Internet Institute are important to evaluate the level of impact broadband connectivity has on SMEs in East Africa.  As fiber optic cable networks expand and nations push for increased connectivity, Internet connections will be progressively more influential for economic growth throughout the region.

 

The ICT sector is one of the most dynamic in Moldova’s economy.  Recording a vibrant growth over the past years, today it represents nearly 10% of the national GDP, on par with agriculture production.

There are about 40,000 people employed directly and indirectly in ICT, making the ICT sector one of the major employers in Moldova.  It is also one of the highest paying industries, as jobs in ICT pay on par with those in the financial sector, historically the best paying jobs in the country.  Most importantly, the ICT industry employs the young generation, offering an exciting, fast-growing and rewarding career for the next generation.

Moldova has already chosen the pathway of ICT.  All players – the Government, the business community, the citizens and the ICT industry itself – have acknowledged the importance of information technology as a catalyst for growth, and as a tool of growth enhancement in all other economic sectors.

Technical assistance from USAID Moldova through the Competitiveness Enhancement and Enterprise Development (CEED) project over the past five and a half years has enhanced the competitiveness of the ICT sector through initiatives meant to consolidate the quality of companies, to strengthen ICT education so that it meets the needs of business, and to align the industry towards common goals.

Just last month, USAID Moldova sponsored the Moldova ICT Summit 2011, featuring the Association of Private ICT Companies in Moldova, as well as the recently launched national E- Government Center.  The event focused on the e-transformation of the Moldovan economy, and the importance of e-transparency, among other topics.

Since the initiation of the first phase of the CEED project, USAID Moldova has been involved in numerous efforts.  They facilitated the formation of the Association of Private ICT Companies in Moldova, established relationships between the national government and the private companies in the ICT sector, helped private firms to become IT-Mark certified ICT companies under CMMI methodology (encouraging foreign investment and trade), and set up talks respecting the formation of a “Cloud-Moldova” e-government system.

Additionally, a need for more trained and educated IT professionals in Moldova has arisen.  To meet this need, USAID Moldova connected the Moldovan Minister of Education with large ICT firms.  The ministry signed memorandums with Microsoft, Cisco, and i-Carnegie (Carnegie Mellon University).  New IT focused courses and degrees are being offered in the Moldovan education system, providing the ICT industry with the professional staff it requires.

Despite these advancements, a few large boulders block continued development of the ICT sector in Moldova.  The national government’s telecommunications company, Moldtelecom, still controls the majority of the market.  Additionally, Moldova is unknown in the region as a destination of IT, this holding back investment.  Thankfully, however, steps are in place to remove these barriers.  The national government is beginning to investigate selling Moldtelecom and a strategy for ICT sector positioning and promotion is underway, which is intended to put Moldova on the regional and global ICT map.

Collecting baseline data in developing countries can be expensive and require many costs.  Also, many have called into question the reliability of the data.  To streamline the data collection process, the World Bank and South Sudan are experimenting with a new alternative—data collection by mobile phones, which World Bank director of Economic Policy Marcelo Giugale recently claimed is the “fast track” to actually listening to the poor, and subsequently meeting their needs.

To conduct South Sudan’s national survey for 2011, the year of their independence, World Bank researcher Gabriel Demombynes worked with the Southern Sudan Centre for Census, Statistics and Evaluation and utilized mobile phones as a means to collect the data (a photo essay explaining the survey design can be seen here).  In the Southern Sudan Experimental Phone Survey (SSEPS), 100 households in each of the capital cities in South Sudan’s ten states were identified, making for a total sample size of 1000 households.  Each household received a free mobile phone.  Researchers gave half of the households traditional Nokia phones and the other half solar-powered phones.  For four months, the researchers contacted the households by phone and conducted the same survey, while adding a few additional questions each month.  Those who answered the phone and participated in the survey were compensated with additional phone time each month; half received five Sudanese pounds of phone credit while the other half received ten pounds.

This innovative survey design allowed researchers to accomplish two purposes: document the current state of South Sudan and experiment with many methods of mobile phone survey data collection.  The results of the survey, and of the data collection experiment, will be available as a World Bank “Poverty Assessment” document in the coming months.  For now, however, a quick summary of the survey data that has been processed thus far can be downloaded as a “Poverty Profile” of South Sudan.  The results demonstrate stark differences between North and South Sudan.

In addition to collecting important data regarding the state of poverty in South Sudan, the study also provides interesting insights about the efficiency and potential of mobile data collection.  Dr. Demombynes describes a few insights from preliminary analysis of the data (though these results may be different once all of the data is analyzed in the coming months):

• There was approximately a 50% response rate for the entire four months among all participants.
• Households who had a mobile phone before the survey were much more likely to respond each month to the survey.
  • This indicates that other respondents had trouble knowing how to work the phone, lacked service coverage, or were less likely to remember to answer and use the phone without prior exposure.
  • More efforts to train respondents on using the mobile phone are necessary and could potentially improve response rates significantly.
• There was no difference in response rates between those who were compensated with five pounds and those who were given ten.
  • There was no control group who received no compensation, so it is difficult to say what impact compensation of any form has on response rates.
• There was no significant difference in response rates between those who received a Nokia phone and those who received a solar-powered phone.
  • The solar-powered phones perhaps had to be in the sun for too long and could potentially be stolen.  Also, although electricity is inconsistent, generators are common and local people know where to go to recharge their phones at affordable prices.

The potential for mobile phones as a means of data collection appears to be valid, as demonstrated by this experiment.  However, additional research should be conducted such as a cost-benefit analysis of mobile collection versus traditional survey methods.  If successful, then more data can be collected about the developing world, informing policy and leading to projects that better meet the actual needs of the poor as opposed to their perceived needs.