Photo Credit: DailyMail

For many of the 73 million registered voters in Nigeria, the decision they were faced with on election day was not just who to vote for, but how to cast their ballot safely.

This year’s election, only the 3rd national election held in Nigeria since military rule ended in 1999 was fraught with difficulties and confusion, including two postponements of the election after what officials call “logistical problems.” Previous votes- in 2003 and 2007 – were marred by allegations of widespread ballot stuffing, voter intimidation, and violence.

Amidst this backdrop, Nigerian voters turned to social media and mobile apps to help them make their voices heard.

Mobile phone applications and SMS were utilized to monitor and evaluate official election results and processes. Looping this information back to Nigerian citizens empowered their action and created an effective and transparent means for free and fair electoral processes.

One application called ReVoDa, is part of the EnoughisEnough (EIE) Nigeria’s RSVP campaign, and connected voters to monitor and evaluate the entire election processes. This is a medium where citizens could report incidents such as ballot box thefts, violence, the late arrival of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) officials, police behaviors, and ultimately, the election results. INEC officials are responsible for running the elections, thus they represented the voice of the people to the authorities.

With ReVoDa, EiE Nigeria had the potential to turns the 87,297,789 Nigerians with mobile phones, 43,982,200 with Internet access and 2,985,680 on Facebook into informal election reporters.

ReVoDa allowed voters to report as independent citizen their observations from their respective

polling units across Nigeria, having registered to map their mobile number, name and polling unit number to specific locations. This allowed EiE Nigeria to send relevant information about the electoral process to registered users; and users can view and share reports of electoral processes with one another.

Subsequent to their connectivity, users could choose from the ReVoDa Mobile App or connect via regular SMS, the latter seems to a more popular alternative. Users would create a profile, enter their Polling Unit Code and Name and are then registered on the EiE Nigeria network.

A week prior to the polls opening, ReVoDa, was downloaded by over 7,700 people. Building on the reports received on April 9 for the National Assembly elections, they saw 466 new incident reports from ReVoDa users across 35 of 37 states – compared with 27 states the week before.

Report map of final election results

A similar program called ReclaimNaija has corresponding aims, but provides deliverable reports directly to the

corresponding electoral bodies.

ReclaimNaija uses FrontlineSMS to receive and send text messages reports, and Ushahidi to visually map the election reports. Alike to ReVoDa, ReclaimNaija makes it possible for citizens to monitor the electoral process and report incidents of electoral fraud.

Unlike ReVoDa though, ReclaimNaija has a direct line of communication with electoral officials. Instead of having a database that merely aggregates information and contains reports, they send the reports directly to INEC. By providing evidence of detrimental electoral processes, it can be combated and corrected.

Femi Taiwo, a member of INITS Limited, a Nigerian company that helped set up the technical side of ReclaimNaija’s monitoring system, says:

On election days, citizens have been frustrated by a number of things; missing names, seeing ballot boxes stuffed or even stolen and other electoral fraud and yet being unable to do anything about this. This time however, is the time to speak out”

ReclaimNaija's map of the final election numbers

ReclaimNaija uses FrontlinSMS or calling dedicated numbers in four major languages (Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and Pidgin) as the gateway platforms to placing reports to promote electoral transparency.

Another difference between these two programs is that ReclaimNaija achieved a large amount of participation through voter education forums for community leaders, spread across Nigeria’s 36 states, and the capital Abuja. By engaging community based social networks, they ensured the information got across to large segments of society and has been crucial to RecalimNaija’s monitoring and evaluation.

Public launch of the reclaimnaija.net citizens on the 2011 elections

During the January 2011 Voters Registration Exercise, ReclaimNaija received 15,000 reports from the public over two weeks, highlighting the importance to have a election monitoring service to offset problems and expose fraud.

The election registration process proved this; on receiving messages about problems such as lack of registration cards, ReclaimNaija was often able to communicate with the INEC, thus helping improve the efficiency of the registration process.

One message received through ReclaimNaija during the first attempt at the National Assembly election said:

more than half of registered voters here [in my voting station] couldn’t find their names… Is this an attempt to reduce the number of voters in Lagos?

These type of citizen based reports and monitoring systems have become a valuable source of information for the INEC to create an environment for fair and balanced elections. ReclaimNaija collate reports and send directly on to the INEC in real time.

“If the INEC hadn’t seen these reports they would not have known about the level of problems being experienced by Nigerians; there would not have been this kind of proof” says Linda Kamau, an Ushahidi developer was in Nigeria to see the launch of ReclaimNaija system.

Kayode R. Idowu, Chief Press Secretary for the INEC Chairman, responded positively to ReclaimNaija and citizens actively reporting incidents to the Commission, “…through SMS and voice calls on phones, or by emailing. Such reports should reflect useful details such as location, time and action involved in the incident, to enable the Commission respond appropriately”.

Clearly, there is a great power in leveraging the use of ICTs to ensure that Nigerian voices were heard in this past election and streamline the efficiency and safety of the electoral process.

Photo source: PCFastlane

Over the past several years a tremendous amount of progress has been made in narrowing the urban-rural “Digital Divide.”  This has primarily been accomplished through market liberalization and subsequent build out of mobile networks–some of which reach into rural localities.

While this urban-rural gap is being narrowed, this is not universal.  Further, it is primarily a voice phenomenon.  With regards to Internet and specifically broadband, this divide remains, and in relative terms it continues to grow even wider in most rural locations.

A May 2008 report from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) report entitled, “Measuring Information and Communication Technology Available in Villages and Rural Areas,” defines this challenge in the following manner:

1. At the time of the report, the total population of developing countries stood at 5.1 billion;
2. Of this total, approximately 56 percent, or 2.85 billion lived in rural areas;
3. This rural population lived in 2.96 million discrete rural localities, with an average population of 1,826.

More recent data estimates while there are approximately 5.0 billion mobile subscribers world wide–out of a world population of 6.7-6.8 billion, somewhere between a population of 1.0 and 1.5 billion live in rural localities where they are without any mobile coverage.  A likely near-equal number are without “affordable” coverage.

The Global Broadband and Innovations (GBI) Program places a priority on addressing this urban-rural gap, with a focus on two key areas;

1. Enhancing Universal Service Funds (USFs), and
2. Promoting deployment of low cost connectivity solutions.

Universal Service Funds–A growing number of countries have established USFs, however, often these are not well designed to reach optimal benefit, nor are they managed such as to provide maximum value.  The GBI has been designed to provide targeted technical assistance (TA) to help countries with better design and operations of their USFs.  Current efforts are underway in partnership with Intel in carrying out a series of regional USF Workshops to move this agenda forward.  Another project is underway in Africa through support of the Africa Bureau, to provide TA to a number of countries where TA will make a near-term impact.

The focus of USFs is no longer simply placing a phone or two into a rural community, but rather seeking to leverage both broadband and voice connectivity for expanding socioeconomic opportunities into these rural communities.

Nor is the focus such as to create an approach for subsidizing on-going operations of carriers operating in rural localities.  There is also a focus on leveraging USFs to fund needed CapEx, where–where by working with the carriers and high tech firms producing low-cost solutions, financially sustainable approach can be deployed for connecting the lower-income, lower-density rural communities.

Low Cost Broadband and Voice Solutions–This parallel effort is also being undertaken by the GBI Program.  Here the GBI is engaged in research and dialog to identify low-cost rural connectivity solutions.  This focus is on providing wireless community-wide convergent networks that provide both broadband and voice services.

Preliminary research has uncovered a small but growing number of innovative solutions now being commercialized.  A potential new set of technologies, Femtocells, hold significant promise in lowering the capital and operating costs for reaching into lower-income, lower-density rural communities.  Several of these are solar powered solutions such they they can provide affordable coverage in areas where there is not access to a national power grid.

The GBI program has informally partnered with Femto Forum—a global Femtocell industry group and the Global VSAT Forum, a global satellite industry group, to further explore the technical and financial viability of these technologies.  Discussions are underway to build off of their respective strengths towards delivering scalable, replicable, and sustainable solutions that reach even further into remote rural locations.  And with this expanded connectivity, delivering access to a wide range of socioeconomic services.

Other lower-cost solution sets are being explored with regard to meeting this low-cost requirement.  This exploration has included proof-of-concept trial configurations here in the U.S., as well as working with satellite and femtocell firms on broader scale international deployments.

The combination of USFs and the emerging lower-cost solutions more suitable for rural settings, hold the promise of ultimately eliminating the urban-rural “digital divide.”  The GBI is working towards accelerating this where  possible.

Usually our discussions of ICT and economic growth follow a familiar narrative: how can we use ICTs to more efficiently perform economic tasks?  We take this line of discussion because we know that efficiency is productivity, and productivity improvements lead to economic growth.

But a recent book published by the World Bank, called “Knowledge Map of the Virtual Economy,” suggests that this line of thought is boxing us in.  Instead, it argues, we should ask “what completely new markets have been created by ICT growth, and how can poor people lead the way in these new industries?”  If this sounds fanciful consider the following: last year a man in California paid $500 in an online auction for a “virtual” castle.  We are not talking about a crumbling, stone-and-mortar, historical relic here; but rather a few lines of code that generate a castle that the buyer can use as a base for his virtual armies in an online video game.   He bought this castle from a company in China that creates (and speculates in) these types of virtual products.  This Chinese company employs young people, mostly male, from lower class or working class backgrounds.  The workers have a decent education but little opportunity, and they are making a healthy living in a completely new industry that offers returns too low to seriously interest anyone in the developed world. But for them it’s a gold mine.

Or rather it’s a “gold farm,” which is the term that has come into use to describe these types of companies (the industry as a whole is known as “gold farming”).  Gold farming was a $3 billion industry globally in 2010, and generated jobs for 100,000 full time equivalent workers.  But, of the new opportunities identified by the report it is the most demanding of its workers.  Other new industries can employ people with less-advanced skill sets.

One of these is called “Cherry Blossoming.”  Derived from a Japanese-language slang expression (“Sakura” in Japanese means both “cherry blossom” and “paid spectator”) the name refers to an industry that sells social media “status” to companies looking to use these tools as part of their marketing strategy.  For example, a company that has just started a Twitter feed may not want to go through a growth period where they have only a few followers, for fear that this low number will reflect poorly on their product or business.  So “cherry blossoming” firms offer these companies the opportunity to buy Twitter followers, by the thousands.  Similarly, they sell “Facebook likes.”

This business involves a large number of extremely small tasks that each generate a very low return for the company.  A worker will sit at a terminal and, using a host of different profiles and accounts, “like” or “follow” their client companies. Each “like” may only take a few moments, and earn the company only a few cents.  For example, a quick Google search will reveal that it is possible to buy 1000 Twitter followers for $20. This type of repetitive, low-margin work does not interest developed world companies, but in the developing world it can offer reliable income to poorly educated people who don’t have any other opportunities.

Though Cherry Blossoming is controversial, it is representative of the emerging field of “microwork,” which on the whole is not.  Microwork is usually defined as a task that takes under 30 seconds to complete.  Companies throughout the world have lots of this work to do, and it is now possible to parse tasks out and have them done by the very poor in the developing world.

Samasource, a non-profit organization focused on generating employment opportunities in Kenya, is one organziation that does this.  They contract with large firms, in this case Silicon Valley tech firms, and perform microtask after microtask out of large telecenters the organization sets up in Africa.  The group’s first contract involved digitizing text.  This is often difficult for a computer to do, and near impossible if the document to be digitized is handwritten. So Samasource workers will look at scanned copies of the document and manually type in words that the software cannot comprehend.  This does not even require the worker to be literate – they just need to be able to recognize all the letters by shape and match them to the keyboard.   Samasource has expanded into other small tasks as well, such as vetting sites for inappropriate images and video, and verifying business listings for crowd-sourced yellow-pages sites.

Performing these micro-tasks gives “dignified digital work” to poor people, as Samasource puts it. They have even managed to set up and operate a successful business that employs many people in a refugee camp in Dadaab, on the Kenya-Somalia border.

The next iteration of micro-task work is to find a way to do it on mobile phones.  The industry isn’t quite there yet, but once it is there will be no geographic limit to who can easily make a living out of the digital economy.  This is the next generation of business process outsourcing, and it holds the potential to employ many poor and at-risk youth in the developing world.

If this discussion gives you any ideas, you may want to try to develop them.  The World Bank is considering holding a “Mobile Micro-work Challenge,” where they would fund promising start-ups in the field.