Originally posted on the GBI Portal – Page 14

Kenyan undersea cable goes live in April

The Lower Indian Ocean Network (LION2), Kenya’s fourth submarine cable, will become fully operational in April this year, the local telecommunications ministry revealed on Thursday.

Map outlying the LION2 undersea cable

The LION2 cable is a 3000 km line extending from Nyali, via the island of Mayotte, located in the northern Mozambique Channel from Mauritius and is set to significantly boost the nation’s bandwidth. Kenya already enjoys connectivity through The East African Marine System (TEAMS), the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) and SEACOM.

Orange Kenya, involved with laying cables via its parent company, France Telecom, confirmed the schedule, adding that the cable arrived in Mombasa in December last year and is awaiting connection. Work continues to finish the cable’s connection at the Mombasa landing station, the company said.

Angela Ng’ang’a-Mumo, Orange Kenya’s Chief Corporate Communications Officer, told reporters that progress on LION 2 “is on target”. Orange said the construction of the 1.28 Tbps cable “is expected to cost approximately KES 6.2 billion.”

According to reports, the cable is part of a bigger project by France Telecom and 12 members of the Lower Indian Ocean Network to build a submarine cable linking Madagascar to the rest of the world via Reunion Island and Mauritius.

Samuel Poghisio, Kenyan Information Minister, said he was confident that “once it is switched on, LION2 will intensify competition in the industry and help further lower Internet connectivity charges”.

Joseph Mayton

February 24, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

An ICT4E Lesson Learned: Offline Content is Key

I recently made one of the biggest ICT4D mistakes in the book. Pay close attention, and see if you can pick it out.

When I was in Arusha, Tanzania last month, I was working with a primary school that recently set up a learning lab with 13 donated computers. The technology was not being used because the teachers were not sure how it could be leveraged for education. The computers were simply collecting dust.

The semester before the trip I wanted to develop something that would allow the school to use the computers effectively. I began searching for online educational content relevant to the Tanzanian curriculum and found all sorts of learning materials, games, and software downloads. Once I had collected a good chunk of quality content, I created a website and placed links to each of my findings alongside the specific curriculum objective that they addressed.

Did you catch it? My big mistake, I mean…

The school wasn’t connected to the Internet yet. How could I possibly have overlooked something like that?

To make a long story short, even though I was told the school would be connected when I arrived, there were some bureaucratic problems that slowed the process of getting Internet access there. About three weeks into my trip, the Internet was finally hooked up, but the wait had cut into the majority of the time that I had allocated for teacher training.

Moral of this story: Do not rely on the Internet. Offline content is key.

While Internet access is spreading rapidly throughout developing countries, it is important that ICT4D projects do not place all of their trust in its availability. There are still countless communities throughout world without access, and many of these communities have several obstacles preventing them from obtaining access. Even when rural communities have the infrastructure to connect, Internet subscriptions in these areas can constitute a large percentage of per capita income. Individuals simply cannot afford Internet access.

It’s important to note that access is not the only issue. Let’s imagine for a second that the school I was working with did have Internet when I arrived. This still would have been problematic since bandwidth in most developing countries remains limited – definitely not conducive to streaming online educational games and videos.

Relying on Internet content also makes projects less transferable. If I found that my idea was successful, and I wanted to scale it out to other schools, I would likely run into the same Internet issues elsewhere. In using the cloud as a solution, remember that weather is always local. Having offline content is much more reliable and practical.

The good news is that there is tons of content that can be downloaded from the Internet in order to accumulate offline content. Wikipedia allows you to download entire libraries of information, and I found plenty of open source educational games that proved to be very helpful to the instructors at the school.

So how did I fix my project?

By the end of my trip, the entire focus had shifted from allocating online material on the website to installing offline content on the computers. This proved to be a much more reliable means of technology use in the school.

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February 24, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Education, Education, Education Partnerships, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Attention ICT Innovators: Have you Considered Peace Corps?

No, I don’t actually mean you should commit to 2 years of service in the Peace Corps (though if you have the time, “life is calling” as the PC recruiters say), but what about joining forces with them? With over 9,000 volunteers, 40% of which focus on education and another 12% in business and ICT, and spanning the globe in about 76 developing countries, isn’t that a resource worth exploring?

I’ve been thinking about this lately since there seems to be a growing amount of speculation about how new innovations in information communication technologies (ICT) are being introduced into classrooms throughout the developing world without enough, or any, teacher training to ensure sustainability. Take for example the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. It drew a lot of criticism after it first released the XO 1.0 laptop for lack of teacher-focused training programs on how to use the devices and it is soon to become even more controversial with the release of the much talked-about XO 3.0 tablet.

Amidst reading the numerous critical blogs and some rather heated debates, I’ve started to wonder: What on-the-ground research is being done to assess the need for some of these new innovations in a specific country in the first place? What resources, particularly people, are already available to help introduce and support the teacher training needed for local teachers to deem the technology useful and relevant within the unique cultural context?

In Cambodia, where I recently served as a Peace Corps Volunteer at the Prey Veng Regional Teacher Training Center (RTTC), the Khmer have a saying: “Don’t take the straight or winding path. Take the path your ancestors have taken.” And new innovations in ICT can be seen as just that — a long winding path of new and confusing devices, unfamiliar to an aging population of school officials and teachers that think they have fared well enough as educators without the help of new gadgets.

Last month, leading experts and stakeholders in the field of mobile learning discussed how people’s perceptions of mobile phones are impeding progress in mobile learning in the recently released UNESCO Mobile Learning Week report:

Perhaps due to the intellectually-light and entertainment-heavy content that has been optimized for mobile devices over the past decade, the primary social challenge is convincing people that phones are NOT a barrier to learning.

Even in American classrooms, mobile phones can often be thought of as a distraction, most commonly used for texting and watching YouTube videos, rarely ever thought of as a valuable teaching aide that teachers could already be using if they had the training or interest to explore its potential on their own.

And mobile devices are just the tip of this growing iceberg of ICT, OER, FOSS, and a plethora of other acronyms used in this field. So once the need and appropriateness of a technology is determined useful for a particular country and educational environment, who might be able to help train teachers how to use and develop it? Who has three months of intensive language training and culture-sensitivity seminars, works and lives with the locals, has a wide range of connections within the school system, and strives to understand the complexities of the education system? That’s right — the tech-savvy Peace Corps Volunteers.

Now that’s an assumption and generalization that all PCVs know and care about what’s going on in the ICT4D field and have any interest of being involved in such endeavors — dealing with stray dogs and gastrointestinal diseases is a challenge enough. But why not reach out to the volunteers in your ICT-destined country and give them a chance to use some of those international relationship building skills that they spent hours cultivating during training.

And Peace Corps is just one of several organizations that send volunteers into the developing world. VSO UK and VSO International, Volunteer Service Overseas organizations, are quite similar to Peace Corps volunteers in regards to their culture and language immersion and 26% work in the education sector. The interactive map below shows where Peace Corps and VSO volunteers are currently serving and the program sectors that they work in. Almost every country has volunteers working in the education sector and some have already launched information technology-related projects:

View Volunteer Programs in Education and ICT in a larger map

February 23, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Biodiversity, Environment, Environment, Environmental Compliance, Forestry, Land Management, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Successful Community-Based Forestry Management

Photo Credit: CARPE

The Congo Basin is a critical tropical forest that supplies vital regional and worldwide ecological services. It is one of the largest tropical rainforests in the world, home to thousands of endemic plant and animal species such as lowland gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and forest elephants. More than eighty million people depend on its abundance of timber and other natural resources for their livelihoods. A paradoxical note is that despite the richness of the Congo Basin, the people near it are some of the poorest in Africa. The forest is constantly cleared to make room for agricultural pursuits and to feed urbanized areas’ hunger for lumber. In addition to deforestation and forest degradation, illegal hunting and commercial bushmeat trade are major threats to biodiversity.

The Central African Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE) is a USAID longterm and regional initiative formed in 1995 in association with a consortium of government and NGO partners that concentrates its resources on six principal forested countries in Central Africa: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of Congo. Uganda, Rwanda, Chad, Burundi, Rwanda and Sao Tome Principe are also involved in the initiative. CARPE is intended to be a 20-year process, resulting in complete local guidance. A major objective of CARPE is to protect forest resources by reducing degradation and protecting biodiversity. Modern tools such as Landsat satellite-derived maps, remote sensing, GIS, and geospatial databases are used for planning and monitoring of the forest. With this information, threatened species are under the protection of local communities and logging is controlled.

Prior to the development of CARPE, vast areas of the Congo Basin were unknown. Since then, a number of initiatives and activities have taken place, resulting in an overall evaluation in 2011. In this evaluation, CARPE was deemed extremely successful for introducing large-scale ecosystem management approaches. Tens of thousands of individuals have been trained in a variety of conservation methods and techniques. With empowerment through such training and motivation that educates and organizes local groups to play an active role in forest and biodiversity conservation programs, civil society is being strengthened. This is seen as critical, circumventing the often inefficiently administered and economically weak centralized governments. The tools practiced allow for an understaffed patrol to communicate with a wider audience, limiting the “weak state management of these resources (that) creates a vacuum where local populations are often stripped of benefits as stronger or elite groups including private companies expropriate natural resources at sub-national and local levels.”Where will CARPE head in the coming years? The implementation of land use management plans for micro- and macro- zones, strengthening of government capacity and transparency are key.

February 23, 2012/by actualize

Connectivity, Legal & Regulatory, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Somalia gov’t intends to create independent telecoms regulator

Few nations lack a dedicated telecommunications regulator. These days, most have an independent regulator, some have a state-controlled regulator, and a couple only have a ministry that more-or-less covers regulatory duties. Not surprisingly, Somalia is one of the few African nations that lacks a regulator. (For reference, Libya, Seychelles, and Western Sahara are the others.)

Although Somalia’s Ministry of Posts & Communications oversees all telecoms operations, the government is scattered and ineffective (the ministry website hasn’t been updated since 2009).

However, we were shocked to read how Somali telecommunications stakeholders recently hammered out a draft communications law that will establish a legal framework for Somalia’s nascent telecoms industry. Ministry of Posts & Communications representatives were even present to discuss the main goal of the workshop: to establish a well-defined independent regulator by the end of the year. The hope is that the regulator, to be designed as the Somali Communications Commission, will promote investment, encourage fair competition, and diligently monitor prices for services.

Hopefully the law can pass relatively quickly, but not so hastily that it lacks substance. A lot is riding on the Communications Act. As the Minister of Information, Posts, and Telecommunications points out, the act will be “a key step in the process of strengthening the rule of Law in Somalia”. The banner for the event even highlighted the ability of ICT to bring peace.

Banner for the 13-14 Feb session in Mogadishu {Horn of Africa News}

Of course, the question remains whether the SCC, once created, will enforce (or be able to physically enforce) the telecoms law.

February 23, 2012/by actualize

Mobile Money, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Women in Development

Mobile Money and ROSCAs: The Intersection of Technology and Informal Financial Services

Photo Credit: Nin Andrews

As reported in the working paper “Mobile Money Services and Poverty Reduction: A Study of Women’s Groups in Rural Eastern Kenya,” women’s groups in Eastern Kenya are using M-PESA as a part of an informal savings product. Through the Vinya wa Aka Group (VwAG), along with support from the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), 21 women’s groups were provided with financial literacy training which included investment, savings, money services, and management. After their initial training, Dr. Ndunge Kiiti of Houghton College and Dr. Jane Mutinda of Kenyatta University stated that the goal of the research was to see how mobile money services could be used as a tool in the women’s groups to reduce poverty in Eastern Kenya.

While all the groups had formal savings accounts along with other investments, the groups still continued to use an informal savings vehicle that has traditionally been used in areas that lack access to an institutional savings product. ROSCAs, Rotating Savings and Credit Associations, are groups of people who form in order to force themselves to save on a schedule. The group members will meet weekly for a set number of weeks, and in each week, each person “deposits” their savings for the week. But, instead of letting the money accumulate each week , a specific person in the group receives the entire pot for the week. The idea is that each week each group member saves a specific amount (say $100) with the understanding that when it is their week, they will receive the pot. For example, if there 10 group members, each week for 10 weeks one individual will receive $1,000. During the weeks that a member does not receive the pot, they still must deposit $100, even if they have already received the pot. This is an example of a social contract in which the group members hold the other members accountable to pay each week. ROSCAs are especially popular when individuals are looking to make a larger purchase (i.e. stove, TV, merchandise for their business) and they do not have a formal financial product to save the money.

In these women’s groups, they saw M-PESA as a benefit in order to receive payments on time from the ROSCA group members. Instead of having to attend each weekly meeting to make the payment, women transfer the money using M-PESA. This allows for group members that are not located in the area, either permanently or because of travel, to still be a part of the group and make timely payments.

This is a great example of how end-users will always dictate how a product or service is used. In the case of the women’s groups, they saw a way to leverage M-PESA in order to make their ROSCAs more efficient. While M-PESA was not originally developed for ROSCAs, this is another way for Safaricom to market its services. These types of reports are very valuable since it shows how customers are using a product or service. By understanding how and why the service or product is being used, companies can further tweak their model or even create other innovative products to match the needs of the customer.

February 23, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Sustainable Agriculture

Social Media @ IFAD’s 2012 GC Meeting

Photo Credit: IFAD

The 35th Session of International Fund for Agriculture and Development (IFAD’s) Governing Council (GC) is currently underway with innovative use of social media for more inclusive, interactive and impact-oriented forum.

The 2-day event with the theme “Sustainable smallholder agriculture: feeding the world, protecting the planet” takes off officially on Wednesday at IFAD’s headquarters in Rome with side events such as Fourth global meeting of the Farmers’ Forum and Haiti post-earthquake support program for food security and employment generation in affectted areas taking place on Tuesday.

The meeting is expected to provide a platform for Member States, partners and the public to discuss and debate what needs to be done to enable smallholder farmers to contribute to raising food availability by 7% by 2050 that is required to feed a growing, more urbanized population.

To stimulate the conversation, IFAD’s strong team of social media reporters are on the ground to get you informed and get you involved. The social reporters will keep the outside world informed through blogs, tweets, posting interviews and pictures on the following IFAD social media channels.

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ ifadnews
Blog: http://ifad-un.blogspot.com/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/IFADTV
BlipTV: http://ifad.blip.tv
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IFAD
Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/ifad

Live tweets will be displayed on the twitter wall in the Plenary Hall, in the meeting rooms and in the atrium. Delegates are encouraged to share their ideas, views and insights via social media channels using #ifadgc hashtag.

The virtual audience can follow the proceedings and interact with the prominent guests and panelists on the above social media channels. Plenary sessions, high-level panels, center stage events and regional and other events taking place in the Plenary Hall and Oval Room will also be webcast respectively at the following urls:

To get more information on IFAD’s Governing Council, visit here.

February 21, 2012/by actualize

Anti-corruption, Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Sierra Leone poised for success with transparency portal, ACE fibre cable, 3G

Sierra Leone has carried the momentum from the October 2011 landing of the ACE fibre cable in Freetown and is off to a progressive start to 2012.

We must all be ready now to embrace change, change in our attitude towards one another, change in our attitude to our work and responsibilities. All of those changes should translate positively into progress and development for our country.” – President Ernest Bai Koroma, 2008.

What’s happened in the mobile and Internet industry this year? Thanks to great reporting by Sierra Express Media, we have quite a few stories to be excited about as Sierra Leone positions itself as a regional ICT leader:

The government (including President Koroma) launched Transparency Sierra Leone, an online portal to increase its level of openness. (More on this below)
GoSL announced plans to revise the existing Telecommunications Act to reverse the monopoly of Sierratel over the GoSL international internet gateway before the ACE cable is operational later this year. (A study by the GSM Association in February 2007, citing Kenya, Nigeria and Egypt as case studies, showed that competition in the international gateways market can reduce call prices by up to 90 percent and double call volumes.)
Airtel launched 3G service on February 3rd (Africell began offering 3G access in 2011).
The Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) launched an online system to manage system contains mineral rights, export licenses, and related payments.

The transparency portal encourages interaction and collaboration between citizens and the government. Citizens may ask questions and read about government projects. In return, the government can be expected to implement suggestions and remain honest about how the nations’ resources (ie. people’s taxes) are spent. In fact, Dr. Kelfala Marrah, Chief of Staff in the President’s Office, made some excellent points at the launch event:

people will pay taxes without hassle when they see how their money is spent
the village square is now the internet
impose attacks and you will be rewarded for imposing attacks

The site has a very clean layout with large text. Homepage slides are uncluttered. Registries allow for quick filtering based on region. The color scheme (green, white, and blue) even matches the flag!

Click to enlarge. {Transparency Sierra Leone}

Also positive:

a focus on national issues and not political debate
collaboration between regulator, finance ministry, infrastructure authorities, broadcasters, and journalists
the idea centre allows for user submissions (only one has been added as of writing)
a blog is frequently updated with news of projects
social share buttons in the footer
FAQs explain how to participate and even how to comment on posts
the president has created a YouTube video (viewed 200 times since January 20th)
‘Agenda for Change’ is prominently displayed as a PDF link, as are links to government websites

The nation is now busy preparing for the operation of the ACE cable later this year. After all, capacity is useless if there is no demand or if the cost structure doesn’t make sense for consumers. Profits from the ACE gateway are expected to contribute to Sierra Leone’s economic progress. The government is clearly not taking any chances is missing this tremendous opportunity.

February 21, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Mobile, Mobile Money, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

M-PESA responds: Benefits and Challenges of using mobile money to reduce poverty for women in Kenya

This is a guest post by Dr Ndunge Kiiti of Houghton College, New York and the GSMA mWomen programme.

M-PESA Responds

The M-PESA staff members were grateful for the feedback provided by the women’s groups. First, the workshop provided them with a broader context in which to understand how these groups were using their services in the rural areas. Second, they were able to spend quality time explaining how the women might confront and address some of the challenges they have faced as a result of the services. The challenges and M-PESA’s suggested responses are listed below.

Fraud

Several of the women had lost money to fraud. The M-PESA staff acknowledged the women’s concerns and highlighted that reported cases were always investigated. They emphasized several tips to prevent M-PESA fraud including:

Calling M-PESA to confirm the request prior to responding to a text message regarding their account (the phone number, which would require a small fee, was provided)
Checking to see if the text message is actually from M-PESA – if it was it would have the M-PESA logo and/or name)
Being aware of their account balance
Ensuring their pin number is always kept safe

It was also brought to the groups’ attention that M-PESA has introduced a new Safaricom SIM card which allows individuals to save the phone numbers used for M-PESA transactions. This enables the individual to just scroll and pick the accurate number instead of having to retype the number every time it is used. This reduces the problem of sending money to the wrong number. The M-PESA staff provided the SIM card service at the workshop and many of the women paid for the service and got their old SIM cards replaced. The women expressed gratitude for the service.

Network/Connectivity Problems

Why some areas face network problems was explained by the M-PESA staff. The company recognizes that network coverage is a problem in some rural areas. A key challenge for M-PESA is the platform or technology has faced limitations in keeping up with the demand, as the users of the service continue to increase across the country. The women were encouraged to report coverage issues to an M-PESA outlet, if there is one in their area, rather than an agent. They were also given a number to call or text, when they have access to service, to report these complaints to give the service provider the opportunity to rectify the problems. Again, this would require a small fee.

Cost

The challenge of cost for service was discussed; even though the service was deemed very useful by users, sometimes the costs involved proved challenging for them. The M-PESA staff explained their service costs, what they entail and how they have worked to keep them affordable for Kenyans. There was mutual agreement that M-PESA has tried to be fair in terms of pricing. In fact, it came out in the conversation that one of the reasons it was being used by all 21 women’s groups was because it was the most competitive in the mobile money market.

Services for Special Populations

In relation to services for special populations, such as the elderly, illiterate or visually impaired, there were no easy answers. M-PESA staff suggested that they would look into the possibilities of programs that might assist special populations to have positive experiences with their service.

Group Communication and Dynamics

On one hand, mobile money allows for money to be sent to facilitate planning at meetings, even if a member needs to be absent. However, some groups argued this can perpetuate the lack of meeting attendance, thus limiting the social aspects of the group meeting and affecting the socio-psychological support that comes from face-to-face group interactions. Since this issue relates more to the training and capacity building carried out by those running women’s groups, it was not addressed by the M-PESA in detail. However, representatives of the organization running the women’s groups encouraged members not to allow the use of technology to erode or limit their face-to-face communication by not attending meetings. The groups were encouraged to continue reminding members that a key part of their mission is being a support system for one another which require face to face communication.

Summary

Overall, despite the numerous challenges mentioned, the groups made it clear that the benefits of using mobile money services outweighed the disadvantages. In addition, bringing together M-PESA staff and their end users was mutually beneficial. The women’s groups were able to gain information, knowledge and services that will continue to help them with their poverty reduction activities. The M-PESA staff were able to garner insights and understanding that may contribute to framing policies and practice for mobile money services.

February 21, 2012/by actualize

Environment, eWaste, Natural Resources Management, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Project Spotlight: Green Prakriya

Green Prakriya, a joint initiative of Digital Empowerment Foundation and Association for Progressive Communication, was formed to address India’s “tremendous economic growth owing to the influx of the information and communication technology revolution.” With this advancement, a wave of e-waste ensues. The initiative works as an eco-web platform that acts as a green ICT knowledge base for practitioners, policy advocates, policy makers, researchers, professionals and the masses interested in environmental sustainability, networking, coordination, and implementation.

Green Prakriya’s philosophy is:

to engage stakeholders working on green technology
to develop a network of stakeholders working on Green technology
to create a rich knowledge base of technology solutions for addressing environment issues
to conduct awareness and outreach programs through seminars and workshops
to develop a collaboration amongst scholars and practitioners nationally and internationally
to act as a policy advocate
to act as an intermediary or medium to promote e-waste management in the city

Green Prakriya strives to bridge the gap of a lack of information and communication of stakeholders aware of the issues of technology waste. The initiative has taken part in mapping exercises and workshops to raise awareness.

February 21, 2012/by actualize

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