Originally posted on the GBI Portal – Page 22

The World Bank Launches e-Sourcebook on Ag.

Photo Credit: The World Bank

The official launch of the World Bank’s e-Sourcebook, “ICT in Agriculture: Connecting Smallholders to Knowledge, Networks and Institutions” took place at the premises of the Bank on Wednesday January 18 2012, with a number of activities.

Among these activities was a panel discussion on the key modules in the book moderated by Mark E. Cackler, the Manger of the Agriculture and Rural Development Department of the World Bank. Members of the panel included Willem Janssen, the Lead Agriculture Specialist in the Latin America and Caribbean Region; Laurent Besancon, Senior Regulatory Specialist in charge of ICT portfolio for the Sub-Saharan Africa region; Tuukka Castren, Senior Forest Specialist at the Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD) department of the Bank; Aparajita Goyal, an Economist at the Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD); and Shaun Ferris, Senior Technical Advisor for Agriculture and Environment at Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

Introducing the book, Tim Kelly, the Lead ICT Policy Specialist in the ICT unit of the Bank stated clearly that the e-Sourcebook is neither academic paper, a report nor cookbook for use. However, it provides development practitioners and governments with examples of where ICT in agriculture has been used, challenges and lessons learned using ICT, and guidelines on project development. It also attempts to address how ICT can be mainstreamed into agricultural interventions, research and entrepreneurship.

A Science Advisor at the Agriculture and Rural Development Department at the Bank, Eija Pehu shared some of the key findings and themes from the book. This includes the need to focus on the demand for services but not on the technology, understanding the users and their demands, providing the enabling environment, exploring sustainable business models, being aware of differential impacts of ICT projects such as gender, age and socio-economic status of the users, and recognizing that smart and higher capacity tools are becoming more affordable.

The highlight of the panel presentation featured an interesting mobile application demonstrated by Shaun Ferris from CRS that is being used for data collection, monitoring and assessment by agricultural field workers to share information and report to the main office. iFormBuilder is currently being used by Catholic Relief Services in a number of remote communities to facilitate data sharing and reporting.

Questions and Answer Session

Two main themes that emerged during the Q&A session were the need to i) identify and show evidence for the impacts of these ICT applications in agriculture on the socio-economic status and livelihood conditions of the farmers; and ii) look more into innovative ways of using ICTs to increase productivity of farmers in addition to the current emphasis on market information systems. It was pointed out that while the e-Sourcebook has good examples of each of the two above areas, more need to be done.

Also a number of academic and research institutes are currently working with some of the ICT projects to understand the relationship between ICTs use by local farmers and improvement in their socio-economic conditions. The conclusion, however, was that it is going to be a difficult task identifying this relationship looking at the number of ways by which the farmers use a given ICT. For example a mobile phone may be used to check weather updates, as an alarm clock, a clock to inform farmers about when to leave for home, make phone calls, check emails, etc.

The Structure of the Book

Organized into 4 main themes and 15 modules:

Section One (Introduction) covers topics like ICT in Agricultural Development (Module 1); Making ICT Infrastructure, Appliances and Services More Accessible and Affordable in Rural Areas (Module 2); Anywhere, Anytime – Mobile Devices and Their Impact on Agriculture and Rural Development (Module 3); and Extending the Benefits: Gender Equitable-ICT Enabled Agricultural Development (Module 4).

Section Two (Enhancing Productivity on the Farm) includes Increasing Crop, Livestock and Fishery Productivity Through ICT (Module 5); ICTs As Enablers of Agricultural Innovation Systems (Module 6); Broadening Smallholders’ Access to Financial Services Through ICTs (Module 7); and Farmer Organizations Work Better with ICT (Module 8).

The Third Section (Assessing Markets and Value Chains) addresses issues of Strengthening Agricultural Marketing with ICT (Module 9); ICT Applications for Smallholder Inclusion in Agribusiness Supply Chains (Module 10); ICT Applications for Agricultural Risk Management (Module 11); and Global Markets, Global Challenges: Improving Food Safety and Traceability While Empowering Smallholders Through ICT (Module 12).

The Fourth and Final Section (Improving Public Service Provision) covers Strengthening Rural Governance, Institutions, and Citizen Participation Through ICT (Module 13); ICT for Land Administration and Management (Module 14) and Using ICT to Improve Forest Governance (Module 15).

What Next at the Bank?

The Bank will be looking into the operational challenges of some of these ICTs applications identified in the book, develop regional task force to follow-up with the progress, and also continue to organize online fora on selected topics in the book, the first of which took place in December 2011 on “Strengthening Agricultural Marketing with ICT.“

The e-Sourcebook is freely available here.

January 20, 2012/by actualize

Access to ICTs & Human Rights: The Case of Namibian Farmers!

Photo Credit: TheJoyOfTech

Report coming from Namibia indicates that some farmers in the South of the country, especially those farming in the Kalahari, have been cut-off from the rest of the world after Telecom Namibia disconnected their phone lines.

According to the farmers, they have not been able to use their phones since the end of October 2011 as a result of a switch from the old manual system to the WiMaX network which provides voice services, broadband data and high-speed internet access, said the Namibian.

This comes at the time when Vinton G. Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet widely known for creating the TCP/IP protocol, stirred-up the global information policy environment with his Op-ED piece in the NYT, “Internet access is not a human right.” Vint Cerf argues that technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. No doubt, the response to Vint Cerf’s piece has been overwhelming (see The Internet IS a (Human) Right… and Why Did Vint Cerf Say That?).

His statement comes in barely six months after the release of the La Rue’s report of the United Nations which acknowledges that Internet access is a human right. The La Rue report recognized that the Internet has become an indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights, and ensuring universal access to the Internet should be a priority for all states.

Digital Divide and Human Right

Another piece that came out this week in response to Vint Cerf’s piece is Tales of the Chinese Railway: The Digital 1%, Vint Cerf’s Internet as a Human Right (Not), the Digital Divide and Effective Use that brought in the issue of Digital Divide. While the Chinese government had good intentions to use the Internet – an online ticketing system, to curb long lines at stations and prevent scalpers from selling tickets in the black market, it is rather resulting in access gap.

These two examples from Namibia and China clearly demonstrate the challenge with the issue of “Access to the Internet” and “Human Rights.” What will be the value of connecting rural communities with ICT infrastructure if the people can’t access it? Can the tool (Internet) enable or empower the people if they can’t use it? Nations or States can ensure that the tools are available – 3G, 4G and LTE technologies in remote communities such as these Namibian communities, but without the financial capability of the people to use the services and applications that go with the infrastructure, the tools may be useless.

The dimensions of the digital divide (inequalities between groups) include social, economic, and democratic accessibility or access to, use of, and knowledge of ICTs. As claimed by the farmers, affordability is the main barrier, preventing them to connect to the new Telecom broadband service. The farmers claim Telecom Namibia compelled them to subscribe to its new WiMAX phone packages or to be left without a phone service.

Photo Credit: Flickr

Responding to the farmers’ complaints, Telecom Namibia’s Head of Public Relations, Oiva Angula, said the company had to upgrade its network because the old system had become obsolete and was not financially viable. “We calculate our cost to the customers based on what we pay to provide services,” Angula reacted to the farmers’ affordability claims and said Telecom had reviewed the rental fees following complaints about affordability.

While the old system cost farmers N$91 a month, Telecom had initially offered a three-year contract at a monthly basic rental of N$1 755. Angula stated that customers can now subscribe to a special WiMax package offering voice services and Internet access for a monthly rental of N$199, and the faster WiMaX broadband for a monthly fee of N$349.

The Head of Public Relations said about 44 farmers were affected by the network switch but he could not say how many farmers have been connected to the WiMaX network. “Only a few are resisting, customers must understand the situation that the telecom industry is moving fast, and we must keep pace,” he remarked.

So the question remains, whether access to the Internet and its associated services is a human right or not, even in the remotest communities of Namibia. I believe that ensuring universal access to the Internet for all individuals worldwide needs to be well-understood in its totality. It goes beyond the provision of the infrastructure to promoting or facilitating the right to available, accessible and affordable content to all. In this case, while the upgrade for new services (voice services, broadband data and high-speed internet access) for the Telecom Namibia customers is necessary, care must be taken so that it is not at the expense of other basic services (telephone) for people at the bottom of the pyramid. And when it comes to human right issues, it does not matter how many people are involved – whether is an individual farmer or 44 farmers.

January 19, 2012/by actualize

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

Lionfish, Tiger Shrimp, Grizzlar Bears! Oh, my!

Photo Credit: Factoidz

Last summer an article caught my eye about the spread of Lionfish in Antigua’s waters, an invasive and predatory creature. The news made me curious if there were other invasive species worthy of catchphrases and surely enough I wasn’t disappointed to find a diverse selection of tigers and bears.

Invasive species, as the name suggests, originate outside of the ecosystem in which they are found. Thousands of years of climate shifts and our urge to conquer new lands have led to major disruptions that threaten native environments, making them susceptible to damaged local biodiversity, food production, and even human health.

In 2005, ICT Update published an issue on invasive species, marking GIS and other tech responses to the monitoring and elimination of threatening pests. Since this publication there have been successful ICT approaches and projects for invasive alien prevention. What’s my favorite one, you may ask? Well, it’s actually a free, simple to use mobile application called What’s Invasive! With this downloadable application one can geo-tag invasive plants and animals that are specific to the desired geographic location. With this information concerned citizens and other groups can monitor growth patterns and participate in eradication campaigns. Currently, the application is vigorously used in American, Canadian, and European parks. With its easily accessible databases, nature education and other public outreach programs in coordination with this mobile app can greatly empower local communities to address issues of environmental protection and climate change.

January 18, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Environment, Environment, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Water

5 ICT 4 Watershed Management Projects

There’s been considerable debate lately about possible uses of information and communications technology for watershed management. Access to monitoring programs assists governments adequately manage and distribute water. Watershed management is critical for regional ecological health, clean water ability, disaster relief, and agriculture.

5 Noteworthy ICT Watershed Management Projects

eGov features India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) that uses GIS mapping and GPS enabled mobile applications for planning and monitoring rainwater harvested agricultural land. The watershed is analyzed through interactive online mapping available in local languages, engaging parties at the village, regional, and state levels. Through this process scarce water is conserved by a supervised drainage line, promoting the cultivation of arable land and responsible seasonal planning. An overview of this project is available HERE.

A similar project, MeKongInfo, is available to citizens along the Mekong River Basin in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. The site houses a database and online discussion that is sponsored by the Mekong River Commission (MRC). It contains many aspects including flood mitigation, fishery management and other issues of overall planning.

AgWater Solutions is collaborating with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and others in Ethiopia through workshops to address small reservoirs and groundwater systems investment.

African Water Facility’s Community Water Management Project in Zambia works with farmers to increase productivity by reducing their reliance on rain-fed farming.

Rio+20’s ICT as an Enabler for Smart Water Management report includes case-studies on ICTs for smart water initiatives. Also worthy of noting as a resource is the United Nations’ Virtual Learning Centre distance-learning course on Integrated Water and Environmental Management for creating regional resource databanks to enhance sustainable water management practices. The course is available through Regional Centres of Excellence in Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific.

January 18, 2012/by actualize

Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Mobile Learning Week: Paving the Way for Policy Development

Nearly 200 mobile technology experts and international education leaders met at the first annual UNESCO Mobile Learning Week last month, December 12-16, at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris. This was the first such UNESCO meeting in which mobile technology took center stage.

Ministry of Educations’ officials, along with other experts from the fields of mobile technology and education, discussed the potential uses and benefits of mobile technology within the field of education in developing countries which has been informally debated and discussed the world over, the technology’s limited accessibility often hindering sustainable policy-changing actions. The meeting was prompted in part because of the growing access to mobile networks now available to 90% of the world’s population and 80% of the population living in rural areas, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in its “The World in 2010” report.

These figures have certainly gained the attention of top-policy makers. Discussions on how to use mobile technologies to transform educational processes will contribute to the anticipated Guidelines on Mobile Learning Policy which is currently being developed by UNESCO and due to be released in 2012. The guidelines will help to develop the future of mobile learning beyond the UNESCO global movement of Education For All (EFA) goals.

The weeklong meeting was split into two events. Leading officials in the ICT field gathered for the International Experts Meeting on Mobile Learning which was limited to selected attendees. Following the meeting, representatives from Nokia, Pearson Foundation, SK Telecom, ISTE, iLearn4Free, ICTP, Microsoft, Commonwealth of Learning, Alcatel-Lucent, Orange, Intel, Ericsson, KERIS and the Mobiles for Education (mEducation) Alliance showcased recent developments in mobile technologies and projects on mobile learning from the field during the UNESCO Symposium on Mobile Learning.

Several keynote speakers at the symposium identified and discussed major challenges to implementing policies and innovative ideas for creating sustainable solutions. Stephane Boyera, Lead Program Manager of the World Wide Web Foundation, stressed the importance of considering the sustainability, scalability, and replicability of mobile learning initiatives during his presentation, “Mobile Technologies, Education and Socio-Economic Development”. He indicated that the main obstacles to development are directly linked to policy makers’ understanding of specific cultural needs.

Dr. Paul Kim, Chief Technology Officer and Assistant Dean for Stanford University School of Education, spoke about the contextualized innovations in education and mobile empowerment design in his presentation, “Future Trends in Mobile Technology Development: What Can We Expect in the Next 5, 10, and 15 Years?”

The event achieved UNESCO’s goal of promoting the potential contribution of mobile technology to education and promises to lead to positive changes in policy development. Working papers that were developed during the event are due to be released sometime in early 2012.

January 18, 2012/by actualize

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

Social media fans the Nigerian fuel subsidy debate

As the protests and demonstrations rage on in Nigeria surrounding the government’s decision to cut subsidies on petrol, many citizen have taken to social media sites to voice their opinions. Fuel subsidies provided citizens with discounted petrol at the pumps, but with the government’s retraction of the subsidy, the price of petrol has literally doubled over night.

Protesters gather during a rally against fuel subsidy removal on Ikorodu road in Lagos.

Users of social media site Twitter relay messages of protest action and subsidy news under the hashtags #Occupy Nigeria and #fuelsubsidy. “In Nigeria, the protest will continue tomorrow, and I will be there to occupy,” writes user toyinoddy.

“It is occupy time in Nigeria, let all of us occupy our resources,” tweets another user.

Mr.Perkinson added his displeasure by posting “I don’t believe in #fuelsubsidy removal and corruption and I’ll back it up till the end. Win or lose.”

Facebook, the world’s biggest social media website, has also been a source of information, but more importantly a place where Nigerians share their feelings and thoughts on the matter.

With rising prices and the high cost of transportation and communication, the internet is still one of the best ways to keep abreast of the happenings surrounding strike action and related violence.

“The Internet gives us very effective uninterrupted flow. We may not have access to newspapers, radios and televisions. We may not even have the money to make all the necessary calls. The Internet is a cheap medium for mobilisation. With the Internet, you don’t even have to go to the street and risk being shot by the police who would accuse you of shooting them first even if you have not handled a gun all your life,” Lagos-based lawyer Imam Okochua told Punch Nigeria.

He also voiced his opinion on the Occupy Nigeria movement, which – according to their Facebook page – aims to end political corruption, poverty, police intimidation, and wealth inequality. “Occupy Nigeria is the dream we have cherished for a long time – a peaceful pressure on the government to come out clean.”

But not everyone is pleased with the efforts made by the Occupy Nigeria movement, and took to social media sites to voice their concerns. “Nigerians too like to copy but like a bad photocopier the result is always very poor. What is Occupy Nigeria? A very, very poor copy of the Occupy Wall street protest,” writes Bodise Wilson, who lives in Yenagoa, Nigeria.

“You want to Occupy Nigeria? Nigerians want to occupy Nigeria, who lives here aliens? Fools! And what about the Oil marketers?” he added on Occupy Nigeria’s Facebook page.

Another helpful tool in getting messages across is the use of BlackBerry’s free messaging system, which allows users to send messages and photos to other users of the service. Soon after the strike commenced, there were unconfirmed reports that the Nigerian government was planning to shut the service down. Thankfully it was proven to be false, as Director of Public Affairs at the NCC (Nigerian Communication Commission), Tony Ojobo, issued a statement contradicting the rumours.

“The attention of NCC has been drawn to the information making the rounds that it had at a meeting agreed with CEOs of telecommunications networks to shutdown BlackBerry services in order to deny Nigerians the use of that very important social network. The management hereby states categorically that there was never such a meeting, nor was there ever a resolution to shut down BlackBerry services. The public is please advised to disregard such information.”

In today’s inter-connected world, social media has proven to be a valuable tool for spreading information at a rapid pace – and it’s only growing. The use of sites like Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry’s BBM service as a source of news and helpful hints highlights the importance of being connected – and how powerful a combined force of internet-savvy citizens can be.

Charlie Fripp – Acting Online editor

January 18, 2012/by actualize

Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Mobile Technology Improves Health Worker Knowledge Retention: Results from a Pilot Project in Uganda

Photo Credit: Abt Associates

SMS-based messages can improve training retention for health workers, according to the results of a mobile learning and performance support pilot in Uganda released in November. The goal of USAID’s pilot project, called Mobiles for Quality Improvement (m4QI), was to test the use of mHealth applications in the reinforcement of in-person training provided to health workers.

The outcome from the pilot showed that texts messages are a viable alternative for the continued education of health workers located in rural regions. This is a low-cost option that allows workers to learn in the field and does not interrupt their service to clients. By utilizing an open source product (FrontlineSMS:Learn), the platform can be used for free and is customizable specifically to needs and challenges in new regions. As a part of USAID’s SHOPS (Strengthening Health Outcomes through the Private Sector), the next steps of m4QI project are to seek out other markets to leverage the mobile learning platform in order to further develop the software as well increase scale. The goals of future projects include improving implementation and identifying best practices.

In using the FrontlineSMS: Learn software platform, Appfrica, a software developer company based in Uganda, created a replicable program that sent messages to health workers to support and test their knowledge retention. The platform allowed for the use of basic mobile phones in order to match the phones commonly owned by the health workers. It provided supervisors data to assess which areas of knowledge were not being properly retained by workers. The project ran from September 2010 through August 2011. The intervention was provided to 34 family planning workers on the Marie Stopes Uganda (MSU) staff in six different service delivery sites. The workers’ jobs ranged from receptionists, lab technicians, service providers, doctors, drivers, housekeepers, and managers. By reviewing the behavior of the staff, four indicators were identified as areas of improvement: hand-washing, sharps disposal, instrument decontamination, and pain management techniques. Four messages were created for each indicator in which two were reinforcing, tips, reminders, or encouragement and the other two were review questions in order to test staff knowledge of past training. In order for each of the four messages to be sent twice to the participants, each worker received one message a day, four days a week, for eight weeks.

While it was initially an eight week pilot, it was expanded until August as there were multiple technical problems which caused the delivery of messages to fail. In total, 3,449 messages were sent, and there was an 86.5% success rate of receipt. In response to the assessment questions, there was a 19% response rate. Participants indicated after the pilot that they were motivated by the reminders for hand-washing rules, utilized their training manuals when they received a question about treatment protocols, were able to re-learn steps to properly sterilize instruments, and applied the information they received about pain management during patient interaction. The interviews also revealed that the messages increased the interaction between co-workers about the topics of the messages.

The pilot also provided lessons for future projects. Those include the need for technical support in the field, a greater understanding by project stakeholders to the purpose and role of the mobile application, a more organized orientation and training for participants, and pre-paid airtime for participants to increase involvement.

The SHOPS project is funded by USAID and is led by Abt Associates and includes partnerships with Banyan Global, Jhpiego, Marie Stopes International, Monitor Group, and O’Hanlon Health Consulting. The focus of the project is to use private sector health in order to improve the quality and availability of family planning and reproductive health, maternal and child health, and HIV/AIDS treatment. Within the mobile health arena, the partnership’s goal is to identify mHealth applications and their best practices in implementation and scale.

January 18, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Building While Operating: Lessons in linking mHealth and mobile money in Haiti

Last week marked two years since the devastating earthquake in Haiti that, according to the Haitian government, took the lives of 316,000 people[1], injured 300,000[2]and displaced at least one million people[3]– more than 10% of its population[4]. Any country’s infrastructure would struggle with this, but in Haiti even some of the smallest problems were exacerbated by the fact that Haiti was (and still is) the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere[5]. Many Haitians do have access to mobile phones, though, so mHealth and mobile money services have enormous potential to fill the gaps and improve their lives.

The earthquake left Haiti’s already weak health and financial systems in tatters. It destroyed 30 hospitals, 21 clinics, 11 Ministry of Health facilities, and 22 health training centers, and it damaged 30-40% of all bank branches and ATMs in the zone of impact. From the very beginning of the recovery, mobile services showed what they could do.

A great deal of mHealth activity took place to bolster the relief effort and safeguard reconstruction, including the Fletcher School /Ushahidi’s crisis mapping and proactive messages delivered via SMS to warn about cholera outbreaks through a partnership between Voila and the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and more. In 2009, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID launched a prize fund to accelerate the launch of mobile money services in Haiti, enabling the population to send, receive, and store money via mobile phones. In the time that has followed, NGOs eagerly adopted mobile money as a safe, speedy way to distribute aid and pay people in cash-for-work programs. In fact, of the 14 mobile money use programs in the world, eight are in Haiti. These programs are realizing a range of benefits – including improved speed, efficiency, and security.[6]

This early flurry of activity is now giving way to longer-term questions. With the prize mechanism nearing completion, providers of mobile money services are looking for ways to expand them in a profitable, self-sustaining way. Haiti’s health system is rebuilding, and administrators are deciding how much to bring stopgap mHealth applications into the mainstream. And the opportunity to combine mHealth and mobile money through insurance plans, voucher programs, and other innovative services is just starting to open up.

Making these processes easier and realizing the long-term benefits of mobile services will require addressing a series of barriers in the public and private sectors:

Strategy to move from prize-led launch to sustainable scale. Mobile operators and banks must now determine their strategies to reach the mass market and move beyond the prize-led launch to sustainable scale, avoiding the sub-scale trap which many deployments face globally. This will require the consortia to prioritize, penetrate, and capture profitable segments of the Haitian economy.
Interoperability and integration. The central bank in Haiti did mandate interoperability between mobile money services, but there is a continued need to integrate services, bridges, and open APIs – especially if mHealth and mobile money are to work together.
The policy environment. At present, the lack of a national ID scheme and policies for data security and privacy are holding back the development of mobile services, particularly combinations of mHealth and mobile money. E-wallets have been used to register people in Haiti in place of national IDs, but the e-wallets are currently capped at US$250 by the central bank, limiting the usefulness of mobile services.
The evidence base. Greater distillation and dissemination of the experiences of providers, users, and regulators would help the sector to develop in a more directed and way, avoiding repeated mistakes and redundancies.

Both the mHealth and mobile money ecosystems are at an inflection point in Haiti, and there is reason to be optimistic. Favorable regulatory approaches have led to the emergence of a spectrum of products, including payroll and merchant payments. For the sector to preserve its momentum, providers will have to find new ways to attract consumers, and policymakers will have to keep up with providers’ and consumers’ needs.

[1]One Year After Haiti’s Quake: Cholera Babies School Without Walls, ABC News, 12 January 2011. Retrieved 7 January 2012.

[2]“Haiti raises earthquake toll to 230,000”. AP. The Washington Post. 10 February 2010. Retrieved 7 January 2012.

[3]“Haiti will not die, President Rene Preval insists”. BBC News. 12 February 2010. Retrieved 7 February 2012.

[4]“Earthquake Magnifies Haiti’s Economic and Health Challenges”. Population Reference Bureau. October 2010. Retrieved 7 January 2012.

[5] “UNICEF urgently appeals for aid for Haiti following devastating earthquake”, UNICEF, 12 January 2010. Retrieved 7 January 2012.

[6]Dalberg Global Development Advisors is currently conducting analysis for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on the business case for, and operational learnings from, NGOs plugging into mobile money, forthcoming later this month.

January 18, 2012/by actualize

Humanitarian Assistance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Connecting the Most Marginalized and Those That Support Them

This post originally appeared on the NetHope HUB.

Visiting refugee “camps” is always a life changing experience. In September my work with NetHope took me to the Dadaab refugee camp in northeast Kenya. Over 200,000 refugees (mostly from Somalia) have lived in Dadaab camp since the early 1990’s. In the last year, the camp size has grown to almost 500,000 refugees as the flight of Somalis to neighboring Kenya has accelerated due to the life threatening food crisis in the Horn of Africa. It is hard to think of these as “camps” because they are the middle of the desert, with no electricity and very limited clean water supply. There is almost nothing there that we would associate with a “camp.”

My reason for visiting the Dadaab camps was to find ways to improve communications capabilities for the NGOs working in the camps. With the exponential growth of the camps, the number of organizations providing assistance has increased and the number of humanitarian workers living and working in the camps has doubled. Until the summer of 2011, the only connectivity available to those working in Dadaab was expensive satellite connectivity with limited bandwidth available. Many of the organizations had 128-256 kbps satellite connections and the use of the bandwidth was strictly rationed.

In late spring 2011 the mobile network operators provided improved terrestrial based (i.e. near broadband) connectivity in the Dadaab area. Mobile phone users started leveraging 3G and GPRS connectivity through the mobile networks. At the same time, Safaricom — the biggest mobile network provider in Kenya — started offering WiMax based connections. This allowed the organizations working in Dadaab to not only get 5-10 times more bandwidth, but often this terrestrial bandwidth was at half the prices that they paid for satellite connectivity.

NetHope in collaboration with USAID, Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Inveneo, UNHCR and WFP is working with Kenyan internet providers Safaricom and Orange to increase the available bandwidth even more while at the same time ensure redundancy and reliability of the connections. During the first quarter of 2012, a shared connectivity infrastructure will be put in place in Dadaab, increasing the reliability even more and opening up the possibility to leverage technology further in the difficult work being done there.

Why is connectivity so important? Why is the ability to communicate so essential to every aspect of humanitarian affairs? For those that have spent time in the field, the answers are so obvious. For those on the outside, it is often hard to imagine a world without electricity, connectivity and the very basic tools that we have come to use in our every day life: a computer, a phone, a printer. But what do these tools do for an aid worker in a place like Dadaab?

THE KNOWLEDGE WORKER — The role of the humanitarian worker, just like the role of large portions of employees worldwide, has become one of a knowledge worker. Computers and mobile phones have become an essential tool for humanitarian workers, just like they have for knowledge workers all over the world. Humanitarian workers who manage programs need to be able to share information with other implementers, gather information from others and report information to donors. It is impossible to quantify the impact of slow or no connectivity, but it does take away an essential part of any knowledge workers tool set.

SECURITY — In a location like Dadaab, where the security situation is very fluid, good connectivity also means that more timely security information is shared. This flow of information saves lives.

NEW APPLICATIONS — When connectivity is poor and bandwidth is limited, then it is impossible to leverage solutions that enable better collaboration between humanitarian organizations. Technologies and solutions such as voice-over IP (VOIP), video conferencing, mobile banking or distance learning are not even considered as part of the toolset when connectivity is poor. These new technologies, which not only enable better collaboration, but also enhance the effectiveness of the humanitarian workers, become a possibility with improved connectivity.

FIELD PROGRAMS — Humanitarian workers are not the only winners when it comes to improved connectivity. There is a wealth of data that shows that connected communities in the developing world have much higher rates of GDP growth than those that are not connected. Developing world communities that have access to cheap and plentiful bandwidth have made huge gains in the areas of economic development, health services, education and even governance.

MORALE — Finally there is a benefit that is often overlooked and that is the effect that improved connectivity has on staff morale. Places like Dadaab are very isolated and the mental health of humanitarian staff is improved when they have the ability to communicate with their families and friends on evenings and weekends. The availability of increased and more reliable bandwidth can enable staff to have video calls via Skype with their families, something I myself have experienced as a boost in morale during my own disaster missions and business travel, not only for me, but also for my own family members.

Advancements in technologies are making connectivity much more affordable and accessible. We at NetHope are inspired to help:

Improve access to the tools that knowledge workers all over the world have come to use in their every day life
Make for a more secure working environment for international development staff
Enable field programs that use the latest information and communications technologies in the areas of economic development, health, education, agriculture and more
Support international development staff and their families in their every day lives

— Gisli Olafsson, NetHope Global Program Director, Emergency Response

January 18, 2012/by actualize

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

Credit Agricole Egypt moves closer to mobile banking

Egyptian bank Credit Agricole Egypt launched has announced on Tuesday it had launched new banking that would allow both customers and non-customers to pay bills without a CAE debit or credit card. Analysts believe this is one step closer to full-on mobile banking in the country.

Analysts believe this is one step closer to full-on mobile banking in the country (image: stock.xchng)

The move is seen as a step toward making banking easier for customers in Egypt, long fraught with difficulties and red tape.

“It’s a wonderful endeavour that will hopefully push the country into the realm of great possibilities and personally, I am getting to use it already because I want to try it out and see if it will be successful,” securities and trade expert for CI Capital Mohamed Naguib said.

The move is in cooperation with Fawry and makes CAE the first such bank in the country to off the service to both customers and non-customers, which allows people to pay bills using cash or other bank cards.

“I see it as a move toward better technology within the banking sector and could be a jumping point for other IT related banking initiatives in the country,” added Naguib.

Customers can now pay at their leisure and has launched a new website to enable customers to do so online.

“Bill payment represents a more efficient, fast and reliable method of payment by allowing consumers to instantly pay their bills anytime at their convenience through Crédit Agricole Egypt’s nationwide network of ATMs,” the company said in a statement.

Currently, the new bill payment service is offered to all mobile subscribers, as well as Egypt Telecom, TE Data, Linkdotnet, Air Arabia, the Food Bank and CIL insurance payments, the statement said.

“Crédit Agricole Egypt is the first bank to offer the cardless ATM bill payment option. This new service does not require the possession of a CAE debit card. Thus, with our bill payment service, no one will have to worry about unpaid bills no matter where they are,” said Jean-Francois Drion, managing director, Crédit Agricole Egypt, in the same statement.

Desmond Shephard

January 18, 2012/by actualize

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