Originally posted on the GBI Portal – Page 58

At PATH, Delivering Information Technology in Challenging Locations

I’ve just returned from PATH’s offices in Hanoi and Phnom Penh, where a group from our information services team reviewed the state of our global health nonprofit’s technical infrastructure there. We also talked with our Vietnam and Cambodia Country Program staff about partnering on projects that include a software development component. I came home to Seattle knowing that this is truly an exciting time to be applying technology solutions in the developing world

May 6, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Climate Change, Extension Service, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Seasonal climate forecasts possible in Africa but not helping yet – study

An Egyptian rice farmer shows his drought damaged rice crop in a village near Balqis on June 14, 2008. REUTERS/Nasser Nuri

LONDON (AlertNet) – For African farmers struggling to cope with increasingly erratic conditions linked to climate change, there’s good – and bad – news.

The good news is that in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, scientists can now issue reasonably reliable seasonal climate forecasts a month or more in advance of the planting season, giving growers a chance to opt for different kinds of crops or other measures to adapt to upcoming conditions.

That has the potential to improve food security in many climate-vulnerable parts of Africa, and reduce the impact on some of the world’s poorest people of droughts, floods and temperature surges.

The bad news is that those forecasts, and other historical weather information farmers need to judge risk and make good decisions, still are not reaching most growers, in part because meteorological data in many African countries is available only at a cost.

Weather information “is an essential resource for adaptation (to climate change) and development,” said James W. Hansen, a researcher on climate change, agriculture and food security at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and lead author of a new report on seasonal climate forecasting and agriculture in Africa.

But “as long as these (data) are seen as a revenue source for Met services rather than as a public good for development, the people who are most affected by climate change, climate variability and poverty won’t have much access to innovations,” he said in a telephone interview.

Growing climate variability is making life increasingly difficult for farmers throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Some areas, particularly in southern and eastern Africa, are seeing extended droughts and high temperatures that can make growing staples like maize a challenge. Other regions, including parts of West Africa, have struggled with extreme rainfall.

Altogether “dependence on uncertain rainfall and exposure to climate risk characterize the livelihoods of roughly 70 percent of (sub-Saharan Africa’s) population,” notes the study, published in the journal Experimental Agriculture in March.

SOME PREDICTABLE REGIONS

But scientists are getting increasingly good at predicting seasonal climate conditions in advance, largely because of growing understanding of how Pacific Ocean temperatures – linked to weather phenomena like El Nino and La Nina – influence rainfall in sub-Saharan Africa.

While it is still very difficult to predict seasonal conditions in some parts of Africa – including across the Sahara and the northern parts of the Sahel – other areas are showing potential for predictability, at least in some seasons. They include much of southern Africa up to southern Zambia; a swath of East Africa centered on Kenya; a wide band of West Africa reaching from the Atlantic coast across to Sudan; and a stretch of west-central Africa from the Atlantic coast into the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Already, “skillful forecasts can be produced more than a month before the normal start of the growing season for the short rains in eastern Africa and the main rainy season in southern Africa,” the study noted.

Just as important, the regional forecasts can be “downscaled” to provide more specific local forecasts with only “modest” loss of accuracy, the study said.

So why aren’t seasonal forecasts yet reaching farmers, particularly given that studies show most are eager to get and act on the information?

Largely it’s the result of communication failures, Hansen said. Meteorologists in many regions tend to oversimplify forecasts, telling farmers there will be higher rainfall, for instance, rather than a 60 percent chance of higher than normal rainfall.

That has led to a lack of trust, particularly when oversimplified predictions don’t come true.

“If I were a smallholder farmer and a climate scientists said it would be more or less rainy, I’d be extremely skeptical. A lot would depend on how much I trust that person,” Hansen noted.

The reality is “farmers understand probability very well. Their lives depend on it,” he said. Leaving the probabilities off forecasts undermines trust and reliability, he said.

But perhaps the most severe problem, he said, is that many African meteorological services see weather data as something to be sold to paying clients – airports, insurance firms, development organizations – rather than released as a public good.

That view is in part the result of structural reforms driven by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, aimed at reducing the hand of governments – often seen as corrupt or inefficient – in services including meteorology, Hansen said. The reforms left many meteorological services dependent on commercial sales of data for funding, he said, a model that is providing difficult to change.

CHANGING THE FUNDING MODEL

Still, efforts are underway. An initiative in Kenya called WIND – Weather Information for Development – aims to help Kenya’s meteorological service find new sources of revenue and make better decisions about what data should be commercialized and what made publicly available free.

In other countries, researchers hope to tempt government meteorological services into releasing satellite data free in exchange for access to information from ground weather stations runs by research organizations.

“If we can get one or two (countries) to break out, and they get new visibility and funding, maybe there can be a domino effect,” Hansen said.

Better seasonal climate forecasts won’t help ease surging food prices around the world, because the surges are driven by rising demand, the scientist warned.

But in some of the poorest parts of the world, good seasonal climate forecasts have the potential to help curb hunger, protect incomes and get some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable people through bad years.

“The ability to anticipate climate fluctuations and their impact on agriculture months in advance should, in principle, enable… opportunities to manage risk,” the study noted.

May 4, 2011/by actualize

Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Workforce Development, Youth Development

Are holistic and contextualized efforts the key to rural youth economic empowerment?

In my last 2 posts, I wrote about reality (how rural youth in Africa are currently harnessing ICTs to generate income), and possibility — some new technology uses and concepts that I learned about at the “Can youth find economic empowerment via apps, m-payments and social media?” Tech Salon, hosted by ICT Works and the UN Foundation Technology Partnership.

This third and last post of the series explores some of the broader aspects that need to be in place or considered when looking at youth economic empowerment and the role of ICTs.

During our Tech Salon conversations, someone reminded the room that a large population of well-educated youth with no prospective jobs (think Tunisia or Egypt) is one thing. A large population of (rural) youth with low education levels is another.

Francis Fukuyama kind of sums this up based on Samuel Huntington’s ‘Political Order in Changing Societies,’ written some 40 years ago: ‘increasing levels of economic and social development often led to coups, revolutions and military takeovers rather than a smooth transition to modern liberal democracy. The reason, he pointed out, was the gap that appeared between the hopes and expectations of newly mobilized, educated and economically empowered people on the one hand, and the existing political system, which did not offer them an institutionalized mechanism for political participation, on the other. He might have added that such poorly institutionalized regimes are also often subject to crony capitalism, which fails to provide jobs and incomes to the newly educated middle class. Attacks against the existing political order, he noted, are seldom driven by the poorest of the poor; they instead tend to be led by rising middle classes who are frustrated by the lack of political and economic opportunity….’

So if the behaviors of these two basic groups (for simplicity’s sake let’s assume there are only 2 basic groups) are quite different, also the approaches to supporting the two groups are quite different, and their views of and reactions to economic crises also tend to be quite different. The first group (the newly educated middle class) is in a better position to access ICT-fueled economic opportunities, whereas the second group likely needs to strengthen its knowledge of things like savings, basic skills, and assets. Context, as always, is critical, and there will not be one single recipe that addresses the economic and development needs of the ‘youth bulge’.

: Youth bulge. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Some would say that economic opportunities created for the newly educated middle class will mean eventual trickle down opportunity to the rural poor — in which scenario app development, Facebook, microtasking and such might be seen as key enablers for economic empowerment for certain youth. But how can we more immediately support those who are not part of this newly educated middle class. And what about the countries that don’t have a large population of well-educated middle class tech-savvy youth? What are some key things for supporting economically disadvantaged rural youth?

Financial Literacy

Financial literacy for both children and adolescents is one key element. Financial literacy helps drive reasoning, conceptual skills, and leads to better engagement later with formal and informal sectors. At an early age, say around 8 years, financial literacy should include basic skills like counting, math, logical reasoning, value. Later on, financial literacy needs to move into understanding loans, down payments, interest rates, credit. In terms of ICTs, yes, mobiles could offer tools for youth to save and to build assets, but youth need to know the importance of building assets in the first place. Aflatoun is one example of programs that focus on financial literacy and the importance of saving. The educational children’s program Sesame Street also does its part. As background, this very interesting mPesa report says that around 21% of mPesa customers use the service for saving/storing money.

Life skills

A colleague at the Tech Salon noted that financial literacy and financial education need to be wrapped up into youth life skills education, also covering aspects like reproductive health, hygiene, emotional health. Youth need financial literacy but they also need basic literacy and increasingly media literacy. They need to know more about career development and to get help making good career choices; help understanding: What is real? What are their realistic expectations for a career? What does the current labor market look like? What do they need to do to prepare for a particular career or job? What are their real options? ICTs could be educational tools here, and not necessarily new ICTs. Television or radio can be just as, or more, effective.

Local Context

It’s also critical that program designers and implementers who want to improve the economic outlook for youth ensure that their program designs and interventions fit with the reality on the ground. Eg, what are the language, literacy, connectivity and gender considerations? What tools are readily accessible to the population they are working with? Who is left out? What tools and information channels do people trust? (Radio is still probably the most widespread ICT for educational purposes in rural areas). We need front-end research, participatory user input, and contextual analysis. We need to talk to actual rural youth where we are planning programs, and incorporate their thoughts, aspirations, realities and suggestions into program design. We need to consider long-term sustainability and local partnerships. We need to think about how the different approaches support the building up of sustainable local economies. All this hard work up front is the most important in program design. And, as several people noted, often agencies only have 30 days or so to design a good proposal for funding.

Opportunities

Preparing up individual youth is still only one side of the coin, as another colleague added. At the end of the day youth need jobs to go into. So yes, there need to be programs that help youth develop (skills, assets, access) but there also needs to be economic development at a broader scale that allows youth to either become entrepreneurs or to work for others, formally or informally. What are the broader job markets or the financial systems and services that youth can access?

There is also the question of whether youth want to be self-employed. A Tech Salon participant commented that informal employment and entrepreneurship are not always the most desirable future for youth. Many youth would prefer a steady job with benefits and security — this is still the measure for success and prestige in many countries. The issue however, as another participant pointed out, is that there are simply not enough steady jobs for youth, so they are forced to be entrepreneurs.

Forbes refers to this with reference to Haiti: ‘In countries with high structural unemployment, entrepreneurship has less of an impact on growth than development economists previously thought. In Haiti, where 75% of the population is unemployed, people turn to entrepreneurship as a last resort. In Port-au-Prince and throughout the country, the term “entrepreneur” has a different meaning than it does in the developed world. Entrepreneurship is borne out of necessity, not the desire to act on business opportunities.

In the absence of a formal economy, Haitians become “necessity” entrepreneurs and must take to the streets and markets to earn their living. The road outside of Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture airport is lined with salesmen pushing a variety of products, from loaves of bread to toiletries. Children sell sugar cane, produce, and potable water while women walk from market to market selling products along the way. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a non-profit research organization, economic growth is not driven by these “necessity” entrepreneurs, who decrease in number as the economy develops. The key to fostering growth is to support “opportunity” entrepreneurs, who choose to start new enterprises in response to market needs.

Barriers

Urban and rural conditions and access to technology and employment in the two contexts are drastically different; this needs to be remembered in the ICT and youth economic empowerment discussion. It often gets overlooked amidst all the tech hype and tech incubator excitement. The difference between the fast-paced urban tech scene and a more remote rural community is vast. And not all countries possess a fast-paced urban tech scene. In addition, it can’t be assumed that just because a developer is from Nairobi, he or she knows the context well enough to develop applications or create opportunities that are fitting for youth in, say, Kilifi. Co-design and participant input are still critical. Urban developers could better understand rural contexts by spending time there.

Girls’ access to opportunities. We know that girls have less access to technology and typically less access to education. How can we support STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education) and other opportunities for girls? How can we convince parents to allow girls to participate in programs and access technologies and other opportunities? How do we find more women role models for girls, both in technology and in work and other areas that take girls outside of the home and allow them access to income, which will also allow them to have more power? How do we create safe spaces for women and girls to access technologies? Often they do not feel safe in Internet cafés or are not permitted to frequent them. In addition, less girls and women own their own mobile phones than men. How can we work to help overcome all the barriers that girls face?

Access to information about existing opportunities. In some countries, Kenya for example, there are government-supported initiatives for youth employment and entrepreneurship, but many youth don’t know about them or how to access them. ICTs can play a role in connecting youth to information about opportunities for jobs, financial services and further education. Different media (radio, television, print, SMS and other) can be used for public education and financial literacy. In addition, media can help inform the population of what governments have promised by way of programs and opportunities for youth employment, and in this way support governance and accountability around youth employment.

4 basic ways…

By the end of our hour-long conversation at the Tech Salon, we mostly agreed that there are 4 basic ways to think about the intersection of youth, technology and economic empowerment:

Technology as a job unto itself
Technology to facilitate asset building
Technology for learning and skill building
Technology to access info about employment opportunities

We agreed that if they are to support youth economic empowerment, ICTs need to be contextualized and they need to be one part of a broader, holistic, and sustainable system. And I think that about sums it up. In case you missed them, check post 1 on ways that rural youth are currently generating income through ICTs and post 2 on some of the newer ways that ICTs could enable economic empowerment. If this topic is of interest, check out the Making Cents conferencethis September.

Update: A colleague just sent me this report which gives great insight: Workforce Development Initiatives for Out of School Youth – What Works? A Participatory Research with Youth and Communities in Southern Philippines.

May 3, 2011/by actualize

Basic Education, Education, Higher Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Workforce Development, Youth Development

Open Educational Resource for Developing Countries

By now you’ve probably heard of Sal Khan, or at least his Khan Academy. The former hedge fund manager turned education guru has been featured on PBS News Hour, CNN, NPR, NBC News, and most recently, was invited by Bill Gates to speak at TED.

Photo Credit- CNN

There is no question that the Khan Academy’s approach is innovative. And it certainly has the potential to change the way people think about education. Sal Khan mentions in his TED Talk his desire to “flip” the classroom – where students learn the materials at home, then come to school to get extra help with the problems and mastery.

But many of the news reports on the Khan Academy stress the usage of these videos around the world – so what kind of impact could it have in developing countries?

The Khan Academy is an example of an Open Education Resource (OER), free to use teaching and learning content. Like all OER the Khan Academy has incredible potential in the developing world, while facing extreme challenges.

Benefits of OER

Reduced costs – online, digital resources can be significantly less expensive than text books, and they can be changed edited easily to accommodate changes in the curriculum. Examples include CK12 FlexBooks and Lulu.com .
Continuous improvements- the usage patterns of many digital products can be monitored and used as feedback. The Khan Academy is a perfect example of this- Khan found that students stopped watching some videos at certain points, so he went back and changed the content in those spots, resulting in decreased drop offs, and increased course (video) completion.
Learning Efficiency- students can learn at their own pace by stopping and starting the videos, going back to cover ground they may have missed, or skipping material they already know
Accessibility- videos can be captioned as well as translated into other languages. Youtube now provides captioning, and dotSUB can translate captioned material into multiple languages.
Localization/Personalization- in many cases digital material can be created or customized to fit local culture and context. Teacher Education in SubSaharan Africa (TESSA) is one example.

But while these benefits are amazing and transforming, getting this content to students in the developing world is tough.

Challenges:

Infrastructure – it goes without saying that students must have access to the equipment and connectivity to access materials.
Discoverability – finding out about various materials online can be difficult.
Quality – not all OER are created equal!
Accessibility – although the very nature of many digital product makes it possible to be fully accessible (closed captioning for videos, screen readers for text, multiple language support, etc), not all producers think of these things, nor do all end users have the right equipment
Interoperability – being able to use materials on any operating system, platform or device is vitally important in the developing world
Sustainability – not only for the producers of the content (how will they stay in business) but for the end users (What kind of personnel are needed to implement a program? What happens if the resources they are counting on stop being available?)

We are just beginning to see how OER can impact students and teachers around the world. Some traditional systems and institutions may be slow to adopt, while others may see these resources as innovative solutions to long standing problems.

May 3, 2011/by actualize

Connectivity, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Gaining Commitment and Synergy: National ICT Planning

During this last decade, ICTs have increasingly become viewed as having national strategic and tactical importance. Globally this was brought into focus through two World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) events—one held in Geneva in 2003 and the other in Tunis in 2005. At the conclusion of the 2005 Summit, there was worldwide agreement on ten ICT-related WSIS targets for 2015. Collectively these Targets for 2015 link directly to supporting each of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In 2010, an interim report was issued that tracks the progress of these targets Further, both the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) issue annual reports that relate directly to the progress being made in the overall ICT arena.

Virtually every country had high-level Ministry-level participation at these Summits, and agreed to these ten Targets for 2015. Further, this WSIS focus served as a trigger to where the vast majority of the participating countries have subsequently undertaken ICT-related strategic planning initiatives for their respective countries. Often these countries have folded these Targets for 2015 into their national level ICT strategic plans.

While this is extremely encouraging, USAID’s experience in this arena has demonstrated that often it takes more than high-level strategy documents. Often there are three missing components to ensure these national-level planning initiatives are fruitful; 1) there is the need for extensive public-private sector dialog throughout the planning process–and beyond the planning itself, 2) there is the need to drop down into a more tactical level–with public and private sector commitments and implementation targets captured and documented, and 3) there is the need for on-going support through an executive level forum that focuses attention on priority issues, periodically assesses progress being made, and makes needed adjustments.

The focus in developing the National ICT Strategic and Tactical Plan is to heighten the countries’ attention, and to mobilizing ICT-related resources. Having these Plans developed through broad participation of both the public and private sectors, along with international development and donor organizations, ensures there is synergy, prioritization, and integration of the wide-array of ICT-related initiatives being undertaken.

The ICT Team, through the GBI Program, provides support in this arena. The following two examples reflect earlier engagements:

Armenia—in 2001 USAID/Armenia, in partnership with the World Bank, supported the development of a National ICT Strategic and Tactical Plan. This initiative was supported by the then President of Armenia and led by the Minister of Economic Development. A critical component in this planning was the establishment of a ICT-related Council chaired by the Prime Minister, with both public and private sector members on the Council. The Council was supported by a Secretariat. After a year and a half, a local review as to progress was undertaken, again with support from USAID/Armenia. This led to refreshing the National ICT Plan to address priority areas where insufficient progress was being made.

Georgia—in 2008 USAID/Georgia requested ICT consultation with one of the findings being that even though Georgia was focusing on ICT, there was no unifying National Plan in place. This led to discussions at the Prime Minister and Minister of Economic Development level, along with a key private sector advisory group, and other donors with active ICT engagements. The team mapped out an initial construct for a National ICT Strategic and Tactical Plan that was subsequently pursued by the local public and private sector entities.

These National ICT Planning efforts are at times the result of an initial ICT Assessment, where the need is identified and local support for such an initiative surfaces. Most often these initiatives are undertaken through a cost-sharing arrangement between the GBI Program and the Mission.

May 3, 2011/by actualize

Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Workforce Development, Youth Development

Are microtasking and de-skilling the key to rural youth economic empowerment?

Last week’s Tech Salon, hosted by ICT Works and the UN Foundation Technology Partnership, asked “Can youth find economic empowerment via apps, m-payments and social media?” I did a bit of reality checking and wrote in my last post about some of the ways that youth in African countries are harnessing ICTs to generate income. And it’s not really through apps, Facebook and mPayments.

So if developing apps isn’t the key to unlocking youth’s economic potential, is there another way that ICTs can support youth economic empowerment? At the Tech Salon we discussed a few other options.

Microtasking

Samasource’s work with “microtasking’ looks pretty interesting. TxtEagle, another microtasking initiative, just raised 8.5 million in start-up funding.

Txteagle is a commercial corporation that enables people to earn small amounts of money on their mobile phones by completing simple tasks for our corporate clients.

The types of tasks Txteagle’s African workers have done are:

enter details of local road signs for creating satellite navigation systems
translate mobile-phone menu functions into the 62 African dialects (for Nokia)
collect address data for business directories
fill out surveys for international agencies

Txteagle seems similar to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, except that workers only need a simple mobile phone – no computer or Internet access is needed.’

I hadn’t been paying attention to the microtasking phenomenon, so I did a little digging after the Tech Salon. Microsoft Research did an interesting study called Evaluating and Improving the Usability of Mechanical Turk for Low-Income Workers in India. They found some issues with the interface and make up of Mechanical Turk that made it difficult for low-income workers to benefit and provided some suggestions to improve micro tasking and make it accessible for low-income workers or those with lower education levels. When they improved the interface and instructions (in local language), test subjects’ ability to complete a task rose dramatically. “The most striking result of our study is that there exist tasks on MTurk for which the primary barrier to low-income workers is not the cognitive load of the work itself; rather, workers are unable to understand and navigate the tasks due to shortcomings in the user interface, the task instructions, and the language utilized.”

I’m sure we’ll be hearing lots more about microtasking (and I’m probably really late to the party here). It seems more reasonable that rural youth could access microtasking work than that they would develop their own apps.

De-skilling

Others at the Technology Salon talked about de-skilling and the job potential that can open up for youth when technology or better access to information allows them to take on roles formerly reserved for more skilled professionals. It seems this is going on quite a bit in the health sector, for example. The de-skilling phenomenon has been around for awhile but I hadn’t seen it as a way for youth in rural areas to access jobs and income, so I thought this was quite interesting.

I’m not sure how much de-skilling is being seriously looked at as a way to connect youth to jobs, or how many youth it’s employing in the rural areas, but it is something I’ll be keeping an eye on and learning more about. I’m thinking that many of us have been looking at de-skilling as a way to engage community volunteers in improving other aspects of community development, eg., allowing community health workers to do their volunteer work more efficiently; but not so much as an income generator for youth.

Job matching and mobile marketplaces

My Finnish colleagues sent me some other examples of mobile (SMS) initiatives that could support economic empowerment and that are good for pushing thinking on how rural youth could tap into opportunities. I think the key is that for now, anything aimed at rural populations needs to be SMS based, as mobile internet is still very uncommon in most rural areas. There’s no harm in planning for the day when most people have Internet-enabled phones, but for now, we’ll probably want to work with what people have, not what we wish they had….

Google SMS Applications allow you to use some Google services via SMS text message.
Esoko consists of mobile updates for farmers and traders delivered by SMS that include market prices and buy/sell offers, bulk SMS functionality, websites for small businesses and associations, and SMS polling technology. Their blog (which I spent some time on today) is great for sharing how they are going about getting Esoko to function well. Again it’s clear that the technology is the tip of the iceberg….
Tradenet is a fully mobile integrated buy and sell portal in Sri Lanka. It has agricultural prices as well.
Babajob is a job matching service from India that is fully mobile integrated.
Cellbazaar is an SMS marketplace in Bangladesh.
Tagattitude is a service that allows international mobile money transfers and purchases; eg., remittances.
Souktel’s JobMatch uses SMS to connect employers with youth looking for jobs.

What else?

In addition to micro tasking and mobile applications, there are some more formal technology education programs such as the CISCO Networking Academies, not to mention plenty of locally created computer and technology academies and schools that formally train youth on ICTs with the aim of generating employment. I wonder though how many of the local training academies are focused on more traditional aspects of technology (eg., if you walk into one of these, do you see a room of oldish desktop computers?) and how many are also combining computer education with mobile, and advancing their education and training curricula as technology advances? Colleagues in Egypt told me that some initiatives exist that train up young people to repair cell phones. I’m wondering if this is widespread in other places as well. In any case, formal training opportunities are still difficult for youth in rural areas, and especially girls, to access.

In Kenya the government is promoting community digital centers through an initiative called the Pasha Centers. These centers are linked to youth structures in the constituency areas. Colleagues of mine reported that youth are accessing loans from the government youth fund and starting cyber kiosks, and mPesa centers that are promoting mobile banking.

On top of the government or NGO programs, the mobile phone industry itself opens a job market for young men and women who know how to set up phones, register SIM cards, etc., and there is a whole side industry, obviously, around mobile phones. But again, the more formal opportunities are in the capital or in secondary cities which can still be quite distant from where rural youth live.

Though use of apps, mPayments and Facebook may not be so widespread at the moment in the places I’ve traveled and where my colleagues are working, as outlined in post 1 of this series, and it’s not at all common for rural youth to develop applications themselves, there do seem to be some other possibilities for ‘youth economic empowerment’ that have a mobile or ICT component. I’m sure there are things I’ve missed out as well, that could be quite inspiring.

The question is how to connect these new opportunities with the young people who are typically excluded: youth in rural areas, especially girls. How to scale up the opportunities while ensuring that they are adapted to local contexts, which can vary significantly. Do youth in rural communities have the education levels and skills to access microtasking and to take advantage of ‘de-skilling’ opportunities on a broad scale? Do they know how and where to access microtasking jobs. How are the connections being made with these opportunities? Who has access to these kinds of jobs? How can rural youth find out about these opportunities?

In my next post, I’ll cover some of the other considerations for youth economic empowerment that we discussed at the Tech Salon.

May 2, 2011/by actualize

Connectivity, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Launching Pad: National ICT Assessments

Increasingly Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are becoming recognized as critical components of international development programs. Yet at times the USAID Missions lack staff resources that can sort through the current in-country situation and local opportunities, and assess how ICTs can be embedded for maximum benefit within their development portfolios.

One of the common ICT-related services provided by EGAT’s ICT Team has been support to the Missions through a one or two week ICT Assessment. These are typically undertake by a small team of two ICT professionals either from the ICT Team itself and/or made available through existing PASA or contractor resources. Ideally this small team is supported by Mission Staff to ensure efficient and effective use of their time on-the-ground.

These ICT Assessments vary in scope depending on the requirements of the Mission. The focus of these Assessments is to assist the Mission program staff to first gain a better understanding of the current in-country status, including; what other donors are doing in this arena, what the government is doing or planning to do, what the private sector is doing and possibly inhibitors they are experiencing, how the education is meeting the ICT challenges, etc. Then upon gaining these insights, the Assessment Team then works with Mission Program personnel to determine if there are rich opportunities for possibly expanding or imbedding ICT-related elements within the program and projects. Typically these ICT Assessments are carried out at two levels:

Countrywide ICT Assessments—a number of these assessments have been undertaken at a broad, countrywide level that includes all things ICT in nature. These Assessments look at both the public and private sectors–including the government’s ICT-related plans, policies as well as their use of ICT (e-government). It includes a look across the private sector’s use of ICTs, but also includes a special focus on the local IT private sector. The Assessment also looks at education relative to the use of ICT as well as ICT within its curriculum. Another focus within this countrywide snapshot is gaining insights into what other donors are supporting in the ICT arena.

The approach taken for these broad ICT Assessments is to gain a fresh insight into “what is” and put forward to the Mission, ideas as to “what may be of value for consideration” relative to matching the assessment findings with the Mission’s development portfolio. In virtually all of these past efforts, a number of potential opportunities surface, with the Missions often pursuing one or more ICT-related engagements as new initiatives, or as new components embedded within existing projects.

Targeted Sector ICT Assessments—another form of the ICT Assessment is that of a more narrow-targeted focus to a specific theme, topic, or sector. Examples here include scopes such as: exploring the potential for telecom market liberalization; setting up or strengthening a Universal Service Fund; establishing an ICT-user training program; examining the potential for embedding ICTs into the country’s education program, or into an existing education project; exploring the potential for launching an e-Government initiative; launching a rural connectivity initiative such as the earlier Last Mile Initiatives; exploring m-Banking, etc.

The approach taken for these more targeted ICT Assessments is to assist the Mission in gaining insights into specific opportunities that are within their current or planned development portfolio. At times these assessments result in the development of SOWs/PWS that are subsequently worked into future RFPs. In other situations this preliminary work is aimed at establishing ICT-related public-private partnerships (PPPs) for embedding into future Mission projects.

Both forms of ICT Assessments are offered through the GBI Program in support of Missions that have a sense of ICTs potential, but may not have the in-house resources or expertise required for this more detailed examination. Depending on the requirement, these ICT Assessments may be undertaken through a cost-sharing arrangement between the GBI Program and the Mission requesting the service.

May 2, 2011/by actualize

Economic Growth & Trade, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Workforce Development, Youth Development

Are apps, Facebook and mPayments the key to rural youth economic empowerment? Reality check.

Last week’s Tech Salon, hosted by ICT Works and the UN Foundation Technology Partnership, was on the topic ‘Can youth find economic empowerment via apps, m-payments and social media?’ Fiona Macaulay from Making Cents and I gave some of the opening remarks to get the conversation started (and Wayan Vota kept things lively as usual).

The premise of the Salon was that ‘today’s youth population is the largest in the history of the world, and 90% of these young people live in developing countries. The global youth unemployment rate is the highest on record, and we’re seeing discontent and disenfranchisement play out on the news each day. In fact, the revolution in Tunisia started with an under-employed youth committing self-immolation in frustration…. Technology-based models hold great promise for increasing and improving economic opportunities for young people: low barriers to entry for youth-built apps, the widespread use of Facebook and its promise as a marketing platform, the ubiquity and ease of m-Payment systems like MPESA – these should be a recipe for youth economic empowerment.

During the Salon we explored 3 key questions:

1) How are youth starting businesses or getting jobs in growth-oriented ICT sectors around the world?

2) How are organizations and programs utilizing technology to reach and engage young people?

3) Where should we be cautious or enthusiastic with technology with respect to youth economic empowerment?

This is the first of 3 posts on those questions, starting with Question 1:

How are youth starting businesses or getting jobs in growth-oriented ICT sectors around the world?

I was pretty skeptical about the potential for apps, Facebook and m-payments to resolve the youth employment/income crisis, at least in the context of the rural communities in Africa where I’ve worked over the past several years. So leading into the Salon, I did an informal survey among some colleagues working in Africa to find out how they observed youth making money using technology, and to see whether the idea above had any legs. My thoughts were pretty much confirmed – in the places we are working, some youth are using technology to generate income, but not so much apps, mPayments and Facebook.

In Egypt, colleagues said that youth are repairing cell phones, serving as DJs at wedding parties, setting up photocopy shops and internet cafes, selling phone calls and airtime, running shops that provide children and young people with the opportunity to play games, and using computers to make flyers and posters for certain producers and products in the communities. They also provide satellite connections for poor families to access national and international TV channels – this service is not legal but generates good income for young people.

In Kenya you’ll find youth managing Mobile Phone Kiosks popularly known as ‘Simu Ya jamii’ (community phones). These double up as phone charging points. Pirated music is big business for some youth and phone unlocking services are increasing. One colleague noted that youth are not really creating applications, but in some of our programs, they are involved in piloting new applications, and thus influencing their development. In Zambia, you don’t see much of this type of activity in rural areas, according to a colleague there. But there are village telcos being operated by youth groups and some village groups are setting up banks of solar chargers to support solar lighting. (Cool result: When they set them up at a schools, encouraging women to come each day to charge their lights, they found that school attendance increased).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTAbe35YCLY]

In Burkina Faso it’s common to see youth selling telephone scratch cards, renting out their phones, offering video services to film at private events, charging up phones for a price. In Senegal, some take phones from one area to another to charge them up for a fee. All over Africa you see video pirating and movie houses, video game houses, video downloading to mobile phones, music on flash drives and flash drives that plug into radios in cars and in collective transportation vans and busses.

There is ‘negative’ business also

Some would place ‘pirating’ and stolen satellite connections here. There is also transactional sex by girls to obtain mobile phones, which are a status symbol. We hear in some communities that adolescents with mobile phones are ‘bad.’ In Cameroon girls said that some boys only use phones to scam people and to steal. Mobiles can also facilitate prostitution. One colleague commented that in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) she has seen girls on motorbikes offering themselves by presenting their phone number on their back. We heard from youth in Cameroon that mobiles are commonly stolen and traded. Some parents in various countries do not like movie and game houses, associating them with porn and western culture.

Are youth in rural areas creating ‘apps,’ using ‘apps’ or tapping into ICT development or programming opportunities?

Not really, from what I have seen and what colleagues tell me. There are some shining stars here and there, but this isn’t very widespread yet, and the youth who are developing apps and such tend to be well-educated urban youth. This 2009 study on how the African Movement of Working Children and Youth (MAEJT) uses ICTs is quite interesting in this regard.

: How do youth obtain and use mobiles? (MAEJT study, 2009)

In Egypt, colleagues said Facebook and Twitter groups around specific issues are common among young people in communities. But using ICT specifically for generating income is not. There is inadequate awareness among poor communities on how to make this happen. Although many youth have access to cell phones, ICT is still expensive and non-affordable for many others. Most of the families who have phones in their houses do not have a direct line, which means that they cannot get access to internet through cheap lines. Internet is still very expensive. Getting jobs through the internet is only common among advantaged, well- educated youth, not disadvantaged youth.

In Nairobi, Kenya, iHub and NAiLab have a big pool of developers and there is a lot of action. In rural Kenya, however, access is limited. There is a lot of interest from the youth who have started to catch on though, so colleagues felt it was possible that there could be some type of rural-urban mentoring or connections to help rural youth get on board. In rural Zambia, according to colleagues, sheer poverty means that very few additional resources and capital are available to take on new ideas. There is still very poor mobile phone coverage in some areas, and many young people have already left for urban areas. My colleagues in West Africa did not report seeing any youth developing apps or using Facebook combined with mPayments to generate income. In Kenya, Cameroon, Uganda and some other places, innovation hubs and labs are generating opportunities, but these again seem to be available to secondary- or even more often university-educated youth from urban areas and capital cities or large cities outside the capital.

So, is this bit about apps, mPayments and social media all hype? I’ll explore that a bit more in post 2 of the series. In post 3, I’ll cover the longer term considerations for ICTs and youth economic empowerment and some broader aspects that need to be kept in mind.

May 2, 2011/by actualize

Humanitarian Assistance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Information sharing at the community level

When in Japan earlier this month I had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Unni Krishnan who is a Humanitarian Coordinator for Plan International, one of NetHope’s member organizations. Dr. Krishnan who is an experienced disaster expert who has been to most of the major disasters in the past years told me a very interesting story of information sharing practices at the community level in one of the affected areas in Japan.

In one of the evacuation centers that Dr. Krishnan came into he saw that there was a big whiteboard with notes written in Japanese. Around the whiteboard there were teenage kids who were running around. He asked his colleague from Plan Japan what was happening there.

The colleague explained that the whiteboard contained a number of questions and answers. When the teenage kids were asked they explained that they had created this information sharing “platform” for the community there. People kept asking questions about the situation and the response. The kids decided to help facilitate this process, by gathering the questions that everyone had and then work on getting the answers from those in charge.

So when a member of the community had a question like “when is the next clothes distribution going to be?” the kids would run around and ask the people responding until they found an answer. The answer would then be written on the note and hung up on the whiteboard.

I loved this story because it reminds us of a few crucial items to keep in mind at all times.

First of all is the importance of information at the community level. We very seldom inform the affected communities themselves of our plans. We are to busy informing ourselves, our donors or the government, but forget the people who are affected. I wonder if the affected communities even know of the massive time we put into writing situation reports that very few people end up reading.

Secondly it reminds us of involving the affected community in the information sharing process. They are the ones who know what the community wants to know. They are the ones who can communicate that information back in a way that the community understands and appreciates. Lets also not forget the healing power of giving them tasks to help their own people. That takes their mind of the devastation around them even if only for the few moments they work on helping their own people.

Thirdly this story reminds us that technology is not always needed to share information. Yes maybe it can be shared more quickly and broadly through help of technology, but the underlying process and need doesn’t require technology to be present. We should therefore focus on improving our information sharing processes and address the needs of the communities for better information and then figure out ways to utilize technology as a tool for enhancing that process and helping meet the need.

So lets start putting focus on the affected communities and how we share information with them and obtain information from them.

April 28, 2011/by actualize

Energy, Environment, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Woven Garments Harvest Energy, Provide Light

Huichol women sewing and using portable light unit

Photo Credit: Portable Light

Maria Carillo sits at a table weaving a beautiful Huichol textile and talking to her mother who threads a needle to work on her intricately beaded piece of artwork. The sun is beginning to lower in the Mexico’s western sky and the looming darkness threatens their ability to work. These pieces must completed and sold tomorrow in the market nearby so the family can pay for Maria’s school.

Maria set down her needles, picks up her nearby woven handbag, and hangs it high above the table where her and her mother sit. After being switched on, the handbag produces a warm glow of light in the darkened hut, and work resumes.

She is using the Portable Light Unit, a simple, versatile textile with tiny solar nano-technology cells that can be woven into energy harvesting bags, or other textiles, using local materials and traditional weaving and sewing techniques.

One of the Huichol textiles

Maria is Huichol or Wixáritari, a semi-nomadic indigenous group located in western central Mexico living in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range, internationally recognized for their production of intricate and colorful textiles.

Similar to the two billion other people who live without access to electricity, the Huichol people live in rugged terrain, where the centralized electrical distribution is costly to implement and maintain. Building the infrastructure often causes irreparable cultural and social damage for indigenous peoples as well as environmental damage to their lands. The combined lack of resources, and damage to their homes, leaves them inadequately prepared and economically displaced.

The Portable Light Project, a non-profit initiative led by Kennedy & Violich Architecture and Global Solar Energy, aims to combine clean energy and lighting with local indigenous textile production. This helps local communities adopt the new technology, adds value to it by including their own work, and heightens economic production; all without removing the Huichol from their traditional way of life.

Miquel Carillo, Huichol Community Leader in Santa Catarina describes the frustration of their hardships without a light source:

We don’t have light. We can only work during the day. Nobody can do anything. We just wait for the sun to come up again

The Portable Light project provides kits containing a flexible, two-watt solar film, rechargeable battery, USB port, and an LED light and training on how to weave them into garments.

Bags can be worn during the day to recharge

By integrating the solar panels with the woven textiles, electronic devices can be easily charged while people go on with their everyday work; and fully charged LED lights allow four hours of visibility, enabling communities to work and study after dark.

The integral USB port is used to charge cell phones, which connects Huichol artisans with art dealers and stores in urban areas without removing them from their homes.

The Huichol people and indigenous weaving projects are not the only way Portable Light Units are being utilized to better the livelihoods of communities in developing regions.

Nicaraguan girls using the bags for Paso Pacifico Photo Credit: Sheila Kennedy

A environmental education program in Paso del Istmo Biological Corridor in Nicaragua uses the bags to help protect endangered sea turtle nests. Villagers work as rangers to prevent turtle poaching at night. They use the Light Units to charge cell phones so they can communicate the location of nests, and women use them to build eco-tourism businesses at night.

In rural Haiti, the bags are being used to support the NGO Maison De Naissance, a network of traveling health workers who provide prenatal and basic medical care. Health workers and midwives use the Portable Light Units as a renewable light and power source for house visits and night procedures. The USB port is used to charge cell phones and medical devices, connecting them with physicians at the clinics who have better intel to help make accurate diagnoses.

Health worker in Haiti using Portable Light Photo Credit: Lee Cohen

The Portable Light Project is a promising example of how to combine economic productivity with environmental conservation in remote areas, but some critics remain skeptical.

Few argue that there is not an economic model to produce mass amounts of the Portable Light Units to supply the huge demand for electricity in rural areas. Others contend that the garments will not be able to withstand rugged conditions common in developing regions.

Frederic Krebs of the Rios National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy in Denmark who designed a low cost, plastic solar lamp for Africa, expressed his hesitancy. He maintains through his research that a high degree of ruggedness is required before portable solar lights can help people developing regions. It was in Krebs opinion that such textiles are, “simply not wearable enough yet.”

These are components of the Portable Light Project that need to be addressed before it can be used all throughout developing regions. However, the Portable Light Project holds promise for bringing a renewable source of light into communities who otherwise have been sitting in the dark.

PHoto of studying using the portable light

Photo Credit: Sheila Kennedy

April 28, 2011/by actualize

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