So I looked throught the current issue dealing with “Realizing Right” and found some articles on the organization WITNESS. I had heard about them before, as a partner of Global Voices Online and was planning already a while to find out more about them.
The project was started in 1992, co-founded by Peter Gabriel and their aim was initially to supply human rights avtivists with video cameras to increase the impact of their actions - a picture is worth a thousand words, as it is said.
In the mean time the internet developed and viceo cameras come with mobile phones, but still the mission of WITNESS remains the same. Thousands of hours of video material documenting human rights violations or witnesses testemonials have been uploaded and can be viewed online.
Additionally, they have founded a social network called “The Hub” to connect groups working in the field on similar issues and give training in how to use a video camera and how to raise public awareness.
In the articles in “Innovation”, several people working in WITNESS describe the project from their point of view. Furthermore several fascinating examples are given, how filmed material on human right violations had severe impact.
I didn’t know before that the organization had such a long history and I am impressed of how big their reach is by now - they operate with partners in 70 countries and have already produced 40 documentations on various issues. As I am in Bulgaria right now I was amazed that they have several videos on the segregation of the Roma people in this country.
I think WITNESS is a great example on how to enable even activists with few financial or personal possibilites to generate a large impact in the public and to enforce changes. All you need is a camera handy and internet access to make the world watch.
After nine consecutive days of high-level talks, discussions reached an impasse when the United States, India and China refused to compromise over measures to protect farmers in developing countries from greater liberalization of trade. [Snippet taken from here]
The final stumbling block, which dominated talks on Monday and Tuesday, concerned the “special safeguard mechanism” — a proposal to let developing countries raise farm tariffs in the face of a surge in imports or collapse in prices.
Developing countries like India and Indonesia said they needed the measure to protect millions of subsistence farmers from unexpected shocks arising from opening up their borders.
But the United States feared its agribusinesses would lose new markets just as it made painful cuts in its farm subsidies. [Taken from here]
During the negotiations there had been big dissent between the US and the EU on the one side and the emerging markets, primarily India and China, on the organization of future subsidies for the agricultural sector. The US and the EU - both under pressure by their powerful farm lobby - claimed enhanced liberalization of the agricultural sectors, whereas especially India demanded a mechanism to protect sensitive agricultural products from competition.
But even beneath the blocks of industrial and developing nations the different parties had no consistent opinions - Brazil, Urugay and Paraguay opposed the Indian proposal due to own interests and in the run-up the French government had critizised actions of the EU.
Today many participators regretted the collapse, whereas ATTAC appreciated it. I’m curious what Joseph Stiglitz will say.
The consequences of the talks’ collapse are uncertain, especially for developing countries. Maybe the talks will resume after the summer, but due to the American elections, changes in the EU commission and upcoming votes in India there will be different circumstances.
I personally don’t really know what to think of it. On the one hand the WTO has always been a quite powerful instrument of the industrial world to push unfair agreements with the developing world, so maybe further change for the worse has been avoided. On the other hand the collapse of the talks may lead the nations who can afford it (EU, US, India, China, Brazil) to a more protectionist trade policy, which may also complicate advances in less developed countries.
Ethan Zuckerman posted about an interesting investment of the Indian telecom vendor VNL, which is related to a former idea of his and Russel Southwood’s - Chief Editor of Balancing act, a portal which :
…seeks to be the primary source for information on the telecoms, Internet and audio-visual media industries in Africa. [Snippet taken from here]
The towers are specifically designed to run solely on the power the sun provides. A comment from VNL themselves:
VNL said that, with solar power, WorldGSM both reduces the operating expenses for mobile operators and contributes to a much lower environmental impact. [Snippet taken from here]
This is, of course, a great solution for areas with no connection to the electricity network.
Today we moved ICT4D.at to a dedicated wordpress instance. This will give us more flexibilty and we will be able to integrate with various tools and services. Of course our feed URL stays the same.
In this first stage we set up an twitter account ‘ictd4ddotat‘ which you may want to follow.
We also created a facebook group which you may want to join.
Nchenga is pointing to this interesting video by Cy Kuckenbaker about farmers in Malawi. I spent several month down in Malawi and traveled the country up and down a few times. I really love Malawi and the people there are so nice. Malawi is known as “The warm heart of Africa” and this is true for sure.
My previous post was about the situation in Kenya. Kenya is really developed compared to Malawi. So it was easy for Cy to find areas not connected to the cellular network. The videos is about farmers in such areas (the Hewe valley near the Nyika plateau) and is asking “What will happen when they become connected?”
80% of Malawians are farmers. Tosi, Chatwa and Mr. Kunga are sure, that cell phone enabled farming will help them to increase the price for their crops, because they cut out the man in the middle and sell direct to markets. This should lead to less poverty.
This weekend I talked to Tom, a friend from England I got to know through Couchsurfing. He is studying political science and was in the past year travelling around Europe and several times to Iran, as that’s where the special focus of his studies lies. He also learned Farsi and spoke with several political activists and politically interested people there. The Internet in Iran is censored and communication is often intercepted - especially the devices of activists and students are of special interest. This poses a major problem for these people and of course also to Tom, as he did not want to miss international news and open communication with his friends elsewhere in the world. So he found out a lot about the technological possibilities to make communication secure or access blocked pages - like SSL, proxies or projects like TOR or Picidae (already introduced here).
He also mentioned another project I had not heard about so far. It was riseup, a US-based initiative providing people with secure webmail, mailing lists and information about secure communication.
Our purpose is to aid in the creation of a free society, a world with freedom from want and freedom of expression, a world without oppression or hierarchy, where power is shared equally. We do this by providing communication and computer resources to allies engaged in struggles against capitalism and other forms of oppression. [snip taken from here]
The communication is completely secure, there are no log files or whatever, every information is encrypted. The organization hosts to date over 10 000 mailing lists with over 2 000 000 subscribers. As Tom told me, this service is a huge relief for politically interested people in Iran, to openly discuss issues and express their opinions.
I find the project particuarly interesting as freedom of communication and protection from oppression are vital assets that can be granted when ICTs are utilized like in the riseup project. The D in ICT4D does not only stand for economic, but also for social development.
In the June issue of the journal “IEEE Computer“, there is a special feature on ICT4D with four large articles. One of them is about ICT4D going to the next level - ICT4D 2.0 Richard Heeks from the University of Manchester writes about the development of ICT4D in general, its current state and future challenges. In the introduction he gives a - in my opinion - very true statement why ICT4D is essential from the activists point of view.
First, there is a moral argument. Most informatics professionals spend their lives serving the needs of the world’s wealthier corporations and individuals because, to borrow bank robber Willie Sutton’s phrase, “that’s where the money is.” Yet seeking to squeeze a few extra ounces of productivity from firms that already perform relatively well, or save a few minutes in the life of a busy citizen, pales in ethical importance when compared to the potential benefits of applying new technology to our planet’s megaproblems.
At least for me this is very essential. I don’t see the need for yet another process optimization tool when the same effort could, drastically expressed, avoid that people are starving to death.
Heeks then claims that ICT4D has reached a new stage where the lessons learned so far have to be addressed and a new view on the world’s poor has to be adopted. He writes about the importance of mobile phones, the need for maybe not new - but appropriate technology, the importance of participation of local people and creation of content by them (he mentions Web 2.0 there) and a need for services and application supporting the poor.
I strongly agree with him in this point, as also parts of my diploma thesis cover these aspects. Furthermore I certainly think Web 2.0 can play a substantial role for some of these requirements.
In the following, Heeks introduces three innovation models for innovations in ICT4D. He distinguishes between development for the poor (pro-poor), with the poor (para-poor) and by the poor (per-poor) and identifies the future need for the last. In the next chapter about “New Worldviews”, Heeks denounces the exeggerated technocentricity in early ICT4D and underlines the necessity of integrating computer and information science with development studies. As he puts it, the understanding of all three subjects will be one of the major tasks for ICT4D 2.0
… we need to develop or find ICT4D champions who are tribrids: They must understand enough about the three domains of computer science, IS, and development studies to draw key lessons and interact with and manage domain professionals.
I myself definitely support this statement and would generally like to see more computer scientists learning about the implications of their research and actions. In my opinion, informatics is highly intertwined with changes in society and the ability of social responsible application of technological skills is essential. Therefore I would for example highly approve more social science in informatics curricula.
Finally Heeks concludes that ICT4D 2.0 - contrary to ICT4D 1.0 - puts the poor in the focus of development, seeing them as “active producers and innovators”. He also identifies the main future challenges to enable and motivate the poor to take action themselves.
I find the article very interesting and one of the things I really like is that it sums up the change in the perception of the poor which should be addressed by ICT4D. Fewer and fewer projects have the “sending computers to Africa” approach which almost never lead to any benefits. Rather than that, projects are launched with a focus on collaboration and sustainability. To use a common saying - “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”. Furthermore, the innovative usage of ICTs in less developed countries - like the examples posted by Martin - lead to the initialization of projects by the poor themselves. “The man” now uses the internet to find information on how to fish and uses GPS to find the best fishing grounds.
Very interesting BBC newsnight video (2 parts) about the mobile phone market in Kenya by Paul Mason. Some facts and numbers and the assumption that Africa skips a entire step in the industrial revolution. The journalist discovers Kenya by using the mobile phone coverage map. The fact that normal infrastructure in the country is rubbish, but the mobile network reaches 80% of the people is stunning!
The movie shows a farmer sending SMS to get the market price for his crops and also goes to Kibera (Narobi), Africas second biggest slum, to see what is happing there … like political flash mobs.
The movie also shows M-Pesa, a mobile banking solution by safaricom, Kenyas leading mobile carrier. Obviously there are plans to launch the service Africa wide, which leads to two implications. Huge amounts of money will be “flying” around the continent and people there will all use their phones as wallets and this will be pioneered in Africa.
A video by Ruud Elmendorp, Dutch freelance video journalist in Africa, shows a GSM/GPS enabled system for tracking cabs in Narobi, Kenya. The cabs respectively the cab drivers are fully tracked while in duty. The owner says that the systems is increasing efficeny, the drivers say that they feel secure. The system is definitely state of the art and I have never seen such a system in Austria, beside all the GPS enabled smart phones around. I think there has to be a privacy discussion. See the video provided by Rocketboom:
This morning I received an e-mail from slum-tv. They will support our movie project. This is great. We will meet the folks in Narobi, Kenya 10/21/2008 to 10/24/2008. We will be filming im Mathare, one of the biggest slums in Narobi.
The Mathare slums, in the Eastlands of Nairobi, which is refered as the home of crimes, where the worse happens daily, every hour with robbery, prostitution, rapes, murders, violence etc. With more than 700,000 inhabitats there is bad infastructure, no roads, worse environment and and people experience difficulties to fulfill their basic needs. [snip taken from here]
Sounds scary, but with the help of the slum-tv crew we will hopefully find our way.
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While browsing today through some ICT4D related blogy, I came across a notice that the MIT sponsored journal “Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization” is free available until August 30th.
