I just discovered an interview with Ethan Zuckerman (also introduced here) on Web 2.0 for Development on the Radio Deutsche Welle page. The introduction text:

The internet and so called Web 2.0 applications hold great potential for the developing world and development work.

Ethan Zuckerman was the keynote speaker at the recent UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Web 2 For Development conference in Rome. Here in part two of our interview with the co-founder of Global Voices, we explore using Web 2.0 tools in rural development and working with low cost web applications to share information between remote locations. [snippet taken from here]

Ethan talks about the difficulties in approaching the people in less developed countries and the need for innovative ways to bridge the gap between the internet and other media that already reaches a big part of the community. Furthermore he gives many examples for real-world implementations of the ICT4D concept in agriculture (Tradenet), transperancy (Mzalendo) or banking (M-Pesa).

It’s definitely worth listening to - check it out.

Developments,

a free quarterly magazine from the UK Government’s Department for International Development designed to increase awareness of development issues [snippet taken from here]

writes in a recent article about a funny and great idea: the TV show Shamba Shape Up!

It is one of these makeover programmes where people come into your house and improve things and get you a new design.

But this show focuses on the needs of Kenyan households. As David Campbell, the director of the production company puts it:

“… this programme will look at practical ways for families to tackle problems at home with a sustainable approach. [...] We did a lot of research to find out what were people’s priorities, and it kept coming back to water, power and food. So the plan is to look at sustainable agriculture, energy use and issues around water use and supply, and then have a team go in who can demonstrate simple ways for people to address these things. ” [Snippet taken from here]

I think that’s a really great idea to spread information on easy ways to improve ones life. TV is in some areas more widespread than internet and these shows of course also add some entertainment factor.

The pilot is available for free on the internet, check it out.

The current issue of the I4D magazine features an article on a user-centered design project in a rural community in Southeast Kenya. The project’s goal was to develop an innovative community radio system to mediate and support participation in women’s Self-Help Groups. In the article the authors describe two specfific scenarios, where the involvement of the women in the design process led to better solutions than the ones that were initially envisioned by the engineers. This is a well-established fact in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research, however the authors state their understanding of user-centered design (UCD) in the context of ICT4D goes beyond the traditional participatory design approach.

Based on their experience they formulated a set of suggestions and recommendations for UCD in developing countries. The following list shows a summary of their findings:

• Follow potential users throughout their day
• Participate in daily activities
• Verify every observation by asking other users
• Discuss prototypes together with the users
• Play with the technology in context rather than organizing structured training
• Wait until users developed an understanding of or familarity with the technology
• Act upon the results collected and lessons learned

Details can be found in the article (pages 49-51).

I closely followed the conflict between Georgia and Russia in the last days.

It has extensive coverage in the blogsphere, so I want to provide some interesting blogs with different points of views for everyone to form his own opinion.

• The Oil and the Glory - author Steve LeVine covers foreign affairs and energy for BusinessWeek
• Registan.net - covers issues of post-soviet countries since 2003
• Global Voices Online - great platform which offers news from places not so covered by mass media with background information and input from various sources

I also want to point to this article of Mark Almond a friend of mine sent me the link and to this one of Yulia Latynina.

For me personally it is/was quite hard to form an own opinion of that whole thing as - like every war - it is quite complex; but from the ICT4D point of view it is fascinating that so many people take the opportunity to express their views and contribute through blogs and even the mass media draws information from them.

Participative journalism, here we go again.

Putting people first points to this acticle by CNN: “Africans get upwardly mobile in cell phone boom“. The report is focusing on numbers and starts with a story about a cab driver in Accra, the captial Ghana, where back in 2002 land plots where exchanged against cell phones. Nowadays cell phones are everywhere, even the poorest own them.

There are now almost seven million cellphone users in Ghana, up from only a couple hundred thousand subscribers in 2000. The continent’s biggest users are in South Africa, with nearly 25 million subscribers, followed by Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco. [snip taken from here]

The story also points to the Grameen Village Phone and the complementary business which grows with the mobile market, like charging cell phones from car batteries, mobile banking, e-health and common e-business.

Just a quick link to Ethan Zuckermans blog, where he introduces a project called Nabuur.

It’s about volunteering in ICT4D projects in developing countries over the web - like translating a web page or doing research on questions like “How much does it costs to ship 30 computers from the UK to Ghana?”

It makes it really easy to help, even from in front of a computer in any developed country.

Here’s the link to the entry, check out the project.

Jonathan Gosier from Appfrica is asking the question: Why is there no solid payment system available in Africa? Check out his recent blog post. He is picking up this interesting fact: Credit cards are normally not accepted in rural areas and in cities; most of the people rely on cash. In many African countries exist mobile payment solutions, e.g. M-Pesa in Kenya, but such a system does not help you out, when you want to order a book from amazon.com or when you have to do a check out with PayPal. The systems provided must be accepted by the developed world. So there has to be a hub from local mobile payment solutions to the internationally accepted credit card systems. Another fact is that mobile payment solutions are driven by cell phones with prepayed accounts. So there is money around. Why are the companies not issuing postpayed contracts? What are the barriers? Check out Jonathan’s analysis:

- excessive taxation of the private sector (discourages entrepreneurship)
- lack of city planning (no real addresses outside of P.O. Boxes makes it hard to track people)
- lack of enforcement (finding people in a place with no addresses is impossible)
- lack of foresight (by companies going for immediate cash versus continuous revenue)
- overwhelming poverty (the middle class is still largely dwarfed by the poor)
- lack of education (leads to ignorant conflicts related to tribe, ethnicity and religion)
- lack of government transparency (with the amount of corruption here it’s no wonder)
- lack of faith by foreign investors (leaving African institutions to fend for themselves)
[list taken based on here]

As I have a special interest in the region of Central Asia and Eastern Europe, I was pleased to read of a BarCamp in Georgia in June where over hundred of bloggers from that region met.

Blogging is in some states even the only possibility besides the state-controlled media for people to get news. One example:

In Armenia, where a post-election state of emergency limited the media to publishing only official government news for 20 days after the March 1 clashes, blogs moved in to fill the gap. (…) “Blogs were the only alternative to the mass media, especially as independent and pro-opposition online media sites were blocked or censored. Blogs registered phenomenal numbers in terms of readers.” - as Artur Papyan, Armenia Country Director for the Media Diversity Institute puts it in [this article]

There exists a flourishing scene of bloggers in these countries - the article talks about 3000 in Armenia, 8000 in Azerbaijan and 10-15 000 in Georgia - which was definitely new to me.

As in many of the post-Sowjet countries there are still dictatorships or other repressive regimes, it’s substantial that internet finally gives the possibility to publically express own opinions and views.

In that context initiatives like Global Voices Online who point a spotlight at these regions and offer guides how to start blogging and especially how to stay anonymous during blogging when free speech is unwanted are highly valuable.

I want to follow up Florians post about the electricity supply in rural LDCs. Al Kags writes about a very conceptual system called Nano Vent-Skin invented by the Mexican product Designer Agustin Otegui. The system acts like a skin for almost every surface and tries to absorb wind energy using built in nano vents. The project has to survive prototyping stage before thinking about the costs. In fact, a ubiquitous system like that could be installed everywhere, especially in rural areas. It could provide energy for lighting up the environment, charging cell phones or power even bigger systems like GSM towers. I think it has to be combined with solar powered systems to give a sustainable solution. Since solar panels are there for quite long, and the prices are low (compared to this system), Nano Vent-Skin has a long road to go to become successful.

Africa has two main challenges. Powering up the continent and doing it in a sustainable manner. In line with this thinking, I have stumbled upon a new technology called Nano Vent-Skin that seems to be very interesting. I wonder if it is the solution for Africa? [snip taken from here]

The Mobile Life Events are a series of conferences and exhibitions that explore the influence of mobile technologies on social life.

The next upcoming event organized by mLife is The First International Conference & Exhibition on Mobile Society (mSociety 2008), which takes place in Antalya, Turkey, 18-19 September 2008. Among other topics the event covers “Mobile Development - impact of mobile technologies on social and economic development” - definitely a potential panel for ICT4D projects.

The session is chaired by Stephane Boyera, who is W3C staff, where he is responsible for “the future work on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries, and how W3C can help bridging the Digital Divide.” He is also the scientific coordinator of the EU FP7 project Digital World Forum, focusing on the use of ICT to leverage economic development in Africa and Latin America.

See also Technology events in Africa and Participatory Design for Development 2008 Workshop.