A lot of participants of IDDS are here - but others may not know what IDDS is:
IDDS is about innovation - bringing together people from different backgrounds & countries to be creative and innovative and design things
These things should improve the lives of people who live on 1-2$ a day
Everyone should be included in the process - also the people in the villages - the concept of co-creation to create new technologies
Working with villagers to identify technologies which might make a difference and share ideas
In 3 days the project teams will go back to the villages with prototypes and refine them
Important:
collaboration
people should become aware that they themselves created this solution
improving creativity and problem-solving capacity beneath people
Paul Hudnut has been with IDDS for te past 2 weeks sharing insights into entrepreneurship
how can you transform a prototype to a product
thinking about the design process
experiences in integrated academia and entrepreneurship
founding member of Envirofit - doing wonderful work and has received a lot of recognition
. Evo Koufou - professor at KNUST Introducing Paul Hudnut
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Paul Hudnut
Quote from Obama’s speech when he was in Ghana: Africa doesn’t need strongmen but strong institutions -> applies especially to universities
society puts it’s trust in the job of faculties and students - training the next generations to be ready for the problems the current generation hasn’t solved
what is the university role in todays world?
how can universitys mission to teach, research and service
develop useful technology
foster entrepreneurship
in this speech economic development examples from Colorado State University will be provided:
how to deal with research and intellectual property
2 company examples
some experiences what US universities have done to support technology enrepreneurship- maybe helps KNUST
definition entrepreneur: a revolutionary with a business model
university initial owner (5%), subsequent investments have been private
$17m venture funding
now: 60 employees
Algae can create fuel very efficiently, very few water is used to create the oil
creating animal feed, energy, biodiesel
July 2009 production began
3000 gallons fuel/acre
from http://www.envirofit.org/
Story 2 - Envirofit: more innovation context - design for the other 90%
large scale problems
solutions need to be regionally adapted and scaled
urgency
different types of problems need different types of innovation
innovation shift from pure technology to business models
people in the villages should be able to create the technology
companies may find way to disseminate stuff inexpensively
move towards open source & business models
Problem attacked- air pollution:
sources: transportation, cooking, industry, fire
kills millions of people
health effect on mothers and children
fixing air pollution may have a large impact
every month there is a “preventable tsunami”
Examples:
motor cycles produce like 5 times more pollution than cars
people cook with open fire
around the world biomass is not very much used - Africa & Southeast Asia have the highest dependence, also high death rates connected to that
household energy:
1/2 of the world’s population cooks with biomass cook stoves
Business model:
what cook stove would the user want?
Envirofit:
started in 2003
funders: faculty & grad students
validating technology:
number of student projects looking at stove design
cook stove lab - fuel efficiencire, cumbustion point, …
business model:
customers
price
market research
…
result:
60 000 stoves sold in India in first year
requires less firewood
cook really well
less smoke
number of awards, now $1m in revenues
now 50 employees
lessons learned:
innovation can’t be mandated, but can be supported and facilitated
creative business models and modes of partnerships needed (networkin between academia, industry & stakeholders)
innovation may depend more on new business models than new technologies
university based start ups can provide learning, research revenue and publicity
what’s next for a university to promote entrepreneurship:
what are the institutions strengths?
how can these be utilized in a changeing world?
what are ideas or problems to start with?
what networks do you need to build? (academia, business, NGOs)
don’t wait to start, learn by doing
“The best way of learning to be an independent sovereign state is to be an independent sovereign state” - Kwame Nkrumah
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original” - Kenneth Robins
“Every institution was at one point just a handful of people in a room reciding to start something” - Paul Graham
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Q & A:
Evoe Kuffou: most people don’t think of the universities as a business - what is a business model for the university?
academy shouldn’t be a business, but needs to encourage this type of activity and has to develop a business model for that
started manufacturing traffic lights - but there is a central financial administration and everything takes too long, how did COL do that?
sometimes COL does it well, sometimes not so well - grants for research, sponsoring agency;
maybe at the point when demand is there, a new company has to be started
can a faculty which is not tenured also jump into business?
difficult, some departments at COL did that but not the university as a whole; that chapter is not finished yet
at KNUST there is no such issue, people are just not fired here; business activities provide opportunities here
what about technology parks? have you had this idea?
COL doesn’t have one, other universities have, city of COL has a technology incubator, often it ends up with people having different aims and no real outcomes & it’s often hard to kill a company
IDDS - Technology, Entrepreneurship and Economic Development in an Academic Environment was published on July 31st, 2009 by Florian Sturm.
It files under global.
ZIFF is the Zanzibar International Film Festival, and was (almost) in full swing when I arrived here. It is a magnificently (dis)organised event which brings film makers, entrepreneurs, NGOs and chancers from all over East Africa and beyond. Martin (of whom more later), as well as running an NGO which brings sustainable technology to local people, made a film about the growing use of mobile phone technology in Africa. It is well worth watching (will publish the web version sometime). More below. It is an acknowledged fact that in Africa, the mobile phone has leaprfrogged land-line phone technology; almost all people here have a mobile - a SIM card costs £0.50, and calls are cheap. More of this later.
We spent several convivial evenings at ZIFF, which is held in the old fort, a double-chambered structure, open to the air. One chamber has a sort of amphitheatre, where the films are shown; the other is an open area with a stage at which concerts took place into the small hours. There is a well-stocked bar in each. Entry was a problem (”residents” get charged £0.50, foreigners £5 or £10).
The first evening passed pleasantly enough - we finally joined up with a group of Belgian film makers who, like many others here, are involved in the general East African cultural scene, which seems to be thriving. Subsequent evenings were quieter, but we were constantly bumping into Martin’s endless contacts, some local, some European - one who came to Uganda/Kenya/Mozambique 5 years ago, and forgot to leave. All manage to make a living, sometimes precarious, but I’m slowly (quite rapidly, actually) realising that you do not need a lot in the way of material goods. It helps, and I know that I am leaving (I hope not for ever) in a few weeks, so a slightly disingenuous thought.
Apart from a few “big” movies, most of the them were sparsely attended. There was an endless cycle of films about AIDS, mostly well-meaning, but I wonder if they ever reach their target audience. Another cycle with harrowing stories of young women in traditional societies, mainly Moslem, who had a relationship, got pregnant, were abandoned and then had to face the most appalling consequences. (While predominantly Sunni Moslem, Zanzibar does not go in for that sort of thing.) One charming film from Cameroun about a couple of friends who compete for a girl (a beautifully choreographed picture of village life); the father wants to marry the girl off to a corrupt politician; she finally succumbs for the good of her family. Her erstwhile fiancée, meanwhile, is in jail after being stitched up by the politician. In the final scene, reminscent of The Graduate (Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft - remember?), the boy is released from jail by an honest policemen and, reconciled with his friend, they race up to the church just as the bride is about to say “I do”. They charge into the church, the girl runs off with her boy, after they have barred the door of the church with a giant pole through the door handles.
The last evening was a gala event, and we went down with the Zanzibits students, who were in a mood of ebullient effervescence. It is hard to exaggerate this; they were absoultely fizzng with good humour. They had made a short film in their class - a series of folk tales and fables, engagingly animated and making liberal use of local children. Another upload for sometime. Finally, Madame Karoume (the mother of the current president of Zanzibar; his father was the first president after indepence, so she is a double first lady) made an endless speech, in Swahili but, like the actor reading the telephone book, never boring. The guest of honour was Danny Glover (Colour Purple), who had previously been driven through the streets in a convoy of Unicef jeeps with blaring sirens. He was rather the worse for wear (or, as they say, tired and emotional but without the emotion), and made a rather uninspiring speech. Then the winning film was shown (an excellent, if violent, film about modern South Africa) and, true to form, everybody (or at least the bigwigs and a sizeable proportion of the audience) left as it started and migrated to the bars and music for more networking.
As a sort of postscript, there was an extra day on Sunday at which Martin’s film - Hello Africal - a cinema verité film about mobile phone usage in Zanzibar was screened to the normal sparse audience. This will also be posted in due course. The streets are now much quieter, and the nightly street market (inter alia, excellent Zanzibarian Pizza, which is not a pizza at all, for £0.75) has migrated to Africa House, which I have not yet visited.
It’s an initiative by MIT (MIT press on IDDS) to drive capacity building in developing countries, but also to provide students with real-life experience and a forum to discuss issues. The students work together with other students and practitioners here in the wider area of Kumasi and try to find applicable solutions for every day problems of the people in rural areas of Ghana.
One project is for example built around the problem of making water drinkable with chlorides - and how to produce these chlorides with the help of available tools - such as a bike, in that case. Another projects deals with easy methods of rice-destoning - which would rural farmers enable to compete better with big companies.
The project is really good covered in various blog - IDDS official blog in as good source, also pointing to other blogs. The results of the projects will be presented at Maker Faire Africa (IDDS at Maker Faire Africa), really looking forward to seeing that.
It’s now already a week that I arrived here in Kumasi for my internship at Kwame Nkrumah University and after some travelling and getting used to this environment I go on blogging here.
One of the things I did last week was to visit some fellow Austrians employed at a project in Sunyani - Don Bosco Vocational Technical Institute. It’s a school project by the Salesians with support of the Austrian organization Jugend eine Welt sending national servants (Zivildiener) there.
Initially the school focused on traditional education for financially disadvantaged students, but two years ago a computer class was started which turned out to be quite a success story.
In the first year the students are taught basic skills such as disassembling and assembling computers, installing Windows and Microsoft Office. Finally they have to do an exam and are awarded the ICDL certificate. In the second year they learn how to set up their own network.
These skills enable many of the graduates to get a job or start an own business. One example is Martin Kwarteng (here with pastor Paolo), who is still working for the school as system adminstrator after he finished the course last year. He orders parts of computers in Accra and sells the assembled ones.
Also some of the students work now as teachers at the school. One of them is Isaac Fokou who would be eager to get more in-depth education in ICTs, but one big problem for him and the other students is that although they are highly skilled, they only have the school certificate which proves what they are capable of. International certificates which are often demanded by employers - such as a CISCO Network Certificate - are much too expensive.
What’s also interesting about the project is that there are also classes on handicraft and the students and workers at the school start now to create school buildings themselves and provide services to surrounding villages. The workers dig clay and form bricks, there is a carpentry and a workshop for metal works - especiall wielding. Also the students learn how to grow and harvest crops, there are also grainfields on the area.
I like the project, it focuses on sustainability and creates employment possiblities for the students. The school tries to be as self-sufficient as possible all the teachers except in the IT-class are Ghanaians. With their workshop facilities they could also provide assistance to small industrial activities in the area.
Hear her talk about how she came to using ICTs, her criticism about ICT4D not considering the people with all their aspects - especially missing out in social terms. Also she talks about the activities of APC and the need to put pressure and regulation on the private IT sector and the industry to ensure positive outcomes for development.
In reflecting on M4Change Nairobi, it occurred to me that ideas largely cluster around other ideas. It was difficult to decide whether this is because ideas emerge as responses to felt needs or because a dominant idea creates a sort of tunnel of vision, sucking other ideas into itself. I would say it was a little bit of both.
Whatever the case, the dominant topic at M4Change in Nairobi convened by Strathmore University and MobileActive.org, headlined by two talented and energetic young ladies, Jessica Colaco and Juliana Rotich and held at Strathmore University on 27th June, 2009 was that of Mobile money transmissions, with Safaricom’s MPesa clearly at the back of everyone’s mind.
That said, it was not surprising that the first session was on the topic of Mobile banking. It’s clear mobile money has significantly impacted society and commerce in Kenya. Landing into the country, you encounter its effect almost immediately. If you ask your Taxi driver, he’ll likely tell you he is willing to receive his payment via the dominant mobile money transfer system, MPesa.
If you penetrate Kenyan society you will find other innovative, original uses. There was a report of how investment clubs, known locally as Chamas, a very popular savings unit in the country, use MPesa to collate and save their funds. This is done either done on a dedicated phone or on the Treasurer’s phone. The officials spread risk and share joint responsibility for the funds thus collated by each keeping one digit of the account’s pin number so that they can only access the funds together.
Koome from Clean Air Action shared how the organisation has used MPesa as a cheap, convenient and timely way to disburse money to farmers in the Mt Kenya region to incentivise farmers to plant trees.
Other examples of use mobile payments abound including but not limited to paying bills, paying rent, paying casual workers and paying school fees. The critical question of the Mobile Banking session at M4Change Nairobi and indeed of the day therefore became, “where do we go from here? What’s the next thing for mobile money beyond facilitating remittances?”
The techies and developers in the house expressed a strong interest in seeing the MPESA API (Application Programming Interface) ‘set free’ to enable them develop new and innovative uses for mobile money. Per one of the participants who also attended the Mobile Banking Conference held in Nairobi earlier, MPesa is owned by Vodafone so that is where the decision to release the API would be made. (Aside: In thinking about this I came to the conclusion that this is a plus rather than a minus. Especially if reports are true that international development funds were invested in MPesa’s for initial development, it should make the service more susceptible to lobbying to be more open and accessible.)
There were a couple of side discussions of note: should (independent) developers for the mobile platform develop services targeted at specific uses and users or develop services and give them to users who will find uses for them according to their needs? And, should companies be driven by a desire to deliver specific benefits to the end user or simply by a direct profit motive that then yields the benefit? The back and forth on this was not so much conclusive as thought-provoking.
The challenges that came to the fore included the lack of interoperability between Kenya’s existing mobile money services. On the surface this makes sense on account of the services having been initially designed not so much as profit centres but as a “retention factor”, to significantly increase switching costs for users. As long as they ably serve this purpose especially for the dominant market player, Safaricom, there is little impetus on the part of the mobile operator to allow transfer across networks. As I see it, this would typically be an area where relative newcomers into the fray (Zap versus Safaricom for example) would have an opportunity to lead in being reactionary and providing cross-network transfer capability. I imagine however that in this case, both technical and security considerations would necessitate proactive participation of both parties. (Is this a space that the CCK is justified in occupying as arbiter?)
The response of banks to MPesa was also a subject of interest. It took a while, methinks, to understand what impact the entry of mobile money solutions into the financial services space meant. When at last they did, they initially responded somewhat defensively, with calls to the Central Bank of Kenya to regulate (code for rein in) MPesa. Now however, they’ve made significant progress and are proactively involved in introducing their own mobile money remittance platforms such as Hello Money by Barclays, or working in tandem with MPesa such as Consolidated Bank which it was reported enables transfers between its accounts and MPesa.
Along a like theme, the highlight of the afternoon was a presentation about a mobile payment solution from Rwanda. The service, Smsmedia, enables Rwandese to purchase prepaid electricity via scratchcard and pay for its use via text message. What was particularly interesting to me about the Smsmedia presentation by Jeff Gasana who flew in from Kigali just to participate in M4Change Nairobi (Now that’s dedication!) was that when efforts to collaborate with the dominant local mobile operator to facilitate the payments they envisaged failed, they went ahead and created their own solution, a scratchcard system which cost a little more the customers but still delivered the value that they needed, both for the consumer and for the principal utility partner, the Electrogaz company. Now that they have the critical mass on their database, organisations that want to deliver messages to their network of customers are subsidising the cost of the service. Currently, they sell 40% of Electrogaz’s prepaid electricity. A simple, effective sustainable solution which has deservedly won numerous awards. The possibilities for scaling ‘across’ their experience with scratchcard payments seem endless. Smsmedia is definitely a company whose genesis it would be interesting to follow. Look it up at Smsmedia.rw. Kudos to Gasana and team.
On a slightly different but no less interesting note, the afternoon discussion ended with a lively discussion about good vs ‘bad’ uses of technology sparked by a presentation about Bluetooth stumbling, a viral way to bypass normal mobile phone transmission channels to transmit messages using a knock-on effect centred on a mobile phone’s unique IMEI number as identification.
Good things are happening in Nairobi, for certain, looking forward to more!
Again three months (actually four … but its been busy times) have passed since our Internal #Q1 2009 blogpost and we can again make a resumé what has happened since then.
We attended e-STAS in Malaga where we moderated a workshop and AfricaGathering in London where we showed the trailer of our movie. Both events were great and we met up with numerous incredible people with great ideas.
Our biggest success so far was the screening of our movieHello Africa at Viennese cinema Schikaneder in May and the subsequent screenings and the online streaming of it. The cinema was full, we got great feedbackand people from all around the world (UK, USA, Uganda, …) contacted us to get a copy. This Sunday the movie will be shown at ZIFF in Zanzibar.
Another quite successful event that took place twice in the last four months was the ICT4D.at Stammtisch. As our members are spread around the world during summer, we are not sure if we will hold one then, but afterwards we will caryy on for sure. Generally - every first Friday a month at Cafe Benno, but we will announce that anyway.
Organizationswise we are happy to have attracted new members - Paul Pöltner who will help us to align our organizational structure to become more efficient and Worlali Senyo (Ghana) who reviews papers and does research on how to extend our projects to Ghana. Furthermore Wambura Kimunyu (Kenya) claimed she would give us a hand covering conferences in and around Kenya. Of course I also want to mention our members who have been already there longer - you have done great work.
Out next steps during the summer are partially already taking place - Martin Konzett is currently in Tanzania and Uganda to meet people and carry forward our projects - and for ZIFF of course. I, Florian Sturm, will go to Ghana in two weeks for the same reason and to show our movie at Maker Faire Africa. We haven’t managed to successfully apply for a grant yet, but we are getting ready for it. Martin will try to attend some conferences (e.g. IPID or Mobile Tech 4 Change) and will definitely go to INTERACT 2009.
This post is part of a series of interviews collected at this years conference Coop 2.0 in Gijon.
Alexander Widmer works for Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and has been Deputy Head of the Information and Communications Technologies for Development (ICT4D) Division until it was closed down in 2008. Now he is responsible for the efficient use of ICTs in the newly created Knowledge and Learning Processes Division.
Hear him talk about the efforts of SDC in the follow up of the World Information Summits in 2003 and 2005, their present activities - which focus more on traditional development assistance - and his views on the potentials of ICTs.
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Paul Hudnut
result:
Q & A:
Just a quick point to an exciting project which is currently taking place here around Kumasi and at KNUST - 
Again three months (actually four … but its been busy times) have passed since our 
