Notes from the Africa Gathering London – “sharing ideas about positive change” – an event about business, IT, social causes and Africa.

.

Ed Scotcher – Introduction

Africa Gathering is already in place almost a year and has grown into this event – giving space for people to present their projects which might not be that big, but still innovative and important

The money which is made is going to a prize for a project which is presented

Mariéme Jamme

We are the leading platform in London today to share ideas about Africa and innovation

Africa is a great continent, a lot of things happen there, we are here to find out how to improve our continent

.

Leon Benjamin – Winning by Sharing

Personal background – child of different cultures, coming from the IT sector

Biggest story of the 21st century – from industrial age to a networked one

The things the basic institutions nowadays needed to survive are mostly gathered around command and control

Advances in technology, prosperity, but at what cost?

The cost of command & control

• Diabetes – e.g. appeared in India with Modern work and life models
• Work Rage – stress, suicides
• Inequality – no more middle class, huge wage differences, rising poverty
• Environment – business “owns” the environment

Animals have a different way of living and have totally different needs to survive

• Self-organization
• Transparency
• Trust
• …

P2P production values

• Open Source Software – also Google, Facebook, … couldn’t exist without it
• P2P lending – microfinance
• Prosperity without growth – economic prosperity other than GDP growth
• Creative Commons – crowdsourcing
• Open democracy

Guide for entrepreneurs

• Different thinking about ownership structures – Visa, a chaordic model; Ricardo Semler, Semco employee contract; txteagle, separation of work
• Different thinking about labour models – fractional work, “the future is about less”,

We need antibodies

• we need different types of leadership
• P2P, self-organized
• power from the bottom, not from the top
• Ubuntu – I am because we are

Q & A:

What steps need to happen in Africa?

• Connectivity – the penetration of mobile phones is not yet enough

.

Ken Banks – Frontline SMS – The business of social mobile: Mobile empowerment and the art of invisibility

Empowerment – build something, then take a step back and let other people take over

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead

Centralised vs. Decentralised communities

• Many people have fantastic ideas, but they can’t realise them because they don’t have access to certain resources
• We have to do something about it

Who has control over the stuff communities are producing? Who is controling?

• The local people vs. the professionals

Long tail theory

• High tech, expensive, infrastructure heavy solutions vs. easy, cheap, free local solutions
• In rural, poor areas, the easy solutions tend to work, but the complex ones don’t

FrontlineSMS

• already documented on this blog e.g. at the April Africa Gathering notes
• empowering people in various countries – e.g. monitoring elections, working with Ushahidi visualizing stuff

FrontlineSMS Medic

• “Text messages saving lives”
• Students in the US set it up
• Out there and running

People run it themselves now, the community is present

Important things to think about when starting a project

• hardware requrements
• make it run on its own
• make it cheap or free
• forget the internet
• assume there’s no technical knowledge
• provide space to connect
• be multi-discipliary
• appropriate technology, low tech
• collaboration, not competition
• connect with your users

New concept FrontlineSMS Credit

• One system, microcredit solution
• Presentation tomorrow