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

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Noemia Bacar – ICT in Mocambique

How are doing with ICT as a woman in Mocambique?

• I am very proud to be the leader of the ICT unit of KPMG in Mocambique
• Only few women are in this field

How is KPMG doing today in Mocambique?

• KPMG is the longest established consulting company in Mocambique – since 1990
• in 2007 a new line of service – IT advisors
• new product and new market – helping clients developing new businesses, implementation reviews

Africa has got a continuity problem – how are you dealing with that in Mocambique?

• companies are often not ready for this
• we are trying to convince companies that it’s important to mitigate risks

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Nick Short & Andrew Hagner & Niall Winters – Royal Veterinary College

Map of the last six months

• quite a lot has happened – Africa Gathering helped a lot
• New partners: Bloomsbury Colleges, London International Development Center (LIDC), African partners – very important as reality check, Novoda – commercial partner, Vetaid – NGO in the field providing a different viewpoint, Google.org, SACIDS, Vodafone
• Research funding, government funding (JISC)

Project overview

• livestock development – NGOs replacing government services for livestock – rise of community animal helath workers, but they are isolated
• mobile possibilities, e.g. an Android platform we are working on now
• pilot study in Zanzibar

Undergraduate research team

• RVC team of currently 9 students
• project on East Coast Fever

Use of phones

• collecting data with Google Open Data Kit – collecting many paramaters
• recording locations
• communication
• updating team blog

Advantages of phones

• quick upload
• XML formatted
• paperless
• keep in contact
• input from world experts
• also several technical constraints

Pros vs. Cons

• great advantages
• but phones are not affordable – financial support?

What do the local vets want?

• educational tool & learning resource
• record production data
• management tool
• ruggedness

Mobile opportunities

• usage is widespread in Africa already
• affordable handsets and tariffs
• sample projects: Google.org & Uganda health care

Perspectives on Learning – Where next?

Challenge – how to use mobile phones to support learning?

• Can learning be a more engaging process than traditionally?
• How to design learning experiences around the mobile device

Why is this important?

• user generated content is more accepted – “caring and sharing”
• students sharing content
• emphasis on mobile learning + Web 2.0

What about an African context?

• a lot of things emerging – mobile phone coverage, data collection tools, sms sending tools
• mobile is the dominant technology for learning
• next project: use mobile devices to produce content locally

Q & A:

If you help animals you help people too – do people understand that message?

• There’s an international movement now to see the whole ecosystem – animal and human health – as one

Who are the kind of people you would like to get in touch with here?

• People get involved in different ways, just get in touch with us and we’ll find out

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Mira Slavova – MMD4D – Mobile Market Applications in Africa

Interested in markets

What would a visitor from Mars see in social structures on earth?

• In the west – interconnected communities and companies
• In Africa, a lot of enclosed societies, not interconnected

More and more penetration in Africa due to the business models

• pay-and-go

impact of mobile phones

• blurring of livelihood and lives
• extending markets
• strengthening households, families, communities, …

significant instances e.g. M-Pesa, TradeNet, Esoko, txtEagle

Liberia: Trade at Hand

• civil war, poor infrastructure, lack of standardisation
• inefficiences in food supply chain, adverse impacts on women
• project: Trade at Hand
• posting and receiving offers per sms

research challenges

• use and social construction of the technology
• impact on markets
• adoption
• business model

innovation challenges

• application development
• literacy
• localisation

Q & A:

Are people already understanding the value of the mobile phone concerning markets?

• Users are very enthusiastic, we are working on educating the user side

Example of Tanzania

• Bus drivers stopped taking passengers but make the middleman for people from the village and the city to trade their offers on demand by order of sms

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Emmanuel Jal – Rapper

Former child soldier in Sudan – “forced to be a war child”

Puts his fight into the music

It’s hard telling the story but somebody has to do it – for the people who have no voice

The different ethnies and religions are no problem, the oild and the fertile land is a problem – everybody wants it

NGOs right now are only buying time, the aid has to change to fix Sudan again

• empower the young people
• more education

Telling his story – how he was cast away from home, recruited, trained for being a child soldier in a refugee camp, and the long and painful journey of his escape

Right now – trying to raise money for a school in his village to give the young people a chance

Link to Emmanuel Jal’s charity

Q & A:

Have you done workshops with musicians to share the experience

• I do stuff at schools with the kids, they could be the next leaders so I try to teach them how to be good leaders

How much have you raised for the school so far and how much is your aim?

• Aim: 1 000 000 $ from 1 000 000 people