Just a short point to our page “Conferences and Events” where we are gathering upcoming ICT4D events. If you want to add other interesting conferences just contact us, we’ll share the calendar with you.

Check it out!

Notes of the Global ICT Department event IT for Climate-Smart Development: “Not Your Grandfather’s Bank” at the Social Development Forum on January 20.

.

We don’t have solutions for climate change and as there are very many stakeholders it is hard to agree on a solution

Global ICT department addresses this issue from the policy angle, but there have to be business models for private investments as well

.

Frank Rijsberman, Director Program of Google.org

Managing climate risk in the cloud

“Innovating for good” - 1% equity spent to innovation

Climate change is impacting people in poor countries

• Sea level rise in Holland and Bangladesh is the same
• But Bangladesh is impacted quite more

Information scarcity increases climate change vulnerability

• acquiring information
• disseminating information
• enabling

Examples where Google.org is involved:

[read the whole article]

In the course of our partnership with the eDevelopment Thematic Group we are happy to announce an upcoming event of our partner: IT for Climate-Smart Development: “Not Your Grandfather’s Bank”.

From the IT for Climate-Smart Development event page:

The session will aim to raise staff understanding of how ICT can be used to achieve better results in climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) promise to be important enablers of climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts in several sectors. Examples may include the use of ICTs in:

• Climate monitoring for weather forecasting and predicting, detecting and mitigating the effects of natural disasters, monitoring analysis and control of industrial processes, among others;
• Lowering energy consumption and GHG in the power networks (e.g. through smart grids);
• IT applications in smart buildings and smart motor systems;
• “Dematerialization” via e-government applications
• Adapting agriculture and water resource management systems to evolving weather patterns using satellite-based information and simple mobile phone applications, smart irrigation and logistics.

An important theme will be the rapidly growing reach of mobile phone networks (more than 3bn phones in use in developing countries) and the potential to leverage these networks for climate change efforts.

Another important theme is investing in and growing the ‘clean’ technology sectors of developing countries, so that the economic opportunities presented by clean technologies are realized.

Speakers are

• Jatin Singh, CEO SkyMet (India)
• Frank Rijsberman, Director Program of Google.org
• Monique Meche, Director, Environment Policy and Sustainability, Cisco Systems

So make sure you’ll be online on January 20 from 9:00 to 10:30 a.m. Washington time.

We’ll cover it here on the blog and tweet about it - the hashtag is #it4dev.

Our documentary Hello Africa continues to tour the world. Previously shown in Accra, Ghana, at the Maker Faire Africa event, 14-16 of August (Which we attended and covered in detail here) , and just recently we were honoured to be invited and have it screened at a festival event called May You Live in Interesting Times, in Cardiff, Wales, 22-24 of October. This was a three-day festival “that celebrates the latest intriguing uses of everyday technology and social innovation, enabled through shared ideas”, and the film was screened daily on their festival hub. Here’s a brief description of the core idea behind the festival:

.

“With technology now firmly placed in the everyday we have put together a festival programme that explores how participation is increasingly the driving force behind much digital content. Mass-technology has enabled individuals and communities to become connected and share information.”

.

Unfortunately we had no possibility to attend this great event ourselves, but according to Carolina Vasquez who is a festival coordinator there, the movie was highly appreciated by the audience and a “great success”. Check out the screening program here, and the Hello Africa entry here.

Again it’s time to make a resumé what has happened in the last three months - same as the last two times:

• Internal #Q2 2009
• Internal #Q1 2009

While Martin Konzett was in Zanzibar, he screened our movie Hello Africa at ZIFF (Summary of ZIFF by Dan Hamm), made some valuable contacts and set up our Zanzibits Support project which is now running with Dan Hamm and Fritz Grabo as teachers.

Our volunteer Wambura Kimunyu attended M4Change Nairobi and wrote a blopost about it - Thoughts from M4Change Nairobi.

I, Florian Sturm, went to Ghana and visited some interesting projects there - for example the Don Bosco school in Sunyani, Suame magazine & SMIDO in Kumasi (SMIDO official website) and the OneVillageFoundation Ghana in Winneba. Furthermore I was lucky that two really exciting events just took place at the time I was around:

• IDDS - International Development Design Summit at Kumasi, Ghana- Summary of final presentations of IDDS
• Maker Faire Africa at Accra, Ghana

Especially Maker Faire was a unique possibility to show our movie Hello Africa and to make a lot of great contacts. I met and talked to many people from the IT scene in Ghana, several makers from around Africa, the organizers from Butterfly Works, Erik Hersman, Nii Simmonds, people from Inveneo, Nairobits, and lots more. Recap of Maker Faire on ICT4D.at

Later in august Martin Tomitsch and Martin Konzett attended the INTERACT2009 workshop Ethics, Roles and Relationships in Interaction Design in Developing Regions which took place in Uppsala, Sweden and online. They presented a paper on Designing an SMS-based application for seaweed farmers in Zanzibar (and why it failed for now). Notes on INTERACT2009 on ICT4D.at

Worlali Senyo, our volunteer from Accra helped us cover the efforts in Ghana towards more broadband for everybody - with posts on AfNOG EO Localiazation Workshop and Ghana to Develop a National Broadband Strategy.

In October we were already present at two events - Africa Gathering in London, and May You Live In Interesting Times in Cardiff, where our movie Hello Africa was screened - once again. Concerning Hello Africa there’s more great news - it made it to archive.org.

Also our partnership with the World Bank eTG group moved forward, we covered two workshops.

• Mobile Innovations for Social and Economic Transformation
• The Singapore Experience: Ingredients for Successful Nationwide eTransformation

Now we are preparing the next interesting event focusing on the potentials of mHealth - “World Bank Day @ mHealth Summit” on 28. October.

For the future we are planning to collaborate more with OLPC Austria in our efforts to create an ICT4D scene in Austria and some ICT4D-related events.

So, a lot of things are happening in ICT4D and we are excited to be a part of the whole scene. Looking forward to the next months.

Suame Magazine is an artisanal engineering cluster on an area of over 50 km² in the city of Kumasi, Ghana. It emerged in the 1930s and constantly increased in size in the following years - being one of the largest industrial areas in Africa by now. Over 200 000 people live there and approximately 12 000 businesses are located at Suame magazine mostly gathered around the automotive sector - doing car repairs and sale of spare parts amongst other things. Most of the businesses are very small and specialised - part of the private informal sector.

SMIDO is the Suame Magazine Industrial Development Organization which was founded in 2006 as a development institution for Suame Magazine. It is an umbrella organization for the associations in Suame Magazine and serves as an interface for the public and private sector. After focusing primarily on advocacy in the beginning, it now also offers ICT trainings for the craftsmen in the area and tries to foster business development.

The people who take the courses at SMIDO are mostly highly specialised workers with long experience in their field - repairing cars, producing custom-made parts, … - but who have not used ICTs before. The benefits the workers gain from learning ICTs are twofold:

Business benefits: As the shops mostly employ few workers and have a manageable stock of customers, keeping books on the computer, printing and communication via internet can help them save time, money and create networks with other colleagues - exchanging knowledge and even creating supply chains. SMIDO provides these trainings and for completing a training, the workers get certificates which are highly valuable when dealing with company customers.

Continuing education: As new cars are almost exclusively managed by microchips and generally cars have become more and more high-tech, the mechanics need training in dealing with these new kinds of car-repair-techniques. SMIDO is therefore searching for large companies in the automotive sector or companies with large stocks of cars to partner with - working together on providing specialised trainings. This would create a win-win situation by providing the companies with capable mechanics for their cars and the workers with increased income and possibilities for continuing education.

When SMIDO started providing trainings, there were only 2% of the workers at Suame Magazine using ICTs, now SMIDO has already trained 100 people and they are looking for possibilities to scale up. With a business plan at hand and a large number of skilled personnel this is an organization which I would love to invest in - if I would be an investor, or an automotive company. On the other hand, such a commitment would benefit the population at Suame Magazine, increasing the safety level at work (also an objective of SMIDO) and providing better income possibilities.

So, maybe there’s somebody interested out there. There’s large potential so I’m curious what will happen.

Some members of the SMIDO team

As we successfully survived two previous “Stammtisch” events plus the release party of our movie Hello Africa, we want to continue this series EVERY FIRST FRIDAY of a MONTH in Vienna, Austria and of course vie internet worldwide, open for everybody in the area of ICTs that wants to get to know us, wants to talk about own projects or just wants to have a nice evening with like-minded people.

One of our big aims when we created this platform was not only to provide information about ICT4D topics, but also to establish real life contact between interested and commited people.

It’s not institutional, it’s not even a barcamp so don’t be shy, we are happy to meet you. Bring your own cold drinks, since this is appreciated by the management of the venue.

What: ICT4D.at Stammtisch #3

Where: Museumsquartier Vienna, Meeting point right in the middle of HOF1 (Haupthof); We will hold up a banner, so you can’t miss us … Later on we may recline to one of the bars.

When: Friday, 7th August 2009, 19:00

See you there!

RSVP via: and/or

I already started a couple of blog posts, but real time publishing will not work, so the posts will have a delay of about 2-4 days … for real time coverage catch me on twitter.com/martinkonzett

“Mobile phones are creating networks of solidarity” - Richard Dowden

I didn’t know Richard Dowden, until I by chance spotted a short review advertising his book “Africa - Altered States, Ordinary Miracles” while riding the train from Luxembourg to Switzerland. As I have a post-paid contract with probably the worst combination of cell phone and network provider in Europe (iPhone and Orange), roaming was again not working, so I just took a hand written note. Back home I
just hit the “1 Klick Bestellung” - Button (which is actually patented by amazon) and I got this huge hardcover just one day before I departed.

Dowden, director of the Royal African Society, turned out to be a triple senior journalist with 30+ years hands on experience being in Africa or investigating about Africa related issues. While browsing the table of contents just before I left, I was amazed to see that the very last of the eighteen chapters was named “Phones, Asians and the professionals - The new Africa“. How lucky am I? What could be better for a technician like me, than digging into to opinions of a non-technician about phones while I am actually in Africa!

So here I am, taking my second leg from Doha to Dar Es Salaam in a stuffed Airbus, hardly managing my MacBook, Dowdens hardcover and a cup of tea, trying to write this blog post while a two year old fellow is screaming like hell right into my neck.

Dowden intros the topic with a brief history about economics and the end of colonialism and also financial and investment strategies of the Western world tied to that, quoting some friends and then building up short stories about what he is thinking is primary driving Africa in these days: “Mobile phones, China and the emergence of a new African middle class“. Reading this book is more than fun, it’s a joyride where emotions come over when thinking into all these excellent described moments, whenever the content is positive and beautiful, or scary and dark. I was thinking of Afrigadget when he says that Africans are using non-African stuff their own way, mashing stuff up or if they
don’t like it, just leave it unused in a corner until it is rotten. I mostly agree when he is clearly pointing out the unbeatable entrepreneurial energy that African people have.

The actual story about phones takes place within very few pages. Explaining the situation with landlines the last 3 decades before mobiles were introduced and that nobody expected back then that
African citizens are able to pay or even want to phone. My statement on the first issue would be, that economic theory clearly says that everybody is able to pay, you just can not estimate how much someone is dedicating within his probably tiny budget. So I agree that, when it is even only a very small amount of money compared to what a citizen of the Western world spends, the multiplication by the population of a whole continent makes is worth thinking about it. The second issue is also clearly and explained very well, he very briefly brings up well known clichés like the fisherman calling the harbor for prices and nomads sitting beside the cows with a mobile. That people just love to communicate and being human means being social. By simply not mentioning things like Twitter, FrontlineSMS or Ushahidi (which all are great tools and have great impact in media and raising
awareness is good, but have very little impact compared to basic functions), he just brings the focus to the basement of the concept of mobile. We also have this in our movie Hello Africa where we feature a fisherman who gives us a plethora of examples of how he is using his mobile and then running out of examples, to tell us at the end that he is using his mobile “for the very reason itself”. (And no, he is not calling the harbor or sending SMS to the market to get price information).

Dowden mentions the political impact within the normal politics and also the opportunity for the rebel leader in the north to call the president in the south and bargain peace, while the bill is payed by the e.g. the CIA …

Dowden is even asking the question, if maybe the Rwandan genocide would have not happened if mobile telephony had been introduced widely at this point in time. This sentence instantly made my eyes close and when I was back ten minutes later I had a strong feeling of confidence that we are heading for the right goals with what we are doing - ICT4D or whatever it is called.

The Chinese part of the chapter is worth another blog post, so stay tuned.