ICT4D Twitter Chat, November

Wayan Vota at ICTWorks convened a lively chat today on information & communication technologies for development – or ICT4D. Expect to see another chat in December.

The hour flew by! After introductions we highlighted projects we admire, projects that have failed, and the problems with cloud computing in developing nations. (On that last point, I note that you can’t even get reliable access to the cloud in the US, depending on which smartphone you’re carrying or which highly-attended tech event you’re at.)

From the chatlog archive, here are some favorites:

The barrier is the carrier. (@jongos)

…we think lots of sun with intermittent rain then! offline needs to work seamlessly with infrequent on-line? (@meowtree)

My thoughts on cloud4d lately have steered toward a highly local, in-country cloud. Reliance on undersea cables too risky. (@downeym)

Donor agencies sobering up after being drunk on internet. (@travis_a)

…second hand, inexpensive, locally sourced equipment > new and shiney equipment that fails in dust and heat (@theresac)

Seems people still thinking, develop in West and take it to Africa who lags. Need to develop in Africa within resource & context (@africastrategy)

Technology is easy. Issues around geography, language, culture, true empowerment and paths to adoption are challenges. (@kiwanja)

Other discussion:

If you have a project that does originate in a developed country, how do you bridge the gap to the developing country? Several people pointed to stories of close on-site collaboration, even co-design, with local experts and users. Remote mentoring, say in the style of MicroMentor, is an additional tool.

How are people attracted to a new service, and what keeps them there? Agriculture, health, and education applications get the press – but it’s music, social media, sports, entertainment, and (yes) porn that have driven adoption in developing and developed nations. In terms of infrastructure, there was also criticism of mobile ICT buses (in India and Rwanda) as less effective, compared to stable ICT centers that become a predictable fixture in a community.

There are two more leads I’ll be watching. First, Cyclos, which provides free and open source banking and mobile payment tools. Second, Question Box, a project creating local information kiosks via mobile networks, has also gone open source.

Update: Take a look at Movirtu, a very smart mobile phone-sharing infrastructure for people earning less than $2 USD a day.  Users have a card plus PIN, and log into their mobile account using any phone on the same network as their account. The people who lend out the phones are rewarded with credits. And users can designate someone who is online more frequently to receive notifications, so they don’t miss important messages or money transfers.

Boom Towns

Worldchanging’s article on Boom Towns has me thinking about the effects of an aging population on the SF Bay Area.

In 2011, the first Boomer will turn 65, an occasion that will herald an epochal demographic shift.  Just as babies boomed in the 1940s through 1960s, older adults will become North America’s – and much of the rest of the world’s – fastest-growing demographic. This imminent population shift is beginning to force a long-overdue conversation about the unique housing, environmental, and health care needs of an aging population.

Unfortunately, it’s a conversation that many of us are ill-prepared to undertake. A recent AARP study, for example, found a massive disconnect between perceptions of aging and its reality.

…These issues came to life for me several years ago, when my father, a California school teacher, started looking for his future retirement home in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.  His criteria for the move, “I want to get away from the crowded [city] and find a place that is less hectic…somewhere I can grow things.”

…My father simply couldn’t fathom the changes that age would bring to his abilities or his faculties. Even though he has never wanted to burden anyone, it was tough for him to envision the kind of decline that would lead to needing help with driving, shopping—or growing things.

…Eventually we found a house across the street from a hospital, a half mile from a future light rail stop, with a ramp over the three stairs leading to the front door, and with plenty of room on the property to add additional square footage or an accessory dwelling unit if my sister, our family, or his friends wanted to join him in Portland.

California is a comparatively “young” state with a high birth rate, but it is not immune to the aging boom. The proportion of residents 60+ years of age is expected to increase by 59 percent between 2005 and 2020. By then, one in five Californians will be over 60.

And then there’s population growth and the sheer number of older people, continuing to grow sharply through 2030 at least.

The state’s report “Aging California” (pdf) notes that this growth will be unevenly distributed. Rural counties currently have lower populations, but a greater percentage of seniors. This is due to the flight of younger residents to urban areas to find work, plus the influx of retirees seeking new homes away from large cities.

Looking at local projections for the future, it’s harder to see a trend. For example, the Lassen-Shasta-Trinity area is expected to age slightly less than San Francisco (39% increase vs. 43%, if that’s significant). These are in turn surpassed by Riverside and San Diego (each near the average of 59%), Contra Costa (66%), and Sonoma (86%). It’s a complex mix of birth rates, employment patterns, migration, affordability, and retirement—and I’m sure none of these numbers reflect the recent financial meltdown.

Personally, I’m becoming increasingly mindful of transit patterns in my daily life. That last bus link from home to BART is weak—nonexistent at night—which means driving to the train station. Nor does the design of my home fit the Portland scenario above. More to think about. I’m determined to do better in my next move. And I won’t be tempted by anything like my in-laws’ Prescott Valley exurban retirement, no matter how inexpensive the real estate.

Solar Sisters: Barefoot women solar engineers

Illiterate, poor African women aged 35-55, many of them grandmothers, leave their families to spend 6 months training in India to be solar engineers. At the Barefoot College in rural Rajasthan they work with their hands, identifying parts by color and relying on oral instruction and sketchbooks. There’s not a lot of electrical theory.

But upon returning to their villages, these women have the skills to solar electrify tens, even hundreds, of houses. Across Africa, 60 engineers have electrified 40 villages at a cost of only 1.5 million USD.

Here’s the video (via ICTworks).

The Barefoot College model is one of radical self-reliance for the poorest of the poor. Management, control, and ownership of the technology lie with the community. The village decides how much to spend on electrification, and chooses the woman who will receive the training. And it is the community itself that certifies the woman as a solar engineer, acknowledging her training and supporting her ongoing work.

The Barefoot College video points out “universal lessons” from the African project.

• Any illiterate woman from any part of Africa, even if she has never left home, can be trained in 6 months in India to be a confident and competent solar engineer. (There are Barefoot Colleges throughout India. It would be interesting to see how the model and code of conduct translate to Africa.)
• Prepare the community first by having them make major decisions on behalf of the whole village, and only then bring in technology.
• Keep urban based “paper-qualified” solar engineers out of the process. A top-down approach doesn’t work. External experts don’t have the vision, faith, or courage to train women as engineers. They also lack the communication tools to speak to villagers as equals.
• No paper certificates are issued; experience shows that in programs where men are paper-certified, they immediately leave their villages for the cities. (I believe that by training older women, the Barefoot College designers are deliberately choosing a population that will be less likely to leave for the city, paper certificate or no.)
• A partnership model, where initial training and materials are donated but expertise and ongoing expenses reside in the village, can work to reach the very poorest.

The video glosses over the process of choosing a woman to receive this training, and the effects on her life and her family’s life. In India women of differing ages have become barefoot solar engineers. This story of 19-year-old Kausalya hints at some of the difficulties.

Kausalya of Buharu village in Tilonia, presents another heartening story. All of 19, Kausalya is adept at fixing and maintaining solar energy systems. What she is also good at is local governance. She used to attend the village night school when Barefoot College introduced the Bal Sansad, or the Children’s Parliament. The concepts of local, state and central governments were explained to school students, who were encouraged to compete for the posts of ‘MLAs’ (legislators) for the Bal Sansad. Prompted by other girls who were too timid to take on male students, Kausalya filed her nomination. She was the token candidate of the entire female electorate, and bagged the post from her school.

Then followed the prime ministerial contest in which all the ‘MLAs’ from over 50 schools in Tilonia contested. Once again she got all the girl votes, while some infighting among others got her a substantial chunk of the boy votes. Kausalya became the prime minister of the Bal Sansad at the age of 13. In three years of heading the Sansad, Kausalya’s ‘cabinet’ solved a host of problems – from the lack of electricity in one village school, to the local sarpanch trying to usurp the land of another. At the end of her term, Kausalya’s parents discontinued her education, and she took up solar training at SWRC.

Life took another turn when she came of age and was packed off to her husband’s home (she had been married when just a few years old) in Jaipur’s Pandwa village. Here too, Kausalya worked on the infrastructure of Pandwa, including solar lights and a new water pipeline. Unhappy with her ‘activism’ to begin with, her husband and parents-in-law gradually came to admire her efforts. “My husband will never say it, but I know he’s very proud of me,” says Kausalya. “Now he asks me to maintain his accounts for him!”

Who uses mobile broadband? Guess again.

Hispanics trail other US populations in overall internet access, but rely heavily on mobile phones and even mobile broadband. A greater proportion of Hispanics and African Americans use mobile broadband (53% and 58% respectively), with both communities ahead of whites (33%).

These figures come from The Hispanic Institute and the Mobile Future coalition. Their short white paper highlights Hispanic market opportunities for mobile broadband access and applications. It’s a market 48 million strong, and also a community in which broadband access is key to economic opportunity and social benefits.

Some other highlights from the report:

Hispanics are more mobile than the general U.S. population and, thus, rely more on cell phones. In fact, compared to Americans generally, Hispanics account for more minutes used and for a higher percentage of cell-phone ownership despite their relatively low incomes.

Given that roughly 40% of U.S. Hispanics are born abroad, in countries where wireless service often is more common than landline phones, the American Hispanic community is more open to mobile broadband than many other population groups. This familiarity makes the leap to smartphones and other connected mobile devices a more intuitive step for many than turning to wired, home broadband adoption and computer usage.

In 2008, Hispanics outpaced the general population in accessing and downloading digital media (music, video, audio, movies, television programs, video games and podcasts), 42% to 35%.

Carnival of Mobilists #190, plus events

Caroline Lewko from WIPJAM hosts Carnival of Mobilists #190. This week’s collection includes A Mobile Learning Roundup of Sorts with news from the (Northern Hemisphere) summer season. We also get a snapshot of the fragmented world of developing for mobile – proliferation of platforms, barriers to app acceptance, and the rise of the netbook.

And a WIPJam itself may be coming to your town.

WIP (Wireless Industry Partnership) is about connecting developers to the information, resources and people important for innovation, growing your business and getting to market faster. …

Jam Sessions are interactive and definitely not boring.  We mean it when we say No PPT, No Panels and No Ties! WIP Jam sessions are a unique format for mobile and wireless developers, where we blend ‘unpanels’, with intimate discussion groups led by industry leaders and developers alike.  And it’s really very interactive – we make sure everyone gets a chance to be heard.

There’s a WIPJAM @ OSIM (Open Source in Mobile World) in Amsterdam next week, September 16, and also WIPJAM @ CTIA in San Diego, CA on October 8.

I’ll be at an event closer to home next month: Mobile 2.0. It’s really two conferences in two locations: a business day in San Francisco October 15, and a developer day in Mountain View October 16. I’m registered for the latter… but if a free pass turned up for the biz day I’d take it in a shot.

Wikipedia color-codes consensus

Starting this fall, an optional extension to Wikipedia will automatically color-code text backgrounds to indicate how “trusted” the text is.

Currently, text on a Wikipedia page is agglutinated from the contributions of multiple, anonymous authors. Anyone can contribute and over-write existing text. This leaves entries open to bias, vandalism, and editing wars.

The WikiTrust extension computes the author of every word of text and determines the author’s reputation based on previous, lasting, contributions. Less trusted text is backgrounded with an orange shade, which fades to white as the text survives later edits and is considered increasingly trustworthy.

Note that trust isn’t truth, it’s consensus. If you’re a new contributor to Wikipedia, your contributions will be colored with a bright orange shade. Established contributors’ new text is colored with a paler orange. But even as an established contributor, if you write something controversial that gets edited in and out, that text will also be flagged with color.

Readers won’t be facing a sea of orange, however. The overall levels of orange text-tagging are kept low in the interest of readability. And the entire trust mechanism will be a separate tab on the Wikipedia page, so you can choose whether to view your pages with or without it.

(via Wired Science)

Carnival of Carnivals Aug. 31, 2009

Carnival is the current festive term for a news roundup, particularly if it’s participatory. It’s much happier than news in brief. Here are three I enjoy.

Have a carnival or roundup you like? Add your favorites in the comments.

Carnival of the Mobilists

Writers on mobile and wireless take turns hosting Carnival of the Mobilists. This week’s (#189) is on MSearchGroove, and is heavy on market trends rather than usage scenarios. I did enjoy the host’s new podcast for the inside scoop on SpinVox. SpinVox promises to automate transcription of voice mail messages to readable text. This is understandably attractive to mobile users and venture capitalists alike. However, human transcription is still a big part of the system. If that problem remains, SpinVox is left with cheap data entry based in developing nations, an operation that doesn’t scale, and questions about financial management.

The Weekly Sift (Politics)

(OK, I know the Sift doesn’t travel or rotate authorship. But it’s still an excellent blog roundup. So I’m sneaking it in under the Carnival tent.)

I used to read a lot of US political blogs. Now I rely on The Weekly Sift. Doug Muder chooses his sources for their insight, and adds much of his own as well. Doug is a skillful explainer – he started out as a mathematician before writing computer guides, and now blogs on politics and religion. Each Sift includes two or three in-depth stories plus a collection of short notes. I’ve known Doug for years, and his calm, humane, and sometimes bemused tone shines through his clear prose.

In the Short Notes from today’s Sift:

You’d expect the people who study visualization methods to have a really kick-ass way to visualize their subject matter. They do. Move your mouse around and watch for the pop-ups.

Amidst the forests of cone trees and decision trees I encountered the hype curve.

Incidentally, I’ve seen that curve recently in CGAP’s article on the hype cycle in mobile banking, and I keep hearing that microfinance in general is moving through its Trough of Disillusionment phase.

Encephalon (Brain and Mind)

For neuroscience and psychology, Encephalon is your source. Edition #74 is hosted at Neuronarrative and is enlivened by Python (Monty) humor. The topics are anything but lightweight, however! Free will, emotion, and intention… criminal behavior… brain fitness software… schizophrenia…

…and a spirited defense of flowcharts!

Tear down that (mobile garden) wall

Hear that rumble? It’s Wednesday’s big mobile announcement. Handset giant Nokia enters m-banking.

Nokia Money has been designed to be as simple and convenient as making a voice call or sending an SMS. It will enable consumers to send money to another person just by using the person’s mobile phone number, as well as to pay merchants for goods and services, pay their utility bills, or recharge their prepaid SIM cards (SIM top-up). The services can be accessed 24 hours a day from anywhere, meaning savings in travel costs and time. Nokia is building a wide network of Nokia Money agents, where consumers can deposit money in or withdraw cash from their accounts.

The service will be first demoed at Nokia World on the 2nd and 3rd of September 2009 in Stuttgart, Germany. It’s planned to be rolled out to selected markets beginning in early 2010. But given more than 4 billion mobile phone users and only 1.6 billion bank accounts, Nokia clearly sees enormous opportunity.

As CGAP notes, Nokia had already begun moving into services in developing countries.

This isn’t Nokia’s first move into providing content to a low-income clientele using the company’s handsets. In April, Nokia announced it completed trials of its Life Tools service. It’s icon-based, which Nokia says helps reduce language and literacy barriers. Its services are geared to farmers (customizable commodity prices, weather, seed and fertilizer availability) and students (English lessons, exam prep). It works on a new generation of handsets which Nokia has targeted at value-conscious customers who want browsing on the cheap. So far, that’s two Nokia phones running around USD 100, so there’s still a lot of distance to cover in cost and range of devices. But the idea behind Life Tools is exciting: browsing at a price affordable not to the economic elite, but hundreds of millions of more ordinary consumers.

Earlier this year Nokia invested $70 million USD in mobile payment company Obopay, which is providing the payment platform for Nokia Money. But Nokia intends the service to be open and interoperable with other payment services as well.

Ken Banks of kiwanja.net notes that this challenges the exclusivity many African m-banking operators enjoy, but may lock customers into a handset rather than a carrier.

This would be a direct challenge to many existing models which require users to switch networks, or to be on the same network as the mobile service they’re looking to use. In addition, it looks like Nokia Money users can sign-up without needing to swap out their SIM cards, making up-take of the service considerably more efficient logistically. If this thing were to grow, it could grow fast.

…As if (very) successfully designing and building low-cost handsets for emerging markets wasn’t enough, Nokia continue to increase their offering of emerging market-specific services through their low-cost phones. Last year it was agriculture and education. Today it’s financial services.

I’ve never been one for predictions, but this one has certainly come true. Again, writing last November:

“…So, what next? Nokia develop a mobile payments platform and embed the client into all of their emerging market handsets? Imagine, a single company controlling the entire mobile technology value chain would make interesting viewing. It could well be the answer to the age old fragmentation problems suffered by the ’social mobile’ and ICT4D space, but would this give the Finnish giant Google-esque powers?”

And then there’s the cost of the voice calls or SMS messages to consider. African mobile analyst Steve Song has been fierce on this issue. Even in developed countries SMS charges are large compared to the incremental cost of providing them. But in Africa, SMS charges comprise a startling percentage of income. Poor Africans spend over 50 percent of their disposable income on communications. Why? Increasingly, you need a phone even to get a ditch-digging job.

Steve takes a critical look at Nathan Eagle’s txteagle micro-work service, in which small tasks are distributed via SMS and completed at piecework rates.

In [Nathan's] talk he points out that the Kenyan incumbent, Safaricom, will earn a billion USD in revenue this year. Minutes later he highlights the fact that his initial attempts to establish SMS-based real time blood-bank monitoring in Mombasa failed because nurses were unwilling to pay the cost of an SMS to update the database. He says:

“… if you’re working at a local hospital, a text message is a substantial fraction of your day’s wage …”

Now put those two facts together. A billion dollars in revenue and an SMS is a substantial fraction of your day’s wage [emphasis added]. Hmmm.

Nathan had to resort to paying nurses the equivalent of three SMSes for every day they updated the blood-bank. I love the ingenious way he found to make the system work but it does highlight what a throttle to innovation the high cost of communication is.

Eventually, it may be data services to the rescue as Africa is better connected via undersea cables to broadband networks. Nokia is integrating Skype into its devices. Steve Song sorts through the issues in a series tagged WGSDIA, “What Google Should Do in Africa“; recommendations include offering web-based versions of Google’s SMS services, and lobbying for better SMS rates.

In the meantime, phone users are doing their own end run on the cost of voice calls and SMS messages. Many use:

…the practice of “beeping” or “missed calling” between mobile phone users, or calling a number and hanging up before the mobile’s owner can pick up the call. Most beeps are requests to call back immediately, but they can also send a pre-negotiated instrumental message such as “pick me up now” or a relational sign, such as “I’m thinking of you.” The practice itself is old, with roots in landline behaviors, but it has grown tremendously, particularly in the developing world.

This comes from Jonathan Donner’s delightful research article on the rules of beeping: who beeps whom, who’s expected to pay for the call back, and how not to beep too much.

Mozilla Service Week Sept. 14-21

Able to lend a (geeky) helping hand to your community? Or are you involved with an organization needing technical assistance? Register now for Mozilla Service Week, and let the matchmaking begin!

During the week of September 14-21, 2009, we’re asking individuals to step up and make a difference by using the Web to better their community. We’re looking for people who want to share, give, engage, create, and collaborate by offering their time and talent to local organizations and people who need their help.

Mozilla believes everyone should know how to use the Internet, have easy access to it, and have a good experience when they’re online. By utilizing our community’s talents for writing, designing, programming, developing, and all-around technical know-how, we believe we can make the Web a better place for everyone.

Mozilla has a history of changing the world – and the Web – in all kinds of amazing ways. When members of our community decide to take action, they can make a serious difference:

• Teach senior citizens how to use the Web.
• Show a non-profit how to use social networking to grow its base of supporters.
• Help install a wireless network at a school.
• Create Web how-to materials for a library’s computer cluster.
• Refurbish hardware for a local computer center.
• Update a non-profit organization’s website.
• Teach the values of the open Web to other public benefit organizations.

As you can see from the list above, you needn’t code or design to be of tangible help. Get someone set up on Skype or webmail. Show them how to shop online. Enable Facebook on their mobile phone. Heck, you could even start up their blog.

Crowdsourced election protection

In following innovative uses of SMS (text) messaging, I’ve been delving into the work of Ushahidi. The name means “testimony” in Swahili, and the platform crowdsources crisis information such as political upheavals or natural disasters. Anyone can submit updates through text messaging using a mobile phone, email or web form.

Ushahidi was developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008.

In breaking news, Alive in Afghanistan is using the Ushahidi mapping system to report election irregularities.

Text messages are collected via Frontline SMS, another great system which uses free open source software to turn a laptop + mobile phone into a central communications hub. Easy to set up, portable, and resilient: just what is needed in chaotic circumstances.

The next issue is what to do with the flood of information that comes in beyond a heat map of incidence reporting. What do you pull out of the SMS or Twitter stream? What’s credible? What’s important? In particular, how do you deal with the first three hours of a crisis? Ushahidi founder and TED fellow Erik Hersman is tackling that problem now.

A small team at Swift River is looking to the crowd to filter data as well as generate it.

Swift … is an initiative that seeks to do two very important things, both of which are crucial for not just Ushahidi, but for many emergency response activities in the future. First, it gathers as many possible streams of data about a particular crisis event as possible. Second, using a two-part filter, that stream of data is filtered through both machine based algorithms and humans to better understand the veracity and level of importance of any piece of information. -Erik

See it in action at Vote Report India.