Hash returns to the state of startup funding:
Both the Crowdfund and VC4Africa initiatives are excellent steps in the right direction, as they both provide platforms that allow less-knowledgeable investors (of tech in Africa), and deeply involved African tech investors alike, to get involved without too much risk at one time. There remains one issue to be solved though, and that is finding the entrepreneurs to invest in...[continue reading]

Organization: Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT)

Location: Cali, CO

Opportunity for internships and jobs for recent graduates to gain international experience

The Decision and Policy Analysis Program (DAPA) of the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) is seeking English speaking recent graduates for 6-12 month internships.  CIAT is an international research center, one of the fifteen global centers of the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research.   Located in Cali, Colombia and working on international projects in Africa, Asia and Central and Latin America, the DAPA program evaluates the effects of climate change, evaluates technology and knowledge gaps, critically analyses environmental and agricultural policy in Latin America, and considers barriers to market access for small, rural producers in developing countries.  

The interns will gain experience in international research for development, and will be actively encouraged to use the internship as a stepping stone to further education at the masters or PhD level.

Expectations:

The interns are expected to work on a range of tasks from project and report writing, to analysis of data and publication of peer-reviewed journal articles.  We seek young, enthusiastic and energetic people with solid English skills, to spend a 6-12 month period of time in our head office in Cali, Colombia.  We provide the cost of tickets to and from Colombia, plus a monthly stipend of US$750 (sufficient for basic living in Colombia). 

Requirements:

• Excellent English skills, including strong capabilities in writing.  Knowledge of Spanish is a bonus, but not essential
• Recently graduated at undergraduate or masters level in any of the following disciplines: Economy, Geography, Agricultural Science, Environmental science, Development Studies, Biology, Sociology, Social Communication, Business or other related subject matters
• Interest in applied research for developing countries
• Open to experiencing new cultures and perspectives

This is an open call with no deadline.  Applicants should send an email to Andy Jarvis (a.jarvis@cgiar.org) with a CV and application letter outlining your motivation, research interests and medium term career plans.  Also be explicit about your potential areas of interest with respect to the Decision and Policy Analysis program’s work.  For further information on the Decision and Policy Analysis Program, see http://gisweb.ciat.cgiar.org/dapablogs/

For further information about CIAT, see http://www.ciat.cgiar.org. 

Read more...

(author unknown)

Authored by: Francisco Noguera

The last few weeks have been unusually busy at NextBillion. You've seen several new names, topics discussed, and the diversity of perspectives represented in our pages continues to expand. Moreover, the site's managing partners (Acumen Fund, WDI and WRI) recently met for a planning session where we discussed several ideas that get to the heart of our site's goal: bringing value to our readers and being the web's primary resource for analysis, news and opportunities related to market-based approaches to poverty alleviation. 

Lots of exciting ideas and lots of work, to be sure, but all of this has been accompanied by several conversations with a growing base of contributors. Today I'd like to introduce you to four new members whose name you'll see more and more often in NextBillion: Maria Zheng, from the University of Michigan, Adeena Schlussel from Acumen Fund, Andrew Eder from NextBillion's partner Technoserve, and Bryan Farris from Bain & Co.

While Maria will join as Editor, Andrew, Adeena and Bryan join as Staff Writers. For more information about their backgrounds and interests I encourage you to visit their profiles. Please join me in welcoming all of them!

(author unknown)

Organization: Ashoka

Location: Sao Paolo, BR

Ashoka is the largest association of social entrepreneurs in the world - men and women with system-changing solutions for the world's most urgent social problems.  One of its next challenges is to help create pioneering business models that harness the joint power of businesses and social organizations to provide sustainable access to essential products and services - such as low-income housing solutions, health insurance or agricultural technologies - to low-income populations, at an unprecedented scale.

We seek a highly entrepreneurial individual with strong strategic thinking, solid business experience and deep commitment to social change to lead our low-income housing program in Brazil.

THE OPPORTUNITY:

Building this new program will be a true entrepreneurial endeavor, the detailed path of which the person will need to chart.  It will certainly include

• Engaging decision-makers from the business and social sectors to refine and scale-up 'A Casa é Sua', a business-social venture that offers integral housing solutions to low-income populations
• Mobilizing significant investment for low-income housing from for-profit and non-profit investors
• Leveraging Ashoka's global community of social innovators to bring sustainable housing solutions to Brazil
• Liaising with the global staff and support the launch of like-minded low-income housing ventures outside Brazil
• Managing a small team

THE PERSON: 

• Demonstrated intra/entrepreneurial track record
• Significant experience within social AND business sectors, commitment to building a hybrid platform for social impact
• Minimum of 10 years of experience in the private sector (including professional careers in management consulting or investment banking)
• A strong track-record of innovation and systems-building regardless of the institutions worked in
• Capacity to effectively communicate with - and engage - various stakeholders ranging from CEOs to social leaders to slum dwellers
• Fluency in Portuguese and English required

Ashoka's Hiring Criteria:

• Entrepreneurial: Compelled to cause major pattern change (e.g., founding an organization or company, starting a movement, or re-shaping the work of an existing organization). Demonstrates relentless and realistic how-to thinking and passion for seeing ideas come to life.
• Understanding and Belief in Everyone a ChangemakerTM: Understands and believes the Everyone a ChangemakerTM vision at a gut level. Candidates posses a broad and inquisitive intellect and a thinking pattern that connects the dots between historical trends and current social context.
• Social and Emotional Intelligence: Ability to work efficiently and respectfully in teams, putting organizational/team goal first (personal glory second).
• Ethical Fiber: Exceptionally strong ethical behavior. Is self-reflective and has strong empathy skills. Trustworthy.
• Self-Definition: The person assumed that changing the world in big ways and on a continental scale is what he/she will do in life.

Application process:

Visit www.ashoka.org/apply, and list 'Brazil Director, Housing for All' in the 'Openings of Interest' field.  With any questions, or recommendations, contact Pilar Martinez at pmartinez@ashoka.org.

 

Read more...

(author unknown)

We were honored to have Thomas Roessler of the World Wide Web Consortium as one of our visitors today at the iHub. He’s a past ICANN board member, and is right in the center of the push for the mobile web. He gave us a talk on how the future of the web is mobile.

Take a look at his presentation (3Mb PDF download) to get a feel for the talk, though full context can better be understood when listening to him talk on the video, which we’ll try to get up on this blog post soon.

(3Mb PDF)

He talked about device APIs too, a very cool concept, where we see APIs popping up for GPS, cameras, microphones and sensors.

• In the past we developed special apps for each platform.
• Now, one webapp runs on all of them.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

In yesterday's New York Times Nicholas Kristof proposed a solution to the critical shortage of debate teams and basketball coaches affecting developing countries.

In my mind, Teach for the World would be a one-year program placing young Americans in schools in developing countries. The Americans might teach English or computer skills, or coach basketball or debate teams.

The program would be open to Americans 18 and over. It could be used for a gap year between high school and college, but more commonly would offer a detour between college and graduate school or the real world

Actually, Kristof is not proposing a program in which Americans meet the needs of developing countries but instead is proposing a program in which developing countries meet our needs. According to Kristof's article

The host country would provide room and board through a host family

And why should developing countries go to all this effort?

Teach for the World also would be an important education initiative for America itself. Fewer than 30 percent of Americans have passports, and only one-quarter can converse in a second language. And the place to learn languages isn’t an American classroom but in the streets of Quito or Dakar or Cairo.

Peace Corps volunteers are not impressed. After all, the cultural exchange and foreign language Kristof is so concerned about are both a large part of Peace Corps. Why create an entirely new and competing program when Peace Corps is fighting for more funding.

There is also the issue of sending unskilled volunteers overseas. Would we want 18 year olds, who probably don't speak our language and may never have taught before, coming into our schools and teaching our children? Would we want our schools, that are currently laying off experienced teachers left and right, to invest in providing transportation, food, and host families for these unskilled volunteers? Or would we prefer that those resources be used to reward and keep local volunteers?

The program that Kristof is proposing is clearly not designed to meet developing country needs. It's time to stop doing things for our own benefit and pretending we're doing it to meet the needs of others.

-----

Related Posts:

Voluntourism: What can go wrong when trying to do right

Guidelines for volunteering overseas #1, #2, #3, #4

How to determine if an aid project is a good idea

Would you be willing to do this?

More bad donor advice - a previous critique on another Kristof article

According to TechCentral, a South African technology news content provider, Paypal is to soon launch in South Africa through collaboration with a bank called First National bank.

We have not confirmed this, but if it is true then at long last South Africans would be able to securely receive payments for their goods online via the popular service. You could in the past make payments via Paypal from South Africa but because  T.I.A you were not allowed to receive payments through Paypal.

First National Bank has finally confirmed what SA Internet users have long suspected. The banking group is partnering with online payments specialist PayPal, a subsidiary of online auctions giant eBay, to allow South Africans to use the US company’s full suite of products for the first time.

FNB on Wednesday invited journalists to a press briefing on 25 March, to be addressed by bank CEO Michael Jordaan and senior executives from PayPal. They plan to discuss how they’ll work together to “make global e-commerce faster and easier for the SA market”, according to the invitation.

TechCentral

TechMasai will followup on the news to cormfirm whether it is true.

 

Related posts:

1. Google Trikers Continue Their Journey In South Africa. Interesting Footage Of Them At Moses Mabhida Stadium
2. The Negative Effect of All The Used PCs From Europe Which Are Coming To Africa
3. South African President Jacob Zumas` Speech At The African Union Summit Concerning Information Technology
4. The Top 6 South African Social Networks A Review

Much has been said about the 'great' TED stage. It is known to be a stage from which the world's most progressive thinkers share their minds.

Well, today at the iHub, another stage was born. It may not be as 'big' but the ideas were definitely 'big'. Today from 4.30 to 6.00 pm an audience gathered to hear 3 speakers from the W3C, dotMobi and a fellow with the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado talk about the mobile internet, mobile web standards and the intersection between copyright law and the inherent nature of openness and open collaboration on the Internet/WWW.

This is was especially enlightening as Afrinnovator.com went mobile today. You can get Afrinnovator.com in a custom, lightweight version on your mobile device, whether it is a basic low end GPRS enabled phone or a Smartphone! Try it out, and we're going .mobi soon!

In the next few posts we will share the talks from the event. For now have a look at some photos:

So tomorrow 12th Friday 2010 there will be 1%EVENT Nairobi hosted by @ToneeNdungu. Why only 1% percent? At first it looks odd to me that we only think of one percent instead of the whole 100%.  Then it hits me how huge the value of % percent in anything we do If the Kenyan politicians stop  [...]kachwanya

Crowdfund is a venture capitalist start-up from South Africa which has made a small impact on the African cyberspace. Crowdfund promises to invest in local South African entrepreneurs by raising money through a community based model.

The idea in their own words is that

1. 1000 people get together and invest R1,000+ each by pooling the money into the Crowdfund.
   .
2. The Crowdfund board approves to use the fund to finance between 10 – 20 teams with excellent ideas, and helps convert the ideas into workable prototypes, in exchange for equity
   .
3. Economies of scale play a huge role in getting maximum bang for each Rand
   .
4. Once a workable prototype is developed, the formal Venture Capital network is approached for further funding, and the Crowdfund most probably cashes out

The idea is unique and seems to fit the  the South African tech scene. The best part being that since the risk is spread over a large number of investors if a company fails, then the investors won’t make painful losses.

The Crowdfund board who will be making the choices of who gets funded and who won’t, include

• Eve Dmochowska
• Heather Ford
• Vinny Lingham
• Justin Spratt
• Elan Lohmann
• Craig Blumenow
• Brett Haggard

The board might be up to the task, but let us wait and see what develops.

 

Related posts:

1. A Review Of The Reasons Why Most African Entreprenuers Start Of With Social Networks
2. South African President Jacob Zumas` Speech At The African Union Summit Concerning Information Technology
3. The Top 6 South African Social Networks A Review
4. Zains African Assets Are Bought For 10.7 Billion By Bharti, An Indian Company

Authored by: Sarabjeet Singh

I read a brilliant article 'Design Thinking for Social Innovation' published in the Winter 2010 edition of the Stanford Social Innovation Review today. The article is inspired from the work of IDEO, a global innovation and design firm, and is authored by Tim Brown (CEO and President of IDEO) and Jocelyn Wyatt (IDEO's Social Innovation Lead).

The article talks about the need for human-centric design to solve complex problems and takes one through the key elements in the 'Design Thinking' process. Through examples of the water treatment centre run by the Naandi Foundation in Hyderabad, India to the Mosquito Net distribution program in Africa, it brings out the importance of design thinking in every aspect of creating and delivering a product or service.

"The design thinking process is best thought of as a system of overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps. There are three spaces to keep in mind: inspiration, ideation, and implementation. Think of inspiration as the problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solutions; ideation as the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas; and implementation as the path that leads from the project stage into people's lives." says Brown and Wyatt.

Inspiration is the first step towards creation of a product or service. Observing how things and people work in the real world (which might require living with local communities) is very helpful for drawing inspiration. The example of the use of the positive deviance initiative, where the problem of malnutrition in Vietnam was solved by discovering the solution within the same community, is a good one of drawing inspiration.

In the Ideation space, the authors highlight the importance of letting ideas flow (while deferring judgment) till the end of brainstorming sessions. Organizations often restrict choices while ideating on projects, which is easier to do in the short-term. However, divergent thinking and more ideas are what lead to disruptive solutions and are beneficial in the long-run. It is also advisable to have multi-disciplinary teams when collaborating. 

The last space is Implementation, which is the key to the creation of the final product or service. In this space, prototyping is extremely important. Testing within a small and well chosen sample set of users can help create a revolutionary product.

If you want to learn Human Centric Design (HCD) and use it for innovation, you can use the IDEO designed HCD Toolkit, which helps organizations understand people's needs in new ways, find innovative solutions to meet these needs, and deliver solutions with financial sustainability in mind. The toolkit was created in collaboration with the Gates Foundation and non-profit groups IDE, ICRW and Heifer International.

(author unknown)

I've really getting neurotic about mobile phones. Not so much in developing for them or their being the new-new data platform but mainly due to the fixation in how Africa is the fastest growing mobile market in the world. Yes, it's true, but that's because penetration is so low, whereas in North America of Europe, the market is saturated already.

I've said it before but the growth figures are way out of line. I have two numbers with two different carriers here in Côte d'Ivoire: Orange and Moov. I have to have both of these numbers as at any given point at least one of them is without a signal and that is often when standing directly below a tower. The networks are overloaded.

This last week put me over the top when both phones were without data access and voice at various points with 2-3 hour delays on SMS's. It makes people pouting about 3G access on their iPhone seem paltry. Although, after talking to a friend of a friend who was in Myanmar for the last three years, the networks here are blissful by comparison.

I'm seriously thinking about getting a third and looking like a true idiot with all these devices dangling off of me. But, it's the case that the mobile systems here, as in many parts of Africa (I've personally experienced the same problems in Ghana as well as Congo) are purely set up for the extraction of wealth. What mining and rubber harvest was to Sub-Saharan Africa during Colonial times, the mobile phone industry is to Modern times. Put in as little money as possibly to get out as much as possible. This explains why there are so many mobile players out there and they all offer pretty much the same kind of deal--a less than stellar one.

Sure, the market will continue to grow and with every person getting two or three numbers, it's going to look huge. But, for anyone actually using the networks on the ground, they leave a great deal to be desired, no matter how large and pretty their billboards down in Zone Quatre appear.

miquel

This is a paper about the Rural Internet Kiosk and its objective for sustainable development to reach rural, remote, and isolated communities across the African continent. With the knowledge that nothing happens in a vacuum Intersat Africa and Voices of Africa for Sustainable Development are rising to the challenge to meet the information and communications needs of rural communities, using a multi-sectoral social business approach to achieve universal, affordable and equitable access through the implementation of the Rural Internet Kiosk. The Rural Internet Kiosk (RIK) is an independent, self-contained, 100% solar powered kiosk featuring three industrial design computer terminals, an administrator terminal, and broadband wireless Internet connectivity.

read more

Crystal

Another Cassava Republic author wins a literary prize. This time its Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani for I Do Not Come To You By Chance, bagging best first book award for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Congrats Adaobi - we're so proud of you!
Click here to join Cassava Republic's Facebook group.

Jean Pierre Nshimyimana initiator of the LifeEngine Clean Water Project, is developing a business that will provide clean water and green energy technologies and environmental engineering consultancy to provide superior services, designs, knowledge, and green energy solutions to community-based initiatives in Rwanda-Legatum

Jean Pierre Speaks at Harvard from Sean Clauson on Vimeo.

Hi everyone, nice to be a part of ICT4D.at. I have been bouncing some emails back and forth with Florian and he asked that I blog on the site, which I will try to do as regularly as time permits.

Over the last few years I have been working on a number of projects concerning new mobile technologies, such as WiMAX, smartphone applications and investigating mobile market places in developing countries. One of the concerning issues that I see is that despite the possibilities of these technologies to change the information access and communication landscape in developing countries, they may also contribute to a new form of the digital divide emerging.
Technologies such as WiMAX-mobile broadband-can technologically fill the Internet connectivity gap like no other technology on the market (satellite technology while covering most of the world is expensive and lesser in quality), and is being used widely in developing countries, Pakistan springs to mind. However, it has not filtered down to the ‘bottom of the period’ nor is it likely to due to economic and political imperatives, which I will not get into. Mobile broadband and smartphones present a technological hybrid future - that is the convergence of mobile devices with PC like functionality and Internet connectivity, but it also presents a potential deepening of the digital divide. So while NGOs, governments and development practitioners are working to close the digital divide (through the MDGs, One Laptop Per Child etc), a new divide between the haves and the have nots may emerge. As mentioned by Ken Banks, the Nokia 1100 remains the most popular mobile phone and Vodaphone recently announced a new cheap mobile phone aimed at the developing world (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8516079.stm). Therefore it is clear that basic voice and SMS functionality will remain the key use of the mobile phones, and probably we will continue to see innovative mobile market place initiatives (such as www.cellbazaar.com) and other SMS and voice based applications. But it is a large leap from this use of mobile technology to mobile broadband, smartphones and tablets. The question is do we aim to prevent this new digital divide and adopt an interventionist approach or allow these recent advances to take their own course?

Stan.

MTN Group today announced an increase in revenue and subscribers for the year ended 31 December 2009, they however admitted a negative impact due to the economic crisis, the introduction of new...

This is a summary only. Visit ITNewsAfrica.com for full links, other content, and more!

Irrespective of people’s stance on the climate change debate, there is no getting around the fact that the green agenda is one that companies of all sizes can no longer ignore, believes Rohil...

This is a summary only. Visit ITNewsAfrica.com for full links, other content, and more!

Below is the “full” Kenya Digital Study key findings summary on Internet usage that was presented a week ago to Media, Marketing and ICT Professionals by the ICT Board and TNS Research International. It was uploaded to the Kenya ICT Board web site just a couple of days ago:

Digital Kenya Key Findings March 2010 View more presentations from kemibaro.

Shortly after the earthquake in Haiti I decided that it was my time to do something and try to help out in a way that went beyond the usual “effort” of donating some cash to a charity. Having a background in wireless (wifi) networking has had me thinking about the applications for wifi networks in disaster areas for some time. Wifi networks can be deployed quickly, cheaply, require no spectrum licenses and most of all have been proven to work. The fast roll-out of wifi networks after Hurricanes Katrina & Charley in the US had shown the benefits of such technology.

Anyway I digress, this is not a blogpost about technology. What I want to write about is how digital media can be used to organise a disaster relief effort. The first thing I did after the idea started formulating in my head was to put up a blogpost. After this blogpost went up it was important to drive traffic to it.Twitter is the best way to do this so I tweeted a link to my post (including the title). As expected this led to an increased number of visitors to the blogpost and shortly after that it also spun out into a good number of comments. Comments are the real lifeblood of a blog. Without comments there would be no discussion or exchange of opinions and your blogpost will just fade away into the grey mist of time. Comments will also increase the page ranking of your blog as keywords used (and repeated) will be picked up by the search engines. It’s a bit of a vicious circle. More comments will drive more traffic which will result in more comments….

I also put direct contact details (email, twitter and even phone number) in the blogpost. I would normally not include all this but the point of this blogpost was to raise awareness & create action and support so it was essential for readers to not only be able to comment but to also contact me. So now I had lots of traffic coming to the blog, plenty of comments and an increasing number of emails, tweets and phonecalls. In other word people were becoming aware of what I was trying to achieve and the support that I needed was starting to come in. No time to relax though. I next setup a dedicated website, Linkedin group & FaceBook page. My aim was now to move traffic away from the blogpost and direct it to the website which was now the hub of our online activities. The website would contain the “who, what, where & how” while twitter, Facebook and Linkedin would give updates on progress and create discussion.

I was not alone in working digital (online) media for these means. The updates and “calls to action” in regards to Haiti was ever increasing. There was a constant stream of updates on the situation in Haiti. There were even people in Port-au-Prince using Twitter to distribute information about aid distribution or to offer to share their meagre resources. News of any of the aftershocks also made it onto Twitter long before the mainstream media picked it up.

We are now 6 weeks into our relief effort and the results have been astounding. Through the use of social media we have now a pool of 45+ qualified volunteers, around $250,000 worth of donated equipment ready to ship, a forward staging area in Florida and air transport from Florida to Haiti. 95% of our communication internally and externally goes via email, twitter & Skype. We have also been in constant contact with NGO’s & relief organisations on the ground, ISP’s & Telecoms companies in Haiti and what’s most important we’ve been talking to Haitians directly. The greatest advantage of this is that our “organisation” is working with people spread across different continents, across different timezones without being bound to location. I can be anywhere but as long as I have internet access I can use my trusty Nokia E71 or my laptop to communicate, arrange and stay in touch. This also means that there is no need to spend funds on office space, equipment or other overheads. That way we can ensure that almost every penny we receive in donations is spent on actual aid to Haiti. Now I am not saying that this is groundbreaking or in any way pioneering but I hope that it goes some way to showing other people how it is possible to organise something like this by using free digital media tools. It lowers the threshhold to actually making a difference and reaching halfway across the globe to help people in need.

Now Haiti Connect is by no means “there” yet. We are now in urgent need of flights to fly 4 volunteers & equipment from Ireland to Florida. Only then can we actually start building the much-needed networks. So if you read this and are in a position to help us with this please do not hesitate to contact me! And of course we need to keep up the ongoing fundraising during the 6 month duration of our initiative to ensure we can cover all our expenses. Again, most of the costs are incurred in Haiti so the money spend on them will benefit the local economy.