Dix jours après le violent séisme en Haïti, deux techniciens d’Inveneo, CIO Mark Summer et Andris Bjornson, sont arrivés sur place pour le déploiement d’un réseau wifi longue distance dont bénéficieront les organisations partenaires de NetHope situées à Port-au-Prince. Ce réseau permettra à ces organisations humanitaires d’accéder à l’Internet, d’utiliser la téléphonie VoIP, de collaborer et de partager l’information.

Après une catastrophe naturelle, la restauration de la communication est essentielle et plusieurs organismes comme Inveneo sont en train de mettre en place leurs propres solutions TIC afin de soutenir les efforts de la reconstruction en Haïti :

• Dons par SMS : Les opérateurs mobiles dans différents pays ont lancé une collecte de dons par SMS en faveur des organisations comme la Croix-Rouge qui viennent en aide aux victimes du séisme.
• S.O.S. par SMS : Suite à une collaboration entre plusieurs organisations y comprises Samasource, Ushahidi, FrontlineSMS, CrowdFlower et le départment d’Etat américain, les abonnés de Voilà, le principal opérateur de téléphonie mobile en Haïti, peuvent envoyer gratuitement un texte au 4636 pour appeler à l’aide.
• Recherche de Personnes : Google a mis en ligne un outil permettant de rechercher une personne ou de donner des informations sur une personne trouvée.
• Bénévolat Virtuel : Samasource recrute les bénévoles pour traduire les textes en créole vers l’anglais et The Extraordinaries a tenté d’utiliser les bénévoles pour identifier les personnes perdues dans les photos.
• Kijan mwen ka ede ou? : Comment est-ce que je peux vous aider ? Google vient de lancer son traducteur créole.

Qu’il soit une solution qui connecte les donateurs à l’étranger avec les organisations sur place, une solution qui connecte les bénévoles avec les actions humanitaires virtuelles, ou une solution qui permet aux gens de surmonter les barrières de la langue, les gens peuvent se mobiliser et répondre aux besoins locaux dans une façon informée et efficace grâce aux TIC. Malgré ses coordonnées géographiques, Haïti n’est surtout pas isolé.

Have you wondered how microfinance institutions (MFI's) could leverage short message services (SMS) text messages to provide most cost-effective loans to their customers? Ben Lyons of FrontlineSMS:Credit has, and he's come up with an intriguing solutions: middleware between mPayment systems like m-Pesa and Zap and MFI management information systems like MiFos and Octopus.

FronlineSMS:Credit Solution

Right now, MFI clients and loan officers send in loan repayments via mPayment services, which notify the MFI via SMS text messages. That's great if you only have a few clients, but successful MFI's soon run into a scaling problem - there are only so many mPayments that MFI staff can transcribe from mobile phone to MFI accounting system at one time before being overwhelmed.

So FrontlineSMS:Credit sits between the mPayment system and the MFI accounting system, quickly converting the SMS's from the mPayment system into accurate client loans and repayments in the MFI management information system (MIS). It can also serve as a conduit between client/loan officer and MFI, quickly responding with loan balance and repayment progress.

Here is Ben Lyons describing the FrontlineSMS:Creidt process at Inveneo's mission*social offices:

Find out more about FrontlineSMS:Credit on their website or on Twitter.

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We've seen all manner of business models upended with the digital revolution, from travel agents to the entire music industry. And now, Google has just wiped out another. Its time to say goodbye to text translation services for Swahili and Afrikaans.

Good Enough

If you jump around the Internets long enough, you'll find Google Translate an indispensable aid in breaking down language barriers. You can put in text or just the URL and Google will create a pretty good translation of your target text in multiple languages.

No, Google doesn't produce elegant translation, but its good enough and that's its competitive edge. For the vast majority of translation work, you're looking for the general point of the text, not a legally equivalent document. So Google Translate, at free, is eliminating the vast majority of translations jobs.

Now in Two African Languages

And now they've expanded their services to include Kiswahili and Afrikaans targeting the millions in East and Southern Africa that speak these languages more fluently than English. And they're doing it for free. In fact, I've even added their handy widget to this post.

• Bad News:
  Translation services companies who previously had a lock on Kiswahili and Afrikaans markets will soon see a significant decline in demand. The majority of requests that were for basic documents is about to migrate to Google Translate. Yet, they'll not go out of business. There is still a need for professional, human, translation - there always will be.
• Good News
  By removing a major barrier to cross language communication, Google Translate has just opened whole worlds of content to those who either only know Kiswahili and Afrikaans or who don't. And with its low barrier to use (Internet access, web browser), Google has democratized what was once rare and expensive.

What Languages Next?

In cheering the Google Translate expansion into Africa, I do hope they don't stop with only two. There are so many more languages, like say Amharic, Kinyarwanda, or Hausa, that would have equal impact as Kiswahili or Afrikaans in bringing a new population online. Let us hope and envision a day when every language is only a click away from our own.

No matter how much bandwidth comes via the new fiber optic cables, there still will be massive offline areas in Africa. So there will still be a great craving for the world's knowledge in classrooms and living rooms from Accra to Lusaka.

Openmoko has just released what might be the killer app to supply a large portion of that knowledge to offline areas - the WikiReader. This $99 device has the 3+ million Wikipedia articles at your fingertips with only a micro-SD card and 2 AAA batteries - no Internet required.

Intrigued? Then listen to Pat Meier-Johnson explain it in this exclusive ICTworks Interview:

Openmoko has been behind large open-source initiatives such as the openmoko opensource wireless phone, and have a greater purpose for the WikiReader. They say:

NGOs and governments in emerging countries are key to the core value of the WikiReader. We believe an uncomplicated device with long battery life and no strings attached could bring this vast repository of knowledge to many people around the world who otherwise could not access it.

I can see this being an amazing resource for educators in rural schools. They would now have access to the Wikipedia's wealth of knowledge at a fraction of the cost for computers or Internet access. In addition, with the Parental Control feature, they don't have to worry about young prying eyes seeing too much.

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Last year the microblogging service Twitter, pulled its outbound SMS service from Africa. While only a few technology elite bemoaned its loss, for me it was a great disappointment. Twitter didn't see that the SMS carrier fees Twitter had to pay ($1,000 per account per year on average) to send SMS to African subscribers were worth future value of these users.

Now ArabCrunch reports that Twitter is in talks with Zain to bring outbound SMS alerts back to Africa for its subscribers. And that's a big deal!

Why Twitter Matters to African ICT Businesses

Twitter is an amazingly convenient way for businesses to reach their best customers, quickly, with breaking news. In the USA, its mainly a web application. In Africa, with its small Internet user based but explosive mobile phone penetration (greater than light bulbs!), Twitter's SMS return can herald a whole new way to get and keep customer attention with targeted messages. For example:

1. Daily specials and sales
2. Location updates of technicians or sales reps
3. Quick feedback to customer questions
4. Service outage or downtime updates
5. Virus or hacking threats

That's just the internal use of Twitter. Add in the sales possibilities around training clients how to use Twitter or upgrading them to hosted SMS options like Frontline SMS or RapidSMS and the return of Twitter to Africa could become a real boost to ICT adoption. Just look at its Facebook in Africa, Twitter already become a must-have for the tech elite and leading companies, and its just getting started. Expect it to rival Facebook due to is amazing ease of use and immediate gratification for both sender and receiver of the tweet.

Africa-Focused Twitter Experimentation

At Inveneo, we're experimenting with Twitter and hosted SMS options to develop solutions for the African market. Just this past weekend, we ran a real-time SMS feedback demo at Maker Faire Africa, using Frontline SMS and Twitter. Of course, to keep up with our ideas, be sure to subscribe to:

• Inveneo on Twitter
• ICTworks on Twitter

And if you have suggestions for future Twitter and SMS experiments, please let us know. We're always interested in mixing SMS and web-based technologies to find African business opportunities.

Hat tip to Appfrica

I've very excited about Maker Farie Africa, a celebration of African ingenuity, innovation and invention. Taking place this weekend at the AITI KACE in Accra, Ghana, the event promises to be a watershed moment for African inventiveness.

I'll be there looking for new and exciting business and technical opportunities to share, as well as manning the Inveneo stand. We'll be displaying our own hacks - an SMS-based conference feedback system and on-demand radio station.

SMS Conference Feedback

The real-time SMS-based conference feedback system allows attendees to make comments about featured projects, respond to speakers, and discuss their favorite inventions using text messages sent from their mobile phones. All appropriate messages will be displayed on a monitor at the Inveneo booth for the public to view, and via Twitter, the social networking website. You can follow the conference on the Inveneo Twitter feed.

SMS On-Demand Radio Station

Inveneo will also be taking SMS song requests for a low-powered FM-channel radio broadcast to conference attendees. This demonstration shows how Inveneo technology could be used to make local radio possible in rural and remote areas across Africa. Together the demonstrations show how ICTs can enable and expand communications across under-served communities around the world.

If you're around, please be sure to stop by, or give a call on 0265 24 43 24

Everyone knows how SMS works - you can send an email to one other person. And there are SMS aggreators like FrontlineSMS that allow you to send text messages to multiple people. But now we have RapidSMS, which promises to take SMS text messaging to a whole new level.

RapidSMS

RapidSMS is an open-source framework for dynamic SMS communication developed by Matt Berg, the UNICEF Innovation Team, and a core team of volunteer programmers (with a little help from Inveneo).

Developed over the past year, in the field and in code sprints, RapidSMS promises to be an innovative platform for SMS-based solutions using server-side logic.

RapidResponse

The first solution, RapidResponse, is a unified mHealth malnutrition monitoring platform that includes screening for malaria and diarrhea - major killers of children under 5 years old in Africa. Here is a great video on the RapidResponse benefits:

Jokko

Tostan has rolled out their own RapidSMS soltion, according to MobileActive. In a year-long pilot with UNICEF, several Senegalese communities are using "Jokko" as a low-cost system to encourage group decision-making in the villages.

Jokko utilizes the RapidSMS functionality dubbed 'SMSForum, as MobileActive explains:

Joining the Jokko community

SMSForum allows community members to access a server in the Tostan office by sending their text to a “magic number”. This number feeds directly into the server or computer which then forward the SMS to a group of community members phones.

The platform supports easy and dynamic creation of multiple groups of people. For example, one village  has created a discussion group exclusively for youth. The basics of this system work much like a group list for text-messaging, however, the sender is only charged for the cost of one local text message. The cost of text messages sent to the “magic number” are covered by the administrator, in this case Tostan.

Innovation Opportunity

Now let us take these examples and think of new applications for RapidSMS. Personally, I think the SMSForum functionality is quite empowering. I can see self-assigned groups starting up, much like a listerv or Yahoo Groups and Google Groups, but all SMS-based.

This would be great for both development projects as well as commercial enterprises. Make the inbound SMS a premium short code and add advertising to the outbound SMS and you could recover costs or even make a small profit on such a system for general community use.

But enough of my ideas. What are yours?

Our inaugural ICTworks Interview is with Crystal Watley Kigoni, Voices of Africa who will explain her project, Access to Knowledge, which is better know as "Pimp My Tuk Tuk.

Here she is describing it for us:

Crystal's Mobile Information Empowerment Centers will bring computers and the Internet to locations with no infrastructure in a fun, innovative, and sustainable way.

A fully solar-powered ICT-enabled tuk tuk will be driven down roads that rarely see cars to small community groups who previously had no access to information due to lack of electricity and other infrastructure. The Center staff will do an analysis with each community group to determine their current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and to ascertain their informational needs, downloading, printing, or burning CD's of the needed information.

Returning each month to provide further resources and analysis, these visits will empower the groups to become more aware of the power and potential of their communities and how ICTs can expand their influence. Further analysis and support will be available at the main training location in Likoni.

See more about this project and other efforts at Voices of Africa.

If you're used to the poor selection of maps for African cities, let me show you the future, today. Google Maps has an amazingly accurate and detailed map of Nairobi, Kenya, where you can do detail searches, for restaurants or computer stores for example, and you'll get almost exact locations.

This is a great resource that apparently got its start when Google opened an office in Nairobi and realized the office couldn't be found on Google Maps. From there, Google added its own map points and then opened up Map Maker to users who want to add their own data to more than 122 countries, including most of Africa.

Now you too can make a little difference - create or edit your own Map Maker data for places you know in African. Even big cities like Lagos, Nigeria could use the love.

As Google says, "Let's map Africa!"

Here is another interesting approach to an all-in-one solar powered computer lab: SolarNetOne

SolarNetOne combines conditioned, renewable power; computers; WiFi; and a VSAT uplink to offer Internet connectivity where there was no existing power infrastructure. Designed by Scott Johnson, in consultation with Vint Cerf, the basic kit includes Open Source software, off the shelf components that can be replaced easily, all the cables and wires required to assemble the system, and costs about $15,000.

You can see a diagram here, and watch a video of Scott below:

But building the system and installing it are two different issues, as reported by Martin Streicher on IBM's developerWorks:

The first SolarNetOne installation [at Katsina State University] in Nigeria remains in continuous operation and is used for e-mail, word processing, and Internet surfing. Except for an initial customs hiccup that stranded the system's power hardware in Germany for several months, the system has suffered no major problems. It's widely regarded as the most stable and reliable system in the region.

In point of fact, corruption is often the most significant impediment to deployment. Often, shady customs officials or other government employees can cause problems. Johnson reports that at least one deployment was scuttled by efforts of proprietary interests seeking greater "developing world market share."

At Inveneo, we can relate to the issues around installation - that's why we developed our local partner network, the Inveneo Certified ICT Partner Program. We see local ICT companies as the best, and only sustainable way to be sure that innovative ideas like SolarNetOne go from prototype to scale.