ICTworks by Inveneo

It was a normal day by Accra standards. I walked out of the house ready to make my way to the center of town for an interview with a homegrown tech company; Esoko. I hailed a taxi and started haggling with the driver, once we had settled on a price, we were off on the traffic-ridden roads into central Accra. An average of 3-15 street vendors would emerge at the larger intersections and red traffic lights trying to sell us anything from fruits, jewelry, books, to shoes (don't ask me how/who would try on shoes while driving!).

Thanks to our zealous vendors, the market played out right outside the taxi windows accompanied by the sounds coming from the taxi radio speakers: Ghanaian Hiplife music and commentary on everything and anything on life in Accra. In those moments, I was immersed in the familiarity and novelty of the experience, completely unaware how my perspective on the market, media and communications in Ghana was about to change in the next few hours.

Below I detail what I learned from Sarah Bartlett (Communications Director) and Andrea Biardi (Technical Manager) who graciously sat with me and described the ins and outs of Esoko (Electronic Market, Soko = Market in Swahili), it's role in Information and Communication Technology for Development and why it could be changing markets in Africa in unprecedented ways.

How did Esoko begin?

A decade ago Mark Davies, a Welsh-South African, fresh from the dot com boom made plans to travel across West Africa on his motorcycle. During this trip he interacted with both rural and urban communities and he kept thinking how life would be different for the people he was meeting if they had basic technology and infrastructure like stable power, printing services and internet; basically, services that people in the west took for granted. What kind of opportunities and innovation would arise from that consistent access to technology? Thus BusyInternet was born; initially an Internet Café, Internet Service Provider and a business incubator run in partnership with the World Bank.

BusyInternet provides basic technology services to the public and has grown into a successful technology hub located in Accra amongst the hustle and bustle of the Kwame Nkrumah circle. As it grew into the largest technology center in West Africa, Mark immersed himself in a new challenge. With mobile phones spreading rapidly and with so much data that needed to be collected and shared, especially in rural areas dominated by agriculture, it seemed the missing link was a technical platform that could facilitate information sharing.

The idea of using mobile phones as that platform was obvious, as in Ghana the penetration rate for mobiles was upwards of 85% in city centers and averaging at 60% across the country. And it has continued to grow since: the International Telecommunication Union reported at the end of 2010 cellular penetration reached 75.4% across Ghana.

So in 2005, Mark and a few software developers started a new R&D company focused on local solutions to local problems using new technologies. Mobile phones played a key role. They created a plan to facilitate agricultural e-commerce under an endeavor they called ‘TradeNet’. Their first product became an application that enabled the dissemination and collection of price information for market commodities like grains and vegetables using simple SMS.

This information was accessible to anyone through the Internet but what made the tools from Esoko powerful and innovative was that you did not need a computer or the Internet to interact with the wealth of pricing information housed on the web server. With the simplest mobile phone, using basic SMS text you can access a world of pricing information. With the click of your mobile’s keypad or through auto-alerts customized for your needs the information would appear on your phone on a periodic feed. You therefore have access to the most up-to-date price information for the commodities of your choice be it coffee, cassava or wheat, at the tip of your fingers.

Mistowa and TradeNet: Before Esoko

In 2006 a partnership was formed between TradeNet and Mistowa, a regional program funded by USAID that aimed to remove trade obstacles in West African markets. Through this partnership, TradeNet emerged to provide an electronic agribusiness information exchange platform that enabled peer-to-peer trading. The initiative was able to offer access to real-time market information including commodity prices, offers to buy and sell between farmers, merchants and traders as well as business contacts on more than 300 products, from over 500 markets throughout West Africa.

TradeNet's work with Mistowa brought to light the kinds of applications that would fulfill the needs of the agribusiness sector. And with 60% of Africans earning their living from working in agriculture, a sector so underserved in terms of technology solutions, it made sense for TradeNet to continue in that area. TradeNet started hiring more software developers, and the applications started getting more interesting.

By this time, there was a growing global trend in using mobiles/ICT to exchange information in a new way, shorten supply chains and get people better money for their crops. It had become resource-consuming to obtain information through the classical methods - collecting forms, using landlines, travelling to locations etc. Many projects and businesses were trying to create electronic systems to solve supply chain problems but were not technology experts or developers themselves.

Around this time, TradeNet re-branded itself as ‘Esoko’ or Electronic Markets (Soko is the Swahilli word for market) and became one of the pioneers in this growing field of African mobile innovation joining the likes of Ushahidi, Frontline SMS and SlimTrader, companies that are creating innovative mobile solutions specifically for the African customer. Esoko focuses on tools for market and agricultural information and is expanding its efforts into other realms whereas other companies in the sector focus on m-money, m-banking, crowd-sourcing disaster/phenomena data and so on. In a continent with such growing demand for mobile technology, it is encouraging to see the variety and growing number of such technology companies creating solutions for the specific needs of the African customer.

Development Work, Local Interests and Sustainability

Several development projects have used the platform and Esoko hopes they will continue to do so in the future; it’s an ideal fit for projects that have a central mandate to integrate information and communication technologies into their projects. Esoko can serve as an ‘out of the box’ market information platform while providing training and support. This means that while Esoko is not part of the core structure that is built for any specific project, organizations can bring in Esoko as an outside expert for the tools they need rather than re-inventing the technology wheel each time.

Many donor-funded development projects have similar challenges surrounding sustainability. Typically, when a project closes down, Esoko looks for a new partner in a new location. In many cases, these new partners have a different value chain or mandate and may be working with different end-users e.g. traders versus farmers.

In other scenarios somebody has to take over and continue to provide the services the community has grown accustomed to instead of a completely dismantling and scrapping many months and years of work. In a new model, the project starts with government or donor funding and then transitions into a business; a franchise that can grow into a sustainable company. The first franchise launched in Ghana in January, 2011, will be a good model to pilot this potential solution toward sustainability.

Local businesses in Ghana are now using Esoko; utilizing some of their apps and services the same way that larger projects do. This kind of local interest also gives credence to the franchise model as there is demand in local markets for the products. Esoko has set up a shortcode across all mobile operator services in Ghana on the phone line ‘1900’.; shortcodes in other countries have also been set up. Franchises in Nigeria and Mozambique have secured funding and are well on their way to launching. The USAID funded Market Linkage Initiative in Malawi is also working to develop a franchise as a part of its efforts.

In other countries, government entities like the Ministry of Agriculture in North Sudan and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in Nigeria have tried to integrate the Esoko platform into their own methods. This will undoubtedly contribute to a sustainable presence of these services as they continue to evolve and integrate into how communities do business.

Sustainability through Best Practices and Failure

Over time, Esoko’s driving principle has evolved into actively seeking feedback from users and stakeholders to drive improvements and new product development. This 'innovation driven' approach allows the company and its products to stay relevant as it continues to bring real value to its customers. This ultimately leads to better sustainability and profitability.

This approach introduces a different accountability schema than is common in the development sector because as a business, Esoko is accountable to its bottom line - profit. This is very different from being accountable to the interests and discretion of donors who regulate the access and flow of steady funds. For this reason, Esoko would want to tell its stories of failure along with success so it can understand its own pitfalls and evolve more rapidly to meet customer demand.

User feedback from one partner to better the platform for their specific needs oftentimes ends up benefiting multiple partners. This is true for some of Esoko’s main offerings (the stock tracking application was initially designed and created for Esoko’s Sudanese partners) as well as small enhancements to the platform, like adding tagging and comment boxes to the price upload page. These comment boxes ended up transforming the tool into a sophisticated aspect of the price information product; introducing comments about quantitative price data took the product from a simple system to access price data to something that was stand-out from anything that was available in the market and can inform the user about markets in a multi-dimensional way. The product was simple enough to use, but also very powerful for its ability to provide qualitative price data such as explanations about price hikes and other price-related occurrences. Enhancements like this are continuous and Esoko’s partners are the driving force behind them.

Presence across the Continent: Esoko in Africa

The network is available across Africa with public data being available to all users. When Esoko representatives are out in communities doing training and in meetings, most users express their excitement about the technology; their reactions show the technology to be something they have long been waiting for. Once the technology is deployed, Esoko works closely to help local partners customize to the specific needs and cultural idiosyncrasies of that community.

Monitoring and Evaluation for Mobile Tech in Development

In November 2010 a survey of 62 farmers in Northern Ghana who have been receiving price alerts for one year confirmed that they have benefited from the service, with an average improvement of 40% on reported deals and revenue. 68% said they would be willing to pay around $1.30 a month, with another 29% suggesting they would consider it, and only 3% saying they would not. The users of the products have been able to make more informed decisions about negotiating better prices, selling farther away, selling as a collective and sending products to Accra on a mass scale. These findings and others about mobile usage have been building momentum for mobile tech and its role in development helping Esoko realize the importance and power of M&E data in telling the story of mobile tech in Africa to the world.

To go beyond anecdotal reports, Esoko has invited researchers to design third party evaluations for these SMS tools. The surveys would obtain quantitative data for M&E that could be useful in showing how the tools are changing people's lives as well as the supply chain. CIRAD, a French organization, did 600 surveys; 300 people who have been using Esoko tools for two years and 300 that have not but live in a similar community and similar conditions. Those results will be out at the end of 2011. In July of 2011 NYU’s CTED in Abu Dhabi began a study to evaluate the effectiveness of the SMS-based market, taking three years to evaluate the impact of using Esoko tools on farm-gate prices and livelihoods (household assets and children in school), farmer marketing behavior (search behavior, bargaining power and market contracts) as well as the trust of other market players, especially traders. They will also gather data to find out how information spillovers and technology adoption occur among rural farmers in Africa.

Mobile Tech is a field replete with opportunities for research. There are many questions that would help understand the technology landscape, its impact and inform approaches when designing new mobile technology interventions in African markets. What is the correlation between mobile technology and development? How does the introduction of mobile technology affect communities and market systems? These questions are of interest to the larger global community as well as to local communities. Two research evaluations already done in India and Niger show that the introduction of mobile technology (voice-only) increased revenues to actors along the supply chain. These findings are cited countless times and have driven innovation as well as policies. New research about data-focused technology can lead to findings with similar implications.

Made in Africa by Africans

Esoko's employees are mainly Ghanaian and West African, with 3 African diaspora employees and 4 US/European expats. Visiting employees typically come for 6 months to bring in knowledge about the latest technology. Currently there is a group of 60 young professionals at Esoko building and supporting the technology. The truly exciting thing about the work Esoko is doing is that it is coming from Africa, and that it is complex technology. Esoko today has a solid user interface, a strong API to communicate with all the different mobile providers to get data from the field processed and then sent out via SMS to end users, and a complete setup of staff and developers comparable to a tech company anywhere in the world.

Impact: Business for Profit & Social Value – Disrupting the Market

According to Esoko, it is a company for profit and for social good because the two come hand in hand. The company has the intention of enabling better transparency, heightening efficiency across value chains and spreading information as well as helping organizations, businesses and individuals get to their bottom lines faster.

As far as innovative technology, the products are designed not to completely reinvent the market, but to make markets more efficient through the presence of the right tools. These tools and solutions are enablers that let people access information more quickly, easily and cheaply. This will likely affect the way people do things, however, it is difficult to say how exactly it will change the market.

For businesses, this means tools so they can do business better; source goods locally, tighten supply chains, and make real time decisions based on quickly sourced field information. For individual farmers who have begun using Esoko, the tools have started skewing the market in ways that are easy to recognize because there is a high level of isolation typically experienced by rural producers. If a farmer has pricing information for regions more than two markets away she might forgo selling her products through several middle-men traders that would buy from her and sell at a different market. With the information at hand she could make a cost-benefit analysis to decide if it is best for her to sell her commodities far away herself or to trade with the middle-men. This decision might eliminate her need to work with middle-men who could take her product and sell it for a larger margin of profit or exploit her for their benefit. Armed with the correct pricing information, she can also negotiate a better price with the middleman. This would likely disrupt the market in unprecedented ways because none of the tools are designed to manipulate the market in any specific ways. The tools are simply enabling access to information that would put the power for decision back in the hands of the customer.

Cultural Considerations

Each country may have specific user interaction needs, which translate into Esoko helping both projects and businesses deploy properly in their markets. For example Ghana has market queens for each commodity where merchants work under the main queen. Enumerators, who collect price data from markets on a regular basis, go into each large market and approach the queens. The queens then have to be ‘courted’ and shown how they can also benefit from allowing Esoko in the market; the goal being that the queen would give approval and Esoko can become operational in that market. The enumerators continue to visit the queen and the markets enabling Esoko to culturally integrate with the market.

In one instance that illuminates the cultural elements and the benefit of 'design for the customer' approach, Kumasi’s market queen was putting high taxes for importing onion from Burkina Faso leading to the creation of a renegade onion trade happening on the streets to forgo the market. While the queens have the power to slightly fix the price in Ghanaian markets, Esoko is able to use features like comments on pricing data to describe the dynamics that play into the fluctuation of prices. This qualitative data helps makes sense of the quantitative price data as well as the cultural and socio-economic context of events in the market.

Esoko is a new inventive breed of African technology company. As the demand for cellular technology continues to grow rapidly, the relevance and impact of mobile innovators will also grow for the African market. With a projection of 170% growth for mobile phone usage (85% growth in smart phone use and 150% in non-smart phones) across Africa in the coming 5 years, technology innovators have the opportunity to impact the market in unprecedented ways that increase transparency, simplify supply chains and maximize benefit to the users. It is becoming increasingly hard to imagine that this kind of technology would not have a significant impact on Africa's development.

1) Can you give a little background to the BOSCO Uganda Project and your role in the project? How did you become interested in working in the HCI field.

BOSCO Uganda (Battery Operated Systems for Community Outreach) is a rural communications project based in Gulu, Northern Uganda. It was launched in 2007 as a solar-powered, long-range wireless network covering locations in former Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps across several districts in Northern Uganda. Using adequate, low-power computer equipment BOSCO brought access to the Internet for schools, youth groups and health centers in rural areas.

The first implementing phase in 2007 was carried out by Inveneo and BOSCO, Inc. from the United States, with major support from private donors and other activists in the US, under the umbrella of Gulu Archdiocese as the local implementing partner in Uganda.

My own involvement as a Technical Advisor (based in Gulu) began early 2008 and ended just recently. It was initiated through HORIZONT3000 (Austrian Organisation for Development Co-Operation) and its personnel program, whose main objective is to support capacity building for local organizations in the developing world. For BOSCO, I was mainly focusing on organizational development and technical capacity building for Ugandan staff.

Thus, in 2008, we started to establish BOSCO as a local organization in order to maintain and expand the rural ICT infrastructure, to provide further trainings for its users, and to become a reliable implementing partner in ICT4D in the whole region of Northern Uganda.

Meanwhile BOSCO has been internationally awarded with the “Breaking Borders Award” (by Google and Global Voices) in 2010 and also attracted other international donors, like Unicef, supporting further expansion and more advanced trainings.

2) What kind of design challenges did you face with the project and how did you overcome these design challenges?

Sustainability is always a major challenge, especially when we talk about long-term self-sufficiency of an organization in the development context. Northern Uganda has seen many local, national and international organizations; mainly also due to the ongoing shift from humanitarian and emergency aid to short-term recovery and long-term development. Many of the organizations I have seen are completely dependent on donor funding and injections from outside.

At BOSCOUganda we discussed sustainability on two different levels. We founded BOSCO as an organization in order to support the performance and impact made through the rural ICT centers. Therefore sustainability meant whether 1. these centers run in a sustainable and self-sufficient way, and 2. BOSCO as an organization can in the long-run become more independent from outside support and remain an active player in its local context? For both questions we've found principle possibilities and solutions which are still in the process of implementation and thus need to be proofed.

1. The ICT centers have started to use the provided equipment for Income Generation (for example through phone charging services using solar power, office/typing services, etc.). Due to the technology used (solar power, etc.) the running costs of each of the rural ICT centers are extremely low which makes it easier for these centers to become independent.
2. We've also implemented an organizational structure in the rural centers, which is defining their internal bodies and roles that are independent from BOSCOUganda – but still with a strong link to BOSCO that can give them guidance and support in case of any challenges.
3. For BOSCOUganda, as a Non-profit-organisation we've started to establish an ICT-Training Center in Gulu Town itself. The idea here is to generate income through that training center, offer practical courses for IT students and other relevant programs, and thus – through cross-financing – give BOSCO the necessary means to continue its ICT for rural development efforts.

3) What kind of lessons do you take from your experience at BOSCO and how do you plan to apply them in the contexts of other cultures?

In Northern Uganda I've seen that the cultural context is a very important factor for the implementation of any kind of ICT4D project, although I'd say it's not only about culture but also about other relevant circumstances, backgrounds and identities – and each situation needs its specific adaptations.

If I look at BOSCOUganda, the whole project is embedded into a rural setting and still facing the challenges of a post-conflict society that has just started to rebuild their homes and leave the IDP camps. Participatory approaches are probably one important method in order to consider the relevance of a cultural context and to involve the user into the design process. But at the same time we have also been aware that BOSCOUganda has brought a completely new technology to still marginalized communities.

Therefore it would have been difficult to only expect these communities to express themselves in terms of technology and content. How can somebody know and express his or her expectations (for example in terms of content), if that person doesn’t even know what possibilities exist? A participatory approach focusing on more general development needs combined with its “translation” into a solution that sees ICT as a means for supporting these needs can help to take care of different contexts – as we tried to do it in our work.

Furthermore a regular feedback loop was then also essential in order to provide content which is useful in the specific context instead of just copying as much as possible of the content that would be relevant in western countries.

4) In terms of contextual innovation and user experience design, what steps do you take in the design process?

As already mentioned in my answer above we've tried to combine a “semi-participatory approach” together with different injections from outside, including a regular feedback loop and adaptations during the design.

In some cases for BOSCO that also meant a kind of “trial-and-error” approach. The advantage of our infrastructure was that all rural ICT centers are connected through a long-range wireless network to a central server in the main office in Gulu and then to the internet – although these centers are up to 50km outside Gulu. Through that Internal Network we had the opportunity to also experiment with “Offline” content and internal forums and chat rooms, which gave us the flexibility to use applications that would have been unavailable via the Internet due to speed limitations.

In general our approach was focusing on Web2.0 applications. For example Uganda's school curriculum in ICT (for secondary schools) is still mainly focusing on theory in computers, its components and then some office applications. Students are supposed to first study the whole history of computers, its hardware, etc. I've seen exam questions, where they are then supposed to know what the abbreviations “html” and “DOS” mean, or similar question – yet most of them still don’t even know how and why they could really use a computer.

At BOSCO we've used a completely different concept. Emails, Discussion Forums, Google Applications, Facebook, Wikispaces, Games or YouTube have been our main entry points in order to support computer literacy in rural communities. This approach has the main advantage that it focuses on “learning-by-doing” and thus gives users a much clearer picture and also the opportunity to express themselves while communicating through ICT.

Especially in the context of Northern Uganda our Web2.0 trainings also contributed to post-war recovery, as people were still suffering from more than 20 years of insurgency, abductions and many other traumatic experiences. Offering new forms of information and communication opportunities might have also helped to overcome that isolation and provided a platform for rural communities to express themselves.

5) Many contest that HCI is one of the first aspects considered in many ICT4D project, do you see ICT4D primarily as a Design Challenge?

Looking at this question I would like to start with the differentiation between ICT (Information and Communication) and “knowledge”. I'd say, “knowledge” means a much more comprehensive and relevant development aspect, than just the provision of Information and Communication facilities.

And in any ICT4D design, the focus question should be, how it contributes to “knowledge”, not only if or what information has been provided. Or the other way around, does the provided information really mean the production of any new knowledge? This question also brings me back to the cultural (and many other) circumstances that influence the processes and project implementation.

I've seen ICT4D projects were the criteria for success was rather determined by the quantity of information (offline versions of Wikipedia, huge databases of agricultural materials, etc.) provided to the beneficiaries than by the real impact of all that information and its contribution to increased “knowledge”.

Also at BOSCO we have gone through that learning process. What sense does it make to provide tons of information, if it is just not adequate or relevant – in our case also due to the quite low educational level especially in rural areas, cultural influences, etc. Therefore, yes, ICT4D is a Design Challenge, and we have realized that the provision of information and communication facilities itself cannot be the main factor of success.

The second important design challenge I would see is, how much emphasize is put on the foundation and support of a proper (local) organizational structure that can make projects sustainable. The current success of BOSCOUganda can be determined by the fact that we have created such a structure, including the training of local technicians in maintenance, and regular user trainings for the rural ICT centers. This process can't happen within months or a year, as it takes time for a structure to establish itself and to grow with the right speed. Sometimes international ICT4D projects probably fail because they try to create “Ownership” as fast as possible (often just because of the fact that donor funding is tending to push quick results and thus shorten the available time for implementation).

6) An issue that seems to weigh heavy in the use context of ICT’s in developing regions is linguistic variation. How do you foresee ICT4D practitioners, researchers and implementers overcoming the challenges of illiteracy, multilingualism and dialectal variation?

Of course linguistic variation can be a challenge, although my experience in Uganda might not be representative and comparable to other countries. In Uganda, English is widely spoken in all regions of the country and students are (except for lower primary school classes) taught using English as the main teaching language. In terms of multilingualism, communications facilities (such as Emails, Skype or Facebook) probably can easier help to overcome these challenges, and our users just used their own, local language then anyway.

Our major challenge at BOSCO was rather the generally weak educational system, which does not mean illiteracy, but rather poor writing and reading skills which therefore also influences the effect of any provided ICT infrastructure and content. The usage of more creative Web2.0 applications – as a means – has in that way also helped us to face these challenges and make ICTs more attractive.

I'd say the more ICT4D projects become interactive instead of just being designed “one-way” and drop-down, the more they can overcome linguistic variations right from the beginning.

7) What advice do you have for those designing information systems for the developing world?

ICT4D is an important and still probably underestimated field although many initiatives have started to go into the right direction. But I think it’s also important not just to design information systems for the developing world, but to really design them with the developing world.

I am still grateful for all the things that I could learn from my colleagues in Uganda. And we, especially those of us coming from the so called developed world, need to think about development and needs first, not about ICT. Thus I'd say it first needs an understanding how to define development and what it really means in a specific context. Just by that, information systems can then – as a means – really support these efforts.

Eva Kagiri works in the field of eLearning creating educational content for different ICT platforms. She has a background in Environmental Engineering, Development and International Co-operation. In the last 2 years, she has been working on educational projects in Africa which have involved the use of LMS, Radio, TV and Mobile platforms for Learning.

1) First of all, can you tell me about your current work in ICT for Development?

I work for a Swedish social enterprise - MKFC (it is a Swedish name translated into English as Multicultural Centre for Adult Education). The enterprise has 4 branches under it :

1. An adult education school in Sweden (Folk High school)
2. Stockholm College (which provides education within and out of Sweden)
3. Helsinki College (works the same as Stockholm College and also where I work)
4. Sharing Awareness (the NGO through which we raise funds to offer support for projects we are unable to support ourselves)

MKFC's main work is Education through ICT. In the organization, we have experts in different fields - pedagogy, development work, ICT and specialized studies like Environment, Health, Teacher Training, and others. This team is the one that creates content. Our learning content uses two main pedagogical approaches, PBL and Action Learning.

The adult education school was the first to be formed, and was purposely for educating immigrants in Sweden. In 2000, the school started running parallel courses online, it turned out that most of the students preferred this system than the face-to-face sessions. So in 2001, the school sold the school building and transferred all its courses online, increasing enrollment and cutting costs.

Our aim is to make education accessible to all through ICT. We have created different educational material and offer it through:

- Online LMS - Opit, a Finnish learning management system.
- CD's and USB's
- Educasts through MP3's
- Mobile phones - so far we have mostly done SMS based education

As you may know, exporting technology, systems or knowledge into developing countries doesn't work for sustainability or applicability if there are not localized, home-grown solutions or a sense of ownership. As a result, MKFC always works with local partners. We have been working in:

1. Eritrea - with Eritrean immigrants in Sweden. This educational project was based on Project development and Implementation. There were many immigrants in Sweden who were interested to go back and develop their country but they didn't know how. MKFC educated them online and provided an idea incubation centre virtually. They developed their business ideas and transformed them into reality in Eritrea.

2. Ghana - in Ghana, we are working with eCAP Ghana Foundation. Through mobile phones and our online LMS platform + USB's we educated a group of 3 young men on Community Health Management. They then transferred this knowledge to a village up North, Niliyungdo. The transformation of that village was remarkable - environmentally and in health related issues like diarrhea and malaria. The village was taught how to clean water using the Solar Disinfection Method, Waste disposal and environmental issues to avoid spread of diseases. The 3 young men did this through role play, pictures and videos.

3. Palestine, Kenya, Pakistan, Somaliland, Tanzania, Syria - In this countries, the main education has been on Teacher Training in service. The biggest challenge that sub-Sahara Africa is facing and many other developing countries is the lack of trained teachers or poorly trained teachers. In our Teacher training in service, we educate teachers on pedagogical methods, specifically PBL and Action Learning. We also teach them how to integrate ICT into their teaching. The reason why it is Teacher training in service is to ensure that the teachers practice their knowledge in an authentic environment and to enable them to continue teaching while they study, avoiding teacher shortages.

The local partner in East Africa for our projects is eCAP East Africa, of which I am also the director and founder.

2) People in developing countries such as Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania etc may have daily life challenges such as securing food, shelter and water, what is the significance of ICT to their lives?

This is a very interesting question. Before I can say whether ICT is significant, perhaps we should first discuss what exactly people in the developing countries perceive ICT to be. The term ICT in the development context (and therefore ICT4D) has only come to be widely used say in 2000, especially in Africa (China might have began in the 1950s). Even though by 2000 Television and Radio were widely used in many African countries, people hardly related these tools to development or as tools for promoting development. They were simply entertainment and social.

As a result, while carrying out many projects in this field, when I ask the locals (and I am now not talking about the elite who have perhaps obtained a degree from some foreign university or studied IT), in 90% of the cases, they always answer 'Computers'. People in the BOP begin perceiving ICT then as something complex, inaccessible and which can only be made use of if you have gone to school. This approach of complexity (which has not been made any easier by governments insisting that schools be equipped with computers instead of enough trained teachers) has resulted in what I call the African syndrome of Education and ICT, where students learn about computers instead of learning through computers.

But I doubt you are in that group of people who have a narrow view of what ICT comprises. Knowing what we both know about ICT being any technology designed to relay/transfer Information and enable people to Communicate, I will say a very big yes, ICT is very significant to the people in the BOP. What we should be asking is not whether it is significant, it is whether the information they are getting through the different ICT's is relevant in enabling them to transform their lives in terms of food security, accessibility to their basic needs or contribute in any way to their general development.

The most important thing in ICT4D is: the content (what is the tool being used for? is the use relevant? is it solving a problem in my life? is it helping me make my life better today than it was yesterday?)

3) How do you think sustainability is achieved for ICT projects?

The only way sustainability can be achieved for ICT projects is if the applicability is homegrown. I am very, very adamant about this. The users or intended users must first identify what their need is. As it is difficult perhaps to do information and communication analysis for say a 40 million population, local people should be involved in the development and implementation of ICT projects - only they know best the problems their fellow citizens face. Engaging local expertise will make the content relevant and the tool easy to use.

One of the other issues why ICT tools are failing is due to limited funding and lack of technical expertise to maintain them once they are in existence. Important ICT applications made to enhance development HAVE to be adopted locally by governments or institutions. For instance, there are currently many mobile apps being developed to deal with problems of health management or agriculture. The institution that is in charge of health or agriculture has to adopt these applications and bear the financial burden. In terms of technical expertise, this is an issue of knowledge transfer. The traditional method of how the West operates in the South has to change. Companies/organizations interested in doing ICT projects in developing countries need to:

1. Support local innovations in this area/develop and together with the innovators put them into the local market or,
2. Import their own innovations but engage locals from the start - conceptualization, to development to production and lastly to dissemination.

Watch this video, it is very interesting:

4) Unlike old technologies such as radio and television, which benefit from high social penetration regardless of income, the new ICTs require continual updating and economic investment, which could lead to the poorest sections of developing countries being excluded…How do you address this issue?

This is quite true. Nothing can beat the breakthrough of inventions, and telecommunication is one of them. We need to take up some lessons from past technologies that African countries adopted. Let's get back to basics - the radio. Prior to the colonial era and even way back before that, Africans communicated in very different ways than they do now - drums, word of mouth and horn-blowing. Introduction of conventional media happened in the 1900s, bringing with it - A new era!! This new Era managed to sustain itself because:

1. People widely adopted it and added it to their already existing culture
2. Because it was widely adopted and very much recognized as something which are needed/useful, governments supported the use of this conventional media. Governments began using this conventional media, governments promoted the use of this Medias and Governments Supported the continuous development of this media.

It is exactly the same thing now. While the principles of what current ICTs are operating on nowadays are old, their development is phenomenal, and we can say in the African context (and globally), we are in a new era! For this new era to sustain itself, we need to do the same things we did with the radio - governments need to be more active in adopting, showcasing, promoting & developing. In this way, the ICTs will gain high social penetration, and therefore the costs will drop. Just look at the mobile phone adoption in Africa now, who would have thought...and now phones are becoming cheaper, and cheaper.

5) Furthermore what significant benefits have you noticed in ‘‘making education accessible to all through ICT’’?

The most significant benefit I have seen is how the use of ICT breaks down the barriers of space, distance and time. The use of ICT has enabled education to move from the traditional classroom and institutional buildings to anyplace, anytime learning. We could also say that it promotes inclusion regardless of a child's economic status, but that is relative as it depends on other factors like cost. In cases however where the consumer is not bearing the cost, it definitely does promote inclusion regardless of economic status.

Other forms of inclusion are very evident - inclusion regardless of race, culture, gender etc. Institution based education has sometimes had serious limitations in promoting education accessibility - for instance, religious based schools may sometimes be highly biased against students who are not of the same religion or who do not meet their standards of religious beliefs. ICTs can also go a long way in increasing the efficiency of teachers - ICT's should never replace teachers, and using ICT's cannot upgrade poorly trained teachers - what ICTs can do is act as a tool through which very well trained teachers can efficiently teach/manage their classes.

The use of ICT's in informal or formal education has reduced the struggles that many young people in developing countries have always had to go through just to attain basic education. For instance, a child who belongs to a nomadic family can still learn mathematics and English, through say, a mobile phone game based application. Before, this child would have had to forfeit any form of formal learning as he/she could not attend school.

6) Last but not least, do you have any recommendations for future ICT projects in developing countries?

1. Homegrown solutions - you cannot assess the needs of people sitting in an office in New York, and no amount of research can compare to life-long personal experience in an environment. If an organization/company would like to implement an ICT project, they need to involve the locals. They can come with an idea and technology expertise, but they will never be able to come with userbility expertise unless they understand how the locals think, behave, believe or live and why.

2. Fulfill a need - not a Want, a Need. There is a big difference. Wanting is something that people can do without, something through which their entire survival does not rely on. We all know human beings basic needs - and they can all be summed up as, 'The right to live'. The right to live encompasses accessibility to food, shelter, clothing, sanitation, water, healthcare and security. Without these things, the risks of dying are multiplied ten-fold. Around these needs comes what I call facilitators (they facilitate and enhance the possibilities of attaining the needs), and this is where Education and things like ICT come in. ICT's should be seen as Facilitators to fulfilling the needs of a society.

3. Transfer Knowledge - this is of course a very complex issue, as it depends on which side of the fence you are standing on. If you are corporate/innovator, the last thing you want is to allow anyone to know 'your tricks', if you are an NGO, humanitarian etc. you work endlessly to ensure the community you are involved in gets all the knowledge they need. I am the latter and am therefore constantly insisting if you are going to do some ICT4D project, sell your product to the people and government then take off, without transferring knowledge on maintenance or development, then don't do it at all. I know that is what is happening everywhere because corporates have the money, even though the locals have the ideas. Practitioners need to leave something behind in the countries they work other than a problem of eWaste.

4. Analyze the sustainability issue - transfer of knowledge is one way of doing this. However, the biggest question ICT delivery (and any delivery for that matter) is always, who will pay? A friend of mine told me the other day that NGO's, Companies, Governments all speak the same language, and the difference is that they all use different terminologies. This language is called 'Money'. I know that so far I have been emphasizing about governments adopting useful ICTs that will bring development. However, as we know, governments hardly ever pay for everything. To make ICT's sustainable, without relying solely on governments, create solutions that people can afford. It is utterly and completely pointless for say, introducing an SMS service for farmers to check market prices if the farmer gets 1 dollar/day and the service costs that 1 dollar or more (including the hardware costs which nobody ever mentions). If I was that farmer, I’d rather walk my cow to the nearest market and sell it for 5 dollars.

Thank you for your time!

As the Information and Communications Technology sector booms in Africa, it is interesting to see the progress of organizations that got started at the inception of the boom. Web4Africa.net is one such organization based out of Ghana. About 8 years ago, before websites and the internet took off as key venues for information for a majority of the population, Oluniyi saw the challenges faced in trying to create websites based out of Ghana and Nigeria.

ICTWorks Interview with Web4Africa's Oluniyi Ajao from Tse on Vimeo

As he details in the video, to get a website hosted, you had to either have a friend in the West, have traveled to a country in the west or some other such means to be able to pay for web-hosting as there were no Africa-based web-hosting and domain name registration companies. Web4Africa is one of the first web hosting and domain name registration services started in Ghana.

During my trip to Ghana, I was able to sit down with him in 'downtown' Accra in Osu. We talked about his take on the role of Information and Communication Technology in Africa and development, the website business in Ghana and Nigeria, smartphones, mobile-compatible websites, doing business in Ghana and more.

Linda Raftree is the Social Media and New Technology Advisor for the Plan West Africa Regional Office and also the ICT4D Technical Advisor for Plan USA. I caught up with her recently and asked her about ICT and sustainability.

Linda Raftree in action

1) First of all, what does sustainability in the context of Information and Communication Technology mean to you? And what do you say to those who believe that sustainability in the context of ICT4D is an unrealistic concept?

In the context where I work, sustainability means that once an external agency or company has stopped providing funding and support, an initiative or solution continues on in a way that is spurred on by local users because it’s something that is useful and/or needed by them and they find it worth investing their time/money/efforts in because the outcomes are worth achieving.

Another kind of sustainability is that which comes with learning and changing frames of mind. This type of sustainability may not be tangible, but it can be even longer lasting. If people are spurred into a new type of thinking or acting which improves their lives, and they make changes and improvements on their own without outside support and without waiting for someone to come spur them along the next time, that is also for me, sustainability.

Sustainability in ICT is not unrealistic if you start with what people have already, what they tell you they are willing to put in, and build from there.

2) Many contest that there are five realms of ICT4D sustainability: economic, political, financial, socio-cultural and environmental. Which of these do you think is the most influential to the sustainability struggle and why?

I think all 5 need to be considered when working on an initiative. Each context is different and what is simple in one place may be difficult in another. I’d say the first one to tackle is socio-cultural however. If you start with engaging users and who want to be involved and who want to use ICTs in their own development, then you’ve already got allies to help you with the other 4 struggles.

3) In 2001 the UNDP stated (in an ICT4D context) that “clearly identified development goals ... are more likely to develop effective operating models and deliver tangible results.” How do you see ICT4D implementers incorporating these development goals into their projects?

That means that ICT4D implementers would need to start with goals like health improvements, education improvements, government accountability goals or whatever, and then see what information and communications gaps exist – see how information and communication can help them achieve their goals. Then they would move to the step of seeing what tools are the best to help bridge the gaps.

It might be technology or it might not be technology. When defining all this, involving users in the discussion and learning from them what information sources they trust, what information they need, where they currently get information, how much effort or time or money they are willing to spend to bridge the gaps is vital to designing the different project phases.

4) Regarding the "Bread vs. Broadband" debate, what do you say to community leaders who fail to see the importance of ICT’s as opposed to their basic needs (hygiene, basic water, sanitation etc)?

I normally work with youth in communities, and they often see the potential of ICTs before their parents do. In many places, however, adults are also seeing the need for ICTs for their children’s education and their community’s future, and they are pushing for access.

If I were working on a program that used ICTs to achieve some other, broader goal that the community wanted to reach, I might show people how the ICT works and how it can help to see if they are interested. There would very likely be someone who steps up. If community leaders failed to see the importance of ICTs, I would listen to them and not try to push something on them that they are not interested in. They know better than I do what their priorities are. They will think about ICTs when they are ready, when they hear about it from neighbors or families and friends, and then at that point someone can support them.

5) Last but not least, what kind of impact do you see local citizens making in sustainability of projects, such has appointing a local champion or incorporating indigenous knowledge. And how do you see fit to engage the local community?

I wouldn’t do any work without engaging the local community, because I work for an organization whose methodology is community based. The community always needs to be involved and sign off and participate in any project or it won’t be successful or sustainable.