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Steve Song recently wrote a great post on 3 reasons why M4D may be bad for Development where he says that:

Mobile operators have entrenched themselves with development agencies as the saviours of access and give generously to m4d development programs. Development agencies have rushed to embrace mobile operators.

While the latter is surely true, mobile phones are all the rage at USAID, I do not see the mobile operators "entrenched" with development agencies, nor do I see them giving "generously" to M4D programs. At least I don't see them involved with the implementers of aid agency programs. In fact, with the exception of Nokia and Vodafone, none of the major mobile line operators (MTN, Safaricom, Airtel, Glo, etc) seem to even notice the development sector.

When juxtaposed with the efforts of technology companies like Intel, Microsoft, and Cisco to support the development industry, the disengagement of the mobile operators is even more striking. I propose there are 3 reasons why mobile phone companies are not entrenched and not giving generously to M4D implementers:

1. Mobile technology doesn't need donors
   The startling rise in mobile phone adoption has primarily been consumer driven - built on millions of micro scratch card transactions without many donor dollars amongst them. So mobile phone companies (handset manufactures, network operators, and their respective ecosystems) don't feel the need to adapt to donor business practices, all of which seem very rigid and constraining when compared to the free-wheeling retail marketplace.
2. Donors can't adapt to private industry's speed
   Mobile technology lives by quarterly targets. New models, pricing plans, and consumer services start, blossom (and die) in 3 months or less. Most donors can't even issue an RFP in 3 months, often taking over a year from idea to contract award - an eternity in the mobile space. In addition, donor agencies require specialized business practices and expertise that might as well be a whole other language to private industry. And don't even get started on the contracting constraints imposed by government purchasing departments who are used to domestic acquisitions.
3. Implementers can't afford in-house mobile expertise
   Last but not least, the implementers who do know how to work with donor agencies, and could be a bridge between the development and mobile communities, often can't afford the mobile expertise. Mobile phone application developers, like other hot IT skills, are commanding salaries that are well beyond international development. Remember, the unwritten rule in development is that no one makes more than the contracting officer at the donor in charge of the contract.

These reasons were inspired by Roxanna Samii's post where she says, "enough with pilots, let's get serious about mDevelopment," and concludes with this great summation of the mobile phone in development issue:

So, quite frankly speaking, I see private and public sector as two separate circles, who are continuously struggling to find an intersection point. However, the reality is that public and private sector live in different time zones and do not seem to have found their preferred collaboration tool which allows them to seamlessly work together and indeed create a win-win situation!

This should be a fair warning to those at donor agencies and within implementers who get all giddy about mobile phones and think that mobile line operators will be just as giddy about their M4D idea.

Working with mobile operators is not easy. Mobiles phones are not an all-encompassing panacea. And just maybe, not the right bet to make at all. Remember that according to the World Bank, broadband Internet access beats mobile phones in boosting GDP.

I am Patrick Meier and I’ve spent the past week at the iLab in Liberia and got what I came for: an updated reality check on the limitations of technology adoption in developing countries. Below are some of the assumptions that I took for granted. They’re perfectly obvious in hindsight and I’m annoyed at myself for not having realized their obviousness sooner. I’d be very interested in hearing from others about these and reading their lists. This need not be limited to one particular sector like ICT for Development (ICT4D) or Mobile Health (mHealth). Many of these assumptions have repercussions across multiple disciplines.

Predictive Text on Mobile Phones

The following examples come from conversations with my colleague Kate Cummings who directs Ushahidi Liberia and the iLab here in Monrovia. She and her truly outstanding team - Kpetermeni Siakor, Carter Draper, Luther Jeke, and Anthony Kamah - spearheaded a number of excellent training workshops over the past few days.

At one point we began discussing the reasons for the limited use of SMS in Liberia. There are the usual and obvious reasons. But the one hurdle I had not expected to hear was Nokia’s predictive text functionality. This feature is incredibly helpful since the mobile phone basically guesses which words you’re trying to write so you don’t have to type every single letter.

But as soon as she pointed out how confusing this can be, I immediately understood what she meant. If I had never seen or been warned about this feature before, I’d honestly think the phone was broken. It would really be impossible to type with. I’d get frustrated and give up (the tiny screen further adds to the frustration).

And if I was new to mobile phones, it wouldn’t be obvious how to switch that feature off either. (There are several tutorials online on how to use the predictive text feature and how to turn it off, which clearly proves they’re not intuitive).

Satellite Imagery & Maps

In one of the training workshops we just had, I was explaining what Walking Papers was about and how it might be useful in Liberia. So I showed the example below and continued talking. But Kate jumped in and asked participants: “What do you see in this picture? Do you see the trees, the little roads?” She pointed at the features as she described the individual shapes.

This is when it dawned on me that there is absolutely nothing inherently intuitive about satellite images. Most people on this planet have not been on an airplane or a tall building. So why would a bird’s eye view of their village be anything remotely recognizable? I really kicked myself on that one. So I’ll write it again: there is nothing intuitive about satellite imagery. Nor is there anything intuitive about GPS and the existence of a latitude and longitude coordinate system.

Kate went on to explain that this kind of picture is what you would see if you were flying high like a bird. That was the way I should have introduced the image but I had taken it completely for granted that satellite imagery was self-explanatory when it simply isn’t. In further conversations with Kate, she explained that they too had made that assumption early on when trying to introduce the in’s and out’s of the Ushahidi platform. They quickly realized that they had to rethink their approach and decided to provide introductory courses on Google Maps instead.

Google Maps user interface

More wrong assumptions revealed themselves during the workshops. For example, the “+” and “-” markers on Google Map are not intuitive either nor is the concept of zooming in and out. How are you supposed to understand that pressing these buttons still shows the same map but at a different scale and not an entirely different picture instead?

Again, when I took a moment to think about this, I realized how completely confusing that could be. And again I kicked myself. But contrast this to an entirely different setting, San Francisco, where some friends recently told me how their five year old went up to a framed picture in their living room and started pinching at it with his fingers, the exact same gestures one would use on an iPhone to zoom in and out of a picture. “Broken, broken” is all the five year old said after that disappointing experience.

PIN Numbers

The final example actually comes from Haiti where my colleague Chrissy Martin is one of the main drivers behind the Digicel Group’s mobile banking efforts in the country. T

here were of course a number of expected challenges on the road to launching Haiti’s first successful mobile banking service, TchoTcho Mobile. The hurdle that I had not expected, however, had to do with the pin code. To use the service, you would enter your own personal pin number on your mobile phone in order to access your account. Seems perfectly straight forward. But it really isn’t.

The concept of a pin number is one that many of us take completely for granted. But the idea is often foreign to many would-be users of mobile banking services and not just in Haiti. Think about it: all one has to do to access all my money is to simply enter four numbers on my phone. That does genuinely sound crazy to me at a certain level.

Granted, if you guess the pin wrong three times, the phone gets blocked and you have to call TchoTcho’s customer service. But still, I can understand the initial hesitation that many users had. When I asked Chrissy how they overcame the hurdle, her answer was simply this: training. It takes time for users to begin trusting a completely new technology.

So those are some of the assumptions I’ve gotten wrong. I’d be grateful if readers could share theirs, as there must be plenty of other assumptions I’m making which don’t fit reality. Incidentally, I realize that emerging economies vary widely in technology diffusion and adoption—not to mention sub-nationally as well. This is why having the iLab in Liberia is so important. Identifying which assumptions are wrong in more challenging environments is really important if our goal is to use technology to help contribute meaningfully to a community’s empowerment, development and independence.

Patrick Meier originally published this post as A List of Completely Wrong Assumptions About Technology Use in Emerging Economies

Loy Okezie, a digital media strategist and founder of Startups Nigeria, the first online technology start-up community in Nigeria, has made a list of the top 10 mobile applications he found and enjoys in Nigeria. From his post 10 Coolest Mobile Web Products of 2010:

The mobile web has definitely come to stay. With more access to the web via mobile phones, we’ve seen lots of web products designed for easy access on mobile phones. Most people now access Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and other web products via their mobile phones.

Local web products and services too are not left out in the fray. In 2010 alone, there were about 20 web products that became easily accessible via our mobile phones. As we expect to see more exciting mobile web products and applications in 2011, I’ve made a list of some of the mobile web products that rocked our phones in 2010.

I’ve made an attempt to diversify the list of mobile web products around several markets. Personally, these mobile web products were very useful to me and I’ll continue to use them in 2011. In no particular order, here’s my list of Nigeria’s coolest mobile web products of 2010.

He goes on to list and describe the following:

1. Genesis Deluxe Cinemas
2. Gyst
3. Dealfish
4. ConnectNigeria
5. Aero
6. Jobberman
7. Naijaborn
8. Gistcaster
9. Naijapals
10. Nairaland

Read 10 Coolest Mobile Web Products of 2010 for more details.

M-PESA has shown mobile phone operators that there is massive money in mobile payments as an alternative to retail banking and other banking transactions in Africa. Loy Okezie has looked at the Nigerian mobile payment space and noted its heating up with several licenses granted to operators by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

He's compiled a list of 7 mobile payment solutions for Nigeria to watch in 2011.

1. MyPesa
2. Paga
3. M-Teller
4. M-NAIRA
5. VTN
6. M-Wallet
7. Monitise

Here's his comments on the one I find most promising:

M-Teller

M-Teller is eTranzact’s solution to mobile money in Nigeria. M-Teller is built to be network independent and bank independent, which means that you don’t have to be subscribed to a specific mobile network or have an account at a specific bank to use the service.

With eTranzact’s M-Teller, agents can open new accounts for customers, using the mobile application on their phones. Upon registration, an eTranzact Genesis Card will be issued to all customers.

eTranzact already claims over 50,000 agents across Nigeria where users can register and transact.

He and Afrinnovator point out (and I agree) that, “part of the reason why Safaricom has a strong following on M-PESA…is the fact that they managed to quickly roll out a strong agent network covering the entire country.”

That is the question I have for you today. How can I buy the $100 Android smartphone from Huawei if I don't live in Kenya? I ask this question as a North American jealous that Kenyans are getting the hottest technology before me. I ask this as a friend of African developers in Ghana and Nigeria who are lusting after this phone, and asking me how they can get it. I ask it becuase.. do I need more reasons?

So how can we non-Kenyas get the $100 Android mobile phone? I propose 2 ways:

1. Would an enterprising & trustworthy Kenyan please set up a quick friend-to-friend export scheme. We buy phones, you give them to friends going to USA, they send to us when here.
2. Would Huawei please recognize that its a global market & stop country-specific pricing. We all want hot, cheap technology, regardless of our passport. Market segmentation like this just pisses off potential customers - from Arusha to America.

Only then can I get back to my day-job and stop dreaming of great little gadgets that work in more countries than my rocking hot, but locked iPhone.

Availability Update

@WhiteAfrican reports that $100 IDEOS Android smartphones will be available in Kenya the first week of October: