ICTworks by Inveneo

Some folks over at the eDiplomacy office at the US State Department are interested in understanding the wishes and needs for technology apps from those working in civil society and beyond. They're interested in mobile technology, including mobile phones, but also any pertinent platform for global usage.

See, it’s easy for the Department of State to look at things from it's governmental context and tell others how to use tools they use, but it’s way more useful to see what we and other groups actually want, whether it exists or not, and then see if State can find or make it.

So with that opening, don't let this opportunity go to waste - let the US State Department know what your mobile tech wish list is in the comments below!

infoDev at the World Bank is establishing mobile applications laboratories in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe and Central Asia as part of its program with the Government of Finland and Nokia. These mobile app labs will stimulate and nurture the next generation of developing country mobile applications entrepreneurs.

What might be the impact of these mobile app labs and the larger Apps4Dev idea - the use of mobile applications to empower development?

During the infoDev Annual Symposium on June 9th, Wayan Vota, Senior Director for Inveneo, will lead a panel discussion on Apps4Dev. We will highlight the exciting new directions which mobile applications are taking and explore how these “killer apps” can promote social inclusion, innovation, growth and jobs in developing countries.

Panelists will ask:

1. Can mobile services effectively serve the poorest at the base of the pyramid?
2. What new applications and content are developing over this technology platform described by Jeffrey Sachs as “the single most transformative technology for development”?
3. What business models and social networks will prevail for the burgeoning apps communities in developing countries?

Moderator:
Wayan Vota, Senior Director of the Inveneo Certified ICT Partner Program

Panelists:

• Ilkka Lakaniemi - Director, Business Environment Strategy - Corporate Relations and Responsibility, Nokia Corporation
• Stuart Gill –Expert in mobile applications for disaster mitigation and response, Latin America and Caribbean Region, The World Bank
• Steve Vosloo – Fellow, Shuttleworth Foundation, South Africa, manager of project on mobiles and teen literacy
• Josh Nesbit - Executive Director, FrontlineSMS:Medic, where text messages save lives

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Join us for a lively conversation and the networking reception to follow.

Apps4Dev: local content, local use
Wednesday, June 9
15:45 – 17:15pm
Room MC 4-800,
The World Bank,
1818 H Street NW,
Washington D.C. 20433

Local governments in the developing world face a serious communications problem. As Roomthinker tweets, there is currently no easy mechanism for constituents to communicate with their elected officials - in urban or rural and underserved areas:

Mass media can quickly inform or educate but radio, TV, and newspapers are usually state controlled by national organizations distant from local needs or decisions. And none of these media are two-way communications. Just one-to-many broadcast mediums.

In addition, local governments can be ignorant about constituents' changing needs and interests - especially marginalized communities that have been historically ignored or under-represented. Local governments may produce services that they find interesting or please national politicians without any feedback from the people they are expected to serve.

Yet there now exits a technology application that could give feedback on the needs of a community, even providing for targeted two-way communication between local governments and their citizenry. This technology is easy to implement and can be easily modified with changing needs: SMS text messaging.

SMS:Gov as 311

Local governments could set up automated SMS systems in their offices and then promote the phone number so citizens in need could text for local government assistance.

Using tools like FrontlineSMS, the local government would set us a simple menu tree for incoming text messages - each keyword would generate a particular response, leading to a new keyword. The system would track mobile phone numbers, allowing for a basic census of constituent needs and interests.

For example: someone texting "Weather" would receive a basic forecast & could respond with CropForecast, FishingForecast, or NationalForecast for specialized weather forecasts in each area. This would both educate the respondents and track how many citizens were interested in each area.

Multiply this over the many local government services and a single FrontlineSMS instance could become an automated information service similar to the 311 service in New York, San Francisco, and Washington DC, at a fraction of the cost.

David connecting with government

SMS:Gov as Citizen Pulse

Smart politicians try to stay engaged with their electorate - keeping in constant communication with them to gauge their mood and needs. Yet how can a local politician know what his geographically disperse constituents need and inform them of his efforts?

Again, using a FrontlineSMS system, officials can easily gather citizen input via SMS, grouping constituent interests by keywords. Then, based on those keywords, informing them of his actions in their interests. Think My Barak Obama via text message.

Try out live SMS:Gov

Intrigued? Then text "LOCALGOV" to this phone number +1.202.506.0148 and you can test out our live FrontlineSMS:Gov demo. Yes, really! Try it yourself from anywhere in the world.

If you're in Washington DC, be sure to join the Technology Salon to be invited to the May Salon on SMS applications for the developing world. We'll have live, in-person demos of SMS:Gov, SMS:Medic, SMS:Credit, and think through an SMS:Learn.

There are more than 70 million mobile subscribers in Nigeria and it has the largest mobile subscriber base in Africa. Five GSM operators are active in the Nigerian mobile market and four CDMA network operators.

Glo 1 landing in Nigeria

The Mobile penetration rate at the end of 2009 was 48%. With the mobile subscriber penetration potential being more than 100%, there is ample room for growth in the market.

National backbone coverage is limited and, in keeping with the government’s Vision 2020 initiative, there are plans underway to extend the backbone, which will provide additional opportunities for investors.

The imminent lighting up of the MainOne and Glo-1 undersea cables connecting to the country is also likely to yield a wide range of growth opportunities in making international bandwidth more readily available.

The number of fixed line/fixed wireless access subscribers in Nigeria is expected to increase to a modest 2.9 million by 2014, indicating that the access mode of preference will continue to be by mobile phone. The number of mobile subscribers is expected to grow at 10% per year over the period, reaching almost 114 million by 2014, and representing net additions of almost 42 million subscribers. Mobile teledensity will approach 66% over this period. The number of internet users is set to increase to 36 million.

Data from Investment Opportunities in the ICT Sector in Nigeria: 2010

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While we often focus on highlighting successes in our field, it’s no secret that many projects just don’t work – some don’t scale, some aren’t sustainable, some can’t get around bureaucratic hoops, and many fail due to completely unanticipated barriers.

At FAILfaire we want to recognize the failures: the pilots that never got anywhere, the applications that are not delivering, the projects that are not having any measurable impact on the lives of people, and the cultural or technical problems that arise.

FailFare Info
New York City
April 14th, 2010
5:00-7:30 pm
RSVP

This event may have been inspired by our Failday Twitter Chat, which wasn't a failure

It’s that time of the year when any expert worth their salt makes some predictions for the New Year. I too couldn’t resist a peek into my crystal ball and here I share what I believe will be the major ICT trends and some of the countries to watch this year. In general, 2010 promises to be an exciting and important year for ICTs in Africa despite the fact that the global financial situation is still uncertain.

Mobile commerce

First off, after hugely successful trials and implementations of m-banking in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana and South Africa in 2009, this year is set to witness m-banking implementations in almost every African country. As m-banking grows, we should expect to see m-commerce in general take off quite rapidly with buying and selling of goods and services on mobile platforms becoming quite wide spread. I suspect that this will impact the business and economic landscape quite dramatically in many countries creating new jobs, innovations and investments.

M-commerce will grow along with e-commerce fueled in part by substantial deployments of 3G broadband services by mobile telephone operators. These 3G deployments coupled with significant terrestrial and submarine fiber deployments underway and/or planned for commissioning in 2010 all over the continent will see the number of broadband connections more than triple this year. African governments will meanwhile reap billions of dollars as they sell 3G licenses to existing and new entrants into the telecommunications sector.

Mobile phone options

Gather Data mHealth solution

Competition among the mobile service providers in many countries is set to heat up considerably, driven by two major factors: an increase in the number of providers in many countries as governments move to issue more licenses and the adoption of number portability. A few studies conducted in countries like Uganda fairly recently suggest that users are locked into particular providers, despite poor service, because they would not like to change their phone number which is currently the case if they moved to another service provider.

With number portability, these users will be able to migrate to rival or alternate service providers with their existing telephone numbers. The introduction of number portability is therefore likely to threaten the bigger players while benefiting smaller players and new entrants. But analysts who follow these things agree that the bigger players will take steps to retain their customers. Either way, consumers will be the winners as quality of service is likely to improve and costs will continue to fall.

It’s also likely that we shall see some major mergers and acquisitions in the mobile and fixed telecoms industry as major global players in this field angle to take a slice of the growing African telecommunications market. The increased number of broadband connections and lower prices will also lead to increased sales of smart phones and computers. I suspect that the major computer manufacturers will release low priced computers targeted at the African market. These are likely to be a cross between netbook type PCs and smart phones.

More bandwidth brings opportunities

As access to the internet improves and costs drop dramatically due to increased competition, the nascent Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector in countries like Kenya and Senegal is likely to take off. Governments are also trying to stimulate this sector with various policy and regulatory sweeteners and stimuli thus making it a sector to watch carefully in 2010.

As intra-country connectivity improves, there is going to be a greater demand for local content in local languages and locally designed applications that fit the context of the different countries. Expect to see a dramatic growth of the software industry in the big markets targeting mobile phone applications. Those who have lamented the lack of African content might be in for a pleasant surprise starting this year.

Government regulation

Can't wait to know you

This year is likely to see some governments move to gain tighter control of and regulate ICT services especially as it becomes clearer that ICTs empower citizens to access information almost instantly, increase demand for accountability, make it harder to hide or gloss over human rights abuses, promote freedom of speech and strengthen political organization. Most countries taking these steps to muzzle or regulate ICT services will do so in the name of national security or fighting terrorism.

This desire to control ICT services will see a big push for SIM card registration (at the moment, one doesn’t need to identify themselves to purchase mobile phone SIM cards in most African countries) which on its own has merits, enactment of “wire-tapping” and other laws restricting broadcast media and in some cases increased censorship of internet, mobile and traditional broadcast content. This is likely to be a year where democracy and human rights activities will join hands with ICT companies to push back against what they will see as government interference in the market.

However, governments will be caught between a rock and a hard place: on the one hand, they would like to exercise control and on the other hand, the ICT sector is becoming a key sector of the economy accounting for a growing and significant portion of GDP and tax revenues as a result of deregulation, liberalization and reduced government control. This is therefore a year where governments will play a high-wire act to ensure that they don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg while angling to gain more control.

Countries to watch

Kenya
Kenya is my number one country to watch this year because of four important factors: its early and leading adoption of m-commerce, large investments in terrestrial and submarine fibre, the government’s strategy to grow the BPO sector and lastly the position of Nairobi as the “unofficial” business capital of the East African Community’s common market. These four factors are likely to lead to increased ICT investment flows into Kenya, decent growth in the ICT sector and a shakeup in the economy as m-commerce and e-commerce take root.

Rwanda
Rwanda is probably the only developing country that has staked its future on ICTs with an ICT-led economic development strategy. Rwanda remains among my top countries to watch on the ICT scene in Africa. The government has done a few things right such as promoting an investor-attractive environment, emphasizing and supporting ICT, Science and Technology education and investing in broadband infrastructure. Rwanda also has one of the most impressive ICT public awareness campaigns, and investment promotion regimes in place.

While in the past, there was a difference between government rhetoric and reality on the ground mainly due to limited human capacity and cautious moves from investors still associating the country with the Genocide, expect that gap to narrow as all of the government policies and interventions in infrastructure, science and technology education, investment policy and regulatory reforms in the last 5-10 years begin to bear fruit. It is not far stretched to expect to see local, regional and international ICT companies set up shop in Rwanda as a base to exploit the East African Common Market and Kigali take on the Silicon Valley status of Africa.

Ethiopia
Still in East Africa, Ethiopia is another country worth watching. Ethiopia still retains state control on the telecommunications sector with a monopoly state-owned telecommunications company. The government has always argued that it preferred to follow a slow and carefully thought out deregulation path instead of rushing to implement a free and open market. This may be the year when we see concrete moves to open up this space. If this happened, Ethiopia with its 80 million plus population would herald a gold rush for ICT and especially telecommunication companies into the country.

Look to Nigeria for change

Nigeria
Nigeria, often touted to as the “power house” of Africa, has in the last few years shocked the continent with an aggressive drive by its movie, banking and insurance industry to expand to the rest of the continent.

Already, Nigerian movies are by many accounts more popular than anything Hollywood could throw up in Africa and this is a trend that will continue to grow. Expect Nigerian ICT companies to begin to play a more prominent role in Africa with some of their top ICT companies already spreading their tentacles into the bigger markets in Africa. It is not too far stretched to imagine that 2010 may herald the emergence of an African ICT giant from Nigeria.

On the national scene, there are at least two submarine cables expected to land off the coast of Nigeria this year and massive fibre deployments underway in the country by the major telecommunication companies. The increased connectivity and lower prices are likely to give a tremendous boost to the nascent but impressive e-commerce sector in Nigeria.

South Africa
South Africa has made massive investments in ICT infrastructure in preparation for the World Cup which it hosts in June of this year. This investment will leave the country with one of the most developed ICT infrastructures among emerging economies in the world. This investment is likely to give the ICT sector a good boost.

Recent news coming of South Africa where foreign investments in the telecommunications sector have been blocked because of a government policy on foreign ownership restrictions in the telecommunications sector is likely to pit South Africa against other countries like Nigeria whose companies are seeking to expand into the rest of the continent. This government policy is also likely to place South African telecommunication companies that command a significant share of the sector in many other countries in Africa in an awkward place especially if the other countries enact retaliatory policies.

Senegal
Lastly, Senegal is a country that has made tremendous gains in the ICT industry in the last few years. Sonatel, the former state owned telecommunications companies now majority owned by France Telecom represents a rare breed of a former state-owned telecom company that has managed to transform itself into a viable and aggressive market player. Senegal has also positioned itself as the ICT Hub for West Africa with Sonatel building infrastructure into all its neighbours. This year, expect to see Senegal secure its position as the ICT Hub of French-speaking West Africa and a growth of the nascent BPO sector.

Alex Twinomugisha's Africa ICT Trends and Countries to Watch in 2010 is republished here with his permission

Whenever we talk about mHealth, there is always much hand-wringing around sustainability. And by that we usually mean we want to find the mHealth model that can be like mobile phones - paid by users and funded by deep-pocketed, aggressive private firms. That way, we can escape the limitations of donor funding and move past the many mHealth pilots that never seem to scale, to truly global healthcare solutions.

I would like to be a heretic and put forth an idea that's be brewing since last week's Technology Salon sustainability discussion where our comments even suggested that all ICT4D efforts are sustainability failures:

Do we expect her to pay? (Data Dyne)

mHealth isn't sustainable

International development efforts in mHealth focus on bringing resources and solutions to communities who are unable to provide their own. This can mean remotely checking on patients in rural areas miles from the nearest clinic, or delivering health PSA's to urban youth in Nairobi nightclubs, to even educating affluent women in India on their menstrual cycle.

But in all these instances and more, the recipient is either unwilling or unable to pay for the service. So why do we keep looking for ways to have them fund mHealth initiatives? Why do we think private payment is the sole sustainable model? Let's look at who has the will to pay for such services and expect them to underwrite mHealth initiatives.

mHealth is fundable

Public health is a high priority for governments. A healthy population is a happy, productive one, and therefore every government has a keen interest in providing healthcare solutions to its populace. Some of these solutions are government funded without question - in the USA we don't expect the Centers for Disease Control or Medicaid to be self-funded in a pay-for-service model. Some solutions are a public-private hybrid - general healthcare services are almost always a mix of public, business, insurance, and private funds. And other solutions can be either - HIV testing and treatment varies by country and even by client.

But in any of these scenarios, do we hear talk about sustainability? Outside arguments about the cost of these programs, no one is advocating that governments stop funding for CDC's or HIV treatments. So why then, when we talk of mHealth, do we try to force a fully private-payer model?

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Here's a great opportunity from Nokia for for African mobile and web application developers to create best-in-class applications. Nokia is offering $125,000 and Ovi Store membership for applications relevant to Africa that will run on Nokia devices:

We're looking for applications that are as uniquely African as bunny chow and biltong are and ones which will add value to the lives of the Africans who use it.

And while this contest runs through November 15th, you can already celebrate African developers on the Apple iPhone.

iWarrior on iPhone

The cross-Afrian team of Kenyan Wesley Kirinya and Ghanaian Eyram Tawia of Leti Games have developed iWarrior (iTunes link, game review) for the iPhone. Here's what Erik Hersman has to say about it:

It’s a great first-effort from the team, and I believe it’s the first game created by a team in Africa. This itself is a much more difficult task than what many might expect. Just to get an iTunes account and a way to be be paid for your application is a challenge due to Apple’s inbuilt prejudice against Africa.

Let's hope that Nokia's contest shows an openness towards African developers that is seemingly lacking in Cupertino.

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