White African

• Help Prototype the “Ultimate” Activist Messaging Tool

  Posted: November 26, 2008, 10:40 pm by HASH

  Ken Banks is the creator of FrontlineSMS, which is used in Ushahidi as a way to allow local phone numbers to be used for incoming messages. There’s a dependency that I’m not a big fan of though - you have to know how to download it, setup and activate it on your computer. That’s a huge barrier to entry.

  As Ken just posted, we were roommates at last months Pop!Tech Fellows program. We’ve known each other for years, but this gave us a chance to talk at length around certain ideas that had been frittering about in the back of our heads. One such idea was how we could get rid of the need to own a computer to run FrontlineSMS (and from my perspective, sync with Ushahidi).

  An independent mobile hub

  If you have someone trying to run an operation in a developing nation, you don’t always have the luxury of having a computer and/or an internet connection. What if you could run this whole system locally from a microSD card, slotted into the side of a USB GSM modem?

  “The software, drivers, configuration files and databases could all be held locally on the same device, and seamlessly connect with the GSM network through the ‘built-in’ modem. This would mean the user wouldn’t need to own a computer to use it, and it would allow them to temporarily turn any machine into a messaging hub by plugging the hybrid device into any computer - running Windows, Mac OSX or Linux - in an internet cafe or elsewhere.”

  Doing this would effectively remove the computer (the largest expense) from the system entirely.

  That’s a very powerful idea. By taking away something, you make it more powerful and more useful to the user. It means a lot for those who are trying to remain under the radar and it means they could do their messaging effectively, and with a lot less knowledge of the system, than is currently needed.

  Building a prototype

  Both Ken and I would like to hack a prototype of this together, so if there’s anyone interested in helping us do this, please let us know. If there are any MAKE fans out there, this might be right up your alley. We’ll both be in Nairobi from Dec 7-12, so if anyone there is game we’d love to do it then. This can also be done remotely too, so anyone want to work on getting FrontlineSMS native to a device such as this?

  [Note: this type of device isn't just useful for activists at all, I can think of a wide variety of businesses and individuals who could use it, it's that in our context activism plays the largest role.]

• 10 Great Reads Around Africa

  Posted: November 24, 2008, 7:06 pm by HASH

  Nigerian Banking Survey

  Jeremy has a quick rundown of some numbers, such as:

  “53% of Nigerian adults have access to a mobile phone, yet 74% of the adult population has never been banked”

  (Full report: 7.3Mb PDF)

  Vodacom South Africa’s Mobikasi

  Vincent breaks out with his first new tech release since moving to Vodacom, it’s a location-based mobile phone accessible documentary on Soweto in South Africa.

  “The location-based documentary looks at people, music, fashion, social issues and places of interest. Instead of showing the twenty-five minute documentary in a linear fashion from start to finish, Mobikasi splits the content up into twenty-five inserts of one minute each.”

  Nominating Peace Heroes in Kenya

  The Ushahidi Engine is being used to run a new non-disaster related site called Peace Heroes, which hopes to highlight ordinary Kenyans who did extraordinary things to promote peace during and after the post-election crisis earlier this year.

  Thoughts on a web cloud for Africa

  “While all the pieces had been floating around in my head for a while I am just now understanding that we really need to drag very little out to Africa for them to have incredibly powerful technology in the palm of their hand (and that such thinking is inherently poisonous) and that we are better off attempting to facilitate the connection of their handsets to The Cloud in order to assist with effecting positive social change.”

  O3b’s first internet package

  The O3b Network is offering it’s first bundle. “Quick Start Africa” is a, Carrier Managed Service designed for Telcos and ISPs on the African continent who need a high capacity, ultra low latency, carrier class IP trunking solution.

  “Life is Hard”

  Niti Bhan talked about this at the Better World by Design conference. Breaking down why life is so difficult for the poorest people in the world and what can be done when trying to address these issues.

  Facebook Garage in Uganda

  Jon Gosier of Appfrica.net is heading up a Facebook Garage in Kampala on December 13. It’s a great chance for programmers to get out and get comfortable with the Facebook platform, and also to meet some of the devs. Get more info at the Facebook event page, and the Appfrica wiki.

  Mobile finance - indigenous, ingenious, or both?

  A must-read post by Ken Banks. “It’s not that people don’t understand banking concepts, it’s just that for them things go by a different name.”

  A GPS in every SIM card

  Talk about a game changer:

  “…a highly accurate GPS receiver and an antenna into the SIM card, enabling network providers to deploy both legally-mandated and commercial applications for all mobile phones, with no need for software or hardware changes.”

  Uganda-Congo border images

  
  

  Glenna Gordon writes a blog out of Uganda called Scarlett Lion, besides great insights, she also has some of the most amazing photography I’ve seen from there in a while. Check out here professional website to see more.

• Bridger, Third-Culture Kid, Xenophile

  Posted: November 21, 2008, 6:41 am by HASH

  [warning: not your normal tech-in-Africa post, continue at your peril.]

  I’ve been off on a mini-family vacation, unconnected from the grid - not even taking my mobile phone with me. It gave me time to think, and one thing I started thinking about was the world I grew up in, and how my daughters are growing up today. It brought to mind a recent post by Ethan Zuckerman, and how it hit home to me. It’s who I am, and might help explain why I do what I do.

  What are bridge figures, xenophiles?

  (Stolen shamelessly from Ethan Zuckerman, please go read the rest):

  Xenophiles are people who are fascinated by the whole world, by things other than their ordinary experience. They’re people who want to connect with people who see the world very differently. Some of these people are born this way, lots more are made - a good recipe for xenophilia is to raise a child in a culture deeply different from that of her parents - people call these kids “third culture kids”. Third culture kids have one foot in each of two cultures - the culture of the country they grew up and the culture of their parents, and as a result they don’t really live in either, but a little bit in both. Some kids hate this - many love it, and they end up bridge figures, natural xenophiles who can help translate cultures for other people. Barack Obama’s one of them.

  It’s my theory that xenophiles are going to be very powerful in the future. We’re living in a world that the pro-globalization folks refer to as “flat”. That’s bullshit, obviously. The world is flat as far as stuff is concerned. In my hometown of 3000 people, I can get water from Fiji and fish from Chile, but I’m not going to encounter any Fijians or Chileans. I’m not even likely to encounter information from those countries, news, opinion or cultural influences like films or TV… not unless I very actively go looking for it. So the world’s flat in terms of stuff, but not in terms of human interaction. It’s flat, but in the least important ways - in the ways that matter, in the ways that would allow us to connect with people from other cultures, allow us to share ideas and solve problems together, the world is disconnected. It’s lumpy.

  Xenophiles are good at making connections in this lumpy world. It’s a good idea to have them if you’re trying to do business in another country - some of the people who are making lots of money in this economy are people from developing nations who study in Europe or America and then return home. They can bridge between cultures in a way that helps them make smart economic decisions. They’re even more important if you’re concerned with security or with diplomacy, because their ability to cross cultures makes it far more likely that they can collaborate and create solutions with people from other cultures.

  Normal is relative

  I don’t think it strange at all switching from the US to Africa and back again. You shift, that’s all.

  When you grow up like we did, “normal” to you isn’t the same as “normal” to either the Africans you live with or the US family you go see every 4 years.

  It’s what makes these images look so strange to some people, yet so normal to me.

  
  My daughter taking a bath in Uganda. The lady closest to her, Alice, I called mama mbili - my second mother growing up. She’s part of why I find it easy to switch gears so easily.

  
  This one is me back in 1978 or so, way out in the bush in Southern Sudan where my parents worked with the Taposa tribe doing Bible translation.

  There really isn’t that many of us yet relative the all the “normal” people, but the bridgers, xenophiles and third-culture kids of the world tend to either have an inordinate impact or be spectacular failures. Maybe average is just a little harder for us to achieve?

• Broadband in Africa Report

  Posted: November 14, 2008, 2:39 am by HASH

  Russell Southwood’s Balancing-Act newsletter is one of the best sources for internet and mobile statistics and reports in Africa. If you don’t read it, you should. If you run any type of mobile, web, or ISP-type company in Africa and you can afford it, then you should be buying the reports. Here are some excerpts from the recent one on Broadband Markets in Africa with some opinions thrown in by me.

  Every country needs a price wiki

  “Confusing range of pricing structures: Different pricing structures are applied to different delivery technologies (DSL, CDMA, WiMax, GPRS, EDGE, 3G, etc) and this makes “like-for-like” comparisons across all African countries an almost impossible task.”

  No matter where you go in Africa there is no easy way to find out what types of broadband connections are available. There would be nothing more useful than a wiki-like tool that people could add to and compare against. A place where people who use these tools can put up their experiences and let others know about the “true” bandwidth provided by companies. This is especially true for residential customers.

  Geographic broadband penetration

  In the world’s most developed OECD countries, 61% of subscribers got their broadband through DSL services by 2007, 29% through Cable TV (CATV), and 8% through Fibre LAN connections. Just 2% of subscribers – some 3.455 million – subscribed to broadband through ‘other’ fixed wireless broadband services. In Africa, some 59% of broadband subscribers use DSL, just 1% use CATV, and the remaining 40% use wireless broadband.

  Broadband to OECD countries in Africa by type

  By December 2007 terrestrial broadband networks were now available in every capital city in Africa, some 50% of main cities, 10% of secondary cities and 2% of towns.

  Traditional media is still king

  Users in the more developed broadband markets make the Internet a modest supplement to a diet composed mainly of radio and television. As South African media owner Prakash Desai, CEO, Johnnic has pointed out in October 2007:”99.9% of revenues are offline. The Internet doesn’t feature.”

  As elsewhere, the Internet in Africa has a symbiotic relationship with other media, particularly television. After a controversial scene in the second series of Big Brother, there were five million downloads of that scene. Ninety per cent of those downloads came from within Africa and of those 33% were from South Africa and 37% from Nigeria and Uganda. Similar response rates on SMS voting and competitions shows that this will be fertile ground for broadband content development as the subscriber numbers increases.

  Mobile providers hold the high ground

  On a continent that has a wide variation in the amount of internet access available when moving from urban to rural settings, the hand tips to those that have lower costs in rolling out infrastructure. Land lines, cable and fibre all cost a great deal to deploy. Mobile phone carriers have the ability to do so at a lower cost through towers. It’s a node vs line problem.

  The key battle ground in the next five years will be between 3G services (or higher) offered by GSM and CDMA operators and fixed wireless broadband services. The outcome of this battle will shape the broadband experience in Africa, whether customers use mobiles as Internet access devices. …Mobile operators launching 3G networks are offering access speeds which compete with the broadband wireless services.

  When that access is just as fast as land lines, then there’s no reason at all to stick with an internet solution that forces you to stay in one place.

• Adgator: An African Blogger’s Ad Network

  Posted: November 11, 2008, 10:22 pm by HASH

  Justin Hartman and the guys at Afrigator are at it again. I’ve wondered for a very long time why no one had created an ad network for African bloggers, thinking that there surely must be someone out there who wanted to advertise on some African blogs.

  Adgator is here to ask that same question, and prove it out. Make sure you read Justin’s post on the new platform.

  Afrigator recently had a sizeable stake acquired by MIH Print Africa, a division of Naspers Limited. This gives them more money to work with, and more credibility. This also means that they have a sizable sales team at their disposal, which is one of the biggest issues when doing an ad network.

  Before you run off to Adgator and sign up, here are a couple things you should know:

  • It’s a 50% revenue split with Adgator.
  • You get paid on a CPM basis, so you had better have a good deal of traffic to make money.

  Questions

  I had a couple questions for Justin regarding Adgator, and he was kind enough to reply with some answers. Here is our dialogue:

  How do bloggers outside of South Africa get paid?

  At this stage we’re only piloting the program in South Africa. We need to test the viability of the program in the country where Afrigator’s largest base lies and if we can make it work here then we’ll take what we’ve learned into other African countries. When we do, we’ll most likely setup our own bank accounts in those countries so that we can facilitate the payment process from within those regions. One of the core issues we’ve always struggled with in the Adgator idea is the payment one and we realise that paying people from SA simply won’t work.

  Are you mainly focused on South Africa right now?

  Yes - we’re only SA for now. I’m hoping to roll this out to Kenya and Nigeria by March 2009.

  I know you have a sales team, how much of those sales are done outside of South Africa?

  None at this stage and herein lies the problem. Because we have little resources in other African countries it makes Adgator even more difficult to implement outside of SA. However, through our efforts with Afrigator we are working on overcoming this issue and establishing ourselves in our larger African countries.

  How many advertiser are already lined up?

  This is without doubt the most difficult aspect of the job as advertisers need to be educated in this process. That said it looks like we’ve got between two and four advertisers depending on how the final negotiations go.

• Maneno: A Blogging Platform Made for Africa

  Posted: November 9, 2008, 3:56 am by HASH

  Maneno means “words” in Swahili. An apt name for a new blogging platform being created right now by Miquel Hudin Balsa. It’s all new. There is nothing in there that’s part of some pre-packaged system.

  Do we need another blogging platform?

  When I first heard about Maneno, the first question that came to my mind was… “what about WordPress.com and Blogger.com?” Don’t those serve the same purpose? Realizing that my knowledge in this might be lacking, I contacted Miquel to answer a few answers. Here is his response:

  “We travel quite a bit and I found that anything hosted in the US gets slower and slower the further you get from the US, so I worked to create a CMS/blog platform that was very stripped down, yet fully functional. Don’t get me wrong, Wordpress is a beautiful, fantastic system that I admire and also use, but when you’re on a satellite connection in Bukavu or very slow DSL in Sarajevo, it’s mighty slow to use, which is the same problem with GMail and other web based applications that were developed in North America and Europe. So, I realized that what I was doing for our personal blogs would translate very well in to a system that would meet a great many of the needs for a new blogging system for Sub-Saharan Africa.”

  That makes sense. Any hosted web platform based in the US and Europe is going to have lag issues Africa. Every byte counts, so a system that has been custom built to work in this scenario can be useful.

  Primary African Languages

  Currently, the Maneno website interface is available in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Kiswahili. Most of the translation work is being built on feedback from translators who work on multi-lingual sites and have problems with the interface - as most are built for just writing and not for translating.

  “For the time being, since we are still in Beta, we want to incorporate about 3-4 more non-colonial languages in the next 2-3 months, perhaps Akan, Hausa, Lingala, or Zulu. For now, we’re trying to include languages that have a large amount of speakers. The system is quite open for translations, and we’re in fact looking for new volunteer translators.”

  For translating individual articles, it’s a instantaneous system where if someone is reading an article, they just click on the dropdown next to it and go to a translation page that allows them to work on their version side by side with the old one.

  Final thoughts

  The site absolutely flies. It’s a lot faster than most other blogging platforms. I’m interested in hearing from others around the African continent on how fast the site loads for them.

  Besides the standard text and images, Maneno allows you to add up to 10Mb audio files as a post. This is a great idea, and shows just how much they’re thinking about things differently, as many normal users of blogging platforms can’t figure out how to host podcasts or audio files to get them out in the public.

  What Maneno is trying to build could be a really effective hosted blogging tool for Africa. Besides language and page-load speed, on their blog they state that they’re also thinking about using mobile phones as a way to blog.

  The software is in it’s Beta stage, which means it’s time to try it out and see how well it actually works in the field. If you’d like to help in local dialect translations, make sure you visit the Maneno Languages page.

• Ushahidi in the Congo (DRC)

  Posted: November 7, 2008, 7:00 pm by HASH

  When we pushed the first version of Ushahidi live in Kenya, I was trying to juggle that as I spoke at a conference in New York. Today, we’re deploying the new Ushahidi Engine (v0.1) into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and I’m in Rhode Island speaking at another conference. I’m starting to see a pattern emerge…

  Reporting Incidents from the Congo

  The DRC deployment can be found at [drc.ushahidi.com], and the mobile number to send SMS reports to is +243992592111.

  Note: This is the alpha software for Ushahidi. If you find any problems, please submit them to bugs.ushahidi.com.

  How you can help

  Get the word out. Let people know the mobile number (+243992592111) and website (drc.ushahidi.com). Help get word to the Congolese on the ground in the DRC of this tool, that’s who needs to know about it.

  Things are serious in the Congo… They are bad, very bad. As Sean Jacobs states:

  “Since August this year at least 250,000 people have been left homeless in Eastern Congo in the latest outbreak of a civil war described here as between government troups and a rebel group claiming to protect ethnic Tutsis. At least 2 million people are refugees from that war which dates back to 1996.”

  It’s a difficult situation, with a swirling mixture of militia and armed forces, compounded by particularly brutal and confusing activities. External military forces, years of displacement and a misinformation mar the landscape.

  A new Ushahidi, a new test

  To be quite honest, we’re a little nervous, just as we were the first time. The new engine still has a few bugs, and there are some process flow issues that we’re still trying to get figured out. This time we’re backed up by a group of competent developers who are working to get things straightened out. Want to help us make it better? It’s an open community, and we’re looking for your input.

  We are VERY interested in hearing from you on how we can make the system better. If you have ideas, thoughts, comments - tell us. Leave them in the comments here, on the Ushahidi blog, or on the Ushahidi contact form.

  This is a test of the system, albeit a very difficult one, but it will affect the way the software is changed, modified and upgraded in the next version. What we get right here, we can make work for you in your area when you need it.

  How SMS messages route through Ushahidi

  This simplified graphic was created to show how SMS messaging moves through the Ushahidi system - it’s a 2-way communication cycle.

  
  
  SMS Reporting Through Ushahidi, originally uploaded by whiteafrican.

  1. An SMS gets sent to a local number
  2. It passes through FrontlineSMS
  3. This syncs with Ushahidi
  4. The message shows up on Ushahidi
  5. Admins can decide to send a message back to the original sender

  We use FrontlineSMS so that we can provide local numbers in areas where the larger SMS gateways don’t operate. For instance, if you were to try to run this in Zambia, you’d probably get a UK phone number if you went through Clickatell. However, we do use Clickatell for the messages that we route back to the original sender due to cost savings. They also have a very nice, easy to use API.

• No Connectivity, No Phone, No Electricty, No Problem

  Posted: November 7, 2008, 6:55 am by HASH

  Next time I’m in Orlando, I’m going to see Scott Johnson. He lives about an hour away in Daytona Beach and has developed a solar-powered Internet “hub” system (running Ubuntu GNU/Linux) that he builds to order. In the video below, he talks about the what, why and how of his system. Incredible work, and well worth watching.

  
  
  GNUveau Networks builds solar-powered computer networks for remote villages from roblimo on Vimeo.

  
  

  His objective is to bring computers and the Internet to places that have no connectivity, no phone service, and no electricity.

  On the wiki, I was able to see that there is a SolarNetOne installation running in Katsina State University, Nigeria right now, providing wireless connectivity and “Internet Cafe” access to hundreds of people. Scott also tells me that they’re in Tunisia and Benin as well, with more requests coming all the time.

  Find out more on his website at GNUveau Networks.

  (h/t Christian Ledermann)
  (thanks to Roblimo for getting me better embed code for the video)

• Web and Mobile Tech Used in Election Monitoring

  Posted: November 3, 2008, 10:55 pm by HASH

  With the big US election cycle culminating in tomorrow’s election day there has been a lot of talk about monitoring of elections. Usually I see this type of debate taking place in other parts of the world - like Zimbabwe, Kenya and Nigeria. However, this time it’s at home, and while all the focus of the world is here, it makes an interesting time and case-study for the use of technology in monitoring of everything from election fraud, to fairness and accessibility.

  This new generation of read/write technology using the web and mobile phones creates a situation where ordinary citizen have both awareness and opportunity to take part in an way that wasn’t possible in such great numbers only a few decades ago.

  There are really two components; gathering information and then distributing that information in a way that is useful for two types of users. First, the general public. Second, the officials and/or media who can cause something to happen when a bad situation arises.

  A list of web and mobile tools to monitor the US elections:

  • MyFairElection - Report your polling station’s
    condition on Election Day. (in partnership with ABC News)
  • TwitterVoteReport - Use twitter, SMS, audio call or an iPhone and Android applications to send in reports on Election Day. (in partnership with NPR)
  • Video Your Vote - Encourages people to video themselves voting and to upload those to YouTube. (in partnership with PBS)
  • VoterSuppression.net - A wiki where users can learn about and enter in reports of voter suppression.
  • Our Vote Live - A site documenting the voter assistance work of the Election Protection Coalition that uses a phone call-in system (866-OUR-VOTE).

  (if you have more that I haven’t heard of, add the link to the comments below)

  Cultural shifts and technology norms aren’t global

  Ethan Zuckerman is wondering whether Twitter, or even mobile phones and the web, are the right tools for monitoring an election. He brings up the fact that using old-school technology like radio and TV can be even more useful in places like Ghana, and how that differs with the experience in the USA.

  I think there are two things going on here.

  First, the cultural use of technology is changing. We’re in that strange twilight zone between mediums where the population is split between overlapping islands of web usage, mobile phones, radio, TV and print.

  Second, this cultural usage shift is compounded by having a two-tiered pattern of usage in different parts of the world. Ethan is absolutely right that one of the best tools in Africa is still the radio. However, that doesn’t translate to the US, where the country is too large for any one radio station to really hold sway. Many in the US tune into “national” radio personalities and shows, who have no “local” footprint. Calling in with your voting precinct’s flaws from Kooskia, Idaho wouldn’t make sense.

  Thus the use of the internet, and mobile phone. We’re at a point where we’re trying to raise awareness, interactivity and reach. What happens when we get mass public awareness of a tool, married with an efficient and useful way to get aggregate data in local communities?

  Final Thoughts

  One item that isn’t up for debate is this. At this time you need to marry up the coverage and awareness power of traditional media (radio, TV and print) with the simple tools and platforms that use the web and mobile phones correctly to gather and disseminate information. What I find most encouraging is that most of the initiatives listed above are using the new tools and they are partnered with major media organizations that can muscle this out to a national audience.

  (Side note: We were asked by a number of people if Ushahidi could be used for this. In short, yes - but the new alpha release of the software wasn’t ready until last week. Too late to play with here.)

  Also read the PBS Mediashift article covering these services in greater depth.

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes