Round Table. What is the role of private companies on Research in ICT4D?

Vanessa Frías-Martínez, Telefónica I+D

Jorge Lang, Intel Iberia

Miriam Catalán de Domingo, Thales Alenia Space

Santiago Porto, External Consultant in Business and Development at AECID and Director of IMSD Master

Javier Guillén Álvarez, Albentia Systems

[I could not attend this session... but at least I got the slides ;) ]

Eric Brewer: Contributions of Technical Research on ICT4D

Traditional development has a very top-down approach, with international agencies funding projects, often with sting and debt attached, difficult to manage (e.g. corruption) and usually with little role for high technology. This just does not fit ICT4D projects’ necessities and way of proceeding.

Cellphones’ evolution was very different: driven by bottom-up demand, because of the ease of use (voice), a dire need for communications (work, remittances…).

Remittances to Africa are circa US$40B and imply much more money than the one involved in aid. This should give an idea about the power of microloans. The Grameen Bank is owned entirely by the poor and has loaned more than US$3.9B. It is mainly used for very short run (up to 6 months) loans, aimed for instance at buying a goat that will pay back the loan with its milk, or paying for seeds that will pay back the loan once harvested. Loans are chained one to the next one and create an important funding and cash flow.

Grameen Telecom allows people to buy phones and rent them to their neighbours. The project covers 50,000-68,000 villages and 60M. The most important thing is that it scales and that the owner (the ‘phone lady’) is indeed interested in the maintenance of the equipment and the sustainability of the system.

Another example: I.T.Mountain.BPO for medical transcription: voice in, text out for medical issues.

The real digital divide is between urban and rural areas: for instance, the mobile phone is an urban phenomenon, as many rural areas have no cellular coverage.

We need to bring connectivity to rural areas, and here is where WiFi comes to the rescue.

Rural connectivity

It has already been demonstrated that the problem is not distance, but line of sight: you can send a signal as far as you can (literally) see. We need to find natural towers (e.g. mountains, hills) to be able to see further.

Aravind Eye Hospital Network: doctors stay at the hospital, patients stay at their homes. 4-5Mb/s per link, video-conferencing — high quality and video are important because the interview really matter —, e-mail, training. Achieved 6,000 consultations/month, over 160,000 patients so far, centers are cash-flow positive, over 30,000 patients have recovered sight, growing to 50 centres covering 2.5M people and possibility to replicate in other cities.

Smart phones

Computers that, nevertheless, are small, portable, have self-contained power, easy to use, culturally accepted…

SmartPhone diagnostic device that, connected to the audio jack (and phones are good at converting analogue signals into digital ones), can provide measurements on heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature, blood oxygen, ECG, fetal heart rate or even blood pressure. The result is a much much cheaper and easy to use diagnostic device. The phone can either convert the raw data into readings of forward them through the GSM network.

CellScope: Cellphone Microscope = (phone) camera + big lens. Its use can be to diagnose malaria after a blood sample is put under the cellscope.

m-Learning: teach English via smartphones and by using educational games. Games have to be based on traditional local games to provide the learner with a familiar and thus understandable context.

Discussion

Fernando Balducci: we definitely have to avoid the confusion between tele-diagnosis and self-diagnosis, which is a hazard we might run into when such tools become more and more present in end-users’ hands.

Javier Simó: concurrence or cooperation? A: concurrence, but informed concurrence. Every place is different, so solutions cannot be replicated in a strictly straightforward way. And for being informed, a certain degree of cooperation is required.

Q: what about call centres? A: a call center requires connectivity, low power, simple infrastructures. So call centres can be a good way to start to create employment in rural areas. But we should be beyond that (including going beyond software development centres).

David Chávez: smartphone or cloud computing? A: it is very likely that computing power of the phone will increase at a faster path than mobile broadband will. Thus why latest developments have gone into the direction of making the phone perform more work than instead sending to and fro data to “computing centres” to perform these tasks.

Vanessa Frías: how is assessment performed in smartphones? A: within the traditional education system, this kind of assessment is very difficult, as it often implies interaction, synchronous meetings, etc. This is why vocational programmes generally work better than for-credit educational programmes. Indeed, there are other security- and privacy-related issues that are still difficult to handle in m-learning.

Ermanno Pietrosémoli: The ICTP-UNESCO Wireless Training Kit

The ICTP-UNESCO Wireless Training Kit has been approved by the International Telecommunication Union and it is aimed at training people in developing countries so that they can install and manage wireless technologies. It is developed by Rob Flickenger, Carlo Fonda, Marco Zennaro, Ermanno Pietrosémoli and S.M. Radicella.

Advantages of wireless networks:

• Cost-effective ways to provide connectivity where other usual technologies — e.g. fibre — are difficult to deploy.
• Operate in a wave spectrum that is free in most countries.
• Interference issues are less severe in rural areas, where there actually is less supply of telecommunication solutions.

WiFi was designed for short distances,, but with some firmware modifications, it can be used in longer distances, achieving a maximum of 382 km.

One of the main advantages of WiFi-based technologies is that they can be managed and maintained by the local communities themselves.

The training kit includes all the devices and materials needed to run a training workshop on wireless networks. It also includes electronic books, support materials (slides, guides, exercises), WiFi devices, antennas and other equipment to run a full training course.

The cost of the kit was initially 1,000€, but all the “software” (including learning materials) is freely available on the net. And the hardware can be built and/or distributed by many agents, hence the cost can even be reduced.

Related initiatives:

• Repository with open materials related to training on wireless networks: WirelessU.org.
• Book: Flickenger, R., Aichele, C. E., Fonda, C., Forster, J., Howard, I., Krag, T. & Zennaro, M. (2006). Wireless Networking in the Developing World. Morrisville: Limehouse Book Sprint Team.

Discussion

Valentín Villarroel: who is the toolkit aimed at? Ermanno Pietrosémoli: especially trainers of trainers. On the other hand, it is also aimed at communities that already have some basic structure and can dedicate a person to these matters.

Experiences in Research on ICT4D within the Master Telecommunication Networks for Developing Countries

Voice over IP in Tutupali-UTPL Network (Ecuador)
Katty Rohoden and Patricia Ludeña

Installed wireless network to connect Health care centres, which enables them to be connected to the capital and amongst themselves.

Alternative Rural Telecommunication Network in Ecuador
Danilo Corral de Witt

Project in Equador, where 60% of people live in rural areas, that are usually have no Internet coverage.

The “Red Alternativa de Telecomunicaciones Rurales de Ecuador” [Ecuador Rural Telecommunication Alternative Network] seeks to find a solution to that, with a new wireless infrastructure and adding GIS technologies to optimize its deployment.

Using GIS allows for a clever management and design of the new infrastructures, and to see what the overall coverage will be.

Design of Clinical History and Tele-ECG Services
José García Muñoz y Ferney Beltrán

Wireless services for the comprehensive management of hospitals, including software to for a more efficient management, monitoring and impact assessment.

Problems:

• Epidemics monitoring.
• Drugs supply.
• Emergencies.
• Pacient monitoring.
• Lack of equipment in health centres.
• Limited access to health care services
• Cerebrovascular diseases not detected.

Goals: improve management and health care, and designing and implementing a network to send and receive signals.

It was key to the project to have an array of indicators of usage of the tool (management software) to test its strengths and weaknesses.

Connectivity was provided by Bluetooth, as it required low power consumption, allowed for high bandwidth and was a spread standard.

Sustainability of Rural Telecommunication Networks
Inés Bebea

The project analyses how ICTs have contributed to the Millennium Development Goals.

Problems:

• Projects in developing countries have low rates of success, under 20%
• Public institutions play a very important role.
• Financial, technological, social and human factors that make sustainability a tricky issue.

How to design and implement a Sustainability Comprehensive Plan?

Three sub-plans:

• Operative maintenance plan
• Institutional and financial plan
• Content and human plan

That provide five kinds of sustainability:

• Financial sustainability
• Technological sustainability
• Social sustainability
• Content sustainability
• Human sustainability

Inter-institutional Network in Santa Clotilde (Loreto, Peru)
Rico Hario Abilowo Hardjono and Elsa Feliz

Goal: improve the administrative and coordination processes between the staff at local public administrations. This was done with a WiFi network of inter-institutional interconnexion that, amongst others, could provide voice over IP services.

The project was a success, but some important areas need much improvement: power supply still and issue, and capacity building and training should be strengthened.

WiMAX solutions for rural areas
Nydia Mendiola and Carlos Rey

Context: big zones without coverage, scattered population, low resources.

WiMAX is a standard solution, runs on a free wave spectrum, is designed for long distances, and its parameters are quality-of-service oriented.

It has, though, high costs when users are highly scattered, as it is designed for a unique connectivity leap: how then to maintain the quality of service while reducing costs? Could WiFi and WiMAX be hybridized?

A hybrid and working solution was created. Then a new standard (802.16j) was issued and seems to perfectly fit with into the hybrid solution.

Analysis of National Policies for Information Society in Latin America and the Caribbean. Are integral strategies in reducing the digital divide?
Amagoia Salazar

Research on the different digital divides and the different national plans to fight against e-exclusion.

Most countries in Latin America have designed and implemented national plans to foster the Information Society, but it is yet to be found whether their approach was a comprehensive one or just focused in specific parts or conceptions of the digital divide.

• Comprehensive approach?
• Where is the focus put?
• What are the thematic priorities?
• What are the regional priorities?
• Is there a commitment with free software?

Maintenance Plan for a Rural Telemedicine Network in Mozambique
Valentín Villarroel, Camilo Garzón

[connection failed during the event]

Discussion

David: what was the non-technical part and what the main barriers in this area? Elsa Feliz: human interaction and logistic coordination was the toughest, and, on the other hand, all the things you can not foresee and that once on the field are much more difficult to solve. Carlos Rey: teamwork is always a challenge.

[worth knowing array of projects, rich in insights, and difficult to summarize in a single post]

Now that Xarxa Òmnia has turned 10 years old, the yearly rendez-vous of the whole network, the Jornada Òmnia, will focus on how should the network evolve in the coming years, taking into special account the changes that have been happening in the last 10 years in matters of the Information and the Network Society, and what are the challenges that policy makers and telecentre administrators will have to face to successfully fight the digital divide and the risks of (e-)exclusion.

I have been invited to introduce both these aspects. And my point has been already been made in the way that I write (e-)inclusion and (e-)exclusion: in my opinion, e-inclusion or e-exclusion will increasingly be a matter of inclusion/exclusion rather than being centre on the “e-”. Obvious as this might sound (i.e. inclusion being a matter of inclusion), the devil is in the details:

• Real impact of ICTs will come — I believe — by them enabling, enhancing and empowering the analogue part of our lives: e-inclusion should be about ICTs finding ways to help people be part of a community, not about pouring people in the Internet (the “e-” focus of e-inclusion), notwithstanding a recurrent strategy in many Information Society policies;
• People not online are, increasingly, people actively refusing to be online. While it is still true that many people don’t go online because of impossibility to access the Internet (hardware, connectivity, affordability, skills, etc.), we also find people that being able to access it, just don’t want to or even walk out of it. Lack of awareness, belief that ICTs bring nothing good to their lives, technophobia, etc. are keeping them disconnected and in risk not of e-exclusion but exclusion at all.

Thus, here’s my presentation:

The main points and rationale of my presentation are:

• The Digital Revolution puts at stake the economy of scarcity (at least at the information and knowledge levels), brings down transaction costs and introduces a new actor into the equation: machines that substitute brain work (as other machines substituted muscle work in the Industrial Revolution)
• The effect of these three aspects, puts at stake institutions? Do schools, firms, governments, the media or civic organizations still have a role in mediating between citizens? Or will citizens bypass them? What if they do? What if citizens themselves are bypassed by their peers?
• If hierarchies and institutions give way to — or are deeply transformed by — networks, inclusion will be a matter of staying connected and being able to re-program oneself to be kept within the network.
• New (digital) competences will be crucial for that, from technological literacy to e-awareness.
• Thus, we might be needing to reframe our policies and foster pull strategies instead of pull strategies; we might also reconsider the role of our (e-)inclusion tools (telecentres amongst them), that might need shifting from the “e-” to the “inclusion”, strongly focussing on community building, enhanced by technologies.

This presentation is a wonderful occasion for me to gather up things I’ve been working on and thinking about in the last two years. In some way, it collects the reflections I already made in the following speeches (in chronological order):

• The role of ICTs and the Web 2.0 for development: from push to pull strategies, about inclusion and exclusion in the Network Society and how the digital divide should be reframed as a network or community divide
• Telecenter 2.0 and Community Building, about how telecentres should evolve according to the new Web 2.0
• Towards a comprehensive definition of digital skills , about what I think a comprehensive set of digital competences is, and their importance for living in the Network Society
• Darwin at the Information Society: adaptation (and benefits) or extinction, on the end of institutions as we know it, and how telecentres should empower individuals to create networks and emancipate from the (ancient) vertical institutions
• Public Internet Access Points: impact vs. sustainability, on the challenges facing telecentres as Internet access becomes more pervasive and being part of a community increasingly important

I want to thank Cesk Gasulla, Noemí Espinosa, Marta Jové, Sònia Castro, Dolors Pedrós and the rest of the organizing committee for the invitation and the valuable chance to organize my reflections and think aloud in public. Moltes gràcies!

Mobile Technology and Social Change in Africa
Jessica Colaço, researcher at the Strathmore Research and Consultancy Centre

Colaço works on Wireless Map Services for Smart Phones (WMS) in Africa.

Mobile Africa’s profile:

• 370,000,000 mobile users
• High demand for Health, Agriculture and Education
• Huge market for SMS apps
• Community of local software developers
• Innovative mobile apps and services, that convert opportunities into solutions
• For most Africans, the mobile phone is the only computing device, portable, networked

Uses

• Communication
• Access to information by subscription to short code services
• Mobile payments (e.g. M-PESA)
• Other applications such as Fish Detector (Kenya), developed by Pascal Katana, and which detects fishes accoustically
• Creation of jobs through crowd-sourcing (e.g. txtEagle, which allows people to complete simple tasks via mobile via SMS and get compensated for it, that is, people get paid to work by SMS)
• Tangaza (“broadcast” in Kiswahlili) that allows users to send voice to several receivers
• M-Kulima (“farmer” in Kiswahili) allows buyers to store and retrieve information about the milk market via SMS. Of course, its application is not bound to milk, but can be applied to many other markets.
• Waññigame allows children to recognize numbers and learn to count
• M-guide for toursm, by Strathmore University: the user takes a photo of an animal, the photo is sent to a server that recognizes the animal and sends the information back
• M-Word for learning

How to create innovative culture? Transferring skills and knowledge through mobile boot camps, sharing ideas and encouraging students to brain-storm in groups, mentoring students and liaising them with experts in this field, creating of a research and open-learning atmosphere.

Discussion w. Luis Ángel Fernández Hermana and Eva Domínguez

Eva Domínguez: mobile phones are a revolution in fields as Education (m-learning) and Journalism, especially citizen journalism.

Jessica Colaço stresses the experience of Ushahidi regarding journalism and citizen journalism, how it is used for transparency and accountability, etc.

Luis Ángel Fernández Hermana points to the distinction between people that use technology on a compulsory basis or as a personal option. In higher income countries, technology is compulsory: you “have” to use the last gadget. This is not the case of lower income countries, where people seek benefit (or profit) in technology.

Luis Ángel Fernández Hermana: In what languages are mobile applications and services? Jessica Colaço: Normally in English, most of the times also in local languages.

Lev Gonick: the mobile platform is a much more crowdsourcing fitting platform to create educational content.

Carlos Miranda: it’s good that mobile phones are kept simple (no video, no cam, no anything). The “intel” is outside, it’s the people. [how strongly I disagree...]

Paul G. West: how to deliver mass-education via mobile phones? [unanswered question; what a pity, I would have loved to get that answer].

Marc Alier: if applications have to be developed, how are they distributed to a larger amount of users and other developers? Jessica Colaço: normally, SMSs are broadcasted with the instructions to find and/or install the application, as providing a URL is not usually a good solution (though still a possibility).

Susan Metros: what is the power of mobile operators? do they listen to their customers? Jessica Colaço: increasingly, customers “come in” the design of applications and services.

Sílvia Bravo: are mobile phones helping Africa to “emancipate” and “be Africa”, or just leading the path towards a copycat of richer countries? Jessica Colaço: the good thing of mobile phones is that they have been adopted at a so-grassroots level that there is no aim to copy, but to be.

See Also

• Jessica Colaço’s TED Fellows page
• Mobiles offer lifelines in Africa, by Ken Banks
• Aplicaciones sociales del móvil: África está dando lecciones de innovación, by Javier Velilla
• Sobre Mobile learning, by Francesc Balagué
• A New Generation of Mobile Developers: Mobile Camps in Africa, by www.mobileactive.org at School Choice
• Africa goes mobile, by Steve Wheeler

So, is there no reason to be optimistic about mobiles in Africa, then? Well, it depends. Let’s bring some data in for the rescue:

Or, graphically:

Source: ITU ICT Eye

Data don’t clearly show the distinction between developing and developed countries, though it can be roughly inferred at least by (sorry for the rude simplification) looking at Africa and Asia (with mostly Low and Lower-middle income economies with very few exceptions — see the World Bank’s Country Classification). The big highlights are:

• Developing countries have less cellphones per capita than developed ones
• Most phones in developing countries are mobile and digital
• The compound annual growth rate of mobile telephony is higher the less saturated is the market

A logical comment about the last statement would be that it’s natural that less penetration leads to higher annual growth rates. Well, it is not that logical: on the one hand, there are countries with penetration rates above 150% (United Arab Emirates, Macao, Italy, Qatar or Hong Kong), so the concept of “saturation” is a tricky one; on the other hand, there are plenty of other commodities and capital goods (e.g. cars or washing machines) that not even dream of reaching these growth rates.

That said, one need to be cautious when stating that there are “many” cellphones in developing countries: this is true in absolute terms, but most untrue in relative ones. But reality shouts out loud that this is changing at an overwhelming speed and that innovation happens at a terrific pace.

These data absolutely support the creation, in 2008, of the Mobile Web for Social Development Interest Group (MW4D), fostered by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This interest group — a part of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative — has as a purpose to:

explore how to use the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on Mobile phones as a solution to bridge the Digital Divide and provide minimal services (health, education, governance, business,…) to rural communities and under-privileged populations of Developing Countries.

Some projects using mobile phones for development

• Kiwanja and their projects: FrontlineSMS, to help nonprofits to benefit from using SMS for advocacy and monitoring; nGOmoblie, a competition to encourage them to think about how text messaging could benefit them and their work; and Silverback, a game for mobile phones to raise awareness about gorilla conservation
• TradeNet, to access and manage market information (specially on agriculture markets) from the mobile phone;
• M-Pesa, to transfer money and make payments through text messaging;
• Ushahidi, a platform that crowdsources crisis information, allowing anyone to submit crisis information through text messaging using a mobile phone, email or web form.
• Kubatana.net and their experience monitoring the elections in Zimbabwe, now converted into a handbook on How to run a mobile advocacy campaign

These and other projects, stories, people and organizations using mobile phones for social impact can be found at MobileActive.

On the other hand, Stéphane Boyera and Ken Banks, co-chairs of the Mobile Web for Social Development Interest Group will be at the II International Meeting on ICT for Development Cooperation, where there is a whole track on mobile telephony for development.

More information

• Mobile Phones and the Digital Divide, article by Ken Banks in PC World
• The meek shall inherit the web, article at The Economist
• Africa Perspective on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development, workshop about mobile phones for development taking place in Maputo, Mozambique, on April 1 and 2, 2009.
• Most mobiles…, Johathan Donner’s blog on mobiles for development.

Round Table: mGovernment. The Mobile Phone and its integration in e-Government
Chairs: Nacho Campos

What is a mobile phone

• Mobile
• A device you use every day
• 110% of penetration
• Many features

Tomy Ahonen: the mobile phone is the 7th medium:

• Personal
• Always on
• Always with us
• Integrated paying method
• Immediate tool

mGovernment: how the Administration adapts itself to the nomadic style of the citizen (The Economist)

Goal: from m-murmur to m-chat to m-conversation (unidirectional, bidirectional, multidirectional).

Barriers:

• Lack of leadership, political and technical
• Infrastructures
• Resistance to change of public servants
• Telecommunication Operators
• Lack of communication plans
• Digital Divide

Mario Moreno Sánchez: Mobile Marketing expert

The advertising market is absolutely saturated: the customer can no more get a bigger amount of ads.

The key of m-development is multistakeholder partnerships between the Administration, Banking and Telecoms. An appropriate legal framework is a must.

MMS is likely to be the next multimedia revolution… maybe more than SMS, because, among other things, it’s really multimedia.

Virginia Moreno: CIO Leganés City Council.

Why mobile communication between the Administration and the citizen?>/p>

• Highest penetration
• New communication channel with the citizen
• Integrated with other channels
• Secure systems

Almudena de la Fuente: Vodafone Government and Public Services Director

How do you sign? With a pen or with a mobile phone?

Multistakeholder partnership: service provider, the Administration, the certifier of the digital signature.

Very simple for the user: just change the SIM (keeping the telephone number) and pay (!) the registration to the service.

Víctor Solla: CIO Avilés City Council

First things first: organizational change before the application of new communication channels.

Technically, it’s everything already done: penetration is (almost) total in the user’s part, and knowledge/data digital management in the Administration part is (or should be) already a reality. It’s “just” a matter of making it happen.

Thus, sometimes the only problem is cost, but not developing cost, but the cost of leadership and organizational change.

The Administration should watch over the existence of an appropriate connectivity so its services can be properly reached. Otherwise, it should foster the establishment of the needed infrastructures, supplied directly or through partnerships with the private sector.

In bold characters, the questions; the answers following.

Cheap laptops, what do you think their acceptance will be like in developing countries? Do you think it will be a success?

Personally I think that they will undoubtedly have some acceptance. In part because there already is a government demand, but in my opinion, they will above all get into these countries through the private sector. The great success of Negroponte and his OLPC project has not been to create a new device, but breaking the spiral “more powerful hardware – new software demanding more hardware power – more powerful hardware – new software demanding more hardware power – etc.”, and showing that it is possible a good hard with a limited soft and vice versa.

Once broken this dynamic of “more, more, more,” the private sector will enter with force into a market of billions of potential users so far neglected because they could not afford that “more hardware, more software.”

I also believe that the mixed model pda+phone (smartphone) can be an interesting trojan horse, given the high penetration of mobile and the already numerous management applications for cellulars in those countries and that have been very successful.

Do you think the production of low cost laptops is the best way to extend and promote the use of computers in the Third World?

Absolutely not. But with two shades/comments.

The first one is that it has already been demonstrated — in developing countries, but in developed countries as well — that the user (citizen, Administration, firms) should see some use (and benefit) in the computer or the Internet. If not, once large infrastructures have been installed (e.g. wire) these will clearly be unused or underused. The laptop, without some clear uses in its design, has neither present nor future.

However, and this is my second nuance, this computer, accompanied by an intelligent design in the field of uses (e.g. a teaching method based on distance education, educational content embedded by default on the computer, a learning plan of shared learning within the family, etc.) can be a spearhead that will break the natural rejection that most of us adopt in front of a new technology.

Therefore, it is by no means the solution, but may be part — and, in fact, be the most attractive sometimes — of a comprehensive plan to promote the Information Society based on content and services.

These proposed low-cost products for developing countries (laptops, mobile phones, cars …), can actually help to reduce the gap of the digital divide?

This question has a short answer and a long one.

Of course, all that implies mainstreaming Information and Communication Technologies helps to narrow the digital divide, by definition: more technology, less gap. Elemental.

The long answer has three parts.

The first, and we discussed: the technology is useless if not used. All in all, and like any technology, the computer is just a tool, for communication and information in a digital world. If, in the end, we cannot access neither information nor communication, the gap remains.

Which brings us to the second part: quality. It is now already (almost) more worrying the quality of Internet connection that the penetration itself: many services require increasingly broadband to operate optimally. Therefore, if these low-cost products have, in addition, low performance, their contribution to bridging the digital divide is also tiny. We should not be thus confusing cost with performance.

Last, the digital divide is a reflection, a derivative of the socio-economic gap. In this regard, if these devices do not reduce poverty or increase welfare, sooner or later, the digital divide will widen as currently are social inequalities. We would then be putting a patch or attacking the symptoms rather than the disease.

Is there room for a number of competitors in the market for low-cost computers?

At the state we are in, we have to count connected computers. According to the statistics, 17% of the population in the World is already connected. So there still is a 83% left to be covered. Moreover, if we include both homes and businesses, we can potentially achieve (as happens with telephony in many countries) more than 100% penetration. So, effectively, and in theory, there should be room for everyone.

Of course, the problem is not supply, but demand: who among these 5.5 billion people can afford to be connected? That is the question to be solved. Mobile telephony, low-cost computers, wi-fi and mesh networks have provided a good bunch of examples of people who previously could not afford connectivity and that now can. And other examples have shown that, if there is a way to make the cost worthwhile (by reducing other costs due to use of technology), this is usually not a barrier.

Do you think that behind this “solidarity rush” hides an unreported trade war?

Businesses, by definition, with their owners and stockholders behind, are not nonprofits. And that’s it. They look for profits: this is their role and we should not make value judgments on this issue.

What is reprehensible is when these firms try to convince us of otherwise, or, much worse, when they harm others with their economic activity.

Almost 90% of the money that goes into research and development is spent on the development of technologies to serve 10% of the richest people in the world. Could this trend be changed or is there something being done in this matter?

I fear that the capitalist system works this way. We need to generate surplus value to satisfy the owner of the capital, and this can only be achieved by selling to the one that can pay, which is the richest.

It occurs to me, however, two ways to reverse this trend:

The first one, the more usual one, is trying to socially share the profit beyond benefiting a few stockholders. It is the model of most agencies for international cooperation, development aid and private foundations and NGOs in general.

The second one is the opposite: try to have more people that can buy things so that 10% becomes a 20%, 30%, etc. That is, betting for the development of the poorest to enable them to be good consumers, so that they “count” on the global scene.

Simplified example: we may investigate malaria (which does not affect the majority of developed people) and provide free vaccines as a way of sharing the wealth (in kind in this case), or we can increase the purchasing power of people who suffer from malaria so they can make demand for vaccines grow and hence the market believes that it is a profitable market to do research in this disease.

Both options have been supported and criticized simultaneously, by people working in development cooperation and solidarity: on the one hand, considering the most disadvantaged as a mere consumers (and squeeze them for profit) is something inhuman; on the other hand, is a way to make development more sustainable in the long run, abandoning charity (which would be the first option presented before) for further development in the strict sense.

But this is another debate ;)

The role of ICTs to educate about sexually transmitted diseases prevention, especially to educate educators.

An important aspect of such education is to ease the communication between the physicists and their patients.

Goals

• Train educators about these diseases… and how to educate about them
• Sensitize youngsters about prevention
• Mobilize policy makers

The main successes are, above all, the speed and spread of information and training, with a strong focus on prevention, which is where information can actually make a difference.

Tools: a platform with three axes (1) content (2) spaces for debate (3) online assistance

María Jesús Medina
Cybervolunteering at Iníci@te Programme

[note: in this session, cybervolunteer = ICT volunteer, not online volunteer. See my Online Volunteering Taxonomy for more details]

Volunteers experts in ICTs to help users in telecenters.

Volunteers are trained about attitudes, techniques, the environment they are going to work in, the target beneficiaries of the several activities, etc.

The public-private partnership between the regional administration (coordinating the project) and the local administrations and telecenters a must for success.

Olga Fernández Berrios
Reflections, tools and experiences about cooperation 2.0

Training for nonprofits about technology for nonprofits, with a strong use of Web 2.0 applications, such as feed aggregation, metablogs, wikis, instant messaging, VoIP, microblogging, online volunteering, etc.

Blogs in the field: use of blogs to raise advocacy and transparency by writing within and from a development project.

Blogs at the headquarters: same, but from the nonprofit headquarters (no need to be really there, but the focus)

Directories of projects and institutions.

Metablogs: Global Voices Online

Planets: feed aggregators, automatically updated once have been set up. The information comes to you.

Wikis: Where nonprofits share their information, handbooks, procedures… and with the possibility that this information can be updated/build collaboratively.

Caveat: some of these initiatives are not top-down, not institutional, but raised by individuals, sometimes as a personal answer (critique?) to the bureaucratic slowness and lack of flexible response of some organizations.

Social networks: some of them using richest media, such as The Hub.

We should shift from talking about technology to talking about the uses of it. The Web 2.0 allows this shift, as technological solutions come more and more irrelevant.

Free flow of information: RSS, copyleft or open licensing, syndication

Slides:

Vicente Carlos Domingo González
humania.tv

To enable media diffusion, especially video, for nonprofits and development issues.

Their role is to act as a new information agency to cover events, projects from nonprofits. It runs on a volunteering basis coming from the media sector + a technological platform to broadcast video.

The goal is not only to broadcast, but have audience too, thus the commitment with high-quality low-band requisites of the portal.

José Manrique López de la Fuente
Opportunities of Mobile Web in developing countries

Success bridging the digital divide

• The will, motivation to access the Net
• Material access
• Personal capacity, competences
• Access to advanced uses

The importance to generate local business possibilities based on ICTs.

Part of the material access and personal capacity interaction is about the ease of use, that should be kept clear in all ICT4D projects.

Mobile Solutions

• Specific applications for mobile phones: maximum integration with the device, but device diversity can generate incompatibilities
• Voice and/or SMS based solutions: simple and working, interoperability could be a pro or a con
• The Web as platform: rich, standards are mainstream

Mobile Web

• Advantage: Integration of existing solutions
• Advantage: Technologies based on open standards
• Problem: user experience, diversity and cost in some places
• Problem: low-tech devices that cannot access the web, mobile carriers not providing access

Carolina Moreno Asenjo
Global Networks and social engagement: ICT integration strategies at Entreculturas

Goals

• Improve quality in education, at a global level
• Foster advocacy through ICTs
• Fight the “loneliness” of the teacher in his classroom
• Cut down costs in training and knowledge sharing
• Create a link to catalyze network building

Leverage communities of practice and communities of learning with ICTs.

Challenges

• engagement of the beneficiaries
• funding
• logistics when setting up the hardware and technological platform
• motoring, coordination
• sustainability

Communication in Alegría Activity

Mobile (connected) classrooms.

Eduardo Pérez Gutiérrez
Geographic Information Systems in Educational Centers for Regional Development

Goals: Develop web-based GISs for diagnose and monitoring of educational centers for regional development.

To fight lack of education in remote, rural areas, governments supply these regions with instructors, that are not actually teachers but have a broader profile, socially speaking, but a lower profile as an educator. So, their social profile is good to interact with the community but the quality of teaching might not be as good as expected.

The GIS should help cross data about the reach of an instructor’s activity, the profile of the population reached by this instructor, etc. and then help the decision-making about the instructor, his activity, the way he spends his budget, etc.

Benefits: focused investments, allows centralized administration, transparency and monitoring, enables confidence, provides context and helps strategy design.

which I find really interesting and a recommended reading for everyone.

This is why I find so disappointing when an author of his stature can so unexpectedly slip out of the road by writing:

the Internet is quickly becoming a medium of interactive communication beyond the cute, but scarcely relevant practice of chat rooms (increasingly made obsolete by SMSs and other wireless, instant communication systems)

[bold letters are mine]

Of course, I’m not questioning him for not foreseeing that SMS would not replace instant messaging — which is what he’s actually meaning by the general concept of chat rooms —, two technologies that now live together in perfect harmony, especially in teen environments. It’s about the scarcely relevant practice of chat rooms.

This is 0% evidence, 100% value judgment.

Evidence about the relevance of such practice is way easy to be checked. First of all, we should remember the origins of both e-mail and instant messaging: high-tech scientific laboratories — there’s plenty of literature about this issue. But once it went out of the scientific environment and got popular, there’s more and more evidence about the relevance of such tools: the Pew Internet & American Life Project issued in that same year, 2004, the report How Americans Use Instant Messaging about 53 million American adults using instant messaging programs. Well, this is quite a lot of people doing scarcely relevant practices. But just at the end of last year, 2007, Garrett and Danziger analyzed how instant messaging was used at work for work purposes in their article IM=Interruption Management? Instant Messaging and Disruption in the Workplace, finding positive uses — yes, you read right: positive. So, evidence absolutely shows that there are good, interesting, useful practices around instant messaging.

What about value judgment? Well, I’d personally agree on assessing as useful, effective, efficient, etc. the use instant messaging for criminal purposes: phishing and pharming, organizing terrorist attacks, seducing minors for sexual purposes, etc. Actually, the main security concerns nowadays about the Internet are precisely in this line: how to avoid the effectiveness of tools like instant messaging, social networking sites and e-mail for criminal purposes. Hence, what is to blame is the criminal who uses these tools, but the tools are working great — even if in bad hands, because tools know no ethics, no law (well, Lessig would complain about this last point).

Summing up: a tool is useful, efficient, effective or relevant besides the fact that we like or dislike the way it is used, but based on its performance.

Same with social networking sites. In a work I’ve already talked about by David Beer and Roger Burrows, they write about Facebook. Even if they are quite open minded, there’s a full chapter about the bad uses of Facebook concerning teachers’ privacy issues which, from my point of view, is almost a digression that really does not deal with the sense of ‘democratization’, as stated in the title of that chapter.

While the authors complain — more than criticize — about the fact of having some colleagues exposed to public dishonor, they lose focus on the subject of analysis: Facebook, social networking sites, shifting towards the (bad) education and practices of such students, which was (supposedly) not the matter of debate in the article.

Day after day I am surprised by the recurrent exercise to blame on the Internet things that belong to “real” life: Law, Education, Business Management… And, even worse, to state about Internet applications and uses things that are absolutely false, taking as evidence what, all in all, was just lack of deeper knowledge and prejudice. Even in the most brilliant scientists. We all have bad days everywhen.

Some highlights:

• Growing commitment to ICT in education on the part of government leaders across the continent. Leadership, leadership, leadership.
• Public-private partnerships are important mechanisms enabling the implementation of ICT in national education systems in Africa. Mark Davies also spoke about this at the Web2forDev Conference when he presented Tradenet, and it’s getting a subject on which everyone comes over again and again.
• The need for digital content development relevant to local curricula is becoming more
  urgent as ICT use becomes more widespread. Surprisingly, there’s few mentions to initiatives such as Creative Commons and no mentions at all about open access policies, strategies, debates and so.
• Interest in open source software and operating systems is growing rapidly in Africa, but this growth is constrained by a lack of sufficient human resource capacity to support such systems and applications. Once again, the problem is not only infrastructures, but capacity building, digital literacy at all levels — and a strong local ICT sector, strong local industry. A chance for endogenous development?
• Internet connectivity remains a major challenge, which is no surprise but becoming a major challenge as Web 2.0 demands more and more connectivity quality.
• Wireless networks are developing rapidly throughout the continent, and of increasing relevance to the education sector, something that projects like One Laptop per Child have turned as their main asset/bet
• e-Learning for Higher Education is still not widely adopted, despite efforts like the ones made by the African Virtual University, USAID’s DOT-COM, SchoolNet Africa, to mention a few. Lack of content, hardware and connectivity being some of the main barriers.

It is especially relevant to me what the preface states:

Despite widespread beliefs that ICTs can be important potential levers to introduce and sustain education reform efforts in Africa [and] much rhetoric related to the ‘digital divide’; there has been no consolidated documentation of what is actually happening in Africa in this area, nor comprehensive baseline data on the state of ICT use in education in Africa against which future developments can be compared.
A lack of information impacts planning [...]
A need for coordination [...]
No consolidated information resource [...]

which I honestly think could be transposed to many many other areas of the ICT4D field. Hence, the need to establish a methodological framework for ICT4D and pursue more research, analysis, indicators, raise datasets, etc.

More info

• Piece of news and main findings
• Survey web page
• Farrell, G. and Isaacs, S. (2007). Survey of ICT and Education in Africa: A Summary Report, Based on 53 Country Surveys. Washington, DC: infoDev / World Bank. (569 Kb)

(Thanks Michael)

The main conclusions are as follows:

• Voice continues to be the key driver in OECD telecommunication markets
• Mobile subscribers outnumber fixed subscribers by a
  ratio of 3 to 1
• Rise of importance of Voice over Internet Protocolo (VoIP), mainly due to rise of broadband adoption, and pressing down prizes on voice services
• Blurring of market barriers: e.g. voice no more tied to fixed analogue lines, but can be accessed through fixed analogue lines, but also through broadband, mobile lines, etc.
• Blurring of market barriers, multiplicity of offers, blurring of regulation.
• Rise of local wireless networks fostered by local administrations.
• Shift from paying for voice to paying for data; shift from paying for data to flat-rate pricing based on bandwidth quality instead of data traffic.
• Trend to lower broadband prizes for better quality.
• Shift of subscription of communication services provided outside the boundaries of a citizen’s country and delivered over the Internet: more pressure on regulation changes.
• Telecommunication trade continues to grow in the OECD area
  and now accounts for 2.2% of all trade.
• China is one of the five emerging countries in the group known as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia,
  India, China and South Africa). ICT spending in the BRICS economies increased by more than 19% a year

Summing up:

• The importance of broadband — the new leading factor of the digital divide.
• The pressure on sector and international regulation — the new arena of the debate to achieve harmonization, inside and outside boundaries.

Presentation: Anton Mangstl

It’s the first time that the revolution is not about the development of systems, but empowerment.

Presentation: Hansjörg Neun

Holidays for me is getting no internet and no GSM. It is important not to get drowned by technologies, but to master them.

Jacques Diouf, Director-General Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Keynote Speech: Anriette Esterhuysen

The importance of ICTs in leapfrogging.

Skilled development, that can be enhanced/fostered by ICTs, and has traditionally been forgotten from the (cooperation for) development agendas.

The focus of ICT4D can be focused into mainstream.

Proliferation of online content, along with language/translation tools, bringing in new users that do not come from the developed world.

Web 2.0 removes the barriers on the consumers, creators of content.

Partnerships are crucial, collaboration is critical for cooperation for development, but most especially engagement, which is widely enhanced by Web 2.0, a perfect platform for this multilayer commitment, response.

Sharing is a main challenge.

We need to rethink (cooperation for) development deeply. We have to provide access to the tools, and to let/help people use them effectively.

Participation, decision making, human rights… are new dimensions on development that the Web 2.0 can include on the development debate.

Online participation should be ways to promote a more inclusive society.

More info

• Web2forDev – Participatory Web for Development at internet.artizans
• Website of the conference
• Blog of the conference
• Wiki of the conference
• Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us, by Michael Wesh
• Pages tagged with "web2fordev" on del.icio.us
• Flickr Photos tagged with web2fordev