texting Julliet

December 13th, 2008 Africa, hybrid media, text messaging

A nice story of love and courtship in Nigeria, via SMS

My friend Thomas Alo had two problems. Though he had been friends with Juliet, a colleague, for years, he hadn’t had the guts to tell her that he loved her and wanted to marry her. His second problem was that he had refused to buy a cellphone.

One day, I sat him down and told him that if he had a phone his problems with Juliet would be over. He asked me how. I told him that he could send her a text message, telling her he loved her and wanted to marry her. He said love affairs were not conducted through text messages.

Later I put pressure on him for a while; he eventually decided to act on my advice and went to buy a cellphone. Rather than face Juliet, who worked in the same office as him, he sent her an SMS declaring his feelings and requesting a date.

Into(context), Kiva.org and an MMS application

November 7th, 2008 Africa, hybrid media, microenterprise

I have been meaning to mention this project by Into(context) for a while. It has a great website, with lots links, images, and documentation that exceeds that of most ICTD pilots. 

Into(context) is a design research project developed by the Design for Sustainability group of Delft University of Technology and funded by Microsoft Research’s Digital Inclusion Initiative. The project reflects the initiative’s goal to understand what role information & communication technology (ICT) can play in creating solutions for overcoming the myriad barriers facing the developing world.

During six months in 2006 design researchers worked directly with Kiva.org and four of its existing microfinance partners in Uganda and Kenya to develop an appropriate technology solution to facilitate the use of their online lending platform. The solution needed to meet the needs of their users and be congruous with the context of East Africa.

The outcome was the development of a cell phone based application dubbed ‘The Miracle Mobile Solution’ or MiMoSo. The MiMoSo effectively eliminated some of the most significant barriers facing the staff in delivering content to the Kiva website. Critical partner information including text and images, can now be sent via Multi-Media Message Service. It allows MFIs the ability to expand their technology resources affordably to accommodate their operations with Kiva. Users submit updates directly over the mobile network without the need for an internet connection. 

The design of this project interests me, as it has been developed to suit a particular niche, to provide an the organizational interface between the loan officer of an MFI and Kiva itself. Driven by MMS, of all things, it is another example of a hybrid process–through it, images and text which start their lives on mobiles in the developing world end up appearing on the PC screens of would-be Kiva users in the developed world.

Use of mobiles by South African youth

October 22nd, 2008 Africa, hybrid media, m-internet, Uncategorized

While at MobileActive 2008, I met Tino Kreutzer, an MA student in the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the University of Cape Town.  He is in the midst of gathering some really interesting data on patterns of mobile/mobile internet use among low-income teens in urban Cape Town.  Preliminary results are up on his website.

The pilot suggests that the majority of urban South Africans in this age group can and do access the Internet via their phones (83% were found to so on a typical day). The popularity of instant messaging and other Internet applications within this group suggests that their use of the Internet differs from those whose access is primarily via desktop devices. This finding has significant implications for mobile media and learning applications, as does the fact that a majority of students also reported gaming on their phones on a typical day (53%).

Links to Mobileactive08 presentations

October 14th, 2008 Africa, beeping/miss calls, conferences, m-banking, microenterprise

Greetings from day 2 of the fantastic Mobileactive08 conference. It is a rare treat to have so many people interested in mobiles and social change under one roof.  For details on the conference, check the live blog coverage here.  

I’ll post some additional thoughts soon.  In the meantime, here are links to the slides from the three sessions in which I participated –  Mobile Use by Small and Informal Businesses; Innovations in Social Marketing (miss calls); and M-Banking/M-payments for Social Impact.   Let me know if you have any questions.

There are a few glitches in the .prf files, but I will try to sort these out in the next few days and will refresh with cleaner files. 

headed to Mobileactive 2008

October 10th, 2008 Africa, beeping/miss calls, conferences, m-banking, microenterprise, travel

I’m travelling this week to Johannesburg for the Mobileactive 2008 conference.  It promises to be a great gathering of people and organizations doing innovative things with mobile technologies.  I’ll certainly try to get some reactions up during the week, but don’t count on any liveblogging…..

4S panel on mobiles in Africa

August 26th, 2008 Africa, beeping/miss calls, conferences, microenterprise, sharing behavior, Uncategorized

Thanks to Jenna Burrell of UC Berkeley for putting together a great panel “On the Ground Accounts of the Mobile Phone Revolution in Africa” at the 4S/ESST meeting in Rotterdam last week.  

Jenna spoke about her current fieldwork (with an emphasis on mobile phone sharing) in Rural Uganda. Wesley Shrum of LSU shared some initial findings about increased sociability among mobile users in Nairobi.  Tom Molony of the University of Edinburgh spoke about mobile use on the streets of Dar es Salaam, with an emphasis on how some small enterprises took advantage of the ‘mobility’ as opposed to simply the connectivity functions of the device.

I did a bit of a re-synthesis of my Africa studies, combining the small enterprises surveys with the open-ended interviews to illustrate how varied (and incomplete) our understanding of mobile’s role in development remains.   I contrasted the kinds of high-clarity results available from narrowly focused papers like Jenson’s Digital Provide (which focuses narrowly but so effectively on one independent variable (mobile Use) and one depended variable (price of fish) with broader explorations. These broader approaches so far either place mobile use in context of other communication behaviors like face to face interactions and internet use,  or expand the range of behaviors under examination to include both instrumental (enterprise/developmental) uses and intrinsic and/or social uses.  This broadening comes with a cost, of course, as the ‘impact’ of mobile use is harder to isolate.  Initial slides are here.

Unfortunately, a few others Mohammed Mohammed from Intel, Hsain Ilahiane from  Iowa State University and our discussant Don Slater were unable to attend the panel and were each missed, both during the session and during the lively chats occurring afterward, over coffee.

Congrats to Jenna, by the way, for winning the Nicholas C. Mullins Award,  given by the Society for the Social Studies of Science for “an outstanding piece of scholarship by a graduate student in the field of Science and Technology Studies.”  Her paper explored “West African Internet Scams as Grassroots Media Production”

Ken Banks on CBC Radio One

June 18th, 2008 Africa, beeping/miss calls, m-banking, microenterprise, sharing behavior

I’ve written about Ken Banks’ work with kiwanja.net from time to time.  Ken just completed a lengthy interview with the technology program Spark on CBC Radio One.  It’s a very good overview of some of the most interesting implications of the spread of mobiles in Africa. The short form touches on m-banking, microenterprises and livelihoods.  The longer form adds Ken’s comments on shared phones, low-cost handsets, and beeping/flashing/missed calls/’please call me’. 

Vodafone Receiver #20 – emerging markets

June 5th, 2008 Africa

An announcement of the latest issue of Receiver hit my inbox today — it is all about emerging markets.   It starts with a photo/traveller’s tour from Ken Banks, with more articles to come in the weeks ahead.

 ”Over the coming weeks receiverwants to give you food for thought regarding mobiles and development. Look forward to a new article each week. Next, Jared Braiterman will let you know why China has become such a hub of passionate technology usage. Further contributions will come from Jan Chipchase, David Lehr and Daniel Greenstadt, Adriana de Souza e Silva, David Frohlich and Matt Jones, John Traxler, Neil Clavin, and Toby Shapshak.” 

Daniel Beltz: “I decided to buy a cell phone for God and to invite people to beep him.”

May 25th, 2008 Africa, beeping/miss calls

The Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco is wrapping up what seems to be a fascinating exposition, AFRICA.Dot.COM: From Drums to Digital.   (if you are in the area – rush down this week!). The exhibit

explores the changing landscape of communication and connectivity in Africa today…It begins with drums and other varied instruments and masked performances that African cultures have utilized for centuries in dynamic, multisensory forms of coded communication executed to transmit sonant salutations, local history, beliefs and social values. Today, mobile phones, computers, and information and communication technologies (ICTS) provide increasingly enhanced and altered networks and connections in African villages and cities. As with drumming, coded signals are used in cell phone text messages and computer instant messaging. Themes of technology appear on fabrics used for clothing. E-mail marketing and cyber cafes are becoming a part of everyday life in urban areas. Artists are sharing ideas across cultural borders, developing creative partnerships, and reaching audiences thousands of miles away…Africa.Dot.Com searches out these uses of technology in the art and social life of the first digital generation in Africa.

Among the pieces on display is Beepez-le! by Daniel Peltz.  It is a wonderful exploration of the beeping/flashing phenomenon, as experienced in Cameroon.  Do watch the lengthy video, touching on everything from the reappropriation of a western technology, to the implications of mediated communication with the divine.  Peltz says:

I built a simple live feed installation that used a camera, a video projector and cell phone to project God’s cell phone screen onto a wall in the city when he was beeped.  I installed it on the street next to two luan and chalk signs, similar to those I’d found in the market.  They read:

Voici en exclusivite   [here it is]
le numero de Dieu     [God’s private number]
597-20-24
Beepez-le!   [Beep him!]

Thanks so much to the reader who was familiar with the exposition in San Francisco and alerted me to it – sorry it took me so long to post this.

My review of mobile research, appearing in The Information Society

May 6th, 2008 Africa, beeping/miss calls, conferences, India, Latin America / LAC, m-banking, m-learning, microenterprise, sharing behavior, text messaging

Over the years, I’ve been keeping an eye on the research literature about mobile use in the developing world.   I first presented a version of this review at a conference in Hong Kong in 2005.  Now, thanks to Leopoldina Fortunati’s efforts to pull together a special issue of The Information Society, the review has finally been published.  Thanks also to the editors at the Information Society, and to the reviewers who provided such valuable feedback at various stages.

There’s a lot more of the literature to cover than there was when I started this back in 2005.  And, since it is an interdisciplinary review, I’m sure to have missed some citations.  Nevertheless, it has been a great exercise for me to get a sense of what’s out there, and to become familiar with the diverse work of an amazing set of researchers along the way.

I hope some of you find this review a useful input to your own work. 

Thanks everyone! 

Donner, Jonathan. (2008). Research Approaches to Mobile Use in the Developing World: A Review of the Literature.  The Information Society 24(3), 140-159.

Abstract
This paper reviews roughly 200 recent studies of mobile (cellular) phone use in the developing world, and identifies major concentrations of research. It categorizes studies along two dimensions. One dimension distinguishes studies of the determinants of mobile adoption from those that assess the impacts of mobile use, and from those focused on the interrelationships between mobile technologies and users. A secondary dimension identifies a subset of studies with a strong economic development perspective. The discussion considers the implications of the resulting review and typology for future research.