Conference and paper: Mobile Phones and the Internet in Latin America and Africa

November 5th, 2009 Africa, Agriculture, Latin America / LAC, conferences, m-banking, microenterprise, publications

Late last month I had the pleasure of attending a conference hosted by the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute of the Open University of Cataluña in Barcelona. The conference, Mobile Phones and the Internet in Latin America and Africa: What Benefits for the Most Disadvantaged?  was a great opportunity to exchange insights between researchers working across disciplines and geographies. There were a number of good papers on migration and the condition of human mobility (not just wirelessness). Other highlights for me included meeting Judith Mariscal and Roxana Barrantes of DIRSI. Roxana has been gathering some excellent data in Peru on changes in household agricultural earnings pre-and post- mobile acquisition. It was also great to see Mirjam de Bruijn and Inge Brinkman, editors (w/ Francis Nyamnjoh) of Mobile phones: the new talking drums of everyday Africa. Their work, and that volume, explores mobile adoption in regions which do not appear often in the literature on ICT use, including Southeast Angola, Northern Cameroon, Chad, and Sudan.

I gave a talk based on a new paper reviewing mobile livelihood services in Africa (crop prices, virtual marketplaces, agricultural extension, etc). The paper is in draft form right now – I will be doing revisions in a few weeks before resubmitting for the conference publication. So, any comments, additions, or questions are most welcome.

Donner, J. (2009, 23-24 October). Mobile-based livelihood services in Africa: pilots and early deployments. Paper presented at the Conference on Development and Information Technologies. Mobile Phones and Internet in Latin America and Africa: What benefits for the most disadvantaged? Castelldefels, Barcelona.

The paper describes a collection of initiatives delivering various forms of support functions via mobile phones to small enterprises, small farms, and the self-employed. Using a review of 24 examples of such services currently operational in Africa, the analysis identifies five functions of mobile livelihood services: Mediated Agricultural Extension, Market Information, Virtual Marketplaces, Financial Services, and Direct Livelihood Support. It discusses the current reliance of such systems on the SMS channel, and considers their role in supporting vs. transforming existing market structures.

Microsoft OneApp

August 25th, 2009 Africa, hybrid media, m-banking, m-internet, mobile social software

Yesterday Microsoft announced the launch of OneApp.  It was developed by Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential Group.  UPG has been doing some great work on Shared PCs, digital literacy, and computers in education. This is one of UPG’s first big efforts in the mobile space.

Microsoft OneApp is a new software application that enables feature phones—commonly found in emerging markets—to access mobile apps like Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live Messenger, and other popular apps and games. Now, people around the world who own feature phones will be able to do more and enjoy a better mobile experience with their existing phones. Microsoft OneApp will be offered initially through partners in emerging markets worldwide.

If you have seen or read any of my research in the past (particularly this newer stuff on mobile-centric internet use), you’ll quickly see why I am excited about OneApp. 

Smartphones are fantastic but remain out of reach of most people in the world. Feature phones, on the other hand, are more broadly accessible.  OneApp is small (150KB download), and runs on many of the world’s most popular handsets. It makes it much easier and cheaper, due to lower bandwidth requirements, for partners to offer and individuals to access the kinds of applications and web functionality that a lot of people with PCs take for granted. Furthermore, because it is flexible, I think we’ll see developers building locally-relevant applications, with the confidence that they can be used on the phones that so many people already have. 

CFP from the Institute of Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion.

July 4th, 2009 m-banking

The Institute of Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion at UC Irvine has announced a Call for Proposals for another round of projects. Check out the projects already underway. 

Slides from Everyday Digital Money workshop

October 22nd, 2008 Uncategorized, conferences, m-banking

At the recent ‘Everyday Digital Money’ workshop, I presented my thoughts on the importance of linking research on adoption, impact, design, and use of M-Banking applications.  The slides are here.  This is a longer deck, and reflects the arguments from my paper with Camilo Tellez on the same topic, upcoming in the Asian Journal of Communication.

Congratulations and thanks to Bill Maurer, Department of Anthropology at UC Irvine and Scott Mainwaring from Intel’s People and Practices Group for putting together such a timely and informative event. 

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…..

too much news – example, grameen and obopay

August 8th, 2008 India, m-banking

As much I enjoy posting to this blog, it is clearly not the place to go for a comprehensive run-down of all-things-mobile.  There’s just too much news and I don’t have a chance to comment on everything. If I crack 2 posts a week I feel prolific. The daily dish, this is not.

Today’s example: the announcement that Grameen solutions and Obopay are launching a “bank a billion” initiative in India and Bangladesh, with m-banking at its core. It is a great story but one I don’t know much about beyond what I’ve seen in the press coverage, to which others have already linked.     

So, please note the new feed on the lower-left hand column of the blog.  This contains links to interesting posts I’ve recently read on other blogs about mobiles, ICTD, m-banking, etc.   Going forward, I’ll try to keep this feed stocked almost daily with good stuff, even if I don’t comment on the content in a standalone post.    

airtime transfers fight TB

July 8th, 2008 Latin America / LAC, m-banking, m-health, text messaging

So this news is a month old, but it is still interesting.

MIT’s X out TB program has gotten some attention lately. Check out MobileActive’s interview with some of the team members for details.

The program, piloted in Nicaragua, encourages daily compliance with the (very strict, very lengthy, very important) anti-TB medication regimen in a cost-effective and very innovative way.  Patients must urinate on a reactive strip every day. If the patient has taken the TB medication, the strip will change to reveal a code.  By sending that code via SMS to their health care providers, he or she can prove that they have taken the medication, without requiring a daily visit from a health care worker.

That’s cool enough already.  But then, to get at the behavioral part of the puzzle, the X out TB program offers cell phone minutes as rewards for patients who have successfully communicated with the health care center on say, 25 of 30 days in a month.

I tagged this post as m-health and m-banking because this is an example of a situation in which the easy and cost-free transfer of minutes/airtime/load is actually a better solution than m-banking funds delimited in actual currencies. This is a good cause and a specialized case, so operators can be approached to provide the minutes at a reduced rate, or even for free.  I’m sure a whole host of regulatory and accounting issues would prevent them from doing this with m-banking funds.

Also interesting – the MobileActive piece points to the ubiquity of cell phone minutes as something of value to participants.

The team also changed the incentives for the project. Initially, they had intended to give people who stuck with their treatment a microfinance loans. “The whole goal with microfinance is you get a peer system from your family,” said Gomez-Marquez. “But when we went to Nicaragua they really insisted on cell phone minutes.” The minutes can either be uploaded to the user’s phone or the team can pass out pre-paid phone cards.

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’. 

Updated m-banking paper

May 29th, 2008 India, m-banking

Camilo Tellez and I have completed a substantially-revised version of the m-banking paper I presented at the 2007 ICA preconference on mobile communication.  

The new paper will appear as part of a special issue of the Asian Journal of Communication on ICTD, edited by Mark Levy.  Here is a .pdf of the pre-publication draft, which will remain on this site until the special issue is available.

Title: Mobile banking and economic development: Linking adoption, impact, and use

Abstract:  Around the globe, various initiatives use the mobile phone to provide financial services to those without access to traditional banks. Yet relatively little scholarly research explores the use of these m-banking/m-payments systems. This paper calls attention to this gap in the research literature, emphasizing the need for research focusing on the context(s) of m-banking/m-payments use. Presenting illustrative data from exploratory work with small enterprises in urban India, it argues that contextual research is a critical input to effective “adoption” or “impact” research. Further, it suggests that the challenges of linking studies of use to those of adoption and impact reflect established dynamics within the Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) research community. The paper identifies three crosscutting themes from the broader literature—amplification vs. change, simultaneous causality, and a multi-dimensional definition of trust—each of which can offer increased theoretical clarity to future research on m-banking/m-payments systems.