Most mobiles…

A little while ago, Ken Banks and Kiwanja.net announced the winners of the first nGOmobile competition, designed to illustrate how grassroots use of mobile communincation (particularly SMS/text messaging) can be applied in creative and powerful ways.  You can find details on the winners in the announcement here.

Or, check out the press release

In Kenya, the Centre for Training and Integrated Research for ASAL Development
(CETRAD) will begin using SMS to work with local communities to promote the
protection and sustainable use of environmental resources.

In Uganda, NETWAS will launch an SMS-based service for rural communities allowing
them to ask a range of water-based questions on topics such as sanitation, hygiene,
water harvesting and water technologies.

In Mexico, The Equilibrium Fund will deploy a range of SMS services to help rural
Central American and Mexican communities solve problems of deforestation,
poverty, malnutrition, unemployment and the marginalisation of women.

In Azerbaijan, Digital Development will begin helping grassroots and politically
excluded people understand their human and legal rights, and to engage them
further in the political process, through their mobile phones.

Each of the winner’s models contains a plan to leverage the flexibility and interactivity of the medium in a way that extends beyond pushing bulk SMS messages to otherwise passive receivers.  The Uganda and Kenya models deepen the two-way interactions between the NGOs and their communities; in the Mexico case, the NGO will host a system that will allow small Maya Nut producers to coordinate with customers. In Azerbaijan, the messages start as get-out-and-vote reminders, but participants are encouraged to forward the messages to 5 of their friends/family, creating potentially powerful network effects.

It would be great to see updates from some of these winners as the projects go live. 

MSR was one of the Platinum sponsors for ICTD2007—the 2^nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development— which wrapped up this weekend (Dec 15-16) in Bangalore.   It was a great program, and it was a treat to welcome so many researchers from around the world to Bangalore.

Veeraraghavan, R., Yasodhar, N., & Toyama, K. (2007). Warana Unwired: Mobile Phones replacing PCs in a rural sugarcane cooperative.  This is a project by some of my MSRI colleagues, in which an existing (and successful) agricultural information system was updated, streamlined, and extended via mobile phones.  The upshot has been greater convenience at lower cost to farmers in the cooperative. While we’re waiting for the papers to go live, some details on Warana Unwired are available here.

Mpoeleng, D., Anderson, G., Asare, S., Ayalew, Y., Garg, D., Gopolang, B., et al. (2007). Towards a Bilingual SMS Parser for HIV/AIDS Information Retrieval in Botswana.   This poster is an example of the kind of detailed, patient work that, in the long run, helps make mobile systems flexible and powerful, without sacrificing the appearance (to users) of intelligence, awareness, and magic.  Can an SMS database ‘understand’ both English and Setswana?  If it is going to be helpful in Botswana, it had better do so.

Other researchers tackled broader issues of wirelesses and/or mobility (e.g., store and forward, mesh networks interactive radio), or mentioned mobiles as part of a discussion of user centered design. I’ll update these links when the papers go live. I expect we’ll see more mobile-related papers in future conferences.

A recent piece in the Economist highlights the increasing importance of information technologies, particularly mobile communication technologies, to international aid and disaster relief efforts.  Most of the piece details the nuts-and-bolts of logistics, for which mobile ICTs are clearly a helpful new arrival. Responders can stay in touch and better coordinate their efforts. So too can displaced or fragmented families, who can find each other via electronic databases.

The article contains two other elements which make more sweeping claims about the “shifting balance” or reconfiguration of relationships between the aid community and those they are trying to help.  The more grounded example is that of the role of large remittance flows via m-payments systems and shop-at-a-distance sites like Makuru.com. I think this raises an important point: as families with overseas members become increasingly connected via mobiles and other ICTs, there are real opportunities for micro-level, family-centric responses to macro-level events like floods and famines.

The second point is less clear-cut.  The article leads with a quote from the Horn of Africa, in the form of an SMS delivered to UN officials in London and Nairobi. 

“MY NAME is Mohammed Sokor, writing to you from Dagahaley refugee camp in Dadaab. Dear Sir, there is an alarming issue here. People are given too few kilograms of food. You must help.”

It’s a great anecdote–though perhaps still more aspirational than descriptive–which the author(s) use to assert that “a familiar flow of authority, from rich donor to grateful recipient, had been reversed.” It will be interesting to watch how, over time, donors and other actors in the humanitarian space integrate mediated feedback and participitory input from ‘recipients’ into relief response. 

In the meantime, we can draw a different theme from the anecdote: the author of the SMS found the contact numbers at an internet café. And, conversely, you and I are reading the quote via the internet again.   This hybridity of media—an intermingling of SMS messages and internet content—is something I expect we’ll see more of in the developing world.