In a hurry? Jump to the site or, even better, submit a report.

Got a minute? Read more below….

Kevin Donovan and I are asking people to supply first-hand reports about the availability and ease of use of prepay, “pay as you go” mobile data in Africa.

In places like South Africa and Kenya, accessing the internet via your mobile phone seems to be relatively straightforward – just pop in your SIM, buy some airtime, point your phone’s browser or app toward the internet…and off you go.  The key is that there is no data plan to sign up for, no monthly bill, and lower barriers to use. But is it that easy everywhere else? We first tried to do this assessment based directly on operators’ websites, but information is sparse and the terminology varies.

Kevin blogged about this last week.  We’ve gotten some great tweets and/or blog coverage by folks like ICTworks and MobileActive.  But this is a not an overnight project…we need lots of you not just to visit the site, but to post your experiences, and to ask your friends and colleagues across every corner of the continent to do the same.  Got a cousin in Burkina Faso or Angola? Know a student in Khartoum or Dakar?  Ask them to submit a report.   If we can get at least one or two firsthand reports from each major mobile operator in the region, we will be able to get a much clearer picture of where mobile access to the internet is easy, and where it remains difficult.

On the one hand, this is useful for international travelers who want to know if they can get access to cheap data while on the road.  Take it from me, it is depressing to come home to a fat bill thanks to international data roaming changes.  

But perhaps more importantly, this is useful data for the ICT4D and M4D community.  The availability of prepay data is important for widespread adoption of the mobile internet in the same way that pay-as-you-go (prepay) airtime was/is important to voice telecom – prepay/satchel pricing is a mainstay of pro-poor approaches for “Bottom of the pyramid” customers.  There is a great deal of hope (and hype) right now that mobile access to the internet will help “close the digital divide”, but if such access is locked up behind monthly plans, or behind confusing sign-up procedures, unreliable GPRS settings or high minimum balances, this divide won’t close anytime soon.

We’re using Ushahidi for this crowdsourcing exercise.  It was a snap to set up and, although nothing we’re doing resembles a crisis situation, the core functionality has been really helpful.

Finally, we have more to say on this in this working paper, A Note on the Availability (and Importance) of Pre-Paid Mobile Data in Africa.  The goal of this project is to deepen the evidence underpinning this paper, and to help make getting online easier for would-be mobile-only users around the region.

So again, Jump to the site or, even better, submit a report. Thanks!

screen grab via ICTworks

Here is a link to a pre-peer review version of the paper, which Wiley lets us host on a personal site like this.  It is suitable for general reading. However, for citations, and particularly for direct quotations, please refer instead to the final and definitive version, available online from Wiley-Blackwell:

A review of evidence on mobile use by micro and small enterprises in developing countries

Jonathan Donner and Marcela X Escobari

The paper offers a systematic review of 14 studies of the use of mobile telephony by micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in the developing world, detailing findings about changes to enterprises’ internal processes and external relationships, and findings about mobile use vs. traditional landline use. Results suggest that there is currently more evidence for the benefits of mobile use accruing mostly (but not exclusively) to existing MSEs rather than new MSEs, in ways that amplify existing material and informational flows rather than transform them. The review presents a more complete picture of mobile use by MSEs than was previously available, and indentifies priorities for future research, including comparisons of the impact of mobile use across subsectors of MSEs and assessments of use of advanced services such as mobile banking and mobile commerce.

Donner, Jonathan, & Escobari, Marcela X. (2010). A review of evidence on mobile use by micro and small enterprises in developing countries. Journal of International Development, 22:5, 641-658. doi: 10.1002/jid.1717, http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123566679/abstract

In any case, I’m happy to say that the paper I mentioned in my last post,  Mobile-based livelihood services in Africa: pilots and early deployments, now appears in this book.

The landscape of mobile services with relevance to the ICTD/development community is changing rapidly, as innovative pilots and full blown deployments are appearing throughout the continent.  In this paper, I categorize some of the existing services related to livelihoods, and offer some thoughts on next steps for research.

In a way, it bridges the gap between two of my earlier review papers – with Marcela Escobari on Mobile use by Micro and Small Enterprises, and with Kentaro Toyama and Katrin Verclas on the state of M4D research.

There is a also a youtube video of my paper presentation at the original conference in Barceona.

Here is the abstract

The paper describes a collection of initiatives delivering support via mobile phones to small enterprises, small farms, and the self-employed. Using a review of 26 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.

And the citation

Donner, J. (2009). Mobile-based livelihood services in Africa: pilots and early deployments. In M. Fernández-Ardèvol & A. Ros (Eds.), Communication technologies in Latin America and Africa: A multidisciplinary perspective (pp. 37-58). Barcelona: IN3. http://in3.uoc.edu/web/PDF/communication-technologies-in-latin-america-and-africa/Chapter_01_Donner.pdf

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.

The conference is at the end of October. So, this is only a pre-publication version and further edits are likely. But we’d welcome any comments or suggestions.  Abstract below:

This study reports results of an ethnographic action research study, exploring mobile-centric internet use. Over the course of 13 weeks, eight women, each a member of a livelihoods collective in urban Cape Town, South Africa, received training to make use of the data (internet) features on the phones they already owned. None of the women had previous exposure to PCs or the internet. Activities focused on social networking, entertainment, information search, and, in particular, job searches. Results of the exercise reveal both the promise of, and barriers to, mobile internet use by a potentially large community of first-time, mobile-centric users. Discussion focuses on the importance of self-expression and identity management in the refinement of online and offline presences, and considers these forces relative to issues of gender and socioeconomic status.

Gitau, S., Donner, J. and G. Marsden. (2009, 28-30 October). “i-Internet? Intle” (beautiful): Exploring first time internet use via mobile phones in a South African women’s collective. Paper to be presented at the 3rd Conference of the International Development Informatics Association, Kruger National Park, South Africa. 

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. 

Donner, Jonathan. (2009). Blurring livelihoods and lives: The social uses of mobile phones and socioeconomic development. Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization, 4(1), 91-101.

This paper focuses on how an intermingling of lives and livelihoods, as mediated by the mobile phone, figures into the micro-processes of economic development. It argues for a perspective on work and on livelihoods that is broad enough to account for (and perhaps even take advantage of) the social processes surrounding these activities. Analysts, policymakers, and technologists interested in the application of Mobiles for Development (M4D) should not ignore the way mobiles blur livelihoods and lives; the developmental and ‘non-developmental’ uses of the mobile are not in competition, nor are they always distinguishable. Instead, the uses of mobiles for developmental and ‘non-developmental’ purposes are often interrelated and sometimes mutually reinforcing. The social functions of the mobile (in matters of connection and self-expression) are helping drive its widespread adoption, and these same functions inform the very behaviors that make the mobile a tool for economic development.

It was great to work with Rich and the team at Polity on this project.  As fitting for a book with a global scope, we were on four continents (at least) while writing it. Rich and the Polity team are in Europe. I started in Bangalore, moved on to Austin and did my last few edits from my new home in Cape Town.

Here are links to the book’s pages on Polity and to Amazon (US),  and below, the blurb from the back cover:

With staggering swiftness, the mobile phone has become a fixture of daily life in almost every society on earth. In 2007, the world had over 3 billion mobile subscriptions. Prosperous nations boast of having more subscriptions than people. In the developing world, hundreds of millions of people who could never afford a landline telephone now have a mobile number of their own. With a mobile in our hand many of us feel safer, more productive, and more connected to loved ones, but perhaps also more distracted and less involved with things happening immediately around us.

Written by two leading researchers in the field, this volume presents an overview of the mobile telephone as a social and cultural phenomenon. Research is summarized and made accessible though detailed descriptions of ten mobile users from around the world. These illustrate popular debates, as well as deeper social forces at work. The book concludes by considering three themes: 1) the tighter interlacing of daily activities 2) a revolution of control in the social sphere, and 3) the arrival of a world where the majority of its inhabitants are reachable, anytime, anywhere.

From a longer article outlining Marlon Parker’s project, on mybroadband.co.za

MXIT, the cellphone instant messaging service best known for chatting teenagers, is now being used to help drug users on the Cape Flats kick their habit.
In the service, based in Bridgetown in Athlone, former drug users who counsel tik addicts use the messaging service as a primary method of support.

The article suggests that they are now counselling 6500 members of the community. I saw Marlon present an overview of this fascinating project at a recent UCT workshop on Researching Mobile Media in South Africa.  Marlon’s blog is here.