Day 2 of the IST Africa 2012 Conference

Day 2 of the IST Africa 2012 Conference continued with paper presentations using a parallel stream approach that started yesterday, with six on-going parallel sessions. Overall session topics today included: Internet of Things; M-Health; EGovernment & eDemocracy; Broadband Access in Africa; TV White Space Spectrum; Living Labs; ICT Entrepreneurship in Tanzania; M-Learning; ICT for Environmental Risk Management.

One interesting mobile application was discussed during a morning session on m-health. Brian Omwenga (Nokia Research Center, Nairobi, Kenya) presented “Buzzenger,” a free messaging platform based on missed calls (i.e. flashing). The platform basically formalizes the already established informal culture of “flashing” to tell people to call them back. The application does message encryption and decryption based on missed call durations. The application was developed in partnership with University of Nairobi and based on incremental prototyping. User feedback found that the application should be extremely fast (users didn’t want to go through a long process to send a message) because the flashing is often done because it is a very fast way to get a message across.

A big challenge for this application is the flooding of the operating network, which can come with sending of longer messages. This is the reason why Nokia Research decided to label this application as an “emergency” messaging system in order not to destroy relationships with mobile operators. Nokia Research realized while piloting the application that they cannot make “Buzzenger” a commercial product because it would get killed by mobile operators who do not make any money off of the application and whose networks would get flooded with the missed calls. Therefore the best use case for the application, Nokia Research decided, is for emergency situations only.

Another interesting presentation was during a session on “Sensors, Empowerment and Accountability,” SEMA for short. All presenters during the session came from ITC from the University of Twente, Netherlands and spoke on different aspects of the 3-year project that they have recently launched. The SEMA project looks at enhancing the relationship between citizens and government agencies through mobile communications and web technology in Tanzania. One of the project managers, Jeroen Verplanke, spoke on “slow burn” (I’m using an Ushahidi term here) versus crisis reporting. Ushahidi states that “slow burn” issues are ongoing over an extended period of time and don’t look to improve in the short-term. Verplanke noticed this phenomenon stating that daily needs that are not events do not often trigger app use because even if these daily needs are not met, coping mechanisms exist. On the other hand, a disaster or crisis situation is much more emotionally engaging as a reminder to report or act.

At the end of Verplanke’s presentation, he highlighted an often-repeated challenge that “technology can be an enabler, but you need the right processes and support in place.” This is so important to keep in mind in ICTD discussions; it deserves to be often repeated.

Follow #istafrica2012 for the last day of the conference tomorrow.

Day 1 of IST Africa 2012 – Developing Local Content

The IST Africa 2012 Conference started with an opening plenary where the Guest of Honor, Tanzania’s Professor Makame Mbarawa (Minister of Communications, Science, and Technology) kicked off the conference. A round table on the Implementation of the Information Society Track of the 8^th Africa-EU Strategic Partnership followed. For more information on the project, check out their website. The aim of the project is to strengthen ICT research and policy links between Africa and Europe. The project builds upon the substantial results obtained and the significant momentum created by several previous projects, designated over the years as the “EuroAfrica ICT Initiative.” The next EuroAfrica ICT Awareness & Training Workshop will be June 13 – 14 in Maseru, Lesotho.

After lunch, iHub Research presented our M-Governance exploratory survey results  as the first speaker in the eGovernment stream which was chaired by Isaac Maredi, Director of ICT in South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology.

A reoccurring theme throughout the day was the development of local content.

Professor Nkoma of TCRA stated that challenges in Tanzania include lack of local content as well as last mile connectivity. Our Twitter followers agree that this is an issue not just in Tanzania but also in Kenya, Zambia, and across Africa. The question then arose, “Do people have the skills necessary to develop local content?” The KINU representative (Incubation Hub in Tanzania ) stressed the need for local capacity building in order to spur businesses and local content generation. Catherinerose Barretto (KINU) stated, “We need to foster innovation and creativity from an early age. In addition to mentorship and skills-based training on the job, we also need to teach students to question and think critically.”

It was raised that the East Africa community has already seen the need to come together and create communities to catalyze innovation. iHub together with The KINU, RLabs, and HiveCoLab were mentioned as examples of the local community coming together to build local content.

A challenge was posed by Jussi Hinkkanen (VP, Corporate Relations and Business Environment, Nokia Middle East and Africa) around Innovation Hubs. “We know that Innovation Hubs (like the iHub, KINU, RLabs) work and have created a massive amount of progress. The next big challenge is how do we scale them up? How do we get iHub in every town around Africa? We have to let the innovators to really drive the innovation in Africa.”

Any thoughts from the tech community? What do you think?

Follow what’s going on at IST Africa 2012 (May 9 – 11) in Dar es Salaam at #istafrica2012.

Conclusion of ICTD 2012

After a whirlwind four days, the 4^th ICTD conference, held in Atlanta, Georgia, was concluded. The event, which brought together the most passionate thinkers, researchers, and some practitioners, was a learning event for all. The event was well run and kept to the schedule (uncommon in most conferences!) thanks in large part to the planning of the conference organizers, especially the co-Chairs from Georgia Tech’s Michael Best and Ellen Zegura.

The last day of the conference was in break-out style again – making it difficult to choose which sessions to attend (so many interesting-sounding ones going on at the same time!). In the morning, iHub Research attended a session considering the added value of the capabilities approach for ICTD research and practice. One interesting point mentioned there was that “Many people think that technology is neutral but others argue that tech is not neutral and has hegemonic means. That debate is very important to keep in mind.” The session chair also advocated for more theory at the next ICTD 2013 conference.

Following the first session, we joined the “Educating Technologists for Development in Africa” session which brought together many of the Africa-based scholars to discuss how to include ICT for D in education. Some of the questions discussed included: Is the D implicitly there or explicitly there?; How do you spread the good results from places where things are going well to places where there are gaps?; How do you make the D happen?; What discipline does ICTD fall under in the university setting?. Some points raised included the need to teach people to think critically because any ICTD program builds on top of existing an education system. Did you know that Liberia does not have any Computer Science program at the university level? How can you talk about ICTD without a CS Department? The session finished with a call to arms: “What are YOU doing in your little way to change the issues you see? We can’t wait for government or this or that NGO…”

After lunch, Heather Leson, Ushahidi’s Director of Community Engagement, was on a panel run by infoDev, about the Role of ICTs in Post-Conflict Situations. iHub Research attended a session on “Utilization-focused Evaluation” framework research on research funded by the IDRC. At the core of the evaluation framework was the notion that the evaluation should be judged by their utility and actual use (Patton 2008).

Overall, the conference seemed to be a big hit with most in the crowd. iHub Research looks forward to ICTD 2013 in Cape Town, South Africa and aims to have an active role in the next conference!

For more:

people’s comments: twitter.com/#!/ictd2012

photos from the conference: flickr.com/photos/ictd2012

facebook: facebook.com/ICTD2012

The “researcher effect” – Day 3 at ICTD 2012

The 3^rd day of the ICTD 2012 conference has not lost any of the energy and psych that it began with! Today was full of interesting (and some controversial) presentations, which were all streamed live at www.ictd2012.org. We started in the morning with a discussion of the important contribution of the anthropologist’s perspective when discussing ICT in development research. It was highlighted that anthropologists usually ask: “How can tech enable in the everyday lives of people?” NOT “Can we observe and measure socio-economic impact in that enable-ment?”.

Later in the morning, an interesting point was made on the “Researcher effect” as something critical to keep in mind, especially for foreign researchers. That is, sometimes “over-researched” populations (such as ones in Kibera, Kenya) may often just be saying what the respondent thinks the researcher wants to hear (this is especially true if the respondent is being paid). In order to try to ameliorate this “researchers’ effect”, it was suggested that researchers need to collect data for at least 2 – 4 months in the field in order to ensure data reliability. One researcher from the audience pointed out, if you collect data over more extended period of time, often you find the real data becomes clear towards the end of the data collection (and exposes the false data that was being stated by respondents initially).

This point about the “researcher effect” emphasizes the need for local research organizations, like iHub Research, that are based in the country where the research is being done and are run by citizens of the country themselves! This of course is not to say that there may not still be the “researcher effect.” But, being based in the country over a longer period of time, knowing the cultural context and understanding the languages, can often ameliorate some of the “effect.” Researchers collecting data in foreign countries (whether it be a Kenyan researcher in the US or a US researcher in Kenya), should link with local research companies to tap into the local research scene and ensure that it is not just “fly in, fly out, research.”

After lunch, some of the interesting presentations included Muthoni Masinde’s talk on the role of ICTs in integrating indigenous knowledge systems and scientific knowledge systems for farmers in Kenya. The day closed with a presentation on source effects for a voice-based agricultural information service in India.

Tomorrow is the last day of the conference! Stay tuned for final notes and thoughts.

ICTD 2012 Day 2

Bringing you a short tidbit from Day 2 at the ICTD 2012 conference in Atlanta.

Today was largely based around 2 plenary sessions (rather than break-out sessions like yesterday). We also had the honor to hear from Honorable Minister Omobola Johnson from the Nigerian Ministry of Communications Technology.

One of the most interesting talks today for iHub Research was given by one of the main developers of the Open Data Kit software, Yaw Anokwa. Yaw spoke on ODK Clinic and the design of a phone-based clinical decisions support system. In a conference where many are sharing stories highlighting that ICTs are not necessarily the magic bullet for development issues, Yaw shared an example where technology did help to improve an existing system. Yaw shared his optimism with the group about the opportunities for ICTs to assist in enhancing already existing systems.

Keynote speaker, Omobola Johnson spoke on how the Nigerian government is trying to leverage ICTs for development. Johnson spoke on how Nigeria is currently experiencing “selective development” with rural areas often excluded from development initiatives. She listed the ministry’s 7 areas of focus, which are:

• Cost reduction
• Enhancing ICT infrastructure
• Equitable access to infrastructure
• Citizen engagement
• Strong support for education, health, agriculture, etc.
• Skills development to sustain industry
• ICT entrepreneurship and innovation

Ms. Johnson also stated that Nigeria is looking to extend broadband to all tertiary institutions in next 2-3 years, as well as develop an ICT Innovation fund for entrepreneurs to tap. She finally expressed her interest in developing ICT hubs around Nigeria and excitement in learning from people who have done it before, like the iHub. “Build it and make sure they come,” she said, explaining how governments should engage with citizenry since “in the past we worked in silos.” She also mentioned some of the exciting work being done by CC Hubs such as http://yourbudgit.com/

Ms. Johnson ended by expressing her desire for more research to be conducted in Nigeria that can help them to formulate their Nigerian e-government and ICT strategy.

iHub Research at ICTD 2012 Conference (Atlanta, Georgia, USA)

iHub Research is happy to be part of the ICTD 2012 conference being held in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference is running from March 12 – 15^th, 2012 and has brought together the most passionate ICTD practitioners and academics.

This morning opened with a keynote speech from our very own David Kobia, co-founder of Ushahidi. David championed for a revisiting of the “D” aspect of the term, “ICTD”, before diving into an in-depth explanation of Ushahidi and its 3 major platforms (including Swiftriver, which was officially relaunched today). Important to keep in mind, David mentioned, is that a map is only as useful as the people who use it. A crowdsourcing platform must thus be easy to deploy, intuitive to use, simple to localize and customize. David emphasized that a software solution like Ushahidi is only 10% of the solution and the real power of the tool is only realized when the deployment itself is on point.

iHub Research was proud to be highlighted in David’s address and even more excited by the questions and enthusiasm raised by the audience during the question and answer session.

iHub Research then joined other African researchers including Jonathan Donner, Kentaro Toyama, Shikoh Gitau, Gary Marsden, Kathleen Diga, and Margaret Nyambura among many others for the ICTD African Researchers Network Session held from 10 am – 1 pm. The main aims of the Network are:

• Amplifying individual voices and raising the visibility of African ICTD researchers;
• Creating a space for researchers to tell their own story;
• Shaping the ICTD discourse on quality research and acceptable publication options; and
• Improving quality of research and publication output from Africa, ultimately with the goal of closing the participation gap in ICTD research.

Some of the suggestions that came out of the discussion-based session were for Africa-based researchers to get some mentors to help in the academic paper writing process as well as to review drafted papers. One African researcher also added that is it good to have a trusted network of people who can review your paper and critique it. Gary Marsden, an iHub Researcher mentor and ICT Professor at UCT recommended that researchers look into publishing in ITID, an open journal publication with a shorter turn-around time than many comparable journals.

During the ICTD African Researchers Network Session, it was also announced that the next ICTD conference in 2013 will be held in Cape Town, South Africa. It is extremely exciting that we will be having the next ICTD conference on the African continent (and it will be a much shorter flight from Nairobi!). iHub Research is already looking forward to taking an active role in the discourse there.

For the remainder of the afternoon, iHub Research participated in the SPIDER open session which discussed SPIDER’s idea for a mapping and match-making application that maps who is doing what and where as related to ICTD initiatives around the world; an e-government session; and a Failfaire that highlighted lessons learned from various ICTD projects which “failed.” Kentaro Toyama, Revi Sterling, Linda Raftree, Anahi Ayala, and Richard Anderson presented a wide range of topics from a “failed” development theory to project-specific “failures”.

Some of the take-aways from Day 1 of ICTD 2012:

• Know the path to get to your goal
• Have a plan B (and C and D…)
• Know who is clearly accountable for what items.
• Negative results help to move forward. We need to get used to negative results and not necessarily think of them as “failures.” A negative result IS a result. We need to have negative results within the ICTD sector and publish them!

On Tuesday, March 13th and Wednesday, March 14th, the Plenary Sessions of the ICTD 2012 Conference will be streamed live through the home page (www.ictd2012.org).  The live stream will start at 9:00am, Atlanta time.  Participate through the live stream!

NOTE: photos from the conference will be up in the next few days!