ICT4D comes to the villages
In their quest to promote development in the rural communities, Ericsson, the Swedish telecommunications giant, mobile operator Zain and The Earth Institute, a development organisation based at Columbia University have launched the provision of mobile phone connectivity to the Millennium Villages in Dertu in northern Kenya, Ruhira in Uganda and Mbola in Tanzania. Dertu becomes the second Millennium Village in Kenya after Bar Sauri in Siaya District. “As the dominant supplier in Africa, Ericsson tapped relationships with African operators, including Zain and its subsidiary Celtel, in order to develop a comprehensive end-to-end communication strategy in the villages”, stated Chris Gabriel, Zain Africa Chief Executive.
For the 5000 odd residents of remote Dertu, the launch comes as a big relief given that the area is being connected to the mobile network for the first time. In this remote, pastoral and nomadic society, basic voice and data communication will be enabled over an EDGE network. New mobile phone applications for healthcare and for livestock management are being piloted to help with the collection of household health data as well as tracking recently immunised livestock.
By October 2008, Ericsson will replace the temporary network by a permanent solution to be operated by Zain. The permanent solution will use Ericsson’s sustainable energy solutions, including solar and wind energies to power the sight as well as other techniques to minimise power requirements. The implemented solution will reduce operational expenditures by up to 80 per cent compared to a traditional site run on diesel generator.
Sony Ericsson has also provided mobile phones to the millennium village health clinics and community health workers. “Patients no longer have to come to my clinic. They simply call for services which I have to take to their doorsteps”, says John Onyango of Siaya’s Bar Sauri Millennium Village. “These days I don’t have to walk for a long distance to reach a veterinary doctor when my cow falls sick. I simply call him and he comes within miutes”, says an enthusiastic Mary Auma, a widow from Bar Sauri. Together with Ericsson, Sony Ericsson has also developed and will provide a new solar village charger capable of recharging at least 30 mobile phone batteries per day and eight phones simultaneously for each village cluster.
In Tanzania and Uganda, Zain and Ericsson have upgraded the existing GSM network to EDGE, thus improving the basic coverage in the area. In combination with its fixed wireless terminals, it will bring mobile Internet to schools and health centres. Ericsson also plans to extend coverage, enabling mobile communication to all the 73,000 people living in both village clusters. Ericsson and Sony Ericsson are also providing mobile phones to community health workers, and have piloted new health applications for mobile learning purposes as well as basic household data collection. Zain has provided SIM cards and established emergency numbers in order to improve access to health care and emergency services. One such initiative is a new toll-free phone service that can be used in medical emergencies to connect patients with on-duty medical personnel. To support economic development, Ericsson plans to focus on identifying and developing telecom services and applications customised to meet the needs of poor, rural communities.
But even as the initiators of this project deny it, there is a catch somewhere. Whereas Ericsson is providing the mobile handsets, buying air time remains a tall order for the poor residents of this village who can hardly afford a decent meal. But Jeffrey Sachs, Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General and Director of The Earth Institute sought to allay the fears. “This is not a marketing idea. Our goal is not to sell airtime. It is to promote development”, he stated unequivocally. Sachs noted that Africa could only achieve its Millennium Development Goals if the donors delivered on their pledges.
The Millennium Villages project, based at The Earth Institute at Columbia University, is a science-based bottom-up approach to lifting developing country villages out of the poverty trap that afflicts more than a billion people worldwide. Already, the project has proved that by fighting poverty at the village level through community-led development, rural Africa can achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—global targets for reducing extreme poverty and hunger by half while improving education, health, gender equality and environmental sustainability-- by 2015.
The project has been spurred by the fact that sub-Saharan Africa has the greatest proportion of people living in extreme poverty in the world. More than 40 per cent or about 300 million people live on less than a dollar a day. The continent’s environmental, epidemiological and geographical challenges—including low productivity in agriculture, a high disease burden and high transport costs—render African countries most vulnerable to persistent extreme poverty. But thanks to the Millennium Villages project, the situation is now being turned around. With the help of new advances in Science and Technology innovations (STIs), local staff work with villages to create and implement sustainable, community-led action plans that are tailored to the villages’ specific needs and designed to achieve the MDGs.
To date, the project has reached nearly 400,000 people in 79 villages clustered into 12 groups across ten African countries namely Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Rwanda and Tanzania. Each village has about 5000 people. In Uganda and Tanzania, Zain and Ericsson have upgraded the existing GSM network and are set to bring mobile network coverage to schools and health centres in the areas.
The move by Ericsson and Zain couldn’t have come at a better time. A report released in May by the UN Foundation and the Vodafone Group Foundation chronicles how the advent of mobile technology has transformed and facilitated the work of a number of NGOs involved in various forms of development work, mainly relief and advocacy. Titled Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use, the report authored by Sheila Kinkade of ShareIdeas.org and Katrine Verclas of MobileActive.org examines 11 case studies of groups active in the areas of public health, humanitarian assistance and environmental conservation. Key highlights of the report include two conflict prevention projects, both active in Kenya. Oxfam-Great Britain and the Kenyan umbrella group PeaceNet created a text messaging ‘nerve centre’ that collected alerts about violent outbreaks during the recent civil unrest and mobilized local ‘peace committees.’
“In the wake of a government ban on live broadcasting of incidences of violence, the SMS Centre became a lifeline for information by linking Nairobi to incidences as they happened on the ground,” says Barasa Mang’eni, PeaceNet-Kenya programme officer. “The initiative encouraged local level dialogue and mediation to stop violence and facilitated communication to security forces, the Kenya Red Cross, and UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Civil society actors were linked to peace processes at the community level, enabling them to contribute to non violence advocacy.” According to Mang’eni, the project served as a vital tool for conflict management and prevention by providing a hub for real-time information about actual and planned attacks between rival ethnic and political groups.
The management of South Africa’s ART programme provides a perfect example of how mobile technology can be used in a resource-poor setting. Cell-Life, a non-governmental organization based in Cape Town created its “Aftercare” programme to work with the public health system and its health workers to provide home-based care for HIV/AIDS patients receiving ART treatments. The mobile technology-based Aftercare programme supports the effective treatment of HIV/AIDS patients, and covers other aspects such as voluntary counselling. Each Aftercare worker is assigned to monitor 15 to 20 patients. The worker visits the patient in his or her home, and in a one-on- one session discusses the patient’s current treatment. Using their mobile phones for data capture, Aftercare workers record information about patient medical status, drug adherence and other factors that may affect a patient’s ART therapy.
According to the UN Foundation-Vodafone report, mobile technology has particularly been used to solve human-worldlife conflict in Laikipia District of north central Kenya. Laikipia comprises a patchwork of small farms, large ranches, privately owned conservancies, and government land. Some 5,000 elephants, the second largest elephant population in the country, inhabit the region. As farmers, ranchers, and these animals struggle to co-exist, the region has gained a reputation for being one of the worst areas for human–elephant conflict, with more than 3,000 incidents occurring annually.
“The tension [in Laikipia] stems from communities having their crops damaged by elephants,” explains Dr. Max Graham, Associate at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), who has been studying and working in Laikipia for almost a decade. “There’s a perception that the elephants belong to the government and ranchers, both of whom benefit from tourism. Meanwhile, communities suffer. Farmers get killed. Elephants get speared or poisoned.”
Believing that mobile technology could offer a solution, the Groupe Spéciale Mobile (GSM) Association (GSMA) Development Fund, together with Safaricom Ltd., Wireless Zeta Telecomunicaciones (Wireless ZT), Nokia, the Nokia Siemens Networks, and local conservation organizations, collaborated in launching a pilot project in Laikipia. Using GSM technology, the project sought to facilitate cost-effective communication among local communities, government wildlife service personnel, and private landowners through an early warning system that would allow farmers to preserve their crops while protecting wildlife.
The pilot utilized ‘Push to Talk on Cellular (Phones)’ (PoC) technology, which combines the functionality of a walkie-talkie or two-way radio with a mobile phone. PoC enables communication between two individuals, or a group of people, and is particularly useful in connecting a user group intermittently over a period of time (e.g., a working day).
When all is said and done, the use of mobile technology in promoting development cannot be understated.