Africa

Let’s face it: Africa is on the downward slope to perdition as far as technology is concerned.

Many people who are not directly confronted with this reality on the continent are usually lured into a false sense that things are looking up because of the fountain of good news that is the telecom sector.

The truth though is that the seeming proliferation of ICT success stories across the continent masks the real picture, which is one of a splattering of embers in a desolate patch of darkness.

For a casual browse through the latest International Telecommunications Union (ITU) ICT Development Index for instance should force you to conclude that ICT offers Africa no relief from its chronic state of technological pathology.

Just consider that on this index the bottom 10 countries in a list of 152 are all from Africa. And of the 50 worst-performing countries in the world, a full two-thirds (34) are from the continent.

Kenya is the global hotspot for all things mobile money.  The two chief payment systems, Safaricom M-PESA and Zain Zap, not only share ten million subscribers, but moved ten percent of Kenyan gross domestic product last year.  According to Danson Muchemi, Philip Nyamwaya and Agosta Liko, the respective CEOs of JamboPay, iPay and PesaPal, those figures represent a massive market opportunity.

Danson highlights “very low banking services penetration” as the impetus behind JamboPay, the first online payment gateway in Kenya that processes credit & debit cards.  By topping up an “online purse” via credit/debit card or mobile money, JamboPay enables users to buy online goods from Kenyan merchants without exposing their information.  Unbanked users can access the service by topping up their accounts via mobile money.  Ultimately, JamboPay aims to mitigate the same market failure that gave rise to PayPal in the West: the need for secure and multi-channel access to e-commerce.

By now you may have seen or heard of 2012, the movie that is.

I only saw it recently, and only by the grace of KLM’s onboard entertainment system. It is standard fare from the apocalypse genre. The Earth has a cyclical destiny, which involves at crucial points in this cycle a confrontation with some life-wiping monstrosity. In the movie 2012, the choice of monstrosity is also pretty standard fare – a disease in the Earth’s crust, mangling the Earth’s magnetic field, displacing the continents, and necessitating the building of a new Noah-type ark – or rather a number of them.

I was not so much worried about the plausibility of this disaster movie as I was about its fatalist non-consequentialism. There isn’t much we can do about unpredictable Earth-chewing bugs now, is there? To all intents and purposes, whatever moral was in the tale of 2012 can't matter much to the lives of you and me.

I have had another kind of apocalypse in mind these past few weeks. It would make for a most underwhelming disaster movie though, and I have no intent of dramatizing the issue. But as quasi-seismic events in the health of the species go – and the fate of the species and the planet are much conjoined nowadays, are they not? – this one is worth at least a cursory thought.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend a meeting at Georgetown University, which featured TLG Capital and members of Quality Chemical Industries Limited (QCIL). QCIL is the first World Health Organization-approved pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in sub-sarahan Africa. Their goals, which include expanding accessibility of antimalarial and antirevtrovirals by guaranteeing affordability and quality drugs.

Their state-of-the-art facility looks like it could be found in any technology park in a "developed" country. I had the privilege of watching a full-length video tour of the facility at the event. Though I do not have access to that film, here is a shorter clip which is styled as a welcome video for visitors.

You can see the high level of detail paid to maintaining a highly sterile and secure facility. Be sure to check out some other photos of the facility. The products they manufacture are Duovir-N, the antiretroviral for HIV/AIDS treatment and Lumartem, the combination drug which is used to treat malaria (also know as ACT).

Ashoka-Lemelson fellow Douglas Racionzer tells the story of his shift from healthcare services to advocacy:

Douglas went on to tell me that the primary problem keeping Africans from speaking out isn't politics, it's culture. "The mindset is, 'The politicians are the experts. Let them be in charge.'" He said that his organization doesn't work with any politicians or party; they only engage directly with citizens.

"I don't want to build an empire," he said. "I don't care about having a scalable model. It's anti-going-to-scale; it's about creating an infection in society."

Text to Change (TTC), a non-profit organization in Africa, has been using mobile technology for health education since 2008. TTC has been running a fun, innovative and practical HIV/AIDS education program in three countries -- Uganda, Kenya and Namibia. This program not only educates participants about AIDS but also encourages infected patients to seek medical help and adhere to medication.

Process: TTC runs a six week SMS based quiz program with participants receiving 3 questions per week. The quiz participants answer via sending a free text message. The correct answer is acknowledged with additional information on the topic and the wrong one by an explanation about the correct answer. Detailed information on weekly quiz issues are also put up in a local newspaper and on the TTC website. At the end of the program, participants visit a Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) centre where they are provided with free HIV/AIDS counselling and testing. Participants answering correctly also have an opportunity to win prizes such as mobile phones and air time.



A similar SMS based model can be used effectively to educate people about other diseases and in providing information on general health related issues such as sanitation.

Photo taken from the Text to Change website.

After just two episodes, we're thrilled to say that the AshokaTECH Podcast has been selected by The School for Social Entrepreneurs blog as a "Top 10 Podcast for Social Entrepreneurs!"  Thanks so much -- we're honored to be included among other great shows.

This week's episode of the AshokaTECH Podcast features an interview with Ghanaian social entrepreneur Bright Simons who leverages mobile technology and SMS messages to help improve health and safety in West Africa. Bright sits down with host Alex Budak, as they discuss his work at the intersection of public health and technology, as well as the promise that mobile telephones hold for African development. 

As always, be sure to follow Alex on Twitter, @TheBudak, for updates on the podcast and your chance to have your own questions answered in future interviews.

Listen and subscribe to the AshokaTECH Podcast on iTunes

Or visit the AshokaTECH Audioroom to listen to this and all AshokaTECH Podcasts.

For all of us who couldn't make it to Maker Faire Africa (MFA) 2009 in Ghana last weekend, there is still hope of getting the low-down on the latest tech for Africa and emerging economies. Here is a list of some of the places to go for the 411:

• The Flickr MFA Group Picture Collection
• AfriGadget's perspective on MFA
• Make Magazine's favorite exhibits from the event
• The Twitter stream of MFA comments
• The MFA Blog

Picture above: "A team from IDDS created a way to take old water bags and other plastic to create 3ply to 40ply plastic sheets. Many things can be made from this, including shoes and bags" by flickr/whiteafrican

Every first Wednesday of the month Ashoka gather's on Twitter to discuss topics in Social Entrepreneurship. This month we are talking about Innovations in Rural Development in Africa and India.

Want to be part of the conversation or simply see what people are talking about? Go to http://search.twitter.com from 12-2pm today and enter #SocEntChat. Everyone is welcome to join!

On December 7, 2008, incumbent Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner of a highly contested presidential election with Raila Odinga.  Odinga and his supporters cried foul, and international observers agreed that the election count was flawed.  Violence soon erupted as a reaction to the election news.  In the end, a coalition government was formed, but not before, according to the BBC, "some 1,500 people died in political violence."

Ushahidi, which means "testimony" in Swahili, is a response to this violence.  According to the Ushahidi web site,

"Ushahidi's roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis.

The new Ushahidi Engine is being created to use the lessons learned from Kenya to create a platform that allows anyone around the world to set up their own way to gather reports by mobile phone, email and the web - and map them."