We recently stumbled upon this cool article in the Guardian, discussing a model for using mobile phones and e-commerce to better support “slum businesses” throughout the developing world. There are many small businesses situated in extremely impoverished communities. But as the article points out, most of these enterprises don’t have formal mailing addresses to send and receive products.
…Chris, a student who lives in Kibera in Kenya, the second largest urban slum in Africa, answers: “One million people live in Kibera, but we do not have addresses. So when I ordered a second-hand camera to use in my business as a journalist, I could not receive the package directly. I had to walk to the nearest postal office at a 3.5km distance. And not just once, I did not know when the package would arrive, so I had to walk back and forth regularly. And you know the people who live in Kibera have little money, so when a package arrives, we have to bribe the local authorities to ensure the package gets to the right recipient.”…
And there is also the problem of payment for products.
…Electronic payments are crucial, as a local student explains: “India still very much has a cash payment culture. So if, let’s say, I want to make a deal with a customer in Italy via the Internet, how can I be certain I will be paid if I send him the goods? And how do I receive the money?”…
There are now corporations looking into ways to create smoother operations for slum businesses, and technology plays a key role in helping to mobilize these companies. New technology can help these businesses rise above poverty and create an equal playing field. A collaboration between TNT Express and Vodafone led to the design of phones that recognize a mobile phone number as an address location and enables secure payments via Vodafone’s M-paisa.
But there is more that can be done to support these companies. Global Wire Associates is doing research on how technological innovation is helping underprivileged small businesses worldwide. Are you a business or tech consultant who has experience working in the developing world? Are you a small business owner in the developing world who has a problem that affects how you do business that could possibly be resolved through technology. Please email your ideas to us at info[at]globalwireonline[dot]org that we can use for our research. We will put together all the ideas and share them with you in the next few weeks in a more formal presentation.
The recent surge to “make famous” Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has also put focus on the importance of being knowledgeable about an online campaign before throwing one’s support behind it. While social media has proven to be a unique platform for organizations to campaign directly to other likely supporters, there is also another side to online organizing that can have a negative long-term effect.
The above film created by the California-based organization Invisible Children has been seen by millions of viewers since it was posted last week. The filmmaker says it was made to bring more awareness of the “crisis” to more people through social media. However, many activists feel the campaign is manipulating the facts. For one thing, the LRA has been around for nearly 30 years and Kony has allegedly not been seen in the country since 2007. However, the film presents this issue as if the LRA just came on the scene and that these crimes are currently happening. Kony’s power has since been reduced significantly as he allegedly only has a couple hundred soldiers on his side. While the crimes against his victims were very real and deserve legal recourse, many activists don’t see the Kony cause as being important today as other current global disputes like in Syria. Michael Deibert, author of Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair, says in the Huffington Post that Kony isn’t the only one to blame for the suffering in Uganda.
The problem with Invisible Children’s whitewashing of the role of the government of Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni in the violence of Central Africa is that it gives Museveni and company a free pass, and added ammunition with which to bludgeon virtually any domestic opposition, such as Kizza Besigye and the Forum for Democratic Change.
By blindly supporting Uganda’s current government and its military adventures beyond its borders, as Invisible Children suggests that people do, Invisible Children is in fact guaranteeing that there will be more violence, not less, in Central Africa.
I have seen the well-meaning foreigners do plenty of damage before, so that is why people understanding the context and the history of the region is important before they blunder blindly forward to “help” a people they don’t understand.
Then there are others like Visible Children who question the process of the campaign.
“These problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow.”
“In our quest to garner wide public support of nuanced policy, Invisible Children has sought to explain the conflict in an easily understandable format, focusing on the core attributes of LRA leadership that infringe upon the most basic of human rights,’’ Invisible Children says on its website. “In a 30-minute film, however, many nuances of the 26-year conflict are admittedly lost or overlooked.’’
This is certainly not the first online campaign to be criticized for simplifying the central cause of concern. A few months ago we discussed the lessons learned from the Troy Davis campaign. A memorable quote came from Flip the Media’s Jonathan Cunningham.
…Many of the people retweeting petitions and posting notices on their social media accounts had never heard of Davis until a week ago — or less. Reading and signing a physical petition, or writing a parole board takes effort and research at the very least. Retweeting a petition for clemency in a capital murder case only takes dexterity in one finger as you click a button. Online activism, while noble and potentially powerful, typically involves the short-winded enthusiasm of the uninformed. If Troy Davis is the triggerman and he’s guiltier than sin, there would still be just as many wide-eyed folks on Twitter sending around links to save his life today. Frankly, that’s uneducated and unwise at the very least and potentially dangerous at the extreme…
Capital punishment and proof of guilt are very complex issues. The Haiti earthquake was also not so simple. When the disaster struck, the natural instinct everyone had was to donate anything that would help the victims as soon as possible. So many people began to donate large sums of money quickly, thanks to the convenience of giving money online or via text message. Many people donated to the Yele Foundation, a charity founded by musician Wyclef Jean, who asked his Twitter followers to text in US$5 and was able to raise US$1 million in one day. Donors felt they could trust Jean with their money since he was Haitian-American and at the time seemed to be credible and had a real connection with his home country. The good feelings all changed a short time later when Yele was accused of poor and unethical accounting, including allowing Jean to use the money for personal use.
Invisible Children’s finances are also coming under question. According to the organization’s most recent financial statements, it spent $8,676,614 last year, but only 32 percent of it went to direct services in Uganda. The rest of it went to staff salaries, overhead and film equipment. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if Invisible Children presented itself as an online video advocacy group. However, IC’s programs description and about pages on their website presents the organization as a humanitarian aid group working full-time on the ground helping Ugandans, comparably to Oxfam or ActionAid. Even Charity Navigator rates IC’s accountability at two of four stars because the charity has only four independent board members instead of five.
To sum it up, as easy as it is to retweet a YouTube video or sign an e-petition these days, the Internet has also made it easier to find out everything you need to know about a social issue beforehand. This is why it is still very important to do both online and offline research about any campaign or organization before becoming a supporter.
While many attendees at the Mobile World Congress have focused mainly on all the latest and greatest mobile tools, a discussion that has gone largely under the radar is the so-called “digital caste system.” Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt said in his keynote before MWC12 that for the “aspiring majority” of five out of seven billion global citizens, “the web is still a scarce resource.”
“For most people the digital revolution has not arrived yet. Every revolution begins with a small group of people. Imagine how much better it would be with another five billion people online,” he said. “Smartphones are part of the solution, but having a smartphone is not enough to get you online.”
The International Telecommunication Union — the U.N.’s specialized agency for information and communication technologies (ICT) — launched the Broadband Commission for Digital Development to help evaluate how to not only make mobile broadband more accessible worldwide, but also how to better incorporate such policies into the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
Target 1: Making broadband policy universal. By 2015, all countries should have a national broadband plan or strategy or include broadband in their universal access/service definitions.
Target 2: Making broadband affordable. By 2015, entry-level broadband services should cost less than 5% of average monthly income.
Target 3: Connecting homes to broadband. By 2015, 40% of households in developing countries should have internet access.
Target 4: Getting people online. By 2015, internet user penetration should reach 60% worldwide, 50% in developing countries and 15% in least-developed countries.
The digital gap is particularly wider for rural women who face the barriers of poverty, illiteracy and language. The UN General Assembly Resolution 58/146 of 2004 recognized the need to provide rural women with better ICT, which has led to the growth of UN-supported ICT programs in rural communities.
There is significant evidence of how this resolution has improved the lives of many women, particularly in Latin America. According to Martin Hilbert, researcher at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the programs help women become leaders in their communities, by allowing them to search for jobs, access education through online trainings and software, and increase their income. “ICTs are a tool to fight discrimination against women in a holistic way,” he said.
Women accessing mobile technology can also become citizen journalists in their communities. Mobile journalism played a large role in the Arab Spring. Yemen’s Nadia Abdullah became an unlikely reporter covering events in her country.
“I didn’t imagine that my father, brother or the family would accept that I go out and do an interview on camera” Abdullah said to Voice of America. “This was almost impossible to do because of the norms and traditions. They are closed and conservative traditions. It is not proper for a woman to appear in public.”
Eventually with the approval of her family, Abdullah used an amateur video camera to document events throughout Sanaa, ranging from crackdowns by government troops to a man cradling the dead body of a loved one. She not only helped to topple Yemen’s long time ruler, but she is now also seriously pursuing a journalism career.
“With a camera and a picture,” she said, “you can silence anyone.”
In the process of doing research for last week’s post on e-waste, we stumbled upon a fabulous film about renewable energy in Africa. As our society has become more wired with all kinds of gadgets that have made our lives a lot easier, sometimes those of us living in the West take for granted the simplest thing that many in the developing world don’t have to work those gadgets effectively – electricity.
Specifically, one-third of the estimated 1.6 billion people living without access to electricity worldwide live in Africa. The lack of electricity is recognized as a major impediment to development on the continent, ranging from health care, education, water access, sanitation and women’s rights.
Of course, poor electrical access has a major effect on ICT development in Africa. As a matter of fact, infrastructure for communications technology has not grown at the same speed as the growth in mobile phone ownership. So it is not unusual for people to travel long distances for many hours just to charge a mobile. Many people use generators to charge mobiles, which can be both very dangerous to the person charging it and harmful to the environment long term. In other cases, mobile phone users might be charged a fee to re-juice their phones, which can cost as much as that person’s weekly pay.
So, it was pretty awesome to find the above film Burning in the Sun, which is currently showing in the United States on PBS’ AfroPop series. The documentary stars Daniel Dembélé, a young entrepreneur who has come back to his village in Mali to start up a solar panel business called Afriq-Power. In this short version of the film, we see Dembélé and his company building panels for an area largely without electricity. The differences these panels make in the village are like night and day, as people are able to continue doing things after dark, like studying. Before the students in the featured school had electricity, every year only 20 percent of them passed their national exams. After the lights were installed, the number jumped significantly to 97 percent!
It is also a great business model that other aspiring African entrepreneurs can learn from. Most importantly, we loved the ideas of self-sufficiency Dembélé discussed in the film.
“Maybe the solution is to not give money to governments,” said Dembélé. “Maybe the solution is to do micro-projects to help the people develop themselves. Give small money to people and they will help themselves.”
Check out these updates on what Dembélé has been doing since the film here and here.
