Technology
“People in Kibera are resourceful, they know how to use what they have to get by.”
This guest post is by journalist Abby Higgins, in partnership with The Seattle Globalist. It’s the third in a four part series which reveals the economically complex and culturally rich life of urban slums, and challenges our perceptions of what life is like for the one billion people around the world that live in them. Read Part One or Part Two.
Bella Achieng with her daughter outside their home in Kibera. Photo: Abby Higgins
Deep inside Kibera, a dum light bulb is illuminating the home of Bella Achieng as she wakes her baby daughter from a nap.
Achieng is an entrepreneur. She works on a small scale, using what the rest of the city throws away as a business opportunity. She buys leftover bits of charcoal from businesses at a cheap price. Then she grinds them up with mud, packing them into neat blocks of cooking fuel that she can sell, turning a small profit.
Reusing cast-off materials is common practice in slums around the world. Human waste is converted into bio-gas in slums in Lagos; the Zabbaleen community in Cairo make a living by operating informal rubbish collection for the rest of the city; litter pickers in Mumbai sort plastics and sell them to recycling companies.
Achieng held one of the cooking-fuel blocks up to me. “You think people in the rest of the city would buy this? No way!” she said, laughing and shaking her head. “But people in Kibera are resourceful, they know how to use what they have to get by.”
The lack of resources in informal settlements may offer a unique impetus to innovate, but that doesn’t change the harsh realities of poverty. Achieng’s hard work and ingenuity means that she and her two daughters may continue surviving, but they still can’t rely on regular meals.
And yet, Kibera residents constantly defy outside expectations. They watched the coverage of Kenya’s recent presidential election on televisions in their living rooms. Many of them own laptops and operate small movie theatres, electronics repair shops and packed restaurants. They send the money they earn back to their relatives in rural Kenya using groundbreaking mobile-banking technology. They used open-source technology to map the streets of Kibera, which had previously been a blank space on official maps.
Cynthia Smith, an expert on socially responsible design who has travelled to 15 countries to study slum innovation tells me that the assumption that the West will bring innovation to poor parts of the world is shifting.
“Often we transfer our ideas to other parts of the world. But in fact that’s changing,” she said. “There are innovation and design ideas that can be applicable to our part of the world.”
Slum residents are using creative approaches to global problems such as urban density, technology access and waste disposal. Necessity breeds invention. And that necessity might just be what makes slum dwellers well equipped to take on a crowded, resource-strapped future.
Check back next week for Part Four
Meet the innovators and entrepreneurs of Kenya’s Kibera slum
This guest post is by journalist Abby Higgins, in partnership with The Seattle Globalist. It’s the second in a four part series which reveals the economically complex and culturally rich life of urban slums, and challenges our perceptions of what life is like for the 1 billion people around the world that live in them. Read Abby’s first post.
The shop is dark and humid. I duck inside, and the warm glow of three television screens coats a room filled with a dozen neighborhood boys. Three of them hammer away at PlayStation controllers, sending a tiny soccer ball leaping across the screen.
“They pay 10 shilling to play for 10 minutes,” explains Vitalis Odhiambo, the shop owner. “I probably get around 20 customers in a day, more when school is out of session.”
Neighbourhood youth pay about ten cents for ten minutes of play on PlayStation consoles in Diddy’s arcade. (Photo by Abby Higgins)
Odhiambo, who goes by the nickname Diddy, was born in Kibera and has lived there his entire life. In addition to his PlayStation business, he runs a shop outside of Kibera that sells women’s shoes and clothing. He even operates a tour company, capitalising on outsiders’ curiosity about his increasingly famous home.
Like most slums, Kibera has no formal government services. Residents can’t access clean water, sanitation, electricity or health care the way the rest of Nairobi does.
It’s easy to think of slums as places of listless poverty filled with victims of circumstances waiting for outside intervention. But Odhiambo’s shop shows another side. Slum dwellers are entrepreneurs and innovators, constantly manipulating their surroundings to creatively address the problems they and their communities face.
“They’re probably the most inventive people in the world because they often have limited access to resources,” said Cynthia Smith, who is the curator of socially responsible design at the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
Smith traveled to 15 countries to learn about slum innovations, from vertical water and sewer services climbing a mountainside settlement in Caracas, Venezuela, to a community oven in Kibera that uses rubbish as fuel. She has compiled her work into an ongoing exhibition called “Design with the Other 90%: CITIES.”
According to U.N. Habitat, 85% of new employment opportunities around the world are in the informal economy, like the untaxed, unregulated businesses in Kibera.
If he gets a little more start-up capital, Diddy says, he’ll expand his business to build a larger gaming centre, with computers and additional PlayStation consoles. But isn’t it difficult to operate a video arcade with no formal electrical system?
Odhiambo says it’s rarely a problem. His shop is powered by Kibera’s primary electricity suppliers, a complex — and entirely illegal — system that has been maintained by generations of Kibera residents.
Not connected to the formal utilities of Nairobi, Kibera residents build everything themselves from power lines to water cisterns. (Photo by Alex Stonehill)
Phillip, who asked that his last name not be used because of the illegal nature of his work, is one of dozens of agents who keep the slum powered. Residents pay him about $4 per month to get hooked up.
He grew up in Kibera and is using his job as an informal electricity broker to pay his college tuition while he is studying broadcast journalism.
“We run three lines from different parts of the city. That way if one isn’t working, there are two additional lines that can be used as backup,” Philip told me. “It’s very infrequent that people lose their power.”
On the whole, Nairobi is a highly developed, modern city. Just ten minutes from Kibera are luxury apartments and malls with boutique stores and sushi restaurants. But even wealthy neighbourhoods like Lavington and Karen — home to former Prime Minister Raila Odinga — have basic infrastructure problems that are unfamiliar in the global north. Last year, I spent an entire night with my electronics piled around me at a dingy restaurant because I had a deadline to meet and it was the only place in my neighbourhood with electricity.
I asked Phillip if it was possible that Kibera’s residents enjoyed more reliable power than I did. “I’d say that is probably true,” he answered with a smile.
Check back next week for Part Three
ONE publish new report: Summit in Sight – The G8 and Africa from Gleneagles to Lough Erne
Today ONE launches a new report that looks at the progress made in fighting extreme poverty since the historic pledges made by world leaders at Gleneagles in 2005.
Get the headline facts from the graphic below, or if you want to delve deeper, read the full report.
The coolest new vlog that’s keeping Africa real
Did you know that the Harlem Shake evolved from an Ethiopian dance called the Eskista? Or that Botswana has a thriving heavy metal scene? No? Then you need What’s Up Africa.
Ikenna Azuike’s weekly video blog takes a cheeky look at what’s happening across the continent and mashes it up with music, video and internet memes that entertains as much as it enlightens.
Here’s his latest post which includes his thoughts on a possible Ghanaian Pope (with a dubstep twist) plus a new maternal health tv channel that’s getting life saving information out to people in an innovative way.
ONE have been lucky enough to grab an interview with Ikenna, where he reveals, “I’m trying to represent an accurate picture of the continent, a more balanced picture than the one that Western media portrays. There are a lot of young Africans that are frustrated by that and so I hope they feel like there is someone out there trying to correct that.
I used to be a lawyer and it was interesting and challenging and all that good stuff and it paid really well, but it wasn’t fulfilling. And now I feel like I am doing something relevant that matters because people are surprised by the blogs and the stuff that I highlight.”
Watch the latest video blog on What’s Up Africa every Monday, and check out our full interview with Ikenna over on the US blog.
Digital Green: Training Farmers with Videos and Social Networks
Last week in London, the Omidyar Network, the UK Department for International Development, and WIRED magazine hosted a one-day conference on transparency and open government called Open Up!. You may have seen this post where we encouraged you all to send your ideas of how technology can help open government to #OpenUp12 on Twitter.
One of the many impressive groups that presented their work at Open Up! was Digital Green. Digital Green is a technology-centric grassroots campaign focused on increasing the effectiveness of smallholder farmers in the developing world, in order to improve their farming methods and their lives.
Digital Green is taking advantage of technology to increase the reach of the lessons smallholder farmers can teach each other. Starting with farmers in India, and later with farmers in Ghana and Ethiopia, Digital Green has developed a video-based system for sharing farming knowledge, encouraging adoption of new techniques and tracking the adoption of the new methods. Local “facilitators” – village farmers –share appropriate how-to videos to their communities using cheap, portable pico projectors. The database of more than 2,500 videos is sorted by crop, region and method. Crucially, Digital Green’s method of using 8-10 minute videos allows the significant illiterate populations (more than 40% in India, 30% in Ghana, and 60% in Ethiopia) to benefit from the lessons. You can find the videos on YouTube here, or search for them on Digital Green’s website. But while the technology is impressive, and useful for helping to share the videos, facilitators are instrumental in ensuring that farmers are watching and understanding the lessons illustrated in the videos, and that local farmers are using effective techniques.
Digital Green is currently working in 1,500 villages with more than 125,000 farmers, approximately 70% of whom are female. Digital Green noticed that the video screenings started conversations about who the “teacher” farmers were, where they were from and what they grew. This curiosity and desire to connect resulted in the Farmerbook social network, where farmers have profiles on a map, that track progress made through screenings, questions, and adoptions of more effective farming methods. Farmerbook allows Digital Green to see just how many people the videos are reaching, and how effective they are at improving farming methods.
Digital Green’s focus on data – to ensure that their programs are working – is impressive. Their analytics page is chock-full of data about who is doing what, where, and how successful those efforts are. But Digital Green is raising the profile of small farmers in other innovative ways. The feedback and data from the screenings are stored on Digital Green’s Connect Online/Connect Offline (COCO) platform, which allows even remote areas with limited Internet and electrical connectivity to update the database. Digital Green’s video-based educational approach may be able to reach more people – more cheaply – than more traditional methods. Historically, agriculture extension workers are trained to teach smallholder farmers new and better farming techniques. However, this is a very labor intensive process. By building bigger networks and using video technology, Digital Green may have hit upon a more efficient way to scale up farmer education.
To provide a bridge between these farmers with their social network and those in urban areas who use more mainstream social networks, Digital Green created Wonder Village, a Farmville-like Facebook game that allows players to connect with their friends and Digital Green’s small farmers to build a healthy, thriving agricultural village. It’s an inspiring example of how technology can make the world a little bit smaller, and enable knowledge and awareness to educate people all over the world.
Click Here to download the slideshow Digital Green’s Rikin Gandhi presented at Open Up!, or follow Digital Green’s work on Twitter @DigitalGreenOrg!
Opening Governments with Technology – We want to hear from you
Here on the ONE blog, we often share with you our experiences and new ideas heard at development meetings and conferences from around the globe. On 13 November in London, the Open Up! conference will bring together the transparency and open government communities to discuss how technology is changing the relationship between governments and citizens, and how it will enable citizens to hold their leaders to account. And they want YOU to be part of the conversation!
Hosted by the Omidyar Network and the UK Department for International Development, and in association with WIRED magazine, Open Up! will be a powerhouse for policy and tech experts, all looking to find ways to increase participation and accountability through innovative new programmes.
The best bit is that Open Up! organisers, speakers and partners want to hear directly from you. They’re looking for new ideas about how we can use technology to increase citizen participation, improve the relationship between citizens and their leaders, and ultimately increase and ownership of government priorities. Follow #OpenUp12 on Twitter to be the first to know what the conference participants are talking about and to add your ideas.
The UK’s Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening MP, will be one of the OpenUp! co-hosts. Other international innovators attending the event include Rakesh Rajani, founder of Twaweza (Swahili for “we can make it happen”), a ten-year initiative to enhance access to information and public accountability in East Africa. Juliana Rotich of Ushahidi (Swahili for “testimony”) will also join the debate. Ushahidi is a web-based reporting system that uses crowdsourced data to map information in a crisis in real-time. Famously deployed in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, Ushahidi has since been used around the world. Gustav Praekelt, managing director and founder of Praekelt Digital, will also be there. Gustav founded the Praekelt Foundation to build open source, scalable mobile technologies and solutions to improve the health and wellbeing of people living in poverty. His programmes have reached more than 50 million people in 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Some impressive and innovative domestic programmes will also be represented. Kepha Ngito is a trustee of Map Kibera, an interactive community information project started in 2009, when a group of young Kiberans decided to put Africa’s second largest urban slum on the map. Kepha was born and raised in Kibera and is involved in other community organizations, including founding the Kibera Community Youth Programme. Jennifer Pahlka is the founder of Code for America, which works with talented web professionals and cities across the USA to promote public service and reboot government.
Some of the programmes may be familiar – we wrote a blog about one of Omidyar’s partners, FrontlineSMS, earlier this year. Innovation is essential to maintain the momentum on opening up governments to their citizens, making sure that there are many more success stories to write about in the future.
You can check out the agenda and speakers on the Open Up! website, and don’t forget – from now until 13 November, you can follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #OpenUp12. If you have an idea about how technology can help open up governments, post a comment below or tweet at #OpenUp12!
Mapping Malawi’s funding gaps
I’m a big fan of maps. They help me to work out how to get from where I am to where I want to be. They help me to find the things that I need. They help me to make arrangements to meet up with friends. They help me to make the best use of my time and to do what I want. Maps are familiar to all of us, but this map of Malawi is the first of its kind.
The key is key – it’s a rainbow. Because when you’re mapping the projects of 27 different donor governments (like those of USAID in the US, or DFID in the UK) on the ground in Malawi, it’s easier to read if it’s color-coded. This map is unique. Not only does it provide, for the first time, a macro view of what donors are doing in Malawi, but it layers poverty and human development data on top of it – indicated by the color grey of that area.
The combination of projects and need highlights geographic funding gaps (information which can spur or improve coordination between donors) and provides valuable information to the government and to citizens, allowing them to mobilize to fix gaps and inequalities in their country.
The combination of projects and need highlights geographic funding gaps (information which can spur or improve coordination between donors) and provides valuable information to the government and to citizens, allowing them to mobilize to fix gaps and inequalities in their country.
The map is the result of a partnership between the Government of Malawi, AidData, Texas Strauss Center’s Climate Change and African Stability (CCAPS) Program and the World Bank’s Open Aid Partnership, which builds off of the success of their Mapping for Results Initiative. Malawi is the first Open Aid pilot country. Nepal, Kenya, Tanzania, and Bolivia are anticipated to follow their lead as Open Aid pilot countries. The Open Aid Partnership is based on the premise that the combination of maps and open data can enable more transparent, inclusive and effective development assistance.
The Open Aid Partnership will provide open and free access to project locations, human development data and results at the sub-national and local level, and facilitate the translation of this data into a collaborative Open Aid Map. The Partnership will support countries’ creation of their own mapping platforms, promote tech-based citizen feedback loops, and build open data capacity and social accountability mechanisms in countries, so that the data and its use can improve the effectiveness of aid programs.
The Open Aid partnership has been endorsed by eight countries (Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, UK), along with the World Bank and the NGO alliance InterAction. The work of the Open Aid Partnership will go a long way to make information about aid resources available and accessible and to mobilize citizens to demand more effective aid programs. But the potential is even greater.
I look forward to a map that also includes information about revenues raised from natural resources, about budgets and spending and about the results of that spending. Armed with such a map, people will be able to follow the money to ensure that resources are used effectively in the fight against poverty, and to navigate successfully along their own development journeys.
ONE warmly endorses the Open Aid Partnership and looks forward to working with the World Bank and its partners to make the vision of open aid and open development, with empowered and informed citizens at the center, a reality.
Other great maps on ONE.org:
Mapping the Horn of Africa famine
Map of Africa’s major infrastructure
Map that visualizes drug resistance data
Who’s helping, where? A map of the crisis in the Horn of Africa
Why energy is important for development
The recent 2012 Ashden Conference on Sustainable Solution for Better Lives had a focus on energy solutions for better lives and was Chaired by Richenda Van Leeuwen Executive Director of Energy and Climate at the United Nations Foundation. Ms Van Leeuwen is an international energy expert with over 20 years of experience and has a particular focus on energy access for poverty alleviation. I sat down with her to talk about the importance of energy access and the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All.
In the first of two short videos Richenda and I discuss the importance of energy access and why action is needed now in the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All to address the energy poverty challenge.
In tomorrow’s video Richenda will discuss how the private sector, governments and civil society can help to tackle energy poverty.
Speed Dating in Rwanda: Technology Meets Development
Guest blog post by Helen Blakesley from Catholic Relief Services.
What brings together more than 170 people, from 5 continents, 34 countries and over 64 organizations, in a room in a hotel in the Rwandan capital of Kigali? Speed dating. Seriously. But all in the name of technology and development.
I feel I should explain. If we were going from table to table listening to someone’s alluring spiel, it was because we were at the 4th CRS Global ICT4D Conference, discovering the latest innovations in Information Communications and Technology for Development.
A woman signs her information form on an smart phone at a CRS seed fair in Kaga Bandoro, Central African Republic. CRS tested a barcode tracking system in June 2011 to see if it was a more efficient and effective way to register and track people helped by the agency. Photo by Sandra Basgall/CRS
I’d been dispatched to the conference with instructions to “unleash my inner geek”. My concern was, did I have one? I own nothing prefixed with an ‘i’. I’m a firm believer that you can’t beat the feel and smell of a real book between your hands and I’ve never downloaded a song in my life. My techie credentials were not looking good. Still, off I went, to explore this new frontier, with absolutely no idea what to expect.
First day of the conference, I’m having breakfast in the hotel restaurant, overlooking Kigali’s thousand hills, when a voice asks to join me. The voice is laced with a European accent, thick with the tones of a James Bond villain. The owner of the voice is wearing a white bow tie with blue dots on it, and proceeds to explain to me the difference between GIS and GPS technology. Gulp. Could the techie clichés be true?
But a few hours later, as the opening speeches proceeded, the revelations began. Four of the five keynote speakers were women. Some, over 60, but still passionately fired up about their subject area. Some were young and petite with funky haircuts and dangly earrings, but who evidently knew what they were talking about. I started to sit up and take notice. This was inspiring stuff.
Partnerships Among Experts
I learned that extreme poverty is often due to extreme isolation, and that technology provides a means of connecting people. I learned that technology can empower people by giving them information and tools to improve their lives. I learned how CRS is using cutting edge technology to increase the impact of our programming around the world, whether it be using GPS to track crop diseases, mobile phones to improve literacy, or using software platforms to rapidly assess needs during an emergency response.
The theme of the conference was “partnership”. Its aim, to bring together the “techies” and the development experts — so they can exchange their needs, share and learn about the latest “geek tech” and find answers to practical problems in the development world.
Partnerships with governments and donors are also at the heart of this work. The conference was officially opened by Rwanda’s Minister of ICT who (rather aptly) read his speech not from paper, but his ipad, the illuminated square reflected in each of his spectacle lenses.
Opportunity to Change Lives
As I sit in the audience listening, with the background noise of people tapping notes onto their laptops and tablets, it strikes me. Here we have a bunch of really smart people who are thinking up ways to more effectively and efficiently help other people. That’s pretty amazing. The words of Carol Bothwell, CRS’s Chief Knowledge Officer, capture my attention. “We have the opportunity to change the lives of millions of people around the world through technology — what could be more exciting than that?”
So back to that speed dating…
There was an eclectic mix of nationalities (Dutch, Kenyan, American, Ivorian…) genders and styles (from gray shirts and matching gray pens to snazzy power dresses). I must admit that I was a little lost at times, when phrases like “web service interface” or “Java enabled” popped up…and I couldn’t suppress a smile at statements such as “the iform platform is mobile data collection on steroids!”
To be honest with you, I did feel a touch sleepy at certain moments, but that was probably due to my lack of tech savvy more than anything else. Because in front of me were state-of-the-art gadgets — most of which I had no inkling about but which impressed me all the same.
To wit: Solar powered iphone chargers for use in remote areas; barcode readers for recording people’s information at seed fairs with just one swipe; portable mini servers so databases can be accessed from virtually anywhere.
The Point of Technology
I heard about mobile phones being used to transfer money to families in need, to text farmers with price alerts or advice on how to tend their crops, mobile phone applications to help health workers chart their patients progress and needs. I saw mini laptops for community workers who can be trained through distance learning. I learned about GPS devices that can be slipped into a pocket, but will provide essential mapping information for planning CRS’ life saving projects.
All this is only possible because technology is evolving so quickly and communities in developing countries have increasing access to it. And amongst all the paraphernalia and data and theory of the conference, we were reminded in the closing speeches of the reason this technology is so important: the people.
As a CRS staffer who uses iphones to collect data on malaria in Sierra Leone told us – “Experiment with amazing technology, yes. But don’t forget why we’re doing this. Don’t forget the people.”
Helen Blakesley is CRS’ regional information officer for west and central Africa. She is based in Dakar, Senegal. This blog post first appeared on the CRS Voices Blog.
Peering into Ghana’s mobile future with Mac-Jordan Degadjor
Mac-Jordan Degadjor is a Ghanaian social media entrepreneur and rising star among global tech bloggers. The 26-year-old recently spoke about the positive effects of social media at the TEDxYouthInspire conference in Ghana’s capital city of Accra and was spotlighted in the Christian Science Monitor’s “Thirty Ideas from People Under 30.” We asked Mac-Jordan to explain why mobile tech advancements are important for Ghana’s economic and social growth.
Why is Ghana ready for a mobile technology boom? Are investors looking to Ghana as a market ready to advance with mobile?
Anytime I’m asked if Ghana is ready for the mobile technology boom, my answer is always YES. In Ghana, there are two major organizations providing locals with the business and technology skills they need to leverage ideas into successful mobile web companies: Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology and Mobile Web Ghana.
New opportunities are showing up that make it possible for low-income economies to leapfrog other countries by adopting technologies that are suitable to their specific circumstances. I’m happy to say that Ghana is taking that bold step in adopting new mobile technologies. Take a critical look at the continent: Africa has more than 110 million Internet users, a number that is poised to grow by 2400 percent in this decade alone.
What about Ghana’s market makes it ready for mobile phone technology? How are smartphones being introduced into the market? Can bandwidth improvements keep up with the technology?
African governments are aggressively developing broadband and information/communications (ICT) policies in order to properly regulate the industry while allowing the market to work its magic. In Ghana, mobile penetration currently stands at 85.5 percent, which means that out of a population of about 25 million, there are 20 million subscribers to at least one of the country’s five active mobile networks (MTN, Vodafone, TiGO, Airtel and Expresso). These days, smartphones are being used in all areas. By 2013, Africa will have 11 undersea cables (including one in Ghana by Glo Mobile), which is likely to result in increased bandwidth and reduced cost to consumers.
From banking to agriculture, mobile technology plays a vital role in the life of the average Ghanaian. Here are two examples of how mobile or smartphones are being used in Ghana:
Esoko is an agricultural market information platform managed on the web and delivered via mobile technology in Ghana and other parts of Africa. Individuals, agri-business, and government agencies use Esoko to collect and send out market data using simple text messaging. By way of SMS, the Esoko platform provides automatic and personalized price alerts to farmers in rural areas.
The Grameen Foundation is also developing and distributing mobile phone-based applications to help the poor better manage their health, through such programs as the Mobile Technology for Community Health (MOTECH) initiative.
How are younger people in Ghana helping to push mobile advancements? As a younger person, why is tech growth so important to you and your circles?
Mobile technology is the future for Africa. In Ghana, the only way to access the Internet among the younger generation is via mobile and smartphones.
The greatest opportunity for growth will come from technological innovation and the adoption of new technologies in service sectors, such as banking, insurance, health, education and agriculture. These growths in technology are very important to me and my networks because they help shape the socioeconomic aspect of our lives and bridge the gap between people in Ghana and those in other parts of the world.
Can you describe some of the apps that could come from tech innovations that would help people in Ghana?
The catalog of mobile applications in Ghana seems to be growing by the day. We have a host of programs including mobile banking, SMS alerts for farmers and agri-business, chat functions, stock market updates and photo-sharing platforms.
When it comes to mobile apps from Africa, there’s been mention of Ushahidi, iCow and Mocality from Kenya, and Ummeli and TXTALert from South Africa. In Ghana, app providers like Nkyea, Esoko, ShopAfrica53, NandiMobile, iWallet – Dream Oval, Retail Tower and Streemio have gained a lot of popularity.
Can you describe the benefits, if any, to government transparency and democracy that mobile tech can bring to Ghana (e.g. promoting accountability, coordinating political events, and inspiring social activism)?
Universal access to affordable information is one area in which mobile technology will be of great importance in Ghana. There is widespread consensus that ICTs offer one solution to this problem, with mobile phones showing particular promise already.
In Ghana, smartphones are more affordable than computers. They require less infrastructure, do not demand much technological knowledge (users do not even have to be literate), and are very durable. With increased use of mobile phones in Ghana, citizen participation in all social aspects of life will be monitored and reported.
As a citizen journalist, the mobile phone serves as a great tool in my reporting and social activism. Bloggers in Ghana will use their mobile phones to monitor and report on the December elections later this year. This will be first time citizens have the chance to play a participatory role in the elections.
Read more from Mac-Jordan Degadjor on his blog or follow him on Twitter. He also writes for the Venture Capital for Africa blog.
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About the Blog
The International ONE Blog is a daily log of the anti-poverty movement. The site is operated by ONE staff, with guest contributions from ONE volunteers, members and allies.
The content of each post and each comment represents the views of that author and does not necessarily reflect the views of ONE. ONE does not support or oppose any candidate for elected office, and any post expressing support or opposition for a candidate is not endorsed by ONE.
TAGS: Kenya, ONE, Slums, Technology