During the tense electoral standoff in Cote d’Ivoire after incumbent Laurent Gbagbo refused to vacate office following his defeat, the hashtag #civic2010 was used to report abuses by dissident forces as well as refugees’ movements and needs. In Malawi, the #July20 hashtag and facebook groups were used to organize the country’s civil society during the eponymous protests which drew international condemnation of the Mutharika government’s crackdown on freedom of speech and press. And, at the time of writing in Mali, activists, civil society and ordinary citizens were using the #mali hashtag to organize the safeguard of Mali’s antiquities held in rebel occupied Timbuktu.

While many associate the events surrounding the ‘Arab Spring’ with the use of digital communication for social movements and political organizing, this truism ignores the real pioneering work done three years prior and south of the Sahara. In 2008, Ushahidi, an open-source platform, was first used in Kenya to map the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi, along with SMS applications and social media platforms collectively known as Information Communications Technology (ICTs) have since spread across the continent and have put the tools to build democracy and good governance into the hands of millions of civilians.

As a result, crowdsourced information has empowered ordinary citizens as never before. A villager in a rural area can report corruption and broadcast to the world instances of injustice — adding a new and exciting angle to human rights, democracy, governance, and civil society development across the continent. At the same time, ICTs have increased the burden on governments to be more accountable and connect with their own citizens.

On the heels of the exciting expansion of ICTs throughout Africa, The African Studies program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC, will be hosting a conference on May 1-2 entitled The New African Democracy: Information Technology and Political Participation. The conference’s primary objective is to join African Studies experts with policy makers and practitioners to discuss challenges and opportunities for African politics in the digital age.

Speaking at the conference are representatives from a variety of institutions including: WANGONet, NDI Tech, Frontline SMS, Accender Africa, African Technology & Transparency Initiative, Afrimap, MacArthur Foundation, Michigan State and Cambridge Universities, Ushahidi, The World Bank, Alpha Strategy, and USAID.

At the beginning of the conference’s second day, TechChange, will deploy a small local simulation for attendees to emphasize the possibilities for integrating crowdsourced information with institutional processes to improve democratic participation and governance function. The simulation which will be lead by TechChange’s Rob Baker, Christopher Neu and Kevin Malone  provides a glimpse into some of the substance covered in the organization’s online certificate course, TC104 Global Innovations for Digital Organizing.

 

Those interested in attending the conference should RSVP to Jessica Carsten at jcarste1@jhu.edu.

Interested in participating in TC104? Apply directly on the TechChange website

Description: The campaign to #StopKony is approaching a critical transition. On April 20th Invisible Children will launch its Cover the Night campaign on the heels of one of the most successful viral videos of all time.

Moving forward from online ‘awareness-raising’, in which over 85 million people viewed their video Kony 2012, Invisible Children is now asking their supporters for something more – offline action. Regardless of your position on the efficacy and appropriateness of the campaign, the upcoming Cover the Night will be an important event in the short history of digital activism. How will Invisible Children translate a resounding marketing success into tangible action? What does this mean for the greater advocacy community?

As a precursor to our course on digital organizing and good governance, TechChange plans to host an open twitter chat to reflect on the campaign and its successes and approaches to date.

Date: Friday 27th at 1:00pm EDT

Key Questions:

1.  One of the biggest criticisms of Kony2012 was that it oversimplified the history of conflict in central africa and the mechanisms needed to create change in the region. How do organizations handle conflicting demands of delivering a message in an accessible way vs attending to complexity and nuance of an issue?

2.  Invisible children was clear that Kony2012 Cover the Night was not intended for policymakers or for affected communities in central africa, it was targeted towards US based activists. Should organizations/campaigns segment or customize messages and actions for different target audiences and how might they do this effectively?

3. Kony2012 proved the power of viral video in getting the attention of tens of millions of people. How do organizations successfully translate online activity into meaningful offline action? how do they sustain success?

 

Hashtag: #TCTalk

Be sure to participate in the chat by logging on twitter on Friday April 27th between 1 and 2pm EDT. Please remember: use the #TCTalk hashtag, introduce yourself, stay on topic, be respectful and have fun. This discussion will be part of TechChange’s monthly twitter chat, which are real-time conversations structured around specific themes.

Have a question but can’t attend the chat?
Mention @TechChange before the chat with any questions you have or issues you are interested in exploring – or just comment right here on TechChange Blog. We’ll do our best to include this feedback in the chat.

Sample Tweet: Join @TechChange for a twitter chat discussing #Kony2012  and Digital #activism on April 27th 1-2pm. Use #TCTalk http://bit.ly/JcwMm9

Interested in continuing the conversation further and engaging with other activists across the globe? Be sure to check out TechChange’s upcoming online certificate course, TC104 Global Innovations for Digital Organizing: open data, good governance, and online/offline advocacy. This course will evaluate case studies where new technologies have been employed for effective change and what factors and contexts are most influential on outcomes. More information can be found at TC104 course description page on the TechChange website.

Zombies have started to make their way into the DC Metropolitan Area! Yesterday the TechChange team delivered another FrontlineSMS simulation, this time set against the backdrop of a Zombie Apocalypse. The training was part of Challenge Accepted 2012 a weekend conference for undergraduates hosted by Americans for Informed Democracy.

Participants were divided up into teams of the Zombie Control Task Force  (ZCTF) and tasked with responding to the sudden appearance and spread of zombies in the city. They then had to set up the FrontlineSMS platform and determine a strategy for communication between  field workers and HQ, and civilians in need of treatment (all while avoiding a roaming Zombie).

Participants were asked to consider workflow questions such as:

  • How will you alert civilians when new information becomes available?
  • Should all civilians receive the same information? How will they be grouped?
  • What types of information will you need to gather from you field workers? What strategy will you use to ensure adequate communication between HQ and the field?
  • How will you verify the integrity of information from the field?
We’ve found that this is a great way to learn the potential and pitfalls of a tool like FrontlineSMS while keeping things engaging and fun. We’re excited about running more of these in the months to come (especially now that we have all kinds of new zombie equipment:)
If you’re interested in learning more about our courses and simulations consider signing up for our next online course TC104: Global Innovations for Digital Organizing. The course starts May 14th and there are sure to a few zombie scenarios in that one as well:)

This article was first published on the The Asia Foundation’s blog, In Asia.

By 

 “Just because they are poor and isolated doesn’t mean they don’t have the potential to be the next Bill Gates,” said Shahed Kayes, the founder of Subornogram Foundation in Bangladesh, while introducing me to lively students at a school he started on the remote island of Mayadip. Located in the Meghna River, the island’s 1,100 residents don’t have access to public services such as safe drinking water, public schools, or health care. The residents rely on the river’s catch of fish for their livelihood, and 97 percent live below the poverty line. Although the school doesn’t own a single computer and the island has no electricity, Shahed couldn’t resist taking out his personal laptop and showing the children how to use it, giving them at least a small glimpse of the world beyond their shores.

(more…)

Until recently, most health clinics in Uganda, and indeed across the continent of Africa, transmitted all of their data manually, sometimes by phone, but in most cases by sending messengers overland to each clinic — big, small, urban and rural — to collect paper records for analysis. This process is critical to verifying that medications are stocked on site and can be distributed in a timely fashion to patients most in need. It is also imperative in ensuring that Uganda’s health policy decisions are made based on the most up to date and accurate information.

But the journey of a paper record from doctor’s pad to the Ministry of Health in Kampala was treacherous at best. From extreme distances to challenging terrain and unpredictable transportation – collecting data the old fashioned way proved to be a time consuming, inefficient and expensive endeavor. This scenario caused health providers to learn about supply shortages only after it had become a relative emergency, hindering efforts to effectively respond to diseases prevalent in the region, such as malaria, HIV, and TB, among others.

One Healthcare implementer facing such data collection problems was the consulting group Cardno, and their Uganda Health Initiatives for the Private Sector (HIPS) project – a program funded by USAID, and administered through partnerships with over 100 private sector health clinics across the country. According to HIPS’ director of partnerships Barbara Addy-Witte, “[data collection] was a very cumbersome process for us. HIPS tracks data from 112 clinics and this often necessitated partner staff to travel to the project office in Kampala to deliver the data forms each quarter.

Working closely with USAID, HIPS faced the challenge of collecting upwards of 90 data points from each health clinic every quarter. With manual data collection and paper management, the HIPS program found these processes to lead to low collection numbers. And as any good project manager knows, low data collection numbers and compromised records can lead to the lack of ability to maintain the most efficient and effective operations. However, a recent partnership with the Denver based mobile technology group access.mobile has the potential to change the operational capacity of health providers in the region, with one of the most basic modern communication devices at the center of operations – cell phones.

The access.mobile team, led by Founder Kaakpema Yelpaala (KP), an American social entrepreneur of Ghanaian descent, has designed a mobile data collection and analytics system based on an SMS platform to electronically track priority health indicators, monitor stock levels of antiretroviral drugs and support organizations in understanding their data. This m-Health initiative, which uses full keyboard feature phones to send and receive information, has been rapidly scaled up for piloting in 70 health clinics in just three months.  It was determined by HIPS that just over 30 of their clinics, mainly urban sites, had sufficient connectivity to send their reports electronically, though the overwhelming majority were not in that position.

But not only is access.mobile working to develop scalable technologies for improved communications in the region, the model of development is one based on local ownership and long-term sustainability. According to KP, “Uganda particularly is a place with a ton of talent in the technology sector. All of our employees in Uganda are from Uganda. They’re trained in mobile technology, computer science, and medicine. They’re the linchpin to our company’s success because they understand the context. They understand how Ugandans think about technology. It’s when you blend a local team like that with a global team like ours – that’s when you get innovation.”

Dr. Dithan Kiragga, the Chief of Party of the HIPS initiative: “The commodity supply chain in particular for ARVs has been a challenge. This partnership presents an opportunity to improve the commodity flow, to develop an alert system that triggers a request when the stocks are low. This ensures that there are no stock outs for priority drugs.”

With Cardno’s Uganda HIPS working towards the end of the fully-scaled pilot phase of the access.mobile solution, results of the financial and social impact of their work will be generated in the coming months and a better picture of their work will emerge.  Furthermore, as the Ministry of Health in Uganda sets standards for data integration at the national level, solutions like access.mobile’s will also be an important element in helping engage the private sector with national health information management efforts.

As it stands however, the nascent m-Health industry has made significant headway toward strengthening supply chains, better depicting public health scenarios on the ground, informing good policy, and ultimately helping to improve the health of millions of Ugandans.

Post authors Kevin Malone and Greg Maly are working with TechChange for the online course: Global Innovations for Digital Organizing. They are happy to continue the discussion @TechChange.

 

Thanks to TechChange resident conflict analysis and data guru Charles Martin-Shields for cross-posting this from his site Espresso Politics.  We’re really excited for this to be presented at Tech4Dev
Hey everybody, I’m pretty excited to have had a paper accepted to the Tech4Dev conference hosted by the UNESCO Chair at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne.  I’ll be focusing on the impact that distance learning technology can have on knowledge co-creation across geographic boundaries, with a particular focus on technology applications for development and peacebuilding.  If you’re curious, I’ve got a draft of the paper stored here.  As usual, feedback is welcome, and I have to give a big shout out to my co-author Jordan Hosmer-Henner (@jordanhh) who is the resident open-source tool guru at TechChange and soon-to-be master of arts at the Elliott School of International Affairs.  If anyone has knowledge of fun things to do in Lausanne, leave a comment with your recommendation!