I started blogging at the Web2fordev gateway, from which I will crosspost some articles here from time to time to get some further discussions on web2fordev. I wrote the following piece together with Giacomo Rambaldi, the initiator of PPgis (Open Forum on Participatory Geographic Information Systems and Technologies).

Online Mapping for Development: Opportunities and Challenges

Maps are an effective medium which can be used for development projects. They help visualise the spatial distribution of complex problems their inter-relationships and promote awareness. In recent years the availability of free or low-cost digital maps and remote sensed images has unleashed unprecedented ways to make use of spatial information for a variety of purposes. Last week we analysed the potential of open data sources for development. Open maps are an excellent example illustrating the many ways to use and link information in creative ways. In almost any development project, maps can assist in the interpretation of spatial issues, foster awareness and support transparency. Le Monde Diplomatique, offers interesting examples on using maps to visualize complex conflict situations. Unfortunately in developing countries large scale maps are not always easy to obtain, data are often outdated or inaccurate or too expensive. Free digital maps offer an alternative.
Potentials and Opportunities

Here are a few examples:

• The Harvard university runs the AfricaMap project, where one can view the African continent through different data layers. It is a good place to experiment a bit. For example in turning layers on and off for display and adjusting their transparency allows users to superimpose data sets. Resulting thematic maps can be linked from other sites. .

• Back at the 2007 Web2forDev International Conference Paul Saunby presented some great simulations on maps using open data around the issue of climate change. That way he could simulate future forecasts for a specific coast. “Such maps could provide planners with valuable information on where to build new roads or houses. They could also give farmers a better idea of where to plant next season’s crops or how best to irrigate their fields.”

• UNEP offers the Atlas of the Changing Environment: “Through illustrations, satellite images, ground photographs and powered by Google Maps, this interactive media depicts and describes humanity’s past and present impact on the environment.”

• A renouned example for putting maps to work is Ushahidi which means “testimony” in Swahili, where human rights activists offers a platform that crowdsources crisis information. It allows anyone to submit information through text messaging using a mobile phone, email or web form. Resulting data are visualised on thematic maps. Recent initiatives covered the Swine Flu Epidemic and the elections in India. The same free and open source application has been used to spatially document the Gaza war and Eastern Congo conflict.

• The AGCommons project combines mapping with mobile phones and aims to equip “Africa’s farmers with location-specific information to reduce uncertainty and increase returns”. AGCommons was one of the organizers behind the WhereCamp in Nairobi, entirely devoted to mapping.

• Another ambitious project is done by scientists from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), who want to create the first detailed digital soil map of sub-Saharan Africa. “African soils are among the poorest in the world, and many farmers suffer from chronically low-yielding crops. With accurate soil maps, we find farmers can increase their yields by around 60%, and sometimes double.” (BBC)

But whoever plans to make use of online maps in Africa should have a look at Google maps and Open Street Maps. Both services offer already some impressive maps for some parts of Africa. Google Maps introduced lately a massive update of maps for Western Africa and Open Street Maps (OSM) added more then hundred thousand miles of roads lately.

Google Maps acquires map material and offers to combine it with third party data and on your own website. Open Street Maps goes a step further offers its complete data with all geo reference for free under the creative commons license. The license is currently changed to a an Open Database License Agreement. OSM relies completely on volunteer work. Thousand of GPS equipped mapers go through streets or parks worldwide and contribute to maps. The result are impressive and in some place the same as good as Google maps or even better. Check out how Mikel Maron initiated some detail mapping for Palestine.

Aidworker shows how OSM maps are even much better in developing countries on the example of Kabul and Tiblis. So in the case of OSM you can download entire geodata, whereas in Google you somehow are bind to their digital maps, which allow impressive presentations.

Challenges

There are undoubtedly also some challenges. In the context only some parts and mainly urban areas have been mapped and there is a need for a critical mass of mappers to enter and cross-validate data in order to achieve a satisfactory degree of accuracy. The dilemma is that where maps are needed most, not enough volunteers are available and in other countries such as in Europe, maps have been developed the furthest. The transparency of maps can also be used for critical issues and lead to discrimination as the Times report from Japan.

Nevertheless digital maps have catapulted cartography into new dimensions in recent years. As a most information is location-specific, mapping offers great opportunities to support communication in development. In the past mapmaking was the realm of a few. Today mapmaking has become a widespread activity accessible to experts and non-experts, well minded and otherwise. Collaborative mapmaking offers great opportunities for development organizations to share and collect data.

Words of Caution

Said that a few words of caution are necessary: Users of online mapping facilities should have a close look at the terms of service they sign up before submitting their contributions. In the case of Google Map Maker upon submission of the data, the service provider acquires “perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display, distribute, and create derivative works.

Further, the frenzy of geo-tagging and online publishing of images, videos and other type of information without obtaining prior informed consent from the concerned parties may result in the infringement of privacy and intellectual property rights. With Open Street Maps in the old and new license, the contributed data is free for reuse and can be used for commercial purposes as well.

At WhereCampAfrica, a gathering which brought together geographers, cartographers and mobile mapping specialists to discuss the potential – and difficulties – of the ‘geographic web’ in Africa, participants expressed their concern that indiscriminate online mapping could feed tensions over land ownership and resource use and control (BBC).

The Inportance of Good Practice

In times where online mapmaking has reached exponential growth rates, there is the need to be increasingly aware of the implications and impact of making geo-located information publicly available and on the need to adhere to the ethical principles of privacy, confidentiality, of obtaining prior informed consent and avoiding exposing knowledge holders at risk.  Practical ethics in the context of participatory mapmaking are discussed on an article published on Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) in 2006. The article is available in 12 languages.

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As an outcome from the virtual forum on mobile phones by FAO – where I experienced a great exchange with mobile phone practitioners worldwide – I was interviewed by the e-agriculture.org forum. During the interview, I tried to summarize my observations and discussions around mobile  phones for development from the recent months. I have published the interview below:

Describe to us the programme on ICTs, especially the use of mobile phones for rural development, which you are working for. Why do you find mobile phones to be particularly interesting in your line of work?
C.K.: I worked for a project on “knowledge systems in rural areas” for GTZ. I look at the topic from different angles such as knowledge sharing, networking and social change and try to identify new potentials. I don’t glance at mobile phones from an economical point of view only, but consider them as means for different areas in social development. For example activists around human rights are the most innovative users of mobile telephone technology for their causes. The interesting thing about mobile phones is that they are so different from all the other ICTs. First of all this all-purpose tool is in the ownership by a majority of Africans across the continent and its users have created creative extra usages for mobile phones. Second it is a different approach compared to conventional ICT4D projects, which relied often on huge funding and did not focus enough on the users’ perspective. But Mobiles are available for low costs and already are adapted for many purposes.

What positive impacts could you achieve for agriculture, food security and/or rural development? How, in your opinion, can we empower local farmers to really benefit from this application?
C.K.: Mobile phones are such a powerful tool because they fill a gap of prior limited means of communication. We have just started to use the various potential of mobile phones. At first, mobile phones have particularly connected rural with urban areas. Nowadays we witness new forms of information delivery and exchange particular with rural areas for agriculture or health, never before possible like that. There are great examples in Africa of local adapted mobile software solutions (e.g. EPROM) orientated on community needs and dealing with technical constraints. Promising is also the formation of own language spaces and innovative voice recognition solutions to address the illiteracy challenge.

Did it also cause a change in working or living habits or even of the whole culture for the locals? Could you give examples, please?
C.K.: Mobile phones are a communication break through. The interesting question is: What will people make out of it? There are already fascinating examples, how mobile phone users invent on forms to use it particular for business. But the impact of mobile phone usage is not analyzed well enough so far. Studies only focus on some areas such as the famous fishery example. Although it is obvious that the mobile phone has changed a lot in societies, therefore an analysis of local adaptation in different cultural contexts is necessary. Apart from all the possible characteristics of mobile phones for rural development they are still strongest with ordinary communication. Like in Europe in the beginning of integrating mobiles into the everyday life, people want to call their family and friends to talk to them in the first run. Very promising are social mobile applications, which will be very interesting in the next future. What happens if you can deliver information to each mobile phone, but also let users interact in networks or with the web. There are fascinating examples such as Ushahidi or the Freedom Fone. But also money transfers via mobiles are revolutionary. In countries where less than 10% of the people have bank accounts using air time as a way of paying and transferring money has a huge impact on society.

What are the challenges you are facing in your projects? Technically, socially, economically, …
C.K.: Everybody is so enthusiastic about mobile phones for development and, of course, I am too, but you also have to be a little bit critical. There is quite a hype around mobile phones. There is a lot of experimentation happening and too little exchange of experiences. The technology itself can’t solve problems. Mobile phones are only the means that you can use to improve rural peoples livelihoods through the best fit for each situation. I do believe that there is also the danger of forgetting some important lessons learnt from many ICT4D projects, which failed for a lot of reasons. One was the lack of sustainability, and another, that mobile phones can only be a mean to an end. And of course, there are many challenges that the use of mobile phone faces: high costs, illiteracy and in many cases, mobile phones projects still have to prove the benefit for users. There are for example problems concerning gender. In some countries women have difficulties to get access to mobile phones or can’t communicate independently. Also the tremendous costs have an impact on the people. Some substitute a whole meal for mobile phone credit. In study in Africa some mobile phone users became even poorer.

What are your predictions for the future?
C.K.: We have only started to tap upon the potential of this all-purpose tool. It will be interesting to see the role of development organization. There are potentials to use it in different approaches in development projects, but also to improve their own work. The open source water and sanitation initiative lets mobile African reporters evaluate their projects. It is obvious that access to the Internet will happen in Africa in the future mainly through mobile phones. But it will be a challenge to deal with the constraints of little mobile phone screen. Nevertheless the ubiquitous connection through mobile phones has many advantages and particular in rural areas offer a linkage with urban areas not possible before. It will be interesting to analyze these implications. Rural areas suddenly have new instruments to broadcast from or analyze their environment. The mobile phone can be already a sensor rich tool with GPS, to measure the velocity or to analyze blood and detect diseases. It will empower mobile phone users to embrace it for all kind daily needed purposes and for social change. The mobile becomes a research tool to give its user the capacity to collect and share information. Open information repositories can be created for development work. One outcome is increasing transparency. Mobile phones can be the key for collectively contributing to new information systems and receiving all sorts of information. The future for mobile phones will be in this kind of data exchange or network exchange to empower people with knowledge, like Nokia’s weather updates in local languages. Surely, some form of data exchange has to work for that, which still inhibits several challenges. But this form of information exchange and networking will happen – whatever technology is behind it. Tools for information exchange solely relying on SMS prove this is possible for all phones.

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The other day I stumbled over this news piece: “The phone that feels the flu before you do” – a company offers a service, where one can find out how intensive the level of flu is in their area. So, basically, you can get “Open Source Intelligence” via mobile phone. I find this quite fascinating because of the potential it entails for other usages and it also says a lot about the future power of information.

Different to older times when you went to your PC to search for information such as a definition on Wikipedia, in the future you can access it anywhere, and you also: a) get real time information about what happens around you and b) you get to participate collectively to refine information, for example through mobile crisis mapping. So imagine mobile phone users engaging in such a collective information gathering for all kinds of purposes. But who will own the information and could it be guaranteed to be open and reliable?

In the case of the flu alert, the company “will say, for instance, that 8 percent to 14 percent of the people in your ZIP code have respiratory illnesses, representing a “Moderate” risk level.” Personally, it would not influence my decision to leave the house or not. To me, the case of the flu alert highlights the potential to use such services for other purposes also in other areas.  I find the use of widely available valuable information for the public very interesting. All sorts of available intelligence is broad to you on your mobile phone. So is the case of fixmystreet.com, from which I can report damages in my neighbourhood and report it to the responsible person; or I can check product information through a common source written by consumers in the supermarket. More importantly, I could have access to environmental data on the corner I am standing at? I can foresee a lot of potential, but also I am worried about locked information, no clarity of ownership and too little access to information.

In the flu alert example, the company “gets the information on disease levels from Surveillance Data Inc. — which gets its data from polling health care providers and pharmacies.” It sounds almost as a mashup, where you combine different data sources. I imagine the future lies in combining intelligently different open available data resources, for example through RSS/feeds or API to provide open intelligence.  Such steps are some interesting startups around climate change, which offer API (Application Programming Interface) for different sorts of environmental data – it simply means, that you can use their data for your own purposes or services and combine different data streams. For example, the World Bank offers “114 indicators from key data sources and 12,000 development photos” and AMEE, the climate change startup,  offers an “open platform for measuring the energy consumption of everything” (Check www.openeco.org/ for more on sharing data to measure climate change).

Google found a much easier way to publish the flu intensity in an area by simply analyzing and mapping search request for flu related issues. So Google will not only make revenue by advertisement, but through offering various of these kinds of services in the future. But frankly, I am a bit concerned about it since a lot of information resides within companies and it is in many cases not publicly available or cannot be used by nonprofits. In the case of Google, the potential to analyze society behaviour is unlimited. If they focus, for example, on the local level, all kinds of patterns and differences can be found out (e.g. politics, consumerism or health).  It seems to me that the future asset will be this sort of information power. The challenge can be easily seen when you compare OpenstreetMap and Google maps for the cities of Kabul, Afghanistan (Google – Openstreetmap) and Luanda, Angola (Google – Openstreetmap). In both cases the open source approach for maps offers better maps done by volunteers. (Thanks to aidworkerdaily.com for the inspiration!)

I think we have just started to tap on the potential of these rich resources, but also will need a lot of further discussion on what type of information needs to be openly available.

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Recently, there seems to be a hype around mobile phones in developing countries. It is great to see the investments being made in mobile technology and communication. At the KM4DEV unconference Pete Cranston, Luca Servo  and I organized a little session around the potential of mobile phones for knowledge sharing. Obviously, mobile communication happens on a daily basis and already has a huge impact particularly in developing countries. Therefore, I am still eager to see what else will come in the foreseeable future.

In a recent article the New York Times went further by asking, “Can the cellphone help end global poverty?” It also described what a big difference a mobile phone could make:

“It’s really quite striking,” Hammond says. “What people are voting for with their pocketbooks, as soon as they have more money and even before their basic needs are met, is telecommunications.” Over several years, his research team has spoken to rickshaw drivers, prostitutes, shopkeepers, day laborers and farmers, and all of them say more or less the same thing: their income gets a big boost when they have access to a cellphone.

During the session we also collected various examples, which I categorized as the following:

• Data transfer (mobile banking, market information system)
• Communication (community radios to connect with listeners)
• Coordination (Twitter or Frontline SMS for election monitoring)
• Collaboration (crowdsourcing such as ushahidi.com or check out this participatory sensing video)
• Knowledge sharing and learning (StoryBank: digital storytelling example below)
• Collective action (Activism)

I find mobile communications particularly promising because most ideas can and will be developed by the users themeselves, as well as being embedded in the local context. The NYT article also gives some nice examples:

 One Liberian refugee wanted to outfit a phone with a land-mine detector so that he could more safely return to his home village. In the Dharavi slum of Mumbai, people sketched phones that could forecast the weather since they had no access to TV or radio. Muslims wanted G.P.S. devices to orient their prayers toward Mecca. Someone else drew a phone shaped like a water bottle, explaining that it could store precious drinking water and also float on the monsoon waters. In Jacarèzinho, a bustling favela in Rio, one designer drew a phone with an air-quality monitor. Several women sketched phones that would monitor cheating boyfriends and husbands. Another designed a “peace button” that would halt gunfire in the neighborhood with a single touch.

Projects, such as Android, promised to have an open operation system on mobile phones, so own applications for specific needs can be developed and in a free open source fashion developed worldwide jointly by programmers. Twitter is a good example to show the ubiquitous of future web applications connected to mobile phones. Benedikt Foit writes about a new report from the W3C‘s (World Wide Web Consortium) Mobile Web Initiative and Mobile Web for Social Development (MW4D). Two findings are particular interesting:

• Mobile phones should be considered as an access mechanism, where mobile browsing is one way to access the content, but using Voice applications (through e.g. voiceXML) is another way, and SMS could be a third option. All of these options should be considered as different delivery channels of Web content. Using the Web as a repository of information could leverage replication and cross-fertilization between different projects by offering visibility.
• Key barrier for having useful and relevant content is lack of local expertise to develop these. Empower local actors to become mobile service providers (technical knowledge, entrepreneurship and business models).

We also discussed during the session the different challenges such as equality, prices, the interface, energy, language and illiteracy rate among others. In that concern, an interesting project in India shows “while village textual literacy rates are low, visual and oral expression thrive.” The StoryBank project uses mobiles to share stories in an Indian village and underlines the potential for knowledge sharing through digital storytelling.

A village committee decides what kind of programmes to make and volunteers from the village, mainly women, undertake to research and record news items on health, education, farming and other topics that are broadcast alongside devotional music and public service announcements.

Lastly, Dr. Gary Marsden describes the changes through mobile social networking from South Africa with a fascinating example from collaborating children:

Most school-children in South Africa use a system called “MXit” MXit is a basic Internet chat application for the mobile phone, and five million people use it; because in South Africa, the cost of sending a single character via MXit is one ten-thousandth of the cost of sending a single character via SMS.  For two rand a day, less than 20p, these kids can stay all day on MXit, despite the fact that it has a terrible user interface that the likes of us wouldn’t put up with.

Many of the schools have banned use of MXit.  But Gary and his colleagues discovered that the kids use MXit to do their homework collaboratively.  Therefore, they added functionality to the MXit system, having reverse-engineered the protocol, and added these features and functions into some of the chatrooms. The kids loved it.  Remember, they have no Internet access.  They added an equation-solver, for solving quadratic and linear equations, and an interface to Wikipedia.

No surprise the MIT started an initiative called for the next billion mobile phone users:

Within the next three years, another billion people will begin to make regular use of cell phones, continuing the fastest adoption of a new technology in history. Soon, this next billion will make their voice heard—and connect to the global information network.

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The German vs. the British websphere

Well, a week after attending both, the Social Innovation Camp (sicamp08) and re-publica, I finally post my reflections on these events. It was great to visit these two events, listen to numerous interesting presentations at re-publica, and grasp the contagious spirit of social innovation in London. There were interesting differences and similarities on discussions in these two events, but I will just extend on some thoughts I had:

• There are great projects regarding Edemocracy in both countries, which allow citizens to participate or influence politics and to give more transparency. There is even a German-British cooperation called e-participation.net. On a workshop, full of interesting presentations about this topic, Christoph Dowe said that it is still not easy to get citizens to engage on those platforms. Some websites do not get any attention and others, such as ich-gehe-nicht-hin.de ( “I do not go there”) for nonvoters or abgeordnetenwatch.de (ask the member of Parliament), are successful. Mysociety.org has great projects in this regards, based in the U.K. For example, Fix my Street.
• On both events free and open source software (FOSS) played an important role. It is clear that FOSS invites for collaboration and allows to build platforms for social innovation, which proprietary software cannot do because it is for commercial purposes. Regarding knowledge sharing, I really like the presentation of deepmehta software, in which knowledge is represented in a semantic network and is handled collaboratively.
• The whole topic around social change, innovation or entrepreneurs plays are far more a significant role in the U.K. Whereas on the re-publica, social entrepreneurs, e.g. startups for social change, played no role although there were promising projects such as betterplace.org and helpedia.org (will blog soon about them). The social innovation camp was fully devoted to this topic.
• Whereas at re-publica privacy laws and data protection were high on the agenda, on the social innovation camp they were of no importance. In contrary, I was surprised how openly people took user generated content for granted. The all over camera surveillance (CCT) in London is rather not amusing.

Local vs. global news

Another interesting development, is the emphasis on the local, as a sicamp08-fellow pointed it out to me during the first evening. The internet is truly global and it is great to connect with people worldwide, but there is this paradox that in the UK or in Germany one often does not even know its home-neighbours. So, there are projects coming up to have social network applications, so that people from an area can find similar interests and engage in community development.

At the re-publica.de, I listened to a presentation by Sean Bonner about “Blogging about local issues, on a global scale.” It dealt with the high relevance of local news in the global web and how metblogs.com tries to cover that. Sean Bonner said:

Before the web local issues did not get as much attention – national and international stuff was more important. Money was made through those kind of news. The Internet changed the distributing and exchange of news specifically on the local level. Blogs play a decisive role. Blog networks are key in local news exchanging.

Back in 2003, Sean Bonner and friends found that there was a lack of local information. Opinions, thoughts and recommendations about local issues. They started working on a local blogging network in L.A, and then opened up a platform called metblogs.com for a overarching network of local bloggers. Nowadays, over 50 cities are participating.

One interesting example is the coup back in 2006 in Bangkok, Thailand. First news appeared 6 hours before CNN on metblogs.com by people equipped with mobile phones. Similarly happened in Pakistan during the web blackout last year. There was also an interesting attempt by AOL to copy their concept, but it did not work out without a community. Sean Bonner said the newspapers rather copy the tools, but forget about the social dimension behind local community blogging.

I did not know about this network before, but it looks interesting. However, it seems often quite individualistic and with random topics. Global Voices Online follows closer developments in countries and translates them in other languages.

An in depth Social Innovation Camp blog post is in process.

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[Published in the Internationale Politik magazine in December 2007.]

How the participative Web 2.0 challenges development cooperation – and why this is a chance for development organizations 

Adyaka, a village in the heart of Uganda, needs a new trade school. None of the 4,000 inhabitants have the necessary skills to develop a business plan an the government has not been of any help at all. So the citizens of Adyaka have had to come up with a plan. With the help of the Internet they petitioned, literally, the whole world and asked for support for their village. Via the global neighbor network nabuur.com, volunteers worked in conjunction with the villagers to set up a business plan. Adyaka is not alone it its quest for support. 10.000 volunteers, who provide their skills and expertise, are available to help up to 150 communities. This web-based global neighbor network allows people from all over the world to discuss basic approaches, develop concepts and receive immediate feedback regarding the difficulties and the success during the implementation process.

Nabuur is just one of many platforms with innovative players which have emerged in recent years. The plurality of their approaches has one thing in common: each and every one is using the internet to promote and advance new development ideas. The traditional development cooperation is being confronted with a new, and so far, unfamiliar dynamic. The concept of ‘help to self-help’ defines the roles of the participants in an entirely innovative way: The borrowers pick the lenders.

The internet, since its breakthrough ten years ago, has been the subject of constant change. More than a Billion users have transformed it into a complex and multi-layered social network. The catchword “Web 2.0” allows internet users to create new individual realms within networks, users swap their knowledge and work together to create concepts and develop solutions. How can biomass be used to generate energy? The answer is provided by Howtopedia, a platform for applied knowledge, which supplies simple sets of technical instructions. The technology is secondary — the main motors of this spontaneous Internet movement are openness, transparency, networking and a focus on innovation. Cross-national project ideas are developed uniting a wide range of experts, interested parties and above all people in need of support. Cooperation develops via the peer-to-peer principle, directly, world-wide and very casual. In the past past, users exchanged songs in decentralized networks, now they are exchanging concepts for African villages. Organizations are working together with civil societies, individuals and groups form ad-hoc alliances across borders. Charles Leadbetter, author of the book “We Think“, sees an unlimited creative potential in these flat self-organized networks that are no longer in need of a classical organization. A new generation of social entrepreneurs, activists and volunteers are on their way to establish their own definition of international understanding.

This also opens the door for new and innovative approaches of the entire foreign aid field. Globalgiving.org is a platform that guarantees investors that 85-90% of the investment will be used locally and that the project will get off the ground in less than 60 days. The implementation, the successes and failures can be tracked through the entire cycle of the project — available to the public via the internet. A network of ideas, a global exchange for social and innovative projects, has been created. Benefactors are often rich philanthropists who have access to large sums of money, however, small donations still play a role. The main players of these networks are small teams that rely on individual, direct help and the ability of people to volunteer their time. At Kiva.org, anybody willing to do so can participate in financing a fish booth for a woman in Ecuador directly from their home computer. Micro-lending between the lenders and the borrowers is a direct result of the popular micro-financing in the worldwide fight against poverty. Kiva.org has disbursed 13 Million Dollars with an over 99% rate of repayment. The cooperation within local organizations aided in the development of an effective and transparent approach which questions the status quo of traditional foreign aid organizations. The lender will personally get his update from the woman owning the fish booth regarding the progress of the project. The consequences of these networks are highly underestimated, even though the approach has its own dynamic and will change development cooperation.

These platforms have been developed mainly in the North. In the South however, innovative social networks, which are directly connected with the local needs, have emerged. In Egypt, for example, the opposition movement has successfully established a network via the Internet. Human right activists use weblogs to discuss the current political situation, and also a homegrown Arab public forum has been developed alongside the state-controlled press. Activists use the newest innovative instruments for their campaigns such as posting photographs taken by mobile phones in order to document the manipulation of Egyptian elections. Even the Diaspora is using the internet quite extensively in order to develop and propagate ideas regarding business and common public interest. Mukuru.com, for example, is a platform where one can buy products for relatives living in Zimbabwe. As the internet in Africa has been getting connected with mobile phones, articles, such as presents, can be bought by SMS. The migrants do not only support their own country with money transfers, but they also use the internet strategically to turn acquired knowledge into support for development projects. This sort of ‘brain gain’ results not only in innovative business practices, but also in political change. And so is the case of Mzalendo.com, who has “An eye on the Kenya Parliament”. The process of change does not only depend on financial support, but also on the commitment and dedication and the successful networking capabilities of all people involved.

Internet, in developing countries, promote the discussion of political, economical and social change. Often bloggers act as citizen journalists. They shed light on poverty and criticize policies of governments, even the role of donors. Citizen journalism develops in a multitude of ways and in its own pace, but it is, overall, becoming more and more professional. The Nata Village Blog is painting a vivid picture of the daily fight against AIDS in a Botswana village. Due to its local importance, a blogosphere has developed entirely in Swahili. And then there is the worldwide blogger portal Global Voices which is being translated by volunteers in numerous different languages. The press agency Reuters supports the freedom of the press of Global Voices and posts its content on their own website. The rule among activists is that transformation has to come from the inside out, and one’s own initiative is the main force in the process of change.

The formation of these new social networks for change represents a great opportunity for development organizations: participation in these networks opens up opportunities for a common dialog on development political issues. The World Bank just launched its third blog titled “How to end Poverty in South East Asia”. The United Nations, together with the leaders of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other organizations, have opened up a dialog with development experts and the public. Pierre Jacquet, Chief Economist of “Agence Francaise de Developpement” (French Development Bank, FDB), spoke out on the press conference for the launch of the blog: “The heads of development organizations are sometimes portrayed as inaccessible bureaucrats, who decide among themselves on the faith of the world’s poorest nations. Through this blog the members will openly share their ideas, their doubts and even their frustrations manifesting their interest for dialog with other development professionals, students and the broader public.” These networks open up a previously unused potential in terms of voluntary commitment and expertise. Development organizations such as the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) can increase the efficiency of their work through targeted participation in these networks. The authors of the book “Wikinomics”, Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, believe that only those organizations, which follow the path of networking, change the culture of their communication and benefit from this productivity potential, will survive.

Whoever is willing to contemplate the genuine complexities of project work cannot fail to see the need for a broad range of expertise and an interdisciplinary approach. The public, cooperative development of project initiatives via Wiki websites, whose text can be edited by every user, is technically simple. However, it calls for a new culture of knowledge exchange. The recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) demands cooperative work due to the complexity of the problems, as well as the potential benefits to be gained from an opening up of organizations and companies. Many enthusiasts of the new web believe that the approach of free and open source software of freeware opens up a new way of problem solving. This goes hand in hand with efforts of the ‘open access’ initiative to supply valuable sources of information, like the Conservation Commons Initiative of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and its database about biodiversity with the help of numerous organizations. The question is how development organizations will benefit and take advantage of those new resources and how much they will contribute in order to achieve their goals more efficiently.

The cycles of change on the internet are fast; the opposition, in light of this dynamic, significant. The additional benefit must constantly be under investigation since there is the possible danger of a cacophony of discourses. No one today can say whether the theory of the Long Tail, which sees the niche as a driving force of the Internet, can be successfully applied to cooperative development work. Another question is if the transparency of the internet is adequate protection from financial fraud.

An obvious challenge is the lack of participation. The cost alone for access to the internet in many African countries is higher than the costs in Europe. The lack of technology is just one of many problems; the qualifications of the users another. The mobile telephone plays an important role, providing a bridge to the Internet with Africa and displaying the highest growth rate of any continent. But still only a small number of the citizens in developing countries have access to the internet. However, it is the social entrepreneurs and non-governmental organizations in Africa which have been quick to make use of the new opportunities, developing a range of initiatives and ideas. Development organizations are slowly joining them and they can learn a lot from the horizontal dialog. As Pierre Jacquet remarked at the opening of “Ideas4Development”: “This blog is in your hand let’s begin the debate.”

Download article: network-of-ideas.pdf

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Last Tuesday I took part on a discussion round in Düsseldorf, Germany. It was about the changing of the communication of enterprises due to web2.0. Reflecting the evening, I find it quite interesting what it might have meant in terms of the new web and its potential users in Germany. To put ahead, I share the opinion that web2.0 has reached Germany quite late – especially if you take a look at the enterprise sector. This event was mainly directed towards external communication or public relation experts, and not so focused on knowledge sharing approaches. Next to me sat Thomas Knüwer, a journalist from the the German Handelsblatt and Marc Pohlmann, who eagerly talked about direct one to one marketing and Wieland Stützel from Frankfurt airport.

Less people, than originally registered, showed up — I even had my doubts the visitors were interested in knowledge sharing. My basic statement was that German companies underestimate the potential of web2.0 even though web2.0 offers new incentives for knowledge sharing, opens new ways of participation and questions hierarchies. The technology is secondary; the communication and exchange sets the dynamic.

Maybe it was the rain, maybe they had already heard enough of web2.0, or they simply did not find it interesting enough. As I am following closely a lot of reportages in the old media, I think not so much has been reported, and when so, it is often reduced to the usual sites (wikipedia, youtube). It was interesting to see and hear that for many communication experts, knowledge sharing is of minor interest.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, most people wanted to get a guideline or solution: How can I influence this community? How can I get my message to the client? And lastly, how to make money with it?

But on the podium were four people arguing in favour of the authentic conversation about the web and how deeply it will change communications. Sadly, that seemed to bored the public relation audience. So, is it the companies or the employees who are not ready for web2.0? Can top-down internal and external communication specialists really have any benefit from it? Right then I had my doubts. But again, It showed me how far the participatory web is from mainstream or normal life organizations. It also showed me that there is a big skepticism about “just another web tool”. It is definitely still too far away from everyday practice within organizations.

Not surprisingly, first remarks from the audience were how to apply it and what will it change? My points about open source collaboration and open networking of organizations did not seem to make them curious. However I found the following quotes nice:

• Marc Pohlmann: “This web shift is not about coverage, it is about one’s niche audience and about having a conversation with it.”
• Thomas Knüwer: “There is not more trash in the Internet it is just so much easier to find it.”
• Wieland Stützel: “Nowadays structured organizations are so much in an internal competition between departments – how shall they possible work together and collaborate and go outside.”

I found it all quite interesting, but it did not seem to engage the audience. I guess we did not achieve the conversation. However, this was not my first time in this kind of events, and still, I am often struck about people’s desire for a road-map of how to deal with it and to influence it, rather than just say ‘that sounds interesting let’s check it out and experiment with it.’

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As Japan is losing interest in the personal computer, Google announces recently the Android alliance to bring free and open source software to mobile phones. The revolutionary part of this is that proprietary software might be mostly for the personal computer; it will not longer be anymore for the mobile. This opens complete different opportunities because free and open source software unleash creativity and the mobile phone is in many countries the number one tool. One of the main communication devices is now open to all kinds of ideas.
But open source is not only about software. It is a movement or philosophy where the software is just one part of it. Approaches such as Creative Commons propagate the use for open license of texts, music, films and many other things. All that shows a shift in thinking of copyright. However, it can also significantly change our work and life.

One approach is to facilitate international development through free and open source. Vinay Gupta argues for open source in technologies such as those for the household.

An open library of designs for refrigerators, lighting, heating, cooling, motors, and other systems will encourage manufacturers, particularly in the developing world, to leapfrog directly to the most sustainable technologies, which are much cheaper in the long run. Manufacturers will be encouraged to use the efficient designs because they are free, while inefficient designs still have to be paid for. This library should be free of all intellectual property restrictions and open for use by any manufacturer, in any nation, without charge.

It basically means that people can jointly create tools or machines and develop them collaboratively further on a peer-to-peer base. That leads to projects such as an open source car or an open source machine. Web2.0 with its many new opportunities for participation, can bring the open source approach to another level. Nowadays, it is social media, but hopefully soon it will be collaboration on a massive scale to find pragmatic low cost solutions for communities. That could happen by conceptualizing with a network of expertise from different actors, by exchanging experiences learning from each other worldwide. Check out the blog from the peer2peer foundation for more insights. The blogger Michel Bauwens collects also excellent links in delicious.

Frithjof Bergmann, (German Blog) a German philosopher, goes in his theory of New Work–New Culture in a similar direction. He propagates that open exchange should become part of our lives. His theory is provocative and has some open source elements in it. Broadly said, he argues that nowadays economy cannot offer enough work for everybody. Secondly, he argues that people often do not work what they really really want to do and questions where does their talent lies. His solution is that people shall divide their work in three thirds. One third to work to have an income, another third to do what they are good at where they can unleash their creativity, and lastly, one third to build and construct all the things and services one cannot earn with the less income. Whether it is realistic or not is another question, even though he has proved around the world in different places such as prisons or Flint in the USA. Here is a paper from Frithjof Bergmann.

What I find interesting about these arguments and developments is that it is possible to have a paradigm shift in the future. It is not only companies and organizations, how the Wikinomics authors argue in their book. It is a culture shift through a new dimension of communication and collaboration. Open source is the fuel for this movement. A peer-to-peer decentralized network to find solutions for everyday problems, develop new forms of low-tech production and own distribution channels by working together in networks in an open source spirit.

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Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to blog during the web2fordev conference. Organization work was more than what I expected, and of course there were so many interesting people to talk to around, I just couldn’t let go. Favourably, we got about 50 blog posts mainly from our journalists, who came from different African countries, and who of course did a great job reporting. Now some sessions can be watched completely over video (unfortunately only Internet explorer though). The week started with an interesting web taster day, and went through many more topics ending the week, yesterday, with a farmer led documentation workshop from Dorine Rüter. Interesting cases were presented, of how farmers in Africa use digital cameras to document and create awareness of their problems in order to help each other. Let me now summarize impressions from theses days at the FAO in Rome.

Inclusion
Seen by many people just as a technology, the web2fordev conference proved to me -once again- that people are more minded and complying when gathered together for so-called web2.0. The conference–even with the official and formal character it has within the FAO headquarter–got a neat unconference character; as the the director of FAO communication said at the end, “This halls have not seen this kind of event before.” It was a good mixture of people from many different backgrounds. There could have been more activists and pioneers in my opinion, but the conference fortunately attracted many people from all around the world.

Patience
Through the days, I felt again that we are still at the bottom or ground work of the using web2.0 for development. Many participants had just started experimenting with blogs, etc. by themselves, and had an understandable difficulty to grasp web2.0 in all its dimensions. Therefore, some discussions went not as deep as I wished, but the different perspectives were valuable. There was often a mixture of scepticism and enthusiasm. Will wikis make sense one day? How much trust do we need to place on wikis , and can we even establish that only virtually? Where is the audience for blogs and how can I filter all that information? That way, on one side, participants helped each other to make sense of all these tools, and on the other, sophisticated database RSS models were presented by Thierry Helmer or Thomas Metz. I wonder how can we cope with the challenge of having so many tools developed in such a short time? Many people are certainly not disposed or cannot follow.

Web2.0 in the field
The conference showed me clearly that a lot has been done in and between organizations. That is where the potential and the easiest implementation lies. There are a few projects in developing countries that have not yet implemented web2.0, but unless obvious challenges are not bridged, it will be difficult to implement more. It was, therefore, helpful and quite realistic to hear from Moses Kisembo and Kado Muir that blogs and wikis are not seldom light-years away from what is needed in Uganda or Nigeria. Nevertheless, bloggers such as Prince Deh from Ginks show how important this pioneer work can be. One high hope at the conference, which was often mentioned, was the mobile phone. Some presentations had in my opinion more of traditional web approach, but there were also many exceptional interesting cases such as Brosdi .org, which is supported by Bellanet. Market information systems and knowledge sharing via questions and answers (e.g. audioblogging from India) were the strongest examples in terms of rural development. One major success factor was that it has a benefit for the community, and in that way they are willing to contribute.

Please check the web2fordev blog for more information. There have been 50 posts written around the conference. Nynke Kruiderink and I give a little interview on tagging.

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I have been dealing with different kinds of content management systems for some years now. What I find fascinating lately it is how applications became powerful and how easy they are to handle by non-experts. Through these applications, creating social media and networking is possible for everybody. Wikis and blogs can be set up in minutes through different web services. But also social network software such as Drupal, advanced content management systems such as Joomla, and of course, blog software such as WordPress, can be easily installed with little effort. For less then 10 bucks and with little web knowledge, powerful applications are around the corner.

1. Pick a hosting package which offers these free and open source software and includes one click installation for applications.
2. Most of these providers offer you a web based administration interface, where you can choose from many different software. With a few clicks a software is installed.
3. The application can be controlled through another web based interface and can be manually configured to different needs. For example, WordPress can be combined with blog posts and static pages to have a blog and a normal homepage.
4. Hundreds of free websites’ templates are offered for all sorts of different taste. In Joomla, it can be easily uploaded on the website itself and you can jump between different designs.
5. Hundreds of different modules or plug-ins allow you to extend your website in all directions. These modules are mostly for free and only need to be uploaded via ftp and activated in the web based configuration.

Of course these steps are a bit simplified, and to have a successful website running, still expertise is needed. However, with already included multiple language packages, these free and open source applications set the path for great networks to social change everywhere. Rightly done, these websites surely can compete with big portals in terms of their features and social networking features. Some applications offer even other distinct services such as BuzzMonitor and Pligg:

BuzzMonitor is “an open source application that “listens” to what people are saying about the World Bank across blogs and other sites in order to help the organization understand and engage in social media.” It is developed by Development Seed, who are also making a presentation at the web2fordev conference and Pierre Wielezynski from the World Bank. It is a monitoring that includes all kinds of feeds and allows them to be rated by the members. This is excellent for a community or organisation to get a picture of certain topics. It can be tested here: buzzm.worldbank.org/tour

A truly amazing application is Pligg, which is a Digg like software. It is a good approach for bringing people together to share and rate news from the web. It is, for example, used for social development here: ngopost.org. With this tool a community share and discuss what is happening in the info-sphere of the web. I would really like to use that application, however, I imagine it is not easy to involve others to join, when everybody is already involved in so many on-line networks. Does somebody have an idea?

In conclusion, I think the development of free and open source social software is decisive to engage for social change and development through web2.0. It will allow to spread the social media thrive in all areas. It is the openness of this application that let us communicate, sharing and creating social media in new ways.

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Information and Communications Technologies for Development (ICT4D) is still a fairly new theme in the development arena. Throughout the years ICT4D has diversified in many different sub-themes such as e-governance, e-agriculture, e-health, education, etc. Although there have been successful stories, the high hopes had often not been realized in many projects. Many initiatives did not work out and so many projects failed to establish a solid and sustainable approach for ICT4D. The reasons are multifold and some learnt lessons are the following:

1. ICT4D has been and still is narrowly focused on infrastructure.
2. Underestimation for the importance of training, qualification, and the different dimensions of connectivity.
3. ICT4D can only successful if it is a mean and not the end itself.
4. Many projects were not orientated on the needs. The benefit of ICT output remained often unclear.
5. ICT4D projects were often not seen from a holistic perspective. Many projects lacked a sustainable concept.
6. Just to offer information (e.g. websites or databases) leads to nothing when people do not see a benefit in it.
7. ICT4D has social, cultural, political and economical dimensions. In that regard technology is only one part.
8. Many experiments could have been avoided if previous experiences were considered (e.g. rural radios).
9. ICT4D works most successfully when its users take over it, creating and changing technology to their needs.
10. Lastly the ICT4D has only a fragmenting approach of sharing knowledge and learning experiences. Ironically, most ICT4D initiatives are not linked together – the potential of the web has not been bailed.

A major challenge, however, is the lack of proven impact for ICT in development. That’s why the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development devoted, lately, an own website to this challenge. The business sector has achieved significantly more, as the success of mobile phones shows. The grameen phone campaign has proven its impact to tackle poverty; which computers, networks and the Internet did not achieve in a decade. A tragic example are telecentres or Internet cafes, which in Africa now often go bankrupt because people rather spend money on their mobile phones.

The market-driven mobile phone phenomenon stood out amidst many donor-driven ‘pilot’ projects that had either collapsed or never delivered the promise, says Nalaka Gunawardene therefore in a critical summary of the first years of ICT4D.

But is it that critical when the web shows every day what is possible, and how sheer connectedness has its impact on development? Many countries have achieved important steps such as India’s approach to e-governance or Venezuela’s results of switching to free and open source software. However, very decisive, from my point of view, will be web2.0, the social web, or the collaborative web. Why is that; I will answer on my next post.

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I have already written before about the concept of open source, but this time I want to highlight the potential of free and open source software (FOSS). I attended a while ago an interesting presentation on free and open source software by Andrea Götzke and Balthas Seibold. What I found most interesting about the presentation were the manifold effects of FOSS:

• Economy
  Cost savings from purchasing software. The market barrier is low for new businesses, but the overall added value is higher because the software can be developed locally. With services for hardware and the web, FOSS offers local employment and development of software and generates though more income locally.
• Education
  FOSS offers universal access. The freedom to study the code of software. In Venezuela, for example, FOSS gave access to education because the whole infrastructure is much cheaper there and own training capacity was built. FOSS can act as a free knowledge transfer and create human capital e.g. through software development. It, therefore, can lead to a “brain gain”. FOSS allows and needs a complete different approach of collaborative work project with high value on common learning.
• Culture
  The development and usage of FOSS can contribute to the country cultural heritage. Own developed software products can be better adapted to local needs and offered in many languages. Own software solutions open new venues of knowledge sharing and learning.
• Law
  Open source software is freely available and guarantees legal security. FOSS offers a sustainable technological independence.

Free Open Source Software represents certain values – sharing, collaborating, community and social development. These values have deep roots in human nature and could be found in all societies at all times. They believe this model – developing software by a community of peer reviewed activists, participants, employees and gifting the results back into the community to be further developed by others thus extending the cycle – could be extended to economic and social development in Africa. It is in this context that the FOSS model emerges as a powerful model for African development. From Brenda Zulu

Challenges

• For a high reliability on FOSS, a critical community is needed, which constantly tests and changes the source code. It needs open culture, which is not always prevailing.
• Proprietary software is also available illegally and cheap, so it offers no incentive to switch to FOSS.
• In many countries the FOSS community is very small and the interaction in a network needs the web and therefore connectivity, which is often not available.
• Much has been done in translating software, therefore many web software is available in different languages. But that is not the case with document material.
• In many countries a whole training infrastructure has to be build to switch to open source software. For example, the Venezuelan Government decided to adopt open source some years ago, and build with it many resources, own training and development infrastructure.

I often got the feedback from practitioners that it also depends on the needs of each particular case. Proprietary software can be a better solution or is anyway the only one available. I am sure I missed many points and factors, but I will continue later on with that topic.

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I just finished reading Allison Fine‘s book “Momentum igniting social change in the Connected Age.” I really liked it because it explains in detail how we should reconsider cooperation and external communication in an organizational context. Fine speaks mainly of civil society such as activist organizations but I think her thoughts can be applied for all kinds of nonprofit organizations (the authors of wikinomics would probably say the same for enterprises). She argues in her book that we have just started to exploit the full network potential and elaborates what the difference for the Connected Age is.

A nonprofit organization shall see its work and purpose closely connected to stakeholders such as partners, members or volunteers. The consequence is to join an “authentic two-way conversation“. This can be achieved by orientating the organization towards open source thinking. In contrast to the proprietary way, where organizations are vertical structured and act as information holders. “Just as learning needs to be more open and transparent organizational planing cannot be the proprietary, closed process it was in the broadcast days.” The open source approach emphasizes on listening to the audience, requesting feedbacks and engaging on equal basis with partners in a network. Openness is the key factor, so within a network everybody is a participant and internal and external boundaries of an organization get blurred.

For Allison Fine it goes as far as that “activists organization must lead by letting go. It’s counterintuitive but true that the more decision making you push away from the center, the more powerful a networked effect. That’s the power-to-the-edge-concept.” The web gives the opportunity to get feedback and interact directly within a wider network of potential like-minded people or even with competitive organizations. But this network approach, in her opinion, has to be facilitated “to fuel conversations” and to engage in social media exchange. However, “technology does not create a sense of community itself, but it can provide a virtual inexpensive place to gather to make community happen.”

But for Allison this not just an option to choose: “Those organizations that ignore the power of social networks will see their relevance and effectiveness sweep away like acid from a leak battery.” Not much more to add than: Yes, it is the web. Yes, it is what people make out of it. Yes, it gains momentum.

Interview and podcast with Allison Fine by Britt Bravo

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I was curious when an article titled Web 2.0 can benefit the world’s poor appeared on Scidev.net. The authors Waleed al-Shobakky and Jack Imsdahl see in new web applications, such as Google docs, a great potential for developing countries. They write, “Web 2.0 can help these students create documents, track their families’ or villages’ business affairs in spreadsheets and save and store data online. Users only need access to the Internet to benefit from these applications.”

No doubt these applications will change the old concept of purchasing software for each computer. But what is the real benefit of having documents online? I think these applications have great potential to collaborate. But the article doesn’t stress enough the “capacity crisis” that developing countries are facing in the context of information and communication technologies. In Africa problems of simple training to use computers, affordable access, and having enough bandwidth, need to be solved. Furthermore, these online applications need instant access to the Internet which is only available to a minority.

A more helpful approach is open office, so people can work without an Internet connection. Another one is Jahazi, which has developed a USB flash stick full of applications. Also, Google wants to bridge this connectivity challenge with its latest tool called Gear, which will allow to work with online content while being offline.

But what strikes me the most about the article is that it leaves out the biggest opportunities about web2.0 and development. The potential lies in its users and what they do with these tools to communicate, share knowledge and create social media. New social networks are established online, which facilitate interaction and collaboration in an unprecedented way. Blogs, wikis or free sources are the drivers of web2.0.

The authors see language as an obstacle, but on the contrary, I believe that web2.0 with its open source dimension offers software in all kinds of languages (e.g. wordpress and drupal). This is a key factor to create own communities in local or regional contexts (e.g. the union of the Urban Poor from Indonesia, Afrigator, Egypt blog review). However, to which extent this can benefit the poor, will be further discussed on the web2fordev conference.

Crossposted: blog.web2fordev.net

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