The annual ICT4D Conferences have proven to be an invaluable opportunity for NGOs, private sector organizations, universities, governmental agencies and foundations to share their experience in using ICT to increase the impact of development programs and to learn from each other. In 2016, 715 individuals from 76 countries and 301 private sector and public sector and civil society explored the ways to harness the full power of digital solutions to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Our thanks to Accenture, Catholic Relief Services, Esri, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, iMerit Technology Services, Inmarsat, IS Solutions, Making All Voices Count, Mercy Corps, Microsoft, NetHope, Oxfam, Pandexio, Qualcom Wireless Reach, RTI International, SimbaNet and World Vision for making that possible.
The world has just made its biggest ever promise to itself. Our leaders have agreed to 17 Global Goals that would mean a better life for all of us. They would virtually end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change in the next 15 years. It’s one of the most incredible to-do lists ever written – but now we need to turn words into action. You, participants in this conference have the power to make sure our leaders keep these world-changing promises. In this session ONE will outline the challenge for the week. If we, from different sectors, organizations and walks of life come together we can put in place a system that allows people all over the world, in every community facing extreme poverty, to report and track progress against the SDGs. We can be sure that we leverage the potential of ICT to give those living in extreme poverty a voice and tools to hold also of us all accountable for delivering against the promises embodied in the 17 Global Goals.
As the conference unfolds this week, take the opportunity to work with your colleagues on the answering this challenge and come back and tell us at the end of the week what approaches you recommend and what commitments you can make. People living in extreme poverty have been waiting for their leaders to answer questions regarding access to modern energy, clean water, education, health services, decent work and the things needed to live safe and health lives and have the opportunity to reach their full potential. Let’s not make them wait any longer.
Farmerline, a social enterprise dedicated to improving the livelihood of farmers, has found strength in empowering farmers with information products providing ROI for the farmers. These empowered farmers become less risky as an investment themselves.
Farmerline’s climate-smart agronomic information product delivers good agricultural practices, weather reports, and market information systems for nine crops to farmers in order to increase their profits and make farming practices more sustainable. Created in partnership with leading socially minded meteorological technology companies and agricultural experts, the products are currently implemented in seven local Ghanaian languages. Fish farmers in Ghana saw almost 50% increase in profits over one season of utilizing these information products. Farmerline closes the information gap between farmers and the world market, while farmers pay as little as $0.09/week.
Farmerline also has a powerful android app-based data collection tool that covers many aspects of farmer support from basic farmer data collection to developing relationships with trading partners, through certification procedures, supply chain management, cataloguing and inventory. This app works with the content services to provide support to every level of farming infrastructure across West Africa.
By discussing this technology, these experiences, and asking what parts of the model are transferrable, we can approach what needs to be reimagined across sectors.
In the agriculture sector, mobile solutions for farmers have failed for three main reasons: First, they're not designed with end-user input. Second, they fail to integrate advisory and financial services-providing only one or the other. Finally, they lack a range of access options-either excluding low-end device users or smartphone owners. A custom bids and offers platform, created by Souktel and Mercy Corps for Southern Africa, is the first solution that offers user-designed advisory and m-commerce services together, with full mobile money integration and multi-channel access (via USSD or app). This session will show how platform was developed from the end user perspective of small-scale farmers and agricultural product buyers. It will also demonstrate how organizations can launch and manage this platform to strengthen their own agriculture/livelihoods projects, and achieve progress toward SDGs #1 (No Poverty), #2 (Zero Hunger), and #8 (Decent Work) as a result.
Economic Identity is a birth right of every human being. The blockchain innovation enables a universal ID for refugees, IDPs and people living in extreme poverty.
Current interventions like micro-credit, social ventures, food aid, financial inclusion continues to stumble. Places like Bangladesh, DRC, Sudan, Somalia, Guatemala and CAR etc. where aid pours in millions of dollars continue to suffer.
Why? Because 2.5 billion people in the world don't have Economic Identity! We can solve this in the next 10 years or less with blockchain based identity.
http://finovate.com/finovatespring-2016-best-show-winners-announced/
As Mobile Network Operators launch Mobile Money, banks launch Mobile Banking services, regulators on the other hand are playing catch-up, with inclusive/cashless/branchless banking policies. Banking executives and ICT experts, have expressed growing concerns of the pervasiveness of Mobile Network Operators on their traditional terrain. The potential of wiping out traditional banking (brick and mortar) services has never been apparent until now. This presentation examines the case of Ghana's financial inclusive ecosystem to ascertain whether the pro-inclusive policies and guidelines have the potential of strengthening the nascent mobile money sector, while weakening the competitive advantage of the more entrenched traditional banking sector.
Out of the six MNOs , there are four active mobile money service providers with an average mobile subscriber base of approximately 5 million. Mobile telephony as an ICT sub-sector is noted to be one of the most dynamic, yet disruptive and transformative sub-sector of ICT anchored on innovation and development. In essence, this presentation attempts to map out the disruptive potential of inclusive digital financial policy as it excludes traditional banking services in Ghana.
Farmerline, a social enterprise dedicated to improving the livelihood of farmers, has found strength in empowering farmers with information products providing ROI for the farmers. These empowered farmers become less risky as an investment themselves.
Farmerline’s climate-smart agronomic information product delivers good agricultural practices, weather reports, and market information systems for nine crops to farmers in order to increase their profits and make farming practices more sustainable. Created in partnership with leading socially minded meteorological technology companies and agricultural experts, the products are currently implemented in seven local Ghanaian languages. Fish farmers in Ghana saw almost 50% increase in profits over one season of utilizing these information products. Farmerline closes the information gap between farmers and the world market, while farmers pay as little as $0.09/week.
Farmerline also has a powerful android app-based data collection tool that covers many aspects of farmer support from basic farmer data collection to developing relationships with trading partners, through certification procedures, supply chain management, cataloguing and inventory. This app works with the content services to provide support to every level of farming infrastructure across West Africa.
By discussing this technology, these experiences, and asking what parts of the model are transferrable, we can approach what needs to be reimagined across sectors.
In the agriculture sector, mobile solutions for farmers have failed for three main reasons: First, they're not designed with end-user input. Second, they fail to integrate advisory and financial services-providing only one or the other. Finally, they lack a range of access options-either excluding low-end device users or smartphone owners. A custom bids and offers, created by Souktel and Mercy Corps for Southern Africa, is the first solution that offers user-designed advisory and m-commerce services together, with full mobile money integration and multi-channel access (via USSD or app). This session will show how platform was developed from the end user perspective of small-scale farmers and agricultural product buyers. It will also demonstrate how organizations can launch and manage this platform to strengthen their own agriculture/livelihoods projects, and achieve progress toward SDGs #1 (No Poverty), #2 (Zero Hunger), and #8 (Decent Work) as a result.
Economic Identity is a birth right of every human being. The blockchain techology enables a true economic opportuity for the refugees, IDPs, and people lving in extreme poverty worldwide.
Current interventions like micro-credit, social ventures, food aid, financial inclusion continues to stumble. Places like Bangladesh, DRC, Sudan, Somalia, Guatemala and CAR etc. where aid pours in millions of dollars continue to suffer.
Why? Because 2.5 billion people in the world don't have Economic Identity! We can solve this in the next 10 years or less with blockchain based identity.
http://finovate.com/finovatespring-2016-best-show-winners-announced/
As mobile operators launch mobile payment services, banks are launching mobile banking services. The adoption of Mobile telephony in Africa has been feted as one of the most progressive in the world, this has open avenues for new and innovates services to be developed on such a success. Mobile payment has been a flagship services developed on this nascent technology. The essence of this session is (1) to assess degree of adoption by different countries in Africa (2) the regulatory argument and (3) the blur boundaries within the mFinance business landscape.
The literature underpinning the ensuing discussion was drawn from the finding analysis of 41 research studies on mFinance in developing countries conducted by Chib et al. (2015), illuminating not only in what it reveals but in the shadows that permeate the field.
From this review we consider two issues as significant. First, trust is highlighted as a mechanism factor that leads to adoption. As the poor relies more on physical money and face-to-face relationships and mediations to exchange money, issues of trust may be important for future research, to understand more of its functions and how to manage it. It is important to note how the literature reports that trust can be transferred, being this a remarkable feature to be applied by mFinance practitioners. Second, are issues of affordability. Even though it is considered a main barrier for adoption, the literature shows that cost is relevant only for some groups. The poor must be thought of as a heterogeneous group.
In the agriculture sector, mobile solutions for farmers have failed for three main reasons: First, they're not designed with end-user input. Second, they fail to integrate advisory and financial services-providing only one or the other. Finally, they lack a range of access options-either excluding low-end device users or smartphone owners. A custom bids and offers, created by Souktel and Mercy Corps for Southern Africa, is the first solution that offers user-designed advisory and m-commerce services together, with full mobile money integration and multi-channel access (via USSD or app). This session will show how platform was developed from the end user perspective of small-scale farmers and agricultural product buyers. It will also demonstrate how organizations can launch and manage this platform to strengthen their own agriculture/livelihoods projects, and achieve progress toward SDGs #1 (No Poverty), #2 (Zero Hunger), and #8 (Decent Work) as a result.
Big data offers the potential of calculating timely estimates of the socioeconomic development of a region. Mobile telephone activity provides an enormous wealth of information that can be utilized along with traditional household surveys. Estimates of poverty and wealth rely on the calculation of features from call detail records (CDRs). However, mobile network operators are reluctant to provide access to CDRs due to commercial sensitivity and privacy concerns. As a compromise, we show that a relatively sparse CDR dataset combined with other publicly available datasets based on satellite imagery can yield competitive results. In particular, we build a model using two features from the CDRs, mobile ownership per capita and call volume per phone, combined with normalized satellite nightlight data and population density, to estimate the multi-dimensional poverty index (MPI) at the sector level in Rwanda. Our model accurately predicts the MPI for sectors in Rwanda that contain mobile phone cell towers (cross-validated correlation of 0.88).
Health systems in low-income countries face challenges of limited resources, poor access, inequity and poor quality of care. An increasing number of these countries are looking to health insurance schemes as a modality for to addressing such challenges and moving forward in the drive to Universal Health Coverage. However, the lack of professional insurance systems renders many schemes inefficient, in some cases unsustainable and in a lot of cases non scalable. The Insurance Management Information System (IMIS) developed under a Swiss - Tanzanian cooperation project in Tanzania is an example of a technology, which provides cost-effective operability in a rural and informal sector context. The application uses mobile phones to support enrolment, renewals, claims submission and feedback collection processes of insurance schemes.
Experience of implementing IMIS in three countries (Tanzania, Nepal and Cameroon) demonstrates how outreach of health insurance schemes can be increased at low cost and common obstacles like identification mechanisms, accountability towards clients, reaching out to remote areas, accessibility to all network facilities, flexibility of insurance model regarding benefit packages, provider payment mechanisms, pooling of funds, and operational monitoring can be professionally dealt with.
As mobile operators launch mobile payment services, banks are launching mobile banking services. The adoption of Mobile telephony in Africa has been feted as one of the most progressive in the world, this has open avenues for new and innovates services to be developed on such a success. Mobile payment has been a flagship services developed on this nascent technology. The essence of this session is (1) to assess degree of adoption by different countries in Africa (2) the regulatory argument and (3) the blur boundaries within the mFinance business landscape.
The literature underpinning the ensuing discussion was drawn from the finding analysis of 41 research studies on mFinance in developing countries conducted by Chib et al. (2015), illuminating not only in what it reveals but in the shadows that permeate the field.
From this review we consider two issues as significant. First, trust is highlighted as a mechanism factor that leads to adoption. As the poor relies more on physical money and face-to-face relationships and mediations to exchange money, issues of trust may be important for future research, to understand more of its functions and how to manage it. It is important to note how the literature reports that trust can be transferred, being this a remarkable feature to be applied by mFinance practitioners. Second, are issues of affordability. Even though it is considered a main barrier for adoption, the literature shows that cost is relevant only for some groups. The poor must be thought of as a heterogeneous group.
A study of the Lima Links platform in Zambia (providing price information) applying mixed methods research involving farmers and other actors related to facilitating the roll out of the tool was conducted. The research provided insight on the realistic role of ICT solutions in agricultural development considering their interaction with farmers and their environment and also explored issues of the platforms sustainability. Further the research provided insight on ICT4D interventions in Southern Africa for the academic and development community considering that information on these interventions is skew to the East African context.
Results show that the provision of efficient market information (or at least price information) can have positive effects on agricultural supply chains benefitting both farmers and traders. Up-to-date or current market information enables farmers to negotiate with traders from a position of greater strength and facilitates spatial distribution of products from rural areas to towns and between markets. In addition, quality historical market information enables farmers to make planting decisions, including those related to new crops.
A case study of the Lima Links platform in Zambia (providing price information) applying ethnographic and in- depth interviews with farmers and other actors related to facilitating the roll out of the tool was conducted. The research provided insight on the realistic role of ICT solutions in agricultural development considering their interaction with farmers and their environment and also explored issues of the platforms sustainability. Further the research provided insight on ICT4D interventions in Southern Africa for the academic and development community considering that information on these interventions is skew to the East African context.
Results show that the provision of efficient market information (or at least price information) can have positive effects on agricultural supply chains benefitting both farmers and traders. Up-to-date or current market information enables farmers to negotiate with traders from a position of greater strength and facilitates spatial distribution of products from rural areas to towns and between markets. In addition, quality historical market information enables farmers to make planting decisions, including those related to new crops. It also permits traders to make better decisions regarding the viability of intra- and, perhaps, inter-seasonal storage.
Bloom is a new publishing software tool that has gained worldwide recognition for its flexibility and ease of use in the development of locally-generated reading materials. Developed by experts in SIL International, and the winner of a recent All Children Reading grant from USAID and World Vision, Bloom is a free program that is being used in a number of African and Asian countries to facilitate the development of reading materials in community languages.
Bloom contains templates for the development of leveled and decodable books as well as natural text; Symphony language analysis software is integrated into the Bloom tool, to help the writer maintain desired levels of readability. Illustrations and photographs are easily included in the text as well. The Bloom library contains a number of books that have been developed as "shell" books and can be translated into the desired language.
This demonstration will provide its audience with an understanding of what Bloom can do and how to use it.
If you are attending the training session, kindly install Bloom in your computer beforehand. The link to install Bloom is http://bloomlibrary.org/installers/BloomInstaller.3.3.4.exe
Bloom only works on a PC, and not a tablet. Bloom runs on Windows 7 or later. It does not work on Windows XP. It does not run on Mac or Android. Bloom also requires .Net Framework 4.5. This is a Microsoft product that comes with Windows 8 or 10. If you have Windows 7, you may need to install .Net Framework on your computer. It requires Art of Reading 3 and this can be downloaded from the Bloom Website. The Version should be 3.5
Humanity exists at the intersection of two unprecedented ages. The first is of information and the ubiquitous computing that people have come to rely on in nearly all aspects of existence. The second is the Anthropocene - a new geological age characterized by exceptionally, exponentially negative and rapid impacts of human activities on earth's natural systems. One of the fundamental challenges of our time is to leverage the architecture of the information age to counter the Anthropocene. Much of that architecture will rest on increasingly intelligent IT that will help us to monitor, model, and manage environmental systems. This talk will highlight the rapid integration of ICT solutions for biodiversity conservation and illustrate the difficulties and promise of instrumenting natural systems.
An overview of digital currency technologies and where they might fit into the Dev world. Included in the discussion will be an explanation of how the blockchain works, as well as a comparative exploration of the mechanisms powering Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and Dash. In addition to looking at ledger issues, we’ll also discuss security, privacy, and the emergence of platform-oriented systems like NXT. The discussion will be illustrated with examples of proven uses.
In Uganda and most developing countries today, the majority of the population lives in rural areas. Faced with a lot of problems resulting from of lack of empowerment and information, these people cannot industriously perform their roles in society unless rightly informed. Citizens irrespective of location need information on health, food and nutrition, family planning, education, business and agriculture. For the people of Butaleja, the fluctuations between hope and disappointment, expectation and infuriation, has defined their lives for many years. It has for long been an intimidating task for them to get information they need for farming, market prices, pesticides, seeds health and education among other basic needs. The priority for them is to have the right information to enable them face today's challenges but how will they handle such challenges if they can't even get the simple information they need? However, there has been much cause for optimism for the people of Butaleja in the quest for destination 2030. The Communication and Information Technology for Agriculture and Rural Development (CITARD) is at the forefront of addressing their fundamental informational challenges. In this paper, a descriptive case study on how CITARD is meeting the needs of rural people to attain SDGs 1, 2, 4, 6, 7 & 13 will be presented. Benefits, challenges and way forward will also be presented. It is hoped that the paper will benefit a number of stakeholders including rural farmers, rural schools, governments of developing countries, public and community libraries and all community based organizations in the developing world.
Map Kibera made the invisible visible. Now Open Schools Kenya (www.openschoolskenya.org) is a project supported by Gates Foundation and implemented by Map Kibera Trust to try and make education information easily available, accessible and useful to everyone, focusing on Kibera as a pilot site. The project has seen around 350 schools mapped in Kibera including informal, private and public schools. The project aims to help parents make informed choices on which schools to take their children to depending on their capabilities and also preferences. Schools can also learn what other schools are doing hence healthy competition towards achieving the SDG number 4. And government now have the data for all the schools in Kibera and can use it for proper planning around education. NGOs and donors can also use the website to fund or implement other educational programs in the area. The website gives each and every school a profile page with details ranging from the population, programs offered, fees, contact info etc.
There is an increasing call by the global development community for Aid to be more agile, contextual and inclusive as we recognize how complex the environments are that we operate within. Movements like Doing Development Differently, Thinking and Working Politically, Feedback Labs, #adaptdev and others are trying to push donors and implementors to be more adaptive and problem-driven. These efforts have contributed to major donor reforms such as DFID's Smart Rules, the World Bank's Science of Delivery and USAID's upcoming revisions to its Operations Policy and Program Cycle, as well as larger investments in Adaptive Management. These efforts will create a large demand for services and tools that that allow for a more participatory and agile approach to development -- a demand that the ICT4D community can be well positioned to meet.
This session will present the larger landscape in development that is pushing for these systemic changes, and present a new initiative that USAID's Global Development Lab is launching to conceive, design, and test how real-time data systems can enable a more adaptive and participatory approach to development in complex settings. This initiative is not focused on adaptation or feedbacks for their own sake, but how decisions can be made in a more responsive, contextual and participatory fashion with access to relevant and usable data at the appropriate times. The initiative is also concerned with how to most appropriately integrate flow data to and from multiple agents and decision makers across the 'information supply chain' - including community members, frontline workers, mid-level managers, and government decision makers - to facilitate rapid operational assessments, adaptive and iterative learning through tight feedback loops throughout the implementation of program delivery, and M&E. The understanding of the power, agency and behavior of the various decision makers, as well as the governance applications that allow for more sustainable and adaptive programming models, will be integral to the success of this work for the ICT4D and broader development community.
Bloom is a new publishing software tool that has gained worldwide recognition for its flexibility and ease of use in the development of locally-generated reading materials. Developed by experts in SIL International, and the winner of a recent All Children Reading grant from USAID and World Vision, Bloom is a free program that is being used in a number of African and Asian countries to facilitate the development of reading materials in community languages.
Bloom contains templates for the development of leveled and decodable books as well as natural text; Symphony language analysis software is integrated into the Bloom tool, to help the writer maintain desired levels of readability. Illustrations and photographs are easily included in the text as well. The Bloom library contains a number of books that have been developed as "shell" books and can be translated into the desired language.
This demonstration will provide its audience with an understanding of what Bloom can do and how to use it.
If you are attending the training session, kindly install Bloom in your computer beforehand. The link to install Bloom is http://bloomlibrary.org/installers/BloomInstaller.3.3.4.exe
Bloom only works on a PC, and not a tablet. Bloom runs on Windows 7 or later. It does not work on Windows XP. It does not run on Mac or Android. Bloom also requires .Net Framework 4.5. This is a Microsoft product that comes with Windows 8 or 10. If you have windows 7, you may need to install .Net Framework in your computer. It also requires Art of Reading which can be downloaded from the Bloom Website. The version should be 3.5.
An overview of digital currency technologies and where they might fit into the Dev world. Included in the discussion will be an explanation of how the blockchain works, as well as a comparative exploration of the mechanisms powering Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and Dash. In addition to looking at ledger issues, we’ll also discuss security, privacy, and the emergence of platform-oriented systems like NXT. The discussion will be illustrated with examples of proven uses.
Map Kibera made the invisible visible. Now Open Schools Kenya (www.openschoolskenya.org) is a project supported by Gates Foundation and implemented by Map Kibera Trust to try and make education information easily available, accessible and useful to everyone, focusing on Kibera as a pilot site. The project has seen around 350 schools mapped in Kibera including informal, private and public schools. The project aims to help parents make informed choices on which schools to take their children to depending on their capabilities and also preferences. Schools can also learn what other schools are doing hence healthy competition towards achieving the SDG number 4. And government now have the data for all the schools in Kibera and can use it for proper planning around education. NGOs and donors can also use the website to fund or implement other educational programs in the area. The website gives each and every school a profile page with details ranging from the population, programs offered, fees, contact info etc.
There is an increasing call by the global development community for Aid to be more agile, contextual and inclusive as we recognize how complex the environments are that we operate within. Movements like Doing Development Differently, Thinking and Working Politically, Feedback Labs, #adaptdev and others are trying to push donors and implementors to be more adaptive and problem-driven. These efforts have contributed to major donor reforms such as DFID's Smart Rules, the World Bank's Science of Delivery and USAID's upcoming revisions to its Operations Policy and Program Cycle, as well as larger investments in Adaptive Management. These efforts will create a large demand for services and tools that that allow for a more participatory and agile approach to development -- a demand that the ICT4D community can be well positioned to meet.
This session will present the larger landscape in development that is pushing for these systemic changes, and present a new initiative that USAID's Global Development Lab is launching to conceive, design, and test how real-time data systems can enable a more adaptive and participatory approach to development in complex settings. This initiative is not focused on adaptation or feedbacks for their own sake, but how decisions can be made in a more responsive, contextual and participatory fashion with access to relevant and usable data at the appropriate times. The initiative is also concerned with how to most appropriately integrate flow data to and from multiple agents and decision makers across the 'information supply chain' - including community members, frontline workers, mid-level managers, and government decision makers - to facilitate rapid operational assessments, adaptive and iterative learning through tight feedback loops throughout the implementation of program delivery, and M&E. The understanding of the power, agency and behavior of the various decision makers, as well as the governance applications that allow for more sustainable and adaptive programming models, will be integral to the success of this work for the ICT4D and broader development community.
Family planning is the key to attaining the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Access to family planning and other health protection products and services is often hindered by a number of factors. These factors include financial barriers. Their situation is compounded by the high cost of travels to resupply products to such locations and the challenges associated with collection of payments for those products supplied. Majority of them are unbanked. These factors lead to stock out of commodities, which affects uptake of family planning and the general, health and wellbeing of the community members.
Mobile money (MM) service was introduced in Ghana in 2009.
HealthKeepers Network (HKN) uses a micro franchise system to distribute family planning (FP) and other health protection products to the rural and underserved communities through Community Based Distributors (CBDs). The CBDs are given training on Family Planning and Diarrhea Management to promote a healthy lifestyle and provide their peers with reliable access to comprehensive information on family planning and short-term FP products as well as other quality health protection products.
HKN's Mobile Money payment initiative (with funding support from USAID/NetHope Solutions) is to increase access to family planning and other health protection products to ensure healthy lives. The CBDs are trained on the benefits of Mobile Money system and how it can be used to make payments or receive payments for remittances, products and services.
This Discussion Group session on Connectivity will provide an open forum for participant discussion as a continuation of Darrell Owen’s morning Plenary presentation on Connectivity. The session will focus specifically on the Least Developed and Least Connected Countries (LDCs and LCCs) that continue to fall behind in the area of having access to affordable Internet—an essential core component for levering ICT4D. The orientation is to explore the need for innovative disruptions across the connectivity ecosystem that hold promise for addressing this critical challenge. SDG Target 9c—“Significantly increase access to information and communication technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020,” is the context, with on universal and affordable Internet access in LDCs and LCCs be the specific focus.
Family planning is the key to attaining the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Access to family planning and other health protection products and services is often hindered by a number of factors. These factors include financial barriers. Their situation is compounded by the high cost of travels to resupply products to such locations and the challenges associated with collection of payments for those products supplied. Majority of them are unbanked. These factors lead to stock out of commodities, which affects uptake of family planning and the general, health and wellbeing of the community members.
Mobile money (MM) service was introduced in Ghana in 2009.
HealthKeepers Network (HKN) uses a micro franchise system to distribute family planning (FP) and other health protection products to the rural and underserved communities through Community Based Distributors (CBDs). The CBDs are given training on Family Planning and Diarrhea Management to promote a healthy lifestyle and provide their peers with reliable access to comprehensive information on family planning and short-term FP products as well as other quality health protection products.
HKN's Mobile Money payment initiative (with funding support from USAID/NetHope Solutions) is to increase access to family planning and other health protection products to ensure healthy lives. The CBDs are trained on the benefits of Mobile Money system and how it can be used to make payments or receive payments for remittances, products and services.
This Discussion Group session on Connectivity will provide an open forum for participant discussion as a continuation of Darrell Owen’s morning Plenary presentation on Connectivity. The session will focus specifically on the Least Developed and Least Connected Countries (LDCs and LCCs) that continue to fall behind in the area of having access to affordable Internet—an essential core component for levering ICT4D. The orientation is to explore the need for innovative disruptions across the connectivity ecosystem that hold promise for addressing this critical challenge. SDG Target 9c—“Significantly increase access to information and communication technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020,” is the context, with on universal and affordable Internet access in LDCs and LCCs be the specific focus.
Information and communication have always mattered in agriculture. Ever since people have grown crops, raised livestock, and caught fish, they have sought information from one another. What is the most effective planting strategy on steep slopes? Where can I buy the improved seed or feed this year? How can I acquire a land title? Who is paying the highest price at the market? How can I participate in the government’s credit program? Producers rarely find it easy to obtain answers to such questions, even if similar ones arise season after season. Farmers in a village may have planted the “same” crop for centuries, but over time, weather patterns and soil conditions change and epidemics of pests and diseases come and go. Updated information allows the farmers to cope with and even benefit from these changes. Providing such knowledge can be challenging, however, because the highly localized nature of agriculture means that information must be tailored specifically to distinct conditions. iTAS (Information technology for agriculture synergy) is a social network where the flow of products, knowledge and information between smallholder farmers groups, research institutions and consumers can be found; it is a place where they can draw upon their social capital in order to strengthen their position within the agricultural value chain.
This presentation focuses on the importance, benefits, and challenges of the usage of hybrid communities (face-to-face and virtual) for promoting health, particularly Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC). One hybrid community, Springboard for Health Communication, will be highlighted during the presentation; we will explore the facets of this sizeable community of health communication practitioners who have come together to talk about best practices and lessons learned in SBCC.
Here's the link to the Springboard>>
Local Nairobi contact: Rohin Onyango
Family planning is the key to attaining the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Access to family planning and other health protection products and services is often hindered by a number of factors. These factors include financial barriers. Their situation is compounded by the high cost of travels to resupply products to such locations and the challenges associated with collection of payments for those products supplied. Majority of them are unbanked. These factors lead to stock out of commodities, which affects uptake of family planning and the general, health and wellbeing of the community members..
HealthKeepers Network (HKN) uses a micro franchise system to distribute family planning (FP) and other health protection products to the rural and underserved communities through Community Based Distributors (CBDs). The CBDs are given training on Family Planning and Diarrhea Management to promote a healthy lifestyle and provide their peers with reliable access to comprehensive information on family planning and short-term FP products as well as other quality health protection products.
HKN's Mobile Money payment initiative (with funding support from USAID/NetHope Solutions) is to increase access to family planning and other health protection products to ensure healthy lives. The CBDs are trained on the benefits of Mobile Money system and how it can be used to make payments or receive payments for remittances, products and services.
There is an increasing call by the global development community for Aid to be more agile, contextual and inclusive as we recognize how complex the environments are that we operate within. Movements like Doing Development Differently, Thinking and Working Politically, Feedback Labs, #adaptdev and others are trying to push donors and implementors to be more adaptive and problem-driven. These efforts have contributed to major donor reforms such as DFID's Smart Rules, the World Bank's Science of Delivery and USAID's upcoming revisions to its Operations Policy and Program Cycle, as well as larger investments in Adaptive Management. These efforts will create a large demand for services and tools that that allow for a more participatory and agile approach to development -- a demand that the ICT4D community can be well positioned to meet.
This session will present the larger landscape in development that is pushing for these systemic changes, and present a new initiative that USAID's Global Development Lab is launching to conceive, design, and test how real-time data systems can enable a more adaptive and participatory approach to development in complex settings. This initiative is not focused on adaptation or feedbacks for their own sake, but how decisions can be made in a more responsive, contextual and participatory fashion with access to relevant and usable data at the appropriate times. The initiative is also concerned with how to most appropriately integrate flow data to and from multiple agents and decision makers across the 'information supply chain' - including community members, frontline workers, mid-level managers, and government decision makers - to facilitate rapid operational assessments, adaptive and iterative learning through tight feedback loops throughout the implementation of program delivery, and M&E. The understanding of the power, agency and behavior of the various decision makers, as well as the governance applications that allow for more sustainable and adaptive programming models, will be integral to the success of this work for the ICT4D and broader development community.
This Discussion Group session on Connectivity will provide an open forum for participant discussion as a continuation of Darrell Owen’s morning Plenary presentation on Connectivity. The session will focus specifically on the Least Developed and Least Connected Countries (LDCs and LCCs) that continue to fall behind in the area of having access to affordable Internet—an essential core component for levering ICT4D. The orientation is to explore the need for innovative disruptions across the connectivity ecosystem that hold promise for addressing this critical challenge. SDG Target 9c—“Significantly increase access to information and communication technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020,” is the context, with on universal and affordable Internet access in LDCs and LCCs be the specific focus.
After more than a decade of success of sustainability standards in agriculture, a debate arises on the impact of such standards and how they have contributed to improved livelihoods for small-scale farmers and their families. Unfortunately facts are difficult to demonstrate. Larger farmer-based organizations (FBOs) that run certification programs often have a low ICT-capacity and consequently no or limited technologies have been used to collect and analyze data from their certified farms and farmers.
From 2012 to 2013, THINK! Data was involved in the internal inspection program of a cocoa farmers’ association involving 16,000 members. All these members’ farms had to be inspected internally on compliance with respect to the criteria out of the cocoa standards, in their case UTZ and Rainforest Alliance. Manually assessing inspection forms of all these farms was a tremendous job, and it took all the effort and working-hours of staff at the association. Consequently, the inspection forms i.e. data that was collected in the field ended up in boxes in a storage and was not being analyzed for other purposes.
Based on this experience, we decided to build a low-cost and easy-to-use data collection and data analysis solution for certified cooperatives, which resulted in the AuditAide solution. The data collection tools, data analysis software in combination with our AuditAide ‘roadmap’, helps FBOs to structure their internal inspection process more efficiently, combine it with other data collection activities, and makes it easier for them to analyze their data by means of a custom-designed reporting module in the software. In West Africa there are currently 4 FBOs that are using our AuditAide solution.
The term 'rural development' also represents improvement in quality of life of rural population. ICT is an integral part of the developmental strategies of both developing and developed nations. ICT applications can enhance poor people's opportunities by improving their access to markets, agriculture, basic education and health. Furthermore, ICT can empower the poor mass by expanding the use of government services and reduce risks by widening access to micro-finance. My paper has elaborately analyzed about variety of fairly straightforward successful rural ICT interventions which have shown a greater impact on agricultural production, post-harvest activities, basic computer literacy, adult literacy etc.
Uniformly, actors in the health sector identify technology innovation and the increasing penetration of mobile phones as a trend that will influence East Africa's health sector. There are exciting technology trends evolving across East Africa that could potentially affect the health sector. Some of these trends include low cost diagnostic devices, wearable technologies, tele-medicine and widespread adoption of Electronic Medical Record systems (EMRs).
There are changes in technology that support innovation in these areas such as increasing penetration of smartphones that have capability to be monitoring devices as well as house health applications; the rollout of 4G mobile networks across East Africa that offer high speed mobile data; faster internet through broadband connections and reducing cost of hardware components.
Yet, while the health sector in East Africa could potentially benefit from digital innovation in a similar way to financial services, agriculture and renewable energy sectors, this is not happening.
This seeming disconnect between the health and IT sectors in East Africa, based on our research, led the SEAD East Africa team to conceptualize and host Kenya's first health hackathon in September 2015. The hackathon was designed to provide a space for collaborative creative problem solving around critical needs in the healthcare sector. The goal of the event was to creatively facilitate connections between health entrepreneurs and the technology community in East Africa so that both groups could better understand the market opportunity in the healthcare technology space.
This presentation seeks to share the key insights from the SEAD Health Hackathon, demonstrate the market potential in digital health and spur discussion on how to better leverage ICT in the health sector.
We will showcase Christian Aid Kenya’s Health projects working with the mHealth platform and other digital data gathering and analysis tools. We will not only showcase our technology platform but also demonstrate how we have integrated various aspects of programming in our work. In particular providing solutions that are responsive to the needs of the communities we work with and how these are sensitive to their cultural dynamics and other practical needs.
The term 'rural development' also represents improvement in quality of life of rural population. ICT is an integral part of the developmental strategies of both developing and developed nations. ICT applications can enhance poor people's opportunities by improving their access to markets, agriculture, basic education and health. Furthermore, ICT can empower the poor mass by expanding the use of government services and reduce risks by widening access to micro-finance. My paper has elaborately analyzed about variety of fairly straightforward successful rural ICT interventions which have shown a greater impact on agricultural production, post-harvest activities, basic computer literacy, adult literacy etc.
Uniformly, actors in the health sector identify technology innovation and the increasing penetration of mobile phones as a trend that will influence East Africa's health sector. There are exciting technology trends evolving across East Africa that could potentially affect the health sector. Some of these trends include low cost diagnostic devices, wearable technologies, tele-medicine and widespread adoption of Electronic Medical Record systems (EMRs).
There are changes in technology that support innovation in these areas such as increasing penetration of smartphones that have capability to be monitoring devices as well as house health applications; the rollout of 4G mobile networks across East Africa that offer high speed mobile data; faster internet through broadband connections and reducing cost of hardware components.
Yet, while the health sector in East Africa could potentially benefit from digital innovation in a similar way to financial services, agriculture and renewable energy sectors, this is not happening.
This seeming disconnect between the health and IT sectors in East Africa, based on our research, led the SEAD East Africa team to conceptualize and host Kenya's first health hackathon in September 2015. The hackathon was designed to provide a space for collaborative creative problem solving around critical needs in the healthcare sector. The goal of the event was to creatively facilitate connections between health entrepreneurs and the technology community in East Africa so that both groups could better understand the market opportunity in the healthcare technology space.
This presentation seeks to share the key insights from the SEAD Health Hackathon, demonstrate the market potential in digital health and spur discussion on how to better leverage ICT in the health sector.
We will showcase Christian Aid Kenya’s Health projects working with the mHealth platform and other digital data gathering and analysis tools. We will not only showcase our technology platform but also demonstrate how we have integrated various aspects of programming in our work. In particular providing solutions that are responsive to the needs of the communities we work with and how these are sensitive to their cultural dynamics and other practical needs.
The Connectivity, Electricity, and Education for Entrepreneurship (CE3) program in Uganda seeks to overcome two technology building blocks in the livelihoods sector: power and connectivity. Solar micro-grid power is provided to ICT labs as well as for productive uses such as small machinery and refrigeration. Internet connectivity is provided for market analysis and research to improve profitability. Computer-based entrepreneurship and ICT training is provided to help micro and small businesses make the best use of the ICT resources at their disposal.
The program is a joint enterprise by global corporations such as Accenture, Lenovo, and SunEdison, the University of Notre Dame, and local stakeholders such as BOSCO Uganda, schools, community centers, and business and government institutions.
The presentation will discuss the lessons from providing electricity, ICT services, and entrepreneurship training to small businesses; challenges in implementation and innovative solutions to those challenges; productive uses of CE3 energy; and the synergy between provision of energy and ICT4D. The presentation will focus especially on new efforts to use and evaluate the effectiveness of ICT connections between local businesses and international mentors.
With the announcement of Digital India Program and with the cheap, handy tools like smartphones ICT has now finally reached the door steps of Rural India. Such untapped section of the population (almost 27% of total population of India) had started realizing the opportunities that were presented by connectivity. There is a need to have a methodical knowledge-sharing system which ensured that users do not loose themselves in the vast jungle of the internet. The Atma (Soul) of Rural India is of course Agriculture, and today many applications like MKisan MyRML are available for Agri. Extension, Rural development
The success story of Digital Platforms created by MGIRI for holistic Rural Empowerment and how we are reaching Stakeholders through our Digital Rural Empowerment Program is shared in this presentationSmallholder farmers are willing to save production capital if they are assured of the safety of their savings. The banks are also willing to extend credit to organized farmers if there is evidence of past transactions.
Unfortunately, the available ways of securing members' savings in safe padlocked boxes faces several challenges including breaking of locks and attacks on box keepers. In a bid to safe guard the savings, members keep their transactions in secrecy hoping outsiders will not know how much money they have saved.
This denies the groups a chance to build transaction history with the banks. To address this, Lutheran World Relief (LWR) explored a mobile phone group savings solution that provides a secure way of saving money using the Airtel mobile group wallet while at the same time making the farmers' transactions visible to the Centenary Bank.
We will present LWR’s digitized saving box product and how it parallels the three padlock approach with a three-PIN system and links to a bank account to provide accountability and visibility of both the group as well as individual transactions.
The Connectivity, Electricity, and Education for Entrepreneurship (CE3) program in Uganda seeks to overcome two technology building blocks in the livelihoods sector: power and connectivity. Solar micro-grid power is provided to ICT labs as well as for productive uses such as small machinery and refrigeration. Internet connectivity is provided for market analysis and research to improve profitability. Computer-based entrepreneurship and ICT training is provided to help micro and small businesses make the best use of the ICT resources at their disposal.
The program is a joint enterprise by global corporations such as Accenture, Lenovo, and SunEdison, the University of Notre Dame, and local stakeholders such as BOSCO Uganda, schools, community centers, and business and government institutions.
The presentation will discuss the lessons from providing electricity, ICT services, and entrepreneurship training to small businesses; challenges in implementation and innovative solutions to those challenges; productive uses of CE3 energy; and the synergy between provision of energy and ICT4D. The presentation will focus especially on new efforts to use and evaluate the effectiveness of ICT connections between local businesses and international mentors.
With the announcement of Digital India Program and with the cheap, handy tools like smartphones ICT has now finally reached the door steps of Rural India. Such untapped section of the population (almost 27% of total population of India) had started realizing the opportunities that were presented by connectivity. There is a need to have a methodical knowledge-sharing system which ensured that users do not loose themselves in the vast jungle of the internet. The Atma (Soul) of Rural India is of course Agriculture, and today many applications like MKisan MyRML are available for Agri. Extension, Rural development
The success story of Digital Platforms created by MGIRI for holistic Rural Empowerment and how we are reaching Stakeholders through our Digital Rural Empowerment Program is shared in this presentationSmallholder farmers are willing to save production capital if they are assured of the safety of their savings. The banks are also willing to extend credit to organized farmers if there is evidence of past transactions.
Unfortunately, the available ways of securing members' savings in safe padlocked boxes faces several challenges including breaking of locks and attacks on box keepers. In a bid to safe guard the savings, members keep their transactions in secrecy hoping outsiders will not know how much money they have saved.
This denies the groups a chance to build transaction history with the banks. To address this, Lutheran World Relief (LWR) explored a mobile phone group savings solution that provides a secure way of saving money using the Airtel mobile group wallet while at the same time making the farmers' transactions visible to the Centenary Bank.
We will present LWR’s digitized saving box product and how it parallels the three padlock approach with a three-PIN system and links to a bank account to provide accountability and visibility of both the group as well as individual transactions.
In this session, I’m going to present how agricultural training videos featuring narrative stories are created. I’m going to share experience on
-developing non-scripted video storyboard,
-engaging farmer actors in co-creating video content
-integrating the technical steps with the narrative stories
Lastly, I will share our evaluation of these videos on the farmers’ learning and testing of the agricultural technology.
Video-based training provide opportunities to rural population to access reliable information about agricultural technologies. However, questions about how to design video content, who to present the messages and what to present are not well explored. Narrative storytelling, as an approach to create video content, normally involves farmers with experience of the technology as actors to share their stories about learning and implementation of certain technology. Farmers actors are encouraged to share personal stories including how they develop the motivations of learning and testing, how they overcome challenges during the testing and etc.,. This kind of video integrates technical content and narrative content together, and intends to psychologically and social prepare the farmers in their technology learning and adoption.
A field test conducted in Malawi shows that, after viewing the video, participants saw connection between the narrative video content (i.e. the farmer actors' appearance, social identity, and constraints described in the video) and their real lives. Moreover, participants were inspired by the narratives shared by their fellow farmers who acted in the video, which seemed associated with their adjustment of existing mindsets about low crop productivity as well as gender relations. For example, women were motivated to overcome the gender stereotype which hinder their testing of the new technology. Such adjustments encouraged participants to consider strategic solutions to overcome the social and cultural constraints of learning and testing the technology.
Bloom is a new publishing software tool that has gained worldwide recognition for its flexibility and ease of use in the development of locally-generated reading materials. Developed by experts in SIL International, and the winner of a recent All Children Reading grant from USAID and World Vision, Bloom is a free program that is being used in a number of African and Asian countries to facilitate the development of reading materials in community languages.
Bloom contains templates for the development of levelled and decodable books as well as natural text; Symphony language analysis software is integrated into the Bloom tool, to help the writer maintain desired levels of readability. Illustrations and photographs are easily included in the text as well. The Bloom library contains a number of books that have been developed as "shell" books and can be translated into the desired language.
This demonstration will provide its audience with an understanding of what Bloom can do and how to use it.
If you are attending the training session, kindly install Bloom in your computer beforehand. The link to install Bloom is http://bloomlibrary.org/installers/BloomInstaller.3.3.4.exe
Bloom only works on a PC, and not a tablet. Bloom runs on Windows 7 or later. It does not work on Windows XP. It does not run on Mac or Android. Bloom requires .Net Framework 4.5. This is a Microsoft product that comes with Windows 8 or 10. If ou have Windows 7, you may need to install .Net Framework on your computer. It also requires Art of Reading, which can be downloaded from the Bloom Website. The version should be 3.5.
Time has come to weed out the conventional ways of presentation. Learners want control; eLearning allows to offer control that classroom learning doesn't. It also becomes a source of education where it reaches out to millions who have limited or little access to institutional education for helping and educating marginalized communities for better health and hygiene habits. One of the most common scenarios for e-learning is to take an existing content in various formats and convert it to an e-learning course and place it virtually. The benefit to this approach is that you can make the course seem more compressed and it gives the learner as well as the presenter easier navigation. Also you may easily access the e-learning link from your mobile, laptop instead of using the heavy Power point slides. This works well if you have a mix of new and old learners who need different levels of information.
iMerit here becomes the source of building these e-learning courses through conversion, testing and redesigning by using various eLearning tools partnering with other organizations to support them and provide a bigger impact for a larger community of people.
eLearning has to be interactive, that’s the goal of this training session. Come ready with your innovative thoughts, let's together create an impact!
Much has been made of the benefits and achievements of mobile money ventures in developing countries. There are huge benefits to larger organizations and citizens in time savings and effort to send and receive money, pay bills and generally have a more efficient cashless process in many areas.
However we have found in many of our projects that these options are simply not that accessible to smaller and even medium sized projects. There are still huge gains to be made in areas such as local savings communities, co-operative funding schemes and more basic areas such as being able to reward or thank users for their contributions.
FrontlineSMS, along with SIMLab, have been running projects and pilots for years in Kenya gathering practical knowledge about the technology and how it can be utilized in the ICT4D world. This presentation/training session/workshop will highlight those learnings and achievements and provide a discussion area for input from the attendees. FrontlineSMS's experience with mobile money automation and workflows is primarily from Kenya, but the ability for the projects and tools to be rolled out across our next 10 countries will also be shared.
Training and a demonstration of FrontlineSMS's in-beta Payments app will also be given.
Bloom is a new publishing software tool that has gained worldwide recognition for its flexibility and ease of use in the development of locally-generated reading materials. Developed by experts in SIL International, and the winner of a recent All Children Reading grant from USAID and World Vision, Bloom is a free program that is being used in a number of African and Asian countries to facilitate the development of reading materials in community languages.
Bloom contains templates for the development of levelled and decodable books as well as natural text; Symphony language analysis software is integrated into the Bloom tool, to help the writer maintain desired levels of readability. Illustrations and photographs are easily included in the text as well. The Bloom library contains a number of books that have been developed as "shell" books and can be translated into the desired language.
This demonstration will provide its audience with an understanding of what Bloom can do and how to use it.
If you are attending the training session, kindly install Bloom in your computer beforehand. The link to install Bloom is http://bloomlibrary.org/installers/BloomInstaller.3.3.4.exe
Bloom only works on a PC, and not a tablet. Bloom runds on Windows 7 or later. It does not work on Windows XP. It does not run on Mac or Android. Bloom requires .Net Framework 4.5. This is a Microsoft product that comes with Windows 8 or 10. If you have Windows 7 you may need to install .Net Framework on your computer. It also requires Art of Reading, which can be downloaded from the Bloom Website. The version should be 3.5.
Much has been made of the benefits and achievements of mobile money ventures in developing countries. There are huge benefits to larger organizations and citizens in time savings and effort to send and receive money, pay bills and generally have a more efficient cashless process in many areas.
However we have found in many of our projects that these options are simply not that accessible to smaller and even medium sized projects. There are still huge gains to be made in areas such as local savings communities, co-operative funding schemes and more basic areas such as being able to reward or thank users for their contributions.
FrontlineSMS, along with SIMLab, have been running projects and pilots for years in Kenya gathering practical knowledge about the technology and how it can be utilized in the ICT4D world. This presentation/training session/workshop will highlight those learnings and achievements and provide a discussion area for input from the attendees. FrontlineSMS's experience with mobile money automation and workflows is primarily from Kenya, but the ability for the projects and tools to be rolled out across our next 10 countries will also be shared.
Training and a demonstration of FrontlineSMS's in-beta Payments app will also be given
Key words: Agricultural technologies, cluster analysis, Feed the Future, Impact Based Spatial Targeting Index, GIS, recommendation domains, scaling out, spatial targeting, Tanzania
In the advent of the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals, it is incumbent on all actors and sectors in the digital health space to embark on the journey to scale with a partnership approach in mind, that seeks to leverage our collective experience, expertise and resources for the achievement of these goals. Ensuring that there is harmonisation of technology solutions for interoperability, implementation plans and funding mechanisms that support nationally agreed strategic objects of governments requires serious commitments from all concerned.
The focus of this panel discussion will be on 'partnering between governments, international partners and key in-country stakeholders in order to move to scale. This panel will seek to answer the following questions:
To focus our discussion we will take the example of the Integrated eDiagnostic Approach (IeDA), an open source mobile application developed by Terre des Hommes to guide health workers during patient evaluation, classification and prescription of children under 5 in Burkina Faso. From its inception in 2014, IeDA has now been piloted in over 180 primary healthcare centres in Burkina Faso and helped health workers conduct over 200,000 consultations. IeDA is now expanding both within the country and beyond. What has worked to enable scalability, what hasn't and what still needs to be done?
The "problem" of girls and ICT is perceived in different ways. For some, image is the key, with breaking down myths and stereotypes viewed as all important. Others see the "problem" as being institutionally based, with schools and teachers misinterpreting male and female capabilities, transmitting negative messages about gender and technology, demonstrating a lack of interest in ICT or, in the affluence / poverty dichotomy, promoting one type of computer learning and practice over all others. Yet again, it can be gender scripts built into computer hard/software that are to blame.
Industry-led initiatives such demonstrate an ability to penetrate widely, if not deeply; address concerns in the literature around making ICT audience-relevant and person rather than technology- centered; and are, it seems, flexible enough to allow transferability and modification.
The primary audience for this session includes three groups: ICTD (to use the broader concept) academics and development professionals. The former will benefit from a timely review of the field from an influential organization that has helped shape practical ICTD programs and measure their outcomes over more than a decade. Such a perspective permits reflection on past efforts and recognition of open problems, suggesting opportunities for further research. The latter would benefit from the best practices, methods, tools, and techniques used to implement, monitor, and measure projects and their outputs. Thirdly, relevant group would come from those who participate in the formal and informal institutions and regulatory bodies involved with developing and enacting ICT and Girls policies.
Although the session is targeted at a research-focused audience, the level and pitch of the dialogue is such that any person at the regulatory, policy, or administrative level can relate to and gain insightful information from.
This session is hoped to provide a snapshot of strategies to improve female participation in ICT and careers suggests a need for approaches, which are both impactful and sustainable. It highlighting both the potential and the drawbacks of various measures, this session will also suggest valuable lessons that may be drawn from both sides of that equation. In designing successful intervention strategies, it is crucial to be aware of issues such as in-built gender scripts in computer hard/software; the kind of messages being transmitted in heterogeneous classrooms; the need for teacher education in gender and diversity issues; the ways in which ICT infrastructure is being employed and the learning / skills development that produces; the desirability of spreading the load where staffing is concerned; the need to make ICT studies real-world relevant; and the requirement for ICT studies to be person rather than technology centered.
In 2013, the Kenyan government pledged to give devices to every child in the first year of primary school. At the same time, Nairobi based EdTech start-up, eLimu, was getting encouraging results from a test of its new revision app in a small informal school in Kawangware. “Average marks in science went from 58% to 73% in a single term,” The Economist reported.
Qualcomm Wireless Reach gave us the opportunity to run a pilot in a large government school in Embakasi, Nairobi. We gave nearly 300 tablets to 37 teachers, and 250 students in classes 7 and 8. They were already being used the very next day.
This is the story of what happens when sky-high expectations come face to face with the reality on the ground. This is what happened in one school in Embakasi last year, but it is also the story of what is going to happen in 20,000 Kenyan schools next year.
A huge public with limited resources is not the “quick win” scenario of most pilots, but it is a much needed reality check. We realized digital education isn’t just about captivating learners; it’s about engaging teachers, involving head teachers from the onset, connecting the community, partnering with the government and more.
Only by providing thorough training and ongoing support can we give teachers the confidence to use technology effectively in the classroom, while engaging leadership and the wider community. This is vital if we are to go beyond digital literacy to improving educational outcomes.
The launch of Kenya’s Single Registry scheme marks a major step forward in the management and monitoring of social protection in low and middle-income countries. The Registry has enabled the government of Kenya to link together the Management Information Systems (MISs) of five social security schemes (the Old Age Grant, Disability Benefit, Orphans and Vulnerable Children’s Cash Transfer, Hunger Safety Net programme, and World Food Programme’s (WFP) Cash for Assets scheme). Furthermore, the Single Registry is linked to the National Registration database, so that programme beneficiaries can be clearly identified by their national ID number.
The Single Registry now enables the National Social Protection Secretariat – based in the Ministry of Labour and East African Affairs – to access information on all households receiving social security. This enables them to monitor: beneficiaries enrolled against the government’s expansion plan for the national social security system, the number and type of programme each household is benefitting from, the accuracy of beneficiary details, timelines of payments, complaints resolved within established time frames, and consolidated programme costs. Importantly, the Single Registry can capture information on schemes that are designed very differently, including the use of distinct targeting mechanisms.
The development of the Single Registry is a core component of the WFP’s Complementarity Initiative in Kenya. Over the past five years, Development Pathways has been contracted by, initially, DFID and subsequently, WFP to work with the National Social Protection Secretariat to build the Single Registry. It has involved:
Kenya’s Single Registry is very different in design when compared to earlier attempts in other countries to develop unified databases. Kenya’s system is essentially a warehouse, holding information on all the beneficiaries of the national social protection system, and is continuously updated as individual programme MISs update their information on beneficiaries. For example, it enables the Social Protection Secretariat to know when households have entered or exited schemes, how much people they have been paid each month, whether there are complaints about the system and, potentially, update any changes in household composition. However, the information produced depends on the quality of the data entered. The next stage in the development of the Single Registry will be to ensure that all programme MISs can be managed at district level – through a web-based system – and that information on beneficiaries can be updated as close to real time as possible. The broader plan is to also bring on board other components of the social protection system such as the National Social Health Insurance scheme and the National Social Security Fund (NSSF).
Globally, the proliferation of mobile telephony and cellular networks has connected once remote, rural populations to levels nearing saturation. Initial concerns about illiteracy and poverty creating a "digital divide", the dropping price of phones and service contracts have spurred high rates of ownership, across socio-economic boundaries. Amidst this backdrop of a mobile 'revolution', mobile phone surveys, such as SMS, IVR, and CATI, are being deployed for a range of health-related topics.
The session will begin with a presentation on the landscape of mobile phone surveys being used in LMICs. The presenters will then discuss key points of consideration in the development of a mobile phone survey. Technical, statistical and political dimensions of this approach, combined with prior experiences in this area will be discussed. Active audience participation will be gained by asking specific feedback on the approach.
The "problem" of girls and ICT is perceived in different ways. For some, image is the key, with breaking down myths and stereotypes viewed as all important. Others see the "problem" as being institutionally based, with schools and teachers misinterpreting male and female capabilities, transmitting negative messages about gender and technology, demonstrating a lack of interest in ICT or, in the affluence / poverty dichotomy, promoting one type of computer learning and practice over all others. Yet again, it can be gender scripts built into computer hard/software that are to blame.
Industry-led initiatives such demonstrate an ability to penetrate widely, if not deeply; address concerns in the literature around making ICT audience-relevant and person rather than technology- centered; and are, it seems, flexible enough to allow transferability and modification.
The primary audience for this session includes three groups: ICTD (to use the broader concept) academics and development professionals. The former will benefit from a timely review of the field from an influential organization that has helped shape practical ICTD programs and measure their outcomes over more than a decade. Such a perspective permits reflection on past efforts and recognition of open problems, suggesting opportunities for further research. The latter would benefit from the best practices, methods, tools, and techniques used to implement, monitor, and measure projects and their outputs. Thirdly, relevant group would come from those who participate in the formal and informal institutions and regulatory bodies involved with developing and enacting ICT and Girls policies.
Although the session is targeted at a research-focused audience, the level and pitch of the dialogue is such that any person at the regulatory, policy, or administrative level can relate to and gain insightful information from.
This session is hoped to provide a snapshot of strategies to improve female participation in ICT and careers suggests a need for approaches, which are both impactful and sustainable. It highlighting both the potential and the drawbacks of various measures, this session will also suggest valuable lessons that may be drawn from both sides of that equation. In designing successful intervention strategies, it is crucial to be aware of issues such as in-built gender scripts in computer hard/software; the kind of messages being transmitted in heterogeneous classrooms; the need for teacher education in gender and diversity issues; the ways in which ICT infrastructure is being employed and the learning / skills development that produces; the desirability of spreading the load where staffing is concerned; the need to make ICT studies real-world relevant; and the requirement for ICT studies to be person rather than technology centered.
The launch of Kenya’s Single Registry scheme marks a major step forward in the management and monitoring of social protection in low and middle-income countries. The Registry has enabled the government of Kenya to link together the Management Information Systems (MISs) of five social security schemes (the Old Age Grant, Disability Benefit, Orphans and Vulnerable Children’s Cash Transfer, Hunger Safety Net programme, and World Food Programme’s (WFP) Cash for Assets scheme). Furthermore, the Single Registry is linked to the National Registration database, so that programme beneficiaries can be clearly identified by their national ID number.
The Single Registry now enables the National Social Protection Secretariat – based in the Ministry of Labour and East African Affairs – to access information on all households receiving social security. This enables them to monitor: beneficiaries enrolled against the government’s expansion plan for the national social security system, the number and type of programme each household is benefitting from, the accuracy of beneficiary details, timelines of payments, complaints resolved within established time frames, and consolidated programme costs. Importantly, the Single Registry can capture information on schemes that are designed very differently, including the use of distinct targeting mechanisms.
The development of the Single Registry is a core component of the WFP’s Complementarity Initiative in Kenya. Over the past five years, Development Pathways has been contracted by, initially, DFID and subsequently, WFP to work with the National Social Protection Secretariat to build the Single Registry. It has involved:
Kenya’s Single Registry is very different in design when compared to earlier attempts in other countries to develop unified databases. Kenya’s system is essentially a warehouse, holding information on all the beneficiaries of the national social protection system, and is continuously updated as individual programme MISs update their information on beneficiaries. For example, it enables the Social Protection Secretariat to know when households have entered or exited schemes, how much people they have been paid each month, whether there are complaints about the system and, potentially, update any changes in household composition. However, the information produced depends on the quality of the data entered. The next stage in the development of the Single Registry will be to ensure that all programme MISs can be managed at district level – through a web-based system – and that information on beneficiaries can be updated as close to real time as possible. The broader plan is to also bring on board other components of the social protection system such as the National Social Health Insurance scheme and the National Social Security Fund (NSSF).
In a world that is fast becoming digitalized, having access to technology is not a luxury, instead it is progressively becoming a basic necessity. As well-intentioned organizations push for digital service delivery for improved and efficient governance, accountability and transparency - it is crucial to understand 'digital economies and politics' in various different contexts. It is a fact that despite the progress in making technology more available, accessible and affordable, the inequalities and inequities across and within various intersections of populations, countries and communities are still looming large. As the recent World Development Report 2016 highlighting the inequalities of digital dividends states that the 'traditional development challenges are preventing the digital revolution from fulfilling its transformative potential'.
As an innovative consortium, MAVC's work model brings together a diverse group of organizations, communities and people in all ideas implementation chain. We have one of the most innovative technology companies (Ushahidi) collaborating closely with an international development organization (Hivos) and an academic research institute (Institute of Development Studies UK), supporting community-based organizations in the Global South to improve local governance structures through community-driven ideas. Through three years of implementation of this model, MAVC is well aware of the digital divide even across the developing countries of the Global South. One of our major learning for ICT4D is that more than making the reach of ICTs universal, we should be improving depth of ICTs and how they engage with traditional development challenges of inequality to be able to facilitate achievement of SDGs.
For example, a 45 year old woman working in a garment factory in Bangladesh may have access to a mobile phone but for her to effectively engage in local workers' union, which are often dominated and led by male workers, to demand her rights and hold the authorities accountable, a mobile app organizing the union is not enough. The app developers must dive deep into the social and cultural dynamics of her engagement as a middle-aged woman in the specific context of Bangladesh i.e. keeping her language, literacy, education, family and social set-ups as active factors of how the ICTs are developed, distributed and used. Furthermore, this app might be open-source but the same code might not apply to a similar case of female garment workers in Ghana. In this classic development context, how might we maximize value of ICTs in achieving global SDGs?
Some of the questions we would like to address through this forum include:
1. Problems around governance are usually long term, entrenched and cultural how can we use technology to kick start engagement between citizens and governments?
2. When technology in governance/accountability projects are scaled/replicated across regions/countries and contexts, how much is replicable and how much is to be contextualized? How realistic are we about such contextualization that might be a laboring process?
3. How can we create dynamic civil society groups that are inclusive, intersectional and can bring depth to the application of technology to traditional development challenges?
Speakers (TBC):
This is My Backyard by Platypus Productions, Liberia
Open content in Kalimantan by Perkumpulan Wikimedia, Indonesia
Digital mapping for social accountability by Kwale Youth Governance Coalition, Kenya
Engaging Citizens in Service Delivery Performance Data by Bahawalpur Service Delivery Unit, Pakistan
Format of Panel + Discussion
Participants will be assigned roles once they enter the discussion room. These roles will include: technologist, policy maker, an illiterate daily-wage citizen, a female teacher from rural area, a young private school-going male teen, an NGO worker specializing in social protection issues etc. Each participant will be asked to reflect on the discussion from the standpoint of the assigned roles and ask questions, contribute thoughts of the panel accordingly. The panel will be documented by MAVC through blogs, tweets and as a learning report.
Globally, the proliferation of mobile telephony and cellular networks has connected once remote, rural populations to levels nearing saturation. Initial concerns about illiteracy and poverty creating a "digital divide", the dropping price of phones and service contracts have spurred high rates of ownership, across socio-economic boundaries. Amidst this backdrop of a mobile 'revolution', mobile phone surveys, such as SMS, IVR, and CATI, are being deployed for a range of health-related topics.
The session will begin with a presentation on the landscape of mobile phone surveys being used in LMICs. The presenters will then discuss key points of consideration in the development of a mobile phone survey. Technical, statistical and political dimensions of this approach, combined with prior experiences in this area will be discussed. Active audience participation will be gained by asking specific feedback on the approach.
The launch of Kenya’s Single Registry scheme marks a major step forward in the management and monitoring of social protection in low and middle-income countries. The Registry has enabled the government of Kenya to link together the Management Information Systems (MISs) of five social security schemes (the Old Age Grant, Disability Benefit, Orphans and Vulnerable Children’s Cash Transfer, Hunger Safety Net programme, and World Food Programme’s (WFP) Cash for Assets scheme). Furthermore, the Single Registry is linked to the National Registration database, so that programme beneficiaries can be clearly identified by their national ID number.
The Single Registry now enables the National Social Protection Secretariat – based in the Ministry of Labour and East African Affairs – to access information on all households receiving social security. This enables them to monitor: beneficiaries enrolled against the government’s expansion plan for the national social security system, the number and type of programme each household is benefitting from, the accuracy of beneficiary details, timelines of payments, complaints resolved within established time frames, and consolidated programme costs. Importantly, the Single Registry can capture information on schemes that are designed very differently, including the use of distinct targeting mechanisms.
The development of the Single Registry is a core component of the WFP’s Complementarity Initiative in Kenya. Over the past five years, Development Pathways has been contracted by, initially, DFID and subsequently, WFP to work with the National Social Protection Secretariat to build the Single Registry. It has involved:
Kenya’s Single Registry is very different in design when compared to earlier attempts in other countries to develop unified databases. Kenya’s system is essentially a warehouse, holding information on all the beneficiaries of the national social protection system, and is continuously updated as individual programme MISs update their information on beneficiaries. For example, it enables the Social Protection Secretariat to know when households have entered or exited schemes, how much people they have been paid each month, whether there are complaints about the system and, potentially, update any changes in household composition. However, the information produced depends on the quality of the data entered. The next stage in the development of the Single Registry will be to ensure that all programme MISs can be managed at district level – through a web-based system – and that information on beneficiaries can be updated as close to real time as possible. The broader plan is to also bring on board other components of the social protection system such as the National Social Health Insurance scheme and the National Social Security Fund (NSSF).
In a world that is fast becoming digitalized, having access to technology is not a luxury, instead it is progressively becoming a basic necessity. As well-intentioned organizations push for digital service delivery for improved and efficient governance, accountability and transparency - it is crucial to understand 'digital economies and politics' in various different contexts. It is a fact that despite the progress in making technology more available, accessible and affordable, the inequalities and inequities across and within various intersections of populations, countries and communities are still looming large. As the recent World Development Report 2016 highlighting the inequalities of digital dividends states that the 'traditional development challenges are preventing the digital revolution from fulfilling its transformative potential'.
As an innovative consortium, MAVC's work model brings together a diverse group of organizations, communities and people in all ideas implementation chain. We have one of the most innovative technology companies (Ushahidi) collaborating closely with an international development organization (Hivos) and an academic research institute (Institute of Development Studies UK), supporting community-based organizations in the Global South to improve local governance structures through community-driven ideas. Through three years of implementation of this model, MAVC is well aware of the digital divide even across the developing countries of the Global South. One of our major learning for ICT4D is that more than making the reach of ICTs universal, we should be improving depth of ICTs and how they engage with traditional development challenges of inequality to be able to facilitate achievement of SDGs.
For example, a 45 year old woman working in a garment factory in Bangladesh may have access to a mobile phone but for her to effectively engage in local workers' union, which are often dominated and led by male workers, to demand her rights and hold the authorities accountable, a mobile app organizing the union is not enough. The app developers must dive deep into the social and cultural dynamics of her engagement as a middle-aged woman in the specific context of Bangladesh i.e. keeping her language, literacy, education, family and social set-ups as active factors of how the ICTs are developed, distributed and used. Furthermore, this app might be open-source but the same code might not apply to a similar case of female garment workers in Ghana. In this classic development context, how might we maximize value of ICTs in achieving global SDGs?
Some of the questions we would like to address through this forum include:
1. Problems around governance are usually long term, entrenched and cultural how can we use technology to kick start engagement between citizens and governments?
2. When technology in governance/accountability projects are scaled/replicated across regions/countries and contexts, how much is replicable and how much is to be contextualized? How realistic are we about such contextualization that might be a laboring process?
3. How can we create dynamic civil society groups that are inclusive, intersectional and can bring depth to the application of technology to traditional development challenges?
Speakers (TBC):
This is My Backyard by Platypus Productions, Liberia
Open content in Kalimantan by Perkumpulan Wikimedia, Indonesia
Digital mapping for social accountability by Kwale Youth Governance Coalition, Kenya
Engaging Citizens in Service Delivery Performance Data by Bahawalpur Service Delivery Unit, Pakistan
Format of Panel + Discussion
Participants will be assigned roles once they enter the discussion room. These roles will include: technologist, policy maker, an illiterate daily-wage citizen, a female teacher from rural area, a young private school-going male teen, an NGO worker specializing in social protection issues etc. Each participant will be asked to reflect on the discussion from the standpoint of the assigned roles and ask questions, contribute thoughts of the panel accordingly. The panel will be documented by MAVC through blogs, tweets and as a learning report.
Tables 39 and 41
This session shares experiences from developing Nigeria’s eHealth strategy and how the collaborative process was guided by the WHO/ITU eHealth strategy toolkit. This session will be helpful for other country stakeholders/decision-makers interested in supporting the review or development of national and/or sub-national eHealth strategies. The presenter worked as part of the UN Foundation team that supported the Nigeria’s Ministries of Health and Communications Technology to articulate and develop the National eHealth Strategy, which was ratified in March 2016.
The presentation illustrates how the vision was derived from the Nigeria’s health sector priorities and how they aligned to SDG3. The presentation highlights the strategic value of a National eHealth strategy in mainstreaming ICTs in the health sector. Assessments were conducted to determine the current state eHealth enabling environment. The structure of the integrated action plan and the measurement matrix will be discussed. Key challenges encountered through the process will be enumerated.
With the announcement of the new Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations, Microsoft has taken the path of incorporating SDGs from the top down into their business, services and approach. While our efforts are still in the early stages, learn about some of the thought processes, approaches and plans to grow towards a global organization making societal impact and empowering more people across the globe to do more.
This session shares experiences from developing Nigeria’s eHealth strategy and how the collaborative process was guided by the WHO/ITU eHealth strategy toolkit. This session will be helpful for other country stakeholders/decision-makers interested in supporting the review or development of national and/or sub-national eHealth strategies. The presenter worked as part of the UN Foundation team that supported the Nigeria’s Ministries of Health and Communications Technology to articulate and develop the National eHealth Strategy, which was ratified in March 2016.
The presentation illustrates how the vision was derived from the Nigeria’s health sector priorities and how they aligned to SDG3. The presentation highlights the strategic value of a National eHealth strategy in mainstreaming ICTs in the health sector. Assessments were conducted to determine the current state eHealth enabling environment. The structure of the integrated action plan and the measurement matrix will be discussed. Key challenges encountered through the process will be enumerated.
With the announcement of the new Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations, Microsoft has taken the path of incorporating SDGs from the top down into their business, services and approach. While our efforts are still in the early stages, learn about some of the thought processes, approaches and plans to grow towards a global organization making societal impact and empowering more people across the globe to do more
During this session we will reflect on what we learned this week, what approaches and commitments we can make to aligning our work so that it contributes to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, on leveraging the full potential of technology to accelerate progress towards those goals, and specifically meeting the challenge of engaging those living in extreme poverty in tracking and reporting on our progress towards goals, telling us what is working, what is not working, where we are succeeding and where we need to strengthen our efforts to meet our commitments.