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.
