Cyber Security Abroad

After listening to a great presentation on cyber security and its importance as well as risks, I became interested in how other nations treat cyber security and if America is giving advice. I stumbled onto an article that talked about how foreign allies of America need to start stepping up their cyber security as they are “equally mobile and even more vulnerable” than America. Many times in developing nations cyber security is an after thought, second to mobile networking and focus on economic growth. The senior adviser for the department’s Office of the Cyber Coordinator Thomas Duke stated that ”due diligence” is a top priority for America and we will start helping developing nations to increase their communications infrastructure. Nations such as India, South Africa, and other developing but prominent countries can be threats to themselves and their global interconnected networks. An example of this is when the South African governments twitter feed was hacked (@StateSecurityRS) and started to advertise a diet regime.

Many developing nations in Africa do not have the skills or are not willing to protect them selves from cyber crimes. The US government has started to engage with South Africa, India, Brazil, and other nations in creating ground rules upon what is acceptable and what is not in relation to cyber security and attacks. As Duke states, “Those are countries that are leaders of the developing world and countries where we think it is very important to identify the things that we agree upon and don’t agree upon”. Cyber security is becoming a big issue globally and will likely continue to do so until all nations tighten up their security or create a stronger set of guidelines.

Mapping Violence with Plan Benin

In addition to producing the ICT4D project guide, Plan also is running a number of it’s own projects to promote child rights through participation and media in Africa. One interesting example of this is Plan’s program to increase the reporting of child abuse in Benin. In Benin, reporting violence generally goes against the cultural norm and many feel that they either don’t have access to communication with authorities or that the authorities won’t act on the information. To address this issue, plan has partnered with Ushahidi to produce crowdsourced maps on incidences  of violence.

The system allows victims or witnesses to send text messages to a special number through an application called Frontline SMS to report the abuse. The website is carefully monitored and all reported cases are verified. Children can also email their stories or send audio or video testimonials. This allows the project to gain a deeper more personal understanding of the accounts. Once the stories have been verified, they appear on an Ushahidi map. This both allows locals to be aware of incidents of violence and alerts the authorities. Plan can also try to match children and their families to the appropriate support service.

While mapping cases of violence is a valuable tool for raising awareness and changing the culture against silence, privacy is still a top concern. Linda Raftree, one of the project coordinators, describes the challenge in the Plan report as such, “‘“Can we capture all the information that comes in, yet scrub it before publication on Ushahidi so that it doesn’t identify the victim or alleged perpetrators, yet keep it in a file for the local authorities to follow up and respond? And a second challenge: If everyone knows everything that happens in the community,how can we ensure privacy and confidentiality for those who report?”’ These are all quite important to consider since the backlash from perpetrators can be severe. However, I think that crowdsourced mapping is a great wait to begin to expose acts of violence without revealing too much about the victim.

As with most ICT4D projects, this technology presents a number of other challenges and limitations that have to do with the digital divide. Of course, if a person doesn’t have access to a cell phone or computer, than this technology is useless. There are also issues with illiteracy. Many people who are illiterate would prefer to call instead of text or email but the system is not set up for this. This would require phone operators and make the system more like a hotline. Also, sending text messages is not free so some people don’t have enough phone credit to text in a report. PlanBenin says that they are working with the government to try to set up a charge free number.

Because of all of these problems, this project is not the ultimate solution to child abuse. However, it is beginning a discussion and working to change a culture of silence and abuse. I’m not sure how effective this technology will be right now for bringing individuals to justice but it does work at the root of the problem so I think it definitely has merit and is worth expanding.

Applying Plan Int’l Strategies for Development

Plan International’s four strategies for ICT enabled development are useful when predicting the future and implementation for ICT devices in specific areas. The blog Will the Ubuntu Phone Rock the African Software Development Market? published on ICTworks.org tries to predict the future of the Ubuntu phone in Africa. The Ubuntu phone is similar to typical mobiles in the U.S. because they have computer capabilities. The phone is comparable to Apple’s iPhone and other Samsung phones. Using the following four Plan International ICT strategies allows us to gain better insight into Ubuntu’s possible success or failure:

1)Understanding the Context for ICT Work
2)Finding a Match Between Priorities and Possibilities
3)Planning and Implementing Concrete Initiatives
4)Building a Culture of Systematic, Sustained and Strategic ICT Use

Understanding the context for ICT work (strategy 1) in Africa is extremely important. Mobile phone ownership is on the rise as well as access to the Internet. There is a growing market for mobiles and an increase in competition in the mobile phone field in Africa. However the cost of mobiles vary and the Ubuntu phone is more expensive than most. If consumers are also interested in the phone component, viewing access to calls as a priority, then they will likely buy the cheaper phone (strategy 2). However if consumers find the dual capabilities important they may go for the Ubuntu phone. According to the blog, “smartphone penetration is swinging up and may actually outpace mobile. Having the ability to write not only apps but full-blown applications may be where African software developers finally get traction.” This is a great incentive for Ubuntu that gives them a leg up on the competition. Both strategy 3 and 4 are more applicable to the ICT environment and less on the specifics such as the Ubuntu phone.

Overall, the future of the Ubuntu phone in Africa is unknown until shipping begins in October 2013.

Former ICT4D Student Blogs about Cell Phones in Africa

As part of her internship with Food Tank, former IDEV4100:ICT4D (Fall 2011 semester) student Suzannah Schneider authored this blog entitled “Five Ways Cell Phones are Changing Agriculture In Africa.” The post lists some familiar ideas, such as using mobile phones to access market prices and weather information, as well as receive useful information via SMS messages. However, it also mentions some more specific and innovative ideas such as iCow and micro-insurance. Based on your experiences in our class, what are your thoughts on these 5 applications of mobiles for agricultural development?

More information about Food Tank can be found in this video: “The Food Think Tank Trailer“

Monitoring Hate Speech over Social Media

One of the greatest strengths of social media is that it is completely uncensored. As demonstrated by the Arab Spring, this feature makes social media invaluable for organizing protests and spreading information that oppressive governments may not approve of. The complete freedom of speech over social media certainly promotes democracy. However, when it comes to hate speech, social media can be a double edged sword. Hate speech over social media has a wide scope and can range from high schoolers bullying each other on Facebook to tribes calling for mass violence against one another.

The latter is a huge issue for Kenya, especially during election seasons. Kenya’s 2007 elections resulted tribal violence that slaughtered over 1,200 people. With tension high for the upcoming elections, Kenyan government and civil society hope to prevent another mass outbreak of violence. One prevention strategy is to monitor hate speech over social media. This article on rueter.com describes the work of Kagonya Awori who runs Umati, a web-based project monitoring dangerous speech. The government has already banned the media from reprinting hate speech against other tribes in full but have no way of preventing viral hate speech over social media. 

Previously most political and tribal hate speech in was spread though radio but now most occurrences are over Facebook. Over Facebook there is no anonymity, since the poster’s name and location are displayed. This allows groups like Umati to monitor specific individuals who are making threatening posts and predict the locations of possible violent outbreaks. The government is taking Awori’s work very seriously and head of criminal investigations in Nairobi is threatening to prosecute anyone who spurs violence over social media.

Kenya clearly has different freedom of speech laws than the US so it does seem like monitoring hate speech is within the governments legal bounds. Preventing violence should of course be a top government priority, however, this article does bring to light the murky line between civilian protection and repressive censorship. It’s hard to say if governments should be able to prosecute their people for what they post other social media, even if it seems justified. Given that much of social media’s strength to incite change comes from a complete lack of censorship, fear of arrest could greatly weaken its force.

Health Education through Entertaining Radio Programs

In this week’s reading, “Why Radio Matters,” Dr. Mary Myers highlights a list of reasons and examples why radio is “the most widespread mass-medium for the developing world.” One of these reasons was that radio has the potential to educate and entertain its listeners. Myers then went on to fuse these two functions into one example- that of the Tanzanian radio soap opera titled “Pilika Pilika,” which educates its listeners on myriad health issues through entertaining plot lines. Earlier today, when writing our assigned analysis and discussion questions based on the readings, I posed the question, “Do you believe that this is actually effective in educating people on important health measures?” I then went on to do a little research of my own, which is how I discovered “Shuga-Love, Sex, Money”–a 12-episode radio drama that tells the stories of a group of four young fictional characters aged 15-24, their choices, dreams, friendships, challenges, and triumphs in a world where HIV and AIDS are an ever-present threat.

Launched in June of 2012, Shuga is a joint initiative of MTV, UNICEF, and the HIV Free Generation (HFG) Partnership. Not only is the series produced in French, English, and Swahili, but it is also distributed at no cost to a wide range of broadcasters. Some of the themes and topics covered through the plot of the series are: HIV counseling and testing, condom use in stable relationships, positive prevention, gender inequality and sexual violence, transactional sex, alcohol abuse, and the role of multiple concurrent partnerships in driving the HIV epidemic. Another unique aspect of the Shuga series that has undoubtedly lent it more success is that it was written and produced by 30 young people from Cameroon, DR Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Lesotho and South Africa. These young Africans from diverse backgrounds all came together for training in a special workshop hosted by Question Media Group with support from MTV and UNICEF in order to create the drama that informs people just like them.

Now to my question as to whether or not this means of delivering vital health advice through entertainment radio is actually successful in improving health outcomes. According to research conducted by Johns Hopkins University/Centre for Communications Programs in Kenya following the airing of Shuga, the data reported increased intentions for HIV testing coupled with decreased intentions for multiple sex partners; improved attitudes towards people living with HIV and AIDS, and increased usage of accessible health and social services among youth who had watched the series. Being a radio DJ myself at the campus station, WTUL, I know what it is like to read obligatory Public Service Announcements each week. The information is terribly mundane, and most of the time, I am certain my listeners tune out during these mandated announcements. Now having learned about these examples of innovative use of airtime to educate the public, I will question these PSAs even more.  Unfortunately, I do not think this coupling of education and entertainment, particularly through radio, would be very successful in the U.S. But programs like “Pilika Pilika” and “Shuga- Love, Sex, Money” show promise for the future of education and empowerment through radio in the developing world.

Integrating African Women into Tech Careers

This week in class, we learned about the relationship between gender and ICT4D. We read a report highlighting the restricted access many women face all across Africa in terms of ICTs. While we mainly discussed their restrictions in ICT consumption, it seems evident that even greater disparities exist in terms of ICT production.

While searching the Web, I ran into this online platform called Women who Mentor and Innovate in Africa (WMIAfrica). WMIAfrica is working on combating the lack of access to information, role models and skills facing young women interested in pursuing Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) studies and careers. It hopes to provide a platform for virtual & physical  mentoring for girls and young women interested in STEM by professional Women Mentors working in STEM fields. On the website (www.wmiafrica.org), it claims to be doing so by:

WMIAfrica Online platform will :

• Recruit and Register members. Professional women, girls and young women interested in STEM
• Encourage mentoring through the sharing of stories, innovative projects and successes by Mentors to motivate , inspire and challenge the Mentees.
• Showcase Africa’s women innovators in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)
• Provide resources such as , useful materials/templates for women having innovative projects to use in their startups or individual projects, opportunities, jobs and scholarship announcements in the science related sectors for women to apply and relevant event information.

This seems to aim to help ambitious girls with entrepreneurial ideas, so-called innovators.  Should this platform be expanded to cater to more women with different interests?

My other concern is that this only has the means of helping those who already have access to these ICT devices and internet, and who are situated in relatively wealthy urban areas with access to these types of institutions and events. How are other women, let’s say in rural settings or abject poverty, supposed to access an online platform?

There also seems to be a movement here in the United States to introduce more women into the rapidly expanding and highly demanded field of programming. Many non-profits in the United States are emerging to shrink the programming divide among genders, including BlackGirlsCode (www.blackgirlscode.com), WebStartWomen (http://webstartwomen.com/) and many others. There are more and more emerging free online coding courses available for anyone with access to internet without the constraining costs of higher institutions. Are these free online coding classes also a viable solution for integrating women into ICT production in the developing world (in this case Africa) or are restricted to the same limited population of women as mentioned above?

Reasons Why ICT4D Projects Fail

In the following video, professionals from Africa explain why they think many ICT4D projects fail. It shows their perspective on ICT4D and highlights 7 of the main reasons for failure.

The 7 reasons stated in the video are:

1. Idea/results not directly tied to improving economic condition of end user

2. Not relevant to local context/strengths/needs

3. Not understanding infrastructure capability

4. Underestimating maintenance costs and issues

5. Projects only supported by short term grants

6. Not looking at the whole system

7. Project built on condescending assumptions

These seven reasons for ICT4D failure encompass much of what we have discussed in class. Some of the specific things that the people in the video talk about go into greater detail in terms of this succinct list. For example, one community organizer discusses how many projects are designed outside of the community without enough initial research or understanding of how the society works. Not only do they not do enough before, sometimes they come in with an attitude of superiority and the notion that they will be teaching the people there how to use technology, not working with them to see how it can be of the greatest benefit to them. Just as Richard Heeks argues, many ICT4D projects have a one-size-fits-all approach and do not take into consideration that each context is unique and some things don’t work everywhere. The video also discusses the need for developed infrastructure to support projects. One man speaks of power outages and how they are an accepted reality in many communities. People are used to the power going out without warning and do not expect notice in advance. Another ICT professional discusses how his community received 40 computers and now none of them work. They were given as gifts, but their maintenance could not be paid for so they are out of use now. This is an example of an underestimation of costs. The biggest overarching problem that seems to be recurring in the video and in actual ICT4D projects is that the project designers and implementers do not fully understand the culture and the problems that need to be addressed. This will continue to be the biggest issue until ICT4D projects work more closely with communities and are led by members from the bottom-up.

Esoko’s Demand-Driven Success in Bringing ICTs to Africa

Across the board, most development practitioners would argue the bottom-up approach is more successful than the top-down approach in regards to development projects. The main reason for this is sustainability. The following blog outlines Esoko, an organization that brings the “market” to Africa. They focus on tools for market and agricultural information via mobiles and ICT. Their success is largely due to the fact the organization is demand-driven as “60% of Africans earn their living from working in agriculture, a sector so underserved in terms of technology solutions”. Additionally, Esoko uses the bottoms-up approach. The idea was not pushed onto the people, rather the idea sprung from the people and their needs. Mark Davies, the founder of Esoko, saw the benefits of putting street markets into the viral atmosphere. Esoko hires locally, employing mostly Ghanaians and West Africans.

The organization uses the increase in mobiles and ICTs’ in Africa to their advantage. The services and apps Esoko provides are SMS messaging, market price alerts, inventory reporting, SMS bids and offerings and maps. The model they use “starts with government or donor funding and then transitions into a business; a franchise that can grow into a sustainable company”. They have started working in Ghana where local businesses are using Esoko. As of right now there are franchises and resellers in Ghana, Nigeria, Mozambique and Malawi. Many other African countries are using Esoko via government funding (North Sudan and Nigeria), while even more are funded via donors (Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana, Tanzania, Madagascar, Uganda, Malawi, etc.).

In regards to monitoring and evaluating, “In November 2010 a survey of 62 farmers in Northern Ghana who have been receiving price alerts for one year confirmed that they have benefited from the service, with an average improvement of 40% on reported deals and revenue.” As stated before, their success is due mainly because of their bottoms-up, grass-roots approach. Why do practitioners continue to push top-down approaches onto governments and other NGOs  when bottoms-up projects tend to be the most successful?

Richard Heeks, Mobile Technology in Africa and Cameroonian Mail

Seeing as our readings this week were fairly pessimistic regarding the role of ICTs in development, particularly on the consumption end, I felt the need to seek out some reassuringly positive literature. One of the better articles I found in the last few days covered some of the impressive (though oft-inflated) data regarding the spread of mobile phone technologies throughout Africa over the last few years. Two of the more staggering statistics include the fact that Africa is now home to 650,000 mobile phone subscribers (more than the European Union), as well as the World Bank’s recent report which attributed an estimated 5 million new jobs in Africa last year to the mobile phone industry alone. The article also highlights benefits stemming from the increasing prevalence of mobile banking technologies in Africa, which before the this class was the ICT development field I was most familiar with. The article goes on to quote Samia Melhem, the World Bank’s Coordinator for Information and Communications Technologies for Africa, as saying: “”More people have access to internet today in Africa than they do to clean water, or even sanitation . . . we can say this has been the most significant revolution in terms of changing the African landscape and how people live their daily life.” This quote is presented seemingly without a sense of irony, though it seems to point out a pretty obvious flaw in the current structure of foreign aid. On a basic human level, clean water and basic sanitation seem to be exponentially more pressing priorities than spreading cellular technology to rural areas. In Richard Heeks’ article “ICTs and MDGs: On the Wrong Track?”, he applauds Bill Gates for continuing to focus his investments in Africa on healthcare and sanitation issues, while in other large organizations we’ve begun to see a shift of focus to ICTs. Though he comes off cantankerous, perhaps Heeks has a point here.

On a final, less relevant note, it looks like the ever-more-rapid spread of ICTs in Africa has had a hugely negative impact on country-level postal services that only recently were booming. There’s always something.