I had a great unplugged-from-the-grid long weekend, from which I finally got back from late last night. This morning I actually sat in front of my computer and, though I had a million things to say, couldn’t seem to get them down right on the blog.
Instead, here’s a picture of me spending time with old friends and enjoying the analog life. 
Thank God for lifelong friends.
Oh, and no thanks to Saints for the Prescott news…
South African marketing firm Quirk has launched a new brand monitoring service called BrandsEye. Global firms like Ogilvy, Standard Bank and the South African Tourism Board are already using it. I’ve yet to try it out, but Quirk is a solid company, and they have good companies already using it, so that’s promising.
I’m a big fan of WordPress and all the customization and businesses that can grow out of it. A couple South African guys have been working in this space for a while, and have a great premium (meaning you pay money for them) themes offered at the new website WooThemes. (Adii, Mark, Magnus and Elliot have a great eye for detail, a boatload of experience with WordPress, and continue to impress on the international level.)
Joe, head of Google Kenya, launched the Google Africa Blog last week. I’m sure all of us will be watching it with interest. No comments allowed though, which is kind of lame.
Last week I talked about Google’s Global Cache, and how they will be housing this new project at Internet Exchange Points (IXP). A quote from Wikipedia’s definition explains the importance of IXPs best.
“The primary purpose of an IXP is to allow networks to interconnect directly, via the exchange, rather than through one or more 3rd party networks. The advantages of the direct interconnection are numerous, but the primary reasons are cost, latency, and bandwidth. Traffic passing through an exchange is typically not billed by any party, whereas traffic to an ISP’s upstream provider is.”
There are 18 IXPs in Africa in 15 countries (I stated 17 last week). A map of those countries is below (click on it to be taken to the interactive version):
Most of these are found in the capital of the country, but not always. For instance, iBiX is located in Ibadan, Nigeria not Abuja and Tanzania has two IXPs, one in Arusha and one in Dar es Salaam.
In list form, they are:
There seems to be a definite advantage to having an IXP located in your country. Why then do so many African countries not have one? From my understanding, it isn’t cost prohibitive to create an IXP or to maintain it. Why would so many African nations, who all have local ISPs, not have a local IXP?
[Update: Michuki Mwangi, one of the godfather's of Kenyan tech (I believe he's responsible for getting Kenya's TLD: yourdomain.co.ke), responded with the following answers to my question.]
“Most of the reasons that countries dont have IXPs are non-technical and are either policy or politics. For instance in Senegal, Sonatel the Senegalese Telco operates in a monopolistic environment. There are almost no ISPs that exist there and those that do just resell ADSL links for the telco. In such a case, they own no infrastructure or services outside what the telco provides. Therefore, there’s been no need/demand for such. A similar case exists in Ethiopia.
In other countries like Nigeria, its getting the players to agree and look beyond the mistrust and competitive advantages that others have to form one. That takes a while.
In other countries its purely a regulatory policy issue that does not permit the existence of an IXP - its as a way of protecting the incumbent telco’s.”
If you are interested in finding out more about Africa’s IXPs, here are some resources:
AfrISPA - African Internet Server Provider Association
AfNOG - African Network Operators Group
EP.net - Africa - List of African IXPs with links
Packet Clearing House (PCH) - for information, statistics and locations
AfriNIC - African Internet Numbers Registry IP Addresses (IPv6)
Over the last couple of months I have been in the process of moving from my consultant position to working full-time on Ushahidi. One of my favorite projects to be a part of was the redesign of Investing in Africa, by Ryan Shen-Hoover. We’ve rebuilt the site from the ground up using Expression Engine as the core CMS, and have redesigned the look and feel completely.
One of the benefits (most of the time) of working so closely with people is that you tend to get to know them pretty well. Ryan ends up being one of those quiet and unassuming individuals who has a great depth of knowledge pertaining to Africa’s capital markets. As he states:
“…there is another side of Africa that gets a lot less press. It is a place full of hopeful and enterprising people who are confident of a better future. This is the Africa that I believe is home to some of the most attractive potential investments in the world today.”
At Investing in Africa, Ryan profiles companies and gives monthly detailed reports on his insights into local markets. So far his library includes annual reports, announcements, and financial results for more than 350 companies spanning 16 markets.
A few last changes are on the way, and a few bugs to be worked out. However, it’s up and ready to use, so take a look, sign-up for access to company reports, and definitely subscribe to his monthly newsletter ($49 annually). Below is a sample:
Investing in Africa: Sample Report, May 2008
Google is well known for snatching up top-level talent, this holds true in Kenya as well. ICT groundbreaker Joe Mucheru heads up the Kenya office, and he’s surrounded by a team of smart young technologists. I had the chance to meet Isis Nyong’o (Strategic Parter Development Manager) while getting ready for Barcamp Nairobi, and then Chris Kiagiri (Tech Lead) and Mark de Blois (Geographic Supervisor) last week before I left.
Google Kenya is Different
I found out a couple of interesting points that make the Google Kenya office even more interesting than before. It turns out that there are 3 offices in Africa; Kenya, South Africa and Egypt. However, the office in Kenya is neither a sales office nor an engineering office, which makes it unique globally. In fact, it is the only “deployment office” worldwide. This means that the Kenya office can be used as a launch point for new ideas and is the central focal point for Google’s Africa strategy.
It came down to a choice between Senegal and Kenya - one French-speaking and one English-speaking, and both with a fairly well developed technology sector. Senegal had a direct transatlantic cable, but Kenya had the right people available. At Google it seems, finding the right personnel usually trumps about everything else.
Speaking of which, they’re still looking for the right people, not only in Senegal, but also in Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. Unfortunately, Google HR seems to be geographically challenged, as jobs in Egypt are somehow not in Africa…
Dealing with a Slow Internet in AfricaThe Google Global Cache (GGC) was announced in May at the African Network Operators Group (AFNOG) conference in Morocco. In lieu of data centers in Africa, Google has created a strategy that is housed at major exchange points to serve Africa at the edge of Google’s network. Internal tests suggested at least 20% performance increase in high latency links, like East Africa.
[The top cycle (1,2,3 & 4) is how things normally work. The bottom cycle (5,6 &7) is where the changes are.]
It works like this. Once anyone within that exchange point’s sphere visits a webpage, the information is cached and it becomes much faster for anyone else visiting that website to access it. Pre-fetching of data also that improves performance over time, even for dynamic content.
This is an interesting strategy. It’s a win for ISP’s (less international traffic means lower costs), a win for end users (pages load faster), and a win for Google (faster, better usage).
The pilot in Africa was turned on in Kenya just 2 weeks ago. There are 17 international exchange points (IXP) in 15 African nations, so with a positive pilot in Kenya, this could soon be seen continent-wide.
Keep your ears open, there are hints of even more interesting stuff coming out of the Google Kenya office.
The most recent technology review has a good article on the transoceanic internet cable build-out happening world wide. It’s got a nice little map visual too, which allows you to see where things are (white lines) and where new undersea cables are being installed.
East Africa is one of the last major regions in the world to not have true international broadband (aka: “fat pipes”). Having just returned from a 3-week stint in Nairobi, I can tell you that these cables will make a huge impact on the local market.
Uploading video, watching video, uploading images, sending emails with images, receiving images, downloading applications, uploading zip files, FTP, VoIP calls… and more. All that stuff is painfully slow or impractical to do right now. You don’t realize how much you use these types of service in the rest of the world, until you’re forced to do without for an extended period of time.
I, for one, will continue to pray to the undersea cable gods that East Africa will see this cable by this time next year.
[Sidenote: I know a certain individual is interning at Google doing a paper on how the lack of bandwidth has crippled web business in East Africa. I'm looking forward to seeing it.]
Recently, I’ve noticed a sudden buzz about ecommerce in Kenya. Brian Longwe talks about the beginnings of this with Mpesa, emails are bouncing around between companies I know, and last week I spent a morning listening in to what the Kenya ICT Board and Federation had to say about it.
Let me start with the Kenya ICT Board. The meeting was basically about legislation and the fact that ecommerce would be good for Kenya. Of course it is, anything that lowers transaction costs for both buyers and sellers greases the wheels of commerce and increases the amount of trade across all industries and sectors. That’s a given.
But how? See, that’s the big sticking point that I’ve been banging my head against the wall over for 2 years now. It’s not enough that you can buy and sell with a Visa or Mastercard in Kenya. As long as you continue to ignore the wananchi (average person), then you’ll only help the wealthy and not see the real gains and advantages of a level playing field.
Which brings me to Brian talking about Mpesa, the mobile phone payment system in Kenya. For, in Mpesa, we have the beginnings of a payment system that can be used by everyone. He’s right about that. What’s wrong is that it’s mobile phone carrier dependent (Safaricom).
Let’s go back to our “average person” again and talk about banks. They are generally unbanked (thus the use of Mpesa), or if they are, they have only a couple thousand shillings (less than $100) in the bank. The transaction costs for them having to keep their money in these aging institutions is often impractical. They have no, or very limited, opportunities to borrow money and they have no realistic way of getting any type of credit.
So, as can be seen, tying money, credit and debt to banks is not practical.
Now, let’s talk about why it needs to be carrier agnostic. This is even easier to understand. In Kenya there are two carriers; Safaricom (Mpesa) and Celtel (me2u). By the end of the year, there will be four. The barriers to use of a system that relies on one carrier is as ridiculous as requiring any payment system on the web to only go through one ISP. Sure, it makes sense if you’re that company to control that monopoly, but it’s bad for everyone else.
What does this mean then? Where do we go from here?The upsides of a carrier and bank agnostic payment system is high. Not only would a system like this be used for the obvious domestic transactions (Kenya-to-Kenya) and external transactions (Kenya-to-world), but all of the sudden we have the ability to create real micro-loans and a new system to create credit scores for unbanked people over time. That’s wealth building, and it would transform Kenya.
Well, first off, let those who have the funds to do so, start building the right type of payment gateway. Start in Kenya and grow regionally, then continent-wide. It’s a semi-heavy investment (relative to who you are of course), but the return is absolutely insane. In fact, it’s ridiculous that after this long no one has done anything beyond build monopolies in this space.
[Note: My first post on this from 2 years ago]
I decided to update the look and feel of WhiteAfrican.com last night. No drastic changes, more of a cleanup really, as things seemed messy to me before. I’m a big fan of Chris Pearson, so I’m trying out his new Thesis theme. Bugs are still being worked out as I customize it a little bit…
I’ve been tracking a site called Jamati, an African entertainment portal, for a little while. Sitting out in Nairobi last week, I got an email wondering if I wanted to talk to the founder, a certain Elias Mageto, who happened to be in town from the US at the same time. Good timing!
“We want to be the go-to network for the diaspora.”
I thought Jamati was new. It isn’t. In fact, it was first launched in 2001, relaunched in 2005, and then relaunched again in 2007. The fact that I finally heard about it last year is proof that Elias finally has found the right mix to make it work.
Elias is Kenyan, with an American mother, and has no Kenyan accent at all (interestingly, a lot like a certain political candidate in the US). An unlikely background in Economics, time at the World Bank and Congressional Black Caucus wasn’t what I was expecting to hear as the background to his entrepreneurial drive into online entertainment. However, he saw a niche needing to be filled and, over 7 years, has continued to try to crack it open.
One of the things that Elias said struck me as very important for this type of pan-African portal play. That is, his seven-person team is made up of individuals from Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. Everyone in this space knows that it’s a lot easier to be regional than continental, but a team makeup like this means it’s easier to do. Those connections back into each major region are already there.
Competitively, two other new publishers,AfricanPath and African Loft, would seem to be the most logical comparison. However, knowing a little about both companies, I think they’re all doing different things (right now, but there will be greater overlap as they grow).
All bridge two worlds, with heavy readership percentages from the diaspora. It will be interesting to see which can grow as time passes, and more importantly, which can attract enough eyeballs for advertisers to start funding more growth.
One of the guys that I’ve been fortunate enough to get to know over the years is Ken Banks. He’s a tireless believer, and more importantly practitioner, in the field of mobile phone as change agent in the world. His FrontlineSMS mobile phone software has been making waves from Chile to Nigeria, and it’s use is only accelerating.
Since its initial release in 2005, FrontlineSMS has been adopted by NGOs in over forty countries for a wide range of activities including blood donor recruitment, assisting human rights workers, promoting government accountability, keeping medical students informed about education options, providing security alerts to field workers, election monitoring, the capture and exchange of vegetable (and coffee) price information, the distribution of weather forecasts, the co-ordination of healthcare workers, the organising of political demonstrations, the carrying out of surveys and the reporting and monitoring of disease outbreaks.
As of today (9am GMT), the new and improved version of FrontlineSMS will be unveiled. The software will continue to be made available for free to non-profits, available in Windows, Mac and Linux formats in six languages; Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Swahili.
Knowing Ken personally has a few perks, like the chance to see the new version early and know the amount of work he’s been putting into making this come into being. On top of that, Ushahidi will be utilizing FrontlineSMS as an extension to the new version of the tool we’re creating - and I know that InSTEDD plans to do the same. You know you’ve created something remarkable when you’re starting to make an impact on the NGO and the technology sides of the world.
Keeping up with Ken is difficult, as he’s a road warrior constantly speaking at conferences or in the field with his software. My suggestion is that you join the his Social Mobile Facebook group, catch him on Twitter, or read along on the Kiwanja.net blog.
Ken, congrats on this, I know it’s been a long time coming. Next drink is on me!
Barcamp Nairobi ended up being quite an event, with 228 attendees and an overwhelming amount of good conversations. The list included bloggers, web and mobile developers, government officials and students. We had people from all over Kenya, as well as a couple who came in from Tanzania. It was truly eclectic and exactly what we were hoping it would be. Josiah Mugambi has the full run-down of topics covered in each room.
Pictures
Can be found on Picasa, Flickr and Facebook (you’ll have to friend John Wesonga for the Facebook ones).
Videos
I’m working on uploading a couple videos from Barcamp Nairobi. There were some really good conversations started, not all of which I was able to get on video, or even be in the room for. Hopefully, we’ll get some blog posts and videos from others who were there as well.
I’ll continue uploading additional videos throughout the week on YouTube.
Barcamp Nairobi Bloggers (let me know if I missed you):
O’Reilly Radar (Programming Languages Survey)
Al Kags (gov’t perspective)
Rob Rooker
The Deeper Meaning of Life (Liz)
John Wesonga
Wilfred Mworia
Josiah Mugambi
Clement “Omesa” Ongera
Peperuka
Frontline Interactive
69mb (poster) (post #2)
Louder than Swahili (post #2)
Startup Africa
Notes from the Road (on Ndemo)
SportsKenya
Tech Talk (NY Times columnist)
Girl in the Meadow
The Gitts Zone
Brian Longwe
Kenyan Poet
Open Source Africa
Do Good Well
Business in Focus
Odyssean
Network World
What a great “day off”! The Tusker Safari Sevens was such a fun way to spend a Sunday. Taking sports photographs is one of my favorite things, and rugby is the best sport to do it in - so much action. I ended up wandering around like a press photographer, even climbing up the tower to get some unique views.
It’s the “Tusker” Safari Sevens, but I guess they don’t sponsor it well enough to also sponsor the team - they are sponsored by Virgin. In fact, I hear that it might not be called the Tusker Safari Sevens that much longer - too bad. I like that name, Kenyan beer and an internationally recognized Kenyan tournament, it’ll be sad to see it go.
This year brought in the world champion 7’s team from Fiji, as well as the French team. The emerging ‘Boks (South Africa’s team) were there as well, and they’ve won the last 3 years. Kenya ended up having to beat Fiji (which rumor says, each player would get 50,000/= shillings if they did).
Kenya won narrow, and hard fought, games against Fiji and Zimbabwe to get to the final. Meanwhile, the Emerging Boks smeared their competition on their way to meet Kenya. Honestly, I thought Kenya would have a hard time in this game. Instead, they blew the doors off with 2 quick tries, and never looked back as they won 31-12.
Of course, the crowd was rowdy as ever, singing familiar Kenyan rugby chants and getting drunker by the hour. Prime Minister Raila Odinga showed up mid-afternoon, to much fan fair and noise - a politically savvy move. All in all, it was a fabulously good time that I hope to see again next year.
(Note: I took over 1000 pictures, a couple dozen can be found here)
I’ve finally been able to upload some video, you can find more on my YouTube channel. Here is a shot of the last try by Kenya vs South Africa:
I’m totally abusing the great (relative term) wifi connection left over at the Jacaranda Hotel after Barcamp Nairobi. Getting images loaded up as fast as possible…
Barcamp Nairobi ‘08 pictures can be found on Flickr using the search tag, “barcampnairobi“.
My images are going up on this set.
Below, NY Times journalist G. Pascal Zachary, showed up and we had a great chat on the local tech makeup, opportunities and economy. Steve Mutinda tells his story of making mobile phone applications.
Things started on Nairobi time, we had some chai and samosa, now we’re beginning the sessions. There seems to be over 100 people here already. T-shirts are being handed out, and we’re passing out O’Reilly books and Yahoo freebies during the day.
TAG for blogging, Twitter and Flickr: barcampnairobi
My Barcamp pictures are going up to this set on Flickr.
First up is:
Second group:
I’ll be going up in the third session, talking about “blogging tips and tricks”.
Man, things are crazy. This last week has been very busy, and full of interesting stuff. Some of the more important, mixed with fun and mundane:
AfriGadget makes the Time.com list of “Top 50 Websites of 2008“. Completely unexpected, and thrilling to see. Thanks to all the editors like Steve, Juliana and JKE too.
Met up with an incredibly talented mobile phone application creator, Steve Mutinda, (J2ME) with two very cool mobile phone apps. Full video interviews on him too, and have just posted the first article.
Got together with some local Kenyan tech guys and we’re hacking away on a BugLabs BUGbundle, trying to get a cool app up and running on it by Barcamp Nairobi this weekend. Posting pictures on that soon.
Met up with a ton of local guys, with some really interesting projects and ideas that I’ll be blogging about soon. Including big thinker Al Kags of the ICT Board, talented designer Fadz of Ark, Matere Lutische with a really cool idea, and many more…
Redid the Ushahidi wireframes, and meeting with some local developers to help build version 2 with us. Got some neat stuff up our sleeves, and one big surprise for Saturday’s Barcamp.
Went and watched a lot of rugby (Pictures are up at Flickr), including Quins vs KCB, RVA vs Mang’u and the Safari Sevens veterans. I love rugby season, only wish I could play too.
Finally, the windup to tomorrow’s Barcamp Nairobi is at an end. Thanks to Google Kenya, Strategiclee, the Kenya ICT Board and Ushahidi for sponsoring it. We’re all set and ready to roll at the Jacaranda Hotel (Pizza Garden side). Should be a blast, and there will be a lot of pictures and posts to come.
Part of you wants to ignore it and hope it will go away. Zimbabwe is such a messed up place that it hurts to even think about it. In the midst of it all, one group is making sure that actions and events are being documented: Sokwanele.
It’s amazing how simple visuals can take a bunch of data and make it real. Above is a chart showing the mayhem, broken down by type. It’s a sick story, but one that can be told in almost real-time because of our current technology.
This is why mapping and other visualizations are so important. Sokwanele is simply collecting the news reports then archiving and parsing them for information. When those stories come in ones and twos throughout the week, it’s easier to ignore. When they’re put forward as a body of evidence using visuals to show their aggregate statistics, it becomes damning and impossible to ignore.
That’s a busy map above. In fact, so busy that you’ll be surprised to know that it’s just the violence that has been perpetrated since the elections at the end of March. Anyone remember the “old” map, from way back then, 3 months ago? I do, and have the screenshot below:
By the way, both of those maps only show a small sample of what is being done. Not everything is reported to news organizations or directly to Sokwanele.
Some people might ask, “But, does Sokwanele’s map help at all?” I’m guessing that it doesn’t directly. However, what it does do is proved fodder for organizations inside and out to make an even stronger case against this repressive regime.
[Note: if you can handle graphically violent images, check out Sokwanele's Flickr stream.]
On a Personal Note
Those of us on the Ushahidi team think on this stuff a lot. We’re not off trying to win mashup competitions and raise funding for further development because we think it’s a fun startup idea. No, we’re doing this because it matters and we believe our tool will help raise awareness and empower organizations to understand and activate against wrongs.
If anything, I’m compelled more than ever to figure out how technology can continue to create change in truly screwed up places.
I was quite excited at the opportunity, provided by Al Kags of Kenya’s ICT Board, to be a part of their meeting on eCommerce. This has always been a hot topic for me, as I strongly believe that the ability to transact business (through web or mobile) is one of the “killer apps” for Africa.
My take is that Africa needs a mobile payment system, akin to PayPal, that is both carrier and bank agnostic.
We’ll see if my definition of what it takes for eCommerce to work is the same as theirs.
NOTES from the meeting after the jump (long)
The private sector
Kevit Desai, Director of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance and the Kenya ICT Federation, starts off by reminding us that eCommerce effects all industries in Kenya, from health care to agriculture.
Marcel Werner, Chairman of KIF, steps up to state that eCommere will add 1% to Kenya’s GDP. Kenya is a champion in many areas, but not in eCommerce. There aren’t a lot of nations in Africa working in this area, except Rwanda, and he believes that Kenya should win that race. He states that eCommerce spurs entrepreneurship and innovation.
One of the great opportunities is in tourism, one of Kenya’s staples. However, eCommerce isn’t only for external forces and the export market, but also for domestic trade. Listing; rural B2C, B2B and G2C, also agricultural trade, healthcare, domestic trade, utilities, etc…
Gaps in the current legislation include the bills being light on fraud, the fact that liability ISPs aren’t defined and express support for eGovernment transactions. Beyond legislation though, which international affiliations should Kenya have? How does Kenya organize for arbitration?
Marcel talks a little about “transport”, as it relates to order fulfillment. It’s easy to sell things online, it’s hard to fulfill and deliver those orders. (I agree, fulfillment is a big deal. However, I also think that the private sector tends to figure this out pretty well, no matter the environment. Now, I don’t agree that it’s particularly easy to buy things online in Kenya right now though - not for the average person anyway.)
Kenya Law as it applies to eCommerce
Michael Murungi, Advocate Asst Editor of Kenya Law Reports. Defining eCommerce: Any form of business transaction in which the parties interact electronically rather than by physical exchanges or direct physical contact.
Why legislate? To legalize, facilitate or control/regulate eCommerce? Michael states that the primary reason for legislation is to facilitate better eCommerce and to protect parties doing transactions. Examples are the need for laws that help with personal privacy. Believes that we don’t need multiple regulators for this industry either, but just a single one for efficiency. However, that governing body needs to be split up between administrative and regulatory areas.
He wonders if the provisions that Kenya is thinking of putting into place don’t foreclose on future developments in e-cash. Examples include Chipknip in the Netherlands and the Octopus card in Hong Kong.
Michael talks about the need for ISP immunity - as it’s crucial to the ICT industry. ISPs should have no general obligation to monitor data traffic, unless the ISP becomes aware of illegal activity. Limitation of liability for transmitting, cacheing, hosting and third-party linking.
Finally, there is a need for prosecution for electronic crime and security.
Paul Kukubo, CEO of the Kenya ICT Board, has come up to talk about both the ICT Board’s mandate and how eCommerce applies to it. Four long term goals:
The web plays a very large part in ICT in this space. Paul has had a great deal of experience implementing eCommerce in the private sector (previously at 3Mice). eCommerce legislation is important in order to increase the amount of transactions that could be taking place in Kenya. We don’t see enough eCommerce activity in Kenya… yet. Part of the ICT Boards responsibility is to raise awareness of eCommerce in the country.
A lot of the eCommerce activities will take place over the mobile phone. We must recognize that as the medium for the future for Kenya. I wouldn’t be surprised if MPesa does more transactions than some small banks. We must be aware of how our population is accessing goods and services through technologies.
Paul breaks into some thoughts on digitizing of forms and documents. Right now there is a propensity to store these documents in hard copy, and not digitally. Paul believes that they might be more secure saved digitally rather than in paper. Example given of a land deed contrasted to a banking/sale transaction for that property.
People are looking for goods and services that simplify their lives. So, what should the exclusions be in the laws? What are the principals behind them, rather than just the exclusions themselves? We see a world in which every record will be a digital record - in 10 years. So these are serious questions.
For international business, it’s incredibly important that we have legislation for data protection and privacy. If business process outsourcing (BPO) is one of the larger initiatives that we’re looking to do, then we must understand that the right legislation to attract international business is critical.
Dr. Juma Oketch, head of the e-government secretariat in the Office of the President - directly connected to the Ministry of information through the Kenya ICT Board.
Every once in a while, in this line of work, you get a genuinely welcome and unexpected surprise. That’s what happened the other night when I met up with some local tech guys and a certain Steve Mutinda showed up just happening to mention that he did some J2ME programming. He has created two mobile phone apps (and working on a third), which I’ll review over a couple of posts.
In brief, LiveQuotes let’s you track the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) from your GPRS enabled phone.
The NSE updates their data every time a trade happens, and that information can be downloaded as a CSV. Steve has it setup so that he checks it every minute, allowing you to have near real-time access to the exchange, and a scrolling ticker for your selected portfolio. Want to see how your stock has done over time? No problem, there is a basic line chart showing how your shares have done historically.
Steve started this about 3 months ago, soft-launching it to a few friends as he worked on new features and fixed things up. So far there are 200 users. I would expect that to change soon. 800,000 Kenyans have just bought into the Safaricom IPO was his inspiration, and a good one because it means there are hundreds of thousands of new stock owners in Kenya.
While it’s fee right now, plans are to charge 30/= Kenya Shillings per week ($0.50 cents) per user. Anyone can receive the application through a simple SMS with a link to the URL, and then registering on the spot. Safaricom or Celtel (depending on which carrier the end user has) will act as middleman for transactions, paying Steve on a monthly basis.
A little math will tell you that by getting just 10,000 users he will make about 300,000/= per week ($4,665). $18,000/month is a nice salary by almost anyone’s standards. I’ll be asking for a loan from him soon, I hope.
What else is in the future? Uganda and Tanzania for one, possibly the rest of Africa if things go well. On the technology side, look for some type of API that will allow others to access the same pre-parsed information.
See it in action in the video below:
One of the thing I love about coming to Kenya is the passionate developers that are scattered around Nairobi. Tonight 6 of us got together to hack on the borrowed BugLabs device, and to brainstorm a Sony Ericsson SDK mobile phone application.
Brian Muita and Wilfred Mworia had their first chance to play with the BUGbundle, a device that you can hack about 10 ways from Sunday. So far we’re understanding the device, and are working on getting a premade working app on it. Needless to say, we’ll likely be in the BugLabs forums quite a lot this week so we can get it working in time for Saturday’s Barcamp Nairobi. (update: Brian got it to work!)
Eric Magutu, Laban Mwangi and Steve Mutinda were all there to brainstorm a cool application that would allow them to utilize some of the neat features available in the Sony Ericsson SDK that had been showcased at Skunkworks last week.
Wananchi is one of the largest ISPs in Kenya. I was invited to come see the installation of Wananchi’s brand new Intel Sat satellite dish, for use in their new WiMax, fiber and cable TV offerings. Two reasons it was interesting.
First, because it’s being installed in Upper Hill, my old neighborhood. I just don’t recognize this place anymore with all of the new commercial buildings.
Second, and probably more interesting to everyone else, is that this dish is aimed directly at the mass market in Kenya and stands to drastically lower the costs of bandwidth to the home. Wananchi will be offering 512k broadband to the home for 3000 shillings ($). Compare that to the next best offerings by Safaricom with their new 3G service for 2000/= (700Mb) or 4000/= (2Gb), and Access Kenya with 256k at 6000 shillings.
From here, it looks like anyone wanting to stay untethered and who doesn’t have that high of bandwidth consumption would likely choose Safaricom (700Mb isn’t a lot). However, if you’re going to spend more than a modicum of your time on the internet, then Wananchi’s new service is the most attractive.
Wananchi’s towers also have fiber pumped directly into them, so more speed and reliability out of the gate. To manage their large 100 tower rollout in the Nairobi area, they’re piggybacking cell towers with Celtel, and hope to be done by around October. Certain towers, with service off of this new dish, will go live by the beginning of July.
All told, I have to say I’m impressed. Not just by Wananchi’s offering, which will come as great news for the public, but that the communications industry is moving along so quickly. Thought international fiber is still a dream in Kenya, local connectivity is booming.
So, where’s the local version of WordPress MU setup for local bloggers? Where are the local web services by local software guys for local companies? That we shall find out shortly, this weekend at Barcamp Nairobi.
(Update: Full-sized images on Flickr)
Nigeria places a distant second, while 2 more Central/East African countries are heavily in their drink too (Rwanda and Burundi). Can’t say I know why there’s such an abundance of pombe in that region…
That’s from a neat data visualization tool called Many Eyes. Again showing the importance of data visualization for understanding large amounts of data easily.
I read, or heard, someone say that data visualizations are there, “to help the ignorant understand complex issues”. That’s about as accurate as it gets. Not ignorant in a bad way, but not everyone can be a statistician, a specific field specialist, or have the time to crunch numbers.
A bonus visualization showing mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people throughout sub-Saharan Africa:
(hat tip Ethan)
I’m starting to compile a list of interesting technology events happening around the continent. If this ends up being useful, I’ll create a page to keep it updated. Let me know if you like it, or if there is someone already keeping a calender of sorts.
Upcoming events to watch (chronological):
West & Central Africom - “The premier meeting place for communications decision-makers to discuss the key issues facing the market.”
Dates: June 18-19, 2008
Location: Abuja Int’l Conference Center in Abuja, Nigeria
Barcamp Nairobi ‘08 - A local “unconference” for Kenyan techies, web designers and bloggers. (disclosure: I’m part of this)
Dates: June 21, 2008
Location: Jacaranda Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya
APPFRICA - a new technology conference and thinktank.
Dates: July 31, 2008
Location: Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda
WordCamp SA - For all bloggers in and around South Africa.
Dates: August 23, 2008
Location: TBD, in Cape Town, South Africa
Barcamp Kampala - Another unconference pops up for Uganda - looking forward to hearing about this one.
Dates: August 29, 2008
Location: TBD, Kampala, Uganda
MobileActive ‘08 - A conference on mobile technology for social impact.
Dates: October 13-15, 2008
Location: TBD in Johannesburg, South Africa
[If you have a good tech conference coming up, let me know.]
I’ll be offline for the next couple days as I hit the road for Nairobi. I’m arriving just in time for the Safari Sevens rugby tournament starting Friday, and will be in Nairobi until the end of the month. If anyone wants to get together, shoot me an email.
I thought I’d leave everyone with some links to stories that I’ve enjoyed over the last week.
More in a day or two, once I land…
Above is the map of the, “iPhone conquest of the world” shown at Apple’s WWDC keynote today. 15 African nations are getting in on the game now that is is 3G and more affordable. Honestly, I wonder how many of the local networks can handle the data load, but that’s another conversation. Orange will be the carrier for Africa (as well as the Middle East and Europe).
The iPhone will be released in many countries on July 11th. However, the full index of countries, including all of the African nations (save South Africa), won’t see the iPhone until later in the year.
The 15 countries are:
Botswana, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, South Africa.
The iPhone in Africa. Really?
Many people will say that the iPhone will never be of any consequence in Africa. Possibly true. Outside of Egypt and South Africa, the number of people who can afford post-paid data plans are fairly limited. The second problem is the data networks themselves, many of them aren’t ready for the stress that iPhone users will apply (as AT&T wasn’t in the US).
I reserve judgment. Blackberry’s, N95s and other smart phones can be made to work in Africa quite well. However, I don’t think what we’re seeing is “just another smart phone”. It’s a new operating system that changes the paradigm of the mobile phone/web. (I think Android is similar in many ways too - just more open).
What will happen is those who can afford the iPhone and the requisite post-paid plan will rush out and buy it. The data networks will become stronger to support it, and local developers will start building for apps (not to mention the secondary and tertiary applications and APIs that are needed).
Years from now, when the idea of the mobile web isn’t so flashy and unknown in Africa, we’ll look back and say our thanks to the iPhone as one of the catalysts that pushed development forward.
Gruber gets it right:
“The physical phone is not the story. A year from now, the iPhone 3G will be replaced by another new model. The platform is the story. Platforms have staying power, and, once entrenched, are very hard to displace.”
[image courtesy of Engadget, and full notes from keynote. Full video on Apple.com]
Coders. Designers. Bloggers.
If you’re in Nairobi on June 21st, mark your calendar! We’ll be meeting at Jacaranda Hotel, going from 10am-5pm for Barcamp Nairobi ‘08.
What is a Barcamp?
“BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.”
All you need to know is this: it beats the hell out of a normal conference.
There is no pre-planned schedule of events, or speakers. There are set timeframes and rooms for anyone who comes in to sign-up for a time to speak in. You attend the ones you find the most interesting. It’s also less speaking than it is conversation and discussion around a specific topic.
Ideas for Barcamp Nairobi ‘08
I’m sure you’ll come up with plenty of other items that are well worth having a discussion about. Here are some of the things on my mind that I hope to hear and/or talk about:
Of course, I’ll do a talk on Ushahidi. Not just Ushahidi though, but some of the really interesting and open areas surrounding the crowdsourcing of content in Africa using mobile devices. Then, augmenting that content with web services like Google Maps, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, etc.
Oh, I didn’t mention that Ushahidi will be providing free t-shirts for attendees. You have to be signed up on the Barcamp wiki to get one, so head on over!
Sponsored by Ushahidi, Yahoo and O’Reilly so far, get in touch with me if you’d like to sponsor as well. We could use a few more shillings to cover some of the expenses. And schwag, attendees can’t get enough schwag…
You can also RSVP on the Facebook event page, but know that for the t-shirts you need to be registered on the wiki.
Two sites recently caught my attention coming out of East Africa.
Bongoza is a new search engine for Tanzania. I’m intrigued by this idea of a niche search engine by country. Usually I would think that the big search engines would do an adequate job for any area, however it might be different if there’s a human helping to index uniquely Tanzanian content, especially as much of it is in Swahili.
The sites in the index are mostly sites that end in the .tz TLD. But since most companies in Tanzania have .com’s, he searches on the internet for hosting companies in Tanzania and gets a list of websites that they host and index them accordingly.
Ali Damji is the gentleman behind the Bongoza. He also created the Tanzania Startpage, which is a useful index of interesting Tanzanian websites, and and Mshikaji (which appears to be down). I love seeing this kind of online entrepreneurship and will make sure to watch this space for more from Tanzania.
EA Collective is a new blog that aims to showcase Kenyan designers. I hope that Barbara Muriungi takes their name seriously though and broadens the scope to web designers from Uganda and Tanzania as well. I know I’ll be paying attention, as I’m always looking for top-notch web designers and developers from Africa.
If you’re a web designer from East Africa, you should consider getting your work in front of Barbara for her to post to the EA Collective blog at bkagwiria [at] gmail.com.
Wow, we’re absolutely stunned, but we just won first place at the NetSquared Challenge! That means we have a check for $25,000 that we can spend on further development of the Ushahidi Engine (version 2).
(Photo by Schipulites)
More important than the money for us though is the validation that we got from the community at large for our mission. It’s the Kenyan and African community that got us here, and the NetSquared community that voted for us to win. A special thank you to NetSquared for making this possible.
To everyone who has supported us, a BIG thank you.
We’re not done with you yet though. We hope that you will continue to be a part of the greater Ushahidi community. Helping us develop the platform further. Helping us spread the word. Most of all, helping us implement it in crisis situations.
Stay connected with us:
Ushahidi Facebook group
Ushahidi Twitter
Want to help? Here are a few of the items that we’re looking for help on:
[update: A couple people have asked for the presentation loop that we had running at our table. It is now up at Slideshare.net (I'll try to get an audio dub over it soon).]
| View | Upload your own
We’re at the NetSquared conference (day 2) still, where we’ll learn the verdict of the voters on whether or not we win. So, cross your fingers! Here’s an interview done of me (short). I actually was laughing at myself since it looks like I’m talking into a fish-eye lense.
Short interview at NetSquared of me. I’ll add the one of David when it is posted.(video)
Ushahidi covered on the TED Blog
(image by Manny Hernandez founder of Tudiabetes
and Estudiabetes, two communities for people
touched by diabetes. On the right is Vam Makam, our new friend and local expert from Adobe.)
After the NetSquared event last night, David and I took off for the WordPress party where we met up with Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress.
Mobile Phone Posts
One of my favorite bloggers has written a piece on South African mobile banking options.
A write up by Katrin of Mobile Active on the “Say no to Xenophobia” campaign being run by Cell-Life in South Africa. I hope their campaign starts coordinating with the United for Africa campaign soon, it only makes sense.
Jan Chipchase on, “Understanding Non-Literacy as a Barrier to Mobile Phone Communication“, part of a larger publication.
I need to write a big thank you post today. It was through you, the greater African community, that David and myself are heading to San Francisco today to present Ushahidi at the NetSquared Mashup Challenge that gives us a chance to win up to $20,000 for further development work. Your support helped us get the most votes going in, so now it’s up to us to win over the conference attendees (who are the final voters).
As I mentioned in my last blog post, we were sidetracked from our preparations a little bit this last week by an even more important event/crisis - the xenophobic attacks happening in South Africa. The Ushahidi engine is being used there now at UnitedforAfrica.co.za.
We’re also unveiling our new logo today, designed by David. Watch the flash presentation to see why we chose it.
Ushahidi is now a registered non-profit in Florida, jumping all the hoops to become a 501c3, with Ory, myself, Juliana and David as part of the team. Get in touch if you’d like to be part of the growing Ushahidi community.
The Ushahidi engine (version 1) is being used to map reports of the current xenophobic attacks happening in South Africa on a site called UnitedforAfrica.co.za. The attacks are a product of foreigners moving across the borders, especially Zimbabwean, and encroaching on the lives of South Africans. I suggest reading this BBC article for more information.
Quirk, a web marketing agency in Cape Town is leading this charge, with Tim Shier, Rafiq and David Kobia all pulling VERY late nights last night to make this come together. Quirk will act as administrators on this build, and the Ushahidi team will step away from it as soon as the build is done.
The most important part of this type of campaign is to get the word out. SMS, email, call your friends and family all over South Africa and get them to tell their friends so that more reports come in. The more that come in, the better the tool.
A couple resources for this crisis in South Africa:
So, what’s up with this “Ushahidi engine”?
As you might/might not be aware, we’ve worked up a plan for a new version of Ushahidi (v2) that would replace what we’ve done as a free and open source tool for crowdsourcing crisis information and then visualizing that on a map. We’ll be presenting that idea next week at the NetSquared challenge in California, and are already building the basic architecture for that. This collaboration with the guys in South Africa ends up being a perfect example of the need for a rapid deployment tool like Ushahidi.
What we could use is more developers from around the world to help us. We already have a good dozen who have committed to helping in some way or other, ranging from the Bay area in California to Kenya to South Africa and Malawi. If you’d like to take part, please get in touch!
Charl Norman is one of the great examples of new media entrepreneurs coming out of South Africa. He’s has an amazing work ethic, showcased in a growing blog empire and three popular social networks. What Charl has been able to do in the last couple years should put the fire under any other web entrepreneur in Africa. He does quality work, finds hidden niches and works hard to promote them.
One of the social networks that Charl created was Blueworld, a social networking site for (younger) South Africans. Recently 24.com acquired a controlling stake in Blueworld for an undisclosed amount. That’s a big success story for a little startup, and one that gives Charl enough money to go do even more exciting things.
Blueworld is a social community where anyone can join and create a profile so your friends can find you online, upload an unlimited number of photos, share videos, write your own blogs, support your peers with groups, send text messages to any network for free, discover new people and connect with friends.
I remember when Blueworld first came out a couple years ago. Like many social networks, it was fairly simple and bare-bones. Looking at the most recent version though, you can see major changes. There are a lot more people using it, and the site is more robust.
Like any other social network, once you gain enough users you have critical mass and the site grows on its own. With 137,000 registered users by March of this year, Blueworld is becoming quite a force in the web space in South Africa. By any measure, Blueworld is a resounding success story for Africa.
Find out more about Charl at his blog, but also check out some of his other work:
Bandwidth Blog (SA web startup news)
BlogBuzz (a mini SA blog aggregator)
Carblog
GayPeers (social network for gays/lesbians in SA)
NetBuzz (a mini SA news aggregator)
Powerloss (focused on power/energy issues in SA)
SA Rugby Blog
Zoopedup (automotive social network)
I’m glad that I decided to stay the 2 extra days following Where 2.0 in order to attend WhereCamp 2008, held at Google’s offices. Frankly, I don’t think you could come up with a better venue. Dusty, Ryan and Anslem did a great job of pulling it all together. We lacked for nothing; WiFi, food, beverages, good conversations, and talks.
It was a real trip to be amongst some of these true geo/mapping gurus, which led to some great discussions. A few memorable ones:
Of all these discussions I was most interested in the one on “time”. It’s one of the areas that we felt made Ushahidi so much more usable, and so we’re trying to figure out ways to make it even more useful in the next iteration. Time is one of the few variables that hasn’t been well represented in map visualizations, but I think this year will see that change significantly.
And, of course, the lightning rounds were a lot of fun. Each person had 5 minutes to talk about whatever they liked. We heard about everything from geocaching games to visualizing crime via heatmaps, to NNDB’s mapper tool that allows you to map relationships between people and things.
Google handed out tents for all of us, so there were quite a few who camped out in the open area over night. Great way to keep people around, and a fun little item to remember the event by.
[more images on Flickr]
Unfortunately it looks like TED Africa won’t be taking place in September of this year. A lot of us were looking forward to this, so it’s very disappointing.
I hope they can get this to work in 2009.
Here’s the email from TED curator Chris Anderson:
Dear Friends of TED,
Regretfully, we’re having to suspend plans for our TEDAfrica event scheduled for the end of September 2008 in Cape Town.
As you may know, we sought to launch this event under the control of a local team, operating under a license. The goal was to build on the full impact and quality of the TED conference held in Tanzania last year. But after reviewing progress with our licensees, we have mutually agreed that that is not going to be achievable in the available time. Our licensees did all they could to deliver on an ambitious plan, and I commend their efforts.
We apologize to those of you who are disappointed or inconvenienced. TED remains 100% committed to continuing to serve its growing and passionate African community. We are considering a number of options, including holding an event in 2009, and expect to make a further announcement soon.
If you have any specific questions or concerns, please write to my colleague jane@ted.com. Meanwhile we will continue to promote content from the Arusha conference online and to work on Neil Turok’s amazing TED Prize wish: that the next Einstein should come from Africa. Please take a look at the nexteinstein.org website just launched by TED partners Avenue A/Razorfish, as well as this recent TEDBlog post celebrating the new AIMS Research Centre in South Africa.
Sincerely,
Chris Anderson
TED Curator
If you’re looking to take part in another conference in Cape Town, Gareth Knight is putting on Tech4Africa, which was supposed to be right after TED Africa.
I had the honor of closing O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 Conference today, where I gave a talk on “Activist Mapping” and some history on our Ushahidi project in Kenya. A couple people have asked me to make the slides available, so I’ve embedded the presentation below.
| View | Upload your own
I’m not sure how useful those images are without the context of me speaking to them. Since I generally type out my notes, I’ve added those below after the “more” button. The notes are not verbatim what I said, but will give you a general indication of what I talked about.
More after the jump! (warning, this is long as it’s a 20 minute talk)
This is my transcript for the talk, follow along as you can…
Where 2.0 Talk on Mapping and Digital Activism
Intro
I’m here to talk to you about real-world usage of your work. Specifically, in the world of causes and issues, where (usually) unpaid civilians use your tools to further their causes: Activists.
My name is Erik Hersman. A short intro on me that will help you understand some of my personal history and motivations will give you some context before you hear about what I did a little later in this talk. I grew up as the son of linguistic missionaries in Sudan and Kenya, only moving back to the US to go to college. I write two blogs, White African is my personal blog where I like to talk about high-tech mobile, web and PC issues pertaining to Africa. AfriGaget is a group blog that I started a couple years ago that focuses on low-tech ingenuity in Africa.
First off, since I’m the last speaker, and since I’m one of those tech guys on the far end of the spectrum that Jesse Robbins talked about earlier, I want to cover some of the really cool things that I saw here that could be hacked/simplified and used in crisis, disaster, and relief scenarios.
Things I’m excited about!
Geotate - imagine this kind of device used by bloggers/reporters in a hot zone
AfricaMap open source project by Harvard
Bug Labs device
DIY Drones - think what you could do with cheap UAVs in a post-disaster scenario.
The tools you create, and the work you do to map the world digitally, are incredibly useful. The world is only now beginning to wake up to the power of the digital, social and living map.
Okay, on to my real talk!
The Ushahidi Story (Summarized)
So, the reason I’m here is due to the fact that I stood up and did something during a time that I wish had never happened. Some of you might be aware that in January of this year in Kenya there was a disputed election where the incumbent (President Mwai Kibaki) claimed a win. There were some gross irregularities, and the opposition (Raila Odinga) refused to accept the questionable results.
What started out as a political fracas quickly devolved down ethnic lines where Raila’s supporters displaced and killed many of Kibaki’s tribe (Kikuyu), while the same happened in Kibaki’s area and the ethnic groups around that area (Luo, Luhya, Kalenjin).
Government forces and civilians battled it out in the urban slums and rural Kenya. It was crazy, somewhat unexpected, and few were ready to report what was happening. Speaking of reporting, as soon as Kibaki swore himself in to a second term, he simultaneously created a media blackout. The only way to get news now was via non-traditional news sources, like blogs. Internally, though there was only old TV and radio show reruns, though rumors and messages were still flying via SMS.
In the midst of it were a couple members of what would soon become the Ushahidi team. Juliana was upcountry and used her blog, Twitter and Flickr to get news out. Ory was in Nairobi, and her blog quickly became the focal point for the international Kenyan diaspora as they tried to get information about what was happening back home. Ory was hearing stories and reports that were not being told outside of Kenya, and many not being reported at all. On one blog post she said,
[Quote slide by Ory]
When I read that, I quickly contacted my Kenyan tech friends.
Our goals were to:
Building Ushahidi
[Ushahidi Calendar]
A loose affiliation of Kenyan technologists and bloggers banded together to create this tool, with the initial goal of aggregating citizen and news reports of violence in real time. 4 days later we had Ushahidi.
It was a way for everyday Kenyans to report in incidences of violence via SMS, email or the web. It was very simple, but it worked, and that was what was important. The Kenyan diaspora, especially the blogging community, rallied around this cause and made people take notice. It ended up being a community action that led to whatever success Ushahidi had.
[Main page] - Demo the site live
[Report detail page]
[Timeline feature]
Let me give you just a few examples from an active day on Ushahidi during the crisis. On January 17th the following things happened:
“Protesters gathered in groups and attempted to walk into the town centre; police fired live shots and tear gas canisters to disperse them. Three protesters were seriously injured and one shot dead.”
“Police battled youths who set fire to roadblocks; the police shot indiscriminately, “targeting anyone on sight”; one man was shot in the stomach as he stood in front of his house.”
“A 13-year old boy was laid to rest next to his uncle´s house; the burial was attended by hundreds of residents who wailed and lit up bonfires.”
What we realized was that we were receiving a lot of information, but we didn’t have a way to track what happened afterwards. We heard anecdotally about how the information was used for good, but we had no way of knowing all of the time.
Results
Lessons Learned
An Enemy Around Every Corner (Really?)
Thoughts on this issue evolved out of discussions I had with a gentleman in meeting we both attended about tools for digital activists. Ushahidi was still fresh, and up until that point we had been so focused on just getting the site up and getting the word out about the project that we hadn’t thought about things such as security of our information, how it could be used by “bad guys”, or how we could verify all reports.
Map Accuracy
- How do you deal with this in a relatively unmapped regions?
- How important is accuracy when raising awareness vs using that data for human rights violations?
Verification
- Is the source trusted?
- Data poisoning
What we learned after development was that data sources and accuracy are very important. What you do with your data, the verification process, and how accurate the data is represented on the map all play a huge role in credibility. More so, how that tool is used by friendly and non-friendly organizations has large repercussions for both the tool and the people you are trying to help.
What’s next
Ushahidi ended up being a prototype that we’ve learned a lot from, and which opened the door for us to learn what organizations and everyday people are looking for when trying to share their data in a map-based setting during a crisis. We were approached, about creating an easy tool that can be used in early warning or conflict mapping scenarios by the public. We think we’ve learned a thing or two about that, but still have a long way to go on it.
We finally incorporated Ushahidi as a US-based non-profit last month. We have some initial funders, which will allow us to create a simple, useful and powerful tool for activists and NGOs around the world. It’s an Open Source project, with over a dozen international developer volunteers so far. If you’d like to know more about this, talk to me afterwards.
On Activism
Activism is a funny thing, because what you care enough to be active about might seem mundane, stupid or even like enemy actions. It covers the gamut - political, societal, land rights, environmental, etc…
It also turns out that activism is very subjective. Your idea of who an activist is and what they do can span the spectrum.
- Bra burning women of the 1960’s (fact or fiction?)
- Anonymous (vs Scientology)
- G-8 protesters
- Support Your Local Brewery!
- Minutemen on the US border (for & against)
As seen in the last example, there’s always an “enemy”, due to the fact that on the other side of an activist’s issue is another person. For better or for worse, they’re the antagonist.
Activists are just a cross section of society, so they’re not always technologically proficient. If you ask yourself later why ever single example I show you of activist mapping is using Google Maps or Google Earth, I can tell you that it’s most likely due to the simplicity of just getting something to work quickly.
Examples of activists using maps around the world:
I’d like to end by giving you a speed-run through other examples of maps being used in creative ways around the world by activists. You can find much more on their individual websites, and I will have the whole presentation available for download on my blog (white african) and it should be available on the Where 2.0 site after the conference as well.
A few points to end with.
Finally, a digitally connected world not only grants us a front row seat to the rest of the world, but also the power to influence events and create change in a way that was impossible just a few short decades ago. So that events that may occur thousands of miles away are in fact - quite literally - in our digital backyard. Which makes it a lot harder to just sit back and watch.
Where 2.0 has started. One series of speakers down, and much more to come. I have the distinct impression that I’m going to have some serious information overload by the end of the day…
I thoroughly enjoyed Adrian Holovaty of EveryBlock’s talk. His partner Paul wrote a couple pieces on rolling your own maps recently that I loved. They’re breaking down the reliance on the mega mapping API’s (Google, Yahoo, MS) as the only way to show your geographic data. Adrian also talked about something that I often think of; using more than just points in showing map data. We need more polygons (ex: heatmaps) and lines.
Nokia’s Michael Halbherr, head of Location Based Services (LBS) did a short talk on Ovi, their platform for seemless mapping integration between mobiles and the web. He made a point of saying that Nokia is mobile/guidance centric, not web/location centric.
Next up was Sean Gorman, who is doing some really interesting things with his organization(s) FortiusOne and Geocommons. His biggest thoughts/concerns were over dealing with massive data sets and the emerging semantic web. To that end he announced Finder!, which I have to admit seems pretty slick. His demo was showing how you could mashup private data sets (your company’s local sales data) with open census data, all available for download as KML, CSV or shape files. It’s slick, go sign up for the beta.
Last up was John Hanke of Google Earth, who announced two items:
John mentioned that, “maps help us organize, plan, provide context and decide.” I think that’s what has made me love maps since I was a kid, and why I’m so interested in the ability to do dynamic and real-time mapping.
For thoughts and analysis on what is happening here at Where 2.0, I’ll pass you off to some mapping gurus:
Off the Map
All Points Blog
Mapufacture Blog
Google Earth Blog
The AnyGeo Blog
High Earth Orbit
Very Spatial
As I was putting together my talk on “Activist Mapping” for Where 2.0, I realized that I was getting a little to fragmented in message. One of the areas I’m probably not going to have time to cover is what I consider the consumer-accessibility of mapping tools, so here it is.
Is There Something to be Learned from the Blogging Evolution?
In my last blog post I showed a slide talking about the timeline of major blogging engines. I did this because I was exploring a premise that there might be something in common with the way self-publishing tools on the web have developed, and the way mapping tools are developing. As I’ve dealt with mapping solutions on eppraisal.com and Ushahidi, I can’t help but think how powerful they are, but still so hard for a non-programmer to really master. The beauty of the blogging engines is that they finally created a way for an “ordinary” person to create a personal website.
When I look at that timeline, I wonder if we’re not in the same era with mapping that we were in with blog CMS tools back in the early 2000’s?
Comparing 3 Digital Activist Tools
As I was thinking about mapping, blogging and activism, I also thought about another one of the core digital tools that activist use worldwide: mobile phones. What would a simple comparison be between the 3?
Blogging’s learning curve is fairly shallow, if you can handle email or word processing, then you can understand how blogging works and do it. It’s middling when it comes to accessibility worldwide, due to bandwidth and PC requirements.
Mobiles are moderately hard to work into good activist campaigns, additional software can make this easier, but planning the campaign doesn’t necessarily take a technologist. Accessibility is widespread and simple to g
Getting from the Tech Elite to “Everyone Else”
Those thoughts led me to think about Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm book, where he talks about the difficulties of getting technologies to leap from the technology elite to the the masses. By anyones definition, I think we’ve seen that happen with blogging. Not so with mapping… yet.
Within the mapping ranks there are definitely those that are trying. Google’s My Maps and Platial/Frappr come to mind as I think of good examples of consumer-facing self-generated mapping applications. However, so much of what is being done (as cool/powerful/amazing as it is) is still only understood and grokked by the mapping gurus of the world.
This is seen first hand in what we had to do with Ushahidi. The ability to just create a map system that was even slightly geo-coded correctly for Kenya took a little work. Not everyone could just jump right in and mashup something as simple as that. Will it ever be as easy as jumping in and creating a blog, or will mapping always be a tech-centered effort?
Sources: I put the above graphic together from the following timeline that I found on Wikipedia, Enterprise blogs and the platform owners blogs.
Why?
I’m working on my talk for Where 2.0 next week and am starting to think that there is an analogy between current consumer-facing mapping tools and where we were in the early 2000’s with blogging and journaling tools. Not sure if I’ll even talk about this, but thought the research into blogging engines was worth sharing.
An article over at Ostatic blog about the escalating open source wars at the OLPC got me thinking again about this project. In general, I’m a big proponent of using OS in the OLPC and hate where this fight is taking things. Why do I even like the OLPC? Well, it has something to do with this quote:
It should be noted that the point of the laptop project was not to give children access to the Internet, or to word processors, or even so that they could learn to touch-type. The idea was to provide children with an open-ended system with which they could tinker and explore — and through that exploration, learn. Papert long referred to computers as “the children’s machine,” because it offers children the chance to learn by creating and sharing, two key elements of Papert’s educational theory known as “constructionism.”
At the end of the day, I just want more computers in the hands of kids in Africa. It’s only by younger generations gaining access to technology that we see major change happen.
Of course, this begs the question about mobile phones. Is it possible to program for mobile phones on mobile phones? If so, maybe we can skip some of this PC paradigm altogether…
There is a reason that Africans, by and large, love Nokia and there’s a reason that the brand has made such an impact in that part of the world. While most companies around the world are ignoring Africa, Nokia actively develops solutions for the continent.
I’m continually impressed with Nokia. They seem to really care about making money by doing things right. That’s easy enough for any large multinational to say, but much harder to practice. However, a couple new stories popped up recently that prove this out.
First off, you should go read what Jan Chipchase is writing about Nokia’s Open Studios. They’re working in shanty towns from Ghana to India actively listening to their target audience in the developing world. One of the initiatives that they just ran was a competition to design your ideal future phone”. Below is just one of the designs, see the rest in at BusinessWeek.
Nokia Civilian Police: Designed by a 17-year-old living in a Liberian refugee settlement, this phone is designed to help the user record daily life in the camp. This way he can share his experiences with others. It also helps fight crime by including two separate cameras. This also ensures that both he and his brother have access to a camera.
Beyond the ethnographic and discovery stages of what Nokia does are the actual phones. Juliana writes about Nokia’s new mobile phones for emerging markets. This is where all the work by people like Jan and Younghee come to fruition.
Lastly, everyone should be aware of Nokia’s Beta Labs, which is full of news and information on what they’re doing in markets around the world. It’s their skunkworks and R&D center (the stuff that they share anyway), and it’s just one more touch point to see how Nokia is innovating around the world.
This was my favorite talk at the Web 2.0 Expo - probably one of my favorite talks period. I promptly went out and bought Clay’s new book, Here Comes Everybody, and am working through that right now. It’s good.
The big question he answers is, “Where do people find the time?”
Enjoy the 15 minute video:
Read the transcript here.
“Building a Startup You Love is Hard”
A new paper by South African Gareth Knight that gives valuable advice for new entrepreneurs in the digital space. He’s the creator of Kindo, a family tree application.
Startups Nigeria Blog
I’m really digging this new blog by a Nigerian named Loy. He’s covering some cool new apps by Nigerians, including CVCrib, which I plan on reviewing myself soon.
Techpreneurs in Kenya
A PDF document by Business Daily that discusses some of the brilliant young entrepreneurs and their ideas in Kenya. Here’s the PDF for download
“Why Africa May Never Produce a Microsoft, Google, Yahoo or Facebook”
An interesting article that discusses the challenge that young college-level entrepreneurs face in Africa.
There are a number of technology companies from South Africa that have had no small amount of success. I want to take a minute to highlight two of them though, because I think they show something important.
The decision you have to make when deciding to create a technology business, a web or mobile application in Africa, is whether it’s something for the local market or international. Very few companies are solving for both. In my examples you’ll see Mxit, a company solving for a local problem, and Synthasite, a company solving for an international problem.
For those who don’t know, Mxit created a java-enabled chat application for mobile phones that decreases the cost per message compared by ~90% of a normal SMS message. They have over 7.5 million users after just a few years in action, and are the staple communication system for young mobile users in South Africa. It’s a phenomenon, and they’re looking to expand internationally.
Synthasite is the free web site creator and publishing platform, designed and created in the mold of any Web 2.0 app coming out of the Silicon Valley. Vinny, the founder, tells me that they have over 70k users and are increasing that by 1000 each day - which puts them as one of the top 3 services like this in the world. They have just moved 1/3 of their operations to San Francisco, with 2/3 of the company still in Cape Town.
Both of these companies had completely different strategies: local and global. These companies serve to prove that any developer in Africa with a good idea that solves a problem, and has the drive to see it through, can be incredibly successful. It’s inspiring, and I hope that more of Africa’s web developers will see the opportunities all around them.
[Image courtesy of Rafiq via Flickr]
I was fortunate enough to spend an evening talking to Kaushal yesterday. He’s a third-generation Kenyan of Indian descent, now working in the tech-land of San Francisco.
During the course of our discussion, we talked about mobile phones and the web. An interesting point that Kaushal brought up was the fact that only a certain layer of society really has access to the web, and the rest only have access to simple communications through their mobile phone.
That little insight gets pretty interesting when you start applying some real project concepts to that thought. One of Kaushal’s ideas was to create a job platform that had two different levels and forms of interaction (using some of the same ideas behind Babajob in India).
This allows those without access to high bandwidth technology to bypass the normal flaws (in a Western ideology) in the technology loop that generally break the cycle in Africa.
The Technology Gap in Africa
UNCTAD defines the technology gap:
“There is a wide gap between those who have access to technology and use it effectively and those who do not. The technology gap exists between those who can create and innovate to produce new technologies and those who cannot. It also exists between those who can access, adapt, master and use existing technologies and those who cannot.”
In Africa, the world thinks of the technology gap as the lack of bandwidth, low access to computers and non-data enabled mobile phones. This is all true, these deficiencies do cause a technology gap to grow. African income levels just won’t allow the same type of consumer behavior towards all technologies as we see in the West.
The average African is not the same type of technology user as the average European or American. Information flows differently, African’s don’t drink from the fire-hose of data that we do. They do use technology though, almost everyone has the minimal level of access to a mobile phone.
What if the technology gap that we see is not as big as we think?
In the UNCTAD definition, we can agree that there is a difference of levels between access and use. However, the gap between creation and innovation is less clear. It gets downright blurry when talking about adaptation and mastering of technologies.
You see, most Africans have a better understanding of the abilities and limitations of their mobile phones that most Americans. There is more modding and hacking of hardware happening in Africa than almost anywhere in Europe.
Summarizing these many thoughts…
What Kaushal is getting at with his ideas on using technology is really about adapting cultural and technological norms to everyday problems. Like any entrepreneurial thought, it’s about finding a challenge and creatively solving it. Ignoring the status quo way of thinking finding another way to make it work.
The R&D that goes into solving technical problems doesn’t always happen in the traditional form in Africa. It happens on the street level with little fan fair, it’s not always flashy and it doesn’t always conform to the way that Westerners would like to see a problem solved.
More high school and university programs should be in place to train technologists, but what is really needed is more businesses being created by solving African technology and communication problems. African government organizations generally do a poor job of marshaling their resources to foster growth in the technology sector - so more businesses pressuring their leaders to pay attention to this industry would be welcome as well.
There are more and more services popping up created for Africans living abroad to shop and deliver commodities to their relatives in their home country. As covered in a previous story, the sub-Saharan African remittance market is about $20 billion annually, so it only makes sense for more tech-smart businessmen to tap into this.
The lack of any cost-effective traditional money transfer service has also played a part in the creation of this financial back-channel. Africans in the diaspora can buy (or send) a wide variety of goods and services including; airtime minutes, flowers, cakes, school fees, shopping vouchers, etc… the list goes on.
Below are a couple of these websites and their respective country:
I’m sure there will be more innovation and interesting sites building out in this place throughout the continent. In fact, I’m sure I’ve missed a great deal of the sites that are already out there. If there is a site that you think I have missed, add it to the comment area below.
ICTP Science Dissemination Unit has been monitoring and testing internet connectivity to 45 universities in Africa for the past 12 months. Using at tool called PingER Africa, they track real-time network performances in terms of response time (for a succession of pings) and packet loss percentages.
The 45-second video embedded below are their results.
If this type of data interests you, you should read their full report titled, Scientific Measure of Africa’s Connectivity (PDF - .64Mb). It’s an incredibly interesting report on their methods and findings.
The new millennium is beginning to see significant advances in Africa’s quest for greater connectivity. Nevertheless, although a substantial increase in the rate of expansion of networks is taking place, the ITU statistics on teledensity show that although there are 57.3 Internet users per 100 inhabitants in Sweden, 57 in the United States, and 34.7 in Italy, there are just 0.5 in Mali and 0.2 in Niger. The Internet tariff for the same type of connection is 1.1% of the Gross National Income in Sweden and in the United States and 1% in Italy, whereas it is 289% in Mali and 683% in Niger. The same differences are reflected by the Internet performance.
One other organization to pay attention to is AfrISPA (African Internet Service Provider Associations), run by Eric Osiakwan. They have been hard at work trying to build relationships between ISPs in different African nations, building an association big and strong enough to make serious change happen.
(hat tip Riyaz and Brough)
Everyone has to answer phone calls after midnight. Thankfully, it’s usually not the emergency that you’re dreading it will be, but a wrong number. Which begs the question, who calls someone after midnight without it being an emergency?
Advertisers, is it really that difficult to understand that you should advertise your value proposition not your unknown brand name? No one knows, or cares to ask, what ABCWidgets.com is or does. They might care that you create the right widget for their need, or that you’re the fastest delivery in the business, etc…
Learn about saving the mountain gorilla in a conflict zone by playing this new game on your mobile phone. A Java game with an education component.
Saving your image files with a specific name (ex: soccer_ball.jpg rather than ns8743.jpg) is a lot better for both your sanity and your search engine traffic. Funny enough, but image search engines still use the file name as their key - so if you want to be found for a certain image, make sure you name it appropriately.
The only other event that I’ve attended that brings as many high profile and high net worth individuals together besides the GPF is TED. What’s wonderful about both events is how open everyone you meet is to discussing new ideas, no matter if they’re (literally) a rockstar or not.
Unfortunately for me, I woke up to only about 20% voice usability. I could barely talk. After drinking gallons of hot water, with lemon and honey, I was able to croak well enough for my panel session on early warning systems.
Sitting on the panel listening to my fellow panelists was actually one of the best parts. Jan Chipchase of Nokia, who writes the wonderful Future Perfect blog, had some incredibly good thoughts on mobile phones and their real-world usage. In honor of how he takes photos of random things he sees around the world, I’ve added the image below of his Moleskin notebook.
One of the great examples he brought up was the how people were being incentivized to take their medications in some developing nations. They were given a piece of paper that when urinated on would show a specific code that needed to be SMS’d in to the health clinic. If it was right, that person would receive top-up minutes for their phone. Just brilliant.
The other panelist was Mark Smolinski, Director of the Predict and Prevent Initiative at Google.org. Again, another class-act with more experience covering health-related crisis in his pinky finger than I have in my whole body. He covered some thoughts on getting “two steps to the left“, thoughts on how hyper-early warning in epidemics can drastically reduce the impact of a pandemic. Fascinating and an infinitely difficult task to perform.
After the panel I was approached to take part in some digital strategy discussions with The Elders - a group of “retired” politicians and high-profile individuals who work to ease human suffering. A prime example of this was when Elders Kofi Annan and Graça Machel went to Kenya for 5 weeks to help resolve the post-election dispute. Needless to say, it was somewhat surreal sitting next to Peter Gabriel while talking with people like Mary Robinson.
Before the night was over, we were treated to a talk about doing something around the HIV/AIDS “genocide” in Africa, and a few songs by Annie Lennox. Her new campaign on AIDS in Africa is called Sing.
We ended the night with a stage discussion with Richard Branson, where he talked about being one of the founders of The Elders and how he uses his business success for global good. He made some polarizing statements about Mbeki and Zuma in South Africa, followed by some thoughts on letting Mugabe walk away in Zimbabwe. In the question and answer session he was called to task by some of the audience.
What I wanted to ask him, but didn’t have the voice for, was his thoughts what he likes to call crisis “war rooms”. He has big ideas on these for both epidemic crisis in Africa and the climate crisis globally. What I wanted to know was why he doesn’t throw a third one in to his collection - a crisis “war room” for human rights and mass atrocities so we’re more prepared for events like Kenya and Zimbabwe.
I’m praying that I get my voice back by tomorrow.
I just got through reading an excellent post by Bret Taylor, ex-Googler and creator of FriendFeed, about the need for open data sets. He makes a compelling argument on how difficult and expensive it is to get any type of meaningful data that can really be used to make interesting web applications. I experienced this first-hand in the creation of eppraisal.com - getting good quality real estate data was not cheap or easy.
I think all of these barriers to data are holding back innovation at a scale that few people realize. The most important part of an environment that encourages innovation is low barriers to entry. The moment a contract and lawyers are involved, you inherently restrict the set of people who can work on a problem to well-funded companies with a profitable product. Likewise, companies that sell data have to protect their investments, so permitted uses for the data are almost always explicitly enumerated in contracts. The entire system is designed to restrict the data to be used in product categories that already exist.
Interesting, but how does this apply to Africa?
Depending on how you look at it, this is a great opportunity or a serious problem. For instance, it’s a problem for us on the Ushahidi project because it is difficult to get some of the detailed mapping data that we need in a usable format. However, if you’re an enterprising businessman you would realize how much un-digitized data is in Africa and would start doing something to create data sets and license that out.
Of course, you licensing that data out puts us all in the same quandry that Bret outlines in his post… That by it not being open and free, the barriers to entry are high(er) and only larger organizations with access to a lot of resources can utilize it. A catch-22 if ever there was one.
It only make sense to give up data, or collect data and give it away for free of the relative cost of doing that for each person is minimal. Anytime you need to use a lot of resources to collect data, then you deserve to charge a fair market price for it. So, while I’d love to have more free data available, I know that the challenges to getting there are quite steep.
A few sources of open and free data:
Twine - Misc.
OpenStreetMap - Geographical data
Freebase - Open shared database
OpenTick - Financial data
Numbrary - Numbers
DBpedia - Structured data from Wikipedia
Swivel - Misc and nice visuals
Jigsaw - business contacts
InfoChimps - Misc free data sets
NumberZoom - Phone numbers
Today is the first day of the Global Philanthropy Forum. Last night I was pleased to find out a couple of connections from TED Global were present; Ali Mufuruki of Infotech and Kevin Starr of the Mulago Foundation.
I’ll be speaking on a panel here tomorrow called “Early Warning: Listening, Technology and Activism“. My fellow panelists are:
In the evening I’m heading off with Jan Chipchase (who I happen to be a big fan of) to an Adaptive Path event about using mobile phones, design and development called, “Street Hacks and Long Wows“. Should be a lot of fun! If you’re in the area, come and join us.
I’m on my way to San Francisco for the Global Philanthropy Forum, and have been pretty busy. In the absence of any real thoughtful post by me, I thought it might be good to make everyone aware of a presentation that I found online by Rudy De Waele of M-Trends.org.
It’s got a ton of great information and food for thought. Enjoy!
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