ICT for Development
In December, Digital Development Debates published its 6th issue, this time focusing on innovation. Among others, one article talks about the benefits of mobile phones in India: “The Value of Information: Mobile Technology Helps Micro-entrepreneurs”. You can read or comment on it by going to the Digital Development Debates website.
“Quality, open innovation and the GC21 E-Academy” – these themes have been at the core of GIZ’s engagement at eLearning Africa, the continents largest conference on ICT for development, education and training. The ‘Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)’ reached out to the more than 1700 participants from all over the world gathering in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania from May 25 to 27.
We have recently published the new issue of the ict4d-Newsletter, including:
Enjoy!
Farmers in Rwanda have asked me how they can access more complex agricultural information on their mobiles, said Paul Barera, Exec. Director, RTN.
Now if that is not a reason for excitement and a call to put our collective minds together, what is?
The statement above was made during a panel discussion on “The Role of Mobile Phones for Rural Economic Development” at the conference on “ICT for Rural Economic Development”. Five experts, with extensive field experience in using mobile telephony for development lead this dynamic discussion. [Read more →]
The Conference Secretariat:
“The response to the Call for Papers for ‘ICT: Africa’s Revolutionary Tools for the 21st Century?’ has been tremendous and we are anticipating a large audience. For this reason we have had to move the conference location, which has been tricky at this stage with many venues in Edinburgh already booked out. We have secured a new venue, but this has only been possible for a later date. We would therefore like to inform you that the date of the conference has been moved to 4th-5th May. The main details are on the ICT: Africa’s Revolutionary Tools for the 21st Century? http://www.cas.ed.ac.uk/events/annual_conference/2010, with further details to follow in the next couple of days. To make the most of the extra two weeks we now have, the Call for Papers has been kept open until 25th February.”
Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, today announced the release of FrontlineForms – a new SMS tool which enables low-cost, real-time data collection and aggregation for NGOs and field workers addressing the most pressing needs of rural communities throughout the developing world.
FrontlineForms consists on a drag-n-drop editor (which enables users to create a form on their computer) and a client that will work on most Java-enabled mobile phones:
“The FrontlineForms client can hold many different forms at the same time, all selectable from a drop-down menu. As requirements change new forms can be built and distributed by simply texting them to the recipients handset through FrontlineSMS – they don’t need to travel to the office to be added. Once out in the field the user simply inputs their data, and once complete multiple forms are combined and compressed, ready to be sent back to the FrontlineSMS hub, again as SMS. If at any time users find themselves working out of range of a mobile signal, the data is usefully held in “offline” mode until connectivity is restored.”
Given that this solution doesn’t require high-tech phones and will run on many already existing low-budget phones, their approach is very interesting and I would love to test this setup in the field one day (e.g. evaluating acceptance of ecosan projects).
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Posted by Anja Kiefer