SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa is a new collection of essays and case studies examining how SMS has been used in Africa for acticism. Essays include Amanda Atwood’s report on Kubatana’s experiences in Zimbabwe setting up mobiles as a means of sharing news outside of government propaganda, to Bukeni Waruzi’s essay on collecting data on children’s rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2004. SMS Uprising is published by Fahamu, a British-based organization with a focus on information services for Africa.
SMS Uprising provides the reader with a decent understanding of the state of mobile SMS usage in Africa today. The essays are written by writers, developers, activists, and researchers who are committed to Africa, and cover a multitude of ways SMS can be applied for advocacy work – everything from alerts about political unrest to sharing health information. The book is divided into two parts: context and case studies.
SMS Uprising is significant for many reasons not least because it has been edited by an African woman activist. Often initiatives in Africa are studied by people who are quite distant from the continent or are academics who are remote from the grassroots of the subject under discussion. The book is also unique in giving an insight into how activists and social change advocates are addressing Africa’s many challenges from within, and how they are using mobile telephone technology to facilitate these changes...The intention is that the information contained within the book will lead to greater reflection about the real potential and limitations of mobile technology.
This article was written by Jesse Feiler and edited by Katrin Verclas.
In the last few week, nonprofits in the United States have started to pay attention to fundraising via text - donations delivered to charities by donors simple sending a text message.
In aftermath of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake text donations to the Red Cross and other charities received enormous publicity, and generated a significant outpouring of donations. (SMS is an alternate term for text message – a160 character message sent over the mobile network)
In December 2009, US Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D – Illinois) introduced the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity (CIR ASAP) Act of 2009 in the American House of Representatives. The bill is a major step in overhauling the American immigration system, providing greater protection for immigrants while ensuring that employers use fair and legal hiring practices.
As the legislative debate about this hot-button issue heats up, interest groups are increasing their advocacy to protect the rights of both documented and undocumented immigrants. With reform on so many people’s minds, two organizations have been using mobile technology to spread the word.
By using local numbers and relaying them through VOIP Rebtel can offer people low-cost international calls. The only cost for the user will be for calling a local number. Rebtel is busy launching SMS functions for free or low cost also.
Tool Category:
Is a web-based application/web service
Key Features :
Enables low-cost international calls.
Main Services:
Mobile Social Network/Peer-to-peer
Display tool in profile:
Yes
Tool Maturity:
Currently deployed
Release Date:
2010-01
Platforms:
Mac/Apple
Windows
Windows Mobile
All phones -- SMS
All phones -- Voice
All phones/Mobile Browser
Program/Code Language:
Java/Android
Objective C/iPhone
Organizations Using the Tool:
We are currently working with Hand-in-Hand to be able to develop better communications for people in need.
We have been rather quiet in our "Deconstructing Mobile" series as other projects have taken priority. We are picking up the thread again to continue to demystify the many myths surrounding mobiles in development and shed facts, evidence, and data on many of the over-hyped projects and ideas. One area with much hype is the recent debate about "mobiles and rape" in the Congo. Laura Seay, an assistant professor of political science at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, recently wrote on her blog a great post that looks for actual evidence linking rape and mobiles. We wrote about this campaign a while back already but her post goes deeper in looking at the facts. It is aptly entitled: Show me the Data. We are reposting it here with her permission.
Show me the Data by Laura Seay
A couple of months ago, a certain grad student/atrocity humor blogger who shall remain nameless emailed with the following question: "Could you point me towards anyone who's done research on the linkage / lack thereof between the mineral trade and sexual violence?" It seems that in her graduate school endeavors, solid research requires actual evidence to support the "cell phones/minerals cause rape" thesis that's become quite popular due to efforts of various activist groups, most notably the Enough Project.
It just so happened that this particular email arrived just a few days after I gave a talk on the subject of minerals and violence in the Congo, so I had already been searching for such evidence.
Long story short: there isn't any. As far as I can tell, there has as yet been no published report that systematically demonstrates a rigorous causal relationship between the mineral trade and the epidemic of sexual violence in the eastern Congo.
There are different scenarios where it is more desirable to have a method of communication that does not depend on cellular or Internet backbone infrastructure:
Sometimes that infrastructure is down - for example due to natural disaster, or man-made "shocks" to the system, from a terrorist attack to simply a massive gathering of people who want to communicate all at the same time, for example at a ball-game or in a conference hall.
Sometimes infrastructure is just not there - like in some developing countries or regions, or rural areas.
Sometimes, one is interested in circumventing censorship, in order to enable civic communications or in order to get news out of a country or conflict zone.
Sometimes one just wants to save money and other costs - why use an expensive infrastructure that was made to get information to the other side of the world, and pay a service tax to the operator, when communication is local by nature? For example for internal communication in a rural village, campus, or enterprise.
Aside from the cases where infrastructure-based communication is not the best way to go, close proximity device-to-device communications offer several added advantages of their own:
A broadcast can be targeted to a limited geographic area without the need to use heavy GIS servers and requiring all participating end points to report their absolute locations.
Opportunistic communications with previously unknown parties, where the co-location serves as a discovery and bootstrap mechanism, and knowing absolute "global" addressing (email address, phone number, etc.) is not required in advance.
Natural mobility patterns of people or vehicles carrying the mobile devices can be leveraged to physically rout information from place to place, or from source to destination. People and vehicles can become "data-mules", or a "sneaker-net". For example, a bus carrying wifi enabled device can act as a "data-mule" and collect information from schools or villages along its path, delivering it to the internet when it reaches a connected access point. People moving away from a natural disaster or a civic demonstration can carry with them pictures, messages, and news from the disconnected zone to the outside world.
The mobile device can act as a sensor in the physical world - depending on the type of short-range radio used, it can sense peers who are physically proximate with varying accuracy.
In some cases the close-proximity communication adds improved security and authenticity, since all parties must be within a certain physical range of one another.
For all of the above scenarios there is a set of common technical requirements and features. The idea behind Comm.unity is to unite them into one core framework that allows development of applications for all of these cases. Different scenarios would call for more specific adaptations (for example added security for some of the scenarios), so Comm.unity is designed to be very modular, and allow developers to use just what they need for the applications that they build on top of it. It is also designed to be extensible by the developer community, so new features and modules could be added. This system is not meant to replace infrastructure, but rather augment it.
Comm.unity is a software framework in development, which is intended to allow developers and researchers to easily create applications that are proximity aware and socially aware, and can run on a large set of existing consumer devices. It implements a wireless, device-to-device information system that bypasses the need for any centralized servers, coordination, or administration. It is designed to span an extensible set of radio interfaces (WiFi, Bluetooth, IR, etc.).
Comm.unity is targeted for field deployment as well as for supporting advanced mobile-phone-based research. The feature-set for field deployment consists of a basic set of functionalities that are simple and explicitly defined. The research aspects include additional features that are more experimental, or support collection of research data - for example modules for performing logging a user's behavior and other sensor data, performing data-mining, machine learning and other types of on-device learning of a user's context and social activity.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a mobile phone
Key Features :
Communications unity: The current state of the close proximity networking space is very fragmented - Many different standards and technologies, and even devices with similar radios (e.g. Bluetooth or wi-fi) are not always able to communicate directly to each other due to limitations imposed by vendor, service provider, or simply lack of appropriate software. Comm.unity aims to resolve that by creating software and protocols that could run on a large set of different mobile and stationary devices, and allow them to directly talk to one another as long as they have similar physical radio interfaces. This means, for example, that iPhones would be able to discover and communicate with Nokia Symbian phones or Android phones via Bluetooth, no matter what mobile operator they belong to, and a WinMobile phone could connect to any Windows, Mac, or Linux computer via wi-fi without any special issues.
Unifying close-proximity technologies: There is a growing number of technologies that support close-proximity and device-to-device radio communications, wi-fi (802.11), Bluetooth, Zigbee, near-field technologies, wi-bree, or infrared technolgies, to name a few. If we abstract the common actions that applications using these technologies need to perform, we could define a common set of functionalities, for example: device discovery, sending a short message, or sending a file. With these and similar primitives, a programmer could write an application that can very easily be adapted to run on different network interface technologies.
Reusable codebase (sample modules: peer-to-peer networking, social awareness, logging, ...)
Extensible Architecture - Modular building blocks
Modular Runtime - Not all modules have to be loaded in runtime, this way strong devices could run high-processing load activities, while weaker mobile devices could run a minimal set of features.
Would you give 15 minutes of your time for a really good cause (and a chance to win a prize)?
Vodafone has recently launched a new version of Betavine, the open mobile application community. This new version encompasses a pilot project called "Social Exchange", which aims to foster the creation of mobile solutions for problems in the developing world.
The project’s aim is to create a website that brings developers, NGOs and community organisations together in order to develop mobile solutions to some of the difficulties faced by people in the developing world. Your input will help Vodafone to make this worthwhile project into a real success.
By participating in a quick and easy online process, you'll also have the chance to enter a prize draw to win a £50 Amazon voucher or one of two £25 ones. If you are willing to help, please go to the following webpage, which will explain everything you need to know: http://www.webnographer.com/do/betavine/socialexchange
In developing countries and crisis zones, the right information can save lives--if it can be gathered and shared quickly. Mobile devices can help, but most low-income communities still rely on basic first-generation phones--not iPhones or PDAs. When roads are damaged, shipping advanced handsets into hard-hit areas can be difficult and time-consuming.
Even when the right technology is available, sharing data between field sites and head offices is also tough: Messaging software and incoming responses are often limited to a single computer in the field.
To address these challenges, Souktel has created alert and survey software that uses basic text messaging to send/receive information between multiple locations. Hosted remotely, the "AidLink" software platform can be accessed locally via SMS on any basic cell phone--enabling any community member to get information, submit data, or receive news. AidLink can also be managed via web and SMS simultaneously, so that NGO staff in head offices and field sites can run campaigns together.
Our solution is simple, and designed so that field workers and community members can manage the software directly:
Aidlink Alerts - Send Messages in 4 Easy Steps:
1) From any mobile phone (or a secure web panel), create SMS “mailing lists” of community member/field staff phone numbers. 2) Segment your phone number “mailing lists” according to specific criteria: location, age, gender, or more. Give each mailing list its own numeric code. 3) On your phone (or online), create an alert message (eg. “Reminder: Training today at 3 pm”). 4) Send SMS alert to thousands of community members at once, or just to specific groups, by entering the codes of the "mailing lists" you'd like to reach.
Aidlink Surveys - Gather Basic Data in 4 Easy Steps
1) On a secure web panel, create your SMS survey: a sequence of short questions that can be sent out via text-message. 2) Send an SMS “alert” (see above) to thousands of registered users—or a small group of people—inviting them to answer the survey questions. 3) Users “text” their answers to the questions, one at a time. 4) Survey results appear directly in a secure online database, for quick analysis and response. Easily exportable to Excel/SAS/SPSS.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a server
Is a web-based application/web service
Key Features :
What makes Souktel "AidLink" unique?
It can be managed online or by SMS from a mobile handset--so people in different locations can all use it together. Not tied to a single computer and handset.
It's SMS-based, so it works on any basic phone handset.
It's connected directly to national mobile network gateways, so partners can send thousands of messages instantly without problems. No USB modems required!
It's custom-built to meet specific project needs: We work directly with partners to integrate apps into your website, your project activities, and your community.
It's developed by people in crisis zones, for people in crisis zones: All apps are created in Palestine for use in Gaza, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and other hard-to-access regions.
It's deliberately designed for Arabic-script languages like Standard Arabic, Urdu, Kurdish and Farsi (but all apps work in English script too).
Main Services:
Bulk SMS
Voting, Data Collection, Surveys, and Polling
Mobile Social Network/Peer-to-peer
Information Resources/Information Databases
Display tool in profile:
Yes
Tool Maturity:
Currently deployed
Platforms:
Linux/UNIX
All phones -- SMS
Program/Code Language:
PHP
Other
Organizations Using the Tool:
Red Cross/Red Crescent - West Bank/Gaza (www.palestinercs.org)
UN-OCHA - West Bank/Gaza (www.ochaopt.org)
Mercy Corps - Gaza, Iraq (www.mercycorps.org)
EDC Inc. - Somalia, Sudan (www.edc.org)
Near East Foundation - Morocco (www.nefdev.org)
AED Inc. - West Bank/Gaza (www.aed.org)
CHF International - West Bank/Gaza (www.chfinternational.org)
Relief International - Gaza (www.ri.org)
....plus more than 35 local community-based organizations, NGOs, and universities in countries across the Middle East and East Africa.
Mobile phones in human rights monitoring is still relatively rare and there are few examples where mobile shave been used successfully in this field. In this video from the recent Open Mobile Camp in New York, three experts are discussing their projects and thinking on the use of mobiles in human rights work. Nathan Freitas discusses security issues in regard to using mobiles in this field and his project Guardian, Enrique Piraces from Human Rights Watch describes his thinking in regard to the use of mobiles in human rights work, and Emily Jacobi features Handheld Human Rights and the mobile tools that are part of the project.
It was May 2008 in Thailand,and Win Tun was anxiously watching his phone. Early May marks the beginning of rainy season, and reports were coming in of a major cyclone hitting Rangoon. A couple of days after the initial landfall on May 2, residual rains had made it to Thailand, and it was clear that Cyclone Nargis - “butterfly” - had destroyed major swaths of land in the Irawaddy delta. Up to 140,000 were missing or dead. Win Tun was worried about his family in Rangoon.
A former political prisoner, he spent 5 years in the infamous Insein prison for democratic activities in university in the ‘90s. When we met in early 2008, he had a sad air to him. Twenty years have passed since since the uprising of ’88, in which he was too young to participate. The exhaustion of fighting for something that seemed so far out of reach was wearing on him. Worse yet, he missed his family but couldn’t return home without bringing undue attention to them or risking another prison sentence.
After Nargis he was lucky. It took three days for him to get through to his family on their mobiles, and he learned they were okay – just upset, like most Burmese, at the government’s negligence of the victims. In the wake of Nargis, international aid groups waited in Thailand and offshore as the government refused to grant entrance to most.
The first few days after the Cyclone, bewildered Burmese in Rangoon stumbled out of their houses to survey the damage. In the streets, monks helped residents clear felled trees and downed power lines. But there were much bigger problems in the delta. Entire villages had been destroyed, and farmland had turned into swamps, contaminated by drowned bodies.
This article was written by Emily Jacobi from Digital Democracy. We are publishing her extensive report on Burmese dissidents' use of technology in three parts. Part I of her report is here. Names of individuals have been changed to protect their identity.
Internet crackdown
New technology had fundamentally changed the context inside Burma. Although access at 2007 was less than 1%, even such low penetration of mobile technology and Internet presented a challenge to the regime.
According to a Democratic Voice of Burma TV producer based in Thailand, in the days leading up to the military crackdown, the camera phones concealed in monks' robes and the footage groups like his smuggled out were the only barriers preventing the government from an all-out massacre of protesters.
On Sept. 29, 2007, faced with widespread international condemnation, the junta resorted to a tactic that other governments are increasingly daring in the 21st century and pulled the plug on all internet and mobile phone use in the country, preventing news from coming in or out. The world was watching – and then the screen went blank.
This article was written by Emily Jacobi from Digital Democracy. We are publishing her extensive report on Burmese dissidents' use of technology in three parts. Names of individuals in this account have been changed to protect their identity.
Burma – a modern anomaly
In September 2007, Buddhist clergy in the Southeast Asian nation of Burma (also known as Myanmar) led hundreds of thousands of citizens in peaceful protest against the ruling military regime. Armed with camera phones and limited internet access, they coordinated the largest protests the country had seen in 19 years, and broadcast the story to the outside world. These tools proved so threatening that the Burmese government responded by shutting off all Internet and mobile phone communications for five days. Why is this significant?
Globally, mobile phone penetration has reached an estimated 4.6 billion subscribers by the end of 2009, more than half the world’s population. Yet in Burma, mobile phone usage remains the exception rather than the rule. Government-imposed barriers and prohibitive prices have kept mobile penetration to approximately 1% of the population, a rate comparable to Internet access in the country.
Burma’s technological isolation accompanies the country’s greater political isolation. Ruled by a military dictatorship since 1962, the nation has become increasingly estranged from the global community. Even the name, changed from Burma to Myanmar by the military government in 1989, is disputed around the world as well as among Burmese political groups. Economic sanctions have been leveled against the country by the US and EU for its human rights abuses, and The Economist ranked Burma163 out of 167 countries in its 2008 Democracy Index.
Burma’s ruling military junta does maintain business deals with neighboring countries including China and Thailand, but the nation lags far behind its neighbors economically and technologically.While there were only 610,000 mobile users in the country at the end of 2008 (1% of the population), India and China were expected to account for a quarter of global mobile penetration – approximately 1 billion subscriptions - by the beginning of the year, according to the ITU. In neighboring Thailand, meanwhile, approximately 92% of the population is covered by mobile telephony.
Compared to its neighbors, Burma’s mobile access seems woefully behind. Despite this, mobiles have played a critical role in crisis moments, such as the monk-led protests in 2007 and in coordinating recovery from the devastation of Cyclone Nargis in May 2008. Additionally, mobile availability in neighboring countries has been effectively harnessed by Burmese groups operating in the bordering countries, where an estimated 3.5 million Burmese have been displaced.
Commercial tool; Free option with ads. TxtLatino in partner with TextMarks owns the shortcode 41411, and allows you to make use of the shortcode with a given keyword. When users send messages to 41411 with your keyword which can be used to send auto-responses back. SMSs can also broadcast to all subscribers.
Tool Category:
Is a web-based application/web service
Key Features :
Provides a shortcode, which users can text with a custom keyword, and get to you. Web-based auto-response to SMSs. Broadcast and feedback collection from userbase.
The potential for mobile technology to impact development has been researched and reported on in areas ranging from job matching services to financial inclusion. More and more development agencies are adopting mobile communications in their programmes in innovative ways. However, there is a lack of research on how mobile technology is being used to monitor and evaluate programs in the field.
After the hectic month of October where there were way too many events focused on mobiles for social impact, November is a bit more technically focused. To help you find your way in this fast-moving world, we’ve compiled a round-up of some key events that are taking place throughout the month of November.
DroidCon Nov. 2-4 (Berlin, Germany) DroidCon is the first Android business and developer conference in Germany. It covers everyting you want to know about the Open Handset Alliance mobile platform. Not focused on mobiles in social impact, but an indication that Android is starting to hop.
iPhone Developer Summit Nov. 2-4 (Santa Clara, CA, USA) Technical sessions explore web development opportunities on the iPhone, including building social applications and developing high-quality, iPhone-style web-based GUIs for applications.
People in the developed world consider the phone a very personal object, something that is always on and always with us. In many developing countries, that's not always the case. People share phones, and many don't own handsets because they are too expensive.
A new company, Movirtu (with a catchy tag line: "Mobile for the next Billion"), wants to extend coverage to so-called bottom-of-the-pyramid customers by using a handset-independent way to connect to the mobile network. The company's goal is to "expand the use of mobile communication by the rural poor communities in Sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia living on less than $2 a day" - in order to improve their livelihoods. The method for doing this is to detach owning a phone number from owning a handset--and to allow users to own numbers without owning handsets. And its gaining attention: CEO Nigel Waller was awarded a PopTech Social Innovation fellowship this year, and Movirtu has been shortlisted for Africom's Changing Lives Award.
After months of work, Betavine Social Exchange, a matching site for mobile solutions in development and for social impact, launched yesterday. Supported by Vodafone, Betvaine Social Exchange hopes to connect NGOs seeking mobile solutions to their challenges with developers and community partners.
NGOs are invited to post a challenge that outlines their specific problem. According to Steve Wolak, Betavine's principal manager, after a challenge has been posed, "everyone in the community is welcome to join in the discussion. When a mobile developer comes up with a technological solution, he or she uploads it into a solutions page. Organisations who have registered as BSX Support Partners may then step in to assist with deployment."
In our ongoing series of How-To Guides, here is the newest: an overview on how to set up an SMS system.
SMS is everywhere, in an amazing diversity of applications. From enabling 'instant protest' in the Philippines, Spain and Albania, to election monitoring in Ghana, Lebanon, and Sierra Leone to HIV/AIDS education and support in Mexico and South Africa, we've seen that 160 characters can make a difference. This article covers the basics of setting up an SMS campaign system, looking at different approaches to suit your goals, budget and technical expertise.
How to Set Up an SMS System data sheet 44387 Views
Author:
Melissa Loudon
Abstract:
SMS is everywhere, in an amazing diversity of applications. From enabling 'instant protest' in the Philippines, Spain and Albania, to election monitoring in Ghana, Lebanon, and Sierra Leone to HIV/AIDS education and support in Mexico and South Africa, we've seen that 160 characters can make a difference. This article covers the basics of setting up an SMS campaign system, looking at different approaches to suit your goals, budget and technical expertise.
SMS is everywhere, in an amazing diversity of applications. From enabling 'instant protest' in the Philippines, Spain and Albania, to election monitoring in Ghana, Lebanon, and Sierra Leone to HIV/AIDS education and support in Mexico and South Africa, we've seen that 160 characters can make a difference.
mobiSiteGalore is a free mobile website builder that allows a user to easily build, publish & share a full-fledged mobile website that is guaranteed to work fine on any mobile phone.
Tool Category:
Is a web-based application/web service
Key Features :
Has mobile emulator to test your sites; all produced sites are 5/5 on ready.mobi tests.
Mobile site builder is available on a mobile phone.
Provides free 3rd level hosting on http://_.param.mobi site. Self-hosting options also available.
Ad integration, mobile widgets, and many such options available.
LiveCast is a service that enables a user to stream live video from a cameraphone to anyone connected to the Web. Location can be tracked on a map, auto-post streams to social networks like Twitter and YouTube, and chat in real-time. Orginating LiveCast is received by an automated streaming server network, where it is "propagated" to be streamed to as many concurrent viewers as requires. Content is also instantly archived on LiveCast servers, for post event video-on-demand delivery.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a server
Key Features :
Streaming live video from cameraphones
Real-time chatting
GPS tracking
Main Services:
Mobile Social Network/Peer-to-peer
Tool Maturity:
Currently deployed
Platforms:
Symbian/3rd
Windows Mobile
Program/Code Language:
Other
Organizations Using the Tool:
The Dallas Morning News
NBC Universal
Harper Collins
Languages supported:
All
Handsets/devices supported:
Compatible mobile devices for LiveCast currently include Symbian, Windows Mobile 5/6, Windows PocketPC 2003, and Windows CE devices.
Streaming live video from mobile phones eliminates the need for heavy camera equipment and slow video uploads, making sharing experiences instant and easy.
Flixwagon is a mobile phone and web application that allows users to broadcast and share live videos from their mobile phones to the internet. Viewers can search, view, and share live broadcasts and stored videos in almost any category including sports, travel, news, personal, etc. Broadcasters can manage their stored videos and share them with others.
Epidemiologists and ecologists often collect data in the field and, on returning to their laboratory, enter their data into a database for further analysis. The recent introduction of mobile phones that utilise the open source Android operating system, and which include (among other features) both GPS and Google Maps, provide new opportunities for developing mobile phone applications, which in conjunction with web applications, allow two-way communication between field workers and their project databases.
Data collected by multiple field workers can be submitted by phone, together with GPS data, to a common web database and can be displayed and analysed, along with previously collected data, using Google Maps (or Google Earth). Similarly, data from the web database can be requested and displayed on the mobile phone, again using Google Maps.
Tool Category:
App resides and runs on a server
Key Features :
GPS and Google Maps data plotting
Easy to share data with multiple researchers
Main Services:
Voting, Data Collection, Surveys, and Polling
Tool Maturity:
Currently deployed
Release Date:
2009-09
Platforms:
Android
Current Version:
1
Program/Code Language:
Java/Android
Javascript
PHP
Organizations Using the Tool:
Imperial College London
Languages supported:
English
Handsets/devices supported:
Android devices
Reviews/Evaluations:
TreeHugger.com http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/epicollect-app-for-android-puts-laboratories-on-phones-your-phone.php
EpiCollect Research Paper http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0006968
We have been working in this field since 2005, leading the industry analysis on mobiles for development and social change. While we agree that mobile phones are revolutionizing the developing world, we think it is time to take a very honest and realistic look at the promises of mobile tech for development and social change, and where these promises are falling short -- and of, course, why, and what to do about that.
