MobileActive.org

Mobile phones are a crucial mode of communication and welfare enhancement in poor countries, especially those lacking an infrastructure of fixed lines. In recent years much has been written about how mobile telephony in Africa is rapidly reducing the digital divide with developed countries. Yet, when one examines the evidence it is not at all clear what is really happening. In one country, Tanzania, for example, some observers point to the fact that 97% of the population lives under the mobile footprint, while others show that ownership is very limited. These extreme values prompted us to review the situation in Africa as a whole, in an effort to discover what is really going on.

Even though the article is from 2007, the content is still extremely relevant. The authors write: This paper accordingly seeks to clarify the conceptual confusion that underlies the grossly different estimates of the extent to which mobile telephony exists on the continent. To this end we employ a framework that distinguishes between mobile phone subscribers, mobile phone owners, mobile phone users, those who benefit from usage and those who have access to this technology. This classification, we feel, will provide the reader with a better understanding of the state of mobile telephony in Africa and will have important implications for the type of data that are needed, but at present are unavailable. The categories that are identified, moreover, help us better to understand different views as to the extent of the digital divide in mobile phones between Africa and the rest of the world."

This paper presents a development paradigm for Ethiopia, based on appropriate services and innovative use of mobile communications technologies via applications tailored for sectors like business, finance, healthcare, governance, education and infotainment.

The experience of other developing countries like India and Kenya is cited so as to adapt those to the Ethiopian context. Notable application areas in the aforementioned sectors have been outlined. The ETC ‘next generation network’ is taken into consideration, with an emphasis on mobile service offering by the Telco itself and/or third party service providers. In addition, enabling technologies like mobile internet, location-based systems, open interfaces to large telecom networks, specifically service-oriented architecture (SOA), Parlay/JAIN and the like are discussed.

The paper points out possible endeavors by such stakeholders like: telecom agencies and network operators; businesses, government and NGOs; entrepreneurs and innovators; technology companies and professionals; as well as researchers and academic institutions. ICT4D through mobile services and their role in bridging the digital divide by building a virtual ‘network economy’ is discussed.

A comparison of do-it-yourself SMS hubs -- stand-alone systems which allows you to send and receive large numbers of text messages via the mobile phone network, without needing to be connected to the internet or to any other computer network.

The paper reviews roughly 200 recent studies of mobile (cellular) phone use in the developing world, and identifies major concentrations of research. It categorizes studies along two dimensions. One dimension distinguishes studies of the determinants of mobile adoption from those that assess the impacts of mobile use, and from those focused on the interrelationships between mobile technologies and users. A secondary dimension identifies a sub-set of studies with a strong economic development perspective. The discussion considers the implications of the resulting review and typology for future research.

This report explores the ways in which non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) and
other groups deploy and use mobile
technology in their work to help solve some
of the world’s greatest problems. This study
is not meant to be exhaustive or definitive,
but rather to provide a view into how a
number of organizations are using mobile
technology to achieve social impact. The authors
selected case studies that enabled an
exploration of significant innovations,
opportunities, and emerging trends, as well
as the obstacles, in the use of mobile
technology to advance social goals.

Large-scale disasters are growing. On the one hand, global warming and unprecedented
environmental change are resulting in disasters more frequent and calamitous than before.
Natural disasters such as earthquakes (Kashmir, 2005), floods (Bangladesh, India and
Nepal, 2007), landslides and mudslides (Bam, 2003; Chittagong, 2007), volcanic eruptions
(Merapi, 2006), tsunamis (South and Southeast Asia, 2005) and forest fires (across
Europe, 2007) continue to severely affect the lives and livelihoods of millions. On the other,
the iconic images of the London bombings (7 July 2006), the Twin Towers in New York on
11 September 2001, Madrid train bombs (2004) and the Bali bombings (2002 and 2005)
coupled with hundreds of gruesome local incidents -- including suicide bombings in coun-
tries such as Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iraq -- are a stark reminder that man made disas-
ters, often the result of terrorism, are a permanent feature of domestic life in many coun-
tries.

But how do we make sense of such disasters -- their causes, their impact on those in-
volved as victims and perpetrators? How do we maintain compassion in a world with com-
peting human tragedies? Does the increasing availability and affordability of Information
and Communications Technologies (ICT) -- covering PCs, radio, mobile phones, blogs,
SMS and the Internet -- result in the coverage and awareness of disasters qualitatively bet-
ter than before? Or does reportage across a hundred thousand websites and blogs by
those who are untrained in professional journalism diminish the importance of and, by ex-
tension, the response towards a disaster?

There are no easy answers to these questions. Whether we like it or not, new technologies
are changing the manner in which we gather, store, disseminate, consume and comment
on news. The overall experience after the tsunami in Sri Lanka and the subsequent design
of ICTs for humanitarian aid suggests that ordinary citizens can play a pivotal role in facili-
tating the flow of information in relief and conflict management mechanisms.

In this paper, the researchers demonstrate the limitations of third party Emergency Alert
Systems (EAS). In particular, because of the architecture of cellular networks, such
systems will not be able to deliver a high volume of emergency messages in a
short period of time. Through discussion, modeling and simulation, this research shows that
current systems not only can not widely disseminate such messages quickly, but
also that the addition traffic created by third party EAS may disrupt other traffic
such as voice communications, including that of emergency responders or the
public to 9-1-1 services.

This 16-page policy briefing from the BBC World Trust Service analyses the role of the media in the Kenyan [January 2008] post-election violence. It is designed to enable an understanding of what has happened in Kenya in the belief that these issues have important policy implications and consequences in many countries. It situates its analysis within debates on democratic governance and poverty in order to contribute to a process of extracting lessons from the crisis. The briefing examines political polarity in the media and its function as a political tool. It discusses the inciting of violence and the role of the local language or vernacular media, as well as the media's role in calming the violence. "The role of the media in Kenya's violence has ...raised questions of whether media can be too free in fragile states such as Kenya....[The] briefing argues that the role of the local language media during the crisis was the product of a chaotic regulatory policy and the lack of training - especially of talk show hosts, whose programmes provided the platform for most of the hate speech....It argues that many local language radio [stations] played a role in calming tensions as well as inflaming them, and could be a powerful mechanism for reconciliation."

This paper presents descriptive accounts of time-critical organizing in the domain of emergency response. Patterns of mobile phone interaction in such work is analyzed showing how the dyadic exchange of mobile phone numbers between the actors plays an important role in the social interactions in the organizing and sensemaking of the emergency. Enacted sensemaking is used as an analytical framework. Implications for design of emergency response information technology are outlined and discussed.

Serious crises and disasters have micro and macro social arrangements that differ
from routine situations, as the field of disaster studies has described over its 100-year history.
With increasingly pervasive information and communications technology (ICT) and a
changing political arena where terrorism is perceived as a major threat, the attention to crisis
is high. Some of these new features of social life have created real change in the sociology of
disaster that we are only beginning to understand. However, much of what might seem to be
new is not; rather ICT makes some behaviors more visible, in particular first response and
altruistic activities. Even so, with each new crisis event, the calls for technological solutions
and policy change come fast and furious, often in absence of empirical research. Our lab is
establishing an area of sociologically informed research and ICT development in the area of
crisis informatics. Here, we report on some of the challenges and findings when conducting
empirical study where the subject of attention is disperse, emergent and increasingly
expanding through on-line arenas. We specifically consider the challenge of studying citizen-
side information generation and dissemination activities during the April 16, 2007 crisis at
Virginia Tech, which we have investigated both on-site and on-lin

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Since the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami,the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC)
together with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) have taken initiatives to study the
current situation of emergency communications in the Asia-Pacific countries and to give
recommendation on national emergency telecommunication and national early warning system
setups.Assessments were conducted in Bangladesh,Maldives and Sri Lanka on these emergency
communication systems. To enhance early warning systems, ADPC, under the Indian Ocean
Early-Warning System programme, also introduced the Tsunami Alert Rapid Notification System
Programme with emphasis on robust ICT systems to disseminate information and warnings from
the national to the community level.

In line with this, the following is an e-Primer brought to you by the United Nations
Development Programme’s Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP) and
the Asian and Pacific Training Centre for Information and Communication Technology for
Development (APCICT).I am confident that this e-Primer will play an effective role in enhancing
and propagating awareness of various ICT tools and will serve as a guide to policy makers,
disaster management practitioners and media personnel on how best to use ICT tools to
successfully counter the threat of disaster.

The Management of the Emergency Capacity Building Project called for a final evaluation of the Project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Microsoft Corporation to assess progress towards its stated goal and outcomes “to improve the speed, quality and effectiveness of the humanitarian community in saving lives, improving welfare and protecting the rights of people in emergencies.” The main objective of the evaluation is to review progress towards project objectives and goals, to inform future endeavors, and to learn. The primary users of the Final Evaluation are the Senior Managers at the IWG agencies, the Interagency Working Group Emergency Directors, project donors, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Microsoft Corporation, as well as agency staff working on the project. The evaluation used a mixed methods approach, including interviewing individuals, holding focus group discussions with most agencies, and conducting two field surveys, one to partner organizations and one to field staff. A limitation to the evaluation was less than full access to field perspectives due to time/resource constraints and the practical inability to contact all the key staff and partners, as well as non-IWG contacts involved in the project – there simply were more than time permitted (over 500 persons). However, 93 agency staff, partners and non-IWG agencies and individuals were interviewed or surveyed. Because of the complexity of the project, evaluators were given a greater page limit to address all the points in the Terms of Reference.

Opportunities for participation by members of the public are expanding the information arena of disaster. Social
media supports “backchannel” communications, allowing for wide-scale interaction that can be collectively
resourceful, self-policing, and generative of information that is otherwise hard to obtain. Results from our study of
information practices by members of the public during the October 2007 Southern California Wildfires suggest that
community information resources and other backchannel communications activity enabled by social media are gaining
prominence in the disaster arena, despite concern by officials about the legitimacy of information shared through such
means. We argue that these emergent uses of social media are pre-cursors of broader future changes to the institutional
and organizational arrangements of disaster response.

"When danger arises, the rule in normal situations is for people to help those next to them before they help themselves."

Achieving interoperable communication across governmental agencies and jurisdictions remains a challenge and is
simply taking time to implement. Initiatives to support agency interoperability continue. However, community
responders remain in need of two-way device quick response tactics. SMS text-messaging is one viable
interoperable communication technology that provides a bottom-up approach while offering benefits for everyday
use. This research in progress studies the use of a web-based SMS text-message training application, designed to
simulate two-way SMS text-message exchange. Speech Act Theory and the Theory of Planned Behavior are
leveraged to carefully measure SMS text-message exchange. The overarching crisis scenario takes the role of the
local community responder. Initial qualitative pilot results are presented and discussed, including next steps for this
ongoing research.