Can the Poor Afford Mobile Telephony? Evidence from Latin America data sheet 2199 Views
Author:
Roxanna Barrantes and Hernán Galperin
Publication Date:
Jan 2008
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
This study analyses the cost of a low-volume basket of mobile services across a sample of Latin American countries, and contrasts these results with standard income and poverty indicators. The main goal is to establish how affordable mobile services are for the poor.
Three general findings emerge. First, the poor generally pay a cost premium for using prepaid subscriptions that allow better expenditure control, though in many cases this premium is much lower than expected.
Second, affordability is an important predictor of mobile penetration. Overall, while affordable handsets and the callingparty-pays system allow a significant number of low-income Latin Americans to become mobile subscribers, the results reveal that the current tariff structure has an inhibiting effect on service consumption by the poor.
Third, since affordability is the most significant barrier to extending the reach of mobile services, as well as the range of services used by the poor, priority should be placed on policies aimed at reducing tariffs and stimulating the introduction of commercial innovations for low-income groups.
Mobile Opportunities: Poverty and Mobile Telephony in Latin American and the Caribbean data sheet 2443 Views
Author:
Hernán Galperin, Judith Mariscal
Publication Date:
Nov 2007
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
Access to telephony for low-income groups is largely based on different strategies of mobile telephony usage. The main goal of this research project is to explore the strategies employed by the poor in Latin America and the Caribbean to access and use mobile telephony services, as well as to identify the major market and regulatory barriers for increased penetration and usage. More generally, it seeks to contribute to the discussion on how access to mobile telephony contributes to improving the livelihoods of the poor –what we call mobile opportunities.
Our results show that mobile telephony is highly valued by the poor as a tool for strengthening social ties and for increased personal security, and that it is beginning to prove useful for enhancing business and employment opportunities. Overall, the survey results suggest that the acquisition of mobile phones by the poor has an economic impact reflected mainly in improved social capital variables such as the strengthening of trust networks and better coordination of informal job markets. These findings reveal the continued need to develop innovative business models that extend the market frontier for mobile telephony. They also highlight the urgent need to rethink public policies that are premised on the mobile phone as a luxury good. Clearly, for the poor, mobile telephony has long been the most cost-effective and accessible alternative.
The Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (Sida) recently published a report, The Innovative Use of Mobile Applications in East Africa, that provides an overview of the current state of mobile phone applications for social and economic developments in East Africa. The report seeks to answer “what hinders the take-off of m-applications for development in East Africa" and asks what role donors should play.
While mobile phones are the main channel for information in East Africa, with mobile penetration covering over 40% of the population, sustainable, scalable mobile services for social and economic development are limited. The report is supported by secondary data, statistics, and field work carried out in Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, along with numerous interviews, meetings and discussions with key stakeholders in East Africa. Major trends in mobile usage, barriers for increased use of m-applications, as well as opportunities for scaling are discussed.
Mobile Diffusion and Development: Issues and Challenges of M-Government with India in Perspective data sheet 2750 Views
Author:
Kavita Karan and Michele Cheng Hoon Khoo
Publication Date:
Jan 2008
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
Mobile telephony has emerged as the new frontier where governments around the world are making themselves more accessible through the remote delivery of government services and faster rate of data transfer. In developing countries, the lower cost of mobile technology as compared to Internet has allowed for the expansion of mobile government or m-government services to the poorer segments of the population. From a literature review on m-government, including the various strategies required and successive practices across the world, we build five parameters for a framework for evaluation of m-government services. These include Infrastructural Investment, Regulatory and Political environment, Awareness and Acceptance, Security and Privacy, and Equitable Acceptance.
Using these factors, we review the m-government initiatives in selected countries both in the West, Asia and India. This paper provides an updated review of the current mobile government initiatives, including: m-government’s facilitation of development; the issues and challenges in India; and, finally, proposes some strategies that can be adopted by India.
Exploiting Mobile Technology in the African Urban Low-Income Informal Music Industry data sheet 2305 Views
Author:
Impio, J., Mastia-Mwangi, M., Macharia, L., Githinji, P., and Sitati, M.
Publication Date:
Jan 2008
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
Music making and distribution is a large scale phenomenon in urban informal settlements in Africa. The talent, vision and passion of the musicians living in the African slums would be appreciated by the music lovers around the world if only the artists had a chance to practice as well as possibilities for recording and sharing. Furthermore this would contribute significantly to livelihoods of the people living in the slums and to economic development of Africa as a whole given the estimates of the contribution that the informal music industry is already making.
The obstacles discussed we believe can partly be overcome by creative thinking and new technology and we hope that this report works as a source of knowledge and inspiration for researchers and developers to develop meaningful services and support mechanisms for young musicians living in the slums around the world.
Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage about revenue from Brazil's mobile youth, a Pew report on mobile habits, the conclusion of NPR's look at race and the digital divide, a guide to building voice infrastructure in developing regions, and what m-banking services need to consider about non-literate consumers.
India is a country of villages, with over 70% of its population living in rural areas. For mobile operators, this means future mobile subscribers in the country are going to come from India’s villages.
Between 2002 and 2006, mobile penetration increased by a more than 40% in India (source ITU). Still, rural penetration is low, making up just over one fifth of the total mobile user base in India, as reported by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India in 2007. The future of the mobile industry is exanding in rural India, but what do mobile operators need to do to tap into this market?
In 2009, Accenture, a global management consulting company, surveyed 2,400 current and potential rural consumers and interviewed 15 senior-level executives representing the mobile telephony ecosystem. The goal was to understand the needs of rural customers for mobile services and identify the value propositions for rural services by mobile operators.
The Innovative Use of Mobile Applications in East Africa data sheet 4041 Views
Author:
Johan, Hellstrom; Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
Publication Date:
Jan 2010
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
The Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (Sida) recently published a report that gives an overview of the current state of mobile phone applications for social and economic developments in East Africa. Drawing on successful adoption of mobile applications in the Philippines, this Sida report seeks to answer “what hinders the take off of m-applications for development in East Africa and what role donors play in the process.” While mobile phones is the one of the most widely accessible gateways for information in East Africa, with mobile penetration covering over 40% of the population, sustainable, scalable mobile services for social and economic development are limited. The report is supported by secondary data, statistics, and field work carried out in Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, along with numerous interviews, meetings and discussions with key stakeholders in East Africa. Major trends in mobile usage, barriers for increased use of m-applications, as well as opportunities for scaling are discussed.
While August may be the month when the Northen Hemisphere is taking vacations, the mobile world is still cranking out events for developers and practitioners. Here's what's happening this month. As always, add an event in the comments if we missed it!
2 Aug. Tech@State (Washington, DC, U.S.A.) The occasional series of tech events at the US State Department in Washington DC., is hosting a morning of talks on mobile money. If you are in DC, register to come or watch the live stream from afar.
5 Aug. Mashable U.S. Summer Tour (Washington, D.C., U.S.A.): On August 5th, Mashable brings its web and social media tour to D.C.. The popular blog's event brings together contributors from Mashable and attendees interested in Web 2.0 and social media. (The tour also stops in New York City on August 9th and Chicago on August 11th.)
At MobileActive, we’ve held a bi-weekly Research Ignite series to keep up with the latest in research related to mobiles for development. For the past few weeks, our team has been learning and discussing new research and reports. We invite you to put on your learning caps and plug into our screencasts, where we will feature some exciting developments in the world of m4d.
For this Ignite, we’re featuring three studies that were presented at the 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The research covers mobile games in rural India and China that address literacy, and a study on mobile Internet use in South Africa.
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of California, Carnegie Mellon University and Nokia Research Palo Alto developed two mobile games, Multimedia Word and Drumming Stroke, which aim to help young children in rural China recognize Chinese characters and practice strokes. It is the first known m-game that leverages a mobile learning tool for the Chinese language.
A Mobile Marakothi, a Traditional Children’s Game in India, that Teaches English
In rural India, empirical studies show that children often miss school largely due to family labor, assisting in domestic work at home or in the farm without wages or as hired labor. The authors believe that “Mobile learning can empower poor children to balance their educational and income earning goals,” and so, pursued the development of a mobile game to teach English vocabulary. Mobile phones with the m-game were deployed to children living in rural Uttar Pradesh, India for 26 weeks. The pilot identified opportunities for out-of-school learning, revealed gender influences on m-game usage and surprisingly, showed that m-games traversed caste and village boundaries and facilitated social interaction.
Presentation starts at 4:03 min.
Challenging Assumptions of Mobile Internet Access: The Experience of Women in A Township in South Africa
More and more mobile users are surfing the internet on their phones. For most people in developing countries, there is no plan B – in other words, no PC-based internet access. This study reports the experience of a group of women in Khayelitsha, in Cape Town, South Africa who connected to a mobile-based internet for the first time. In this article, six challenges facing mobile-only internet users in developing countries are identified. The authors propose how to the mobile industry can move forward by keeping the end-users in mind and introduce the concept of “digital divide” that is secondary to mobile access – it’s “after-access”.
Presentation starts at 9:59 min.
Thank you to the authors for providing permission to use images, screenshots and data as well as helpful feedback for the screencast. For more research, reports, and white papers about mobile technology for social change visit our mdirectory.
The Mobile Minute is here to bring you the day's mobile-for-development new. Today's Minute covers disaster assistance applications on smartphones, a BBC guide to using pocket-sized video cameras for reporting, the UN ICT Hub's first Briefing Report on ICT4D in the Asia-Pacific region, the development of two new systems that allow mobile phones to work in areas with no reception, an intriguing idea for an iPhone app to combat homelessness, and an event on mobile payments in the Tech@State series in Washington DC.
Today's Mobile Minute covers the mobile gender gap, mobiles in the classroom that allow deaf children to learn alongside hearing children, a study about mobile over-sharing, mobile credits on cell phones during disasters, post-Haiti disaster management with ICTs, and a 90-second interview with Patricia Mechael about mobile health.
The Child Africa International School in Kabale, Uganda encourages the use of SMS at school in order to foster communication between hearing and non-hearing students, as described in "Deaf Children are Being Heard in Africa." (Hat tip Textually.org)
According to a Webroot Study of 1,645 social network users, 55% of people polled said "they worry over loss of privacy incurred from using geolocation data" on mobile phones."
"Disaster Response 2.0: Learning from Haiti" looks at how ICTs were used after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, covering mobile donations, Ushahidi, and how ICTs can help during emergencies.
[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog-posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]
The Mobile Minute, our new daily feature, is here to keep you up-to-date on mobile-related news.
HP Labs India develops "SiteOn Moobile India" a program that allows users with basic mobile phones to access the Internet.
"Digital Diplomacy" The U.S. State Department's Jared Cohen and Alec Ross show how they use ICTs in foreign policy work in this in-depth New York Times article.
[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog-posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]
Engineering Rural Development data sheet 3346 Views
Author:
Parikh, Tapan S.
Publication Date:
Jan 2009
Publication Type:
Journal article
Abstract:
Presented here is an overview of the operational needs of NGOs and CBOs and the role information systems can play to increase their accountability and efficiency. Information systems need to fit the diverse operational needs of NGOs and CBOs, which include coordinating activities, training and monitoring staff, documenting results, accounting, reporting, decision making and learning, acquiring external information and encouraging community participation.
Unfortunately, there are gaps in information systems that impede the ability of NGOs to embrace ICT. To name a few, the lack of open, accessible, cross-platform mobile development tools, limited opportunities and resources provided to local small software companies to engage with NGOs, and the lack of long distance networking technologies to reach remote locations.
Two examples of technologies that were applied successfully are shared: Self Help MIS, an application to monitor activities of small microfinance organizations and credit groups and DigitalICS, an application for data collection used by agricultural cooperatives. The author stresses that ICTs should be viewed as a tool to allow local change agents to be more effective and accountable and shows how computing is able to support local organizations by inspiring innovation, implementation and dissemination of projects, and measuring impact.
Counting Mobile Phones, SIM Cards and Customers data sheet 2128 Views
Author:
Sutherland, Ewan
Publication Date:
Apr 2008
Publication Type:
Report/White paper
Abstract:
The GMSA reports that the mobile subscriptions worldwide is at 3 billion (2008) with 270 million subscriptions in Africa at the end of 2007. This policy paper considers the challenges faced by public policy makers in understanding the true number of individuals with mobile access. There are many reasons why customers might have more than one phone, phone number or SIM card, which results in the double-counting of customers. As a result, it is difficult to assume that the number telephone numbers or SIM cards translates into individual customers. The author discusses the issue of ambiguity in the estimates of mobile teledensity as an indicator for the MDGs and the subsequent challenge for public policy makers in interpreting the large numbers and how they reflect the reality of their countries, cities, towns and villages. Case studies in Bulgaria and South Africa are presented.
BabaJob: Bringing Jobs to People at the Bottom of the Pyramid data sheet 5033 Views
Finding a job is hard but in India, BabaJob is making the process a bit easier for job seekers at the bottom of the pyramid.
Started in Bangalore in March of 2007, BabaJob is a matching resource for blue-collar workers looking for jobs. Sean Blagsvedt, co-founder of BabaJob, explains that the inspiration came from Anirudh Krishna’s research paper “Escaping Poverty and Becoming Poor: Who Gains, Who Loses, and Why?” Blagsvedt learned that most people moved out of poverty through job diversification. However, he noticed that most job-finding resources in India were designed for people seeking white collar jobs. Blue-collar workers and those at the bottom of the economic pyramid had to rely on word of mouth or luck in order to find the jobs that could help them move out of poverty. He decided to create a resource that would allow workers in India to find jobs in their fields and born was Babajob.
The JadeTower Corporation provides software development and training. One service includes Kanchoo, which provides publishing support for mobile phone applications.
This article was written by Bright Simons, Director at IMANI-Ghana and President of the mPedigree Network. It is re-posted here with permission.
Let’s face it: Africa is on the downward slope to perdition as far as technology is concerned.
Many people who are not directly confronted with this reality on the continent are usually lured into a false sense that things are looking up because of the fountain of good news that is the telecom sector.
The truth though is that the seeming proliferation of ICT success stories across the continent masks the real picture, which is one of a splattering of embers in a desolate patch of darkness.
For a casual browse through the latest International Telecommunications Union (ITU) ICT Development Index for instance should force you to conclude that ICT offers Africa no relief from its chronic state of technological pathology.
On Wednesday evening I was lucky enough to attend the first ever "Failfaire", organized by MobileActive.org where several brave souls agreed to present their failed "Information Technology for Development" projects, explaining why they failed and what they learned from them.
I work on knowledge management in UNICEF, and have a strong interest in improving how we learn from our experience. This event (which was certainly not a failure!) was interesting to our work from at least two points of view:
1. The lessons learned from the projects themselves
2. The idea for the event itself and whether this might be something we could try ourselves.
There were four presentations during the meeting:
Bradford Frost presented on Mobileimpact.org a project to recycle old cellphones and donate them to Africa.
As we here at MobileActive.org have been covering ICT and mobiles for development now for more than five years, we have seen our fair share of failures. For every great project that changes how a community benefits from technology to improve the lives of its people, there seem to be twice as many projects that fail, and end up wasting time, money, and maybe worst, goodwill.
Too often in our field, we talk up our successes, overhype and overestimate the value of our projects, and sweep the failures under the rug. But, if we don’t talk about what didn’t work (and, perhaps more importantly, why it didn’t work), others will keep repeating the same mistakes.
That is why we invented FailFaire, a gathering that is happening tonight in New York City and that we hope will take place in other cities around the world. FailFaire is a place where it's ok to talk about what didn't work to learn from for the next project using mobiles for social change and development.
Spring has us ready to get out and share new ideas, so it’s time for our monthly event roundup. Below are some of the mobile events happening around the world that we think might be of interest to the MobileActive.org community. If you know of any great M4D events happening near you, let us know over email (info at mobileactive dot org) or in the comments or on our Facebook page.
FAILfaire, April 14 New York, NY: Of course, we have to start off with promoting our own FAILfaire, which is taking place on April 14th, 5:00-7:00 p.m., in New York City. At FAILfaire, we want to learn from each others’ failures in ICT and mobiles for development – speaking openly about what didn’t work is the best way to improve for the future. Gather round with some wine and a sense of humor, and get ready to talk about FAIL! Sign up here.
Calling all failures! On April 14 we're hosting the first FAILfaire featuring a close look at ICT and mobile development projects that have crashed, burned, and simply FAILED.
While we often focus on highlighting successes and gains in this field, it's no secret that many projects just don't work - some aren't scalable, some aren't sustainable, some can't get around bureaucratic hoops, and many fail due to completely unanticipated barriers. FAILfaire is a platform to openly and honestly discuss failures so that we can learn from what hasn't worked in the past in order to make our future projects stronger and better.
This is where YOU come in. Have you been a part of a project that flopped? Maybe the project used the wrong technology for its region. Maybe it didn't engage the intended community. Did not take culture, people, or both into consieration. Or maybe the rollout was too rushed. Whatever the reason, we want to hear from you.
Later this month, Souktel, a Palestinian NGO, and UNICEF will host a two-day bootcamp and mobile programming workshop with young Palestinian developers in Ramallah. The bootcamp hopes to jumpstart a mobile open source developer community in the region.
“There are a lot of young Palestinians who are unemployed. […] We wanted to work with young people who have time and are creative. We hope to create the first mobile open source community in the Middle East,” says Souktel’s Katie Highet.
