A global network of people using mobile technology for social impact.
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.
Guest post by Christine Martin, Tufts University.
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.
The idea
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.
Read the full How-To Set Up an SMS System here.
Mobile tech as a tool for social development is makling the front pages in 2009. They are hyped as panacea for global issues such as rural health in developing countries, poverty alleviation, making rural markets more efficient, and activism.
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.
If we imagine Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle falling asleep in a developing nation in 1998 and awaking today, it's likely that he'd be fascinated and surprised by mobile phones. When Rip went to sleep, only a few hundred million people had access to mobile phones, and most lived in wealthy nations. A decade later, the ITU sees 4.1 billion mobile phone accounts, two-thirds of them in the developing world. The changes brought by mobile phones are both subtle and omnipresent - mobile phone numbers painted above shop doors allow merchants to untether from their stalls; carpentry ads scrawled on road signs turn a craftsman with a phone into an independent, mobile business; secure money transfers from abroad pay the village school fees that grant a child an education.
The rise of the mobile phone has challenged many of the predictions about information in the developing world offered by information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) specialists. Instead of embracing community solutions that offered shared access to information, many poor people have been willing to pay large sums (as Steve Song and others have documented, sometimes more than 50% of their disposable income) for personal access to communication tools. Presented with a model that extends connectivity into some poor communities without government subsidy, often turning a profit, the development community is rightly looking for ways to build tools for economic and community development on top of these platforms.
While we are wise to embrace the successes of the mobile phone platform, we need to think carefully about the implications of a mobile-based communications future in the developing world. Much of the thinking about ICT4D has focused on the benefits of the internet, an open, decentralized platform that's different from mobile phone networks in critical ways. It's unclear that some of the emergent behaviors we've celebrated on the Internet can be easily replicated in a mobile-centric world.
Here are some mobile events for the month of October that we thought are noteworthy and of interest to the MobileActive.org community. If you know of others, please mail us at info at MobileActive dot org.
The first Mobile Web Conference in Africa is a two-day event in Johannesburg that focuses on some of these key questions: How will the mobile industry evolve to a point where the vast majority of people have access to the mobile web and the content they want to view? How can societal and economic problems be tackled by the development of the capabilities of the mobile device?
PopTech explores major trends shaping our future, the social impact of new technologies, and new approaches to addressing the world’s most significant challenges. Several PopTech Fellows are part of the MobileActive.org community, including Deb Levine from Isis.inc, a leader in using mobile phones for sexual health education.
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Ben Freda Consulting