Member Aid For AfricaA monthly newsletter for members of the Kabissa African civil society network

Contents

  1. Dear Mimi: Internet Advice Column - Ushahidi comes to DRC
  2. Under the Baobab Tree: News and Blog Posts from Kabissa Members
  3. Kabissa Matters
  4. Technology News and Resources
  5. Opportunities Pot
  6. Member Spotlight: Paradigm Initiative Nigeria (PIN)

1. Dear Mimi: Internet Advice Column

Are you working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Do you know people and organisations that are involved in responding to the crisis in eastern Congo? If so, please help spread the word about Ushahidi, the project described below, and take note of the following mobile number and web address which you can use to report incidents of violence that you have witnessed:

+243992592111
http://drc.ushahidi.com

Ushahidi is a project trying to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Ushahidi means “testimony” in Swahili and is an incredible effort to build a platform that crowdsources crisis information. Allowing anyone to submit crisis information through text messaging using a mobile phone, email or web form.

Ushahidi is being designed to be deployable quickly to respond to any crisis situation, and has already been deployed in Kenya, South Africa and now DRC. Below is a quick 40 second video that summarizes the vision behind the project. You can learn more and get involved at http://www.ushahidi.com.

2. Under the Baobab Tree: News and Blogs from Kabissa Members

3. Kabissa Matters

  • Liz in BeninMembership Update: 15 organisations joined Kabissa this month, from Togo, Ghana, Kenya, Somalia, South Africa, Uganda and Nigeria, bringing our membership total as of today to 1287.
  • Former Member Relations Manager Liz Trautman has joined the Peace Corps in Benin (and has discovered blogging)
  • Come check out the new, more functional web design for Kabissa community site and new navigation menu and email features: if you visited http://www.kabissa.org recently you will have found that this month we made several important improvements which we expect will make the site easier and more fun to use in all web browsers. Note the powerful pulldown menus across the top which provide direct access to all the critical areas of the site, and the improved design of the organisation directory and blog pages. Now is a great time for you to spend some time on the site to learn about all the great things you can do there. Please send us your feedback and join the Kabissa 2.0 beta group if you have time and expertise to share so we can collaboratively make the site even better!
  • New: "Clustrmap" shows everyone where visitors to the Kabissa community site are coming from. Click on the map at the bottom of Kabissa site pages and you will see a larger version of the map with circles indicating where people are coming from. The map will reset once a month, with archives being kept for historical purposes. It is exciting to visualise on a map how popular the site is and the many places in Africa and around the world that are home to people involved in the Kabissa community.
  • New: reply by email to notifications received from the Kabissa site! It has been possible for some time for registered users of the Kabissa site to keep in closer contact with the Kabissa community by setting up new content notifications. Now it is also possible to reply directly by email to notifications you receive in your inbox - just hit the reply button in your email, write your message above the original text (or delete the original text) and send your message off! That's it - your message will then automatically be added as a comment to the post you are replying to and become part of the conversation. Try it!

4. Technology News and Resources

5. Opportunities Pot

6. Member Spotlight: Paradigm Initiative Nigeria (PIN)

This month Sokari's speaks with Gbenga Sesan, one of the founding members of Paradigm Initiative Nigeria (PIN) in Nigeria.

Sokari: You have been blogging on technology in Nigeria for 3 years, can you tell us why you started and what you hoped to achieve with your blog "ORO" ?

'Gbenga: I started blogging because I discovered that I was already "blogging" :) Before 2005, I had been keeping online journals through the help of various web pages including my TIG profile and personal website so it was quite a natural move for me to set up ablog in 2005 after I'd heard the term used a lot by the likes of Tim Akinbo andEdward Popoola. With Oro (which is a Yoruba word which translates to mean"word"), I wanted to create a space where I could offer usefulinformation to young Nigerians, tell the world about the progress of ICTs inNigeria and also have a personal platform where my own thoughts could bepublished without any editorial vetting. I was maintaining a number of mailinglists and responding to tons of eMails all around Youth and ICT issues at thetime so I thought it would be easier to have a place where they could all go toinstead of spending so much time responding to every eMail (and I did respondto every eMail at the time).

Sokari: You state that you made a conscious decision to use your blog to create a "positive" space on Nigeria and Nigerian technology. Do you not think that it is necessary to reflect critically on Nigeria's technology development in order for us to learn from our mistakes as well as create a more conducive environment for innovation and development?

'Gbenga: I am one of the major critics of Nigeria's technology industry but I've always loved the approach of lighting a candle instead of cursing the darkness. Right from my minor inputinto the first IT Policy while I was still a student in Ile-Ife, I have believed in reflecting critically on the development process and prompting theopportunity to learn from mistakes but since we have so much news about what's wrong with Nigeria in cyberspace, I could avoid duplication of efforts byfocusing on the positive. You know, I keep wondering if today's youth won't bebetter if they grew up reading good news as headlines. My blog doesn't compareto mainstream media in terms of impact but it should at least inspire the fewthat come in contact with it -- either directly or through the many feeds ithas. However, my choice to stay positive doesn't stop me from writing aboutwhat needs to be done and also try to "create a more conducive environment for innovation and development." Maybe I'd rather see the cup as half full, even though anyone who calls it half empty isn't necessarily wrong.

Sokari: Recently, the creator of Nigerian social bookmarking site, Sturvs, Temi Kolawole, commented on the "lack of collaboration" amongst Nigerian technology innovators. What are your thoughts on this?

'Gbenga: I quite agree with Temi on that and think we need to pursue better collaboration because that's how we can work together to create relevant development. We are fortunate to have innovators/enthusiasts across the world and it would be great to see some form of collaboration as we make progress on individual fronts. I think that we need to start thinking of how to identify (and create if none exists) a platformthat can bring us together and allow for consistent exchange of ideas and more. Each time I am involved in a collaborative project that involves Nigeria and technology (and I've been involved in a lot), I keep my antennas out in search of that platform. I'd be the first (maybe second, after Temi) to throw my weight behind such opportunity when it comes.

Sokari: You have been involved with a huge number of technology initiatives, especially for youths in Nigeria, including the Paradigm Initiative Nigeria. What is PIN and who are the target group?

‘Gbenga: PIN is thea cronym for Paradigm Initiative Nigeria and though it started with an online volunteer team with the main objective of connecting Nigerian youths with ICT opportunities, it has grown into a non-profit social enterprise seeking to help deliver ICT for socio-economic opportunities in Nigeria. We have worked withgovernment, civil society, private institutions and international organisationsin ICT education, telecentre support, ICT applications in rural areas, andother ICT4D interventions in Nigeria. PIN's bottom-up result-oriented programs,all of which are delivered in partnership with various institutions andcommunities, include Ajegunle.org, the Internet Safety, Security and Privacy Initiative for Nigeria; theNon-Profit Employee Motivation Program and Dare to beBIG, an upcoming reality TV show focusing on youth and ICTs.

Sokari: Can you tell us some of the technology groups PIN has worked with and how successful these have been.

‘Gbenga: During theWorld Summit on the Information Society process (2003-2005), PIN worked with the likes of TakingITGlobal, Nigerian Civil Society Coalition on ICTs, Nigerian Information Technology Development Agency, and the Nigerian Youth Coalition on ICTs. The results of the 3-year long campaign speak for themselves today and have also been chronicled in the book titled, "Global Process, LocalReality" (available for download here). We have also worked with variousUnited Nations agencies with technology mandates and we believe that thecollaborations have been quite successful considering the impact on our ownlearning curve.

Sokari: You have created a Facebook group "Friends of PIN" - what do you hope to achieve through the Facebook group and Friends of PIN in general?

‘Gbenga: Friends of PIN was established as an opportunity for various people to support PIN's work regardless of location. The FaceBook group is the home of the group at the moment, and it's helped us connect with supporters who are either able to join us physically at project sites or those who are working out various strategiesthat can help us sustain the work that we do. Our goals with FoPIN include thecreation of a machinery that helps us attract resources (in terms of man-hoursand financial capital), having a group that can give us immediate feedback onour existence, and presenting a platform through which we can reach out toother locations with our projects -- when we need to.

Sokari: How have you used Web 2.0 technology in promoting and organising PIN and other technology initiatives.

‘Gbenga: Yes. We have leaned heavily on social networking in spreading the news about our work and involving youth in our social campaigns. For example, we have kept a FaceBook event page, "The Alternative"alive to spread the word about our ongoing Internet Safety, Security & Privacy Initiative for Nigeria campaign.

Sokari: On reflecting over the past three years can you name three areas of development that Nigerian technology innovators should be thinking about?

‘Gbenga:

1. Mobile -- We need to exploit this ready platform as much aspossible! With over 50 million "access points" (i.e. mobilephones), we can do a lot.

2. BoP Applications -- There are countless applications (fromsoftware to high-tech) that will help those who are at the bottom of the pyramid, and exploring this opportunity may be the way forward for many small businesses that are presently too busy trying to compete with established institutions.

3. Innovation -- It's strange that I speak of innovation while responding to a "technology innovation " question but we are yet to see a deliberate push for new appropriate innovations that don't necessarily follow templates already developed elsewhere. I do not speak of reinventing thewheel, but the need to use innovation as an answer to our perculiar issues.

Sokari: What do you think are the main barriers to technology start ups and to internet take up in Nigeria?

‘Gbenga: Infrastructure, policy and focus. The lack of infrastructure (including power and access) does its own bit of discouraging most efforts, the policy environment needs some upgrading so it can fit the profile of the New Economy, and the focus of today's youth (the nation's potential manpower base) on immediate results don'thelp us much.

"Gbenga Sesan, a member of the United Nations Committee of eLeaders on Youth and ICT and Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellow, is a social entrepreneur, Information Society researcher and Nigeria's first Information Technology Youth Ambassador.He is quick to express passionate belief in the potentials thatInformation and Communication Technologies (ICTs) hold for developingeconomies, and has expressed this at various local, national, regionaland international fora through his speaking opportunities in overtwenty countries. 'Gbenga is a graduate of Electronic & ElectricalEngineering from Obafemi Awolowo University and has been trained atLagos Business School, New York Group for Technology Transfer, Oxfordand Harvard."

If you would like your organisation to feature in the "Member Spotlight", please email Sokari at community@kabissa.org

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