I have been invited to return to Netsquared as champion for Ipeace, a featured project of the N2Y4 Mobile Challenge. The innovative project is described as follows:

Ipeace, is a safety open source mobile telephony platform and Web 2.0 platform to allow journalist, human rights activist, scientist and people to expose war crimes and human rights violation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Ipeace open-source mobile telephony platform will uses J2ME code that can run on a wide range of java-enable phones. 

It will include  different options (Video, Camera, SMS, MMS, GPS, GIS) to collect information, alerts and spread those information world wide.

I am excited to meet the people behind the project, Narcisse Mbunzama Lokwa and Dueme Patrick Safi, and to learn more about the Ipeace project. I am particular intrigued to find out how the creators intend to very quickly  implement such a challenging set of features on a limiting platform (mobile phones) and all of this in a way that is anonymous and secure. The need is great for such functionality, and not just in the Democratic Republic of Congo! 

Last time I was there was for N2Y2 together with Kim Lowery, presenting our own Kabissa 2.0: Strengthening the Social Web in Africa project which was featured that year. Reviewing Erik's blog post about it, I am reminded that I still think it's well worth doing even two years later!

It will be interesting also to spend more time with innovative friends at the event, including Mary Joyce of DigiActive and Ken Banks of FrontlineSMS. Indeed, it's great that 3 of the 10 finalist projects are based on FrontlineSMS. If you are coming, please let me know @kabissa!

Kabissa has joined the growing community of social enterprises, activists and innovators in Africa and around the world who are using Twitter to keep in closer contact, share information and deepen personal connections using SMS and the web.

What is Twitter, then? It is "a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?" It is more than that. Erik Hersman, who blogs at WhiteAfrican.com, describes it this way:

Twitter represents a change in communication. By acting as a global gateway for updates via SMS (or the web), that then updates all of your followers, Twitter succeeded in breaking ground in one-to-many messaging.

If you are using Twitter, you can now follow Kabissa at http://twitter.com/kabissa ...and let us also follow you! 

Below is a helpful introductory video that covers all the Twitter basics: 

I received the announcement below via the [interider] list. If you are concerned about digital security, please check this out and let us all know how it works for you. -Tobias

In a first step in improvements announced last week, we have moved the Kabissa participatory website to a Media Temple Dedicated Virtual account. The site now has plenty of resources devoted to it so we expect that everyone will have an easier (and faster!) time using the site from now on. Many thanks go to longtime Kabissa volunteer Greg Schnippel for his help in ironing out the final bugs in migrating the site!

Please help us by pointing out any new problems you come across since the move today or if you have any feedback. In connection with the website development we are working on right now, we will be in touch with everyone shortly to request input on where you would like this site - and this community - to go in the future. You can submit site feedback at http://www.kabissa.org/beta - thanks!

I was really glad to get this email from TED about their new TED Fellows program, especially because I saw many friends and tech innovators working in Africa among the first group of 40 TED Fellows. Wonderful things are indeed emerging from Africa! Congratulations, friends!

Intriguingly, there is an open application process to join so anybody between 21-40 years old, even you, can apply!

Here are the TED Fellows working in Africa that I already know and  admire: 

• Bola Olabisi: Founder of Global Women Inventors and Innovators Network; Nigeria/U.K. 
• Erik Hersman: Cofounder of Ushahidi.com -- a site providing online visualization of conflict areas; blogger for Afrigadget.com and White African; organizer, Maker Faire Africa. Kenya/U.S.
• Joshua Wanyama: Founder of Pamoja Media -- the first African online advertising network; founder of African Path -- an African Huffington Post. Kenya/U.S.
• Katrin Verclas: Mobile trends analyst and founder of Mobileactive.org -- a global network of people using mobile technology for social impact. U.S. (not focussed on Africa but mobileactive.org is still very influential in Africa)

And here are the fellows working in Africa that I don't know (yet) but look forward to learning about: 

• Gerry Douglas: Founder of Baobab Health -- an NGO creating eHealth systems to address health care crises in the developing world with particular emphasis on HIV care and treatment. Malawi/U.S.
• Juliana Rotich: Cofounder of Ushahidi.com -- a site providing online visualization of conflict areas; blogger, Environmental Editor of GlobalVoices. Kenya/U.S.
• Patrick Awuah: Founder and President of Ashesi University. Ghana
• Rye Barcott: Marine Corps Captain; Founder of Carolina for Kibera; Student, Harvard Busines School/Harvard Kennedy School. Kenya/U.S.
• Sheila Ochugboju: Operational Director of Global Women Inventors and Innovators Network; science educator. Nigeria/U.K.

I remember meeting Ben Rigby at the first Mobile Active convergence in Toronto quite a few years ago now, and being struck by his innovative and bold ideas. He was then in the process of developing mobilevoter.org, a clever new initiative to use mobile phones to encourage people to register to vote. This is a big issue in America, where so many young people tend to be apathetic about politics and don't even register to vote, let alone go to the polls to cast a ballot.

Now he has teamed up with Jacob Colker to create The Extraordinaries, offering what they call "On-Demand Volunteerism by Mobile Phone". This initiative, powered by an iPhone application, will be only available in the US, but I could imagine this type of innovating having terrific potential in Africa where logistical conditions make volunteering of any kind very challenging indeed. When I wrote to ask about it, the response from Jacob was "I think it's going to be about a year before people can download the application internationally, but we DO want to go worldwide with this asap! Please watch our email newsletters for updates. Glad to know we have people that may be interested in Africa." What kind of mobile phone volunteering could you imagine happening in Africa within the next few years?

Follow The Extraordinaries at:

I received this mailing from the Gates Foundation today and was impressed by the size of the commitment and the partners involved - Rotary, Gates, UK and Germany. I knew Rotary was deeply committed to polio eradication but did not know the scale of the investments. I would be interested to hear more from Kabissa members about how this news will be received in Africa, in particular in Nigeria, and how the problem of polio is being addressed by local organisations in your communities. Also - how will innovative technologies be applied to address this seemingly intractible problem. -Tobias

SAN DIEGO -- Rotary International, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the British and German governments today committed more than $630 million in new funds to fight polio, a crippling and sometimes fatal disease that still paralyzes children in parts of Africa and Asia and threatens children everywhere. In addition to pledging needed funds, leaders urged additional donors and leaders of countries where polio still exists to join them in an aggressive push for eradication.

The Gates Foundation is awarding a $255 million challenge grant to Rotary, which Rotary will match with $100 million raised by its members over the next three years. At the same time, the United Kingdom is giving an additional $150 million and Germany is giving an additional $130 million (? 100 million), both to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). Contributions from the U.K. and Germany over the next five years will not count toward Rotary's match of the Gates Foundation challenge grant.

Each month, New Tactics hosts an online dialogue focusing on a particular tactic. This month's featured online dialogue is on Election Monitoring.  Election Monitoring is a powerful tool in promoting democracy, political rights and good governance. We will discuss the principles behind this tactic, the risks and challenges involved, and the techniques being used by practitioners to overcome these challenges. We invite you to join our featured resource practitioners and share your experiences.

If you recall, last month I shared a post from OneWorld US to help choose the "OneWorld Person of 2008". Well, the results are in and while the OneWorld community did not choose an African, they DID choose a social entrepreneur who is devoted to helping Africans "move themselves out of poverty". Now they are asking the community to engage in a dialogue with the winner. Post Your Questions to Social Entrepreneur Martin Fisher. (Pamela Adoyo, who works on HIV/AIDS in Kenya, came in a close second. Congratulations!)

I have been a vocal critic of the One Laptop Per Child program over the years, and still am - but am beginning to see that things are turning around for the project and that they are starting to do many things right. I see the "give one get one year two" scheme has ended as of December 26th and it's no longer possible to get the laptops - several of my own neighbors participated and the process was quite smooth. Hopefully this will be extended so the laptops contine to be available worldwide to those who need them, or that it is repeated again next fall. I don't know personally how the laptops are being introduced through projects in Africa and would be glad to hear about it through the Kabissa community. In the meantime, below is a link to a useful Negroponte talk on TED about OLPC in Colombia: 

In a special report from the field, TED follows Nicholas Negroponte to Colombia as he delivers laptops to schoolkids in territory once controlled by guerrillas. His partner? Colombia's Defense Department, who see One Laptop per Child as an investment in regional stability. (Want to help out? OLPC's Give One Get One program runs through Dec. 26.) Watch this talk >>