Mobile Phones

From the AFRIK-IT mailing list I learned about this new post by Richard Heeks which, among other interesting insights, provides particularly striking (but not surprising) charts comparing mobile and Internet penetration in rich and poor countries. Richard provides the data he used to generate them via a shared google spreadsheet to encourage others to remix and analyze them to draw further conclusions. I like this approach!

Worldwide mobile, Internet and broadband data for 1998-2009 is now available online at: http://ict4dblog.wordpress.com/tag/ict4d-statistics/

Based on ITU data, this provides a compiled and cleaned-up spreadsheet of data; charts comparing technology penetration levels in countries grouped by income; 'digital gap' charts comparing richest vs. poorest countries; and 'digital lag' data showing how many years behind the richest countries are the poorest countries.

Activists, bloggers, journalists and students in Egypt are using their mobile phones to alert their networks if they are in danger or have been arrested using SMS text messaging and the micro-blogging service Twitter. Egyptian activists who have informed their network of arrest by police have proved this to be an effective means of getting the word out quickly of their detention so that fellow activists can pressure the government for a quick release, or mount a longer-term campaign in the result of formal charges.

In the first week of February Mobile Web East Africa was held in Nairobi, well over 110 participants took part from all echelons of the mobile ecosystem, with the ICT4D sector particularly well represented.  Over the course of the two days there was a huge amount discussed and this would be a record breaking blog post if I were to repeat everything.  So rather than going down that route I wanted to direct Kabissa members to the two best sources of information from the event:

The new opportunity to have activism through mobile phones is fascinating. A while ago Sokari Enkine asked me to write a chapter for a recent published book funded by Hivos.

Our hearts and minds are with the people of Haiti in these crucial days after the earthquake. No matter where you are in the world, you can help. Below is a message from Erik Hersman of @ushahidi with a very good opportunity to volunteer online to help map and integrate info from Haiti for use by people in need and those who can provide relief.

Following on from the impact that SMS, Voice and Mobile Money has had on the African continent the next stage of mobile technology evolution appears to be in the process of development – with the upsurge in the use of the internet and applications on mobile handsets.

For any of you who travel in the region and use the mobile phone as the primary mode of getting online, getting the settings for a data connection is seriously frustrating. More so since my phone (an android) doesn't for some reason allow me to save the settings from the phone company and I have to manually input them.

Thanks to Google (hat tip: ICTD chick) and some serious aggro, I was able to get the most updated (September, 2009) settings so here goes:-

MTN, Uganda:
Access point name: MTN

 In an attempt to increase its sugar production, the Sugar Corporation of Uganda Ltd., which produces Lugazi Sugar, sought government permission to clear and annex about 71,000 square km of the adjacent Mabira forest.  Mabira forest is one of Uganda’s largest natural tropical forests.

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: