The “Stop Stock-Outs” campaign is based around a little-known, but devastating, problem. Medicine stock-outs - where local clinics and pharmacies run out of high-demand, crucial medicines - are a potentially lethal problem in a number of African countries, yet governments insist they don’t occur. The team behind the Stop Stock-Outs project set out to find a solution and asked themselves, ”What could be more powerful than a map which contradicts these government claims?”
Last year, activists in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia started surveying clinics in their respective countries, checking stock levels of essential medicines. After visiting clinics and pharmacies, activists report their results using their mobile phones through structured, coded text messages (SMS) – “x,y,z” – where the first number represented their country code (Kenya, Malawi, Uganda or Zambia), the second their district or city, and the third the medicine which they found to be out of stock. The messages are then visually displayed on an online map, showing specific reports by location and building up “hot spots” of activity. Within the first week alone, the team collected reports of 250 stock-outs of essential medicines. Because incoming data automatically populates the map, it represents an almost real-time picture of stock-outs. After a successful launch and a week piloting the service, the “stock-out SMS number” has been distributed to medicine users throughout each country so that anyone with a mobile phone can send in a stock-out report. However, unlike reports from official, known data collectors, these messages will firstly be checked by staff at Health Action International before being posted up on the map. Then the government can’t deny it’s happening and the public pressure can really start.
Nigel Waller dropped the surprising statistic that worldwide there are one billion people who use cell phones – but don’t own one; instead they share, borrow or rent them. The Cloud Phone was intended to serve this market. At first Waller tried to create a cell phone that could be manufactured for just $5 so that everyone could afford one, but he couldn’t pull it off.Instead Waller went with a $25 phone, but designed it so that a village of users could share it while still maintaining individual phone numbers accounts on a single phone. Activation cost? Just 10 to 20 cents per person.
The Cloud Phone is a service that allows people to have their own identity, and to log in and log out of other people's mobile phones, just like you can log in and out of your e-mail account using someone else's PC. In this way users can have their own personal mobile number for private communication, at half the cost of a SIM card and without the hassle of carrying a SIM card around.
When a user logs in with their own number and pin code they will be greeted with a menu. For example it says, "Hello, John. Your balance is $1. You have two missed calls. You've got one SMS message."
The Cloud Phone was developed by Movirtu and Frog Design, after they met at the PopTech conference last year, and the development process included a field study with 12 residents of the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya.
28 Oct 2010 // The idea came to Nathan Eagle, a research scientist with the MIT, when he was doing a teaching stint in rural Kenya. He realised that, as three-quarters of the 4.6 billion mobile-phone users worldwide live in developing countries, a useful piece of technology is now being placed in the hands of a large number of people who might be keen to use their devices to make some money. To help them do so, he came up with a service called txteagle which distributes small jobs via text messaging in return for small payments.
Mr Eagle hopes txteagle will do its bit by mobile “crowdsourcing”—breaking down jobs into small tasks and sending them to lots of individuals. These jobs often involve local knowledge and range from things like checking what street signs say in rural Sudan for a satellite-navigation service to translating words into a Kenyan dialect for companies trying to spread their marketing. A woman living in rural Brazil or India may have limited access to work, adds Mr Eagle, “but she can still use her mobile phone to collect local price and product data or even complete market-research surveys.” Payments are transferred to a user’s phone by a mobile money service, such as the M-PESA system run by Safaricom in Africa, or by providing additional calling credit.Working with over 220 mobile operators, txteagle is able to reach 2 billion subscribers in 80 countries. It already has the largest contract-labour force in Kenya and new ways of using it are being found all the time.
25 Oct 2010 // Tavneet Suri of MIT and Billy Jack of Georgetown have resurveyed ~2,000 Kenyan households about their perceptions and use of the M-PESA phone-based money transfer service. The first survey took place in the fall of 2008; this one took place in fall 2009. The results are just out:
// M-PESA is rapidly propagating down market to poorer, less educated, more rural customers. In the 10-month period between the two survey rounds, the percentage of households using M-PESA increased from 43% to 70%. During this period, the percentage of M-PESA users who were unbanked increased from 25% to 50%, while the percentage of rural users increased from 29% to 41%.// Agents are working better, and liquidity issues are sorting themselves out. A much larger percentage of users in Round 2 trust their agent (95%) than did users in Round 1 (65%), even while the number of agents quadrupled during the 10-month period from 4,000 to 16,000. // Awareness is almost 100% - The percentage of households who don’t know about M-PESA fell from 18% in Round 1 to 3% in Round 2.// Increased use for saving - The percentage of users who use M-PESA for saving increased from 75% in Round 1 to 81% in Round 2.
8 Sept 2010 // A new Mobile Application Laboratory (mLab) will be launched in Nairobi this year in a 2-year program that aims to create 8-10 new mobile apps. It will be hosted by the *iHub, Nairobi’s Innovation Hub which is an enabler and catalyst within the technology community. The *iHub consortium comprises eMobilis, the University of Nairobi's School of Computing and Informatics and the Web Foundation. As well as the lab in Nairobi, there will be a second mLab created in South Africa.
The mLabs will be focal points run and used by Africans working to increase the competitiveness of innovative enterprises working in mobile content and applications. In each lab local companies, technologists and experts can collaborate to develop locally relevant applications that meet user demands.
Each lab will be a platform for building the technical skills, business nous and personal relationships needed to build scalable mobile solutions into thriving businesses that address social needs. As well as providing state of the art equipment, the labs will offer technical training and workshops and connect developers and entrepreneurs with potential investors, academic experts, and even public sector leaders.
The mLabs are expected to be fully operational by the end of 2010. Future mobile applications labs are planned for Eastern Europe and Asia.
The labs are part of the wider €12.9 million program 'Creating Sustainable Businesses in the Knowledge Economy' ran by infoDev, Nokia and the Finland Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which aims to encourage innovation and competitiveness among SMEs in the information and communication technologies and agribusiness sectors in particular.
Today I took a closer look at the presentations put together for the 6 mobile phone applications developed for Kenya by the d.school students this year. For me 2 of the solutions stood out:
PillCheck (Kifaa cha Tenbe): a mobile application to help people find information on the availability and pricing of malaria drugs quickly. I like this solution because it tackles an essential need, the PSS is worked out well and the idea is presented very effectively using the 'prezi' web tool:
M-MAJI: a system that allows people to identify clean water sources in their community. I also think the presentation effectively demonstrates the need for the service and how the PSS works, although as a traditional PDF it is a bit less dynamic than the above presentation:
The Nokia Research Center in Nairobi (NRC Nairobi) focuses on understanding the needs of the African mobile phone user and creates concepts and visions to fulfill these needs. The concepts are built into prototypes and pilots and then field tested.
In this video, Jussi Impiö (head of NRC Nairobi) talks about their project to help youth find development opportunities through music:
The team must face some Africa specific challenges. The majority of Africans have extremely low income level and less than 10% of the population has access to the fixed electricity grid. This creates a need for new business models. Another challenge is that more than 1000 languages are spoken in 56 countries, sometimes in very isolated communities.
Mobile communication has a great role in social and economical development in Africa. NRC Nairobi is co-operating with NGOs and UN organizations to develop such devices and services which could support this progress.
Research topics include:
// Entrepreneurship // Energy management // Health care // Education // Transportation // Social media // Arts and culture: music, storytelling, oral culture
A group of d.school students recently returned from Kenya, where they spent 2 weeks working with Nokia Research Africa and the University of Nairobi to develop health-related mobile applications. The trip was the culmination of months of work in connection with a new class at the d.school, "Designing Liberation Technologies".
Starting in April, Stanford d.school students worked with computer science students at the University of Nairobi to identify the design needs of health care providers and low-income mobile phone users in Kenya. The students then developed prototypes of mobile applications to support delivery of health services in urban areas. In August, a group of students travelled to Nairobi to meet with NGO partners, test prototypes, and advance plans for the future.
Although relatively few Kenyans have heavy-duty, feature-rich smartphones like the iPhone, Kenyans make very sophisticated use of the technology available to them. For instance, it is not uncommon for Kenyans to own multiple SIM cards and swap them in and out of their phones as necessary to take advantage of favorable in-network and off-peak pricing structures.
By 2009, nearly 40% of the adult population in Kenya held an M-Pesa account, and the user base is still growing strong today. Originally intended to be a tool for making safe and secure payments, M-Pesa has gone on to do a lot more. By replacing cash, M-Pesa has solved a nagging security problem that chilled all kinds of financial activity in Kenya - including savings. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority of Kenyans do not hold a brick-and-mortar bank account in their name, and M-Pesa is quickly taking the place of cash-stuffed mattresses. According to a recent study by several American economists, three quarters of M-Pesa users it to save money, and many M-Pesa users say it is the most important savings tool they have.
Building on the insights gained during their research, the 20 d.school students came up with the following applications:
mNote: an online archive for community health worker notes. This application empowers community health workers by preserving the flexibility and control they appreciate in their current paper notebooks, but adding digital knowledge management capabilities.
M-MAJI ("mobile water"): an electronic information system that allows people to use their mobile phones to identify clean water sources in their community. The application seeks to decrease the time and money spent searching for water, improve water quality, and foster vendor accountability by providing a mechanism for user feedback.
Babybank: a dedicated savings plan designed specifically for pregnant women in the slums of Nairobi. By leveraging a popular cell phone payment system, M-Pesa, the application aims to make savings easier, so that expecting mothers can afford the services that will keep themselves and their babies healthy.
Mazanick: an application to provide support and advice to pregnant women via SMS, with the aim of helping motivate them to attend prenatal appointments.
PillCheck (Kifaa cha Tenbe): a mobile application to help people in Kibera find information on the availability and pricing of malaria drugs quickly.
PatientMap: a system to make the waiting process in clinics more transparent, and to increase patient trust in the medical system.
