Talking About TIER

TIER is in Doha!

If you are in Doha, too, presumably for the ICTD2009 conference, come meet our colleagues and check out everyone’s demos and posters. Alas, the workshops have already happened (woohoo, TIER people featured in all three workshops, with me in the Curriculum workshop, Matt Kam and Divya in the Young Researchers’ Workshop, and Rowena organizing the “What is Research” workshop), but you still have time see the posters and demos:

• ICTD State of the Union: Where have we Reached and Where are we Headed?
  Sergiu Nedevsci, Rabin Patra, Joyojeet Pal
• Rajnikant?s Laptop: Computers and Development in Popular Indian Cinema
  Joyojeet Pal
• Improving Data Quality With Dynamic Forms
  Kuang Chen, Harr Chen, Neil Conway, Heather Dolan, Joseph M. Hellerstein, and Tapan S. Parikh
• Metamouse: Multiple Mice for Legacy Applications
  Kurtis Heimerl, Divya Ramachandran, Joyojeet Pal., Eric Brewer and Tapan Parikh

And of course don’t miss the TIER ICTD papers:

• Political Incentives and Policy Outcomes: Who Benefits from Technology Enabled Serivice Centers? Jennifer Bussell
• Improving Literacy in Rural India: Cellphone Games in an After-School Program Matthew Kam, Anuj Kumar, Shirley Jain, John Canny
• ICTD for Healthcare in Ghana: Two Parallel Case Studies Rowena Luk, Matei Zaharia, Melissa Ho, Paul Aoki
• E for Express: “Seeing” the Indian State through ICTD Renee Kuriyan, Isha Ray
• Claim Mobile: Engaging Conflicting Stakeholder Requirements in Healthcare in Uganda Melissa Ho, Emmanuel Owusu, Paul M Aoki

If I’m good I’ll take notes during the keynotes and post them on my blog. =) In the meantime you can download the proceedings temporarily from the ICTD2009 website (warning I think it is 35MB).

Melissa

I meant to post this a while back (like 3 weeks ago when the announcements first started coming out), but this is interesting and relevant for a lot of us playing around in the Ghana telecommunications arena:

Vodafone in Ghanaian mobile deal
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7487821.stm
Page last updated at 13:41 GMT, Thursday, 3 July 2008 14:41 UK
Mobile phone firm Vodafone is to expand its presence in Africa by buying a controlling stake in Ghana Telecom for £452m ($900m).

I’m not sure what this means. My first question (almost selfishly) was whether Vodafone would continue the program enabling doctors to talk to each other for free on OneTouch lines (courtesy of Brian Levine from NYU and Mr. John Annoh Quarshie from OneTouch). But the larger order questions are ones of management - how much upheaval will Vodafone bring to GT? Will it be more of the same years of mis-management (constant re-organizations, blame shifting, and strategic monopolistic practices aimed towards, well, understandably, maintaining their market control), or will Vodafone use GT’s strategic position wisely and maybe actually stimulate healthier telecommunications growth in Ghana?

Good or bad for Vodacom? Good or bad for Ghana? Well, I personally think it’s a mix. Ghana’s opposition party thinks it’s a bad deal and the parliament blocked approval until the next meeting in October - possibly trying to hold out for Ghana’s presidential elections in November. Their reasons? I don’t know what the real reasons are - maybe Eric O or someone else in Ghana can speak to that - but the article says they want to hold out for more money. I hate hearing that from politicians - but in Ghana who can trust the businessmen to actually strike fair deals? In the long run, though, I think the cash is less important than the change of management (and perhaps the shares), and I don’t know enough about Vodafone to know what tidings this holds for Ghana as a whole. I do think that this is really interesting from the perspective of the multi-national company diving into african mobile market fray. Buying out the entire national monopoly dsl/landline/mobile company seems a bit drastic, especially given GT’s history. But given their progress on DSL broadband provision in the past year, I can’t say this is a bad move. While I was there, they managed to expand to Takoradi, Cape Coast, and Tamale, covering three additional regional capitals within a span of just a few months, and simultaneously wiping out the ISP competition in those markets.

From a mobile communications standpoint, Vodafone’s acquisition of GT might be coming at a good time, closely following the heels of MTN’s recent acquisition of Areeba (formerly known as Spacefon). Jump on the Bandwagon. What the newspaper articles really fail to say, then, is that Vodafone is not just acquiring the mobile division of GT (aka OneTouch, the third largest mobile provider, and sometimes the most reliable, if there is coverage), but Vodafone’s acquisition (if approved by Parliament) would also cover the rest of GT as well. And this is strategic. GT controls the international long distance market, access to the SAT3 submarine fiber link, and most of the DSL broadband market, as well as 90% of the landline market. $900m for a controlling stake in a telecommunications company that serves 22 million people actually would seem pretty cheap, if I didn’t think that the company was in deep need of a management overhaul. Last time I checked, they were months behind on connecting to the Ghana Internet Exchange because they were doing yet-another company re-org, and couldn’t decide who was in charge of it. So I’m undecided on whether this is a fair deal or not for Ghana, but I do think that change might be a good thing!

Anyways.. news of interest, a couple of editorial remarks. We’ll see what happens in October!

UN Alliance Works to Bring Internet Access to All Africans
By Margaret Besheer
New York
19 September 2007
http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-09-19-voa72.cfm

A new U.N.-sponsored initiative is being launched to bridge the “digital divide” and connect African countries with each other and the rest of the world. VOA’s Margaret Besheer reports from U.N. headquarters in New York, where the world body, governments and the private sector are working to bring Africa’s 900 million inhabitants online.

The African continent is the fastest-growing cellular phone market of any region over the last five years, but has not been able to replicate that success with the Internet. Fewer than four out of every 100 Africans have access to the worldwide web.

Experts say upgrading Internet access, or what they call ICT for Information & Communication Technology, will enhance development and enable Africans to compete more effectively in the global marketplace.

Mohsen Khalil of the World Bank says the “Connect Africa” initiative, which aims to make Internet connectivity widely and cheaply accessible, will create an information revolution in Africa. “When you give access to a human being you unleash the power of human innovation and entrepreneurship. It is really so powerful all they need is access,” he said.

International Telecommunication Union President Hamadoun Touré says the “e” in “electronic” will also stand for “economy,” because improving Africa’s Internet connectivity will increase its wealth. “ICT [Information & Communication Technology] today is a catalyst, is an enabler, is a tool for all sectors of economy: be it education - “e-education,” be it government - “e-government,” be it business - “e-business,” or health - “e-health,” every sector will have the ‘e’ component in it,” he said.

The average monthly cost for broadband service in Africa is three times higher than in Asia. The initiative’s creators say marketplace competition and private sector investment will lower the cost of Internet connectivity. They are also trying to model their strategies in Africa after successful ones in China, India and other countries.

Organized under the U.N.’s Global Alliance for ICT and Development, the “Connect Africa” initiative kicks off next month at a summit in Kigali, Rwanda.

For those of you interested in what TIER is up to this summer, you can check out some of our member’s individual blogs.

Mine is: http://www.ictdchick.com/blog

MILLEE is: http://bidtierindia.blogspot.com/

I’m sure there’s a few more - anyone that has one should post a comment on this blog and/or send out a line over the mailing list!

Melissa

Eric and Sonesh are currently in Dharamsala at the AirJaldi conference.

There’s a lot of great stuff going on there - with some amazing people. For more information check out the Dharma TV blog:

http://dharmatv.blogspot.com/

The website for the conference is http://summit.airjaldi.com/

Sonesh at this very moment is working on a long distance wireless link between two schools in the area.

Melissa

I went to two talks on Monday - the second was given by Larry Brilliant, Executive Director of Google.org, founder of Seva, winner of the 2006 TED Prize (”One Wish to Change the World”) and leader in the eradication of smallpox.

My notes are here.

He decided not to give his normal “Health of Humanity” talk, instead giving a rather inspiring talk about what it means to change the world, and what he considers to be the four threats to global health: Global Warming, Diseases - particularly zoonoses, Poverty and Injustice, and Religious and Sectarian Violence. He also spoke about religious tolerance and the Dalai Lama’s recent visit to San Francisco.

Melissa

Jenna Burrell, from LSE, gave a talk on her research in Ghana for Intel People and Practices on Monday. My notes are here. She’s done an anthropological study of the use of cybercafes in Accra, including BusyInternet, and highlights some ways in which her findings contradict some of the pervasive assumptions about their use.

What struck me most was the other-centric attitude of the Ghanaian users (which came out most in her work on Internet fraud). I’ve been thinking about how colonialism has affected the attitudes of people in Ghana towards development and aid - and it’s resulting impact on brain drain. Based on my conversations, it seemed like finishing your education and leaving Ghana was a logical objective - I remember people in church praying passionately for American visas - and that the only motive for staying was altruism and national empathy. To be called obroni (white foreigner) is supposed to be taken as a compliment. Anyways - there’s more than I have time to say here - but in general this is why I think promotion of local content creation and local innovation, and especially local ownership of development projects are so important.

Melissa

My notes from this year’s UNIDO/Berkeley Bridging the Divide conference are available on my web site (http://www.melissaho.com/research/talks.php).

It’s been a very interesting weekend, with engaging speakers and panelists. As usual, I would have to say the best part of the conference is the opportunity to meet all of the people that came. I hope you were able to make it - but if not, I’m sure the rest of the TIER group will be posting notes as well…

melissa

Professor Vijay Modi from the Mechanical Engineering Department at Columbia University has a pretty neat idea (among many others) for alleviating the problem of electricity in rural areas. His research group has proposed a way of smartly charging batteries without really damaging their lifecycles. These batteries, along with circuitry to prevent faulty charging and a built-in fluorescent lamp fixture, can be given to rural households to provide light for 4 hours, extending the days in rural households. Since even in rural areas, schools at least have some power for a few hours, children from rural households can bring the batteries in for re-charging. Not only is this an improvised power transmission system, but it’s also a really great incentive for parents to send their kids to school.

Here is a cached copy of a NYT article on this.

Professor Modi’s website has some good resources on rural energy.

I am periodically asked about targetting the US as a developing region, and there are certianly parts of the US that could use some help. However, this is the first article that made me think about it more broadly.

Why the Web is Hitting a Wall (MSNBC)

In particular, US Internet usage is stalled around 65% (of households) and it appears that the reasons are ones that we have heard before: too expensive and too complex. I also think that the lack of rural broadband limits usage, especially now that most sites expect/require decent bandwidth. This article also points out that non-users are a pretty broad spectrum and not just the “conventional wisdom” groups of the elderly or technophobic. (DVD usage is at 83%, for example.)

I still have no immediate plans for the US, but I find it more likely that basic DR solutions for complexity or cost seem likely to find a home here as well.

-Eric