Small Things Count

Durban Green Tours - COP17

2011-11-23T23:21:00.001-08:00

From their brochure / website link:

"The eThekwini Municipality recognises the threatposed by climate change and has, during the past decade, implemented a numberof mitigation- and adaptation-focused interventions as part of its MunicipalClimate Protection Programme."

One of the projects the municipality is involved with are the Durban Green Tours which launch on Sunday! There are two routes: one on mitigation and another on adaptation. And best of all the tour is free courtesy of eThekweni municipality!

Sign up for the tour at the eThekwini ExhibitionStand at the South Africa Climate Change Response Expo. The tours will start on the 23^ndNovember and will run daily until the 6^th December. All tours will leave at 10h00 from the TransportHub, with the exception of the two tours running on Sunday Dec 3, and willreturn within four hours. I'll be on the inaugural Sunday tour as someone I know will be the infamous tour guide!

For more information: http://www.cop17-cmp7durban.com/en/logistics/green-tours.html

Year of the Tiger: Meow

2010-02-26T04:45:00.000-08:00

My dedication to the Year of the Tiger comes from Uganda TigerFM - a great shot of the volunteer DJs at this multi-purpose community centre just outside of Kampala. Happy belated Chinese new year!

Other interesting works that I came upon today particularly pertaining to Access to Knowledge:

*African Journal of Information and Communication: Issue No 10 edited by Luci Abrahams and Eve Gray

*Presentation by Arthur Attwell: Quick, easy licences, and why they matter - reviewing the possibilities of alternative business models for publishing in areas like Africa.

*Report by Harley et al (Jan 2010) at the University of California called, Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines

Big ICT strides in Southern Africa: News

2010-02-25T05:15:00.001-08:00

Southern African leaders are making some public strides this week in regards to information and communication technology policy. Today and tomorrow, the South African department of communications (DoC) host a multi-stakeholder forum in Midrand for their Presidential National Commission initiative, the Information Society and Development (ISAD). Representatives Nyanda and Phiri utilize an approach which hopes to engage the different players in South Africa and has potential to improve planning and implementation of ICTs particularly for five areas: ICT for Rural Development, SMME Development, Formation Ethics, e-Government Services, and e-Skills Development.

One highlight is the e-Skills development commission which hope to create a national implementation plan for ICT skills development across the country and within its various programs and services. In a recent Research ICT Africa study on e-skills (pdf), the research found that “In 16 out of the 17 countries, the strongest positive and significant effect on probability of higher e-skills can be attributed to having completed tertiary education”. In order for the South African DoC to make a significant change within their country, not only does the government need to improve affordable access to the internet for all, they must also coordinate long-term education policies which strive for more university graduates.

Another most relevant commission which the ISAD is looking for is an information ethics commission. The whole concept of global security, human security, privacy and transparency is growing in research and importance. With the Italian courts siding against Google for posting a video of a bullied boy with Down’s Syndrome for violating privacy law, South Africa has a responsibility to develop concrete resolutions which concern this area of information ethics. Such a measure also falls in line with the conclusions of a recent African Union special discussion on ICTs (pdf) in which “Africa must harmonize its policies and projects at national, regional andcontinental levels taking into account the cyber security space” (particular recommendation by Senegal’s M. Cisse – page 14).

Across the border, Zimbabwe announces its 2010 – 2014 National Information Communication strategic plan. ICT Minister Nelson Chamisa also hopes to cover cyber security and e-government just as proposed by South Africa. The ICT Bill is on its way to Cabinet for approval. Given Zimbabwe’s high rank in education (actually I’m not sure how it is doing these days), the group needs a solid plan for infrastructure and affordable access in order to meet a significant move towards the networked society.

Gendered Access to Knowledge and Africa

2010-02-25T02:27:00.000-08:00

Here is a photo which reminds me of my ongoing pursuit to understand gender research in the realm of information and communication technology (ICTs) for development in Africa. This is a group shot was taken back in Johannesburg in 2008 with researcher partners and IDRC staff who are trying to interrogate the socio-economic effects of ICTs and whether there are advantages or disadvantages applied differently on men versus women. Since then, I have been trying to write out some thoughts on the gender research being pursued around me here in Africa. Here is what I hope is just the start:

I recently published an article for GenderIT.org: Reaction to the Gender Findings from Africa’s Access to Knowledge Research:

"GenderIT.org writer and a Research Officer at Canada`s International Development Research Centre, Kathleen Diga tracks the journey of the African Copyright & Access to Knowledge (ACA2K)research network to better understand the nature of African national copyright environments and their impact on equal opportunities for all citizens to access information, particularly in the realm of education. The author argues that the ultimate development goal of copyright law is to afford equal access to educational learning materials regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, disability or age. The law must be flexible in order to recognize existing or potential discrimination against vulnerable groups. For example income constraints are likely to discriminate against women more than men in efforts to access educational materials.

It is a follow up to a previous GenderIT.org article, University women struggle for knowledge access in Africa:

"The future female leaders of Africa are up against major barriers to knowledge access, which could mean lost opportunities in university learning and teaching the state-of-the-art research most necessary for academic success. Online academic journals, and university textbooks are a few of the important resources that are part of this access to knowledge, which is pertinent particularly at the university level. Not only do students need to pass their courses, they are also encouraged to develop innovative and novel ideas informed and possibly inspired by past research work. Kathleen Diga questions whether such access of learning materials to all students and teachers at universities in Africa are fair to both women and men."

The creativity that I call South Africa

2010-02-18T11:46:00.000-08:00

It’s taken a few years, but I am now starting to inch to the edges of the creativity explosion that I call South Africa. Since arriving here a few years ago, I’ve always been stoked on the conventional handicrafts of wired animals, patterned cloth and beaded jewelry of Africa. I’ve seen even fewer concerts and wandered into a few gallery and fashion shows in my day. But recently, I’ve started to learn more about the ingenious film, music, blogs, art and writing collective that rates high for me in terms of South African originality and quirk. And why wouldn’t it be here? The country is immersed in an environment of inspiration whether it be the breathtaking landscape and ocean, or the intense history of the people coupled with the diversity of endemic species of animal, plants and race. So given this new found creative space and revelation of awesomeness, I hope to reveal on this blog some great places, adventures and living artifacts that come my way in South Africa. Some of great stuff that I’ve seen lately include: White Wedding, Bunny Chow, Jerusalema, (all these films can be seen on long haul flights with South African airlines) Die Antwoord South African Vice writers, Mahala, go Magazine, Visi Mag, skinny laminx and Bruce MacKay (I love his Dee Tee).

All kinds of great stuff coming up like Design Indaba in Cape Town (26-28 Feb 2010) and 2010 Afrika Burns (22-27 April 2010) in the Tankwa Karoo.

Look forward to a year of creative vibrations.

Free Nelson Mandela - 20 years later

2010-02-11T11:20:00.000-08:00

Today is a great day to be in South Africa. February 11, 2010 marks the 20 year anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. For 27 years Nelson Mandela was in prison. There are some great article pieces coming from the South African news. The one supplement piece in the Star newspaper brings in many perspectives which reflect on the dawning of the new democracy in South Africa. The audioslide show by BBC is fantastic – brought a tear to my eye. Read more here...

This day also makes me reflect on my recent visits to the Apartheid Museum, Soweto, Nelson Mandela’s house and the Hector Pieterson Memorial. I had the chance to move around to these historical places of South Africa with a seasoned activist from Canada. She was part of the Canadian network which rallied for the freedom of Nelson Mandela and pressured the Canadian government to lay international pressure on the apartheid government for a non-racial, non-sexist democratic state. It was eye opening to be more aware of the reach that this political prisoner had around the world.

I recently had to look through some of IDRC’s past accomplishments in South Africa and one of the most outstanding pieces which I speak with pride is the organization’s help in building research and recommendations in economics, urban and environmental policy which would be implemented in a new South Africa which is inclusive to all citizens of the country. Many of the researchers funded continue to be part of South Africa’s political network.

They were worthy contributions in South Africa and in Canada and I respect those who have dedicated their lives to a more fair society in this African state. Unfortunately, I live here in South Africa now and I see how the struggle continues for its people. Activism remains strong as citizens still fight for the right a more equal education system, and improved services for all (housing, electricity, water). My final reflection is if this was still an apartheid state, what would I be doing today – do I remain aware of the struggles of the people yet be complacent as the rate of poverty rises, or do I rally forward with the movement as would have been done by the Canadian activist more than 20-30 years ago? Could history repeat itself but in another form if we don’t stay active in the new struggle?

The photo of the coloured glass Mandela is found at the Regina Mundi Cathedral in Soweto.

ACA2K Dissemination Seminar - Recap

2009-12-04T20:15:00.000-08:00

I recently had the chance to attend the ACA2K Dissemination Seminar held this month at the University of Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Hosted by the Link Centre, the half-day event was funded through the ACA2K’s supporters, IDRC and Shuttleworth Foundation and was an opportunity to share their recent research findings within the realm of copyright law and its influence on access to educational materials in Africa.

The event hosted about 18 representatives ranging from local librarians, NGOs, to government– all wishing to learn how copyright legislation was affecting their perception of the education system particularly in ensuring reach of textbooks, journals, and other learning resources were reaching students and other users in South Africa. While a large array of research findings were addressed, participants were specifically focused on finding the way forward to ensure that a balanced, contextualized law for copyright holders and users of learning materials is accurately delivered and thus to make certain the progressive socio-economic development in their country like South Africa.

Listening to the presentations by ACA2K’s South Africa and Mozambique team, and the round of comments/questions from the participants, I was amazed by the genuine desire many had to better understand copyright law, and to figure out how to participate in change in their respective disciplines and in a sustainable way. There was a real interest in how to improve access of learning materials particularly for the sensory disabled (such as supporting the upcoming Treaty for the Visually Impaired to be presented at WIPO’s standing committee next week), which in its current copyright state, has no legislation facilitating the access to materials for the blind or disabled. Yet enshrined in the Constitution, the law states that the visually impaired cannot be discriminated and there must be ways found to deliver them their rights to education. Secondly, the team discussed how updated copyright policy should start to match much of the innovation in distance education and the content which they provide to students. While distance learning (with use of electronic materials) is flourishing in many parts of Africa, many institutions can be unaware whether such online portals falls under “fair use” for students or if they are liable to pay royalty fees for sharing materials to their students. The law is vague and in South Africa, the Copyright Act has not changed since 1978 and cannot possibly cover such new innovation under this outdated Act (but I understand is currently under discussion for change). For me, I saw strong advocacy could also go towards indigenous knowledge and how learners need to be given provision to access such materials which affect learning about their cultural heritage. It was also incredible to learn how the eight African study countries had all established copyright law and they had chosen to adopt policies which exceeds that of the minimum requirement by international standards.

The ACA2K has been an effective voice in international fora like WIPO, and they push for the advocacy support needed to ensure that Africa is part of those discussions at the higher levels of international law standards. ACA2K has really served to bridge African issues right down to the under-resourced user of learning materials to governmental change in copyright law. This group is able to establish enough strong rigourous research to attract the ear of international groups and build for further research in intellectual property in Africa. Such an approach does not come easy, as the team endured team member changes to physical distance to language barriers, the group has made major strives in the last two years. Despite inadequate or poorly maintained infrastructure, the team bypasses these barriers and has produced high quality peer-reviewed works. By partnering with local African researchers, such as those from the University of Cape Town or Universidad Eduardo Mondlane (Mozambique), we have found that those researchers will have profound effects on their own government law and being the natural advocates for change and improvement in their nation and their fellow citizens.

As a next step, ACA2K hopes to continue their advocacy work and find ways to reach change in the areas identified in their research. I think that I saw several exciting potential partnerships emerge between ACA2K and lobby groups for the blind, distance education and possibly indigenous knowledge initiatives. I look forward to seeing the group thrive to maintain their African network of like-minded lawyers and Intellectual Property experts and continue to assist other African nations map out their copyright law history and ensure that they deliver impactful research as has been conducted by the ACA2K team.

UPDATE (December 17, 2009):

1) Recent statement by IQsensato (and ACA2K) at the 19th Session of World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (WIPO - SCCR 19, 14-18 December 2009) found here.

2) ACA2K December 2009 Policy Brief: Research Findings from Africa Relevant to WIPO SCCR 19 which addresses the eight countries research findings on copyright limitations and exceptions in a)Distance learning; b) Visually-impaired persons; and c) Libraries and archives.

Reflection on IDRC's Acacia Research and Learning Forum (ARLF)

2009-12-02T08:31:00.000-08:00

(photos courtesy of Acacia Learning Forum '09 on flickr)

In the beginning of October (yes, I know... almost two months later!), I had a chance to participate in an extraordinary event in Dakar called the Acacia Research and Learning Forum. After nearly a year + of planning, this meeting brought together just over 150 researchers, bloggers, and other brilliant African minds. The meeting was to take stock of the incredible African research in information and communication technologies that has been produced in at least the last decade and have a look forward to the future of ICT4D research in Africa.

ARLF: an Innovative System: My thoughts

In my perspective, the Acacia research and learning forum (ARLF) had some similarities to an innovation system. In both an innovation system and the ARLF, the relevant players from different spheres (such as academic, government, entrepreneurs, civil society, etc.) of Africa’s development come together and became aware of the extent of research through which ICT4D exists in Africa. The forum raised new refreshing ideas on how different disciplinary work could complement each other. In being aware of the diverse research being conducted in Africa towards development, the participants became aligned towards the shared interest of how their African ICT4D research has helped to better understand the economic and social implications of ICTs. This alignment has helped to reinforce the joint commitment towards Africa’s development. The Forum gathered participants who are partners with IDRC and this built trust allowed researchers to express their project or research network successes as well as their fears in an open and honest space.

Forum Methodology: The forum processes were innovative and participatory particularly to encourage new thought and learning. Many participants were excited in the ever changing format of the forum, moving from styles like an Open Space format to Speed Geeking. The process however, had the risk of overwhelming participants of the vast extent of ICT4D research and may have participants feel less direction in a more vast view of development. In other words the attempt to become holistic and organic in thinking particularly in such an interdisciplinary field as ICT4D can leave one uncertain on how to ensure inclusiveness of all development aspects of their project without losing their core objective or under limited funding.

On the other hand, this new method of learning can also be transformative and help to foster refreshing, and novel ideas (such as aspects of privacy, surveillance, and security in a networked society) to the betterment of the African research networks and projects. The participants also became so absorbed in the new un-conference process that some wished to adopt similar methodologies of learning to their institution.

At the end of the day, the forum shared how our partners have attempted to tackle their research projects with different levels of contact with policymakers, communication for influence, capacity building, gender research and methodological development. The Acacia Team is at a point in their timeline to ask when does one know when there is the right mix of development outcomes for a project or research network given certain levels of capabilities as well as budget constraints?

Successes of the forum: The fear of a solely Anglophone or Francophone dominated event dissipated from the participants as the organizing committee made concerted efforts and pro-active plans for bilingual opportunities in all sessions. Besides the use of translators through out the event, the online coverage pre-event (http://acaciaforum.net) as well as during the Forum were attempted to be covered in both English and French. In response to this success, language became a topical issue even in regards to African localization and the importance of the participation of all society members by overcoming language barriers.

(Kiss Abrahams from GRACE tells us about research in Zambia)

Gender Research: The presence of at least five GRACE network members as well as the strong messaging of gender justice through GRACE’s network leader clearly generated strong interest in gender research among participants at the forum. It was certainly uplifting to find that when participants were asked to join a themed group of their interest, the gender group comprised of leaders from a Radio / ICT project, ACA2K, and PanAf, to name a few. Ramata found from her quick question of where teams fell under, “whether gender research was important in ICT4D” versus “how gender research can be conducted in ICT4D projects,” all participants chose the latter. The Forum, I believed improved the thinking of gender research among the participants however I wonder if whether we may have missed a chance to further help participants delve into the gender research questions that they for their projects and research networks.

(Martin, blogger on left)

Collaborative Tools: The combination of the African Commons Project, the selected Francophone bloggers and the web 2.0 savvy participants themselves help to populate the successful online bilingual documentation of the Learning Forum. The flexible open-source webpage platform developed and assisted by Doug Dyson and them the forum coverage through means of liveblogging, audio podcasts, flickr photos, twitter feeds, and youtube videos and other collaborative tools have helped to build capacity not only among the bloggers but the participants themselves. Such tools also assisted in ensuring partners who were not able to attend as well as others interested in the ICT4D Africa sphere could follow the forum proceedings real-time and shall remain open for use to all post Forum.

Ethics and Best Practices in ICT4D research
Lastly, a major highlight of the Forum for me was to engage in a ICT4D methodology workshop on the last day. At first, I thought it was merely going to be a review of quantitative and qualitative methods and research paradigms. Well the debate moved into further on the ethics of research and best practices of research. Major questions included how the networked society and globalization could possibly help in missing rich indigenous knowledge if not captured. How do African researchers ensure that the research initiatives that they take on board reflect on their own values and beliefs, thus ensuring production of local research.

"Today do we have enough intellectual confidence to challenges availed to us in a globalized, networked society?"

My favourite part was when one Francophone researcher brings up a quote by Khalil Gibran: “And I have found both freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.”

A researcher can risk being isolated or misunderstood if he/she attempts to research in his/her own paradigm. In the African context, the current global framework is not interested in an African ‘paradigm’. The question is: can African researchers identify where they stand in research from an African perspective?

Further debate asks how does one frame a question and identify the right question and words. Moreover, "When questions are provoked, a researcher is responsible to take action. This is our ability to take part in research as well as part of our academic responsibilities. "

Overall, Dakar was an incredible learning and musical experience for me. I can only look forward to the future in Africa.

Women, Africa and Business

2009-11-07T05:57:00.000-08:00

"The glass ceiling will go away when women help other women break through that ceiling." – PepsiCo. CEO Indra Nooyi

Going through my usual business of emails, tweets and news browsing, I noticed several leads on African Women and Business:

- Wharton Africa Business Forum hosts a panel on Women in Business

- Munyua writes a chapter in Book, African Women and ICTs, titled, "Women entrepreneurs in Nairobi: examining and contextualizing women’s choices"

Just a quick weekend note. I am always looking for more great stories and examples of women and business particularly in social entrepreneurship initiatives.

Re-cap: IDIA 2009 conference

2009-11-06T05:08:00.000-08:00

Purpose:

I think conferences are in much need for visual stimulation like the beautiful animals (hyena above) of Kruger in order to develop creative and innovative ideas of research. This was the setting of the International Development informatics Association 3rd conference in South Africa.

The purpose of participating in this conference was to present my conference paper based on the research that I had conducted under my 2008/09 IDRC Professional Development Award to an international academic audience. My paper is co-authored with Kenyan, Jason Musyoka, and titled, “Re-thinking Acute Emergencies Response through Communication Technology in African Rural Communities.” The paper can be found here.

The IDIA conference was a conventional meeting of practitioners and researchers working in the field of community and development informatics. A majority of delegates seemed to be affiliated with Monash University who were the local organizing committee as well as South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) – Meraka Institute who is a current IDRC partner. According to the roster, there were 35 presenting delegates based at South African based institutions, and the others were from institutions in Australia (8 mainly Monash University), USA (4), Nigeria (2), Sao Tome (1), Brazil (1), India (1), Pakistan (1), Kenya (1), UK (2), Mozambique (1), Botswana (1), and UAE (1).

The conference venue was inside the Kruger National Park at the Berg-en-Dal camp. Since delegates were based in the camp (you cannot leave the camp after 6pm), there was no escaping the sounds of the creatures that creep in the night; it made for a wonderful experience of roars and tweets just outside one’s cottage. The conference room itself was in a dark, face-brick façade room which was not conducive to the best lighting but presenters seemed to manage regardless.

Highlights of IDIA09:

My presentation: This was my first time presenting the research that I conducted in Winneba, Ghana, on the perceptions of acute emergency response in a peri-rural community where mobile phones and emergency hotlines have been introduced in the area. From the overwhelming questions and comments that I received, it seemed like the 20 odd persons at my presentation found the topic stimulating and a need for further research in the area. My presentation can be found by clicking here: http://bit.ly/oe8a2

IDRC Partners: While the conference was mainly composed of African-based projects, I had the pleasure of meeting two researchers who presented their IDRC-funded projects within ICT4D - PanAsia. They were the only two projects coming from the Asia region and definitely added diversity to the conference (only paper on rigourous sampling methods and only paper specifically on gender and ICTs). First, there was P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan (Vignesh), from India, (IDRC Project: "ICTs and Urban Micro-enterprises: Identifying and Maximizing Opportunities for Economic Development ") who presented a paper that exhibited their comprehensive multi-stage probability sampling method that was recently piloted in Mumbai, India. Their intensive work using maps provided by government (some of which were hand-drawn) and random selection of the locales emphasizes the need for future research in the area of ICT and development to take a more rigorous approach to research design.

The second IDRC-funded project was presented by Nazima Shaheen (photo on left) from Pakistan and topic was on "The Gender Digital Divide in Rural Pakistan - To Measure and to Bridge It ". This is the first time for Nazima to present her preliminary results of new statistics on Pakistan’s ICT usage with aggregated gender data. Nazima has also submitted a paper (The Prospects and Challenges for Women Empowerment through Open ICT4D in Pakistan) to IDRC’s ICT4D upcoming conference in March 2010.

Rhetoric and Rigour Debate: Another well-received paper was presented by Ron Weber (Dean of Monash University- Australia) titled, “Research on ICT for Development: Some reflections on rhetoric, rigor, reality, and relevance.” He states that the ultimate goal of research should be to build theory and ICT4D research should be building upon this theory with rigourous research. From his sample of reviewed ICT4D journal articles, his findings interpret that this interdisciplinary field leans more on rhetoric and lacks of such research rigour. His paper is certainly a bone of contention for ICT4D researchers to ensure that they spend the time to develop well-thought out research methods, paradigms, their values and theoretical frameworks before jumping into the field.

From Kagiso Chikane’s (Meraka Institute manager, CSIR) presentation, she finds the continuous challenge for their ICT4D projects is trying to quantify the impact of their work on development. Also how does one find the technical and financial support from the communities to continue running these intervention projects that have shown positive change in a community? There were several papers presenting the work by the Council for Scientific Industrial Research (CSIR), Meraka Institute particularly discussing their technology intervention work on the Living Labs, and the Digital Doorways.

Zimbabwe and ICT Policy: On the African research, there was an excellent presentation by Tendai Chari on the political economy of telecom policy in Zimbabwe titled, “Information and Communication Policy Formulation and the Information Divide in Zimbabwe.” His findings show how ICT policy in Zimbabwe is actually only modified when there is a result from a judicial court cases against unfair government telecom policy. While the court cases usually forced government to change their law, this practice results in a process that has no democratic consultation or participation mechanisms for the citizen. It would be interesting to link his research to the political economy and broadband infrastructure work being done by the CICEWA project.

I thought that Mutshewa’s fascinating paper, “A survey of the commercial activities created by the mobile telephony for the informal business sector in Botswana” could possibly be linked with Dr. Sylvestre Ouédraogo research on the Informal Sector and ICTs in West Africa.

Young African ICTD Researchers: I had the chance to meet Kenyan PhD candidate (University of Cape Town), Shikoh Gitau, who presented her preliminary field research on the results of training women to first time mobile internet users in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha informal settlement area. She is one of the several bright young African scholars who were presenting ICT4D research at the conference. As there is a growing number of young African researchers who are individually investigating the changes in African society as a result of communication technologies such as mobiles and internet, it may be a good idea to start linking them together and see whether research collaboration and learning can effectively take place.

Radio and Convergence: Two delegates were interested on how their findings illustrated how radio messages have influenced a citizen’s interest in new social media such as Facebook. In Shikoh’s presentation, she mentions that her training intervention was initially set to teach women the use of email and job searching with mobile phone internet. However, during her training, the participants wanted to learn about Facebook because of the local radio station’s promotion of information on the Facebook platform. I have sent both delegates information about Acacia’s project named ‘Radio, Convergence, and Development in Africa’.

ICTD Research and Policy Influence: Policy and research debate flared up during the conference. Walter Brown (Monash University) presented on South African Communications Forum (SACF) new platform for South Africa’s ICT policy reform: Vision 2020. This SACF group recently presented a draft report on their planned process to influence government policy formulation which hopes to create a more conducive environment for developing and implementing ICT in South Africa. He asks how academics can be involved in such a process for change. One CSIR delegate believes that there is a need for institutions and researchers to be familiar with policy and their issues because their research needs to remain relevant in order to provide evidence that substantiates changes in rules and regulations. Another delegate emphasized the need to work with NGOs that fit with your cause as a NGO’s lobbying efforts will be effective in influencing policy makers.

Overall, good conference for learning about development informatics projects and research particularly in the sub-Saharan Africa region. After experiencing a space like this, I definitely think more informal meeting opportunities for African researchers are necessary to discuss and collaborate on similar projects. I can't wait for those opportunities!

Conference Paper: Mobiles and Perceptions of Mobile / Emergency Response in Peri-rural Ghana

2009-11-05T06:04:00.000-08:00

This presentation was prepared for the 3rd International Development Informatics Association (IDIA) Conference. 28-30th October 2009 Johannesburg; South Africa. The draft paper and report on the conference will be posted on this space very soon.

Special thanks to Wireless Africa research partner, One Village Foundation, and Mr. Kafui Prebble, for the organization's logistical support back in November 2008 for this field research.

Conference Paper Abstract:

Local rural communities frequently receive little assistance in resolving acute emergencies. In rural areas, emergencies are thus resolved using alternative local mechanisms and adapted practices mediated through available technologies. However, local mechanisms may lead to various barriers such as potentially asymmetrical emergency information to a certain population and can remain on a “who-you-know” basis. Individuals who are new to an area or those disadvantaged with poor social networks are limited to time-consuming and costly options for assistance during emergencies.

RE-THINKING ACUTE EMERGENCIES RESPONSE THROUGH COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN AFRICAN RURAL COMMUNITIES

View more presentations from kdiga.

Reactions and Portfolios

2009-06-04T21:29:00.000-07:00

(photo from http://www.bevoda.ca/photos.htm)

The Canadian International Development Agency react to Minister Bev Oda's statements to the Ottawa's newspaper, the Embassy (article here). These comments include the lack of health experts in their programs as well as their focus on spending money and not on measurable results. Wow.

In the same edition, the Embassy reports on seven African diplomats in Ottawa speak out to the Senate Foreign Affairs committee on the drop of African countries from the priorities of the upcoming aid spending (article here).

Other new publications:

Portfolios of the Poor:
How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day
Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford & Orlanda Ruthven

How the poor are able to find solutions on $2 a day. I love this type of research as it is very very difficult to build systematic research that records what low income individuals spend everyday. At one point in my research, I tried to record six households and ask them to record their last ten phone calls and SMS. First of all, the tool must be super easy to understand and second, you need to have a contingency plan when an individual is illiterate. The first chapter of the book is free of the website, but can't wait to get my hands on a copy of this book.

Here is the link to the website: Portfolios of the Poor and Financial Access Initiative.

IDRC - MENA Workshop & ICTD Conference

2009-05-29T09:05:00.000-07:00

– Doha Qatar April 16-21, 2009

I had drafted up this trip report a while ago but have been so busy with another conference paper, that I pushed it aside. I also found that several comments had already chatted a bit about the ICTD conference, however, I didn't see much written on the Young Researchers Workshop nor a pre-conference event hosted by IDRC for Middle East and North African researchers. So here it goes!

The IDRC team arrived in full force to learn about the Middle East and experience the extraordinary enthusiasm of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) researchers while at the same time update themselves on the latest upcoming research that the world has to offer in ICTD.

Day One was a pre-conference workshop titled, "MENA Research Capacity Building Workshop." The objective of the workshop was to strengthen ICT4D research capacities in North Africa and the Middle East.

The Doha Seef Hotel venue was a large room that was divided off to make the room not feel massive, but unfortunately the room size did not make for ideal acoustics especially when attempting to work with a large multi-lingual group.

Delegates were invited from all parts of the region including Morocco, Algeria, and Oman. After introductions and review of the expectations, the delegation broke out in to a World Café style of facilitation.

In small groups that rotated during the session, the crucial questions of “What is ICT4D, how do you interpret the ‘D’ and what makes a successful ICT4D project” were asked. In the discussions, the delegates who had not really explored this area became engaged and did creative critical thinking about how their areas of study could attempt to transform the area of ICT4D. One response to the meaning of ICT4D: “when it contributes to a more humane and sustainable world for more people.” Within the discussions, I found the delegates emphasize the meaning ICT4D as transformative change in the lives of ordinary people.

The researchers from "Strengthening ICT Research Capacity in Asia (SIRCA)" presented their ongoing work including some of the projects that they are going to be funding within their grant competition.

(Photo: Dalia sells her proposal at the ‘Souk’)

In the afternoon, the MENA participants engaged in the “Proposal Souk” where they posted up their proposal and the rest of the audience would come by and listen to their proposal’s “sales pitch”. This great engaging activity got people on their feet after a long day of workshop. The end of Day 1 was left with high energy and prepared the delegates with open ears and eyes for the conference.

(Photos: ICTD conference – lunch hour ‘pow-wow’)

During the ICTD conference, the facilitators for the workshop planned debriefing sessions at lunch hour to discuss and analyzed the different papers being presented. This lunch time gathering brought the workshop participants together like a team and helped to build that trust and discussion which would follow for the next days after the conference and into the workshop conclusion.

ICTD2009 Proceedings Online:
http://www.qatar.cmu.edu/~yonina/ICTD2009Proceedings.pdf (warning 35mb)

The first conference was hosted in UC Berkeley and then it was followed with Bangalore.
The event boasted in presenting the best scholarly work on the use of ICTs for development, both in technical and social science areas. There were over 250 submissions to the conference and all papers underwent a double-blind peer-review process. One of the paper reviewers indicated uncertainty of the transparency of the review process. Also, the reviewer was unsure as to who decides the criteria for the review process. Some of the delegates felt that the conference had a bias towards American chosen presentations. There were 19 oral presentations, and 27 others for poster presentation to a more than 300 person audience. Several IDRC partners were presenting such as a demonstration booth hosted by e-Fez (Asmae and Driss).

Pam Zahonogo, RIA! Researcher from Burkina Faso, presented the RIA! poster and paper, Mobile Telephony Access and Usage in Africa, which has received some conference coverage from Eric Hersman’s popular website, White African. Beyond the conference, a quick search has found RIA! Recent household survey work being utilized and reference by numerous authors.

Young Researchers Workshop

One of the first workshops was the Young Researchers Workshop. The workshop drew in an exciting atmosphere of young up-and-coming PhD researchers working in all parts of the world. In their call for papers, the committee selected 12 papers (I posted them online here) to be presented at the workshop. Senior researchers were then part of a committee that gave feedback to the presentation. As it was one of the first workshops of the conference and the other workshop was postponed to a later time, the room was packed with audience members of over 70 persons. Each delegate had approximately five minutes to talk about the challenges of young researchers in the field of ICTD.

The presenters had backgrounds ranging from computer science, geography, social science and development. It was clear however, that some presenters did not necessarily feel these disciplines quite fit into the research work that they were engaged in. A majority of the discussion included cross-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary definitions of ICTD. Those under the discipline of Computer science were trying to re-align their actual discipline objectives – how to get the discipline to evaluate not just the computer programming aspect but also to evaluate the other external and internal factors of a research project in order for that computer program application within development to succeed! Some of the delegates included those from the University of Washington, who were working on with OpenMRS and D-Tree international, and Commcare, to the Royal Holloway University of London who were working on participatory model tools to conduct field research. Among the papers, 10 out of the 12 presentations were about work conducted in Africa. (The other two were in China and Albania.) Another disturbing reflection comes from Tim Unwin’s (one of the Senior Researcher Judges) blog reflection on the workshop: “the much academic discourse plays to the tunes of conductors who are not necessarily particularly interested in the needs of the poorest and most marginalized"

I feel that part of the reflection may have come from my paper (as well as others) to how we cannot remain in the status quo of the current engagement of women (and other marginalized groups) in ICT4D work. For a little taste of the Young Researchers Workshop, watch Paulo Brunello’s work.

In the afternoon, the remaining individuals (most of the audience disappeared to the other three sessions taking place) split up into groups and discussed some of our stories in ICTD. My favourite activity was ‘speed-dating’ where those who identified with the social science stayed in one line and then the computer scientist were in another line. Then we had 60 seconds to figure out how the social science could work with the computer science in a project together. All of the delegates wished there was more time to do this activity because only then was there creative brainstorming on how one could overcome those difficulties of a multi-disciplinary field.

That's all I really wanted to highlight from the conference, but here is Prof Heeks' comment on Bill Gates and ICTD, a short piece by Jonathan Donner and a little travel report by Stephane Boyera.

Of course, I made sure to sneak out to check out the Museum of Islamic Art (very amazing) and the souk waqif - must sees when in Doha (photos in kdiga's Flickr).

Recap on Business Plans from the Slums

2009-05-28T22:52:00.000-07:00

“The role of business skill development in catalyzing dynamic economies and alleviating African urban poverty”
Green College, University of British Columbia

Yesterday, I returned to the old stomping ground of my university and business school, Sauder School of Business, to engage in a workshop discussing issues of social entrepreneurship and development in Africa. The workshop was a fundraiser for the Sauder Africa project Social Entrepreneurship 101. I have been following SE101 since 2007 when I first mentioned to Nancy Langton about the wonderful work of the Kimathi Information Centre and their full-spirited leader, Jose Ngunjiri. They continue to be partners in helping to train young entrepreneurs through a business planning course to this day.

I was quite unsure what to expect from the workshop besides listening to some experiences of work in Africa. My uncertainty then turned to a feeling of inspiration – I sat in this room and started to hear the thoughts of Canadians genuinely committed in the issues of development and business both at home and in Africa and beyond. The discussion was extremely engaging between the audience and speakers in trying to capture what makes a successful entrepreneur in the most dire of circumstances. Here is a little bit about the speaker’s discussions and how I related to their work.

Photo (left to right): Nancy, Dale, Stephen, Marcia, Joanna, Rob

Marcia Nozick, Executive Director of Eastside Movement for Business and Economic Renewal Society - EMBERS

Marcia, who has been working in community development since 2001, became involved in EMBERS mainly because she lives in the neighborhood. At the time, she was looking for ways to get involved with the marginalized in what is known as one of the poorest area codes in Canada, the downtown eastside (DTES). EMBERS is basically a business training for those in the DTES who are ready to start their lives fresh as an entrepreneur. She mentions a great deal of support (some for nearly 4-5 years) that is provided for nearly 135 of the new businesses. EMBERS provides a tremendous amount of resources in an attempt to help the businesses succeed such as the financing 3 to 1 program. For example, if the business raises at least $600, the organization matches another $1200 in order for the business to leverage the capital and grow. Of course, these business owners overcome major barriers (some without identification, can’t open bank account, navigating business regulation forms, etc).

It is just hard for me to imagine what Africa could be like if such abundant resources were available to entrepreneurs as they are here in Vancouver. While so geographically apart, many challenges are the same in attempting to develop a business from one’s bare hands.

Dale Albertson, Executive Director of African – Canadian Continuing Education Society

ACCES is simply providing education programs in Kenya. He approached the workshop less about his organization and more about some of the literature that has helped him understand micro-enterprise, mainly quoting work from Development in Practice journal. He asks what is the motivation for creating microenterprises in disadvantaged areas? The motivation is to provide one’s basic needs and dealing with lack of security. Thus in such mindset, most entrepreneurs have no thought as to what activities they wish to pursue. Instead they copy the businesses that are common around their community. Why? The individuals are extremely risk adverse; they are not interested in starting in a venture they know nothing about. The biggest question in their minds is how to make money in the least amount of time given the limited resources. Thus, the businesses gravitate towards those industries that already exist. He also states that less than two percent are products that are differentiated from those that currently exist. His last main point was that those with a vision tended to end with better futures and those with formal training had the better visions.

While I can understand the motivation reason mentioned by Dale, I also wonder whether there is some deeper disruption also taking place that keep people from having a totally new product in their community market. I wonder whether differentiating your product also brings animosity and jealousy to the community which some would rather avoid. I recall my time in Uganda when a farmer mentioned who some of them were attempting to grow a new product, apples as was demonstrated by the extension workers. The problem is that apples are expensive to grow with the cost of all the inputs compared to the other crops, so not all farmers could grow in it the area. Once a few farmers attempted to grow the apples, many would steal the apples or cause harm to the apple growers. Those growing apples had to ban together at night to protect the apples. Now I wonder if someone decided to go against a sign of solidarity (ie growing the same crops, selling the same goods, etc), do they always experience such negative reactions from their communities, thus avoid such confrontation? Such innovators have a tough barrier to overcome if this is true.

Rob Kozak – Researcher for Africa Forests Research Initiative on Conservation and Development - AFRICAD, Professor of Sustainable Business Management, UBC

Rob is a researcher who clearly wants to addresses the linkage between poverty and forestry in Africa through alternative forest tenure business models. He states that 90% of the rural poor are dependent on the forest (either for subsistence, housing, food, medicine, etc). A majority of the forest business utilizes the concession based export model where large tracts of land are sold to multi-national corporations. From such models, little wealth goes back to the communities in the forest and the communities usually have limited rights of land access. He asks the question what could these communities (particularly indigenous communities) do to formalize or legitimize a business in forestry, otherwise move out of the informal sector? He knows that direct finance and subsidies do not work so what is required are interventions with sound business principles. Since most of the small and medium size forest enterprise cannot compete with the MNCs, how can they sell to smaller niches or domestic markets? How do we enable business for these local business persons?

In his talk, he mentions attempting to assist the most marginalized in the forests of Congo, the pygmies. I had the chance to visit a group of pygmies at the edge of the Rwanda / Uganda border as well as those near Bwindi forests (best known for the endangered silverback gorillas). The pygmies have been pushed out of their homes in the forest, some for the reasons of conservation of endangered animal species. The communities were given no exit strategies to help them survive out of their usual hunter-gather societies. The people are extremely impoverished, many treated as unpaid workers on agriculture land (only fed a small meal a day), those disabled are left to beg from home to home or steal small potatoes when they can. It is actually one of the saddest situations to see and ask how they are forced to survive. Rob and his group have a huge weigh on their shoulders to attempt to gain some legitimate rights to land back to these indigenous people.

Joanna Buczkowska – Managing Director for UBC Centre for Sustainability and Social Innovation, Development Advisor for SAWA Global

Joanna mainly spoke from her work with SAWA in showcasing grassroot leaders in 50 of the poorest countries in the world. They are currently looking for innovative ways for these amazing individuals to show case their work (ie. Video) and how to mentor or connect these heroes to each other and the rest of the world. A major criteria that has helped their program to succeed is to ensure that the heroes are active partners in the dialogue of the program. I love the sprinkles of inspiration from their website and have a few names I would love to drop into that program for sure!

Stephen Nairne – Managing Director for Lundin for Africa

Stephen’s organization helps to provide social venture capital to organizations in Africa. They currently are working with eleven projects in nine countries. They attempt to scale businesses in West Africa as well as provide funds for technical assistance. He asks how to get businesses into the formal sector and become taxpayers. The process can take in some areas five to ten years. He mentions their support towards the Acumen Fund which generally invests capital in bottom of the pyramid institutions. I also like his keen interest in the growing area of mobile banking.

Overall, the event was well worth attending and look forward to hearing more about these organizations in the future.

Canada dead set on improving their development aid bucks

2009-05-21T10:42:00.000-07:00

I’m back home in Vancouver and it has been a real treat to have time to myself. I get to finish up some reports long overdue, catch up with friends and family and catch up with Canadian news in international development. It looks like I came at the right time as the Minister of International Cooperation, Honourable Beverley J. Oda just announced the new Canadian strategy to international development – greater efficiency and greater focus.

Her speech was super straight forward and you know exactly what they want to do: 80% of resources towards 20 countries to increase food security, stimulate sustainable economic growth and secure the future of children and youth. Bam.

Other sidenotes include sending 15% of their Ottawa-based staff into the field and no more ‘tied aid’ – as in buying food aid in the local countries as opposed to using Canadian food and suppliers which costs up to 30% more! The Ministry is also adding a Democratic Promotion Agency – self-explanatory.

My thoughts – do it. The Ministry has only $2.1 billion to play with this year in aid, they are obviously responding to that terrible Senate report that on CIDA, Overcoming 40 Years of Failure, and we hope this criticism will shape them into a more effective agency.

While some of the criticism has already come through that this new strategy does not direct state its efforts towards poverty alleviation, the idea of increasing food security is absolutely directed at the poor. The workers at farms who are a majority women can help improve their livelihoods with improved inputs and technology for farming and hopefully see better healthy crops in the future.

I’m just stoked that Mozambique has remained as one of the priority countries!

Music in April

2009-03-21T00:55:00.000-07:00

A few of my passions have been cropping up lately, much to my delight. 1) Good booty-shaking music. The Cape Town International Jazz Festival is coming up fast on April 3-4 and they have an insane line-up for the Saturday. A few of my favourites: Zaki Ibrahim (Canada), Napalma (Brazil), 340ml (Mozambique), Maceo Parker, Hugh Masekela and last but not least, MOS DEF! The decision to through down cash for a flight for this one day might be worth it!

When I get a chance, I like to flip over to CBC Radio 3, and Exclaim magazine websites to see what is going on back in the Canadian music scene. Lo and behold, a group that has grabbed my heart: Thunderheist! The Nigerian born, Canadian singing in this crew and the DJ have unleashed my inner soul of good dance, bass crunk, I can’t wait to get home and buy their album to be released March 31! It’s also ashame that they will be touring with Exclaim and they will be at the Biltmore on April 25… but at the same time as the Ski and Board Festival in Whistler… oh, how can I be in two places at the same time??? Oh and up on the hill, there is Metric (new album released April 14) and DJ Z-Trip on the 24 and 25 April. Too much good stuff at one time!

ICTs in Burkina and my Research

2009-03-21T00:47:00.000-07:00

ICT Art in Burkina Faso

Still on the artist theme, shift to check out the mural work coming from Burkina Faso. I posted this one which has a computer user asking about finding a husband online. Yup. Penpals or mail order brides go online. I find it as a real reflection of how computers are starting to influence a few lives in West Africa.

As for ICTs on my front, I’ll be heading to the shindig, ICTD2009 conference in Doha mid April. There is this Young Researchers Workshop which should be fun, if you are hopefully looking for innovation gong show. I hope there is beer. Here’s my paper on my current work and the struggles of young African scholars in finding opportunities in collaboration.

ICTD Submission Final(2)

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Press Releases Other research africa

I also just submitted this short article about access to knowledge and gender to the genderIT.org website, will post if it ends up making the cut!

Besides the conference, I’m busy trying to sum up my research work on emergencies and ICTs in Ghana and Uganda. I’ve got my TAMs Analyzer qualitative tool working by my side. It just gets so tiring trying to get through the scripts and make sense out of it all. And especially when there is so much excitement coming up in April!

Happy International Womyns Day

2009-03-06T06:48:00.001-08:00

I have never really celebrated it before but glad to acknowledge all the amazing women making it happen, in small ways or big ways. I am talking about the ladies who can break social norms and do what they want to do because it makes them happy and because they are creative passionate people.

Those are all my girls back in Vancouver, and those I have known throughout my stints to Europe (especially Belgium), Mozambique, Kenya, South Africa and beyond. And my mom, my grandma and girl cousins and nieces.

There is still a strong fight to give women the capabilities and chance to strive for their ideal job or ideal life. If things remain as it is, then we'll never see a world of non-violence and equality for all people. So even if you don't feel the pressure of inequality from where you are, know that it is still strong in other parts of the world, and we can always use your strength or words of support to know that you believe in a better world than what exists today.

fighting words for International Womyns Day (weekend).

Check out women and technology history:

wyatt, sally. 2008. Feminism, Technology and the Information Society: Learning from the past, imagining the future. Information, Communication and Sociey 11(1) - 111-130.

Within the article, it mentions Donna Haraway's 1985 "Manifesto for Cyborgs," -
"Taking responsibility for the social relations of science and technology means refusing an anti-science metaphysics, a demonology of technology, and so means embracing the skillful task of reconstructing the boundaries of daily life, in partial connection with others, in communication with all of our part" (1985, page 100) - Summary: Women's lives are intimately entwined with technologies.

2009

2009-01-25T22:13:00.000-08:00

The new 2009 year. Okay, yes, I am 26 days later than I should be in writing that note but better late than never. After dealing with the nuisance of my jinxed car and having a most wonderful surf holiday in Durban and Jeffrey's Bay, it is back to the research work. A very exciting year ahead especially since our initiative will be planning a big all-Partners shindig on ICT4D in Africa come October 2009! I hope to use this space to detail a bit of the interesting research that has been coming out of Africa most lately on international development through technology. In the meanwhile...

Women's Net and Cell-Life both based here in South Africa are asking initiatives that deal with HIV/AIDS to tell them about their innovative practice of using social networking tools in their work. They are conducting an interesting study of how social networking will change the way people communicate about issues about HIV/AIDS.

To the year ahead...

Beauty of Africa

2008-12-21T22:12:00.001-08:00

sleepy
Originally uploaded by make_change

In between all the reading on technology and development, I stumbled upon this author who felt justified to write a paper on the reasons that there is great wealth here in Africa. He then makes recommendations as to how one should take the riches of Africa and complement it with appropriate development practices. Easier said than done, but I guess it is necessary to repeat it every so often so that one doesn't get stuck in some kind of African pessimism (mainly media-driven) rut.

But I guess I read the article because I suppose I needed to confirm my own observations about this continent.
It is pretty spectacular when you can drive 1 hour away to see 25 lions huddled under the shade of a tree on a hot summer day. Every so often, I get stoked to see some unusual endemic flower in the Cape, crazy cacti like tree from Madagascar (in a botanical garden) and then some bumblebee thing that sniffs out my basil plants.

The patterns of fabric I recently bought in Ghana could break my bank account if I stayed long enough. Technology-wise, the blogs I read are African-based and shooting out novel ideas one cannot even fathom back in Vancouver. This space does not do justice as to the many African researchers I interact with each day who are making incredible contributions to science and development. So this is the flip side of Africa. No wonder it is so hard to leave.

Wake Up.

2008-12-21T07:36:00.000-08:00

It truly has been a wake-up year. While I haven't been in slumber to issues of Africa's development, I admit that, in the past, I have sidelined the deeply rooted issue of gender inequality. But it is always on my mind. Back home, where I can go enjoy a beer, watch ice hockey at the local pub with the boys and girls and not have to think about being categorized in a box because of age, race, religion or gender is a luxury. It is not only society or its institutions which instill multiculturalism and values of equality, but it is inside yourself; of how within us we decide not to oppress or judge. We do not stand for informal rules of engagement or culture that is not just.

For here is Africa where sexual violence and gender inequality reigns strong, convoluted within its tradition and culture; a difficult mix to break through. What development policy could possibly intervene in deeply enculturated beliefs? There is none.

It begins with you and me. It begins with listening and giving African feminism a chance to work on the continent. We look within ourselves and say the change starts now. At FTX, Joanna Kerr (Oxfam Canada) puts it rightly, “There is no vaccine to rid of patriarchy or a machine for economic justice”.

Within the technology sphere, my own observations see new technology help increase the divide between the rich and poor. As one who wants to see a more equal, just society, how do we “make tech just”? (Kerr, 2008).

Exposing these tech powers that oppress is a start: 1) English- only websites: how do you empower rural African women who do not speak or read English? Push for localization tools on the web.
Within ourselves we can grab the tech by the horns and not shy away from what seems complicated. “Re-envision a new world” (Kerr, 2008), make tech available to women for their work, and be creative at the sign of waking up.

Reference:
Kerr, Joanna (2008). Speech at Feminist Tech Exchange November 12, 2008.

Check out Feminist Africa Journal (University of Cape Town)

Mobile Rural Costs for Women

2008-12-21T07:22:00.000-08:00

Recently Johannesburg was the host to Mobile Active 08 – a meeting of researchers, innovators, engineers and technology enthusiasts from around the world to explore together the social impacts of mobile telephony. It was a perfect preparation time for me to think about Women and Mobile and present about certain aspects from Africa. For example, mobiles have had ridiculous growth in Africa averaging over 1000 % more subscribers than in 2001. However, despite the growth, let us not assume women are part of this accessibility.

First off, we would certainly consider cost as a major deterrent. Did you know that in developed countries average 2-3% proportion of their budgets to communication while Africa averages around 10%? This is only average, and you can imagine that even more poor citizens paying more because they will likely pay the highest amount per call using low-denomination airtime credit, and spend proportionally more for maintaining broken second-hand phones because of new battery purchase, or the amount of electricity charging frequency each week on top of low erratic incomes.

With these high costs, you see women making sacrifices or substitutions within their meagre household budgets to accommodate for communication costs. Some cases, a reduction of food can merely mean eating more food from the garden or farm. However in other cases, one can even find themselves not eating for the day in order to have airtime credit.

In the development sphere, which looks at technology and social practices, how do we seek solutions in overcoming these challenges for women who are looking to this communication device for a change today in their lives?

Tech News on Women

2008-12-18T03:34:00.000-08:00

Two quick info bits:

1) Great innovator, Brenda Burrell (and trainer at the Feminist Tech Exchange workshop last month), is on BBC News - Digital Planet! She talks about the Freedom Fone and her amazing work in Zimbabwe.

2) ITID Special Edition on Women: Information Technologies and International Development has just released a special journal on women. I haven't had the chance to go through all the articles, but hope it will be interesting!

MobileActive08 Reflections

2008-12-17T00:24:00.000-08:00

1. Intro: I finally had time to write up my reflections on the MobileActive08 conference back in October 2008. The purpose of this conference was to examine how mobile phones and their applications can be used for social impact in developing countries. MobileActive08 was an IDRC-sponsored event with some of the top 360 mobile phone social researchers, NGOs, ICT4D innovators, technologists, etc. from all around the world gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa. One of the joint organizers, SANGONET (IDRC partners since 1996), who has worked for years on strengthening civil society organizations and their utilization of ICTs in Southern Africa, teamed up with MobileActive.org to make this event possible.

2. Summary: Overall, the conference was well facilitated by Alison Hewlett, or the self-named orchestra conductor. It was unlike any conference I had ever attended mainly made up of interactive (some self-directed) group sessions. I overheard many participants complimenting the concerted effort in making the space collaborative. This conference found the wonderful mix of researchers mingling and challenging the efforts of technology developers (or developers challenging efforts of other developers). I suppose the whole point of these meetings was to see isolated silos on innovation to come together and work in cooperation for a common cause. I think there was some realization in this as I saw people trying to form geographical and thematic groups (ex. Latin America or Johannesburg MobileActive group). I also noticed some NGO representatives were there to see what tools and research were currently available in mobile applications which could be applied to their own work. I think this conference was well designed and reached its set objectives.

3. Web 2.0: MobileActive made a concerted effort to incorporate several Web 2.0 collaborative tools online: Twitter, youtube, blogging, slideshare, Facebook, confabb, etc. It is the conference where keeping your cellphone on is allowed. Their website attempted to collate and aggregate all the tool uses onto their website. Of course, when I was monitoring the usage of the tools, I only really saw the Twitter tool being used in real-time.

The leaders of groups were asked to provide a discussion report and upload on confabb notes, a very useful tool. After testing the tool myself, Confabb is an easy uploading tool for delegates to use for rapporteur or summary notes of conference sessions. However, by the end of the conference, I was only able to see a few conference discussion notes on the confabb note share tool. If this is the participation by innovators, I wonder what result would come from a conference of African partners where they may or may not be Web2.0-savvy. Would participation be better or worse? I think some training will be required prior to conference if one hopes for Web 2.0 usage.

4. Outputs: I observed one major output from the conference: the development of an open mobile consortium. I also noted that from the Disaster and Mobile conference, the panelists will also try to work together to make their applications interoperable and assist each other’s needs. Another output was a paper by Jonathan Donner and Katrin Verclas which was presented at a recent Mobile for Development (M4D) conference in Karlstad University, Sweden.

Click links for:
- MobileActive08 Powerpoint Presentations
- MobileActive08 Photos
- MobileActive08 You-Tube Videos: Find 40 new quality videos produced at the conference

Research @ MobileActive08

2008-12-17T00:17:00.000-08:00

5.1 Kathleen’s Participation at Mobile Active08: As for my contribution, I made two presentations about: 1) my previous research on Mobile and Women and 2) Mobile and Poverty. There were about 15 people in the first session and 7 in the second session. The interest in the area included those who were doing research in the field and wanted to know what research was out there on mobile. There was realization by all of the little research available on the adoption or behaviour change as a result of mobile phone.

5.1.1 Mobile & Women (Oct 13, 2008): I had presented with Kutoma Wakunuma and her 3 year study in Zambia on women and mobile phones.

5.1.2 Working group session: Mobiles and Poverty (Oct 15, 2008): short write-up on the session found here. The presentation was on the substitutions being made for mobile phone services and a consensus by the audience was that further cost/benefit research needed to be conducted to determine the changing effects on poverty as a result of mobile phone usage.

Overall, the conference was a worthwhile experience for moving forward research on development and impacts through mobile phone innovation.

Kampala Visit in Aug/Sept 2008

2008-12-12T06:38:00.000-08:00

Back in August-September 2008, I had the chance to visit Kabale, Uganda, to conduct data collection for my research project and to examine the current status of Wireless Africa’s Uganda project.

When I first arrived, I went over to Makerere University’s Department of Electrical Engineering: Community Wireless Resource Centre (CWRC). I had the chance to meet Peterson Mwesiga and two former CWRC Electrical Engineering students were part of the team who helped to plan and implement the wireless networks in three telecentres in Uganda: Lira, Kabale, and Nabweru. It is clear from this discussion with CWRC that this program has been successful in providing hands-on experience and expertise to these former engineering students. I am unsure if such training is available in other African electrical engineering departments but the CWRC training program could be used as a model for other wireless networking projects throughout the continent. I was definitely impressed by their thesis topics and the work they have done in the area.

I also had the chance to meet CWRC’s Director, Dorothy Okello, at the WOUGNET office (she wears many hats!) who is active in community wireless networking. Dorothy’s community implementation and advisory activities continues to be dynamic within the region including with government cooperation. In the short time I was in Uganda, she had sent Peterson to fix the Lira network as well as recommended a Ministry of ICT meeting to collate research on wireless networking projects in Uganda.

I visited the Nabweru Telecentre (former IDRC project), one of the wireless networking projects just 6 km outside of Kampala. While one can see the telecentre had the mesh networking connected to the community hall, the court and the school, the inability to pay off their connectivity fees with the local service provider keeps it unconnected. Apparently, CWRC’s new MSI grant will hopefully be used to service this debt and then test a bandwidth management tool at Nabweru. Even so, the telecentre admits the need for a business plan and financial management training particularly given the difficult conditions (intermittent power, landline cutoff due to stolen phone cables, political interference, etc). Ivan is passionate to keep the centre open, has won several UNICEF awards for their radio programming but shows clear needs for advice on how to raise funds and remain operational.

Field work in Kabale

2008-12-12T06:27:00.001-08:00

After a few days in Kampala, Christine and I jumped on the Post Bus (slowest bus ever) to Kabale, 434km from Kampala. We started off by meeting the two telecentre managers from Kabale and Kachwekano. Formerly under IDRC’s African Highlands Initiative (AHI), the telecentres have been taken over to the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADs). The NAADs coordinator responsible for the district’s telecenters, had strong interest in expanding the idea of village information centres (VICE: currently piloted in Rubaya sub-county) to the rest of their 20 sub-countries.

Six focus group discussions were conducted and 24 key informants were interviewed within the 3 weeks. Our focus groups consisted of the displaced Batwa community, craft women, volunteer youth radio presenters, women and men farmers groups. Some of the key informants we met were: Red Cross, religious organizations, anti-corruption NGO, Kabale hospital / health centre staff, tow truck services, police, fire department, NAADS, and all the available wireless network nodes.

From preliminary observations, this rural area utilized a mix of traditional and mobile phone techniques for communication during an emergency. This research results will attempt to draw the before and after effects of ICTs in addressing emergencies in the region. Lastly, the CWRC have a great case study set up in Kabale for exploring sustainable business models and the telecentres are keen to see wireless internet be more affordable and reliable in their area.

It was a great research trip and now the transcripts sit on my desk for analysis and write up. Oh boy.

Mobiles & Market Participation: Uganda research

2008-12-12T05:54:00.000-08:00

The Impact of Mobile Phone Usage Coverage Expansion on Market Participation: Panel Data Evidence from Uganda, 2008, Megum Muto, Japan International Cooperation Agency Research Institute

Fascinating paper on a panel data study which finds that mobile phone network expansion (in Uganda) has a larger impact on the market participation (perishable goods) in areas farther from districts.

The researcher also states that it is not clear "whether farmers obtain the full efficiency gain due to the mobile phone expansion" particularly breaking the information asymmetry between trader and farmer. He recommends community capacity building in retrieving and sharing timely market price information through producers' associations (thus including non-phone owners).

Just reading this article reminds me of driving through Kanungu District (Uganda) at 6am and watching men and children pushing bicycles uphill with big banana bunches (locally called matooke - usually 3 bunches on one bike) and pineapples to sell at the nearest market. When I asked our driver how much they get, it was:

2500 to 3000 USH ($1.56 - $1.88 USD) per bunch
COSTS: 1000 USH to PUSH uphill & return + 500 per bunch from farmer = 1500 expenses ($0.94)
PROFIT: 1000 to 1500 USH ($0.63 - $0.94) a bunch x 3 = ($1.89 - $2.82) if all bunches were sold. This does not include paying the little boys for their help and their lunch. At least that's what I calculated in my head according to the rough information from our driver.

Tell me where the farmer can make more money because he still has to push.

FTX & AWID Trip Reflection

2008-12-03T00:15:00.000-08:00

The Feminist Tech Exchange was a specific capacity building workshop to help women & feminist rights organizations, including some IDRC partners, improve their ICT technical skills, and thus advance their dissemination methods in the online web 2.0 environment. Hosted by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC, long-time partner of IDRC), the workshop also attempted to integrate gender analysis and current ICT4D and feminist issues such as communication rights. Lastly, FTX allowed for the organizations and ICT4D experts to network in an open space as well as to improve the trainer’s facilitation skills. The intent was also for FTX participants to display or use their newly developed skills and knowledge at the AWID Forum.

1.0 FTX Trip Summary

2008-12-03T00:06:00.000-08:00

The Feminist Tech Exchange had been a dream come reality for APC particularly members like Jac sm Kee who has been looking for opportunities to build technical and media capacity of feminists. APC members from Asia, Latin America and Africa converged with the 130 women and men from around the globe and shared a space to express diverse views on how feminist approaches and practices can examine the field of information & communication technology. For capacity building, the 15 hours spent at the Monkey Valley resort, produced near-to-final projects ranging from radio programs, short videos and digital stories. Some of the videos were then shown at the AWID forum to all 2000+ delegates before the start of plenary or on large screens throughout the forum. As for the examination of feminist approaches to ICT, the plenary or dialogues addressed issues such as communication rights and policy implications (Anriette Esterhuysen, Executive Director, APC), violence against women and ICT (Jac) and women movement building (Srilatha Batliwala, Scholar Associate for AWID). Delegates became aware of the issues, but due to limited time, further discussions were seen to spill over to the AWID organized sessions, “Is the Internet Feminist?” and “Politics, Power and the Internet”.
I noticed that many participants were young Communication Officers from the respective organizations looking for improved ways to disseminate their advocacy work. I sat in on the wireless and mobile activism track which demonstrated technical applications for mobile phone activism and setting up community wireless networks.

I had the chance to meet for the first time some of IDRC’s ICT4D – Pan Asia research partners like IT for Change (India) and ISIS (Manila) and improve my knowledge on the Pan Asia programming for Gender. Some Acacia partners were also present such as Robert Kirunda (Uganda) from the new Acacia project, “Examining the Nexus between ICTs and Human Rights in Africa” (105271). It is fitting for this project to see the privacy rights, access to information and censorship issues from the feminist perspective particularly under those societies where websites are blocked and monitored for inappropriate content in the eyes of government.
Further Discussion: What was learned about the feminist practices of technology?
Output: http://ftx.apcwomen.org/. The list serv also continues to be active as delegates send in links to their photos and lessons learned post-FTX.

2.0 AWID Trip Summary

2008-12-03T00:00:00.000-08:00

Association for Women’s Rights in Development hosts a women’s rights conference every three years and this recent Cape Town forum saw its largest delegation of 2200+ people with one-third of the delegates arriving from the African continent. According to IDRC records, we have been supporting AWID research and forum activities since 1999. This current year, it appears that IDRC supported two specific projects: 1) funding FTX participants to AWID forum (Pan Asia: 105129) and 2) conceptual framework research on “Building Feminist Movements and Organizations” (WRC: 105411). From my observations, IDRC research partners particularly connected to APC are highly involved with AWID activities and have influenced the direction of including ICTs and women’s rights in the agenda.

2.2.1 FTX Hub: APC was designated a space for FTX participants and others to used the FTX hub as their meeting place or technology learning space during the Forum. I felt the Hub made the forum experience more personalized particularly for the FTX delegates to mingle with known faces. They were able to use their new skills to blog, or trial applications like FrontlineSMS to inform FTX of the events or experiences during the forum. Many of the prominent speakers at the forum were also interviewed on online radio program FIRE (FemTalk) hosted by the Hub.

2.2.2 Plenary: One major observation was that during plenary, AWID ensured that the panel was inclusive of all different types of women particularly those who are usually marginalized within their respective societies (ie. Aboriginal, LGBT, disabled, etc). The inclusion of all women was clear and demonstrated throughout the forum such as the African Feminist Forum recent declaration to ensure the inclusion of all women regardless of ethnicity or gender identity. http://www.africanfeministforum.org/ - Charter of Feminist Principles for African Feminists.

2.2.3 Other Highlights: I highly recommend supporting future research discussions on the session “Development Paradigms and Practices from a Feminist Perspective”. This session had a full packed audience but the debate did not go further than just basic iterations about the World Social Forum and stating the need to explore alternatives beyond neo-liberal ideologies.

2.2.4 Feminist Africa: I attended a book launch of a journal publication, “Feminist Africa”. South Africa’s Deputy Speaker and former Deputy Minister of Defence, Nozizwe Madladla – Routledge and feminist scholar, Yaliwe Clarke, spoke about the recent theme on militarism, conflict and Women’s activism. They gave fascinating perspectives on the South African arms deal, gendered post-conflict and African military recruitment. It would be interesting to see this debate go further with the African Gender Institute.

2.2.5 IGF: IT for Change hosted Southern Feminist Perspectives on the Information Society. Ms. Anita Gurumurthy used the space to discuss internet gender justice for the upcoming Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Hyderabad, India. They planned to present a document to address gender inequalities and women’s communication rights.

2.2.6 Funding Forum: There was also much debate throughout the forum on funding mobilization particularly for women rights movements and movement building. The African Women’s Development Fund has a wonderful list of funders for women’s rights under their publication, “Where is the money for Women’s Rights in Africa” http://awdf.org (the publication is not online but I have a physical copy). Appendix A has the links to all of the women’s rights funding organizations.
For more information and summary of plenary sessions, go to the AWID Forum 2008 website: http://www.awid.org/forum08/index.html

3.0 Recommendations and Actions

2008-12-02T23:56:00.000-08:00

1. ICT & women’s rights research collaboration: The forum dialogue which has been sparked on feminism approaches to ICT4D and policy implications but there needs to be further research exploration perhaps through the Feminist Network on Gender, Development and Information Society Policies across Gender & ICT research networks. This can also include deeper analysis on the feminist practices of technology and communication rights for women.

2. ICT Capacity Building: It was obvious from the FTX training in new innovative media and web 2.0 tools are of high demand and need in developing countries. In cases of limited resources, there is high likelihood for women to have less chance to improve their technology skills. Thus interventions are required to ensure that women gain equal opportunities and become aware of their own patriarchal societies and cultures that are preventing these gains for other women.

3. Feminism and the Military: An extremely interesting realm of research from a completely different perspective.

My life.

2008-11-28T07:08:00.000-08:00

Wireless Africa Technical Workshop (Nov 2008)

2008-11-27T04:58:00.000-08:00

The workshop is the 3nd planned workshop by the network project, Wireless Africa. This event was a specifically capacity building workshop to help develop business cases for chosen country entrepreneurs and improve practical hands-on wireless network applications for technicians in each Africa project. The intent is that this group learning would lead to collaboration and lessons learned among country members as they attempt to improve their current rural telecommunications infrastructure practices and thus develop more sustainable(and possibly expandable) business models within their community networks.

Summary:

Wireless Africa can offer leadership in linking the research of all ten cases of isolated rural community wireless networks. At the workshop, participants were asked to understand the need for their work to engage in policy implications on telecommunications, to improve their knowledge on other value-added applications for wireless networks, and to advance business practices through use of demand side studies and accounting templates. The process in which these networks change the way they operate need to be well documented and brought together so that mistakes are not replicated and instead solved as a collaborative group of like-minded social entrepreneurs or technicians as is the hope of Wireless Africa.

For policy and practice, Alison Gillwald (IDRC project: #103114) from Research ICT Africa! (RIA!) was asked to present their recent 2007 Household Survey results as well as ensure the RIA! researchers contact Wireless Africa researchers to improve policy dialogue. Wireless Africa also asked African network for Localization (Anloc) research network leader, Dwayne Bailey (IDRC Project # 104475), to link localization researchers to Wireless Africa researchers to ensure African local languages are also utilized within the projects. Steve Song from Shuttleworth Foundation and Toni Eliasz & Rudi von Staden from Ungana Afrika presented their business cases of ongoing projects called the Village Telco and feasibility business study in Eastern Cape respectively. These informative presentations were an indication of the need to share and collaborate between other ICT research networks as well as ongoing projects within the continent.

Technical side: Alberto, Louise, and Sebastian have been long-standing wireless networking trainers with ICT4D – IDRC worldwide. They once again helped our technical strand to improve their knowledge of open-source applications and devices which can be used to improve the teams’ community wireless networks in terms of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), billing tools, bandwidth management and updated mesh-setups. Their technical manuals and open source applications are well-documented (some on website) and provided to each participant on DVD.

Business side: All 10 African teams walked away with a draft business case template as well as their first attempt to “sell” their team’s idea under an “elevator speech” – short concise three minute presentations about their community wireless network. During the workshop, teams received constructive criticism on their ideas of micro-services and whether their plans would reach any profit or worthwhile investment from future interested parties. Katherine and Xolani from Ninjani helped to build the survey methodology called card sorting to help gather data on their client’s needs for wireless communications and possible micro-services to be offered by the African team. Teams are to email their draft business plan to Uys by December 15, 2008. After feedback, teams will send their final copy by January 15, 2009. All in all, the workshop was a good mix of theory and hands on participation.

Finally, the beginning formation of a Wireless Africa Alliance started to take shape during the workshop. Kafui (Ghana), Houda and Jamal (Morocco), Muroro (Zimbabwe) and Ochuko (Nigeria) volunteered to be the first temporary steering committee to further develop the role and mandate of an alliance in improving telecommunications infrastructure policy, practice and learning dissemination. The Wireless Africa organizing team (or consortium) agreed to support the WAA’s work.

TakeBacktheTech - 16 days of activism

2008-11-26T00:11:00.000-08:00

I recently met Jac and her APC crew who thought of this innovative way to explore violence against women through ICTs.

At the recent Feminist Tech Exchange in Cape Town, it is actually amazing to learn of how women are suppressed from their freedom of expression around the world. Websites are continuously torn down or hacked if it does not suit a certain government's views. Children are tricked to participate in graphic, explicit websites or forums. The right to protect your information and privacy could be invaded as each day passes.

Being based here in South Africa, where words of violence and abuse directed at women and children (even from the incoming president) are mind-boggling, it is imperative that one explores the new and innovative ways to beat the system. Please follow takebackthetech during the next 15 days of activism if you believe in a better world.

What would our world be like if all women participated in the knowledge economy?

2008-11-26T00:06:00.000-08:00

FTX blog: 11/12/2008

As we reach our last track day here at FTX, I do not see it as the end to learning and practice.

Firstly at AWID, we hope to keep our FTX friends connected with SMS (through newly learned tools) to keep in touch with news and actions happening as we disperse among the 2000+ delegates and go to our separate hotel accomodations. I also hear rumours of a wireless network being set up at the conference as a practical demonstration and possible testing of the new prototype of Freedom Fone.

Secondly, Take back the Tech will be a great way to practice new skills. Done.

Beyond FTX and AWID, I see feminists being better heard through the new tools. But how do we document the possible successes and hardships that we will most definitely run into now that our FTX tech support network is not at the tips of our fingers like now? How will feminist work be shaped because of the use of SMS to advocate for improved access to ICTs for women? What will be the industry reaction be to the changing environment as women gain better skills in wireless networking?

1. Let us not stop questioning.

2. Let us document, video, audio-record, photograph, write, SMS.

3. Let us talking about it one-on-one.

4. Let us get people to see the light.

5.Let us share with each other how our world would look like if women were able to reach their full potential.

Link:

GRACE:
www.grace-network.net

F4W – Feminists for Wireless!

2008-11-26T00:01:00.000-08:00

Wireless (wi-fi) community networking has become a recent passion of mine particularly here in Africa. The passion lies in reaching the last mile: seeing rural communities be connected to internet using innovative practices through antennae, wireless routers and motivated people. This is even after overcoming harsh conditions of poor reliability to electricity, dust, lightning, illiteracy, hilly terrain and lack of resources. Wireless does not leave the rural out and in fact, has helped to develop skill and astonishing new ideas of reversing the digital divide trend.

But lets not be too wishful. My observations in Africa is that wireless networking is still dominated by male electrical engineers. But because wireless networking is still such a new concept, the trend can still be reversed. I believe that it has begun here at FTX! My heart filled with hope and optimism as I watched my track participants attempt to dispel usually daunting ideas of hardware and go configure a wireless router and learn more about connecting wi-fi. It is not hard at all! We just need to learn the glossary of the scary tech words and do it. So feminists (male and female), if we want wireless networking to be useful to our underserved rural communities and help women gain access to the knowledge economy, make time to learn these wireless hardware / software skills today.

Shout out to Lillian and Fatima leading us to see Wireless through Women!

Links:

Wireless Africa
Wireless Networking in the Developing World
Community Wireless Resource Centre (Makerere University)

Hands dirty @ Wireless & Mobile

2008-11-25T23:59:00.000-08:00

Blogging at FTX (11/11/2008):

Its a windy chilly day in Cape Town, but the weather has definitely not slowed down the energy of the participants at FTX. From the summary of the different track groups, it appears most facilitators have started with concept and technology introductions. Today, the groups are delving deeper into practice and usage of the technologies. In the wireless – mobile track, the participants are getting their hands dirty with testing FrontlineSMS for mass SMS campaigns. As with trying to add Fring to our mobiles yesterday, only one successful test group was able to get the messages out to the South African phone numbers using the software and GSM modem. Lets not despair; we still have time to work out the glitches with our other test groups. As our facilitator, Brenda stated, its the best way to learn about technology!

The Struggle

2008-08-13T04:52:00.000-07:00

Dear Patrick,

As alumni to the School of Development Studies, I am in support of your appeal to the university to keep the Centre for Civil Society at UKZN open. During my time at the university, the CCS has encouraged the use of new methodologies and participatory action research to best understand civil society; such new and innovative ideas should be encouraged in the name of the advancement of social research. Their record of publications and support around the world is more than impressive because of its strive to understand the true realities of the underserved, disenfranchised people of Africa.

The Centre has brought a diverse wave of academia to speak on civil society issues and in the recent past I have found as alumni, the CCS tried innovative Web 2.0 and collaborative forums to open the discussion beyond the physical space of the centre. In an area studying the usage of Information & Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), your attempts to use such creative methods of civil society participation is beyond the steps taken or used in research institutes in Africa.

Please take this email as a sign of support for the continuation of the Centre for Civil Society. I have asked the SDS alumni to email you for their sign of support.

Regards,

Kathleen

Related websites:
UKZN's Centre for Civil Society website: http://www.ccs.ukzn.ac.za/
Hands of the CCS, COSATU: http://groups.google.com/group/handsofftheccs
SangoNet Support of CCS: http://www.sangonet.org.za/portal/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9889&Itemid=1
Mail and Guardian article: http://www.mg.co.za/printformat/single/2008-08-12-ukzn-to-clip-bonds-wings

Funding

2008-08-08T00:55:00.000-07:00

I am currently busy working on my project literature review as well as assist with background materials for Wireless Africa's own demand studies on wi-fi community networks. It's been intense, I'm trying to write as much as possible (and trying to push away from writer's block) and just prepare for my upcoming trips to Uganda and Nigeria! Woohoo!

In the meanwhile, I've been finding a few funding strategies and grants for possible follow up on ICT4D work (if the proposal is worded well enough). Just thought I'd share and perhaps others can share their own list of funders:

1. Research Into Use (DFID): Innovation Challenge Fund
"The purpose of the African Innovation Challenge Fund (African ICF) is to provide financial support to teams so they can take promising research, funded by DFID, to the next stage of use. The selected initiatives will contribute to RIU’s purpose by delivering significant use of RNRRS and other natural resources research outputs for the benefit (direct or indirect) of poor men and women in different contexts. "

2. SSRC (USA): Media Research Hug: Small Grants Project
"Small grants of up to $7,500 are available for research that supports public-interest efforts to change the media / telecommunications infrastructure, practices, policies or content. The grants are intended for short-term, advocacy-centered research, completable and usable by advocacy partners within the next 4-12 months."

Agriculture, ICTs and Gender in Africa

2008-07-21T02:05:00.000-07:00

This last month, I was asked to judge GENARDIS 3, "Small Grants Fund to address Gender Issues in Information and Communication Technologies for Agricultural and Rural Development in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP Countries)." The applicants that I judged were a wide range of projects attempting to use the tools of radio, computers, and media to reach the disenfranchised in their villages. Unfortunately, there were some applicants that immediately drew the opinion that women = gender, which is still a major misconception of what this small grants fund is all about. The thing is that it is likely to be women and children who are most disadvantaged in these small villages wishing to implement technology in order to improve lives. However, maybe it is not, and it is best to analyse the situation for both men and women first and then distinguish the differences between the two groups. Perhaps we will find a village where males are not participating in computer classes and 99 % are women, then why have these males decided not to participate?

Check out the GENARDIS projects that have won in 2005 and an evaluation on the program in 2007.

More Information:

IDRC - Acacia webpage on GENARDIS

Gender and Natural Resource Management book

Mobiles & Poverty

2008-07-20T01:45:00.000-07:00

Since completing my studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, I have been doing a bit of writing based on my mobile phone study. My field work photos are found under "IDRC work" on my flickr page.

Here is one article: i4d: Mobiles are leading the way: A review of IDRC projects

Here is a short case study write-up that I did for the W3C workshop in Brazil in June 2008.

This is an old presentation that I did at UKZN in November. I presented my results and analysis at the IDRC on May 1, 2008 with an updated presentation (ask if you would like a copy).

| View | Upload your own

All kinds of ICT4D conferences have been popping up recently:

- HCC8 - Pretoria, South Africa (25-27 Sept 2008)
- Msociety - Antalya, Turkey (18-19 Sept 2008)
- SAICSIT, Wilderness, South Africa (6-8 October 2008)
- MobileActive08 - Johannesburg, South Africa (13-15 Oct 2008)
- ICTD 2009 - Doha, Qatar - deadline for submissions: Sept 22, 2008 - (17-18 April 2009)
- IFIP, Dubai, UAE - deadline for submissions: August 15, 2008 (26-28 May 2009)

Gender and Wireless Africa

2008-07-19T01:12:00.000-07:00

Last month, I attended the Wireless Africa workshop: June 25- 27, 2008, CSIR Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.

Here are some excerpts from my report:

Day 1 – Wednesday, 25 June 2008

Purpose: The purpose of the workshop was to introduce the Wireless Africa research project, share current wireless community network initiatives throughout Africa and choose the three countries as case studies for review of their sustainable business models. There were at least 40 participants in total (10 women participants) and all proceedings will be found here.

One country presentation highlights:

Emphasize goals towards development: Prof Hicham Bouzekn, Al Akhawayn University, Morocco stated that the success in working with regulators and even mobile operators depends on “the way you present your project, […] cannot be perceived as a threat. It must show some goal of development, and a benefit to the country”. Prof Hicham’s Wifi project had also seen their regulators pushing the researchers to aim big, increasing their research sites by two-three more areas in Fez.

Business Models: As for presented business models, the range was also diverse among the countries and within the country institutions. The 16 countries had telecentres models, government owned models, NGO style setups and primary school network ideas. Within the institutions, the range of products and services could be from running a microfinance institution to internet café side projects with a whole gamut of income generating projects done within. While aware of the idea of business models, none of the countries had actually written up a business plan or prepared such documentation in the past. Fantsuam was possibly the closest organization with $USD figures of their operation costs and revenues through their cross-subsidized model of business.

Village Telco example: Steve Song (Shuttleworth Foundation) and Rael Lissoos (dabba.co.za) presented on the Village Telco model (wiki.villagetelco.org) which is in place in Orange Farm, South Africa. Running for the last two years, Rael has been able to provide wireless services to this community with use of pre-paid cards for internet and phone services. The recent village telco workshop (June 16-20, 2008) can be found here. Steve did a presentation summarizing their workshop asking the question can a mesh network be developed for $5000 USD and deployed and break-even within 6 months. From the workshop came the “Mesh potato”, a hardware/software package which allows for phone/internet connection, and asterisk, BATMAN and network management software. Check out more information on Steve's blog.

Day 2 – Thursday, 26 June 2008

2.1 VoIP and Wisp in a Box Presentations: Louise Berthilson (it+46), Alberto Escudero-Pascual (it+46) and David Rowe (Free Telephony Project) presented their current work on VoIP in a Box. David showed the simplicity of wireless point-to-point setup by getting his children to set up a wireless phone in a public park. Sebastian Buettrich followed with the development ideas of WISP in a box (still in progress with completion date aimed around +/- October 2008). From both technology presentations, it was clear that low power was a major roadblock that needed to be addressed immediately as power is usually one of the most costly expenses in running these technologies. “Big power is low power,” as stated by Alberto. All projects must consider looking at low power using technologies in order to see sustainability. So why not consider the 1Watt computer? Another major challenge was how to move from small to large scale networks with out destruction, particularly address network management problems once capacity starts to reach a point of over optimal. How does one prepare for this point? Another major obstacle discussed is learning retention – local transfer and avoid staff turnover – in a business model. While some acknowledge that they will need to continuously input training, the discussion looked a use of retired professionals, training business people to be a trainer for a business, young 3rd year undergraduate students volunteers, other motivation techniques, use of local women or grandmothers (my idea), training government officials.

Gender Presentation: I gave a short presentation on gender research based on the firm desire by Wireless Africa management to incorporate gender into their research plan. The presentation was based on the IDRC – Acacia lessons learned from the Gender Awareness Workshop in Fez, Morocco in 2007. Here is the presentation:

| View | Upload your own

The purpose of the session was to ask country/researchers to consider adding gender as part of their research agenda in their planning and consider four possible strategies of implementation. Why is this area of study exciting? As technology is fairly new in many of their societies, great insight comes from research on the adaptation and usage of technology by both sexes. Secondly, as implementers, one can have great influence in whether such tools become gender biased or not in the community by way of constructing opportunity for both men and women with the technology. I emphasized “What are we losing out?” asking the audience what innovation and economic advances will the project be missing if they exclude specifically women from the knowledge society? As little has been written in the field of gender and wireless community networks (even in North America), I also challenged the group to work towards presenting their gender research to the Acacia Conference in Dakar, October 2009.

At the end of the workshop, the three pilot projects were announced: Ghana (onevillage Foundation), Uganda (Community Wireless Resource Centre) and Nigeria (Fantsuam Foundation).

More information on Wireless Africa, click here.

CICEWA Workshop #3

2008-07-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

This week, I was asked to attend one of our IDRC research partner's workshops here in Johannesburg. Here is an edited version of my workshop report.

1. Project Objective:

The project, “Communication for Influence: Linking Advocacy, Dissemination and Research: Building ICTD Networks in Central, East and West Africa” (CICEWA) has the objective to identify obstacles to universal affordable access to broadband ICT infrastructure in Central, East and West Africa through two sub-regional ICT policy advocacy networks. Their key role is to disseminate research and find effective ways to advocate for ICTD.

2. Workshop

CICEWA hosted their third in a series of workshops (the June one was in Senegal). I dropped in last Wednesday, July 16. The purpose of the workshop was to bring African journalists and researchers nominated by the ICT4D network from East, West and Central Africa to develop a common research framework, and build the network for stronger ICT4D policy advocacy. In the previous two meetings, two regional networks were formed: EAICT4D, coordinated by Harry Hare (KictaNet, Kenya) and GOREeTIC (Coura Fall, APC).

There were 18 participants (7 were women) from both French (Senegal, Congo-Brazzaville, Rwanda, Benin) and English (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda) speaking African countries. One of the participants was an APC member from South America.

3. Presentation: Telecommunication Reform in South Africa

The first speaker, Robert Horwitz, Professor at UC San Diego, spoke about a paper that he and Willie Currie recent wrote: “Another instance where privatization trumped liberalization: The politics of telecommunications reform in South Africa – A ten-year retrospective”. This journal article was used in the presentation as a possible output model for the country teams. The author spoke further on the research and the methodology undertaken to produce this paper.

A major issue which arises from many transitions from monopoloy state-owned telecommunications to a competitive market is governance. How does a country create a new market structure for telecommunications and then how do you deal with the incumbent? How do you change the tariffs enough for the incumbent (who had provided much infrastructure in the first place) to stay competitive and yet allow competitors? Many known regulators are still unable to provide strong structure to guide this process in a transparent manner.

4. Discussion

The researchers were asked to develop their country’s political narrative or institutional histories and use institutional players, the context, the political structures and understand why things happened and how they are likely to play out.

Major question put to the participants, “Where are the points of entry, on policy, and advocacy, how best to engage, how to provide pressure with impact, and practices of freedom.”

During the discussion, each country described their political and telecommunications story. In summary, there were several issues with the regulator and its ability to help in lowering the interconnection costs between mobile phone operators. There were also examples were cell phone operator competition led to lower prices but cases like Tanzania were there was no price change. There is also the issue of high costs as a result of governments high tax imposition (ex. Uganda has 30 % tax). Discussion also came up on the weak consumer associations in the country who are not able to push for fair competition and lower prices.

In terms of the research, the question came up as to how one revealed the “secret deals” which undermine the processes of good governance particularly during this transition period? How do we start to see transparency and show things as understood and fair by its citizens? How does one expose “never released documents” and hold government accountable?

Fifteen ways in order to retrieve important documents and interview key informants in institutions like government:

a) Be persistent
b) Try talking to people who lost out in a contract or deal
c) Work through the opposition or the chair of certain parliamentary committee
d) Interview mid-level management, reveal certain information, build rapport, allow them to reflect on the big picture
e) Always check sourcing
f) ‘Follow the money’ – check annual reports, stock exchange prices / reports
g) Use the switchboard operator to your advantage
h) Turn off the voice recorder and hope this will lead to information
i) reluctance to give information IS information
j) Ensure anonymity: “off the record” can be called key informants, “respected industry insider”
k) Always ask “who else should I talk to?”
l) Possibly align one’s self with an organization (eg. Statistic bureau) for authority
m) Use cousins / sisters within the organizations
n) Be aware of permits which may be required to conduct research.
o) Use the country’s freedom of information act

Other News:

Village Telco and dabba.co.za gets exposed on the Economist: Read more

IDRC - CICEWA network project links here

Special ICT4D Edition: Computer June 2008 (Vol. 41, No. 6).

The restoration of STC

2008-07-16T22:23:00.000-07:00

While I have always had the intention to start updating this blog on the wonderful things happening here in South Africa, it is only until now that I have pushed some keys together and voila, words to screen. Since my last blogpost, I have started venturing into new research terrain working with a network on Community Owned Wireless Networks and testing the waters in the socio-economic side of these pilot projects particularly on gender. I'll also go back into time and reflect on the research findings from my mobile phone and technology spending project last year as well as update on the recent workshop and conferences which will be taking place in Africa on Information & Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D).

Besides that, well you probably heard that Nelson Mandela's turning 90 this Friday! Stories have been running on all the local papers of people who had met Mandela while he was studying as a young lawyer in Jo-burg, to his days spent in prison on Robben Island. I guess you have to give credit to the man, he did his time and the respect and hope he has brought to the people of South Africa is not something one will forget for a very long time.

homemade goods obsession

2008-02-23T09:54:00.000-08:00

Today's been fairly creatively stimulating and work un-productive.

Last night, I strutted off into the Centurion evening to a club just off Old Johannesburg Road near where I am staying. Sadly enough, the night of dancing, ended at 12 midnight with a power failure in that part of town. Double Downer (the DJ had no idea what he was remixing), to say the least, but certainly can't be a particularly profitable night for the venue. Well, at least I got my dancing feet moving again.

The next morning, I decided to venture to the Irene Market at Jan Smuts House. Twice a month (1st Sat and 3rd Sat), the diversity of wares are displayed throughout the space surrounded in high shading trees. I was impressed by the range of over 300 stalls of home-made wares, cultural display of cuisine and fun to be spent in Irene.

What did she buy do you ask? Well, first off, a beautiful handmade doll from Vicki's Kid's Stuff (+27 82 806 8401) for R80 or $13. At this booth there were nappie bags and other baby wares. I then stopped at this booth which made these incredibly innovative purse made with a zipper. Pam from Dizzy Zippy (Yvonne: +27 83 248 2376) greeted the passerbys by rolling out this zipper and then zip around and around until it becomes a purse. It's fantastic. Their product ranges from small pencil cases to school bags ranging in price from R40 - R 150 ($ 6.50 - $25).

For lunch I had some Portuguese Rissois near the entrance for R7 ($1) and a 100% real orange juice for R8.

In the beginning, I cruised through the food section only to find some delicious Acacia/Eucalyptus raw honey (R30 or $5) produced in Irene by Bees Knees (+27 12 667 2372 or cjprussell@xsinet.co.za). On the label, it states unheated and unfiltered: “Nature's Best for Connoisseurs off the Comb with all its Natural Pollen” Then next to the honey booth, was the Mustard Shop with some homemade tasty Sweet Basil salad dressing (R20 or $3.40) and DELICIOUS olives mixed with peppadews (R30 or $5 for small plastic container). yum.

My highlight of the market was passing through south africa's history in images. Post cards and other products from digitized material of a man's artifact collection passed down by his father (former professor of Anthropology). A beautiful collection converted into post cards, birthday calendars and tin cans. The Colonial Heritage (The Reed Foundation) boasts of “100 year old postcard & photographic reprints of Old Colonial and Republican South Africa) +27 72910 1661 / +27 82 884 9989. I was able to score some amazing images (R10 or $1.70 per postcard or R70 or $10 for birthday calendar) of the Bluff, Durban with dated shots of 1435 and hear the story from Thatcher and Amber about the infamous Rickshas in Durban when they first arrived from Japan in 1892. Today, most people recognize the ricksha on Durban's ocean front as a tourist trap or the raddest part of surf classic, Endless Summer.

stoked on the visit and will definitely try to go back. Highly recommend arriving there between 8:30am - 10am otherwise feel the wrath of the longest line-up to the market. Parking is R5.

Best Travel Tackling Techniques: O.R. Tambo Johannesburg Airport

2007-12-17T01:08:00.000-08:00

I can say I'm a O.R. Tambo regular. Fly out Friday, Fly in Monday. I actually have started find there is a group of vigilante weekend warriors who do the trip as I do to Durban. In the last three months, I share some of the wonderful tidbits that have helped me kill through 30-90 minute wait (either because your cheap flight is delayed or you got to the airport so dang early just in case there is an accident on the road that could be backed up for hours).

1) The Keg and Aviator: Yes, the best way to kill time at O.R. Tambo is finding a nice pint and cheese nachos and just let the hair down. Actually x-nay the nachos - they are kinda not fun and will not meet your expectations. Tucked away at the far end of the restaurant floor, it's worth the few steps further. Do not let them seat you near the entrance; ask to be seated near the back with the flat-screen TVs and people and catch the most recent sport highlights. Sit at one of the long lounge tables, so much room, and it's usually never full. Killer.

2) Sushi at the Ocean Basket: Okay so they may take FOREVER to deliver a few maki rolls, but who cares? The craving must be satisfied and if you are lucky, you might have the women who delivers you the soft rock hits of the 80s on her synthesizer and voice. YEOW.

3) Wi-Fi internet: love it. Sit just about anywhere and time kill on Facebook and digg and other random websites. The phasing out can be so easy.

4) Hand Luggage only: Okay for within country travel, it's worth it. You stare at the long queues and feel the luggage getting heavier and heavier.

5) Lastly, Shaded Parking # 3: Totally wicked find. While not as cheap as Supersaver parking in butt-f* no-where, Shaded Parking #3 is half the price of the other covered lots and it's still close enough to walk if you feel like. The bonus is of course the free shuttle that takes you right to your vehicle or any of the departure gates. love it. I wish I clued into this one 2 months earlier.

9 Great Websites for South Africa Trip Planning

2007-12-10T04:33:00.000-08:00

I have been so lucky to have many of my friends from home come visit me in my last few years in South Africa / Kenya. I always have loads of questions thrown my way on Africa in general and travel and living tips in the area. This is my top 9 things to consult before jumping across the ocean to live/work/study or party/travel in South Africa!

1) Free Classified listings in Durban:
It's the craigslist of South Africa! So great for finding rental apartments and cars!

durban.gumtree.co.za/

2) Cheap Flights within South Africa:
All countries have their cheap flights within the country... Kulula, Mango and 1time are the way to go at reasonable rates if you happen to get the right deals. JNB to DUR can be as low as $20-$50 one way!

www.kulula.com
www.flymango.com/
www.1time.aero/

3) Cheap Car Hire in Jo-burg:
I have my old Toyota Corolla beater for 2500 R ($415) a month as I look for a possible permanent vehicle. Best price I have found so far for an automatic.

http://www.rentawreck.co.za/

4) Backpacking in S.A. and Mozambique:
This free guide is on recycled paper at any of the backpackers across South Africa. It is a great way to move across this country at a great price!

www.coastingafrica.com/

5) Good Eats in S.A.:
I love their top 10 lists.

www.eatout.co.za

6) Events in Durban and S.A.:
Haven't used it much but looks promising...

www.ijol.co.za

7) Blogs in Africa:
Get a real sense of what's happening around Africa...

www.amatomu.com
http://afrigator.com

8) Social Bookmarking in Africa:
what are people finding as interesting in Africa?

www.muti.co.za

9) Techy stuff on Africa:
I got some of my social bookmarking links from here. Really innovative stuff.

http://www.bandwidthblog.com/2007/09/14/south-africas-web-startups-to-watch/

S.A. universities: fight for your right...

2007-10-03T10:21:00.000-07:00

I am frustrated. Students at the University of the Witwatersrand were shot at with rubber bullets as they attempt to protest against the hike in next year's tuition rates. How ridiculous. You have some of your intellectuals and leaders at one of the top universities in the country with the inability to protest and speak up for their rights to education. I ask those who still represent tertiary education or part of student bodies to support the Wits students with emails, publicly denouncing violence on this protest and messages to these institutions that these are not radical, weapon toting hooligans... these are your future leaders who wish to voice their frustration with the difficult undemocratic S.A. system.

What happened to spare fun time?

2007-09-15T00:22:00.000-07:00

I'm back and forth from Durban and Jo-burg as I strive through the last four months of my internship with IDRC. Currently, I'm trying to bag this research project analysis on mobile phones and technology spending and its relation to poverty in rural Kenya and Uganda. Yesterday I took a half day course with Hilary at UKZN's ITD school on the qualitative tool, Nvivo. Super simple to use and I think will be useful to sort out my 200+ pages of transcripts (yes, it took me literally 2 weeks to listen to tapes and do this). My only issue is that Nvivo7 only works on Apples with the intel chip and I'm one generation behind with my iBook G4. Doh. Looks like time for an upgrade when I get back to Vancouver! In the meanwhile, I'm attempting to download free versions of HyperResearch and Tams Analyzer to see if they can do the same job. I'm also do it the old school way, wading through the date on paper with post-its, highlighters and coloured dots as I'm a visual learner, but time is running out and I need something interesting for my presentation to the School of Development Studies on Oct8!

Recently, I was sent this wicked article on Buddeblog called, "Changing societies and the role of telecoms" and makes you re-think again, what's with all the work and where's the balance of giving back to society or at least having fun?

This blog talks about people having more time to engage in social activities when they have telecommunication technology. It reminds me of a comment from a man in Meru, Kenya, when I was conducting interviews... We were talking about the time when the community was having water installed into homes. He recalls one neighbor protested paying for the water and asking, “what will my wife do if she does not fetch water?”. Can you imagine? Rather keep her busy fetching water and keep her from doing other social or functional activities.

I like his props to Canadians and New Zealanders on working to integrate Aboriginal culture (still a way to go but trying more than other countries!)

I especially like this paragraph:

“With the economy changing from scarcity to surplus we should use this unique opportunity to tap into these old cultures, with a view to re-evaluating ourselves, our lives and our communities. A good starting point would be to study these cultures, to try and find some answers to the environmental changes that are currently having such a serious impact. As I write this, half of Greece is on fire – how many more warnings do we need before we start to make changes?”

Maasai captures crowd

2007-07-24T05:12:00.000-07:00

with his voice on this video. Best artist from the display of Kenyan artists on Friday night. Read more with a few UBC business students who attended the event....

men do nail polish

2007-07-23T06:28:00.001-07:00

While I am going through my field notes from my research this week, I am going to try to recollect some of the most interesting things spotted or experiences. For example, back in June, I interviewed a group of nine women in a hair salon about their mobile phone use and changes in their lives. During this time, I did notice something odd. While salons are usually separated for men and women (like our barbers and salons), there was a man doing nails for a young woman. Yes, I suppose if this was in Vancouver or in some super trendy salon, it would not be strange. But in the context, I asked my research assistant about it, and she said that he was actually not working at the salon. He was a hawker (people selling knick-knacks on the street) and men had picked up the job of doing manicure/pedicures in the area. If a salon does not offer the service, they walk through and do the job. I also noticed another man doing nails from a woman's home several days later.

So talking about gender equality, do nails become a gender-neutral (or is it in this case a male-dominated occupation?) job in rural Uganda? What other examples of jobs exemplified as women-dominated are now being taken on my men even in contexts that appear to be extremely gender-biased? A man carrying a baby on his back in East Africa or man being the "house help" (where the wife works and the man stays home)?

am i shaking?

2007-07-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

it's been a crazy few months. I just got back to Nairobi on Tuesday after spending almost 2 months in the field (rural Uganda and Kenya) collecting data for my study. But what's going on in Nairobi? Well for the last three days I have been feeling tremors from a nearby earthquake in Tanzania. It's kind of strange because I actually don't know what I would do. The first time I felt the movement, it was strong, the walls shook, I was on a Skype meeting and froze. The following night I put my passport in my wallet so if whatever may happen i'm ready to move. It's continuous: 5am, 10am. 5pm. 8:30pm. I sometimes don't know if I am shaking because of drinking too much coffee or coca cola or if it's just the continuity of the tremors. What next, Nairobi? Banning of plastic bags and no smoking in public areas? Oh, never mind. That happened as well while I was gone!

How about wild elephants walking around my Kenyan study area especially where the local women collect firewood to sell for their livelihoods? next story.

Viva los Jozi

2007-05-31T08:31:00.000-07:00

Today is my last day spent in Johannesburg. This is my catchup email after relatively cold evenings last week in Durban and cold fireplace-required evenings in jo-berg. My lovely friend, Natasha, had put me up at her house of a million random people (the house has people coming in and out all the time and we are both unsure who really lives there). I wish her all the luck in her move to the new pad tomorrow! The neighborhood she lives in is Melville, a very up and coming trendster street with funky ceramic and bead shops, evening bars and morning cafes that remind me of an incredibly small version of Montreal by day and night. I also had the chance to be taken over several extremes of the city - the industrial Midrand area (big, boxy corporate headquarters of multinational companies), Rosebank mall (atypical mall like every other outdoor type mall), and the all eccentric Yeoville (high adventure area but typical of immigrant [this of a north Africa type] ville with much needs for social services). Memory: walk up a flight of stairs to a home converted to Ethiopean restaurant with men sitting on the couch and little girl bouncing around the home/converted food place. thanks tash

Back in Durban - one week later!

2007-05-09T01:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, I have been slacking on the entries after I arrived back in Durban last, last Sunday. I have been trying to settle back in to the University system and as expected deal with the usual one-day logistical nightmares of UKZN - getting renewed student card, organizing an office, getting internet access, etc. But luckily it was one day and not an enduring process as one experienced last year during the strike, so I'm relatively happy about that. My birthday had recently passed so I had the chance to dine with some UKZN friends and Sean at a Moroccan restaurant called Fabulous. As fabulous as the food was, the service was pretty dismal - example, not allowing Lauren's vegan cake into the premises UNLESS we paid a "cake fee". Crazy. Anyways, I liked my chicken tagine and can say it was comparable to the Moroccan version but it looks like the lamb shanks and ostrich were the actual tasty winners. The weekend was spent reviewing notes and surfing back in town. Durban had some big canoe festival going on last Sunday, so while waiting on the surf break, we watched several hundred race canoe paddle out of the waterfront, of course, with a few overturned boats not quite making it past the break. too funny!

The university has its usual stream of School of Development Studies seminars and workshops going on: today, Professor Vishnu Padayachee will host "Capitalism of a special type? Trajectories of capital accumulation in South Africa" at noon today. I just might attend.

Duduzile Khumalo from the Centre for Civil Soceity hosts on Friday: "Social and cultural benefits of Umgeni River that have been lost to the Inanda Dam"

Her description: "Dudu Khumalo is a community activist working mostly with rural and townships organisations. She has worked with the South African Municipal workers union (SAMWU) as an Organiser and as a co-ordinator for Water and Sanitation issues in the SAMWU KwaZulu Natal Province. While at SAMWU she also helped to co-ordinate Women's issues within the Union. She is currently at the Centre for Civil Society as a community intern."

Gastronomic Delight of Fez, Morocco

2007-04-27T02:44:00.000-07:00

Rad Writers at the Ottawa Writer's Festival

2007-04-26T02:49:00.000-07:00

If I was in Ottawa, I would only be attending this event: Writer's Festival, hosted at the National Library and Archives. Stephanie Nolen, the voice of Africa in the Globe and Mail (read a snippet from her book 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa here, will be speaking along with Michael Ondaatje, Andrew Cohel and Alexandre Trudeau. What a line-up.

Maroc: Bienvenue!

2007-04-13T01:22:00.000-07:00

I finally get to see North Africa. When I lived in south Portugal back in 2002, I had always contemplated hopping on the ferry from Spain to say that I had been to "Africa" - well Morocco, that is. Now being a little more knowledgeable (less naive) about the continent, my "hop-over" will now be an 11pm flight tonight to Dubai (another new airport), then connecting to Casablanca, and then Fez, Morocco at around 5pm on April 14. Map is courtesy of US CIA. Ah, the joys of long flights and airport interiors. I have also been informed that about some most-wanted local suicide bombers with 9lbs of explosives were taken down by police in the slum areas of Casablanca. Apparently it should not affect travel in anyway. For me, it sounds like a re-visit of when I passed through Bilbao, north of Spain, winter 2001, when the day before, the police had to block off some street for an expected bombing by the ETA. No one was hurt, but full-on threat to citizens living in these cities that they experience everyday.

What have I been reading: The reason why I love the New Yorker is because of its eloquent way of getting the reader to see multiple sides to a person or event that the mainstream media, in most cases, fails to cover. I noticed that Cassidy's article on Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank, has become their most read article. The article allows the read to try to determine themselves whether Mr. Wolfowitz could be using his presidency as a move to push his agenda on Iraq which failed to surface with the US government because of his "silent diplomacy". I got in major debate with an American and Canadian volunteer while in Mombasa on the World Bank especially on the quote that Mr. Wolfowitz was a "bleeding heart". I like the lead-on that the World Bank president needs to project more clearly his plans for the future of World Bank as McNamara did... decide for yourself. Good read.

Mombasa Easter SlideShow

2007-04-10T08:07:00.000-07:00

Wow, this took a while to figure how to put together a slideshow on your blog. I actually learned how to do it from Digital Inspiration website and voila! after a few newbie errors, this is the wonderful tool of showing my photos from Flickr. This digital world is a wonderful place! hahah.

Mombasa was hot and sweaty. From the bus ride on the newly paved tarmac, right into the island, I felt the perma-drip on my nose the whole time we were in Mombasa. I caught the mini-bus everywhere, hopping around from one part of the north coast to the other. We crashed a few 5-star hotel poolsides just to take advantage of their waterfront location and lounge chairs. On the Saturday, we made our way into Haller Park to see the giraffes up-close and personal - the park is actually more than that. It is a peaceful trail of ponds and wildlife, completely to gain back serenity after hours of people at the Nakumatt shopping centre or the packed beaches. I stayed with some new friends at Bombolulu, a handicraft workshop where all goods are made by the disabled or the blind. It is an amazing place as the staff live on the grounds and you will find yourself surrounded by smiles and welcoming sits or chats near a breezy covered spot even at the heat of the day. Thanks to Cindy, Geoff, John, and Mike for our competitive evenings of this boardgame, Carcassone and introducing me to the Mombasa place of life. Enjoy the pics.

Simplicity or not?

2007-04-03T08:37:00.000-07:00

After almost two years with the same design for the blog, I've decided to switch over to a more simplistic format, colour and font change. I'm not sure if I feel to comfortable with it yet, so bare with me while I test my own tastes on you.

After heavy debate between me, myself and I, the decision for a trip to Mombasa for Easter holidays has been set. I'll be jumping on an non-air-conditioned bus at 9am on Friday morning and be set on my way to the East coast. I met some new VSO friends who said that they would be happy to host us. I am so looking forward to seeing the ocean, sand and just a new side to the world.

It's funny the things you start to miss while living away from home. Like funky trendster Asians walking around Robson and 10$ all-you-can-eat sushi or cheap Sunday brunch with friends or Aboriginal Art or Emily Carr and the imfamous West Coast forests. I have been getting a bit Vancouver home flavour from a few fun websites from like Beyond Robson and the Commodified. The best at home literature I get at the office is the Ottawa Citizen. Oh yea.

Following Tech Development in Kenya

2007-04-02T01:57:00.000-07:00

Just made a quick post on PICTURE Africa on a meeting of tech and engineering minds of Kenya... check it out...

Zippy Okoth performs at Alliance Francaise - Nairobi

2007-03-31T01:26:00.000-07:00

Nairobi is flourishing with culture and it's hard to let it just pass you by while living in this vibrant city. Last night, Zippy Okoth, performed a 11 song set for her packed crowd at the Alliance Francaise. Sporting a rad yellow dress, her and her band got the audience dancing to her songs dedicated to mothers, fathers and victims of rape (an unfortunate act of commonality in domestic homes of sub-Saharan Africa). She is articulate and gets us laughing with her songs pulling male members to the stage and eluding to her tears of a shy girl (when she is most obviously not that shy!). She has a voice for African women and hope to see her perform down the road with the growing number of Kenya's upcoming performers.

Young Kenya Entrepreneurs keen for business

2007-03-30T00:45:00.001-07:00

Phillip sells customized bags made of recycled paper and shoelaces
Originally uploaded by make_change.

Last weekend, I was invited to attend a Young Entrepreneurs Symposium hosted by the Kimathi Information Centre. The organizers, Jose and Carthy, were kind enough to arrange my pickup and tour of their digs while organizing their first big event hosted by the centre. They were hosting this event because a number of young people had asked for information on how to start a small business and where to get financing. Within two months, they brought in the Kenyan government representatives of the Youth Enterprise Fund, a few microfinance institutions and motivational speakers to address the group of over 100 young people on how to approach small business in Kenya.

Just as an observer, I was blown away by the initiative of this group of young volunteers who came together and produced a well-attended event for their neighborhood. They also organized a Market Day to allow young people to display their wares and word on the street found some of the biggest sales happening due to the event. Impressive.

Bouquet to a stranger

2007-03-28T01:37:00.001-07:00

Bouquet
Originally uploaded by make_change.

How little things can brighten one's day like yesterday's gift: a bouquet of flowers from a few schoolgirls as I walked home. "You can keep this one," they told me and little did they know it was my first flower bouquet of the year.

Kenya News: I learned yesterday that three Canadians were killed in a road accident on their way to Samuru Game Park outside of Nairobi. Their van was hit on the side by an out-of-control truck. Other Canadians and one Japanese were injured and in hospital. My condolences go out to their families back home for their children to be so far away and have a tragic accident to happen.

The Endless Possibilities of E-Commerce

2007-03-21T05:20:00.000-07:00

I have joined the digital world and bought my first e-book and e-magazine online. On the hard drive of my computer, I now have one PDF copy of The World of Goods: the Anthropology of Consumption by Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood from ebookmall and for my closet-fan obsession of fashion magazines: Zinio's Elle Magazine. The downloads for both products were relatively quick (like any other kind of download), and I am once again amazed at the availability of information now here at our fingertips even here in Nairobi. Even working with this Canadian organization, I am fully connected to all libraries around the world and through inter-library loans, can access any publication. Now the question remains if the rest of the world can have such access, can the possibilities even be imagined?

News from Nairobi: March 2007

2007-03-19T23:34:00.000-07:00

So I was doing a search on the web and found that a website had posted my blog on the Java House as "Kenya News". I guess the website gathers interesting stories pertaining to the region and puts them all in this one place.

Things are going real well in Nairobi. Within the country of Kenya, final preparations for the World Cross Country Championships race in Mombasa is underway. The local papers are posting photos of all the athletes flying into the country for the race and excitement building for this weekend. On the other side of the coin, the papers have also been reporting on the poor gentrification process. Instead of assisting to clean up the filthy alleys of the city, the committee responsible has instead put up large sheets of metal to cover up the realities. Also streetchildren have been "swept away" for the event and rumours of protest line the newspaper columns. It is a bit sad that some poor results of preparing well in advanced for a world class event has again surfaced and what can one do but hope the race goes well??

Aling Mary's on the Vancouver Sun!

2007-03-19T23:14:00.000-07:00

After doing my weekly call back home to my parents, I found out my cousin and aunt were on the business section of the Vancouver Sun for their infamous Filipino shop on Main Street and in Surrey called Aling Mary's. The photo was taken by the Vancouver Sun's Bill Keay. Read more...

Hoodo and I having a java jolt before concert!

2007-03-15T04:15:00.001-07:00

Hoodo and I having a java jolt before concert!
Originally uploaded by make_change.

Java House is this uber Nairobi trendy coffee shop that is making quite the scene in the city. The place was packed on the Wednesday night, but I've heard that it's always busy no matter what time of day. This can be saying something about demand for coffee by the middle-upper class of this place. Then we moved on to check a Kenyan dance performance by Alema Dance. Check out the photos by clicking on Hoodo and I!

By the way, check out the funky scarf that I'm sporting. Before coming over to the Java House, Hoodo and I did an out-of-town shop for funky goods at a place called maridadi fabrics. Some super finds and has been supporting poor women since 1967. I will be bringing back this product for sale to you in Vancouver! :)

Kenya Music at the Mater Heart Run

2007-03-12T00:50:00.001-07:00

I touched a child's heart.

2007-03-11T23:38:00.001-07:00

I touched a child's heart.
Originally uploaded by make_change.

I ran my first 10 km race during The Mater Heart Run on Saturday, March 10, 2007. This run was organized to fundraise for the children’s unit for the Mater Hospital in Nairobi. After picking up the troops (co-worker, her sister and her sister’s kids), we drove over the Nyayo Stadium, where the race would kick off. In Nairobi, I’m used to watching these kites (type of predator bird) circle the sky but here, the trees were lined with the marabu storks I first saw at the Nairobi National Park.

We entered the stadium and found a sea of green t-shirts. Of course, I pulled the usual t-shirt ripping tradition and re-designed a once warm oversized shirt to a sleeveless jersey. We were off at the sound of a marching band that squeezed and bottle-necked at the exit of the stadium and ran in the middle of Uhuru highway and around Nairobi. Running is actually a really great way to see the outskirts of the city but I’d probably not do it if it wasn’t for this race. The sea of green started to break up a bit as people started to run-walk but the kids I’d pass (or they’d pass me) were full energy! I finished with the first 2000 people (because the first 2000 get a certificate!) and then proceeded to see the rest of the festivities.

After run events saw loads of high school and elementary school students crowd near the stage to watch their school mates have dance-offs and watch performances by local Kenyan artists. There were also booths surrounding the stadium. One which caught my eye was the Alive and Kicking Kenya – NGO supporting unemployed youth to make hand-stitched soccer and volleyballs and also promote messages of malaria and HIV/AIDS prevention. Very innovative ideas so I bought one of their leather soccer balls for 1000 Kenyan shillings (about $12 CAD).

After the race, I relaxed at home before heading to the nearby mall, Yaya Centre. I enjoyed a healthy roast-beef and strawberry juice at some health fruit juice shop and then found a cute little bookshop called Legacy Books. The shop sells books and reports on community development and is attached to a small coffee shop. Brilliant idea!

Friends are popping over to Africa from the sounds of a few emails. One for child care in Ghana and another assisting with some program promoting Africa bike designs for Kona… sponsor an African bike! Such a good idea because most people cannot afford cars and the bicycle is the best and healthy method of transport considering the road conditions and inaccessibility to some of the villages!

I have just met these Japanese dudes who do a Japanese tour to slum programmes all over Kenya as well as throw in a bit of the tourism bit. One guy buys goods from Kibera and Thika slum workshops (hand crafted pen holders, wire /bead animals, etc) and sells them with their group in Japan.

So many wonderful small ideas assisting with development for the communities. One dollar goes a long way for many of these places so if interested, save your pennies and support a LOCAL African community group!

PICTURE Africa

2007-03-07T22:16:00.000-08:00

As part of my internship, I stipulated on my workplan that I would create a blog corresponding to the work that I would be doing here in East Africa. Although most of my work so far has been limited mainly to literature review / desk work, you can check out some of the popular media links and articles that I am picking up on the field of ICTs and development. I have also listed all the partners of this IDRC-funded project with which I am attempting to coordinate. In the next few months, I will start heading out in to the field to participate with PICTURE Africa (Poverty and Information and Communication Technology in Urban and Rural East Africa), a project seeking to learn how ICTs are affecting poverty in East Africa. Take a look if you are interested in Africa's work in ICTs and development.

Diga with Orphan Elephants

2007-03-05T04:48:00.001-08:00

Diga with orphan elephants
Originally uploaded by make_change.

I just watched the video twice and think it's hilarious! The baby elephant's trunk just poked right over the fence and stunned Hoodo and I, briefly until I was brave enough to tickle the young ellie! I added a few photos of the orphan elephants, just click on the photo to see! We spent a good hour with these elephants and their caretakers. They take donations and host an adopt-an-orphan-baby-elephant campaign.

Elephant Orphanage visit in Nairobi

2007-03-04T22:10:00.000-08:00

This weekend, I took a break from work and cruised over to Karen to visit the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, an organization which cares for orphan elephants and rhinos. We spent the afternoon watching this playful bunch of ellies roam around like children playing in the blankets, and teasing you with their trucks. In our visit, one month old, Kilgoris, was found hanging out with some Maasai cows when he was swept away from his family during a major flood. The Maasai people had then informed Kenyan Wildlife Service to come and take care of this orphan elephant. Adorable!

News from East Africa

2007-02-23T01:56:00.001-08:00

River flooded 6 days ago
Originally uploaded by make_change.

Mozambique Cyclone : Wow, I have been following the news mainly from the prior flooding taking place. The flooding came from the release of the dam. Today, I learn about the cyclone. I hope that the prior evacuation had helped to keep the displaced from what could have been disastrous. Read more...

Nairobi: Headlines: "Death of a Gangster"

The last month, the national newspapers have been posting photos of the recently gunned down in Nairobi. After two Americans and a prominant AIDs doctor shocked the international community, steps were taken to oust the crime wave. Apparently this criminal has been causing trouble in his community for a long time charged for 11 murders and many other robberies. Only since high profile individuals had been caught in the killing spree have steps been taken to find individuals like Simon Matheri. However, had the high profile murders not taken place, would the killings continue on in this small neighborhood in Athi River? This is the case for many other neighborhoods of the poor who suffer insecurity and crime in their areas where they have reported activity to the police but do not have the international coverage.
Read more...

NGO-in-a-BOX

2007-02-23T01:14:00.000-08:00

The web is a powerful place. I had bought a mac computer because of the ease of its editing software for video, software that I had become fairly familiar with during my time at undergrad setting up UBC TV on campus. We were circuit one and streamed video on sports events through out campus. At that time, we were revolutionary, in having the ability to broadcast the largest intramural program in Canada. Now, I logged onto the UBC TV website and they have caught on with the blaze of videoblogging and show videos created by their team and UBC students. Amazing stuff.

Another revolution. Editing software is expensive. But NGO-in-a-box has gathered all the different Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) so that people can edit and produce video basically for free with their own equipment! Social activism on video is existing and videobloggers on forums like EngageMedia are showing others what is happening on the field in terms of activism. Blown away.

Canadian Senate drills CIDA's poor work in Africa

2007-02-19T01:17:00.000-08:00

Wow, this report states that CIDA has not made a difference in the last 40 years and that the whole institution should be disbanded. The Senate had interviews with hundreds of Canadians and Africans on the state of development in Africa and CIDA's work in the field and found that 80% of CIDA staff are in Ottawa, not in the developing country. The recommendation is to reverse this trend and see 80% of staff in Africa and have an Africa-located office. I like that prospect... especially since the people living in Africa are part of the process and more likely to experience the struggles of the people here.

As I have been a CIDA intern in the past, I think that there are certain benefits of sending Canadians abroad to work in the field and actually have a better glimpse of the true nature of development.

They also recommended more economic development projects instead of social welfare programmes... unsure where I stand on this but I suppose if Canada supports economic growth, they assume that the growth will immediately go to social programs - um, bad assumption, especially where civil society and governance is still extremely weak. As much as I support economic development, there still needs to be integration of social policy in order to see that education and health are driving priorities for the countries.

What a wonderful time to re-examine CIDA's work and see how more effective change can take place.

The restaurant below!

2007-02-15T23:20:00.000-08:00

I finally had the chance to try out a new restaurant called Slims Restaurant. Now, I know you folks back in Vancouver get the impression of some cheap french fries and even cheaper beverages... but unfortunately, Slims (Nairobi) this is not the case. I entered in my flip flops and noticed, at around 6:30pm, the clientele were apres business folks in suits. Very nice central bar and booth seating on the side and well placed dining setting. Impressed! I sat with my friend Veronique and we ordered the guacamole and chips for a starter then one steak for her and one grilled tilapia for me. We chatted all about life and her getting back to conduct her research in Sudan (boy, have I been brought to another light about the conflict in Sudan!) and other things happening in and around Nairobi. The tilapia was excellent and not sure exactly how they were able to scale the fish and leave no bones! Nice herby type sauce. The crowd started to fill in a bit two hours later of Kenyans and a table of a few foreigners. Nice to try a new place once in a while.

2007-02-14T06:50:00.000-08:00

I have been busy typing away at this literature review trying to tie all the amazing ideas and thoughts which can accumulate from this study into some kind of concrete plan. I just read this Working Paper from MIT - Department of Economics called "the Economic lives of the poor" by Banerjee and Duflo, which look at 13 countries and their Living Standard Measurement Surveys (LSMS). These surveys tell you what a person spends their money on in a month, what is their income, where they live and other demographics. They looked particularly at the bottom 10% of the population of these countries and saw that the poor did have gaps in their budget for things like entertainment, alcohol, and other non-needed food items. The problem is having a reliable place to save and psychologically commit to the future when their lives were in many times, such an unstable and insecure state. I should be able to get some great ideas from this paper.

Catherine & I at Lake Naivasha

2007-02-12T22:04:00.001-08:00

Catherine & I at Lake Naivasha
Originally uploaded by make_change.

"if you pray for rain, plan for a thunderstorm..." - I just heard this on the BBC Africa this morning on my walk to work... I love how I have a little FM radio on my cell phone. It's actually keeping me up to date with the world news and the interesting debates and opinions. Like last night, they were asking people about Senator Obama and his presidential bid - while the commentators kept pushing for this media-generated, "can he represent African-Americans", the people phoning in kept telling them that it has nothing to do with race and in fact, it's just exciting to have a new face interested in taking leadership in America. By the way, the Kenyans LOVE Obama because his father was Kenyan-born and word on the street say that the Luo tribe (where his father was from) are attaching 'Obama' to the name of their children. Wicked.

There was also BBC debates on the Dixie Chicks and how they just won 5 Grammy awards even after the media exploited their words against Bush and the war and making it seem like the state of Texas was completely against them. Then these callers were saying how it was unfair that the media did not show the Texans who actually were completely against the war and supported the anti-war messages by the Dixie Chicks. I love the BBC Africa radio station, so great!

This last week has been eventful; went to Lake Naivasha for a staff retreat that focused on "stregthening institutional capacity" and noticed themes of integrating montioring and evaluation of programs are still taking a back-burner for many projects when it is always brought up in terms of importance. The lake was nice with hippos in the back and deer wandering the grassy fields. The hotel was incredible with a gym, tennis courts and delicious buffets.

On the weekend, I tried out an Ethiopean restaurant which was very tasty and not too expensive. I also took an afternoon to go to the nearby Nairobi National Park. The park was not too busy but didn't see too many animals. Lots of giraffes and butterflies but the grass was so high and trees so green and lush from the rains. It made it impossible to follow an animal once they entered the dense bush. Midway through the trip, the rain started to fall and our 9 passenger van slipped and slid through the wet soil. It was madness; we didn't get out until 7pm at night (6:30pm was the closing time). Mental note: go to NNP only at winter.

On Sunday, I went with my Japanese neighbor and her 1 year old son to this massive outdoor mall called the Village market. Nice shops but very pricey and nothing that I could really say I wanted to take back as presents except for some of their cool handmade glasses shaped like elephants for $10 USD. The really interesting part was the diversity of people entering the mall. It is this middle to upper class group with their families from all around the world just enjoying the patio atmosphere on a sunny Sunday afternoon at the international food court. That was nice to see.

Who questions the World Bank?

2007-02-08T21:53:00.000-08:00

The Bretton Woods Project is fantastic and brave at pointing out the substantial flaws in development research conducted by the World Bank. Evidence come up "technically flawed" and "inconsistent" and many delivered and written only to complement an agenda set up by the institution. Many of the researchers are pressured to not offend their policies or partners and will choose Western researchers who believe in the same objectives they do. The major flaws of the World Bank is that their research is not peer-reviewed like most academic journals and they are unlikely to be conducted by developing country researchers. Other aspects outside of income are rarely conducted in order to truly understand a country's economic and developmental climate.

It is good to question where information has been retrieved and try to understand the flaws because at the end of the day, important policies are passed due to bad research which does not help the country in development.

International Development Week

2007-02-06T21:53:00.000-08:00

Being here in Nairobi, I haven't experience too many events involving International Development Week in Canada... however, I'm not too sure how many Canadians are even aware of the week and will be participating in the events an International Development Week. Well, I hope that I will be proven wrong and see Canadians at least try to learn more about the world around us through one of the organized events hosted by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) or trying to look up on the web different development initiatives taking place every day on the other side of the world or even in your own backyard.

I try to follow as closely as possible the different funded programmes that come through town like the Global Aids campaign or organizations setting up the marketing for selling and distributing mosquito nets to the country. It's great to see these programmes happening but it is also important to be critical about these programmes and looking to see that their plans attempt to be local (local staff and local materials) and self-sustainable. The other important aspect is to see that people try to evaluate their successes or challenges and look for ways of improvement vs. just securing funding. Development is not just a donation; it's ensuring that people grow out of poverty through their own decisions and choices and that we try to support their decisions by helping them influence government or look for ways of access to their very dire needs.

Staff Retreat to Lake Naivasha

2007-02-06T21:22:00.000-08:00

Today, I'll be leaving at around 10am for our staff retreat to Lake Naivasha. It is a few hours outside of Nairobi into the central Rift Valley. Apparently it is an area where many of the local Maasai people live and the lake is one of Kenya's fresh water lakes. The Rift Valley has recently had cases of "fevers" where the cattle are catching some kind of mozzy bite and meat needs to be treated carefully. Eeee. We are staying at a nice place called Naivasha Simba Lodge which looks really nice and it's in front of the lake. However, we'll see how much time we'll have enjoying the scenery as most of the time will be spent at meetings on personnel people from Ottawa and workshops right until we leave at 4:00pm the next day. Until then...

BOP - Bottom of the Pyramid Marketing!

2007-02-05T21:30:00.000-08:00

While here, I am trying to understand how businesses are able to service the poor and it appears that emerging literature on this massive market of 80% of the world's population will soon be seen in a new light. Harvard University had this new article come out on the concept of "bottom of the pyramid" and is one of many universities researching on how companies can look at the emerging economies and develop the right products or services to serve their needs.

The Junction in Nairobi

2007-02-05T00:01:00.000-08:00

I moved into the new place yesterday and I'll soon post some photos of the pad. It's really great and there is a small balcony where you can stare out onto the busy main road. There is some kind of church across the way so there were loads of vehicles parked all over. I went over to one of the local malls called the Junction and finally exposed myself to Nairobi coffee at the Java House. This outdoor patio in front of the parking lot was packed with people local and non-local all enjoying a Sunday brunch. I had myself a beef burrito with guacamole and beans - not bad! The coffee is pretty good too with a whole selection that any real coffee shop should host. It is incredible but there is certainly a demand for this type of coffee shop in Nairobi with the mix of expatriates and locals reaching the middle class income level. Attached is a massive Nakumatt for groceries as well as other little clothing shops and the Kazuri beads shop. Great place if you want to be out of the city and need a piece of "home"...

One month in Nairobi - check!

2007-02-03T05:24:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a month and a month which has definitely flown by. Today, I went for a walk around the city and still discovering all kinds of hole in the wall restaurants with brilliant soups (Chinese chicken and spinach) and fresh mango juice. I don't know why I keep waiting for the right time to check out either Java House or Normans - their two big coffeehouses... I'm afraid that I'll be disappointed coming from Vancouver, the coffee village. I now notice that there are cybercafes (big and small) EVERYWHERE in this city and 1 minute costs about 10cents. It's amazing that such infrastructure completely exists here, and it's fairly fast. I have been skype-ing from my office and from a small 6-computer cybercafe across the street from the hostel. It's been great!

Also found a great little bookshop, Book Villa near the pretigious Stanley Hotel which lets you either be a member and borrow books all year for a fee or buy a book and once you return it, you can buy another book for half price. Such a great idea! I also noticed how entreprenuerial people are here. I meet taxi drivers running small food stands on the side of the road. People selling newspapers at every corner (and lots of people read the newspapers in Nairobi), lots of suits during the week heading to their job for the week. Amazing stuff.

It must be my week because a co-worker has offered me her spare bedroom to stay there for my remaining 3 months in Nairobi. She has a great furnished apartment on the 4th floor about 7-10 minute walk to the office. So I'll actually get to cook if I want to or order food in. That's all for now... have a great weekend.

Bridges - Organic Restaurant in Nairobi

2007-01-30T05:30:00.001-08:00

Bridges - Organic Restaurant in Nairobi
Originally uploaded by make_change.

Wow, is it Tuesday already? Loads of great things happening here in Nairobi. One of them happened a week ago; I was introduced to a pleasant find: this fantastic organic restaurant place called Bridges! I was so impressed that I'll have to make it a priority to come here as much as possible during my stay here. I had a fresh tilapia with a side of sweet mango-ey sauce, bed of rice and salad. All for less than $4. Oh, organic fresh fruit juice included!

I finally saw that movie, Blood Diamonds, with Leo, actually incredibly impressed by the dramatic and stunningly beautiful backdrops of beach, then hellish dirty city to then majestic forests of Sierre Leone. I remember the rumours of his presence in Maputo during the filming of parts of the film. I swear some of the beach scenes look so familiar to Maputo or Mozambican beaches but I could be wrong. Some of the dialogue also reminds me of the film, Hotel Rwanda, when asked if the West will help now that the reporters write stories or take photos of their strife and the bluntness of "no" and "unlikely" kind of puts a jab at your heart... because there is some truth to the apathy that is referenced. The movie also takes a few strikes at development workers, Peace Corps, and consultants who come in trying to do good with their fancy laptops when their governments may well be funding the arms for the wars or the extremist militia taking place today.

The director also did a great job of leading the watcher through Daniel Archer and him dealing with his demons or inherent goodness in people... of course the discussion goes, "people are just people; it's the action they take chich determines if they are good or bad" He takes us through survival, TIA (this is africa) and that he could never abandon his continent.

Anything else: I saw a small concert at the Alliance Francaise last Thursday: the Ingosi Stars. They were rocking out , some in traditional wear, and singing to the sounds of the drums, guitar and other percussion instruments. The highlight was the actual band starter, Ingosi, was this old man who comes out with his traditional string instrument and taking his small moves like the two-step. Good times.

Book Release - The Media and the Rwanda Genocide

2007-01-25T21:18:00.000-08:00

Here in Nairobi office, we have Allan Thompson doing his book release, "The Media and the Rwanda Genocide", and is available online to download or to purchase. Professor at Canada's renowned journalism school, Carleton University, Professor Thompson delivers a collection of writings that display how Rwanda waas infitrated by hate media during the genocide which instigated much of the fighting and how the international media chose to turn a blind eye to the situation and how the presents of media could have changed the results of the horrific events that took place in 1994. In one of the writings, it talks about how censorship is still strong today within government with leaders once in charge of propaganda and military intelligence and this is not just talking about Rwanda. This book describes how even today editors, reporters and those who produce any opposing views to the government is classified as "genocial ideology". Many have been exiled, killed, or persecuted in prison... the same was happening in Mozambique when a reporter was mysteriously murdered after reporting on certain stories implicating governmental officials to misuse of donor funding.

It's happening in the world and I give kudos to those reporters who have been willing to risk their lives to report the truth and even more respect to those who take action.

Motif Records and Tumi Molekane - South Africa

2007-01-25T21:13:00.000-08:00

Just been forwarded the information about the new independent label in South Africa, Motif Records and artist Tumi Moelkane. Please click here to listen to his song, Maria or more of his 3 sample tracks on his myspace page.

Saw the film - The Inconvenient Truth

2007-01-25T04:58:00.000-08:00

Al Gore gives his climate change speech on video for all to see and understand the real dramatic affects of global warming. Definitely a film worth checking out and see the relevant facts of climate change. However, in terms of suggestions of stopping climate change could be further expanded, well worth the time.

What gets us into trouble
is not what we don't know,

it's what we know for sure
that just ain't so.

-Mark Twain (from the Inconvenient Truth)

Marching for Swaziland's Democracy

2007-01-25T03:39:00.000-08:00

Here's another clip of the events that took place at Kasarani stadium in Nairobi, Kenya for the 2007 World Social Forum. These marchers are seeking for justice in democracy as they are currently ruled by one of the last existing monarchies in Africa.

The World Social Forum was an opportunity to meet groups particularly those working in Africa in building a more fair society. I met with youth group leaders, members of church congregations, activists, graphic designers, you name it. In the local papers, there was positive and negative press on the forum, saying that there are never any concrete plans made towards development. While I only briefly attended one planning meeting on how to implement goals from the WSF, I see the determination and passion for many delegates in fighting for a world where water and air is still available to people as a human right and where farmers can continue their traditional ways of farming from generations before and not be forced to buy patented seed that had belonged to the traditional farmers in the first place. It should not be illegal to harvest and keep your seed as one has done years ago. But it's happening...

Friday Night in Nairobi - WSF 2007 Cultural Events!

2007-01-22T00:26:00.000-08:00

Friday night was my first taste of Nairobi’s night life, venturing outside of the radius of my safe Y. At 7:15pm, Veronique, Hoodo and I jumped into a cab for 200 ksh and cruised over to the Alliance Francaise, between Utalii and Monrovia Street near Loita. It felt like you had to manoveur into a little side street to get there and in front were loads of guests gathered at the front. It is a nice window-laden buildling and inside you find a small gallery of local sculptures (wood and metal) and some paintings by African artists. On the second floor, one will find a fairly extensive bibliotheque (library) and a display of World Press photography from around Africa. We walked back down to enter the area of the concert stage to see Eric Wainaina, Kenyan musician, now there for his CD release. The stage was set up in the AF’s garden with the steps now made as sitting area. We found a place on the ground near the stage. Eric seems to have formed quite the following with Kenyans singing to his lyrics and getting the crowd into the physical actions to the song, “Sawa sawa” from his first album. Various musicians would also join Eric on stage such as the German ambassador on piano and a the wonderful sounds of Sarah. Not only stunning voice and white dress to dazzle the all-embracing crowd. Just as Eric’s band took over for a few more upbeat sounds, the rain started to pour and those not under the coverage were dancing and smiling in the rain. It did not seem to damper their spirits at all; in fact, it may be re-energizing for many looking for some dancing room. The packed crowd, stoked atmosphere, and well-staged concert gives Eric and Alliance Francaise a wonderful build blocks to the future for culture and the arts in the Nairobi scene.

"A world without AIDS is possible"

2007-01-21T22:41:00.001-08:00

"A world without AIDS is possible"
Originally uploaded by make_change.

Action packed weekend with the World Social Forum starting this past Saturday, January 20, 2007. I was walking into town when we crossed paths with some of the people participating in the opening march from the slums of Kibera all the way to the city centre's Uhuru Park. I heard the park means freedom which makes sense in this case as people organize to speak of the freedoms they have been denied - speech, basic services, health, and life. Loads of people from around the world walking around with their participant or volunteer name tags and confused faces of where events where taking place. Kasarani stadium is a massive football field where groups have stands surrounding the outside of the stadium for information on their organization or selling their wares. I attended a workshop on participatory video and saw people actually pick up a camera for the first time in their lives. Empowering experience.

UBC Business school in Africa

2007-01-19T03:28:00.000-08:00

Looks like my old faculty is catching up with the development times and trends and have initiated some programs right here in Nairobi last July/August 2006 under the title, "Social Entrepreneurship 101". Why wasn't this course offered when I was around? Take a look at their blogged history of the project while in Africa and the concept behind the project.

World Social Forum registration tent

2007-01-19T00:55:00.001-08:00

World Social Forum registration tent
Originally uploaded by make_change.

Well, I arrived at the tents on the Kenya International Conference Centre grounds at 8am and found myself sitting around reading the Nation (to see the other WSF events happening around town) until about 9am. A guy behind me asked if I wanted to register and I said, of course! Luckily I registered online and paid online so actually I was supposed to be there solely to confirm and pick up the registration package. What registration package and wrist band? Registration package? nope, still hasn't arrived and all festivities begin tomorrow. If this is a sign for the next week, I better pack 3 newspapers and a lunch and embrace the positive energetic chaos that will be here in Nairobi!

Tonight, there are several events taking place; Poetry Slam with possibly Dennis Brutus speaking at the Go Down Art Centre at 7pm, another artist performing at the Alliance Francaise (500 ksh) and then the big fundraising (??) concert with Oliver Mtukudzi and friends at 7pm at the KICC hall but its 1000 ksh (2000 ksh for VIP???) general admission. I think it's a bit out of the price range for many people to attend particularly for locals so like other overpriced events I have attended in Africa, I'm sure I'll be within a tiny crowd of foreigners and lots of Kenyan volunteers, which is not what the event should really be about. I hope that the organizing committee of WSF can prove me wrong.

World Social Forum arrives on Saturday!

2007-01-18T04:12:00.000-08:00

The city of Nairobi should be bustling in activity as the World Social Forum (WSF)
kicks off this Saturday January 20! It will be the first time that I will be at such a gathering of social activists, academics, development people and artists. I still recall the South African group organizing many months ago in preparation of themes and activities that they wish to present on behalf of the underprivileged, the shack dwellers, the unionists, the voiceless, and the poor. UKZN should be bringing it a few of the students from the Centre for Civil Society so look forward to meeting up with some familiar faces. Those who are not able to attend the event, you can also participate online with your comments or thoughts at www.wsfprocess.net. This website is supposed to engage debate and share ideas of the groups attending and further push the agenda for change for civil society.

Visit to the University of Nairobi

2007-01-17T22:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I took most of the morning to spend time at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Nairobi. I brieflly met with Mary Omosa, a research fellow at the institute and met some of the alumni and current students of the Masters' programme. Apparently the intake for the two-year programme is around six-seven students per year and classes are taught for the first 1 1/2 years. To follow is the research component where students conduct work for their dissertation. I hope that I can use this opportunity to start collaboration between UKZN and UON in terms of a student network. The other part of my visit was to see how the research team was doing for the ICT and Poverty project in Kenya. I spent 2 1/2 hours with Lynet and Obidia flushing out the questions so that they were in Kenyan country context and raise issues to bring forward to the management team at the end of the week. It was great spending time with the two bouncing ideas off of each other about the research tool and learning a few Kenyan terms for food items and ICT products. When we finished off the tea and samosas, I made my one hour walk back to the office...

Polite Notice - No Parking

2007-01-15T01:34:00.001-08:00

Polite Notice - No Parking
Originally uploaded by make_change.

The thing is, Kenyas are so friendly and polite that they even have signs, "Polite Notice: No Parking". I think this is what has made my first week in Nairobi quite adjustable. Not only have I been provided with incredible resources through the office, people are happy to help you, and the office is very "open door" policy where you can chat and collaborate ideas at any moment. To give you an idea of my mornings, I get up around 6:30am, head from breakfast around 7:30am (which consists of a mandazi bread, coffee and papaya or pinapple slice for 1$ CAD) and then 15-20 minute walk to the office. Yesterday, I walked by this man roasting corn in his little corner and bought a half piece for 5 Kenyan shillings (10 cents).

The capital city of Nairobi

2007-01-13T04:07:00.001-08:00

the Drive through Boane
Originally uploaded by make_change.

This photo is certainly not Nairobi - it is absolutely the opposite. Nairobi is a busy congested city with skyscrapers in the downtown core and all the businesses you little heart will ever need in a limited brand fashion. I found a local gym today with stairclimbers, weights and aerobics studio for around $3 a day if I sign up for 3 months. That's fairly comparable to back home. I have fallen for the Nakumatt - the superstore of Kenya - and found everything that I need - umbrella, hangers and an extension cord and fruit juice boxes! Certainly less garbage around the streets and they have green-suited cleaners spraying down the sidewalks in the morning. So far, very comfortable working in this city for the IDRC.

Living only 15 minutes from the office is utterly convenient which is why I'm in the office this afternoon. Actually, I think this is one of the special aspects about working for this institution. Flexible hours for a researcher as ideas don't necessarily develop from a 9-5 fashion. They have incredible research resources at my disposal. Full-on online library, sattelite high-speed internet connection (coming from Canada, crazy!), a driver who does a weekly run for staff to town for any necessities... and they provide French language training for the staff. I'm thinking about cleaning up the French a bit myself. I should look into that.

Only real downside is not being near the ocean that I have grown to love. Even after I left Belgium, I vowed not to return to a landlock, mountainless place. However, things change, and Nairobi is a place where it can happen - Mombasa is near by (beach!), the national park with animals is less than an hour outside and I am still in the place I love, Africa.

Spier Cheetah Outreach

2007-01-12T04:27:00.000-08:00

Spier Cheetah Outreach
Originally uploaded by make_change.

I have uploaded some new photos from my October and November trips to Mozambique and girl-road trip South Africa. You can check it out on my Flickr page by clicking on the photo. Back in November, the girls and I were driving into Stellenbosch (near Cape Town) to take in the country's reputation of incredible wine. One winery had the cheetahs so we made it our first stop. Click the photo for a further story.

Happy 2007 New Year in Nairobi

2007-01-09T04:39:00.000-08:00

So many people... are conditioned to a life of security, conformity and conservatism, all of which appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have and endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

- Alex McCandless (Into the Wild)

Thanks, Emily (Scotchy) for this quote in Krakauer's book (soon to be Sean Penn directed movie, what?)

I'm slowly settling into my new life here in Nairobi, mainly trying to get all my supplies and thoughts together for the next few months as I truck through the remnants of my dissertation (I need to finish) and be trained by Edith and IDRC team in the Acadia division. Acadia is representing the "Communities and the Information Society in Africa Program Initiative". I'm still trying really under the extent of the information society here in Eastern Africa and hope that I can share more about it in the next few months.

In the meanwhile, I am biting the frugal bullet and sticking around the YWCA for $5 a night for this month until the first paycheque comes in...