Noteworthy...

Hello (!), and thanks very much for being so patient while I transitioned back to an Oxonian existence. I'm nearly all settled and on something resembling a routine, which is quite exciting. Research productivity is still a matter to be tackled, but I'm getting there... slowly, slowly.

News while I was away? - Lots, really! Below is a little collection of stories which caught my attention when I finally sat down to catch-up on the world's goings-on. These are but several among many, to be sure:

• Owen Barder on when innovative finance is good for development - and when it isn't
• Despite China's rapid economic rebound in recent months, many Chinese companies are still operating at a lower level of activity than they had achieved in the boom years
• American chicken feet may be the US's saving grace in its recent (and ongoing) trade war with China
• Nestle is in a bit of a bind as it has been discovered that the company purchases milk from a Zimbabwean farm seized from its white owners and now owned by Mugabe's wife. Now that's a "whoops" moment if I ever saw one...
• The 24 September edition of the Economist had a wonderful special report on the positive potential of mobile money in Africa
• Writing in the European Voice, Jonathan Holslag and Gustaaf Geeraerts argue that Europe should expect to see a more assertive China in the coming years
• A rather biting review of Paul Collier's book, Wars, Guns & Votes written by Dr. Mutuma Ruteere, Research Fellow at the University of Cape Town. The review is written from an anti-imperialist, anti-interventionist tone; certainly worth your time

Noteworthy...

• Observing the evolution of the theory of evolution
• Via Marginal Revolution, a video on wine and cereal pairings. I can't quite decide whether to be intrigued or absolutely mortified, or whether to simply laugh it off given that all food and wine pairings are allegedly a scam, anyway
• Sub-Saharan African states are falling behind other regions in terms of competitiveness. While there have been some improvements in the past year (with Uganda registering as most improved), sub-Saharan states as a whole have slipped down the global rankings since they were first listed in 2000
• Freakanomics has a great piece on African entrepreneurship, which highlights the creative ingenuity present across the continent
• Bilateral relations between China and Cuba are at their best time in history, according to Chinese top legislator Wu Bangguo. Oh, and the U.N. has declared Castro a "World Hero of Solidarity." Makes you stop and think, doesn' it?
• Think your DSL is faster than a pigeon? Think again
• On this September 11, 2009 please take a moment to remember all those who sacrificed their lives eight years ago today. We will never forget

Noteworthy…. the aid edition

Via Mo'Modernity Mo'problems the newest 'twinning' aid initiative: toilet aid

Broadband has arrived in East Africa. The 2,790 mile East Africa Marine System underwater cable connected Mombassa with Fujairah in the UAE on 12 June and is expected to become fully operational within three months. A great map of the cable (as well as others) can be found here

Education and ... football for all?

Blood and Milk's Alanna has a great post on what aid workers can learn from missionaries (note: this has nothing to do with converting people!)

mHealth data from the Humanitarian Technology Challenge

Via UN Dispatch, Matthew Cordell writes:

Ken Banks, the brilliant creator of FrontlineSMS is now delivering a Lawrence-Lessig-style presentation at the Humanitarian Tech Challenge.  It's all interesting and worth comment, but right now he's talking about a friend of his who took "a laptop and 100 used cell phones" to St. Gabriel's Hospital in Malawi.

That small amount of equipment served 250,000 people, saved $3500 in fuel costs and saved 1,000 hours in travel time. Incredible.

The Humanitarian Technology Challenge is a partnership between the IEEE and the UN Foundation & Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership, and seeks to define and develop sustainable solutions to humanitarian challenges in the developing world. These solutions should be able to be implemented locally and "within the environment, cultural, structural, political, and socio-economic conditions where they will be developed."

Dear Africa, We would like to invest. Sincerely, the U.S.A. (P.S. Just fix some things, first...)

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce today launched the Africa Business Initiative (ABI) intended to help bridge the investment gap between the United States and Africa. Together with Baird's Communications Management Consultants, ABI today also released a report entitled The Conversation Behind the Boardroom: How Corporate America Really Views Africa. Driving the study is the ever-perplexing question of why Africa has not attracted more attention from the U.S. business community.

The answer, it seems, is that Africa is attracting the attention of U.S. businessmen - particularly in the technology sectors, and particularly now more than ever - but the costs of investment (political instability, a general lack of a business-conducive framework, and a poorly defined rule of law, among others) continue to outweigh the potential profits to be reaped.

What would it take for corporate America to fully take the African plunge? In short: a stable political environment; an educated (African) workforce; a fair business environment; and improved infrastructure. Goodness! If this is, indeed, the wish list then any such investment may be a lonnng way off! Given that the Chinese seem to have little trouble with the continent's current state of affairs, too, many African states now have little incentive to reform so as to accommodate U.S. desires. If nothing else, such U.S. demands may well result in more African leaders 'looking East,' much to the disadvantage of American corporations.

Regardless, the report itself is quite interesting and forms the first part of a two-party study. Part two, The Public Sector Conversation, will be conducted over the next several months and will focus on African government responses to the corporate American responses put forward in the currently available study. This may be quite telling, indeed!

Rwanda: mHealth pioneer?

Rwanda has been in the news quite a bit lately, and appears to in many ways be emerging as a model for African development (ironic, isn't it?). Indeed, Kagame's mantra of entrepreneurship over aid has seemingly lead to a significant upturn in the country's development, and Rwanda appears to be rising.

Writing in the UN-Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership blog (the Foundation is the leader in the mHealth field), Claire Thwaites reports that Rwanda is on the leading edge of the mHealth frontier:

Supported by the Rwandan Ministry of Health, Voxiva, and the Treatment Research and AIDS Centre (TRAC), TRACnet is an electronic records system that can be uploaded to mobile phones. In Masaka it is being used to track and record the distribution of anti-retroviral medications, ensure drug adherence, electronically create and submit patient reports, and access the most up-to-date information about HIV/AIDS care and treatment.

[...] In Masaka, I was guided through the health clinic by the local program manager, Hareuhana Diaedonne. During the tour, Hareuhana spoke at length about the simple but significant benefits that have been brought about by the introduction of mobile phones to the local healthcare system. Using TRACnet, he reported, data entry that used to take months to record and aggregate now can be collected in just 5 minutes.

A booming mHealth industry may not only be the ticket for improved public healthcare in Rwanda, but may also be the perfect opportunity to attract more investments into the country, in turn continuing to fuel Rwanda's rise.

Nigeria's booming entertainment industry

I confess to be just as surprised as the next person (sadly my knowledge of African pop culture doesn't quite measure up to what I know of the continent's politics): Nigeria's music and film industries are booming. So much so, in fact, that the country's film industry (known as Nollywood) has surpassed Hollywood (!) to become the world's second largest after Bollywood:

According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) survey, Bollywood – as the Mumbai-based film industry is known – produced 1,091 feature-length films in 2006. In comparison, Nigeria’s moviemakers, commonly known as Nollywood, came out with 872 productions – all in video format – while the United States produced 485 major films.

“Film and video production are shining examples of how cultural industries, as vehicles of identity, values and meanings, can open the door to dialogue and understanding between peoples, but also to economic growth and development,” said UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura.

“This new data on film and video production provides yet more proof of the need to rethink the place of culture on the international political agenda,” he added.

To gain a better appreciation of the Nollywood industry, I strongly suggest you watch Franco Sacchi's film, 'This is Nollywood.' 'This is Nollywood' shows not only how the introduction of digital technology has revolutionized (loosely stated) one of the world's poorest (and by some accounts failing) countries, but also speaks to the very theme of culture highlighted in the UNESCO report. Ethan Zuckerman blogged about the film back in 2007 (I'm a bit behind, it would seem).

But there's more: according to CNN, Nigeria's hip hop industry is also growing. Like the film industry, Nigerian hip hop is regarded as a cultural alternative to Western music and in some sense serves as a unifier in what is a most ethnically diverse state:

While no one is so naive as to suggest that the film and hip hop industries are the panacea to Nigeria's problems, their respective success may nevertheless be a small, albeit important, step on the road to economic growth and development. One can only hope and, indeed, enjoy.

[HT: Joshua Keating, Africa is a Country]

Rwanda rising

In January of this year, Oxford's Paul Collier and Jean-Louis Warnholz published an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled "Now's the Time to Invest in Africa." The title is quite self-explanatory: they argue that over the last several years trends have emerged throughout the continent to present a prime investment climate. This includes political stability, international and economic policies, and business profits and growth.

This is certainly true, and perhaps more surprisingly, is true especially of Rwanda - a country which commemorated 15 years since the genocide a mere week ago. In those fifteen years, however, much has changed and Rwanda is quickly moving towards establishing itself as one of Africa's most investment-friendly havens. Among those placing their faith in Rwanda are the CEOs of Starbucks and Costco, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and former British PM Tony Blair. For them and others, Rwanda is regarded as the most undervalued 'stock' on the continent, and presents a unique opportunity to bring innovation to a nation.

Rwandan president Kagame has been credited with marshaling much of the country's turnaround. Indeed, though problems of civil liberties loom large, the economy is booming. Kagame's strategy is quite a curious one, closely mirroring Chinese strategies, rooted as they are in guanxi networks:

Kagame's strategy relies on wealthy and powerful friends to lure private investment, train a new generation of managers, build a globally competitive economy, and wean the country off foreign aid. Even as troubling questions remain about Kagame's involvement in the region's ongoing conflicts, this unpaid, business-savvy team is marketing the brand called Rwanda.

The spirit behind 'brand Rwanda' is a distinctly entrepreneurial one, and resonates across all industrial sectors. Most prominently, perhaps, is the emphasis being placed on the country's information and communications-technology sector, which is pivotal to Rwanda's ambitious development strategy and has been rocketing young entrepreneurs into the domestic and global marketplace. 

Fifteen years on, Rwanda is seemingly moving in the right direction. If the country is any example, it may be time for the West to invest in Africa after all. 

[HT: Elizabeth Palchik Allen]

mHealth for Development

mHealth (shorthand for 'mobile health') is a topic about which I admittedly know quite little, yet am beginning to gain interest in through various friends and colleagues active in the field. To the best of my knowledge, at the forefront of mHealth initiatives is the UN Foundation and Vodafone Group Partnership created in October 2005. Together they've recently released a report, mHealth for Development: The Opportunity of Mobile Technology for Healthcare in the Developing World, in which is examined the potential for mobile phones in improving health in the developing world; future health needs in developing countries; and potential roadblocks for sustainable mHealth programs.

Mead Oliver offers a rather critical analysis of the report, addressing some of the pressing questions surrounding mHealth. Perhaps most importantly (at least from my humble perspective) is the question of how to design incentives for truthful data collection by cell phone:

The problem in using cell phones for flu surveillance is that of incentives. How does one induce the general public to accurately report outbreaks of flu? People might under-report for fear that an intervention would be draconian. This fear could be offset with a campaign describing the nature of the intervention and perhaps by rewarding those who report with free cell phone minutes. On the other hand, If one gives away cell phone minutes for reports of flu episodes, people might over-report. The [UN/Vodafone] report suggests that these incorrect reports were entirely due to a misunderstanding based on language, when intentional misreporting in hopes of receiving the promised reward may have instead been the problem.

Despite such persisting challenges, there are presently upwards of 50 active mHealth projects, the majority of which are in sub-Saharan Africa.  Among the most promising of these is Project Masiluleke, a mobile health project started in South Africa in 2008 which uses text messages to reach people in the most remote areas of the country to encourage them to get information and counseling on HIV/AIDS. The project delivers approximately 1 million HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis texts each day to personal cell phones providing contact information for the national AIDS helpline:

Callers to the national helpline can ask questions about HIV, get information about where to get tested and receive counseling.

The project takes advantage of a popular form of texting across Africa, called a "please call me" message, that can be sent for free from a phone even if it is out of pre-paid minutes. The empty characters on the free text are used to convey the health message.

Future phases of the project will allow users to text health questions, if they prefer not to call the line, and will provide an internet portal of information accessible by cell phone for people to learn about HIV. The ultimate goal, says the group, would be to provide free home HIV testing kits that would be supported by mobile counseling, so that people who aren't willing to visit a clinic can find out their status.

For now, much of such mHealth programs appear quite confined to sub-Saharan Africa, with a few projects scattered throughout Latin America and Southeast Asia. It will be most interesting to track the success of these projects to uncover whether they might prove equally successful elsewhere. Jumping the gun a bit, Nokia Research has already begun working with humanitarian agencies in India and psychiatrists in China to identify the potential m-technology might hold for remote populations there.

Science and development

The key to economic prosperity is turning innovation into profits. A growing number of countries in the developing world are showing how this can be done. Their societies are benefitting as a result.

Leaders in Africa and other developing countries face huge challenges in meeting the basic needs of their people and competing in the global economy. Yet, unlike their predecessors, who had to make do with limited technical knowledge, they have a wealth of scientific and technological know-how at their disposal. Innovation is at the centre of economic growth. The challenge, however, is not so much to build from scratch as to use expanding technological opportunities to their advantage. This does not mean that developing countries should avoid investing in basic research and development (R&D), but rather that R&D should be guided by the need to adapt existing knowledge to local markets.

From, Nature, International Weekly Journal of Science

More Noteworthy

Indonesia is facing what some may argue is the worst shortage of all: an alcohol shortage

Observations and tips on developing mobile phones for developing countries

A wonderful animated map of immigration to the U.S. between 1820- 2007, designed by a Northwestern grad (go Wildcats!):

Immigration to the US, 1820-2007 v2 from Ian Stevenson on Vimeo.

Development technology - the good, the bad, the...useful?

A big 'thank you' to Ethan Zuckerman for stirring my thinking on the advantages and disadvantages of  development technology this morning. Writing on Apple's introduction of the iPhone in Egypt (and the Egyptian government's subsequent suppression of the Maps application on the grounds that GPS is a military prerogative), Zuckerman asks:

whether technologies inherently help confront and change authoritarian regimes, or whether these regimes are more successful at adapting to and repressing speech via new technologies.

This is an interesting question with seemingly no clear answer. In China, for instance, the government has mastered the art of  permitting certain technologies while suppressing others. The result is a populace somewhat falsely empowered with a sense of information, making marginal progress in the way of reform, and a government that isn't going anywhere anytime soon. A similar analysis may be offered in the case of Russia, and Venezuela, to a degree.

Switching gears a bit, I began exploring the various information technologies (broadly speaking) emerging across Africa. Here,  the issue is perhaps not so much changing authoritarian regimes (though that certainly wouldn't hurt), but engendering sustainable development. A few interesting projects caught my eye:

• A small NGO in Nairobi called ALIN (Arid Lands Information Network) is working to connect rural communities via community knowledge centers by running solar powered VSAT dishes
• A web-based reporting tool  - Ushahidi (which means "testimony" in Swahili) - is allowing Africans caught up in political unrest to report incidents of killing, violence and displacement.  Its goal is to create a simple way of aggregating information from the public for use in crisis situations. It has been recently used in the Democratic Republic of Congo
• Wikiforets is a living dictionary and encyclopedia, bringing together French speaking Africans who can share their knowledge of the indigenous forests in West and Central Africa with the aim of conserving the forests in which people live or on which they are dependent

What's especially wonderful about these projects is that they are all local initiatives. A testament to the value of skills training, indeed. 

Mobile money transfer service in Kenya

An interesting article in yesterday's FT speaks to the growing importance of telecoms as a tool for development in Africa:

The rise of the mobile phone as a bank account substitute in Africa was reinforced on Monday as Vodafone announced the launch of a cross-border mobile money transfer service between the UK and Kenya.

The service will allow remittances to be sent from selected Western Union branches in the UK to Safaricom subscribers in Kenya, who can then redeem the money or send it on to another mobile user. The maximum amount that can be transferred internationally is £200 ($296).

The service follows the success of M-PESA, amobile money transfer service in Kenya offered by Vodafone and Safaricom which has signed up over 4m customers since its launch in March 2007, and has been extended to Tanzania and Afghanistan.

M-PESA allows poor people without bank accounts to deposit, transfer and withdraw cash with their mobile phones. The service is often used by men who live and work in cities and send money to their wives and children in their home villages.

The battle for African telecoms

In recent days I've had a slew of information about the development of information and communications technology (ICT) in Africa come across my desk, the most useful of which is Ryan Hahn's post "All Things Africa and ICT" on the PSD blog site. It appears that Africa's telecoms sector is quickly becoming the new "it" thing within the development community. While most of the mobile operators are home-grown, countries like China, India and Japan are not far behind in the scramble for contracts. 

According to the most recent edition of Africa-Asia Confidential, "China is assuredly in the lead." In March 2008, a US$69 million agreement was signed between Angola's MundoStartel and China's ZTE Corporation to develop telephone networks in Angola. This past June, Tanzania's Excellentcom Ltd signed a $180 million contract with China's Huawei Technologies. Under the agreement, Huawei Technologies will start building Excellentcom's network to enable it to cover the whole country within 13 months. Similar deals have been signed between China and Kenya, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Algeria, and other countries across the continent. 

It may be pure coincidence, but mobile subscriber and penetration figures have nearly quadrupled since China's entry into the continent in 2000:

With other countries fighting to enter the market - new among them Kuwait's Zain and UAE's Etisalat - the African telecoms sector will definitely be one to keep an eye on in the coming months.