When People Die of Hunger

The Elephant in the Room, by Banksy

Its been a dry rainy season in East Africa. Traveling last month in Kisumu, Kenya, I read about a Kenyan women who died of hunger while giving birth to surviving twins. Last week, newspapers in Uganda reported that 35 people died of hunger in northern Uganda. Ken Banks asks us about the elephant in the room of global poverty. To me, this is it.

Technology, Obama and Rural Africa

Tonight, I'm participating in a podcast organized by the Peace Corps Africa Rural Connect project, on how the Obama administration can leverage digital technology to deliver social and economic gains to rural Africans. I'm going to make two points:

Let Aid Recipients Tell Donors What They Want

Technology can change the foreign assistance industry by allowing recipients, via mobile phones, to tell donors what their need on their own terms. Philanthropic groups such as Global Giving are already experimenting with linking donors and projects via an online marketplace for aid.  Further, Global Giving is experimenting with mechanisms to ask recipients exactly what they need from donors. One such experiments allows people to dictate donor funds in their community via mobile phone. The new USAID coordinator should put in mechanisms that allow recipients to tell us what they need.

Convince Telecoms of ‘The Economics of Abundance’

It may seem as though we are in a golden age of mobile innovation: Google is delivering farming information to rural Ugandans via SMS and Safaricom has a low-cost mobile money transfer service for Kenyans. However, the truth is that telecom companies are holding back to a trickle what should be cascade of innovation. The typical value-added SMS (anything besides person-to-person messages) costs 10 US cents in Uganda. 

This means that new innovations that would contribute to economic or social growth will not be deployed, not because of engineering challenges, but because of artificially high costs. The truth is, lower SMS prices mean both more users and revenue for network providers and more access to services for rural poor. Luckily, the [unfilled] State Department Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy position exists to lobby foreign governments and telecoms on technology policy issues like this. 

driving my (temporary) benz in africa

  "Welcome to K'la City, where the food is delicious but the roads are shitty."

Like Chris Blattman, I also recently learned the perils of driving on Africa's mean streets. Unexpectedly, one of our Ugandan friends loaned us his Benz. As I took the keys from him, I immediately had flashbacks of turning into oncoming traffic and driving over medians: the adventures of my first day driving in America as a 16-year-old.

That night in Kampala, I had to adjust to both the perils of driving in Africa, and the challenge of orienting myself, British style, on the left side of the road.  Somehow we made it home, after rocking the chassis with a few deep pot-holes and almost knocking over a cyclist with a wide load of sugar cane.

The best part about driving in Africa?  When you are lost, you just ask a few children playing on the side of the road for directions, and they will jump in the back of the car and drive with you there.

Dreams of His Father

A president's first trip to Africa:

So I believe that this moment is just as promising for Ghana - and for Africa - as the moment when my father came of age and new nations were being born. This is a new moment of promise. Only this time, we have learned that it will not be giants like Nkrumah and Kenyatta who will determine Africa's future. Instead, it will be you - the men and women in Ghana's Parliament, and the people you represent. Above all, it will be the young people - brimming with talent and energy and hope - who can claim the future that so many in my father's generation never found.

A speech full of rousing rhetoric, unique in the directness of its call to hold African leaders responsible.  Yet the mechanics of Obama's policy in Africa: USAID director and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, have yet to be put into place.

Why Bandwidth Prices Won't Fall Too Fast in Africa

Engineering News reports on the SEACOM submarine fibre cable:

The increase in pirate activity during April and May 2009, in terms of intensity and geographical coverage, has necessitated a change in undersea cable system Seacom’s cable installation plans, which has 
resulted in a delay in the ready-for-service date from June 27, 2009 to July 23, 2009.

Its hard to tell how much bandwidth prices will drop in East Africa with the arrival of the SEACOM. However, this article points to a more general problem: reliability.  How often will outages occur, either due to cable cuts or other problems? Since no one knows the answer to this question, most ISPs will have to maintain their costly satellite connections (at least as back up) until the reliability question is answered.

Steve Song on the Philippines, SMS Pricing and the Economics of Abundance

Last week I asked what arguments would convince network providers in East Africa to stop fixing SMS prices artificially high. Steve Song answered with the 'economics of abundance' argument, where carriers earn more by having more users at lower costs. This is a familiarand powerful argument in the telecom policy world.  Steve explains how the argument worked in Phillipines, resulting in 1 cent SMSs (the global average is 10 cents):

Regarding what sort of pressure it would take to get operators to voluntarily drop their SMS rates, I think they need to be convinced of the economics of abundance. They need to believe that if they halved their SMS rates, that their SMS traffic would more than double. I have given the example of the Philippines where they send roughly a billion SMSes a day as compared to roughly 25 thousand per day sent in South Africa. The cost of an SMS in the Philippines is less than 1 US cent as compared to 7.5 US cents in South Africa. If you double South Africa's population (and resulting SMS revenue) to roughly match the Philippines, they are still generating more than 3 times the revenue at less than 1/7th of the price.

Amassing evidence that lower pricing leads to more revenue is the first step. The second step is finding someone in the Kenyan or Ugandan telecom sector with the gravitas and positioning to make the argument to the network providers

I'm an Appfrica Labs Fellow!

Just over a month ago, when I arrived in Kampala via bus from Nairobi, I immediately started spending time with Jon Gosier, founder of Appfrica Labs, a for-profit incubator and software development firm in Kampala. Sensing that this fantastic company was growing both its bottom line and its international prestige (Jon was just named a TED Fellow), I immediately agreed when Jon offered me an opportunity to work on business development.

This week, we finally announced that I will spending the rest of the summer (at least) as an Appfrica Labs Fellow. I'll mostly be working on status.ug, a internet-mobile social network portal for Uganda (more on this soon).

Why Appfrica Labs? Since I left Uganda close to three years ago, both my research and private sector work has mainly been around two connected questions: What is the effect of digital technology on society; and, what communications policies will best promote innovation and growth in emerging market technology sectors-- both with a regional focus on Africa.

Appfrica Labs gives me a perspective on these questions from one of the leading innovators in East Africa. Not to mention, after meeting the amazing Ugandan developers that Jon works with [check out the great list of ongoing projects], I'm confident that he has the right business model to succeed. I'm happy to be on board!

Should Governments Force Providers to Lower SMS Prices?

Earlier this week, Google, Grameen Foundation and MTN Uganda launched a premium SMS service aimed at delivering health tips and critical agriculture tips to the poor. A debate erupted when it was mistakenly thought that MTN was charging users 220UGX to use this service.

nota bene: In Uganda, sending a person-to-person SMS costs 110UGX. Sending a premium SMS (primarily when businesses target potential customers) costs at least 220UGX.

When it was clarified that the service costs only 110Ugx, the debate turned to whether network providers are fixing prices artificially high, and if so, whether the government should set a price ceiling in order to both stimulate innovation and lower the prices for the poor.

Two thoughts:

(i) This is the lowest price ever for a premium SMS service in Uganda.

I was talking about this debate to a director of one of most prominent software companies in Uganda. He reminded me that this is the first time in the industry's history that a premium service has gone for less than 220UGX. This is a good first step, but most likely not a deal that anyone besides Google could get immediately. Many of the premium SMS services [usually targeting the rich] are adding their own fee (usually around 60UGX) onto the 220UGX base and making a killing

(ii) What kind of pressure would it take to get network providers to lower SMS rates voluntarily?

In Uganda, the best things are done without government intervention. Think about how amazing it is that an NGO, an Internet company and mobile company got together to launch this program without government intervention (contra programs run by, say, USAID or UNDP). Often when the public pressures an industry to reform, the industry comes together to create voluntary restrictions. This recently happened when the Internet industry came under fire for violating human rights in China. Is this concievable with the mobile industry in Uganda? If so, it would have to start with pressure from companies that are innovating in the SMS information space.

I'm Back!

A few weeks ago, I made my way from Nairobi to Kampala, stopping to see a family of lions sleeping soundly after ravaging a water buffalo on the banks of Lake Nakuru.  When I arrived in K'la, I wasn't sure how long I'd stay or what I would do.  Some interesting work has come about. More details soon, but here are the themes: (i) the Africa internet infrastructure; (ii) mobile software;  and (iii) internet & democracy.  And, of course, the latest news from these three fronts.

In London, the Economist covers SEACOM, the first submarine fibre cable to be lit in East Africa, raising the hopes of cheap and fast internet across the region.

In Boston, my colleagues at the Berkman Center write in a WaPo op-ed on the limits of reading Twitter in Tehran.

In Orlando, Hash writes about the keys to running a successful mobile social networks.

M-Banking Progress in Kenya

It's not every day that you put on a conference [in Africa or anywhere else] and see immediate results. Last month, I help organize in Nairobi, along with my colleagues from The Fletcher School and the Central Bank of Kenya, the M-Banking 2009: Balancing Innovation and Regulation. The idea behind the event was to get banking regulators, network providers and bankers in the same room to talk about how mobile phones can be leveraged to bring more access to banking services to more people.

Last week, Finance Minister and Deputy PM Uhuru Kenyatta, who opened our conference, published a bill to allow branchless banking and open the door to more appropriate mobile banking regulation. Today's Sunday Nation (Kenya) reports:

Mr Kenyatta noted that despite of the progress the country had made in the banking, many Kenyans remain unbanked due to deposit-taking institutions’ limited reach. “ In this regard, I propose to amend the Banking Act to allow banks to extend their footprint through agencies with wide distribution networks,” he said. Recent innovations like mobile telephony firms Safaricom and Zain’s M-Pesa and Zap have deepened the banking services while expanding the outreach to the previously unbanked population.

However, the expansion of the services have been held back by the lack of a legal and regulatory framework to monitor and arrest crimes like money laundering and terrorism. Players in the banking sector last month held an international conference in a bid to draw experiences and expertise from the various parts of the world in order to craft relevant laws.

It feels good when conferences help lead to useful outcomes.

Kenny Rogers, Kenya's VP and Me

The Scene:
Kenya School of Monetary Studies, Central Bank of Kenya, Nairobi
Candle Lit Dinner by the Pool

At the Table:
Kalonzo Musyoka, Vice President of Kenya
Njuguna S. Ndung'u, Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya
Professor Kim Wilson, The Fletcher School
Your Humble Blogger

Professor Wilson, turning to the VP: "Your Excellency. I'm doing some work on the effect of gambling on poverty in Haiti. Is gambling amongst the poor a big problem in Kenya?"

VP: "Do you know Kenny Rogers?"

Professor Wilson: "Yes, I do."

VP: "As Bwana Rogers says, 'You've got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, know when to run.."

Me: "Your Excellency, it turns out I sang that very song at a karaoke bar in your country only two nights ago."

VP looks me, pauses, : "...you never count your money, when you're sitting at the table, there will be time enough for counting, when the dealings done.

Timidly at first, then with rising cadence, the I join the VP in song: "Every gambler knows, the secret to survival, is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep, because every hands a winner and every hands a loser, and the best you can hope for is to die in your sleep."

Later in the evening, in his public remarks broadcast on national television, the VP remarked on the intelligent conversation he had had with a young American and his professor.

Should the Foreign Aid Industry and the African Digerati Work Together?

The foreign aid establishment and the African Digerati are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to Africa. USAID, the World Bank and other anchors of aid are consolidated, lethargic and rooted in a command economy that Breznev would be proud of. The Digerati: engineers and entrepreneurs solving problems via the medium of mobile phones and the Internet, are decentralized, innovative, energetic and generally suspect of any bureaucracy.

One line of thinking says that getting these communities to even talk to each other is a waste of time. I'm not so sure. I've made the argument that the Obama Administration should think carefully about concrete ways to leverage technology in international development.

I just wrote a short article called Searching for Innovation in Foreign Assistance in the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs. Its a review of the economist Bill Easterly's most recent book, but its also a first attempt at introducing the reform minded flank of the aid industry to the dynamism and energy of the Digerati. I'll be on the hunt for anecdotes of the Digerati as I romp through Kenya and Uganda this summer.

On Blogging in the Classroom

I'm leading the last session of Patrick and my Digital Democracy course tonight. To prepare, I was sifting through the fantastic set of student blog posts from throughout the semester. The diversity of topics, opinion and writing style reminded me of Andrew Sullivan's piece from November 2008 in The Atlantic. Andrew writes:

...as blogging evolves as a literary form, it is generating a new and quintessentially postmodern idiom that's enabling writers to express themselves in ways that have never been seen or understood before. Its truths are provisional, and its ethos collective and messy. Yet the interaction it enables between writer and reader is unprecedented, visceral and sometimes brutal.

I think assigning blogging in college (or high school) classes helps students develop their voice, not just within the bounds of formal writing, but by encouraging the exploration of the relationship between themselves and the content they are exploring.

Here are a few excerpts from some of the students in my class. They are representative of breadth of content we discussed in the class, but perhaps more importantly, they embody the wide range of voices we all take on when blogging.

Matt writes on Nerding Out on Undersea Cables:

The fact that a huge part of Africa relies on satellite to connect to the internet completely blew my mind, and when I found that even our connection to the internet here in Boston tenuously relies on the well-being of a few bottleneck points I decided to do some more research into the history of the backbone of the World Wide Web.

Sam reflects on the role of the Internet in the larger activism narrative:

“Johnny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine; I’m on the pavement thinking about the government.” Bob Dylan said that in 1965. The midpoint of an era that shook, like a withdrawn junkie, with political unrest. And to put it lightly, ain’t shit changed — just the names, faces and places….oh yeah, and now we have this thing called the internet. Once upon a time, the markings of a true activist were physical action and the robust will to stand in harm’s way; bottles broken in streets, sit-ins, Molotov cocktails and marches. Today the political landscape has changed. Concurrently, the weapons we use to fight injustice on this terrain have evolved. After all, who wants to sit in a Humvee with paper thin siding when the freedom fighters* come?

Aaron critiques the DigiActive Introduction to Facebook Activism:

A DigiActive Introduction to Facebook Activism” gives a concise overview of how to best use Facebook to achieve a successful campaign. While I believe the advice given in the guide is fairly helpful, I believe it grossly overestimates the power of digital tools for grassroots movements looking to achieve substantial reform. There are three criticisms of the guide that I have which concern accountability, sustainability, and results.

Hui discusses jailed bloggers:

jailed bloggers = violation of human rights = repressive government = INJUSTICE

The above is a primitive expression of the thought process most individuals seem to take on when the subject of jailed bloggers is broached. Yet, for me, the subject of jailed bloggers immediately brought to mind the two Singaporean bloggers who were jailed for their offensive racist remarks. Here, another formula is proposed:

jailed bloggers = due punishment for action harmful to other persons/society = enforcement of law + maintenance of civil society = JUSTICE

Why this difference? Are they mutually exclusive?

Digitally Doing Business | A Hypothetical

Imagine two teams of engineering students, the first in Silicon Valley and the second in Nairobi. Each of the these teams develops an equally sophisticated and useful SMS-based mobile phone software application that will allow health clinics to create automated responses to reproductive health questions submitted to them via SMS. For example, women in the developing world who send SMSs about HIV/AIDS, pregnancy or condoms would automatically receive detailed information about these requests. They often have no other source of reliable information. Each group believe this product can be profitably marketed to health clinics and aid agencies around the developing world.

It is well understood that entrepreneurs in the developing world (the Kenyans in our example) face significant legal and institutional barriers from reaping the benefits of their good ideas. Measurements such as the World Bank Doing Business Index, as well as the management, political science and economics literatures have addressed these barriers in detail. They include, but are not limited to, the ability to secure seed capital, incorporate and legally protect a business, transfer money both domestically and across borders and efficiently and flexibly find employees well-positioned to perform. In short, much of the developing world suffers from a poor institutional ecosystem for doing business.

This post marks the start of a series of blog posts that ask the question: to what extent can new digital institutions help entrepreneurs circumvent poor institutional ecosystems and privately re-design their incentives landscape? As more of the machinations of global commerce go digital, new tools are emerging that would help the Kenyans in our example lower some of these barriers. The Digitally Doing Business series will explore new opportunities ranging from digitally registering as a US company regardless of physical location to securing previously unavailable venture funds and low-cost payments from abroad to distributing work to employees via mobile phones.

Contrarians of Philanthrocapitalism

A few months ago I drafted a technology for international development proposal for the Obama Administration. This was one piece in a broader effort to get the official foreign assistance community to embrace the values of the Africa tech community: experimentation, low cost innovation, local solutions and flexibility.

This largely tracks with Matthew Bishop's notion of Philanthrocapitalism:

While hopefully some of the world's problems will be solved using for-profit business models, many will not. But that does not mean they can not be addressed in a businesslike way, in the sense of serious focus on results; understanding where to use scarce resources to have the greatest impact through leverage; a determination to quickly scale up solutions that work and a toughness in shutting down those that do not; backing entrepreneurial, innovative approaches to problems; forming partnerships with whoever will get the job done soonest and best and taking big risks in the hope of achieving outsize impact.

In the latest issue of Dissent, Alix Rule offers one critique of philanthrocapitalism from the Left that can not be ignored:

The 'sensibility of giving a damn' isn't really much to commit to; conveniently, most everyone's already committed. But mere possession of a moral pulse doesn't provide much of a basis for decision-making. Yet, when good is like money, individuals do not need coherent approaches to it any more than institutions do; there are no trade-offs or hierarchies or conflicting loyalties here, either. In place of a critical moral framework, we're furnished with a sort of cabinet of curiosities, the decontextualized contexts of which are presumably to be enjoyed as peculiarly shaped artifacts of good...Absent the semblance of context- we're ill equipped to judge.

Any marketplace for good risks being overtaken by possible oligarchs (Gates, Soros), falling prey to glossy marketing at the expense of accuracy and context (Save Darfur) or simply continuing to exclude the recipients of aid. Overcoming these dilemmas is the challenge of foreign assistance community in our time.

Net Effects in Moldova

via b|zzare's photostream

One of the great things about teaching about digital democracy is that every week there is a new story about the effect of the Internet on global politics. This week was no exception. 10,000 students emerged in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau to protest the communist government. One of my favorite new blogs, Foreign Policy's Net Effect, hosted by my friend Evgeny Morozov, has a great overview of the role Twitter played in keeping the Moldova protests popular online [for a while the Twitter handle #pman, short for the biggest square in Chisinau, was listed as one of Twitter's Trending Topics].

As he notes at the start of the post, Evgeny seems to find my Berkman Center paper on the role of technology in Ukraine's Orange Revolution to suffer from a bout of cyber-optimism. This is certainly not the case. My thesis of the paper is to challenge those like Michael McFaul who argue that "the Orange Revolution may have been the first in history to be organized largely online." I argue that:

In the case of Ukraine it is evident that pro-democracy forces used the Internet and cell phones more effectively than the pro-government forces, such that in this specific time and place these technologies weighed in on the side of democracy.

The successful revolution in the Ukraine was the product of really good organizers who leveraged technology to be more effective than they would have otherwise been. A few hours after his original post, Evgeny provided a great bit of follow-up analysis by pointing out the different role that technology played this week in Moldova and those five years ago in Ukraine.

mBanking 2009: Balancing Innovation and Regulation

Mobile banking in Africa has everyone's attention. Mobile companies are realizing a new revenue stream, banks furrow their brows over possible new competitors and NGOs hail a new venue for the poor to access capital. The Fletcher School's Center for Emerging Market Enterprises, along with the Central Bank of Kenya, are hosting a conference on May 25-26 in Nairobi to address how central banks and regulators should respond to the explosion of mobile banking:

“M-Banking 2009: Balancing Innovation and Regulation” conference is:

a student-led initiative that seeks to bring together more than 100 key stakeholders in the mobile banking sector—regulators, financial institutions, telecoms, customers, and mobile service entrepreneurs—in an effort to shift the dialogue around mobile banking from the risks it presents to the social benefits and business opportunities it provides. The conference will focus on the identification of tangible m-banking policies that strike a balance between increasing access for the underserved and controlling misuse of these new systems. The current nature of the m-banking sector and potential future developments will be explored.

The announcement of this conference also marks a new focus on mobile finance on this blog. In the coming week or so, I'll be writing about the best ideas in both the industry and regulatory space of mobile banking. My writings have addressed the industry and civic implications of more and cheaper Internet on the continent. In parallel to this discussion of a freer exchange of ideas, I'll also be discussing about a freer exchange of capital.

Market Access at the Expense of Democratic Ideals?

This is a stylized version of the question facing a handful of corporations, including Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft and Cisco, who have to figure out how to do business in Internet-censoring markets like China.

How corporations and policy makers in the United States navigate this thorny landscape was the subject of our Digital Democracy class last night (session description here). The first half of the class provided an overview of the state of censorship globally: how states marshal moral, political and security reasons to censor content through IP blocking, DNS blocking and proxy servers tactics.

via Robert Faris and Nart Villeneuve, Access Denied (MIT Press: 2008), Ch. 1

The second half of the class was a simulation of a House of Representatives debate on H.R. 4780- The Global Online Freedom Act, a rather Draconian measure designed to impose export controls on the sale of any item "to an end user in an Internet-restricting country for the purpose, in whole or in part, of facilitating Internet censorship." We were joined for the debate by Sarah Labowitz, my colleague at the Fletcher School, and the first hire at Yahoo!'s human rights shop. Some in the class showed libertarian tendencies, arguing that it was not the prerogative of the US Government to legislate on issues related to domestic politics abroad. Others objected to the legislation for pragmatic reasons: government is too slow to keep up with the technology industry.

Regardless, the class seemed very willing to trust corporations to make the right decisions. This, to a large degree, is how the issue has played out in the real world. Last year, a group of corporations and NGOs, in consolation with Harvard's Berkman Center, started the Global Network Initiative, "a collaborative approach to protect and advance freedom of expression and privacy in the ICT sector."

Updated | 36 Hours in Kampala

Back in 2007 I wrote 36 Hours in Kampala, a guide for discerning travelers who found themselves with a weekend to spare in Kampala.  With fresh eyes, my compatriot Rebekah at Jackfruity recently returned to our old stomping grounds to investigate how Kampala has changed in the aftermath of the Beijing-esque sprucing the city received in the lead up to the Commonwealth Heads of Summit event. Her update, 36 Hours in K'la City, points us towards Kampala's new best cup of coffee, bowl of queso and view of the frightening storks that stalk the city. 

Heading to Bogota

Wet Bogota, via Aku Ma's Photostream

Teaching Digital Democracy @ Tufts

The Tufts homepage (article here) is featuring an article about the course I'm teaching at Tufts with my  collaborator Patrick Meier.  I've been thinking about the intersection of the Internet and politics for several years, and its been a joy to learn from students who live with these tools, care deeply about communities and are not afraid to think critically about the status quo.  You can see the thoughtfulness of the students clearly in their weekly blog posts here. 

ISA2009: Panel on ICTs, Human Rights, Activism and Resistance

The study of the effect of the Internet on democracy is really in its infant stages. One reason the Berkman Center's Internet & Democracy project initially focused on creating a set of narrative case studies is because we felt there simply was not enough data for a larger quantitative study.

This is why when I gave a paper at the International Studies Association Conference (ISA2009) yesterday in New York I was happy that my colleagues were presenting what is really the first shot across the bow in studying quantitatively the effect of the Internet and mobile phones on outcomes such as protests and human rights. It was also fun having the always snappy Daniel Drezner as the discussant for this panel.

My friend, and the panel chair, Patrick Meier has a great set of summaries of these papers, including my piece of the the effect of Internet on democracy in Kenya's 2007-08 presidential election crisis.

Africa Tech News Roundup 1.03.09

three feet and rising, via Meg Rorison's photostream

mBanking | Nigeria Shaping Up to Become the Next Big M-Money Market [Balancing Act, 2/1]
http://is.gd/c5g4
"Nigeria's seemingly slow uptake of mobile payment presents a huge opportunity that can revolutionize the payment world, create new set of mobile entrepreneurs and new business models in a market of 54 million mobile subscribers and an addressable market of 140 million people."

Privatization | New Government to Review Ghana Telecom Sale [Balancing Act, 2/1]
http://is.gd/iaG6
"Ghana's new Government has decided that it will re-open the terms of the contract made under the previous Government with Vodafone International. This is the worst kind of nightmare for an international investor: you've paid the price, you're in the hole but there's no control over the cost of the political risk incurred."

ISPs | Ugandan Consumers Get ICT Lobby [East African, 1/9]
http://is.gd/iaGd
"Dissatisfied ICT consumers in Uganda can now seek redress from the Uganda ICT Consumer Protection Association, in case of bad service, substandard products and general unscrupulous practices by data and voice service providers."

Earth | Google Earth Reveals Hidden Environment Treasure in Mozambique [Afro News, 1/26]
http://is.gd/iaGh
"Using Google Earth to identify a remote patch of pristine forest, scientists on an expedition to the site discovered new species of butterfly and snake, along with seven globally threatened birds, in the area that they acknowledge to be the locally known, but unmapped, also adding that scientific collections and literature also failed to shed light on the area."

OLPC | Laptops, Not Mobile Phones, Are the Means to Liberate the Developing World [The Gaurdian, 1/13]
http://is.gd/fP1Y
Responding to news of OLPC's scaling down of operations, Corey Doctorow make the case for laptops in the developing world. At White African, Hash reminds us that the choice between mobiles and laptops becomes less stark every day.

Blogging Culture | Why I Blog About Africa [Global Voices, 12/28]
http://is.gd/iaGT
For the last few weeks a 'Why I Blog About Africa' meme has spread across the Africa blogosphere. GV collects the best, from both Anglophone and Francophone Africa.

Africa Tech News Roundup 1.21.09

contour sketch, via Meg Rorison's photostream

Apps | Google Launches New Services for SME's [Africa Business Daily, 1/20]
http://is.gd/gwLf
"Small Kenyan businesses can now access cheaper software and customized Web products following the launch of several new solutions from Internet firm Google."

Mobile | Are Mobile Companies the New Treasuries of Africa? [ICT for Development, 1/15]
http://is.gd/ghNa
Adam Denton, of GSM Association, argues that "mobile phone companies are mediating – and could mediate – fiscal relations between governments and citizens." Mobile companies provide 7% of the tax base in Africa. For the first time, a fiscal decision will have a direct impact on citizens in Africa, since the tax burden of phone companies directly affects millions of citizens.

Infrastructure | Ethiopia's ETC: The Elephant in the Room Slows Down Economic Development [Balancing Act, 1/19]
http://is.gd/c5g4
Ethopia's incumbent telecom provider ETC was one of the first adopters of fibre networks in Africa. However, today it offers the worst quality and highest cost on the continent. This is holding back Ethiopia's many talented tech entrepreneurs.

Finance | Safaricom Weighs Debt Option in Tough Market [Africa Business Daily, 1/20]
http://is.gd/gwLl
"Kenya's top mobile phone service provider Safaricom is weighing its financing options as it seeks new cash to power its growth in a market where competition has intensified with the entry of new players."

Politics | It's a War of Attrition [Daniel Kalinaki's weblog, 1/19]
http://is.gd/gwLr
Two weeks ago, Daniel Kalinaki, one of Uganda's most important journalists, was summonsed to police headquarters for publishing a certain story about northern Uganda. His narration of his interregation displays the tenuous state of press freedom in Uganda.

Politics | Advice to Obama's Africa Team: Don't Change Much [CDG Blog, 1/15]
http://is.gd/gwLy
"Rather than shy away from the continent's problems, [Bush] launched several major new initiatives that recognized Africa's significance to America. The aid budget to Africa more than tripled on his watch and the pipeline has been sufficiently filled to put the U.S. well on its way to meet President Bush's pledge to double aid to Africa again by 2010." At her confirmation hearing, Susan Rice, the next UN-Ambassador signaled that she would help Africa help itself through supporting regional bodies like the African Union.

Culture | Africa's 100 Best Books of the Twentieth Century [Zimbabwe Int'l Book Fair]
http://is.gd/g6xE
"To mark the beginning of the 21st century, and encouraged by Professor Ali Mazrui, the Zimbabwe International Book Fair launched the international compilation of 'Africa's 100 Best Books.'"

Shaping Young Minds

Tonight I start my teaching career. Alongside my frequent collaborator, Patrick Meier, I am creating a teaching a course to Tufts University undergraduate course entitled Digital Democracy:

In the last five years, text message campaigns, online social networks, and citizen media have played a major role in world events including a democratic revolution in Ukraine, a humanitarian emergency in Kenya and the election of the first African American President of the United States. This course explores how digital technology changes both the mode and the meaning of democratic participation. We will conduct this inquiry through the exploration of case studies and by putting an experimental social networking application to the test, exploring its use in civic projects throughout Boston.

Patrick posted the syllabus here (pdf). I'm incredibly excited, not least because no one has really figured out the effect of the Internet on politics yet. Andrew McLaughlin, my boss at Google, once said: "We are only in the most vague sense conscious of what the Internet's disruption means in the real world." There really is no better way to attack these unanswered questions than by getting a bunch of smart, open minded people together in a room to talk about it. This will be fun.