| Posts in category 'Africa' |
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16 January 2010
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9 January 2010
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Publishing Perspectives reports on a recent panel discussion on the African publishing industry at this year’s African Literature Week (16 – 21 November) in Oslo, Norway.
(via @jranck) |
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7 January 2010
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13 December 2009
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| The latest issue of Anthropology Matters contains an interesting article on the use of mobile phones in Africa:
Being cool or being good: researching mobile phones in Mozambique |
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19 November 2009
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A number of articles illustrate the power of the mobile phone in emerging markets:
What next after the Mobile revolution in Kenya? Nokia Life Tools – a life-changing service? Mythes et réalités des usages mobiles dans les pays en développement Bangladeshis rush to learn English by mobile |
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9 November 2009
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The November 2009 edition of Mobile Money Africa, “Africa’s leading online resource for mobile financial inclusion”, is entitled “Banking the unbanked Africans” and is entirely available for download.
The December edition will focus on Mobile Money and Payment technologies for Africa. Download magazine (November 2009) (via David Tait and Niti Bhan) |
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22 October 2009
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19 September 2009
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Ken Banks, creator of FrontlineSMS, wrote a guest piece for BBC News. His main claim: “If you want to see how east Africa may respond to the arrival of high-speed internet links, look no further than the mobile phone market.”
Also read Bill Thompson’s commentary on the same topic. |
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16 September 2009
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One of the projects of AppLab, the application laboratory of the Grameen Foundation, is focused on mobile technology for community health (MoTeCH) in Ghana:
A just published ethnographic research study sought to assess the initial state of information, communication, and mobile phone use for maternal and newborn health both within the health sector and the general population in the Dangme West District in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. Key study findings illustrate that there is a strong foundation upon which the MoTECH Project can build to advance the use of mobile telephony to target beneficiaries in the general population. (via Tech4Dev) An older study (January 2008) dealt with “Livelihoods and the mobile phone in rural Uganda.” |
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10 September 2009
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In emerging markets, agents are the customer-facing element for mobile banking providers, “who rely on them to open accounts, do customer care, and (crucially) stock adequate amounts of cash and e-float to enable clients to deposit and withdrawal. Yet, there is no consensus on how to build a viable agent network.”
CGAP, the independent policy and research center dedicated to advancing financial access for the world’s poor, looked at M-PESA merchants in Kenya for clues about the profit drivers for agents .
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2 September 2009
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Jonathan Donner, a researcher in the Technology for Emerging Markets Group at Microsoft Research India, has submitted a paper — together with Shikoh Gitau and Gary Marsden — on first-time mobile internet use in South Africa to the upcoming (3rd) conference of the International Development Informatics Association, to be held at Berg-en-Dal in Kruger National Park here in South Africa on 28-30 October 2009.
According to Jonathan, the paper focuses specifically on two questions: what happens when the first and only means of accessing the internet is via one’s mobile? What are the implications for M4D and ICTD?
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24 August 2009
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24 August 2009
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Paula Fortner, iHealthBeat senior staff writer, reports on how innovative mobile technologies are helping to fundamentally transform health care in many developing countries.
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24 August 2009
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5 August 2009
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Gunnar Camner and Emil Sjöblom recently spent three months in Tanzania for their master’s thesis in Media Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden, to investigate mobile banking services from a user perspective.
In which contexts do alternative uses, e.g. savings, become popular and why? The final report will be presented during autumn 2009 and made available at the project blog. Meanwhile, they sent a dispatch to the CGAP blog:
You can also more about the project here or download the whole project outline here (pdf). |
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23 July 2009
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| Both the Guardian newspaper’s PDA blog and TED itself are posting regular updates from the current TEDGlobal conference in Oxford, UK.
(TED stands for technology, entertainment and design, and it’s an exclusive conference that brings togethers thinkers and doers from around the world. The TEDGlobal edition is directed by Bruno Guissani.) Here are some selected highlights: Manuel Lima Rebecca Saxe Aza Raskin Stefana Broadbent Jonathan Zittrain Gordon Brown (video) Also check out the Guardian PDA blog post on a new mobile phone search service for Uganda. It talks about the work of Jon Gosier of Appfrica, who has launched a simple project using a corp of mostly volunteers with mobile phones to find out what Ugandans want to know. |
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14 July 2009
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In a country where people don’t have electricity, much less Internet access, the Grameen Foundation partners with Google to relay information through mobile phones. Dara Kerr reports from on the ground for CNet:
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14 July 2009
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Olga Morawczynski, a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh and has spent more than a year investigating customer adoption and usage in both urban and rural Kenya, and has been sharing some of her insights on the CGAP blog. This time she talks about a third player, Sagentia, who was behind the M-PESA success:
See also these earlier CGAP posts about her work (oldest posts listed first):
Morawczynski is the author of a forthcoming CGAP brief on M-PESA and recently co-authored Designing Mobile Money Services: Lessons from M-PESA with Ignacio Mas. |
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9 July 2009
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Last week Google announced a suite of SMS services in Uganda. In a follow-up post on the main google blog, the company explains that it is the result of more than a year of true user-centred research and design.
You can find more background information on the Africa Gathering site. |
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1 July 2009
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Experientia news
The latest issue of UPA's UX Magazine is devoted to sustainable design, and one of the articles is ...
Experientia, the Turin-based user experience design company, has created a new and innovative ...
Helsinki, Finland -- Earlier today, Turin-based company Experientia was announced as part of the ...
On 21 July 2009, Experientia turns four years old. From four friends and business partners to an ...
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