Africa perspective on the role of mobile technologies in fostering social and economic development
Last week, the W3C Mobile Web Initiative organised a workshop on the “Africa Perspective on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development” in Maputo, Mozambique.
The workshop set out to understand the specific challenges of using mobile phones and Web technologies to deliver services to underprivileged populations of developing countries, and to capture the specificities of the African context.
“There are today more than half of the population living with less than 3$ a day, and lacking all kind of services (health, education, government…). The incredible growth of the mobile penetration rate last few years is providing a new hope. The potential of simple ICT services on mobiles to improve people’s income has indeed been largely demonstrated. The aim of this workshop is to explore how to leverage these success stories and create an enabling environment that would drive the appearance of numerous services all over the Developing World.”
There were sessions on m-health, technology, mobile activism, enabling environments, m-govenment, m-banking and agriculture.
Presentations and papers are now available online (though some presentations are very concise). Here is a short selection:
Technology
- New paths: exploring mobile-only internet use in South Africa (slides) – Jonathan Donner (Microsoft), Shikoh Gitau (UCT)
- Freedom Fone: Mobile information service for social development, Brenda Burrell (Kubatana.net)
Enabling Environment
- Need for richer features in addition to affordability in entry mobile phone devices (slides) – Jussi Impio & all (Nokia)
- Integrating mobile data services into an existing information ecology (slides) – Andrew Dearden
- Making a case for spoken Web as the mobile Web for developing countries – Arun Kumar (IBM)
M-Banking
- Mobile phone banking: Usage experiences in Kenya – Adrian D Kamotho Njenga
- A Taste of Virtual Currency: Air4Cash and Cash4Air – Ali Ndiwalana, Oliver Popov
