| |
Back to Index
One
Missed Call? Refocusing our attention on the social mobile long
tail
Ken Banks
September 20, 2008
http://publius.cc/
In "The White Man's
Burden - Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have
Done So Much Ill and So Little Good", William Easterly's
frustration at large-scale, top-down, bureaucracy-ridden development
projects runs to an impressive 384 pages. While Easterly dedicates
most of his book to markets, economics and the mechanics of international
development itself, he talks little of information and communication
technology (ICT). The index carries no reference to 'computers',
'ICT' or even plain old 'technology'.
But there is an entry
for 'cell phones'.
E. F. Schumacher, a fellow
economist and the man widely recognized as the father of the appropriate
technology movement, spent a little more time in his books studying
technology issues. His seminal 1973 book - "Small is
Beautiful - The Study of Economics as if People Mattered"
- reacted to the imposition of alien development concepts
on Third World countries, and he warned early of the dangers and
difficulties of advocating the same technological practices in entirely
different societies and environments. Although his earlier work
focused more on agri-technology and large-scale infrastructure projects
(dam building was a favorite 'intervention' at the time),
his theories could easily have been applied to ICTs-as they
were in later years.
Things have come a long
way since 1973. For a start, many of us now have mobile phones,
the most rapidly adopted technology in history. In what amounts
to little more than the blink of an eye, mobiles have given us a
glimpse of their potential to help us solve some of the most pressing
problems of our time. With evidence mounting, I have one question:
If mobiles truly are as revolutionary and empowering as they appear
to be - particularly in the lives of some of the poorest members
of society - then do we have a moral duty, in the ICT for
Development (ICT4D) community at least, to see that they fulfill
that potential?
You see, I'm a
little worried. If we draw parallels between the concerns of Easterly
and Schumacher and apply them to the application of mobile phones
as a tool for social and economic development, there's a danger
that the development community may end up repeating the same mistakes
of the past. We have a golden opportunity here that we can't
afford to miss.
But miss it we may. Since
2003 I've been working exclusively in the mobile space, and
I've come to my own conclusions about where we need to be
focusing more of our attention if we're to take advantage
of the opportunity ahead of us. Don't get me wrong -
we do need to be looking at the bigger picture - but there's
not room at the top for all of us. I, for one, am more than happy
to be working at the bottom. Not only do I find grassroots NGOs
particularly lean and efficient (often with the scarcest of funding
and resources), but they also tend to get less bogged down with
procedure, politics and egos, and are often able to react far more
quickly to changing environments than their larger counterparts.
Being local, they also tend to have much greater context for their
environments, and in activism terms they're more likely to
be able to operate under the radar of dictatorial regimes, meaning
they can often engage a local and national populace in ways where
larger organizations might struggle.
So, waving my grassroots
NGO flag, I see a central problem of focus in the mobile applications
space. Let me explain. If we take the "Long Tail " concept
first talked about by Chris Anderson and apply it to the mobile
space, we get something like this. I call it "Social Mobile's
Long Tail".
What it demonstrates
is that our tendency to aim for sexy, large-scale, top-down, capital-
and time-intensive mobile solutions simply results in the creation
of tools which only the larger, more resource-rich NGOs are able
to adopt and afford. Having worked with grassroots NGOs for over
15 years, I strongly believe that we need to seriously refocus some
of our attention there to avoid developing our own NGO "digital
divide". To do this we need to think about low-end, simple,
appropriate mobile technology solutions which are easy to obtain,
affordable, require as little technical expertise as possible, and
are easy to copy and replicate. This is something I regularly write
about, and it's a challenge I'm more than happy to throw
down to the developer community.
Another key problem that
we have emerges as a symptom of the first. Because larger international
development agencies, by their very nature, tend to pre-occupy themselves
with the bigger issues, they often inadvertently neglect the simple,
easier-to-fix problems (the "low hanging fruit" as some
people like to call it). The Millennium Development Goals (MDG's)
are good examples of the kinds of targets which are far easier to
miss than hit.
In mobile terms, using
the technology to enhance basic communications is a classic "low
hanging fruit". After all, that's what mobile phones
do, and communication is fundamental to all NGO activities, particularly
those working in the kinds of infrastructure-challenged environments
often found in the developing world. Despite this, there are few
tools available that take advantage of one of the most prolific
mobile communication channels available to grassroots NGOs -
the text message (or SMS).
Much of my own work with
FrontlineSMS has sought to solve this fundamental problem, and in
places such as Malawi - where a student, my software, a laptop
and one hundred recycled mobile phones has helped revolutionize
healthcare delivery to 250,000 rural Malawians - the benefits
are loud and clear. In other countries, where activities of international
aid organizations may be challenged or restricted by oppressive,
dictatorial regimes, grassroots NGOs often manage to maintain operations
and often provide the only voice for the people. In Zimbabwe, Kubatana.net
have been using FrontlineSMS extensively to engage a population
not only starved of jobs, a meaningful currency and a functioning
democracy, but also news and information. In Afghanistan, an international
NGO is using FrontlineSMS to provide security alerts to their staff
and fieldworkers. The software is seen as a crucial tool in helping
keep people safe in one of the world's most volatile environments.
With a little will, what can be done in Zimbabwe and Afghanistan
can be done anywhere where similar oppression exists.
In cases such as these
- and there are many more - we need to stop simply talking
about "what works" and start to get "what works"
into the hands of the NGOs that need it the most. That's a
challenge that I'm happy to throw down to the ICT4D community.
There's only a certain amount of talking we can do.
There are, of course,
many issues and challenges - some technical, some cultural,
others economic and others geographical. The good news is that few
are insurmountable, and we can remove many of them by simply empowering
the very people we're seeking to help. The emergence of home
grown developer communities in an increasing number of African countries,
for example, presents the greatest opportunity yet to unlock the
social change potential of mobile technology. Small-scale, realistic,
achievable, replicable, bottom-up development such as that championed
by the likes of Easterly and Schumacher may hardly be revolutionary,
but what would be is our acknowledgement of the mistakes of the
past, and a co-ordinated effort to help us avoid making them all
over again.
I spent the
best part of my university years critiquing the efforts of those
who went before me. Countless others have done the same. Looking
to the future, how favourably will the students and academics of
tomorrow reflect on our efforts? If the next thirty years aren't
to read like the last then we need to re-think our approach, and
re-think it now. The clock is ticking.
Read Inside/Out
with Ken Banks
*Ken Banks,
Founder of kiwanja.net , devotes himself to the application of mobile
technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing
world, and has spent the last 15 years working on projects in Africa.
Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS,
a field communication system designed to empower grassroots non-profit
organisations. He graduated from Sussex University with honours
in Social Anthropology with Development Studies and currently divides
his time between Cambridge (UK) and Stanford University in California
on a MacArthur Foundation-funded Fellowship. Ken was awarded a Reuters
Digital Vision Fellowship in 2006, and named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation
Fellow in 2008. He is a close observer of a process he calls the
"grassroots mobile revolution."
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
TOP
|
