Hash reports on another trade listing service:Mocality’s job: create a digital platform that makes it easy for business owners to promote and expand their businesses in Africa. “As a business owner, you get free SMS, a contact list, a free mobile website and a free mobile business card.”More...
Founded by Tayo Oviosu, Pagatech :...is a fast and convenient way to send cash to your friends and family. All you need is the mobile phone number of the person you want to send cash to, the amount to send.That’s it! The recipient will get the cash within seconds. You can send cash to anybody - even if they don't have a Paga...
In a piece relevant to the startup scene within Africa, Sarah Lacy of TechCrunch writes about the opportunity of Indonesia :I think what Indonesia (replace with Africa) could use is something in between the current state of no high-growth capital and the money that goes to countries like India and China: A Y-Combinator-style incubator that could help Indonesian entrepreneurs make sense of the pitfalls of modern startup life, including things like recruiting and managing talent, how to deal with Silicon Valley giants, how to make money online and when and when not to raise outside funding. The funding amounts and exits would be small, but a Yossi-Vardi-style angel could clean up where many classic VCs might crush startups under the weight of millions. Someone to coax these entrepreneurs as...
Accessing the Web has become so easy for so many that it's startling to learn that less than a quarter of the global population can connect to the Internet External Link, according to Internet World Stats. Meanwhile, the penetration of mobile phones — especially in developing countries — is much larger.Which is why IBM Research India in New Dehli has launched what it calls the Spoken Web, a network designed to use phones, not computers, to bring information on the Web to mainly under-served populations that cannot readily experience the Web's benefits.Read more ......
At the recent IAALD congress, Paul Barera from the Rwanda Telecentre Network described at the CTA workshop on m-agriculture how mobile devices can provide another communications and information channel for rural communities, one that can also support telecentre revenue models.Koda Traore of CTA, interviewed at the IAALD Congress 2010, takes this further and describes how mobile devices extend the definition of telecentres beyond being simply a geographical point to an "IT service centre". In this concept, mobile phones are a value adding channel for teleservice operators and rural communities, taking information directly into homes. This is well demonstrated in the Grameen Foundation programme, whose positive evaluation was reported earlier in IAALD blog.Surprisingly, perhaps, there is no...
In ICTworks the founders of TechHub Nigeria state:We are raising money from our pockets and from partner companies to build a physical tech hub that will be able to take at least 100 geeks at a time. This will allow techies who are constantly battling with power problem, internet subscription and computers to get started, and build stuff they have dreamed of. The hub will also provide facilities that will help them build business around their tech ideas and mentoring from best tech brains Nigeria have! In five to six months time, the tech hub should be ready....
In early 2009, Grameen Foundation went to Uganda with the idea of creating a fluid and effective two way communication channel between rural farmers and the world of agricultural experts, development agencies, traders and commercial players. Grameen Foundation’s technology center had a plan – harness the power of the mobile phone, a technology that is oblivious to such bottlenecks and combine it with a network of human intermediaries that can be trained to fully leverage its capabilities for the benefit of the farmer. The Community Knowledge Worker concept was thus born but would it work? In this report, the foundation shares some of the lessons learned on what it takes to sustainably build and expand such a network of information intermediaries....
Nokia is bringing Ovi Life Tools, a set of informational services for rural areas in developing countries, to China, the company said on Friday.The SMS-based service will be in simplified Chinese, the written form of the language used in mainland China. The services are split into four categories: healthcare, agriculture, education and entertainment.More:Ovi Life Tools lands in ChinaRural Calling: Can Nokia Sustain Its First-mover Advantage?...
Next week in Montpellier, CTA's Kevin Painting will organise a session entitled: 'm-agriculture: how mobile devices transform information and communication.'How do you use mobile phones in your work with agricultural communities?What are the most significant new developments in services and technologies in this, the fastest changing sector of ICTs?How are we engaging with the continually increasing numbers of people in agricultural economies who, for the first time, are connected and reachable?How can we exploit the opportunities and meet the challenges presented by the convergence of technology, media and information services?Billions of people use mobile phones to communicate and the number of unconnected people is plummeting. This connectivity, the mobile phone economy and the...
Afrinnovator profiles Zimbabwe's Kubatana Trust's Freedomfone application:Freedom Fone is an information and communication tool, which marries the mobile phone with Interactive Voice Response (IVR), for citizen benefit. It provides information activists, service organisations and NGO's with widely usable telephony applications, to deliver vital information to communities who need it most...Related articles by ZemantaQuick Hits Around African Tech...
I4D magazine is producing a special issue on e- agriculture in April in partnership with the e-Agriculture Community of Practice. i4d is a premier magazine on ICTs published by CSDMS (Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies) in India. This special issue will showcase recent advances in agricultural and rural development from around the world through the innovate use of ICT. Key topics include Mobile Telephony; Rural Farmer's Information Networks; and ICT and Development Communities. To access the special issue online: http://bit.ly/cpUfrQ...
In 2009 Finextra reported on Efulusi's mobile wallet application: Monitise says it will integrate its mobile money manager platform with E-Fusili's mobile wallet technology to create financial accounts that can be operated from consumer handsets....The E-Fulusi mobile wallet technology currently powers the Mobipawa and ZPESA services, the first two mobile banking services in Tanzania. The firm has worked closely with the national central bank to establish a regulatory framework for mobile banking in the country.More here Read related E-fulusi hereRelated articles by ZemantaMobile phones become pocket banks in poor countries...
An article in The Economist informs about a new microinsurance scheme promises to help "safe farming".Farmers in Kenya pay an extra 5% to insure a bag of seed, fertiliser or other things like herbicide against crop failure. Agribusinesses hoping to benefit from higher sales of their products, match the farmers’ investment to meet the full 10% cost of the insurance premium. Agents register a policy using a camera-phone and a text message confirming the policy is then sent to the farmer’s handset. If weather conditions deteriorate, a panel of experts determine if crops will no longer be viable and payouts are made directly to the handsets of farmers in the affected areas using a mobile-money service. Read the full article....
BBC Digital Planet article describes the use of mobiles to collect and share vital data on health and disease. Datadyne's EpiSurveyor software is used by health workers to gather information about vaccination rates and instances of HIV. "We're using just standard cell phones - not smart phones necessarily, although we're working on an iPhone application," said Joel Selanikio, co-founder of DataDyne. Joel Selanikio, co-founder of Datadyne says that while internet access via desktop or laptop computers is not readily available to all, many people, even in the developing world, have a mobile phone. EpiSurveyor was built with a focus on international development, but Mr Selanikio says others are finding uses for the system - a trend which could make the project completely...
Jeffrey Sachs, Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General and Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, says: “Mobile communication is perhaps the single most transformative technology for rural African villages to improve access to health care and education, create new business opportunities and access to markets, and ultimately to help eradicate extreme poverty.Read more ......
To build a stable business, farmers regularly need information on a wide range of subjects. They need long and short-term weather reports to choose the best time to plant and harvest. They need current information on the spread of pests and diseases that might threaten their crops. They need to get the latest tips and advice to make the most of their available land. And they need market data to find the right buyers at exactly the right time. But farmers don’t want all the information; they only want what’s relevant to their specific needs. And to help them, a few services are now providing agricultural information tailored to fit the particular working conditions of individual farmers.Read more ...Also:Customized information: Nokia Life Tools delivers customized agricultural...
This working paper from the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations investigates a series of questions: What kind of information do farmers value the most to improve agricultural productivity? Do mobile phones and mobile-enabled agricultural services have an impact on agriculture? What are the factors that impede the realisation of the full productivity enhancing potential of mobile phones? The study found evidence that mobiles are being used in ways which contribute toproductivity enhancement. However, to leverage the full potential of informationdissemination enabled by mobile telephony will require significant improvements insupporting infrastructure and capacity building amongst farmers to enable them to usethe information they access effectively....
Pour avoir un business stable, le paysan a besoin d’informations sur toutes sortes de sujets : des prévisions météo à court et à long terme afin de choisir le meilleur moment pour les semis et la moisson ; des rapports sur la propagation des maladies et des nuisibles susceptibles de s’attaquer à leurs cultures ; les derniers conseils et astuces pour optimiser son exploitation ; des infos commerciales pour trouver les bons acheteurs au bon moment. Il ne veut pas être abreuvé d’infos, mais seulement connaître ce qui peut lui être utile. Pour répondre à cette demande, plusieurs fournisseurs d’information proposent des services « sur mesure ».Lire plus ...Aussi:Informations personnalisées : Nokia Life Tools, l’information agricole sur mesureDu web au téléphone : Un...
At TEDMED Eric Topol presents advances in wireless medicine that will lead to enhanced...
Loy Okezie reports:If you ever need to track your friends location within Nigeria via your mobile phone, Starcomms has just made it easier. Thanks to the availability of GPS-enabled phones among other factors, the LBS (location-based services) market is set to boom in Nigeria...[continue...
Treehugger reports:The Duron, which is manufactured by a company of the same name, comes with a 5 watt solar panel, a cell phone charger connection, three LED lights, and an AC grid charger. When the system is fully charged — a process that takes a day of soaking up sunlight — it can power three hours of bright lighting or 10 hours of dim...
TechMasai profiles Celltrust:...Celltrust, following the Kenyan model of mobile payment services, has introduced iSecureSMS Mobile Banking and Payment Pilot for the African region...The company expects that the new Secure SMS/Text Mobile Banking program launched through its Global SecureSMS Gateway will be adopted at high rates within the first few months of operation. After the introduction of the platform in the region, end-users will be able to make mobile cash transfers, payments and securely access other microfinance banking products.More hereRelated articles by ZemantaNigeria plans to issue naira-denominated bonds...
Banta Labs "...builds websites, web applications and mobile tools that help organizations improve their workflow, communication and outreach.We almost exclusively use - and contribute to - open source tools such as Drupal, Asterisk, Ubuntu Linux and...
Founded by Wilfred M Mworia, African Pixel "...is a startup mobile software development company that specializes in making software for Smartphone platforms..."Hash writes, the company's "...first application is iScribe (iTunes link), a simple tool for writing a journal on your phone. It’s the tool I’m using to write this post as it pushes to WordPress...[continue...
Afromusing reports on Africa Gathering speaker Simeon Oriko, who proposed a Mobile Computing Cloud with the following attributes:- Put the processing in the cloud. Think Amazon EC2. Put the storage there too so the mobile acts as a dumb terminal of sorts. Storage space on mobiles is still quite expensive, but storage online can be very cheap, and processing information online is much easier that on mobile phones.- Create a common platform that all mobile phones can share. Its tedious to make apps for the myriad OSs like Android, Iphone, Symbian, J2ME- Integrated solutions like PesaPalMore...
One project of the USAID-funded Global Livestock CRSP was called LINKS - Livestock Information Network and Knowledge System.This project is placing ICTs inside a broader livestock information and analysis system that is designed to improve livestock markets and trade, thereby enhancing thewell-being of pastoralists in East Africa. LINKS technology was recently incorporated into the National Livestock Marketing Information System (NLMIS) active in Kenya.See LINKS project publications on ICTs, phones, and markets in East Africa....
Limangeni Alex Mankhambo receives 'Scientist of the Year Award'-ScidevSbts an information technology service provider.Nile Capital readies Africa focused funds Gapbridge Investment aims to "bridge" the "Gap" between the lower end and middle layer's of the economy."A list of INFRACO's infrastructure projects in Africa.Anabel Mobile a mobile communications device...
Many farmers save seed from one harvest for the next season's planting. But, for those who can afford it, commercially-sold seed, such as hybrid varieties, can be more productive. However, with so many types of seed on the market, which should farmers choose? In the past, local extension officers were able to recommend suitable varieties for different locations. Those kinds of advisors are thin on the ground. So now, the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service, known as Kephis, is trying a new way to give maize farmers the information they need. Farmers who want to plant maize can send an SMS text message to a database created by Kephis, and get an automatic response about the best varieties for their area.Read more ......
Nokia may be a name most would associate with handsets and great user interfaces. But increasingly, the Fin is focusing on solutions and services. We take a look at the launch of Life Tools, which targets an interesting segment in the emerging market of India. Following this, the service will be rolled out in Indonesia, which will make it the first country in Southeast Asia to get the Nokia solution. First talked about in November 2008, Life Tools is a service tailored for farmers and rural communities living in remote areas, providing them with information specific to their livelihood and personal enrichment. Read more ......
A trial Sri Lankan commodity trade matching portal using mobile phones to improve marketing of farmer produce will need private sector investment to be sustainable, an official said. Chitranganie Mubarak, a Senior Programme Head of the Information Communications Technology Agency (ICTA), said the project is part of efforts to use mobile phone and information technology to link farmers with markets.Read more ......