Ethan Zuckerman gave the keynote speech on the final day of the Web2forDev conference, held at FAO in Rome, 24^th-27^th September 2007. Ethan is the co-founder of Global Voices, the world’s largest aggregator of media in the South. The Global Voices Forum brings together bloggers from around the globe.

Here are some quotes from that speech today:

Zuckerman on our new interest in old technology:

‘Email preceded the Internet… blogs are ten years old, and Wikis have been around since 1995… If most of this stuff is twenty years old, why are we talking about it now? Because it’s not about the tools, it’s about the people.’

‘The reason that it matters now is that we are experiencing a seismic shift – it’s about who can be brought together with these tools.’

Zuckerman on mobile phones:

‘When we think about participatory web, it’s not about laptops and high bandwidth… it’s about mobile phones. There are 3 billion handsets worldwide, and its estimated 80-90% of people in the developing world can access a mobile phone if they need to. This is a level of penetration of technology that changes the rules of the game. We need to broaden our thinking beyond the Web.’

‘For example, Interactive Radio for Justice gives people, particularly women, the opportunity to send questions via SMS to very powerful people. No, it’s not Flickr; no, it doesn’t have tags, but it’s back-and-forth participatory, it’s appropriate to the people it’s trying to reach.’

Zuckerman on Wikipedia:

‘Get smart about Wikipedia. It’s the ninth most popular site in the entire world. This it literally the biggest bang for the buck you can do.’

Zuckerman on why you should blog:
‘Think about who you’re trying to reach and how… if someone just signs a petition and says, “this is important to me”, it’s not enough. We’re looking for participation here… This is the reason to blog: links. Blogs are full of links and Google loves links – the more links you have, the higher up the search engine results you’ll appear. It makes sense to look at this as an eco-system approach. You have to link to figure out how to participate.’

At the Web2forDev conference, everyone has been saying that it’s not about the technology – it’s about the people. It’s about what people can do with the technology – and what ‘mash-ups’ of tools and approaches are appropriate and really working.

I came to this conference to find people who are really doing participatory web – not just using the technology, but facilitating real empowerment and positive change. Our plan at IIED is to co-publish with CTA a special issue of the Participatory Learning and Action series on participatory web for development – so I needed to find real examples.

Well, yesterday I was lucky enough to see Ednah Karamagi give her presentation, Enhancing Knowledge Sharing in the Rural Community through Adoption of Web 2.0 tools.  

I felt like I had found a magic bean.  Ednah works for a Ugandan NGO, Busoga Rural Open Source & Development (BROSDI). It’s a not-for-profit organisation that works with government and civil society in improving rural livelihoods. Within BROSDI is a project called Collecting and Exchanging of Local Agriculture Content (CELAC).                       

Both BROSDI and CELAC project make extensive use of Web 2.0 approaches. But it’s a real combination of Web 2.0 and grassroots participation. For example, CELAC is almost entirely populated with locally generated content. As Ednah says, ‘We are sharing information from our great grandfathers that we are losing in our generation.’  

Essentially, it’s a great combination of the online – Blogs, Google Maps, Wikis, online documentation, chatrooms – and the offline – a weekly mobile phone SMS farmers’ information service, village knowledge brokers, monthly farmer forum meetings, village meetings, radio, and hard copy documentation. They are even developing an e-learning tool for primary school children. 

Ednah is candid about the challenges they face. ‘The Internet is expensive, and needs power,’ she says. ‘It’s a problem in a country where access to electricity is intermittent.’ There is also the issue that people need to change their attitudes towards sharing information, rather than ‘hoarding’ it. And sometimes the technology doesn’t work – and is abandoned. ‘We did have a Wiki,’ Ednah says. ‘But the staff rejected it, as it was too complicated. But we plan to have a new Wiki for developing training material so that we can all comment and add to it.’ 

Ednah was a real inspiration. There was a long list of real life examples – not just the different technologies – but how the technology has made a real, positive change to people’s lives. My favourite was Cissy and her turkey farm. Ednah told us, ‘She learnt how to rear turkeys on SMS!’

This morning, I overheard Dr Hansjorg Neun of CTA talking to Ednah Karamagi. He asked Ednah, ‘Why do you think you have been so successful?’

Ednah’s reply was, ‘You have to use as many methods as you can to reach your community.’

Well, BROSDI are doing that in style. Let’s hope they continue to get the support they need to keep this pioneering organisation going from strength to strength.    

A Voices of Africa is a Web 2.0 news and information website that encourages ordinary people and professionals to use mobile phones to share video footages about news that are taking place in their own communities. They are currently piloting the project in Mozambique, Ghana and South Africa. Voices of Africa Director in South Africa explains their plans to make this as successful tool that would use web 2.0 to benefit all communities in Africa

Download audio

Interviewee:  Elles Van Gelder

Interviewer:  Chris Kgadima, Nkgowa Media

Report back on: Agric Market Information Systems 2.0: Making it private, profitable and peer2peer – a presentation by Mark Davies, Tradenet.biz

 ‘Why source your maize from many small local producers in Africa, when with just one phone call it can all be shipped from Argentina?’ 

OK: I’ve paraphrased Mark Davies here. But I think it sums up two things: why Tradenet.biz was needed – and what it is beginning to change.  

Farmers need prices in order to compete in the open market. Product developer Davies realised that he could meet a real need. ‘Market information is complicated and frustrating – it’s extremely complex data,’ Davies says. ‘I realised that here was a great business opportunity to work in an area that I thought was interesting.’

A couple of years ago, he began working on Tradenet.biz, an information portal for African agricultural markets. Paying, registered users input and update agricultural market information into an online customised database: off-lorry prices, farm gate prices, market place prices, wholesale prices. In turn, users can request information relevant to them, which is then sent out to them in a text message.

‘These are real-time SMS uploads from the markets,’ explains Mark. And it means that the information is accessed by mobile phone – and not through an unreliable and costly Internet connection. 

TradeNet.biz is currently operating in 13 African countries. There are 439 commodities online. So far, there have been 650,000 price uploads. There are more than 5,000 registered users.

But the real evolution came when TradeNet.biz moved from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 based on an innovative peer2peer process.

‘The first version was a classic, top-down and centrally managed model,’ Davies says. ‘Was the data really accurate or relevant? What we needed to understand was the market itself, not just the NGOs’ needs.’ 

Davies realised that the people with the best data were the buyers, the sellers, and the producers – those in the market place themselves. ‘We needed to refocus,’ he says. ‘We had to get the participants to upload this data themselves.’

One important feature of TradeNet is that it’s not all virtual. A key factor in its success has been the establishment of permanent TradeNet.biz kiosks in market places. These kiosks act as information points – and the kiosk workers can also act as translators, greatly reducing the problem of the language barrier. In future, Davies says, these kiosks could create real opportunities for entrepreneurs, opening new kiosk franchises in villages. 

Despite initial reluctance, people are really beginning to see the value of what TradeNet has to offer. ‘It’s a powerful analytical tool,’ Davies says. ‘For the first time, we are able to get views of markets across countries, and we can begin to see the price differentials. But we’re really just beginning – we’re only three years into a five-year research and development phase.’  

There is anecdotal evidence that it’s working. Davies mentions that one trader in Nigeria commented:

‘You have turned our local market into an international market.’

Hot Group in association with South Africa’s Agriculture Research Council is currently producing farm management tools that help rural farmers to manage their farm activities. They have integrated Information Commutation Technologies (ICTs) such as mobile phones, websites to manage livestock and irrigation systems on a daily basis. The aim of the project is to capacity local farmers to use this web 2.0 enabled tools to manage and share information on their farm and agriculture activities.

Interview: Gert Mintjies- Hot Group

Interviewer: Chris Kgadima- Nkgowa Media

By Brenda Zulu

Africa Interactive, the publishers of Africa News www.africanews.com a world wide interactive multimedia platform focused on Africa are piloting a new project called “Voice of Africa” where journalists use mobile phones to send news video clips to report news.

Elles Van Gelder Editor in Chief of Africa News said at the Digital Citizen Indaba (DCI) in Grahamstown , South Africa last week that the project was launched by the Dutch who said Western media does not represent does not represent Africa and set up the project to show more balanced images of Africa.

She explained that sending video clips using the mobile phone was a new way of creating content. She said journalists who are part of the project are trained to become innovative reporters and how to use the cell phones.

Elles explained that they also looked at the technical side of doing the reporting and provided the journalists with small keyboards because the cell phone keys where too small to enable Journalists do their work fast.

She observed that the media focus was on Africa and that this was a revolution as these Journalists will be reporting live in events such as elections in Kenya.

Peter Verweij of the University of Utrecht Netherlands observed that mobile technology brings Journalists back to the streets meaning one does not need to get back to the newsroom to send a news report.With the GPS facility, editors in the newsrooms will also be in a position to supervise their reporters because they will be able to know where the reporters are and what they are doing.

Verweij said mobile phones will enhance journalists to report from anywhere for web pages and blogs. The content can range from text to Video and noted that for the first time anyone could be a reporter.

He also observed the challenges for
Africa as being the level of internet connectivity as the work of Journalists is set to improve dramatically with innovations in mobile GPS technology.

In the same vein, Ndesajo Macha a Sub Saharan Global Voices editor in delivering his key note address at the DCI said the future was mobile. He said text messaging has been delivering news.

He said SMS was also used for social networking as much of the news now is known through SMS before the mainstrem media makes the reports.

The coming of new technologies thus has led to fear of adapting to new ways of doing Journalism.

The future for Africa is Mobile as it has been embraced by more than 200 million people on the continent.Talking on convergence, Arrie Rossouw the editorial Director of Media 24 said there was need for people to stop talking about cries and insecurity and instead strive to move toward integrated newsrooms.

The discussion on convergence noted that in African news rooms remains largely unrecorded. Some newsrooms are marching forward, pod casting news items and music programmes and sending texts to cell phones, others are experimenting with video, sending sports clips and news to wireless services.

Matthew Buckland, the Mail and Guardian Online Manager told delegates attending the Highway Africa Conference 2007 that the Web 2.0 software was an important development for smaller role players.

Buckland noted that Media companies need to develop strategies for using the web 2.0 software for social networking and also to attract advertising.

He pointed out that the web 2.0 has played an important role in the improvement of technology and is also less expansive.

Web 2.0 is a term often applied to perceive ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of web sites to a full fledged computing platform servicing web application.

Hey Folks. Here are some interesting information and discussions that are going on in the English web2fordev Dgroup which should not be held back from the broader audience. Have some insides into web 2.0 and low bandwidth! Cheers Anja.

Steve Cisler:

I’m running an online project called KnowledeX whose members include social entrepreneurs around the world. It runs on JotSpot a full-featured wiki now owned by Google. I have a number of participants in Africa who have some difficulty connecting. I think the problems that arise are not just due to local low bandwidth (or electricity problems) but the number of hops from the user in Northern Nigeria and the server in California. He reported a two hour wait to get on, but later it dropped to a mere then minutes–more than most of us would wait, I think. If there is a lot of negotiation between the user and the site, common to apps written in Ajax, I think that the online experience will be frustrating for some. This may limit the usefulness of some of the more promising apps. And that does not include large files of video or static images, both of which can be a barrier.

Tobias Eigen:

Hi Steve. [..] I agree very much with your assessment, and really from my point of view the answer is the same as it has always been. When developing Internet tools and services for people in “low-bandwidth countries” it is important to offer a range of options for participating that include offline tools and “low bandwidth” access to content. If we do, in the end everyone will benefit - even those in rich countries with always on internet connections.

Web 2.0 encourages developers and providers of services to rely on “web applications” and to create “rich internet applications” using AJAX etc. It’s great to use java to avoid making people install software on their computers in order to participate - and to make it easier to upgrade applications iteratively. Here’s a good link to Youtube video explaining the technical background.

This is all well and good, but in the process we shouldn’t forget those that need the service and don’t have fast or reliable internet connections, and we shouldn’t assume that we all will always have access to the Internet. [..] The answers for providing many options for participating in Web 2.0 sites seem to be in RSS feeds and “open APIs”. Feeds allow us to subscribe to websites via a number of means including email and newsreaders, which both can be downloaded using offline tools. [..]

“Low bandwidth” pages are also facilitated by Web 2.0, and are being rapidly developed mainly because people in rich countries want to access the same information on their mobile phones. Part of the opportunity of web2fordev I think will be to inquire into the barriers that people (and in particular civil society organizations) in low bandwidth countries still face to making the most of their limited Internet connectivity, and to investigate how they can harness Web 2.0 technology to overcome those barriers.

If you have read this far, then you might be interested in learning more about Kabissa’s “African Web 2.0 Ambassadors” proposal which we pitched at the Netsquared conference last month.

Steve Cisler:

Tobias, Many thanks for a very informative post. That explained a lot and makes it seem like the barriers are not as great as I had imagined, though I have had an experience with a whiteboard/conferencing system called ‘elluminate’ where the participant in Ecuador had to spend a long time just downloading the java file over a slow line but was able to make use of the advanced features once installed.

Tobias Eigen:

Hi Steve. [..] Strictly speaking, though, the most powerful benefits of Web 2.0 for our purposes seem to be more in asynchronous communications - where people communicate and collaborate by posting content to websites and are reading it and using it in creative ways. They can do this on their own time and in a combination of online/offline strategies.
Synchronous communications with tools like elluminate, skype, text messaging, SMS, VOIP etc etc are a different beast altogether and the frustrations of low bandwidth are more painfully apparent to everyone involved!
However sometimes they do seem to be merging into Web 2.0, resulting in meaningful opportunities. Take for example the recent integration of Skype and Evoca.