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Mapping to Protect Kenya’s Environment: the eMazingira Solution

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Powerful new grassroots crowd-mapping tools have sprung up in the past few years across the global South, from Brazil’s Wikicrimes (www.wikicrimes.org) real-time crime mapping technology to the now famous Ushahidi (http://ushahidi.com) – a non-profit company making the free and open source Ushahidi software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping – from its base in Kenya. They share some common features. All draw on the widespread use of mobile phones in the global South combined with growing access to the Internet, either through 3G mobile phone services, WiFi wireless connections, Internet centres or increasingly available broadband Internet services.

They then connect the mobile phones to the new mapping services available either on the phones or on the Internet. One example is Google Maps (http://maps.google.com).

These mapping services are revolutionary in what they bring to poor communities. They allow people to quantify in real time what is happening in their area, as well as see what is happening around the world. Where in the past this sort of mapping and statistical data collection was chiefly the domain of government departments and private services for wealthy corporations, individuals can now participate in the collection of data and map what is happening in their area. This can include mapping actual crime as it occurs, or slum-mapping, where a visual snap-shot of a slum area is made to better target aid and development.

This is a game-changer for human and sustainable development. It has the potential to close the gap between the collection and analysis of data and action. Accurate, real-time data makes it easier to push government agencies to deliver on their promises, especially during a crisis.

Kenya’s eMazingira website (www.emazingira.org) is showing the difference these tools can make. It allows people to identify potentially destructive practices that harm the environment – unregulated forestry, pollution, dangerous animals, land degradation, climate change – and alert others to what is happening. This level of awareness, it is hoped, will in time reduce the destruction of local environments and improve the quality of life for both humans and wildlife.

Mazingira means “environment” in Swahili. The website’s motto is “Keeping the environment clean for the future generation”.

The eMazingira website is a visually simple affair with a leafy banner image and an interactive map showing what is happening. It is in its first iteration and future upgrades are on the way. A rolling list of incidents keeps readers briefed on what is happening, from “Fire burning” to “Sewer burst” to “Rogue elephant”. There are five main categories to choose from and users can file reports by text message, email, sending a Tweet (www.twitter.com) or filling in an online form on the website.

“We got to know about Ushahidi during its first deployment which was in Kenya, when it was used to map post-election violence incidents in early 2008,” explains Dunston Machoka, director of BTI Millman Limited (www.btimillman.com) inNairobi,Kenya, a custom software development firm leading the project.

“We were inspired to develop eMazingira, on one hand, because of the passion we had for environmental conservation and on the other hand, from the success stories we had observed of Ushahidi deployments inKenya,HaitiandJapan.”

Machoka believes this is a critical time forKenya’s environment: “eMazingira comes at a time when environmental conservation is a huge concern inKenya. Our key observation was that there was no effective reporting mode for environmental incidents for citizens.”

The website hopes to better engage citizens in tackling the country’s environmental problems and sees this as a way to spur further government action.

One of eMazingira’s proudest moments came when it won the World Summit Youth Award as the 2011 Runner Up for the use of ICT towards attaining the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

But how easy is it to work with this technology? Machoka advises those starting out to turn to the Ushahidi team for support.

“I would advise them to get in touch with the Ushahidi team through their website and by doing so the deployment will be easy, fast and there will be adequate assistance in case of any challenges,” he said.

For the next two years, eMazingira will be focusing on rolling out the service to the country, from the main towns to rural areas.

“At the end of the period we hope to start similar programmes in East Africa based on the lessons learnt inKenya,” confirms Machoka.

And that isn’t where the eMazingira story will stop: its creators also want to deploy the technology globally, if countries have the right conditions.

“The key necessity for the application would be good mobile and Internet infrastructure and government that can promote citizen participation in environmental conservation,” Machoka said.

Published: December 2011

Resources

1) With less than five years until the 2015 deadline to meet the Millennium Development Goals, any tool that can make development decisions more precise is a benefit. Website:http://www.undp.org/mdg

2) The Map Kibera project uses an open-source software programme, OpenStreetMap, to allow users to edit and add information as it is gathered. This information is then free to use by anybody wanting to grasp what is actually happening in Kibera: residents, NGOs, private companies and government officials. Website:http://www.openstreetmap.org

3) NGO called Rede Jovem is deploying youths armed with GPS (global positioning system)-equipped (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System) mobile phones to map the favelas of Rio de Janerio. Website: http://www.redejovem.org.br

4) Mobile Active.org: MobileActive.org is a community of people and organizations using mobile phones for social impact. They are committed to increasing the effectiveness of NGOs around the world who recognize that the over 4 billion mobile phones provide unprecedented opportunities for organizing, communications, and service and information delivery. Website: http://www.mobileactive.org

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/12/04/big-data-can-transform-the-global-souths-growing-cities/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/12/11/cyber-cities-an-oasis-of-prosperity-in-the-south/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/12/04/data-surge-across-global-south-promises-to-re-shape-the-internet/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/02/17/digital-mapping-to-put-slums-on-the-map/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/25/indian-city-slum-areas-become-newly-desirable-places-to-live/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/04/indian-id-project-is-foundation-for-future-economic-progress/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/31/mapping-beirut-brings-city-to-light/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/31/new-weapon-against-crime-in-the-south/

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-1/

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2022

Categories
Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters Southern Innovator magazine

East Africa to get its First Dedicated Technology City

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

An ambitious scheme is underway to create a vast technology city on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya.

With information technology proliferating across Africa after decades of stagnation and underinvestment, a host of exciting new technologies have had to exist within structures not built for the 21st century.

One attempt to change things is Konza Technology City (konzacity.co.ke), an ambitious project that aims to build the infrastructure to host the companies of the 21st century for Kenya and East Africa. Konza Technology City joins a growing network of technology cities and parks across the global South. If the links between these centres of technological innovation and smart thinking can be strengthened, they have the potential to contribute to exceptional gains in human development.

Konza Technology City will be built on 5,000 acres (2,023 hectares) of land 60 kilometres south of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.

The lead agency on the US $10 billion project is the Ministry of Information and Communication (http://www.information.go.ke/). The Kenyan government is seeking partners and investors to help with funding the project, whose components include a business process outsourcing (BPO) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_outsourcing) zone – where specific business functions are contracted to third party providers. There is also a financial district and a commercial district with office space.

This will be combined with the other side of Konza: hotels, hospitals, a sports stadium and other support services necessary to support a city. The idea is to develop the site over a period of 20 years, with the BPO and IT Educational and Science Park taking up 23 per cent of the site.

Kenya plans to expand its business process outsourcing sector and has been hosting conferences in Europe to gather the best advice. The sector has experienced double-digit growth in the past three years, rising on the increasing capacity brought by new undersea cables like TEAMs, Seacom and EASSy.

The idea is to put in place the building blocks of a 21st century Kenya and to become the leading hub for the whole of East Africa. Kenya has an ambitious plan to become a middle-income country by 2030 (http://www.vision2030.go.ke/).

There is scepticism about large projects in Kenya, with some fearing they will be abandoned before they are finished. But it does seem this project has galvanized a wide community of support. According to IT Web’s (http://www.itweb.co.za/) Ken Macharia, opponents of the project make various arguments. People in the information and communication technologies sector would like to see greater local capacity in place before such massive investment in buildings goes ahead. Others oppose the idea of having a planned city and would like to see things evolve organically. Still others question the government’s capacity to undertake such an ambitious scheme.

According to Macharia, the ‘if you build it, they will come’ argument is winning the day. The scope and ambition of the project has both excited many players within and outside government and focused their efforts.

Macharia even believes the public sector is way ahead of the private sector.

“The government is light years ahead in terms of the vision and drive of developing the ICT sector in the country, while the private sector is trying to catch up,” he said.

Kenya will become the first country in the region to build a technology city. It can look to China for some examples. One is Shenzhen City and its Science and Technology Park (http://www.ship.gov.cn/en/index.asp?bianhao=20). Or Cairo, Egypt’s Smart Village (http://www.smart-villages.com/).

Macharia also says the focus solely on technology is missing the bigger impact Konza can have.

“The city’s concept has financial, educational, commercial and industrial implications, which have not been sold as aggressively as the tech aspect has. Perhaps the better name for the proposed city would be Konza Special Economic Zone, where the key pillars mutually benefit from each other’s presence. Technology, after all, is a means to an end, not the end itself.”

The timing for a place like Konza City is excellent: undersea cables are being placed around and to Africa. The continent was notorious for being the most underserved continent on the planet and is in a furious transition from this information technology wasteland to a potential oasis of prosperity.

The undersea cable projects are promising a bandwidth explosion for the continent of Africa. The WACS cable (http://wacscable.com/index.jsp) is being put in place to link South Africa and Britain, and is due to be completed in 2012. It runs up the West Coast of Africa and will become the first direct connection to the undersea cable network for Namibia, the Congo and Togo.

It will increase South Africa’s bandwidth by an estimated 23 per cent.

Various technology investors, including the search engine giant Google, are also planning to build an undersea cable linking the so-called BRICS countries by 2014 – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The cable will also link them all to the United States. The technology group i3 Africa is leading the project (http://www.i3-mea.com/africa/), which should open up 21 additional African countries to the world’s undersea cable network.

Konza Technology City could make Kenya a significant beneficiary of all this new connectivity and bandwidth.

Published: July 2012

Resources

1) Center for Innovation Testing and Evaluation: CITE will represent a 20th century American city with a population of approximately 35,000 people and be built on roughly 15 square miles. CITE’s test city will be unpopulated. CITE will be a catalyst for the acceleration of research into applied, market-ready products by providing “end to end” testing and evaluation of emerging technologies and innovations from the world’s public laboratories, universities and the private sector. Website: http://www.cite-city.com/index.php

2) Dubai Internet City: Since its official opening in 2000, Dubai Internet City (DIC) has grown to become the Middle East and North Africa’s largest Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Business Park, hosting both global and regional companies. Website: http://www.dubaiinternetcity.com/

3) Songdo International Business District (IBD) officially opened on August 7, 2009 as a designated Free Economic Zone and the first new sustainable city in the world designed to be an international business district. With its strategic location just 15 minutes driving time from Incheon International Airport and 3 ½ hours flying time to 1/3 of the world’s population and regional markets such as China, Russia and Japan, Songdo IBD will position South Korea as the commercial epicenter of Northeast Asia. Website: http://www.songdo.com/

4) Nasrec Smart City: South Africa’s own ‘smart city’ is in development. Website: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=168466

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2023

Categories
Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

Pioneering African Airlines Help to Expand Routes

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

The last decade has seen a revolution in African air travel. The number of air routes has grown and this has paralleled the economic growth across the continent. As demand has been strong for Africa’s resources, it has also fueled a consumer boom that is benefiting an increasing number of people.

More and more people can afford to fly and flights are taking Africans to cities across Africa and out of Africa to visit cities around the world. These flights also bring in a growing number of tourists and business people.

As growth continues despite the many obstacles and challenges, and as urbanization rolls onwards, new routes have sprung up linking the continent’s cities to each other and to the world. National and local airlines have evolved to meet growing demand for flights, with the big global airlines moving in to compete.

Africa’s airlines, tourism and airport authorities gathered in early 2013 to discuss how better to link the continent up by air, and the fruits of this collaboration are coming to light.

A recent new entrant is Fastjet (http://www.fastjet.com/us/). Bringing the highly competitive budget airline model to Africa that has proven so successful in Europe, it is owned by Britain’s Easyjet and has its hub in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It will offer low-cost flights to South Africa, Zambia, and Rwanda in autumn 2013 and, ambitiously, hopes to become “Africa’s first pan-continental low-cost airline” (BBC). It has 10 aircraft.

If people book early, they can snag a one-way flight between Johannesburg and Dar es Salaam for just US $100.
Fastjet is also creating a low-cost airline in Nigeria in partnership with Nigeria’s Red 1 Airways (red1air.com).

One airline also expanding its routes is Daallo Airlines (daallo.com) from the small nation of Djibouti (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djibouti) in the northeast Horn of Africa.

Its website shows straight away how the airline is able to help link up cities normally left out of global air routes. Flights can be booked for journeys between Djibouti and Somalia, a country only now beginning to recover from decades of civil war and anarchy. Daallo also flies to Nairobi, Kenya, the East African hub for international agencies and corporations, to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Hargeisa, capital of the autonomous region of Somaliland (http://somalilandgov.com/).

It also offers weekly cargo flights to these destinations. Daallo has a Boeing 777 and an Antanov AN-12.

Djibouti is tiny but well positioned as a transport and shipping hub. It has invested heavily recently in its port facilities and benefits from good security, with a large U.S. base located in the country, Camp Lemonnier (http://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/cnreurafswa/installations/camp_lemonnier_djibouti.html), home to Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa.

Further improving flight access in Africa, in August 2013, South Africa saw a new low-cost airline enter the marketplace. Safair (safair.co.za) is operating 10 daily flights between Johannesburg and Cape Town using Boeing 737-400s.

Ethiopian Airlines (http://www.flyethiopian.com/en/default.aspx) has also started a strategic partnership with Malawi Airlines as part of its Ethiopian Vision 2025. This will make the capital of Malawi, Lilongwe, Ethiopian Airlines’ third hub on the African continent. It has its main hub in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and its West African hub in the Togo capital Lomé.

Published: October 2013

LINKS:

1) Routes Online: The Routes business is focused entirely on aviation route development and the company’s portfolio includes events, media and online businesses. The company organizes and operates world-renowned airline and airport networking events through its regional and World Route Development Forums. They are held in key markets throughout the year in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas and the CIS. Website: http://www.routesonline.com/

2) IATA: The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is the trade association for the world’s airlines, representing some 240 airlines or 84 per cent of total air traffic. IATA support many areas of aviation activity and help formulate industry policy on critical aviation issues. Website: http://www.iata.org/Pages/default.aspx

3) Airlines International magazine: Airlines International is IATA’s flagship magazine, available in print, on tablets and online. Website: http://www.iata.org/publications/airlines-international/Pages/index.aspx

4) African Airlines Association: “To be the leader and catalyst for the growth of a globally competitive and integrated African airline industry”. Website: afraa.org

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2023

Categories
Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters Southern Innovator magazine

The Water-Free South African Bathing Solution

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

As the world’s population grows from its current 7 billion to a projected 9 billion in 2050 (UN), competition for access to the Earth’s resources will become fiercer. The most essential resource for life on the planet – and an increasingly precious resource – is water. Water is necessary for the very survival of humans, animals and plants, and is also used in vast quantities by industries and farms.

As demand increases, water resources will need to be conserved more and more, while clever ways will have to be developed to use less water. And there is also another factor to consider for the world’s poor: many millions live in very constrained conditions in urban and rural areas. For their health and dignity, the ability to wash every day is critical. Being clean is vital to being able to economically advance in life: it is something that sounds obvious but is often not a possibility for many millions of people living in slums.

Many will face lives where water is an uncertain resource that will be either expensive to purchase or will require lots of labour to obtain.

Anyone who can come up with a way to help bring the dignity of being clean and healthy while also saving water is onto a winner.

A clever South African, Ludwick Marishane, has developed a clear gel that works like soap and water but doesn’t need H2O to get a person clean.

The product is called DryBath (http://headboy.org/drybath/) and uses a “proprietary blend of a biocide, bioflavonoids and moisturisers.” It differs from common liquid hand anti-bacterial cleanser products that people use to sterilize hands. Those products use alcohol to simultaneously sterilize germs and evaporate the liquid.

DryBath works in a different way by not requiring water or alcohol to complete the washing. The liquid gel is odourless, biodegradable and moisturises and does not need to be rinsed off. It instead leaves users smelling fresh and “tackles the hygiene and water consumption problems in a manner that has never been used before.”

It also comes in a special package developed in South Africa. EasySnap™ sachets allow users to quickly snap the package and dispense the solution on to their hands to have a wash. EasySnap is a rectangular sachet that is snapped in the middle to open.

Marishane, a 22-year-old student at the University of Cape Town, told Reuters that the idea for DryBath came to him when he was a teenager living in his rural home. It was wintertime and his friend didn’t want to bother washing because there was no hot water available.

“He was lazy and he happened to say, ‘why doesn’t somebody invent something that you can just put on your skin and you don’t have to bathe’,” Marishane said.

That was when the light bulb went off in his head.

Intrigued, he started doing research on his web-enabled mobile phone. He trawled through the search engine Google and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia to find what would work as a water-free wash. After six months of research, he came up with the formula for DryBath and acquired a patent.

Now the strategy of Headboy Industries Inc. (headboy.org) – the company set up by Marishane – is to sell DryBath to corporate clients and in turn donate a free sachet for each sale to DryBath’s global charity partners, who will distribute DryBath to poor communities either for free or at a subsidized cost.

Marishane believes his product will be particularly popular with certain industries: flight crews and passengers on airlines; hotels looking to save on water usage; the military for soldiers serving in the field; and NGOs and charities providing services to poor communities, in particular during emergency situations when it is difficult to provide a reliable water supply.

Marishane has won several awards for his invention, including Global Champion of the Global Student Entrepreneurs Awards 2011, and is considered South Africa’s youngest patent holder.

“DryBath will go a long way in helping communities,” he believes.

Published: September 2012

Resources

1) How to register for a patent in South Africa. Website:https://www.sabs.co.za/index.php?page=patents

2) SABS Design Institute: The SABS Design Institute promotes the benefits of good design in order to stimulate the economic and technological development of South Africa. Website: https://www.sabs.co.za/index.php?page=designinstitute

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2023