David South Consulting

Tag: Southern Innovator issue 1

  • Mapping to Protect Kenya’s Environment: the eMazingira Solution

    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

  • Cash Machines for the Poor

    Cash Machines for the Poor

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    Access to basic banking services for the poor is weak at the best of times. Many are openly discriminated against as a ‘bad risk’ by banks, and denied the sort of banking services middle and higher income people take for granted. Yet it is a myth that the poor do not have money or do not wish to save and invest for their future or for business.

    The so-called Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) – the four billion people around the world who live on less than US $2 a day – are being targeted by a wide range of businesses. Indian business consultant and professor CK Prahalad, the man who coined the term BOP, has gone so far as to claim this is a market potentially worth US $13 trillion, while the World Resources Institute puts it at US $5 trillion in its report, The Next 4 Billion.

    And contrary to popular perception, the poor do have buying power, as has been documented by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professors Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo in their paper “The Economic Lives of the Poor”. Surveying 13 countries, they found those living on less than a dollar a day, the very poor, actually spent 1/3 of their household income on things other than food, including tobacco, alcohol, weddings, funerals, religious festivals, radios and TVs. The researchers also found that the poor increasingly used their spending power to seek out private sector options when the public sector failed to provide adequate services.

    India, where 63 percent of the BoP market is rural and 304.11 million people are illiterate (Human Development Report), makes for a particularly tricky market to reach with bank machines: the average transaction is just 100 rupees (£1.25).

    But a Madras-based company has come up with the Gramateller – a low-cost, blue-and-white bank machine custom-designed for the poor and illiterate. Vortex received funding of 2 million rupees (US $48,000) from an investment company, Aavishkar, that specializes in micro-venture capital — small sums for new business ideas. The advantage of micro-venture capital funding is its longer payback time: a young company does not get driven out of business by having to pay back the cash before the idea has been realized. Normally, venture capital helps a business to grow quickly but the venture capitalist wants to see an immediate profit on the investment.

    Vortex’s chief executive officer, V.Vijay Babu, said: “The idea was conceived by Prof. Jhunjhunwala of IITM (Indian Institute of Technology Madras) in the course of an exploratory project focused on using ICT to deliver modern banking services to rural India.”

    “It was found that branch-based banking is too expensive to be extended to remote rural locations where the volume and size of transactions are small. Using conventional ATMs (automatic teller machines) as a channel posed many difficulties because these ATMs were not built to operate in [illiterate] environments. Hence the need for developing an ATM specific to this context.”

    Costing just a 10th as much to build as an ordinary cash machine, Gramateller has a fingerprint scanner for the illiterate, and is able to accept dirty and crumpled bank notes. Vortex came up with an ingenious solution to do this, said Babu: “Vortex developed a beltless dispenser design that in many ways mimics the way a human teller would pick and count notes.”

    Vortex hopes to massively expand access to cash machines: at present, India has just 30,000 machines, or one for every 43,000 people (the US has a machine for every 1,000 people). These machines are being piloted with India’s biggest private bank, ICICI, and they have garnered interest from Indonesian banks as well.

    “We are running pilots for two leading banks with about 10 ATMs,” said Babu. “Though it is still early, the initial response has been very encouraging – rural users find fingerprint authentication intuitive and simple and the ATM convenient and easy to use. A few users also gave feedback that our ATMs look less intimidating, maybe because it is placed in a non-air conditioned room with easy access and also is different in shape from a typical ATM.”

    Furthermore the cash machines have taken a beating to see if they are robust enough for rural India: “The ATMs were tested for extended operating cycles under the harshest of environments that would prevail in the rural context — using soiled currencies, operating in non-air conditioned and dusty environments, subjecting the machine to typical fluctuations in line voltages and power outages. User-acceptance was tested by enlisting the participation of rural and semi-urban people to carry out test transactions.”

    As for thieves getting their hands on the cash before the poor, Vortex maintains the machines will not become the victim of thieves: each machine will only carry a fifth of the money of city-dwelling bank machines.

    Elsewhere in the South, a South African research and analysis company BMI-TechKnowledge (http://www.bmi-t.co.za/) in its latest report identifies a boom in banking services across Africa. In particular, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Mauritius, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco – all have seen surges in profit and services as a result of improving banking regulations and political conditions. Maybe future markets for the Gramateller to reach Africa’s poor lie ahead?

    Published: August 2008

    Resources

    • Unleashing India’s Innovation: Toward Sustainable and Inclusive Growth, a report by the World Bank.
      Website: web.worldbank.org
    • xigi.net (pronounced ‘ziggy’ as in zeitgeist) is a space for making connections and gathering intelligence within the capital market that invests in good. It’s a social network, tool provider, and online platform for tracking the nature and amount of investment activity in this emerging market also referred to as blended value investing. xigi’s goal is to help this international emerging market to grow through market formation activities that guide and educate a growing wave of new money, while connecting it to the emergent entrepreneurs and deals on the internet.
      Website: http://www.xigi.net/
    • The new report Global Savings, Assets and Financial Inclusion by the Citi Foundation is packed with innovative approaches that are allowing the BoP (bottom of the pyramid) to use their income to build assets and more sustainable livelihoods.
      Website: http://www.newamerica.net
    • NextBillion.net: Hosted by the World Resources Institute, it identifies sustainable business models that address the needs of the world’s poorest citizens.
      Websites: http://www.nextbillion.net/ and World Resources Insitute

    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

  • Wireless Internet Culture Helping Zimbabwe Economy Recover

    Wireless Internet Culture Helping Zimbabwe Economy Recover

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    Zimbabwe’s turbulent descent into hyperinflation at the beginning of the 2000s – and the food crisis it caused as prices soared and purchasing power shrank – captured the world’s attention. From refugees fleeing the country to widespread hunger and poverty, the impact of hyperinflation was stark and distressing. Since the country’s economy stabilized in 2009, various signals are showing that Zimbabwe is slowly making its way back to growth and stability.

    The scale of the hyperinflation is summed up by Zimbabwe’s eye-popping inflation rate. By December 2008, inflation was estimated at 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion percent (or 65 followed by 107 zeros — 65 million googol) (Forbes Asia).

    One recovery strategy is emerging in Zimbabwe’s booming eating and drinking establishments. It seems the urge to socialize and network has become the source of economic vitality where so much else has been damaged.

    The proliferation of coffee shops with wi-fi (wireless internet access) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi) has spawned a new, connected business culture that is flexible and entrepreneurial.

    Zimbabwe’s unity government was formed in September 2008. By the beginning of 2009, the government relented on the crippling hyperinflation and allowed business to be conducted in the US dollar. This made it possible to save again and do business with greater predictability. At this time, the country had the world’s highest inflation rate and the central bank printed a 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollar note.

    The economic result of greater stability has been new shopping malls opening and a boom in new eating and drinking establishments.

    During the hyperinflation, eating out was the last thing on most people’s minds. Just surviving was the paramount daily task.

    In the capital, Harare (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harare), the shopping mall Sam Levy’s Village (http://samlevysvillage.com), in the prosperous Borrowdale area of the northern suburbs, is full of thriving coffee shops, restaurants and pubs.

    Outside of the wealthy enclaves, coffee shops have sprung up in the city’s art gallery, in sports clubs and a local supermarket chain.

    While the coffees are still expensive relative to local wages, the Zimbabwe Online Hotspots (ZOL) (http://www.zol.co.zw) in the coffee shops have proved a big attraction. Most people in Zimbabwe have unreliable or non-existent electricity or, if lucky, poor-quality phone and internet dial-up in their homes.

    ZOL Hotspots typically offer the first half hour of internet use for free. To surf longer, users must buy a voucher.

    The damage done to the economy from hyperinflation and the political crisis means the country is still on the mend. But people have now resorted to what they call “networking,” according to Bryony Rheam in the Daily Telegraph newspaper. The functioning economy is all about making deals. And coffee shops with wi-fi are the perfect place to meet with a potential business partner.

    But while the coffee shops are buzzing with people doing business, the proprietors still need to work out how to make better profits. Sales are still poor as people are mostly fixated on the wi-fi. One owner told the Telegraph: “We need to start charging people who sit here all day surfing the net.”

    It is the restaurants who seem to be enjoying the boost in incomes and better spirits after the economic troubles. Zimbabwe’s black middle class are enjoying big occasions and celebrating with friends and family in restaurants.

    “We went without for so long, that a lot of people almost see it as their right to spend money on eating out,” one patron told the Telegraph.

    More good news has come from outside investors as well: Amstel Securities NV (http://www.amstelsec.com), based in Amsterdam, Netherlands calls Zimbabwe’s economy “the final frontier market in Africa”. It believes the country has the potential to grow its GDP (gross domestic product) to US $12 billion by 2015. The International Monetary Fund says the economy jumped from US $4.4 billion in 2009 to US $9 billion now.

    In Amstel Securities’ report, it pegs the dollarization of the economy as the reason for stability: “These improvements have made Zimbabwe a much more vibrant economy with good further recovery potential.”

    And these good vibes are contagious: it has been reported that the American hamburger chain McDonald’s is revisiting the idea of setting up in Zimbabwe. McDonald’s is currently present in a handful of African countries: South Africa has 132 restaurants.

    Published: September 2010

    Resources

    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

  • Crowdfunding Technology Start-up Success in Africa

    Crowdfunding Technology Start-up Success in Africa

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    Technology is the future for the South, and South African start-up culture is trying to get a foothold on the African continent and forge a more supportive environment for entrepreneurs and innovators.

    Modelled on the successful approaches pioneered in U.S. high-technology centres like California’s Silicon Valley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley) , Crowdfund (http://www.crowdfunding.co.za) aims to connect start-up technology companies with cash, experience and contacts, helping them get to the crucial prototype stage so that they can go big and go global.

    It works like this: in order to build up a fund of cash to invest in start-ups, 1,000 people get together and invest R1,000 (US $128) into a Crowdfund – a pool of investment cash. A board is set up and uses the pooled cash to invest in between 10 and 20 of the best start-up ideas submitted. The ideas are funded and developed into working prototypes in return for a stake in the business. Once the working prototype is up and running, traditional venture capitalists are approached for further funding and usually Crowdfund will then cash in its equity.

    The concept of crowdfunding allows groups of people to use the internet to pool their money together to help support a person or a cause (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_funding) . There are now many variations on the concept, with online services providing crowdfunding for artists, designers, film-makers, causes, scientists and technology pioneers.

    As a model for raising funds for small businesses, the concept has a long history in poor communities across the South. Often, it can be a group of poor women pooling their resources to help each other start small businesses. Technology in the form of the internet and mobile phones has helped the concept jump to the next level, and expanded the pool of people who can support a crowdfunded idea around the world.

    It is an answer to the need for so-called “angel funding” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_investor) : somebody with lots of cash who is willing to help a start-up entrepreneur. Crowdfund’s founders felt South Africa lacked enough angel funders to meet the needs of the country’s technology start-ups. This can be a big problem in countries where there is no history or culture of angel funding and searching far and wide for the “next big idea.”

    In April of this year, Crowdfund was able to raise R1 million (over US $128,000) from 229 investors.

    Venture capitalists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital) – people or investment groups looking for high-growth start-ups to invest in – usually prefer to put their money into proven ideas for big, fast returns. They often lack interest in smaller ideas that may grow more slowly. It is a classic dilemma: how can an entrepreneur know if their idea will work if nobody will give them the cash to prove it?

    This is a critical problem in the information age. As broadband technology spreads across Africa, the opportunities for online businesses will just grow and grow. But few will be able to benefit and African start-ups will not stand a chance against global competition if funding is not available to nurture new businesses.

    Crowdfund assesses ideas and identifies skill shortfalls. The cash is used to help with the skills shortage, provide office space, bandwidth, hosting and mentorship. The funded team will also have access to legal, marketing and management experts to get through the development stage and avoid costly mistakes. The development process in stage one takes three months. The Crowdfund Board will then search for potential investors to take the start-up to stage two and a working prototype.

    By this stage negotiations will take place to set the start-up off on the path to global success. They are helped with the tricky negotiation process with investors.

    Apart from the start-up cash, the powerful idea behind Crowdfund is the network of support and advice that comes with it. Two of the board members are South Africans based in San Francisco, USA, and can make that crucial connection with the buzzing U.S. technology scene. Investors are asked to mentor the start-up concepts, meaning start-ups are accessing normally costly business advice.

    Crowdfund tries to get a response back to potential start-ups within 48 hours (http://digitalgarage.co.za/2010/04/12/filtering-the-applications-for-funding/) , so, if you have a great idea, get submitting!

    Published: June 2010

    Resources

    • TechMasai: Pan-African start-up news and reviews. Website: www.techmasai.com
    • Kickstarter: This new site allows US artists, journalists, entrepreneurs, explorers and others to raise the funds for their next big idea. Anyone with an idea for a new endeavour can post a description of their project on Kickstarter along with a deadline, a funding goal and incentives to encourage others to pledge financial support. Website: http://www.kickstarter.com/
    • AfricaUnsigned: This African alternative way of producing African music started this year. Unsigned artists record their music, funded by fans. Music fans from all over the world listen to the selection of artists, pick their favorite(s) and chip in a minimum of $1 dollar to the recording of a professional EP. The music is then distributed to the fans who backed the artist and sold on all major online stores (incl. Amazon & iTunes). Website: www.AfricaUnsigned.com
    • Afrinnovator: Is about telling the stories of African start-ups, African innovation, African made technology, African tech entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs. Their mission is to ‘Put Africa on the Map’ by covering these kinds of stories from all over Africa. As their website says, “if we don’t tell our own story, who will tell it for us?” Website: http://afrinnovator.com

    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 2022