While everyone is amazed at the quick proliferation of mobile phones in the developing world, here's a startling statistic which should check our unbridled enthusiasm for m-everything: 73% of women in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia do not have a mobile phone.

Across all developing countries, adult women are 21% less likely to have a phone than men. In absolute terms, that's a 300 million-woman gender gap. Yet that gap is not evenly distributed. For instance, rural women who work outside the home are more likely to pay for phone use themselves and spend more on mobile phones as a percentage of income than their urban counterparts.

Why do women own and pay for mobile phones? Because they see tangible benefits: across all women, 90% feel safer and more connected thanks to their mobile phones and almost 50% used a mobile phone to search for employment or increase their income.

And mobile line operators should take note. The annual incremental revenue opportunity in closing the gender gap would be $13 billion per year, and even at current rates, 66% of all new mobile subscribers will be women. Simply put, women are the face of growth for the mobile industry in the developing world.

Such are the findings of the Women & Mobile: A Global Opportunity (PDF), authored by Vital Wave Consulting and sponsored by the GSMA Development Fund and the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women.

But Brooke Partridge, CEO of Vital Wave, took this concept a step further. She gave us a new development formula to challenge our conventional thinking:

Women + Mobile Phones = Economic Development

We all know that equipping women in low-income countries with productivity tools earns tremendous returns for development - it's not just good for them, it's good for their families, villages, societies, countries.

We know that women spend up to 90% of their income on their families and are responsible for up to 80% of food production in many low and middle-income countries. These women run families and businesses.

And we also know that mobile phones are uniquely positioned as tools for growth in our era. Research has shown that mobile phones are associated with faster economic and business growth.

Combining the two - the role of women and the power of a mobile phone - has the potential for exponential impact. It's the perfect, and the obvious combination; empowering women through the benefits of mobile phone ownership is the easiest and most straightforward measure we can adopt to advance social and economic growth in developing countries.

Speaker notes of Brooke Partridge, Vital Wave Consulting

The Role of mServices

After dropping that bombshell on the Technology Salon, Brooke went on to explain that closing the mobile phone gender gap will not be easy. Of course cost and access are issues, but she found that perceived need is the largest barrier to female adoption.

Women, it turns out, just see a phone as a communication device for talking with those that they already know. And if everyone they know is near to them - in their family or community, they don't feel the need for a device to reach them. Either they can easily walk to them or can borrow someone else's phone to call them when needed.

So how to drive adoption, close the gender gap, and increase economic development? mServices. In the Salon, we brainstormed on what those mServices could be, and came up with these four:

1. mPayments: With M-Pesa reaching throughput equal to an astounding 11% of Kenya's GDP in 2009, its the killer mServices application. In her research, Brooke found Kenyan women to be more aware of the value that mServices could provide them, because of their exposure to M-Pesa.
2. mEmployment: Remembering that 50% of women looked for jobs or increased income through mobile phone usage, we quickly agreed that mobile job boards or an mCraigslist would be popular if targeted at women.
3. mHealth: Women are usually the home health provider, so offering them healthcare services (advice to diagnosis to treatment) over mobile phones should be an obvious mService
4. mAgriculture: Women are responsible for up to 80% of locally-consumed food production, so they should be the target farmers in mobile agriculture services.

mServices have barriers to deployment. The services need to be very low cost, and yet high volume to be sustainable over millions of often rural and poor users. And to scale them beyond interesting pilots, there needs to be ongoing early-stage support - both capacity building and financial - that's often missing in the gap between public donor program and private venture capital.

And of course, as we've found in previous Salons, sustainaiblity and scale are relative and contentious. Scale can be a community, a province, a country, or a continent depending on who is measuring sustainability. In the world of mobile phone operators, its almost always in the millions - either subscribers or revenue.

Women + Mobile Phones + mServices = Economic Development

Brooke concluded the Salon by remind us that while the mobile phone gender gap may look like $13 Billion dollar for-profit problem, mServices deserve attention from women's groups and development organizations.

Scaling mServices is the key to closing the mobile phone gender gap, mobile phone ownership will empower women across the developing world with new access to information, services, and goods, and therefore mobile phones usage by women is directly linked with, and will result in, overall economic development.

Over 300 million women are being left out of the benefits of mobile phone ownership as it becomes the most ubiquitous technology in the developing world, which has major implications given women's role in social and economic development.

Furthermore, the potential value of cell phone ownership increases as mobile services (mServices) including health, finance, and commerce become available - half of the women who do have mobile phones have either increased their income or looked for employment using them.

Yet how can value be shown in mobile phone gender parity? Where are the challenges to scaling mService implementations? And what's the typology of different mService applications themselves and their relation to women's use of mobiles?

For the July Technology Salon, Vital Wave Consulting's CEO, Brooke Partridge, will share her company's insights and the results of a major new report on the mobile phone gender gap - Women & Mobile: A Global Opportunity (PDF), authored by Vital Wave Consulting and sponsored by the GSMA Development Fund and the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women.

This ground-breaking analysis of emerging economies quantifies the opportunity for achieving gender parity in mobile phone ownership and characterizes the relationship that women have with mobile technology.

With detailed case studies, value chain models, and added opportunity identification from Vital Wave's own analysis, we'll explore the importance and the challenges of scaling mServices implementations across countries and genders.

Closing the Mobile Phone Gender Gap
July DC Technology Salon
Thursday, July 15, 8:30-10am
UN Foundation Conference Room
1800 Mass Avenue, NW, Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20036 (map)

We'll have hot coffee and Krispe Kreme donuts for a morning rush, but seating is limited and the UN Foundation is in a secure building. So the first fifteen (15) to RSVP will be confirmed attendance and then there will be a waitlist.

Special Salon Exclusive!

For those that arrive early, we'll have a sneak peek at the new HUB: Health UnBound community from the mHealth Alliance. David Gutelius will provide a preview and explain how HUB will become an online network connecting the global health, health systems strengthening and technology communities, to improve health outcomes by reducing fragmentation and redundancy

Short Message Service (SMS) text messages, which started as a way for Nokia engineers to test mobile phone network operations, has grown into a killer app - for everyone. At the SMS4Dev Technology Salon in San Francisco, we looked at three ways to apply SMS to pressing development projects.

SMS:Gov

First we discussed the issue of local government communications with their constituencies. The problem being that usually they don't communicate with constituencies outside of infrequent in-person meetings.

By employing software like FrontlineSMS in a SMS:Gov usage model, local governments could offer two compelling services: 311 and MyObama.

• 311: By offering a single, simple text message menu tree using keywords, local governments can categorize constituent needs and wants into categories for prompt response, like the 311 systems in New York, Washington DC, and San Francisco.
• MyObama:Local politicians can use the same process to become knowledgeable on the electorate's concerns, and individualize their message to respond to those concerns, like MyObama did to great success in 2008

Rob Munro discussing his SMS efforts

Categorizing SMS via Artificial Intelligence

But what if the categories for keywords are not known in advance, or a community doesn't understand the concept of a keyword? Rob Munro faced this challenge in Malawi when implementing FrontlineSMS with rural Community Health Workers (CHWs) who mainly use the Chichewa language.

The doctors at a central clinic spend one hour each day managing incoming CHW text messages, but with a patient population of 250,000 this averages to just 5 seconds per patient per year, and so any automation for triage incoming text messages from CHWs can lead to huge productivity increases.

Rob developed self-learning artificial intelligence algorithms that parsed free form SMS text messages in three different ways:

1. Normalizing spelling variants of keywords by learning linguistically predictable alternations
2. Segmenting words into their component morphemes to identify key substructures (like "patient" as the key form of "patients")
3. Using the normalized/segmented data to classify each message to determine its urgency - patient-related vs. administrative texts

With the algorithm learning from just 600 text messages it was was able to achieve about 95% accuracy, which should hold across any language using an alphabetic writing system and improve as the volume of text messages increases.

Applying SMS to Private Industry

Stepping away from SMS itself, Zach Berke spoke about two ways in which his company, Exygy, is developing text messages to support private industry expansion into the developing world.

• Payment plans: Solar power can be expensive, but how do you have a payment plan for an installed system? Require owners to text in codes they buy from local retailers to unlock another set amount of usage.
• Pharmaceutical validity: Counterfeit pills are a huge issue for consumers, but a simple code printed on a package can be texted to a central verification system to confirm drug authenticy.

Now both of these systems have their challenges. For the solar system, how do you pre-set codes into the hardware, or keep someone from soldering around the payment device. For pharmaceuticals, its printing variable yet secret codes on a specific end-user level package, with each code unique yet short enough to text without error.

Yet it can be done. Unicef used RapidSMS to track the distribution of 63 million mosquito bed nets across Nigeria with test messages on ordinary mobile phones using no-charge SMS shortcodes.

Where the last SMS4D Technology Salon reminded us of the unique gift of mobile technologies to be implemented in the field, The Cloudy SMS4D Salon really drove home mobile phones as a multifunctional tool whose true impact is tied more to the usage than the technology itself.

While we gathered to discuss SMS4D, we really talked about heath reporting and outreach, education, and community building through knowledge management and sharing. It just so happened that these health projects were using SMS codes to report longitudinal child health statistics.

Data gathering in health, and even knowing when to gather data, is a huge burden, often relying on community health workers doing the healthcare version of the Training and Visit system of the agricultural extension world. Waiting around for a planned infrastructure is hopeless, but working with the more incremental nature of mobile can improve reporting rates and reduce errors -- "utter chaos works everywhere" being the best quote of this Technology Salon.

ChildCount+

Childcount builds on existing SMS reporting to enable community health workers to rapidly register children, note any symptoms or diseases they might have, improve patient tracking (and thereby reducing duplication), and schedule immunizations and outreach. The SMS "encoding" builds off of a simple and familiar paper form, which is handy for training (but less useful than a mango tree, as we'll see).

The runner-up quote from this Salon dealt with discussion around the potential risk of intentionally fabricated data -- "humans are awful at falsifying data" -- digitizing and quick, auditable reporting exposes both errors and lies.

Happy Pill

Winning the award for innovative ideas in mHealth was the HappyPill project -- instead of boring old SMS, HappyPills uses "flashing" - where you call a number and hang up immediately to "ping" someone. Usually, flashing is just a free way to ask someone to call you back, or you can sometimes work out extensive codes -- one missed call is just saying hi, two is call me back, three means an emergency, etc..

HappyPills takes this basic, essentially binary interaction and applies it to help improve adherence rates for prescription regimens. A medical center can send out flashes to their patients, and the patients are reminded to take their pills and would then flash back to signal that they took their medicine. It's naturally not foolproof, but hugely more cost effective (almost cost-free) in comparison with sending a community health worker out to the patient on a motorcycle to witness their pill-taking.

Jokko Initiative

It turns out that people are not just willing, but economically motivated and excited to use (and pay for) basic SMS-based services to improve their numeracy and literacy skills, improving their ability to communicate cheaply over their phones as well as better navigate market prices. In these low-technology communities, Tostan's Jokko Initiative is creating a curriculum to enable this via SMS.

Mango tree mobile phone menu navigation

They have also come up with an amazingly simple methodology to introduce people to menu systems using a mango tree metaphor which gracefully transitions from the concrete (planning a climbing route on a real tree to get to a specific mango) to the semi-concrete (the same, on a diagram of a tree), to the abstract (the tree diagram becomes the menu diagram, the mango a specific function).

Anyone who thinks that is too basic has never shown their grandparents a new shiny piece of technology, or had their entire worldview of user interface challenged by someone physically pointing a mouse at a screen).

Patatat

Patatat is an early-stage solution, which puts SMS into the role of a community town hall, newsletter, or email list. It removes not only the normal geographic barriers that a listserv gets around, but also infrastructure barriers, so (for example) farmers across a region or the world can share knowledge around their crops without relying on the grid and hardwired phones/Internet to do so.

This also centralizes costs to one "host" and minimizes it to the community, so a farmer could send one SMS (free to receive, costs to send), and the host would re-broadcast it to the entire "community." With Twitter already showing that it can (technically) report earthquakes faster than the earthquake itself spreads, this rebroadcasting tool also has clear applications in emergency announcements, citizen journalism and a myriad of other fields.

Technology or Development?

So, was this technology salon about technology, or was it about development projects? Sure, all of the projects discussed at the salon happened to use server and cloud-based SMS technologies. They also use paper, physical transportation, and people. That the technology is now moving from the focus of a project to being a (cool, exciting, powerful, still new-and-shiny) tool in the toolbox is truly heartwarming.

It means mobile phone ICT solutions are maturing into a cross-sector role and not into another silo, but a "pillar of excellence".

Are you a Technology Salon subscriber on the West Coast that's feeling left out of our two SMS4D Salons in Washington DC? Don't! We're bringing all the great SMS text messaging fun to San Francisco with SMS4Dev-SF on June 17th.

Mobile phone payment in India

At mission*social, the Inveneo offices on Mission Street in SoMa, we'll have the following three discussants explaining how they're utilizing humble text messaging to change lives in the developing world:

1. Robert Munro will explain how he's developed machine-learning algorithms to categorize free-form SMS to a 95% accuracy - across any language - for SMS:Medic
2. Zach Berke will showcase a SMS verification system that Exygy helped build which protects against pharmaceutical counterfeiting in India and a new SMS micropayment platform for solar power installations
3. Wayan Vota will expand on SMS:Gov, an innovative use of SMS text messaging to create a 311 system for local governments

If you'd like to join us, you'll need to RSVP for this Salon via SMS: text SMS4Dev, your name, your organization to the live SMS:Gov demo at (202) 506-0148. For those that need an example, I would send "SMS4Dev, Wayan Vota, Inveneo" (w/o quotes).

SMS4D-San Francisco
June SF Technology Salon
Thursday, June 17, 8:30-10am
mission*social Conference Room
972 Mission Street, 5th Floor
San Fransisco, CA 94103 (map)

We'll have espresso and donuts for a morning rush, but be sure to RSVP ASAP, as we only have room for 15 people, then there will be a waitlist. In DC, we're filling up the same day as the announcement goes out.

Now that your interest was piqued with last month's SMS for Development Technology Salon, get ready for SMS4D-2: the Cloudy Salon.

On June 10th, we're having another round of SMS-focused guests, this time their solutions are cloud-based vs. last month's local administration. Joining us will be:

• Matt Berg discussing ChildCount+, based on RapidSMS
• Gannon Gillespie explaining the Jokko Initiative from Tostan
• Mike McKay describing both Happy Pill and Patatat
• And Josh, James, Ben, and Wayan again on FronlineSMS usage models

You'll need to RSVP for this Salon via SMS. To join us, text SMS4D, your name, your organization to the live SMS:Gov demo at (202) 506-0148. For those that need an example, I would send "SMS4D, Wayan Vota, Inveneo" (w/o quotes).

Be sure to RSVP ASAP, as we only have room for 15 people, then there will be a waitlist - last month it was 45 people deep!

SMS4D-2: the Cloudy Salon
June DC Technology Salon
Thursday, June 10, 8:30-10am
UN Foundation Conference Room
1800 Mass Avenue, NW, Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20036 (map)

We'll have Krispie Kreme donuts and coffee for a morning rush, and there is even a Salon Bonus: we'll be giving out a USB SMS router during the Salon - a $150 value, yours for free thanks to Inveneo.

The SMS4D Technology Salon focused on the power of Short Message Service (SMS) text technology to create scaled impact, starting at the local and regional level. We went through an inspiring round of implementations and use cases of on-the-ground efforts using FrontlineSMS in cross-sector development situations.

SMS:Gov demo at SMS4D Salon

Throughout the examples, we were constantly reminded that mobile phone-based development solutions - while they may be globally replicable - usually start locally.

Microfinance

Microfinance solutions, tying the payments to the notifications via mpayment were the purview of CreditSMS, lowering the costs of each loan by dramatically reducing transactional costs, allowing MFI account managers to deal with the exceptions (late/missed payments) instead of wasting time and making mistakes in tracking payments to records and managing each interaction.

mHealth

mHealth, a favorite topic of Tech Salons can use SMS to replace timely and costly travel to report medicine stock levels and local disease trends, but also mobile-centric medical records management and remote, low-cost diagnostics tools, all using SMS:Medic.

The data coming out of a tool like this also can bubble up into knowledge products -- a dashboard of geo-tagged symptoms linked to key infectious diseases would be invaluable at spotting outbreaks and managing stock levels, targeted outreach/intervention, or other responses.

eGovernment

Democracy and governance, another example of a sector with clear needs for interactivity and data-gathering, can benefit from SMS:Gov, enabling 311 style systems via SMS to go through a decision tree of interactive text messages to report problems or get information. Anything from reporting a pothole to figuring out what pest is destroying farmer crops. Local government could also data-mine the text message stream to track local trends and spot emerging problems - handily also increasing their likelihood at getting re-elected.

Education

Even mobile-enhanced education was discussed as SMS:Learn, and presented in a very realistic framing at the Salon as an assistance technology to existing educational programs. Trainers and educators could use decision tree text messages as an interactive learning tool or testing method to individualize learning.

Implementation

SMS provides robust measurement and evaluation data - each response is tied to a unique phone number and can be tracked over time. Local governments, donors, and implementing partners could use dashboards from all four of these solutions to monitor usage and effectiveness of various services and expose systemic problems.

Yet, SMS does have its drawbacks. Its visual and written, and not every user will find it an optimal interface, so SMS can be parried with other technologies, like interactive voice response or FM radio, for maximum impact.

Also as with politics, all change is local. The reverberating message from the SMS4D Salon was to have your technology where the decision-makers are. If you want local, on-the-ground reaction to a text message, then the actor and the technology need to be local and on-the-ground too.

Cloud-based, Internet-only apps have their place, but the beauty of locally-managed text messaging is that it operates off-grid. Truly mobile phone-leveraging solutions are those that can follow mobile devices to the place of use - regardless of electricity and Internet connectivity constraints.

Text messaging is a quick and targeted way to reach beneficiaries in the developing world. But you already know that. Yet have you seen an SMS router close-up? Experimented with proven solutions that you can use in your existing programs? Or brainstormed on how SMS could add sizzle to your next proposal?

In the May DC Technology Salon we will have live demonstrations of several real, deployable SMS solutions that are being developed by local experts right here in DC for use around the world focusing on:

• Microfinance
• mHealth & eHealth
• Democracy & Governance
• Education & Adult Learning

This Salon is now closed to new RSVP's - we had 50 requests for 15 slots in the first few hours and the waitlist is already too long to add anyone else.

In fact, you even need to RSVP via SMS! To join us, text TechSalon, your name, your organization to the live SMS demo at (202) 506-0148. For those that need an example, I would send "TechSalon, Wayan Vota, Inveneo" (w/o quotes). Be sure to RSVP ASAP, as we only have room for 15 people, then there will be a waitlist.

SMS for Development
May DC Technology Salon
Tuesday, May 18, 12:30-2pm
UN Foundation Conference Room
1800 Mass Avenue, NW, Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20036 (map)

Be sure to be prompt - we'll have sandwiches and sodas for the quick folks - yet even tardy attendees can get in on the Salon Bonus: we'll be giving out a USB SMS router during the Salon - a $150 value, yours for free thanks to Inveneo.

On April 15th, we had a lively discussion on public-private partnerships with Robert Schneider, Senior Alliance Advisor, in the Office of Development Partnerships, Private Sector Alliances Division at USAID. Rob is the ICT partnerships lead for ODP/PSA, or as many may recognize better, the Global Development Alliances (GDA) office

Do note that while Rob Schneider presented at the meeting, these notes are not his statements or the position of USAID - this is my impression of the cumulative input of all twenty-five Technology Salon participants.

Evolution of Partnerships

Public-private partnerships, of which GDA's and PSA's are a subset, have moved from what was once more of a corporate social responsibility activity to assuage international critics, to become a key competitive business advantage for companies that may also improve relations with host country governments and the local communities in which they operate.

"Avoiding Nigeria" has also become a common refrain, as companies want to make sure the communities in which they operate see them as net benefactors, not as pure extractors.

"Picking Winners"

Good partnerships do not distort local markets; they drive increases in market size and new market penetration where there isn't currently a market to begin with. To take agricultural inputs as an example, when a donor subsidizes business loans for an innovative, first-mover company expansion or guarantees borrower payback of inputs, the donor is helping private enterprise realize the market potential in a risky market. The company, now understanding the risks and returns, can price accordingly, which over time helps other companies do the same - leading to competition, not monopolies.

Incorporating Small Companies

Often, we only hear of partnerships with Fortune 500-type companies and there can be the impression that alliances overlook small American companies and local country firms. To an extent this is true, but mainly because big firms have the capacity to invest the staff time and resources in building partnerships, and the resulting activities have outsize impact - changing Wal*Marts purchasing habits impacts the global retail market.

However,,USAID Missions are encouraged to have close relationships with local companies and many form partnerships with firms at the district and national levels..

Measurement & Evaluation

Funding for measurement and evaluation has been on the decline for years, which makes any level of assessment difficult. In addition, contracting mechanisms discourage long-term review of projects - expenses are not allowed after the contract period, which can be much too soon to see big impacts.

Even when evaluations are performed, they risk being suppressed. Politically, bad news is not encouraged by either public or private organizations, and private companies seeking to sustain a competitive advantage over rivals do not always welcome the publicity of good news.

Yet, social networking technologies like Facebook and Twitter, could allow greater beneficiary participation in evaluations without a large increase in resources.

Strategies for Success

Successful alliances usually are multi-party partnerships - several entities coming together to achieve common goals. This may be daunting at the onset, but by having several participants, partnerships have greater resources and can better survive the defection of a participant.

Concentrating efforts in countries with USAID missions that encourage public-private partnerships and are already bought-in to the benefits that alliances can bring is one way to increase the likelihood of success. However, not every Mission is focused on building alliances at the moment, so implementing partners should assess both mission and private sector appetite for partnership before spending a lot of time creating a partnership.

In addition, implementing partners should seek idea buy-in from all stakeholders - from private industry to USAID to local organizations - before they create a project or seek resources for it. This is key as staff turnover can derail projects if there isn't deep organizational commitment.

Other Impressions

For more participant impressions of the event, please check out PPPs and Sustainability by Matt Vanderwerff of IREX.

On April 8th, Inveneo was pleased to host approximately 20 experts in technology and development for a Technology Salon held at mission*social, a collaborative workspace for social enterprises.

The event was billed as a conversation about the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the Haiti earthquake response, but the conversation focused on a wide range of opportunities and constraints facing the use of ICTs in responding to disasters, wherever they occur.

(We're now bi-coastal! To join the next San Francisco Salon, get invited here.)

The event featured presentations from three ICT and medical professionals with direct experience leveraging ICTs to support disaster response followed by open and free-ranging discussion.

Download Mark's presentation

Mark Summer of Inveneo

To kick us off, Mark Summer (CIO of Inveneo) presented on Inveneo's WiFi networking efforts in post-quake Haiti working primarily with the NetHope alliance. This network provided broadband connectivity to NetHope member organizations - and a few others as well - in the crucial weeks following the quake, when local ISPs were not functioning effectively.

Mark emphasized the value of reliable, low-cost networking technologies, the need for better pre-planning and the importance of building local capacity.

Download Eric's presentation

Eric Rasumussen of InSTEDD

Eric Rasumussen, CEO of InSTEDD, then described a wide range of initiatives in which he and his team were involved in Haiti, including work to facilitate and curate the flow of communications from victims and the public (much of it via SMS) and to feed this information back to first responders.

Eric focused on the importance of tight coordination among responding organizations, that these organizations must be self sufficient in the operating area, and the need for regulatory and policy reforms to enable.

Dr. Kumar Menon of Amrita University

Dr Kumar, of Amrita University, joined via Skype from India to describe in brief his organization's efforts to provide web-enabled critical care capacity in the wake of floods and the 2004 Tsunami. Dr. Kumar focused his comments on the need for reliable broadband connectivity in order to support medical aid via telemedicine during disasters.

There was good debate on several issues, but the following points got a lot of nods from participants:

• There is a general need for more collaboration around an integrated framework for the use of multiple channels of information during disasters
• Organizations involved in ICT response must be entirely self sufficient on the ground (bring 1khz Honda generators!!)
• Development and effectiveness of systems will require a hospitable policy environment (e.g., free SMS during declared disasters, liberalize use of radio spectrum, etc.)
• Better ICT pre-planning is needed (caches of networking equipment, sharing of information resources - ie, mapping data - within local setting, localized caching of Internet content, etc.)
• There must be an appropriate balance between reliance on Internet/cloud and localized content/resources
• Public education about use of alternative communications channels during an emergency will make response more effective

What other ICT lessons learned are there from Haiti?