Author Archive
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“Don’t let the tech wag the MEL dog.” This quote sums up the conversation from the London Tech Salon focused on “How can ICTs improve Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL)?” Essentially it means that when exploring the applicability of ICT we have to ensure we start from what MEL is setting out to achieve and…
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If you had 90 seconds to answer a question you did not know the answer to, what would you do? Admit to the gap in your knowledge? Take a guess at the answer? Or Google the answer on your phone? The majority of people would opt for the later. Technology has not only changed the…
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NGOs and social service organizations are increasingly turning to mobile technology as a tool for designing and delivering services to the poor, whether in health, education or any other sector. And of course a major element of these services is often the delivery of cash transfers, for which mobile money can play a critical role….
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Internet access, in particular via mobile technology, gives citizens a medium through which to exercise their political voice. It can be used to challenge preexisting power systems and is a potential game-changer in countries with undemocratic regimes. As we’ve seen with the Arab Spring, citizens can use Internet tools to place the fates of governments…
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Our February 6th Technology Salon in New York City focused on the organizational challenges that development organizations face when trying to innovate or integrate ICTs into their programs and operations. We looked at the idea of “innovation” and different ways to approach it. We asked what “innovation” really means and why “technology” and “innovation” seem…
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This is a guest post from Jamie Narkunski, who works as a UX consultant at ThoughtWorks NYC. I recently attended a Tech Salon where the subject of grant applications came up. Part of the conversation revolved around the issue that the complexity, format, and investment required in the traditional grant application process acts as a…
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The NYC Technology Salon on February 28th examined the connection between bigger, better data and resilience. We held morning and afternoon Salons due to the high response rate for the topic. Jake Porway, DataKind; Emmanuel Letouzé, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative; and Elizabeth Eagen, Open Society Foundations; were our lead discussants for the morning. Max Shron, Data…
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Geodata is popping up everywhere. Companies, agencies and organizations now dazzle audiences with beautiful graphics that are supposed to represent what’s happening in a given industry, geographic area etc. Uber, the car service has maps that show the location of every Uber driver across the world, in what they call “God View.” At the February…
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At the December Technology Salon, the word “Local Content” emerged as multifaceted term that has different definitions across development organizations and sectors. Priya Jaisinghani and Jonathan Dolan of USAID, and John Garrity of Cisco, led the discussion about what orgs are doing in regards to Local Content. Participants’ definitions of Local Content ranged from news,…
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33,000 stores, 61 years of business, and more than 1 billion served. Can you guess which organization these numbers are associated with? McDonald’s. Imagine if development organizations had these kinds of statistics. Imagine if they could track results to this degree. Would programs save money? Be more efficient? What would it take to harness data…
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The salon style conversation featured Columbia University and popular aid blogger Chris Blattman, GiveDirectly co-founder and UCSD researcher Paul Neihaus and Plan USA CEO Tessie San Martin. The ensuing discussion, operating under the Chatham House Rules of no attribution, featured representatives from large NGOs, microfinance organizations and UN agencies. Research from Kenya, Uganda and Liberia show both the promise and shortcomings of cash transfers.
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The Technology Salon on “How is ICT Impacting Education in Rwanda?” in Washington, DC featured lead discussants David Rurangirwa, ICT/Education Specialist for USAID/Rwanda, who described the Rwanda Education Commons and Jacques Murinda, Executive Director, OLE Rwanda, who explained initiatives that OLE is implementing using TeacherMates and OLPC XO-1 laptops.
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Let us start with the classic (borderline cliché) development proverb: if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, but if he is taught how to fish, he will eat for a lifetime. It was this analogy that got conversation started at the latest Technology Salon, “Are Mobile Money Cash Transfers the…
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I am Russell Southwood of Smart Monkey TV and in July, I was at the “How is ICT Impacting Education in Rwanda?” Tech Salon DC on the experience of using technology in education in Rwanda. Several of those who spoke emphasized the importance and centrality of the teacher in the education system.
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Games have been a point of contention in the education technology field for well over a decade, but thanks to the raw determination of Henry Jenkins, James Gee, Katie Salen and other game enthusiasts, the deconstruction of the games paradox has made space for games with social impact.
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Imagine playing Grand Theft Auto V, (and maybe if you’re lucky, today you really are). You’ve just stolen a car, and as you’re racing down the street, you decide to take a phone call. A cop pulls you over for using a mobile phone while driving. In the next level, your character must decide if…
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Over the past 5 years Nairobi, or the ‘Silicon Savanah,’ has blossomed into a global hub and a regional role model for cultivating innovation. mPesa, Safaricom’s mobile money platform, has led the globe in electronic payments serving emerging markets and base of the pyramid. Nairobi is home to the first tech incubator in Africa, the…
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I am Anna Shaw and I recently attended a Tech Salon that really got me thinking. We spent a morning discussing, What Are the Technology Challenges in Congo Brazzaville? The conversation started out with a relatively typical examination of the challenges the ICT4D community knows all too well. The cost of mobile phones is too…
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I am Josephine Mutugu and at the Nairobi Technology Salon on What is the Next Mobile Development App that Will Scale? we launched into the discussion with a brief summary of the iHub report “Mobile Phone Usage at the Kenyan Base of the Pyramid.” In particular, we wanted to explore what the next development app…
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I am Amos Cruz and below are my thoughts around a recent Technology Salon on “How Can We Make ‘Cloud’ Solutions Relevant in the Offline World” with a cohort of though leaders and decision makers in information technology and international development.