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You’re staring down a new Request for Proposal and you know the goals can be achieved quicker, cheaper, and more effectively with the help of a software solution. You want to include your killer app in the proposal but you’re a development expert not a hacker. Where to start?
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Let us start by agreeing that technology has great promise in increasing the economic empowerment of youth in the developing world. We all believe it. But what is that promise in reality? Which technologies hold greater promise? What innovations work? That was the issue we discussed at the Technology Salon on Youth Economic Empowerment with…
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Today’s youth population is the largest in the history of the world, and 90% of these young people live in developing countries. The global youth unemployment rate is the highest on record, and we’re seeing discontent and disenfranchisement play out on the news each day. In fact, the revolution in Tunisia started with an under-employed…
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According to 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, the 73% of women in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia who do not have a mobile phone represent $13 billion per year in incremental revenue for mobile…
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Brooke Partridge, CEO of Vital Wave Consulting, put forth a startling proposition in a previous Technology Salon. She described a new ICT4D paradigm: Women + Mobile Phones + mServices = Economic Development. She believes that combining the traditional role of women in the family and the power of services delivered through the mobile phone (mServices)…
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At the Technology Salon on “How to Incorporate ICT into Proposals”, we discussed some of the challenges and solutions for proposal writers when they try to incorporate information and communication technologies into future program design.
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We all want to add the technology sizzle to our proposals. Nothing wins an RFP these days like “e” this or “m” that. Yet ICT projects are complicated, and hasty technology additions in proposals often leave implementers struggling to achieve project milestones after the contract is won.
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The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has a proud history of transforming development through science & technology. As part of the ambitious reform effort, USAID Forward, USAID is developing a set of Grand Challenges for Development, a framework to focus the Agency and development community on key barriers that limit breakthrough development progress….
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US Government agencies have issued a number of Grand Challenges to spur science, technology, and innovation. There is even Challenge.gov to solicit new challenges and solutions from the public. USAID is also looking at Grand Challenges, and had a recent conference to discuss them: Transforming Development through Science, Technology and Innovation.
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On the occasion of the 2010 mHealth Summit, please join the United Nations Foundation, the Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership, and the mHealth Alliance for a luncheon discussion of the forthcoming report: Health Information as Health Care: The Role of Mobile in Unlocking Health Data This report examines the ecosystem of patient-related health information, tracing data…
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At the Technology Salon on Rural Power Solutions for the Developing World, Eric Youngren of Solar Nexus International started us off with the basics, and I learned about the difference between power and energy: Power is the instantaneous creation and use of electricity – what is needed right now to power an electronic device, and…
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Electrical power is key for an ICT deployment – and many other basic services as well. Yet it is often the main barrier to deployment because often it simply doesn’t exist in rural and underserved areas, or “off-grid” locations. If electrical systems do exist, they can be expensive, intermittent, and unreliable. In short, there is…
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At the How Peer-to-Peer University is Hacking Higher Education Technology Salon in San Francisco, Philipp Schmidt discussed his Peer 2 Peer University initiative, an innovative approach to further the reach and impact of higher education.
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Unlike our usual Technology Salons, which are not recorded, the ICT4D, Innovation, and Millennium Development Goals Salon at the UN Week Digital Media Lounge was taped by Mashable for your viewing pleasure.
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As part of this month’s Educational Technology Debate on mEducation initiatives, the Technology Salon will be looking at ways to apply mobile phones in education, and scale them across organizations with an mEducation Alliance.
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The UN Week Digital Media Lounge will be highlighting new approaches that are tackling Millennium Development Goal challenges. Innovative information and communication technologies are one way to accelerate progress toward meeting the MDGs. But what are the big new ideas? Who is pushing the innovation envelope? And how are humanitarian agencies using these ICT tools…
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Imagine imputing an object into a rigid four-year, $100,000+ process, hoping that when it finally leaves this system its a useful tool. That’s the current university system, where higher education resembled the Waterfall software development process. Now contrast it with short bursts of learning using educational materials openly available online, with constant feedback on progress…
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There has been a great deal of media attention on the ‘One Laptop Per Child’ (OLPC) project since the announcement of a “$100 laptop” over five years ago. Most of this attention focuses on its potential to address the educational challenges in developing countries. Much less is known about what is actually happening on-the-ground with…
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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…
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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…