Africa is home to about 1.1 Billion people, sub-saharan Africa is the second largest mobile technology market after Asia and the fastest growing one, with the GSMA forecasting the region’s mobile users will reach 346 million by 2017.
The rapid advancement of technology means that not all mobile applications will actually make it out there—-for a reality check, take a look at the Google Play store and Apple Store, in Africa on the other hand we are blessed with several challenges which means our young, creative programmers and developers create products that actually transform lives, in a big way.
Without doubt the mobile phone is at the forefront of innovation in Africa, every new technology seeks to solve the challenges being faced by 1.1 billion people through mobile tailored services.
If you are looking for inspiration, now you know where to visit next…..!
Today the mobile phone has penetrated every facet of society from farming to banking, mobile technology is changing many lives in Africa — fast. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of households in 23 countries in sub-Saharan Africa had at least one mobile phone in 2013, with median growth of 27% since 2008 and median annual growth of 5%.
The combination of mobile phone SMS, geographic information systems (GIS), Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp and other technologies are increasingly being used to warn communities of potential crisis and inform them how to prepare, and to help governments and aid agencies predict how emergencies may unfold.
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| FrontlineSMS |
At Geographic Information Solutions we continues to pioneer trainings on the use of open source solutions like ODK, FrontlineSMS, QGIS etc as tools that NGO’s can utilize. Below are some of ways technology is being used in early warning and preparedness, especially in disaster prone areas in Sub-saharan Africa.
Market monitoring
Aid agencies are increasingly using mobile phones to monitor and analyse market data in remote areas. Buyers, traders or other informants communicate information about food availability, the functioning of local markets, and food prices to agencies like the World Food Programme (WFP) using SMS.
These programmes are used all over the world, including in Kenya, northern Mali, Niger, Somalia and Tanzania. Agencies then use this data to inform programming – cash vouchers may be provided in markets with high availability and high prices, for instance, and food assistance may be provided in areas of low availability.
Health early warning messages
Many organizations now use mobile phones to help prevent health emergencies. For instance, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in West Africa, Oxfam and other agencies say they send out periodic health information related to Ebola, HIV/AIDS, malaria, reproductive health, hygiene and other issues to raise awareness among phone users.
A recent survey of the impact of these health messages by IFRC in Sierra Leone found that 90 percent of people who received such messages changed their behaviours in a positive way.
“When it comes to mitigating crises, we obviously need to be more proactive, not reactive, and this technology really helps us with that,” said Moustapha Diallo, IFRC spokesperson in Dakar, Senegal.
In April 2013, to pre-empt a cholera outbreak in Sierra Leone during the year’s rainy season (in 2012 the country suffered its worst cholera outbreak in 15 years), IFRC set up an SMS system called the Trilogy Emergency Relief Application (TERA), which can send vital information to more than 36,000 people in a single area in less than one hour.
“We’ve been able to reach more than a million people this way, which is more than we could have reached using other methods,” Diallo said. “I think that all humanitarian organizations are now aware of the value of using such technology, and that it will really change the direction that we go in the future.”
Community early warning
Advanced notice of an impending natural disaster can give people a valuable, and often life-saving, head start when it comes to reaching safety.
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| Flooding in Chad. Use of technology to warn of disasters is increasing Photo: Pierre Peron/OCHA |
In Malawi, communities living along the banks of the Katchisa-Linthipe River, a high-risk flood zone, worked with Italian NGO COOPI (‘Cooperazione Internazionale’), with funding from the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office’s disaster preparedness programme (DIPECHO), to monitor water levels. The measurements were sent to communities downstream via mobile phone. If water levels start to rise, people have time to prepare for possible flooding.
Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Save the Children and IFRC have also sent out “blast messages” to warn people of impending threats, such as high flood risk, imminent storms or disease outbreaks in Haiti, Kenya Madagascar, Niger, and other countries.
Speeding up delivery
According to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), a pilot programme of Action Aid and infoasaid in Kenya last year showed that sending advance text messages to aid recipients about pending deliveries cut down distribution time from three hours to 30 minutes.
Similarly, IFRC says they were able to reach more people in a shorter amount of time in Nigeria when distributing mosquito nets just by sending out text messages beforehand.
Geo-hazard mapping
WFP has partnered with NGOs, UN agencies and governments around the world to map vegetation, crop coverage, market locations and water sources in areas that are prone to natural disasters, using technologies such as satellite imagery, spatial analysis and GIS.
Many governments have also begun creating geo-hazard maps, which identify areas that are prone to natural disasters, such as flash floods, soil erosion or landslides. When a natural disaster occurs, these same technologies can be used to map out where roads have been destroyed or washed away, and to pinpoint the location of victims.
CRS first started using this system during the 2010 earthquake in Haiti to map out destroyed homes, track the construction of 10,500 transitional structures and calculate piles of rubble. It has since expanded the program to Madagascar, the Central Africa Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and plans to reach 30 other emergency-prone countries over the next 18 months.
In West Africa, IFRC, along with the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Change Centre, has been using weather forecasts from the African Centre of Meteorological Application for Development to create easy-to-read maps, which allow field offices in risk zones to preposition supplies and quickly deploy teams in the event of a disaster.
Monitoring payments to indicate vulnerability
Mobile cash transfers to vulnerable people are now routinely used by WFP and its partners, both in and before crises. By collecting data on recipients, these cash programmes can also be used to signal impending crises.
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For instance, if many recipients are suddenly in need of more cash immediately after a transfer, or if many begin defaulting on micro-loans, aid organizations know to look for underlying causes.
Mobile technology will continue to be the preferred means of service delivery to the ever growing population in Sub-saharan Africa. Unlike other markets, Africa will continue to be the cradle of people centered innovations for several years to come.
Please feel free to share your experience on the trans-formative effects of technology in your organization, or innovative efforts you are taking towards humanitarian service delivery.