The Truth About Disruptive Development in the Digital Village
After a quick Twitter interaction, I find myself having agreed to write this caveat to Ken Banks’ recently published article The Truth About Disruptive Development published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. So I’ll start by taking a step back to ask myself what aspects of his proposed points make me hesitate with a second […]
The pros and cons of Kenya’s role as technology pioneer and East African frontier market
Rural Kenyan schoolhouse, somewhere near Kisii, March 2012 Only two years have passed since the publication of the Emerging Africa series of articles for Dirk Knemeyer’s GoInvo blog starting in February 2011. Since then I’ve had a much closer look at Kenya’s current state of the art when it comes to internet diffusion, renewable energy […]
Human centered systems design: Navigating complexity through flexibility
Drawing credit: JAM visualdenken Systems designed for use by communities tend to operate differently from back end or operational processes. Its only natural given the unpredictable nature of crowds. I’m sure there are a lot of people looking into this field, with greater experience and knowledge than I. However, I bring this up due to […]
Lowering barriers: Its about access, not the device
When Vanderbeeken sent me a link yesterday about Nokia working closely with Facebook to get the next billion online, it reminded me of this crude diagram I’d constructed back when I was watching this space far more closely than I do now. Twitter and Facebook are the two big names that weren’t even on our […]
Priorities for an internet on the mobile platform for Africa’s prepaid economy
Something that Gustav Praekelt said in the news about access to no-cost information being a basic human right at the Mobile Web Africa caught my attention. There is still a gaping void in services accessible to and customized for the needs of the mass majority of mobile phone owners in the world. The next billion […]
Cashpower: prepaid electricity in Rwanda
Maarja Motus, an Estonian designer and my recent intern spent 3 weeks in Rwanda recently conducting some research on my behalf. Here’s an extract from her report on Cashpower, the Rwandese term for prepaid electricity. An electricity agent (Cashpower agent) next to Kigali market has 300 customers, only 10 of them buy for whole month […]
From Motorola to Samsung: Eras of global mobile leadership
A recent conversation on Twitter with Neelakantan on the topic of Apple and emerging markets led us down the rabbit hole of reminiscing on mobile phones and their history of leadership in the recent past. We’ve read, written and commented on mobile phones since 2006 or so, and today’s foray into the archives inspired me […]
Reflecting on The Informal Economy, October 2012
John Keith Hart, who first saw the economic activity of the “unemployed” in Accra, Ghana back in the beginning of the 1970’s, almost exactly 40 years ago, opened the symposium with the statement that the informal economy had gone mainstream. After all, he said, here was a gathering of folks from around the world, ready […]
Questioning the narrative of extreme affordability for mobile phones
Yesterday I had a long conversation with someone whose job is related closely to mobile phone design. You’d recognize his employer’s name very easily. He asked me about extremely affordable phones for the low income segment in emerging markets. Late in the year of 2012, I found myself hesitating before answering immediately with a resounding […]
The Informal Economy Symposium, Barcelona on October 12th 2012
Our aim with this symposium is to explore the global scope, innovations and potential futures of the informal economy. Opening Keynote will be John Keith Hart, who coined the term “informal economy” and the day long symposium on the 12th of October will be closed by John Thackara. There will be three panel discussions, as […]
