New developments and curiosities from a changing global media landscape: People, Spaces, Deliberation brings trends and events to your attention that illustrate that tomorrow's media environment will look very different from today's, and will have little resemblance to yesterday's.
After months of preparation, the Sanitation Hackathon weekend is upon us.
In dozens of countries around the world, IT and sanitation experts will join forces for an intensive brainstorming and programming marathon to develop innovative applications for some of the world’s sanitation challenges.
These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.
“The Mapping Digital Media project examines the global opportunities and risks created by the transition from traditional to digital media. Covering 60 countries, the project includes data on how these changes affect news about political, economic, and social affairs. Visit the Open Society Foundations’ website to see the full version of each country’s report.
CIMA worked with the Open Society Foundations to identify the most important digital media indicators in the series of reports. The mapping tool allows for the visualization of these indicators from each report and enables the comparison of digital media penetration in various countries. Please note that some data from the reports has been recalculated to ensure that comparable data is presented in the map.” READ MORE
Linda Raftree
ICT for WASH and public service delivery
“In June, two organisations focussed on using ICT (Information and Communications Technology) in the water and sanitation sector joined forces in Cape Town. SeeSaw, a social enterprise that customises ICT to support sanitation and water providers and iComms, a University of Cape Town research unit (Information for Community Oriented Mu nicipal Services) co-hosted a two day event to look at how ICT tools are changing the way that public services function in developing countries.
There are growing expectations that harnessing ICT intelligently can bring about radical improvements in the way that health, education and other sectors function, particularly in developing countries. SeeSaw and iComms wanted to look at this in more detail – and to build on the open sharing of experience to provide general principles to those planning to harness ICT for public service delivery. Their overarching goal is to help practitioners cut through much of the complexity and hype surrounding ICT usage and give them a robust set of guidelines with which to plan and negotiate partnerships and projects on the ground.” READ MORE
These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.
Mashable
How to Use Mobile Devices to Solve Global Problems
"In 1999, half of the world had either never used a phone or had to travel more than two hours to reach the nearest one. Years later, mobile devices are being used in extremely innovative ways to connect and empower people around the world.
'It's not about being connected,' said Larry Irving, co-founder of the Mobile Alliance for Global Good, at the 2012 Social Good Summit on Sunday. 'It's about being connected with a purpose.'" READ MORE
Transparencia Mexicana
A New Role for Citizens in Public Procurement
"Globalisation has the potential to raise living standards for citizens around the world, as well as bearinthe risk of excluding people from those benefits. Ensuring that globalisation contributes to a more equitable and sustainable form of economic growth requires the participation of citizens in monitoring how the global economy is changing and how it impacts the life of people.
The Arab Spring has shown the power of people in their potential to change political systems. Transparency International, the global civil society organisation leading the fight against corruption, aspires to support the emergence of a broad-based social movement standing up to corruption, especially where it violates human rights and threatens the most vulnerable. In Transparency International’s Strategy 2015, we underline that sustainable change requires broad public support. A widespread public engagement will reinforce the demand for solid institutions and provide a strong mandate for political leadership to succeed in their commitments.” READ MORE
Please watch Women Entrepreneurship to Reshape the Economy through Innovation in MENA, at the European Development Days live on Tuesday October 16 at 11:00 AM cet
Across the developing world, women business owners are far more prevalent at the informal and micro-scale than growth oriented small and medium sized enterprises. Women still face an uneven playing field in education, employment, earnings, and decision-making power.
The Middle East and Northern African (MENA) region faces its own particular set of challenges. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the development of strong economies and opportunities for both men and women to pursue a livelihood without barriers is integral to the future of the region. There is an enormous enterprise and job creation agenda to be fulfilled in the Middle East. A recent study by the OECD notes that today, only 27% of women in the region join the labor force, compared to 51% in other low, middle and high-income economies, and only 11% are self-employed, against 22% of men.
These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.
TechCrunch
Meet The $35 Tablet That Could Connect The World
“TechCrunch just got its hands on the new Aakash UbiSlate 7Ci, the super-cheap tablet that will attempt to connect every student in India to the Internet. Educators have long hoped that cheap computing devices could bridge the global information divide, but previous attempts have been dogged by disappointing performance, lack of Internet access, and financial barriers. The latest version of India’s $35 tablet comes equipped with WiFi and has an optional upgrade ($64) of a cellular Internet package of $2/month for 2 GB of data (roughly 25 emails, 25 websites, 2 minutes of streaming video, and 15 minutes of voice chat a day). More importantly, it is expected to launch this month in India with the government’s commitment to connect even the most remote areas to the Internet. The impact of a successful rollout is difficult to overestimate: rural schools that have been connected to the Internet show immediate and tremendous gains.” READ MORE
These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.
Stories
Interactive: Mapping the World's Friendships
“Technology bridges distance and borders. Individuals today can keep in touch with their friends and family in completely new ways — regardless of where they live. We explored these international connections through Facebook and found some trends — some predictable, some wholly unexpected, and some still inexplicable.
Who can explain the strong link between the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the poorest countries in the heart of Africa, and Ecuador? The reason the Central African Republic might be good friends with Kazakhstan is likewise mysterious to us.” READ MORE
For fun, suppose you were a software developer, and you came up with a terrific idea to communicate public transit information. For example, imagine your city experiences frequent floods, and you have devised an automated system that sends SMS texts to passengers, advising them of alternative transit routes during emergencies.
How much revenue do you think you could earn for that software? How many people could you positively impact?
What if I told you that today, by taking advantage of one tiny revolution in open data, you could take those numbers and multiply them by 350, turning $100,000 into $35 million, or 1 million people into 350 million? Sounds pretty good, right? If you are in international development, sounds like a promotion…
 |
| Noel Aspras in the Philippines says that "even the lowliest of farmers owns a cellphone now" because it has become a necessity. Watch the video below. |
When I lost my mobile phone two years ago, I felt dismembered. After all, my cellphone was constantly by my side, serving as alarm clock, calendar, and default camera for those ‘Kodak’ moments you couldn’t let pass. It was also a nifty calculator that I turned to when splitting restaurant bills with friends.
After grieving the loss of my “finger” for two days, I pulled myself together and got a new, smarter phone that allowed for faster surfing on the web, audio recording and a host of other functions that, well, made me quickly forget the lost unit. A blessing in disguise, I told myself.
So when no less than a farmer from Pagsanjan in the Philippines’ Laguna province told me that mobile phones were “no longer a luxury, but a necessity,” and added that “even the lowliest of farmers riding on a carabao (water buffalo) owns one,” I couldn’t agree more.
These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.
Wired
Africa? There's an app for that
“In June this year Apple CEO Tim Cook shared with the waiting crowd at its Worldwide Development Conference that Apple would be giving access to the App Store to 32 new countries, bringing the total to 152. Tim Cook also shared some impressive statistics: the App Store now has 400 million accounts; there are 650,000 apps available for download; there have been 30 billion app downloads and more than $5 billion (£3.2 billion) has been paid to developers.
Of those 32 new countries there are a number in Africa, ranging from countries like Chad with millions of potential app users to remote São Tomé and Príncipe, with just thousands.” READ MORE
How relevant is ICT for transport? The emergence of low-cost open-source mapping tools; widespread cellular network coverage in developing countries; declining costs of mobile phone hardware; and increasing Internet use by public agencies have resulted in unprecedented opportunities to support transport planning and management in developing countries.
These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Building a Toilet Fair - Day 1
“Usually, Sunday would see the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Seattle campus empty save for a duck or two, and maybe a few zealous weekend workers. However, this last week was another story entirely. The campus was buzzing as exhibitors from around the world started to set up toilet prototypes for the upcoming Reinvent the Toilet Fair.
The Reinvent the Toilet Fair held August 14-15, 2012 at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Wash. showcases innovations from around the world that are creating a new vision for the next generation of sanitation. The fair aims to inspire collaboration around a shared mission of delivering a reinvented toilet for the 2.5 billion people worldwide who don’t have access to safe and affordable sanitation.
Here's a look behind the scenes during day 1 of transforming our campus into a toilet fair.” READ MORE
These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.
The Guardian
70 journalists killed in six months
“At least 70 journalists and support staff were killed while on assignment in the first half of this year, making it one of the bloodiest periods of recent times.
Fifteen were confirmed dead in Syria alone between January and June, according to the biannual Killing The Messenger survey of news media casualties produced for the International News Safety Institute (INSI) by the Cardiff school of journalism.
The next worst countries were Nigeria, where seven unidentified newspaper staff were killed by a bomb, Brazil, Somalia, Indonesia, where five journalists died in a plane crash, and Mexico.” READ MORE
These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.
International Center for Journalists
Digital Map to Track Corruption Launches in Colombia
“A new digital mapping tool to track and monitor corruption in Colombia on a national scale, launched July 24th a result of our partnership with the Consejo de Redacción, a country-wide organization of investigative journalists.
The "Monitor de Corrupción" (or "Corruption Monitor") will provide journalists and citizens a platform to submit reports that will expose and map incidents of corruption.
It’s a project I anticipate will contribute to making Colombia a more transparent and stronger society. The idea for this grew out of another similar project by Knight Fellow Jorge Luis Sierra.” READ MORE
In the late 1990s, an international consultant told me that a proposed electronic health information system in the Dominican Republic was “like Star Wars and will not work in this country.”
Our objective was to improve service delivery by virtually connecting health providers to share medical records with one another as patients moved from health centers to hospitals. We learned that this was much more than an overnight task, requiring a sustained medium-term effort by the government to get the system fully up and running.
In recent years, I’ve seen similar efforts realized in the Russian Federation, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Botswana. In two Russian regions, Chuvash Republic and Voronezh Oblast, for example, electronic records are helping coordinate the flow of clinical and financial information across the health systems as facilities, departments within hospitals, and health insurance agencies have been “virtually” connected through broadband networks. The electronic records are supporting clinical decision-making, facilitating performance measurement and pay-for-performance initiatives, and ultimately the continuity of care as patients move across the health system. Inter- and intra-regional medical consultations and distance learning activities are also being supported by telemedicine networks that connect specialized hospitals with general facilities.
