Afromusing » Kenya

On Innovation

Juliana Rotich — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:19:50 +0000

There are many tomes, missives and observations on Innovation, that it demands freedom, that it is evenly distributed and should be fostered organizationally and even on a country level

Allow me to add one.
To be innovative, you need a healthy modicum of humility. Many a conference has the theme of innovation as part of discussion in almost anything. Innovation in technological context, in development and most recently, innovation in philanthropy. Innovation is something many technologists, futurists and business leaders are in search of. It is like the modern day holy grail in the face of disruptive tech trends that usurp business models, not to mention Moore’s law being ever more apropos with every product launch cycle.

As part of the Co-Founding team of Ushahidi, I have the privilege of working with an incredible team that is globally dispersed, with our team call every week encompassing 7 timezones. I mention this because as we have built platforms and tools over the past 3 years, I am continually learning about what it means to innovate. I say continually, because it is a process that is ongoing and does not stop at having a cloud based service (Crowdmap) mobile applications and a semantic data collection curation tools in the pipeline (SwiftRiver). One of the key things I have learned about innovation is that it takes humility to get on the ground; sometimes quite literally, to appreciate the view of an issue or a problem or simply someone else’s story. This became quite clear to me when I was in Zambia last September for the elections, the Ushahidi platform was used to crowd source information about the electoral process. Problem: Being surrounded by rowdy youth, as we approached a polling station; this after checking with the police station and being told that all was well. I did not sign up for alerts from Bantuwatch.org. If I had done so, I would have realized that the reality on the ground was quite different. The view from the ground or the crowd is one you need when assessing any situation.

As part of the Ushahidi strategy we started an innovation hub in Nairobi. My colleagues and I agreed that we needed to give back to the tech community that helped us get to the global stage plus, we needed a base and office in Kenya. With generous support of The Omidyar Network and Hivos we set out to create a space for technologists, business leaders, developers, designers and the larger tech community. The space helps us convene, collaborate and celebrate this narrative of African tech. Each day, developers congregate, work through their vision of what utility they can provide, we hack, play foosball, have coffee and hack some more, get on Skype calls at odd times of the night, then yes…hack some more after that. Ushahidi is still largely virtual, it is in our DNA after all; the iHub is one of those nodes of communities that is a key part of our interactions. Other nodes are the offices of our partners in the bay area, Mozilla who let us organize meet ups and the countless coffee shops and co-working spaces that cater to the modern day location agnostic web worker, volunteer or simply…geek.

Being on the ground, connecting with each node in our global interconnected community is something I can honestly term a gift. In September I travelled to Lusaka, Zambia on the eve of elections. There, I got to see first hand how our platform was being deployed on the ground, publicized over radio; to give citizens a voice during the elections there. While I was there, I met with a group of young developers, volunteers and journalists who were exploring how to grow the nascent tech community in Lusaka. It reminded me of the early days pre-Ushahidi, where Erik, myself, Jason Mule, Shashank Bengali, Brian Muita and others would meet at restaurants that had wifi, to connect. To share, and later, to collaborate. That network that exists in real life and virtually, is one that is without the brick and mortar of co-working spaces and set the foundation for what happened after. I think that is what I helped us innovate. A mix of on-the-ground reality, David Kobia’s coding jujitsu and most of all the open source community online. This is a mix that works for us and we learn together to build the global Ushahidi community. It is not easy. One thing is that when people are gathered based on passion for what they do that is when you see innovations. When there is a direct correlation between the problem and the possible solution, the promise of the tech entrepreneur or mobile developer is to architect the avenue. Pierre Omidyar observed this at ONEF 2011 and I see it in Africa’s techies. We have a long way to go, but we can imagine the world differently and go about building out our vision. Having the tools and the team to do this is like being handed Thor’s hammer.

I notice the growth of similar spaces like the iHub in Africa (with glee!) and I notice that countries and philanthropic organizations are setting up self styled tech cities. Some will work, some will not work. In Kenya there is the idea of Konza City. While it looks great on paper and I really would like to see it happen, but I am cautiously optimistic. Why? Partly because of what Roger Malina’s analysis, that most governments haven’t a clue how to innovate, much less foster it. He included much more than I can add here, if you have 21 minutes, definitely watch his talk.

For nations and Foundations; If the goal is to spur innovation, it takes humility to listen, to look around and participate with innovators wherever they may be first. To see potential where others see trash, to support and uplift without supplanting and dictating. To connect with others based on passion, that is where where the most influence happens. There is a need for acknowledgment that innovation is a culture with a thumbprint that can be unique, dynamic and most of all long range. One has to think about social Impact, philanthropy or investing. To see solutions where others see problems you have to get back on the ground and listen. This is something we are striving for as we grow Ushahidi around the world and invite others to join us in translating, localizing and Crowdmapping the issues you care about, build communities around the issues and explore solutions collaboratively.

PS: Currently heading to Davos from DLD2012 if you’d like to collaborate on Innovation, Tech, Africa, ping me using the contact form above or @afromusing on twitter.

Spotted in NBO: NYPD

Juliana Rotich — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 13:11:38 +0000

See the full gallery on Posterous

The Internet of Things, meet crowdsourcing

Juliana Rotich — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 05:51:59 +0000

Over the last year I have had the great fortune of mind melding with various people with incredible ideas. As some of you may know, I am involved in Ushahidi, an open source platform for data collection, visualization and interactive mapping. Ushahidi has gotten its notoriety in the crowdsourcing sphere, with growing adoption around the world. From Kenya to Russia, Poland, Mexico, South Africa, Italy and countless other countries; it is something I continue to marvel at while enjoying the ride of learning; with a global community of hackers from Ghana, Malawi, Netherlands, US, Kenya, Poland etc, I marvel even more.

The idea behind the platform is simple. That anyone, given a channel to say ‘This is what I see’ and send that information via SMS, email, web and twitter. With Ushahidi’s plethora of mobile apps, reporting via smartphones can also be done quite seamlessly. With the Android app SMSsync, you can be your own SMS gateway. What this means is you can run a hub from your Android phone, such that any sms’s sent to you get sync’ed with a call back URL which can be an Ushahidi deployment or another server based application. So with the channels of data collection sorted, you of course have the processing capability that is available on the cloud (Think SwiftRiver), and the visualization component which can help convey the data in a compelling way.Maps. Things are getting even more compelling with plugins such as Cloudmade (Think preety, preety maps), and bookmarklets that can overlay Ushahidi data with other data available in the open layers format. Point is, the tools to create a visual from the collected data is also sorted. Beautifully too.

Now to the Internet of things. My first encounter with this idea was from listening to Elder of the Internet Vint Cerf at Lift09. He mentioned how you can have sensors in your cellar that make sure the temperature of the wine stays constant, and does some automatic reporting via internet to you if there is an anomaly. Those sensors have IP addresses and are nodes in your network. I did not think of it in terms of ‘Internet of Things’ at the time, but looking back now, that is exactly what he was describing. Other sensors abound, from the innovative Enphase inverter for giving you information on your energy generation from solar panels to the trash tracking devices used in the MIT Senseable City lab projects. Another great way to grasp this concept is to check out the twitter account of London’s Tower Bridge, and read this account of how it was set to tweet.

Now take these two ideas and meld them in different ways. Allow me to use the word holistic. As in holistic near ‘real time sense-making‘, incorporating the internet of things, with crowdsourced data delivered through channels that encourage participation. There is an opportunity to see things dynamically and not just do after-the-fact post mortem. This could work for flash point events like the Haiti earthquake (taking data form Geiger counters etc + crowdsourced data like that available on the haiti deployment run by Noula.ht. It could also work for longer term events such as the BP Oil spill in Louisiana.

…the closer to real-time one can get the right answer and respond, the better. And milliseconds matter.

-Jeff Jonas on a smarter planet

- Data from things/sensors can trigger a report online if a tracked value reaches a certain threshold or meets certain criteria. For example, the Copenhagen Wheel by MIT Senseable lab. The wheel contains sensors that monitor carbon monoxide levels in the air,NOx/Nitrogen Oxides, a measure of air pollution, noise, ambient temperature and relative humidity. The data is accessible on a mobile phone app and can be shared with friends or even the city.

- Data from people filling out a form, sending an email, SMS or twitter message. This can be qualitative in nature, and use of the Ushahidi platform provides a way for citizens to participate in data gathering, plus sign up for alerts that are relevant to their concerns. An example that can be useful to check out is the Where Are The Cuts map from The Open Knowledge Foundation in the UK.

Combining the various sources of data (Open layers can be used to distinguish various types of data/color coding points of data can help to differentiate between sensor data and crowdsourced data). A dynamic map of information can then emerge that is not so much a snapshot, but an animation.

Cue: Augmented Reality (AR).
The Mobile Individual Measurements of Air Quality (MIMAQ) project out of Netherlands gives a perfect example of combining sensors, air pollution information and AR.

This wired piece on ‘When augmented reality hits the Internet of Things’ is also instructive and interesting.

Change is at times compelled by insight. The insight from using technologies/ideas outlined above could lead to behaviour change if we can make data relevant to an individual. Relevant to the decisions they have to make based on the information they have at the time. For an idea that mixes some of the above ideas and adds relevance, have a look at Mapnificent.

Mapnificent from Stefan Wehrmeyer on Vimeo.

[Mapnificent] …allows you to set a point in your chosen city and a map will display the entire area over which you could travel by public transit in a given amount of time. It also allows you to see an area that is both 15 minutes away from yourself and 15 minutes away from a friend by transit, and since it is integrated with Google Maps, allows you to search destinations within that specified area.

The recent deployment of the Ushahidi platform by The South China Morning Post is one to watch. “CitizenMap starts with environmental issues, focusing on the destruction of natural beauty in Hong Kong – from illegal dumping to unauthorized development, from vegetation removal to columbarium construction.”

The reason why this could be interesting, is that it has the potential to give journalists leads that they can follow up on and gather more facts on issues such as toxic waste dumping. It is harnessing the power of the people to help make Hong Kong a better place. This feeds into the idea of changing behaviour. If individuals/corporations realize that the public is watching and able to report incidents, would they still engage in such activities?

Say we had near-real time crowdsourced data from the public, and data from sensors all in the public domain; what could we do? What kind of projects could we come up with?

During TEDxNairobi, Erik Kigada an architect with Planning Systems shocked many of us in the audience by revealing something we did not know about. The city of Nairobi does not have a coherent master plan. The city is using 1999 plans to build in 2010. This presents myriad problems for businesses and individuals who need to plan. His point was made stark by the road construction happening while the event was going on. If a master plan existed showing that a bypass was planned, the architect who built the auditorium would not have put it near the road. There is an opportunity for emerging economies, rapidly growing cities to become smart cities. They can do this by taking a cue from the Senseable city projects. Current, near-real time data can be gathered with the help of the crowd, to provide pertinent information to urban planners, academics and leaders. The hope here is that they can make well informed decisions that take into account the flowing reality of the city.

“Insight from data can be used to leapfrog.” -Assaf Biderman

There is also the opportunity for education and academia to use participatory systems to link science, data and student participation. Relating the exploration of built/urban environment to the scientific method of observation, data collection and analysis.

I am interested in your ideas on how we can use these technologies and ideas to address the many challenges facing our world in Health, Education and Environment. I am particularly interested in figuring out a joint project in Kenya, please leave a comment or contact me to explore and collaborate.

Events to check out if you are interested in this topic:
-The Urban Internet of Things Conference Tokyo Nov 29th – Dec 01
- Vlad Trifa’s Lift@home workshop ‘Hack your city – Urban IOT after party’ Nov 29th Tokyo
- Open Data Hack Day Dec 4th all over the world
- Workshop on Applications of Wireless Sensor Networks for Environmental Monitoring in Developing Countries to be followed by Conference on Wireless Sensors Technologies for Environmental Monitoring 28th February – 11th March 2011 Trieste, Italy.

Additional resources/reading
- MIT Senseable City site and twitter @SenseableCity
- Peter Hirshberg’s blog
- Free M-science book Sensing, Computing and Dissemination
- UCLA Center for Embedded Network Sensing CENS
- JP De Vooght blog and twitter @jdevoo. This post titled ‘Arduino Meets Ushahidi’ is particularly fun.
- The Economist special report on smart systems
- Jeff Jonas blog IBM

Nokia: Bicycle Charger Kit for Mobiles

Juliana Rotich — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 18:57:41 +0000

*Cross posted on AfriGadget.

There was a major announcement today from Nokia about the release of cheap phones for the emerging markets, featuring dual sims and the ever useful LED flashlight. What is even more interesting is that with the launch of the phones, a bicycle charger kit. According to CNET Asia, the kit will be available by year’s end.

Rounding up the announcements today is the Bicycle Charger Kit, which comprises a charger, dynamo and phone holder. When docked to the latter with a 2mm charger jack, the electrical generator will produce energy to juice up the handset. According to Nokia, the dynamo starts charging when the speed of the bicycle reaches 6kmh and stops when it hits 50kmh. It matches the efficiency of a normal charger when the bike is traveling at 12kmh.

The bicycle charger kit will be useful to many people in Kenya and other emerging markets, its only a matter of time before it is repurposed to charge other devices like small radios. All in all the phones seem AfriGadgetty, what with their dual sims; perfect for markets where people have more than one carrier – thinking of Nigeria here, where its not uncommon to see someone with multiple phones because of varying network coverage/dependability + LED flashlights, it is clear that Nokia is making products that have utility for millions of people around Africa. Personally I can’t wait to try out the phones and mobile kits as soon as I can get my hands on them. Come to think of it, this is hardware localization, something that could go hand in hand with the software localization we are clamoring for in the African market.

For modded bicycle posts from the AfriGadget archive, click here.

Many thanks to my friend Cyrus for the heads up, I think he has just inspired me to blog again.

Shop online using mobile money: PesaPal is Live!

Juliana Rotich — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:35:19 +0000

PesaPal is a service that enables anyone with an MPESA or ZAP mobile money account to buy goods and services from approved merchants. Why should people with credit cards and paypal accounts have all the fun? For the 6.5 million users of MPESA in Kenya, PesaPal will be a welcome service, particularly to those without credit cards, but do have MPESA accounts. Granted the number of merchants available right now is limited, as merchants sign up there will be lots of choices for buyers as to the services and goods they can order with their mobile phone and the web.

PesaPal is a product from Verviant Consulting, a company that has made inroads in the IT consulting business, providing end to end IT support. This new product ushers in a new form of commerce. The CEO Agosta Liko recently spoke to Capital FM in Nairobi regarding the advent of fiber optic cable in Kenya, and the new way to do trade online…

“I call it ‘new commerce’ because e-commerce was the era of credit cards and all. We will own this era where I should be able to pay for mangoes from Mombasa and pick them in Nairobi. I see it becoming the way by which we buy,” he projected.
Mr Liko said this development would most likely be driven by increased competition, the need to ease the cost of doing business and remain competitive.
“From this point going forward, people are going to see how they can make money from the internet, how you can save operational costs and how customers will be willing to pay on time,” he said.

I see this a tighter coupling of the mobile phone and the cloud. Something I have alluded to in the past . Its gratifying to see homegrown solutions to the problem of trading online in a seamless way, we need not wait for Paypal to get its act together and include sub-saharan countries, we can just get on with business.

Online merchants, click here to register your business to accept PesaPal, and friends in .ke, sign up here for the service. Developers, do not fret, here is the info you seek, on how to use the PesaPal API.

Disclosure: Liko Agosta is a close friend of ours, and I bum off of the Verviant offices bandwidth whenever I am in Nairobi. I was a pre-beta tester of PesaPal

Land Grab Right on The Green Belt?

Juliana Rotich — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:43:03 +0000

Spring Valley Nairobi – An area that was supposedly protected by the Green Belt Movement is now being built up by a developer. The Green Belt Movement is the organization founded by the venerable Prof. Wangari Maathai, a nobel laureate and actually a heroine of mine. I ask about this because there are more questions than I have answers, when I drove by this area in late 2006 and late 2007 my impression was that the whole valley around the signboard was part of the Green Belt Movement protected area. At the time the whole place just had trees and a few vegetable gardens. Am I mistaken?

The sign board is now an exercise in utter irony

Fence around the property

view from the road

view from the side.
All pics taken June 28th 2009.

Anyone with more info, please comment.

Kenya Data Networks Opts for Solar Energy

Juliana Rotich — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 23:40:45 +0000

About KDN: It is one of the first companies to invest in network infrastructure in Kenya, laying fibre before the Seacom cable arrived. It provides internet services to businesses and individuals. Well their Butterfly wifi initiative was flaky at times, but quite bold at the time (early 2008). I wonder how the service is stacking up against competition from the likes of Yu, Safaricom 3G etc?

Via Kenya Capital Investment Group

Kenya Data Networks, has opted to solve their energy problems by tapping the power of the sun. The KDN solar power plant generates 10MW of power, enough to buffer it from fluctuations in the grid which result in frequent brown outs. Last year, the cost of electricity increased by over 51% so its not only good for the environment, but I am sure it makes a whole lot of sense for the balance sheet of KDN. From the video they are already saving 50% on their electricity bill, I think this is a good example to other companies that they too can embrace renewable energy. Now if only Kengen could make plans to create a smart grid that allows netmetering…

Recycle: Hand bags from Woven Sacks

Juliana Rotich — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:50:50 +0000

Industrial woven sacks that are typically used to package fertilizer and grain are transformed into chic bags.

Spotted October 2008 at Moyo Lake Gift shop in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Unrelated PS: Architecture enthusiasts, particularly those interested in Nairobi, help us out with this mystery on flickr? We used to play a game we called ‘Wapi?’ which means ‘where’ in Swahili. I think we started this game in 2006, we’d post a picture on our blogs and have everyone guess as to the location. Steve had the most difficult ones, JKE and Mental too. Might be time to revive the game? *off to go look for an image to stump y’all with*

Repurpose: Converted Shipping containers

Juliana Rotich — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:20:11 +0000

Spotted in Nandihills, Kenya January 2009. I saw one just like this in Bungoma, but was not quick enough with the camera to get a good shot. Turns out Zain is using these as pre-fab offices in rural areas. I like the repurposing going on.

Spotted in Nairobi, January 2008
At Lagoon, a bar/nyama choma (roast meat) joint.

Got more in your archives? If so, please comment?

South Africa: State of The Mobile Web

Juliana Rotich — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:08:28 +0000

Via ICT4D on Twitter

The Opera Mini mobile web browser is gaining popularity even in my household (ahem Nokia E71), and the latest numbers from the State of the mobile web indicate the stats for SA. I did not find any stats on Kenyan usage, i suspect its still not a ‘critical mass’ to warrant inclusion in SMW. Would be curious if anyone has mobile web stats from Kenya, please share, because Tim Berners Lee said so!

Download SMW PDF here and read a summary with highlights and pretty graphs here.

From the report:

In 2008, we saw strong growth in Opera Mini usage all over the world, in both developed and developing countries. Social networks and search engines were competitive, as Opera Mini users determined their preferences.

emphasis is mine
I would not be surprised if traffic from the developing world eclipses that of the developed world in the coming years. If over 80% of BBC mobile site’s traffic comes from Africa…we are likely to see more dominance of mobile web usage by my fellow Africans.
I heard this bbc stat last year and cant for the life of me find the document it was mentioned in. Halp?!

Snapshot: South Africa (# of unique users)

• Live is back on the list after a six month absence.

• In December, neither Gmail no webmail.co.za are on South Africa’s top ten list.

Top 10 sites in South Africa (# of unique users)

1) facebook.com

2) google.com

3) wikipedia.org

4) yahoo.com (up from 5)

5) gamejump.com (down from 4)

6) my.opera.com

7) mxit.co.za

8. youtube.com

9) waptrick.com (up from 10)

10) live.com (back on the list)

Top social networks in 2008 South Africa
• Facebook was the preferred social networking site for South Africans in 2008.

Web site Growth rate in 2008 (users)

facebook.com 187.48%

peperonity.com 66.44%

mocospace.com 189.98%

hi5.com 59.84%

I am shocked, who are these people using hi5?!!
It is quite likely that the stats for Kenya would indicate Facebook as the top site, would love to see how Zuqka is fairing on. @kahenya i am sure the TOS for Zuqka would definitely trump FB’s current heavy handedness?