Tweeting from Robben Island...the new text of freedom

The opportunity to understand a little more about the famous prisoner 466/64 makes Robben Island a popular destination today.

As 50 of us tourists sat inside a prison in Section G, many were on their phones...tweeting what they heard, sharing what they saw and sending images to the rest of the world of their moving personal experiences.

Till 1991 - just 19 years ago, this was a maximum security prison known for its absolute and complete isolation of political prisoners of the Apartheid regime.

No information was allowed to leak out. Very little came in.

Nelson Mandela (466/ 64 - the 466th prisoner at Robben Island in the year 1964), spend around 16 years here, at the center of what would be South Africa's long and hard struggle for democracy and freedom from apartheid.

Today - we sat there communicating with the whole world. Each person in that room was writing, publishing, broadcasting through their mobile devices. In just 19 years so much has changed. This is the new text.

In a tour conducted by one of the ex-political prisoners, I had the opportunity to go inside the prison cells, walk the corridors and hear the stories of complete and total isolation. Of the atrocities only humans can bestow on fellow humans. And of how human dignity can still find ways to forgive.



Bereft of the tools for education, prisoners miraculaously found ways to convert the prison into a university - and the amazing process of Each One Teach One came into being. Popularly known as the 'Robben Island University' by the prisoners, they used every element of their spirit to over come the indignity of colour, separation, politics - and convert the subaltern text of imprisonment into learning.

Its amazing. Technology has changed the politics of freedom forever.

In 2004 I had the opportunity to visit the Alcatraz, off the San Fransisco Bay. When the wind blew across the bay, you could hear voices carry over from the city into this maximum security prison that had housed many Civil War prisoners. Information, learning, knowledge and news - were all a premium. A privilege that was considered unnecessary .

In 1997, I was an assistant director on one of the first film crews to be allowed to shoot in Kashmir. We shot on a few islands in the Dal Lake - islands that used to be the headquarters of the Hizbul Mujahideen. The site of many atrocities, these beautiful islands had seen so much struggle. We shot a docu-feature for the Home Ministry, stories that would build confidence and bring hope to the people of Kashmir.

The degree of despair in Srinagar in those years had amazed me. And as a film crew, we were a threat to many who saw news and information as a major de-stabiliser. Confirmed artists refused to act, under threat. And finally some CRPF personnel and 4 young surrendered terrorists became our key actors. The film ran on 'Doordarshan' - which for many years was the window to the world for India. Today of course, its irrelevant. There are over 250 channels on TV. Most of them with Breaking News every second.

Twitter, Facebook, SMSes, Mobiles have fundamentally changed our world. Made us free in such a different way. And it evolves every day.

Over 3 billion people have mobile phones across the world. 1000 new mobile customers are added every minute over the globe. Mobile internet is empowering Africa...

Inspiring organizations like Ushahidi have created platforms that allows people and communities to collate distributed data via SMS, email or web and visualize it on a map or timeline. A simple way of aggregating information from the public for use in crisis response. The people of Haiti have benefited tremendously from Ushahidi's innovation.

Georeferencing, geotagging, visual mapping, community mapping.... all innovative applications of mobile technology that connect the world today in such incredible ways.

And yet there is the oppression in Afghanistan.

It gives us more reason to continue innovating. Finding more ideas that will link technology and freedom...

An Innovation Fair!

Writing from the World Bank Innovation Fair, in Cape Town, South Africa. We are on Day 2 and just finished a Panel discussion on 'Scaling Innovations'. A favorite topic of course!

A quick background on this event: The World Bank Development Marketplace has been taking ideas to action for the last 10 years. The Development Marketplace is holding the first of a new generation event - the Innovation Fair on Moving Beyond Conflict and Fragility. The event is tied to the 2011 World Development Report and draws on a pool of innovative solutions collated through an online competition that invited applications, got users to vote and shotlist social impact ideas.

This Innovation Radar registered 2000 users, produced 223 project applications from 40 countries. 50,000 users viewed and engaged with the ideas online - and a final 30 social impact ideas were shortlisted and invited to Cape Town for the Fair. These ideas can be reviewed by clicking here.

You will note that these ideas have come from regions such as Sierra Leone, DR of Congo, Kenya, Burundi, SA, other African countries - and also from Columbia, Srilanka, a few from India. In some of these countries, the existence of conflict and the fragility of the communities is a very real scenario. And most of the ideas directly focused on how technology and innovation can be applied to empower, equip, build economic opportunity in such a context.

Egbe Osifo-Dawodu from the World Bank Institute wrote a great piece on why the subject of moving beyond conflict and fragility is relevant - and why this forms the basis of the innovation fair.

The ideas were collated and presented around 2 broad themes:

1. Improving Service Delivery and Governance through the use of Communication Tools
2. Innovative Research and Practical Approaches to Conflict and Violence Prevention

The application of Communication Technology forms a thread across many of the ideas - and while several of the ideas are in initial prototypes, a few have also created a fair amount of impact in more advanced pilot stages.

A few core themes have run through the discussions over the last two days:

• The role of the government in conflict areas to support innovation
• How do you scale beyond the initial pilots
• How do you sustain some of the ideas and get community really involved in owning and taking them forward..
• Role of institutions like the World Bank in supporting the social innovators...etc

Some of the discussions and quick excerpts of all the different presentations are accessible at the following link http://innovationfair.ning.com/

My comments on the Panel discussion on Scaling Social Innovations were really around the core thought that it is possible to 'Design for Scale' - rather than 'hope that the idea will eventually scale'... Given the nature of early stage innovations being discussed, shared 3 key thoughts around scaling...

• The notion of Innovation: Its not about the initial breakthrough idea - but about a series of ideas, which when layered together create significant impact. This usually involves innovations around the product, service model, revenue model, operation models etc, all combined together. Examples such as the evolution of pre-paid services on mobile phones that created a layer of a service and revenue model over the base mobile technology to make mobility accessible to millions of people. Without this extra layer of innovation - mobile phones would be limited to very few people. So the notion of innovation asks: What is that set of ideas that makes your core proposition strong and relevant?
  

• The role of the innovator: If the above is true then scale is built into the notion of Innovating, especially since the innovator needs to build a cohesive set of ideas that make a proposition work. This means that its important to start finding ways to succeed in creating the impact, incorporating many more simple solutions as the idea slowly takes shape... and find ways to have many people adopt your idea, thus creating a natural pull for your idea. The innovator has a role to play in building the core idea from the simple workability of the idea, through acceptability and adoption - and finally to a model that demonstrates the scalability of the model and its impact. Which stage is the implementation of your idea in right now?
  

• The role of the Ecosystem: And here come organizations like the World Bank, Ashoka Foundation etc - who have the capacity to facilitate collaborations, provide initial funding, exposure, learning for the innovator and his/ her team, help evaluate and provide a global platform for sharing, cross learning and fostering partnerships - that can give the social innovator speed. The most core resource is of course the funds. But its critical for Social Innovators to treat the funds as Working Capital - and not funding. Thus designing the models for sustainability very early on in the life cycle.
  

We talked through examples in India such as ITC eChoupal, SMSOne, Akshaya Patra that have approached scale in a structured manner.

A great example of a sustainable social impact model in a conflict environment presented itself right here at the Innovation fair!! The Social Media team anchoring the event - RLabs or Reconstructed Living Labs - is a beautiful idea that identifies disadvantaged youth, builds capability in them to use and apply technology and social media - and then finds a market for these skills and create economic opportunities. Was great to see them in action at the fair - you can see more on the work of the RLabs by clicking here.

Micro Entrepreneurs say go beyond News, Facilitate Market Access...

Bagmari, Ultodanga, Bhaghajatin are slum areas in North & South Kolkata - populated with several thousand enterprising, independent micro-entrepreneurs.

Vegetable vendors who buy Rs.1500 worth of vegetables every day from wholesalers and sell it at a net profit of Rs. 150-200 per day.

Egg vendors who procure 1000 chicken eggs per day at approximately Rs. 2500 and sell for a net profit of Rs. 160 per day.

A family of potters who procures the clay for Rs. 6000 per truck - that lasts them 15 days, making 1000 small Diya's (earthen lamps) per day. The family earns a net profit of around Rs. 200 per day for the sale of these Diya's. Everyone in the family works on this.

Small stitching units that produce hosiery vests, children's clothes for the local markets - producing up to 50 dozen sets with a 2-3 member stitching team. Net profit per day for the business owner approx Rs. 350 per day

These are micro- entrepreneurs. Each running simple, very relevant local businesses - providing for their families through the business and in some cases also providing jobs to a few more.

In studying this ecosystem, we found some interesting initiatives that are keen to formalize this section of entrepreneurs - and create more economic and capability impact.

For example an enterprising News Service has been initiated in this area of Kolkata for the last 2 years to build a flow of news that can enable these micro entrepreneurs to share knowledge and build capacity - and therefore increase incomes. Supported by an international News Agency, that is keen to further the impact of News in disadvantaged communities - this project publishes a local newsletter distributed to the micro entrepreneurs.

Printed twice a month, Amar Khabar is populated with stories of success, little tips on new business ideas, info on loans - all collated by 'young citizen journalists' from within the same micro-entrepreneur communities.

In its 24th edition when I met the team in March 2010 - this newsletter now reaches 102000 entrepreneurs within north and south Kolkata, free. With a validated database of 5000 readers, the team is now putting all efforts behind building a strong repository of reader data - such that more specific inputs and info can be provided - and the black box of 'who are the micro-entrepreneurs' can be opened.

Its a valiant effort at somehow formalizing the information, learning and knowledge flow for entrepreneurship - within a highly fragmented, disorganized and dynamic community.

Impact?

Meet Gopa Bhattacharya, a middle aged serial entrepreneur who runs a small eatery, makes Bindi's for local women, and makes and sells an odd assortment of simple products.

She read an article in Amar Khabar that provided tips on how to make and sell solar lamps. She went to Barabazaar, got all the key parts needed, made her first solar lamp 2 months ago. She now makes and sell 5 such lamps each week. For a profit of Rs. 200 per lamp. In the last 8 weeks she has augmented her income by Rs. 6000 by building a completely new product line! This reiterates the power of knowledge. Make it accessible. And the enterprising person will find a way to use it and flourish.

But for Gopa to grow beyond this, she says she needs the obvious - market access. As a woman she cannot travel beyond her community - but she knows that at her price point she can produce a lot more by hiring a couple more people - but where can she sell it?

More income would mean more 'poonji' that can be generated (working capital), which would mean lesser loans from money lenders and MFIs. But how does she get access to markets?

So at Version 1.0 - This News project has succeeded in demonstrating the immediate potential of this idea. But for large scale impact the 'Gopa effect' has to be wide spread and critical mass of real financial impact created in the micro entrepreneurs business. Either top line - or savings in costs or new product lines...and several of these.. Repeatedly you hear the request for a MARKET for the products. "Find us a market, connect us to the markets....we will find a way to produce more..."

The fact is that the producer will need to find his/ her own market. But what or who can facilitate that? What's the capability needed for that?

Should version 2.0 of such a Newsletter go beyond 'Knowledge & Capability' and become more of a bridge between the sellers and the buyers maybe? The reader base needs to include both sellers and buyers, producers, aggregators and consumers. Clearly the newsletter would need to shift its paradigm - from providing access to News to becoming a platform and interface for business impact - powered by relevant knowledge and strong database of active readers.

There are around 1.5 - 2 million such micro entrepreneurs in Kolkata. Even at a price of 0.50 paise per successful connection between seller and buyer, A Newsletter could find ways to be sustainable. At a low cost of Rs. 1 per edition that helps build the capability and provides learning to its readers...it could be more sustainable. Combine that with SMS coverage to a dedicated subscription base - and access for whole sellers...more sources for generating funds to stay alive.

The innovation challenges to building version 2.0 of such a News Service?

• How to institutionalize the 'Gopa process' of enterprise and risk taking across a larger community?
• Making content creation a far more collaborative effort - can mobile phones be leveraged to collect, write and collate news and content?
  
• How to build a knowledge chain that meaningfully links producers, consumers, buyers, sellers - in a manner that direct economic impact is possible to measure?
  
• Can this be a 'lifecycle' engagement for micro entrepreneurs - or should it be limited to providing connects and news
  
• How can available technology be integrated across the network - mobiles phones, field devices already used by large FMCGs in these markets, local phone booths.

Meeting the micro-entrepreneurs and seeing the impact of the News flowing through - led me again to the thought: There are great ideas out there, good prototypes being implemented. The initial ideas are often supported through philanthropic funds.

But to make them sustainable - what's needed is to build the next level of solutions if real impact has to be brought to economy and life in India...that's where innovation is needed. To go beyond the prototype.

If you know of some well scaled models that focus on increasing the economic success of micro-entrepreneurs and use technology and business models for this - do pls write in. Would be great to study and learn from them. Will help cut the curve immensely!

Another interesting news service I learnt of - HIBR.me in Lebanon.

Getting paid to produce electricity for the government!

Am at the Development Dialogue 2010, an annual gathering at the impressive Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship in Hubli, North Karnataka. This is designed as an intersection of social initiatives being funded by the foundation and several international social entrepreneurs, consultants, business leaders all coming together for a few days each January to work through the key issues concerning the sustainable scale and growth of socially relevant initiatives.

Amongst all the discussions, the one that stands out is the Micro-Hydro community based electricity production in Indonesia. Tri Mumpuni, an Ashoka Fellow and well known activist in the subject of sustainable electrification of rural communities shared the model she and her team have evolved in Indonesia.

The challenge? Over 105 million people in Indonesia still live without electricity. The government has tried large hydro plants - but it violates human rights and often irreversibly damages the ecology. Several small initiatives have tried local micro-hydro plants - but these are not sustainable. As soon as subsidized state run power comes in, these small community initiatives fizzle out. The problem still remains - because state run electricity, supplied off a central grid has its own challenges of sustainability, especially in remote, rural areas.

The People Centered Economic and Business Institute, partnering with local communities has created a series of micro-hydro solutions. And they found a way to succeed! The trick is:

- Build the capability and skills within the community to run and manage the micro-hydro plant, including the technical details of running the plant. If the community is unwilling to learn and take ownership - Mumpuni and her team just don't take it on.

- And - more importantly - build an agreement with the central state grid to buy the excess power generated from these small installations!

And by implementing a connection between the off-grid local system and the central grid, the provision of rural micro-hydropower (MHP) plants has now become an economic investment activity!!.

Through cooperative dialogue the community decides how to leverage the income it is generating - Voila! And now the income from these micro-hydro plants is enabling better health, more education and sustainability of the communities. And it chooses to continue using the local off-grid system long term, instead of completely shifting to the central grid.

The by product of this approach is also the protection of the environment - its become critical to ensure trees are protected, water is saved and harvested, catchment areas are kept healthy - because it is all now an economic investment and is helping the community build and grow.

What started initially as a government approval only for IBEKA facilitated MHPs, Tri Mumpuni and her allies got the government to agree in 2002 to buy all small scale power generated from such off-grid systems in Indonesia. It probably required tons of lobbying over several years - but the impact today is a highly sustainable model that connects local, off-grid electricity production to economic opportunity in an ecologically responsible manner.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) adopted this as a Public Private Partnership model in the Asia Pacific region. The People Centered Economic and Business Institute is now taking its extensive learning from Indonesia and in partnership with organizations across other countries is advocating the need for good governance to build sustainable models through the Electricity Governance Initiative.

Opportunity models via Mobility inclusion

It’s pretty clear that the mobile device is no longer just a talking device for personal use, designed for urban users – but it’s instead a computing device, an economic device, an opportunity gateway.. that has the power to transform lives through inclusion.

I studied four examples specifically to cull out some learning on how 'opportunity models' have been crafted using mobility as the route:

1. Space Data Corp - Wireless Network Coverage

Jerry Knoblach wanted to bring wireless service to millions of rural Americans. His plan: Beam it down from balloons hovering at the edge of space. His company, Space Data Corp., already launches 10 balloons a day across the Southern U.S., providing specialized telecom services to truckers and oil companies. The balloons soar 20 miles into the stratosphere, each carrying a shoebox-size payload of electronics that acts like a mini cell phone "tower" covering thousands of square miles below. To make this effective, an operational and economical model has been put into place that pays farmers to release hot air balloons with transmitters every 24 hours.


2. M-Pesa (Vodafone – Safaricom)

In a country like Kenya, where there are less than 2 million bank accounts serving a population of 32 million, the lack of an efficient, affordable banking infrastructure is a contributing factor in the persistence of poverty. Prohibitively high cost of banking and the fact that a majority of Kenyans earn less than $1 a day added to the problem and left a big gap in the development potential.

Vodafone came up with a single but powerful approach to tackle poverty in the developing countries where they operated, based on the insight that access to finance facilitates entrepreneurial activity. And thus was born M-Pesa.

Essentially account holders can have virtual accounts at Safaricom and operate it using SMS – thus transacting business between individuals and individual to businesses, without really needing a 'traditional' bank account.


3. Cell Bazaar

A rudimentary e-bay like service that leverages the simple, widespread power of SMS to bring the market to the phone. By sending simple text messages to 3838, users post items for sale, look for items to buy, and obtain current market prices of products or services.

This is essentially a craigslist over mobile phones! Any Grameenphone user can dial 3838 and listen to the latest items on the market in Bengali. After dialing 3838, users choose from 8 categories: Jobs, Mobile Phones, Agriculture, Motorcycle, Car, Electronics, Computers, and To-Let. Every few hours, users will hear new information through this service.

Although 75% of Bangladesh’s population has no access to electricity and Internet penetration is only 0.03%, Cell Bazaar has more than one million users.



4. Voxiva - Alerta

A health and disease surveillance system that enables health workers to use existing modes of communication, without any Internet access. This system challenges old paradigms related to monitoring diseases in remote rural contexts by enabling:

• Real-time collection of critical information from a distributed network of people;
• Rapid analysis of data to drive decision-making and allocation of resources;
• Communication back to the field to coordinate response.

Effectively transforming the village pay phone into a communications device on par with that of a computer – and putting the power of technology and communication within easy access for remote rural users.


These four diverse examples from very different corners of the world had insightful patterns:


1. The economics of phone usage currently assumes that the consumer of services pays for it. Instead we see here that service providers need to view the consumers as the producers. Producers of real time data, knowledge, information and insights that can be exchanged for services. The business model is not based on usage – but on contribution. Cell Bazaar applies the principle of user-generated content becoming the currency for mobile usage.

2. Access to mobile solutions is largely based on network coverage, which involves high investments and slow movements into remote areas. Space Data Corp experiments demonstrate that Network coverage can potentially break free from the assumptions of location, physical infrastructure and huge investments – to a method where it can reach everyone. With an effective economic model that pays for itself.

3. Paradoxically high-tech solutions need not mean more devices, or more complex applications for users. Alerta combines existing modes of communication inside villages and overlays it with a robust application to capture and interpret voice inputs from all kinds of devices…the backend of this solution is fairly sophisticated. But for the user it just involves talking into a phone. A simple act that now has the power to save lives, control disease and enable prosperity.

4. Urban users have followed a sequence in reaching today’s advanced technology state. From simple phones and computers to high tech converged gadgets using cloud computing. There is no reason that rural users need to follow this sequence. Business model innovations that compel users to adapt to voice or video or any other complex technology have demonstrated this already.


Its very interesting to note that Prosperity (and inclusive growth) is a combination of economics, opportunity and accessibility. Examples like M-Pesa, Cell Bazaar and Alerta have created opportunity models and powered them with mobile technology – thus driving prosperity in developing economies.

When Samsung says 'Next is What?' - its time to look away from the product paradigm and dig deeper into user lives and regional contexts. Nokia's Life Tools has some interesting initial experiments in that direction for rural users...

No power sockets in the wall...

What paradigms constrain innovations in ensuring electricity is available for all?

The world energy council recently published a very thoughtful report. Energy Scenarios 2050. Based on Accessibility, Availability and Acceptability of solutions that will ensure everyone in the world has access to modern energy solutions.

Four possible scenarios have been drawn up that elaborate on these. The future includes more solar power, bigger pipelines for natural gas, technology enabled turbine solutions, green initiatives, sustainable energy policies…and a lot of good English.

Somewhere it fundamentally assumes that everyone in the world wants to plug an equipment or an appliance into a wall socket and draw energy from there to fulfill everyday needs. And so, naturally, the areas of innovation become:
1. How to get more power to that wall socket, with lesser losses
2. How to get cleaner, greener power to the wall socket
3. How to get this power to reach more people (especially the poor and unserviced), more effectively.

And these questions map the current paradigm of new electricity solutions. What could be a radical new question that we could ask ourselves that would fundamentally alter our approach to energy solutions?

A few hour’s drive from Lucknow are villages like Parora and Seri. Electricity is infrequent. A village gets an average of 5-6 hours of power supply daily. Intermittent supply, fluctuating voltage and availability for a bare handful of hours during the night. Never really enough for irrigation, or home appliances or running a computer or charging a phone or any of the million things you believe you need electricity for…

One enterprising villager I met in Seri told me that he has found the solution for lighting up his home. Flashlights. He removed all bulbs and tube lights from his house and instead hung flashlights in every room. Without any electricity reaching the village he found that the bulbs were pretty useless most of the time. And the fluctuations in power meant frequent replacements. A heavy expense for an ordinary villager. But flashlights? How does that light up a house? What about batteries? Isn’t that expensive? And strength of the light?

What he held in his hand was an LED handheld torch from Eveready. Priced at Rs. 90 per piece, this is taking over the market from Philips in the bulb and tubes category in villagesor Uttar Pradesh. A torchlight that gives out powerful, clear, white light, uses 2 cells, can run for 3-4 months on 2 cells at 5-8 hours per day. What I walked into was a rather well lit room.

No wall sockets being used.

Another villager took me to the terrace of his house to show me the V-Sat dish installed by ITC, to help him run his e-choupal center. But what I noticed was that his was not the only house with a dish. Almost every household had a small ‘chatri’ as a dish is locally called – a satellite television connection.

In that village almost 80% of the households have a television and a Chinese made DVD player. DVD films are very popular. They can be bought for as little as Rs. 10 per DVD and have 2-3 films included in each disc. Picture and sound quality is rather bad. But quality is not the primary driver here. Need for entertainment is.

How are these powered? A little battery box in each home that provides an alternate source, combined with a few entrepreneurs in the village who own diesel generators. If regular electricity supply cannot recharge their batteries, the Villagers take their batteries to the generator point and charge their batteries for a few rupees per hour at the generator. A self-sustained ecosystem. No plug sockets in the wall.

These are small solutions.... within an ecosystem starved of the traditional solutions. And they may have a high carbon footprint....but maybe we need to take our learning from here - and not from the most advanced laboratories. No wall sockets. No wires. Self-generating. Ecological. locally creatable. What would be the paradigm shift for electricity solutions?