Abstract
The historic focus of development has rightfully been on macroeconomics and good governance, but technology has an increasingly large role to play.  In this talk, I review several novel technologies that we have deployed in India and Africa, and discuss the challenges and opportunities of this new subfield of EECS research.  Working with the Aravind Eye Hospital, we currently supporting doctor/patient videoconferencing in 30 rural villages; more than 25,000 people have had their blindness cured due to these exams.

Dr. Brewer focuses on all aspects of Internet-based systems, including technology, strategy, and government.  As a researcher, he has led projects on scalable servers, search engines, network infrastructure, sensor networks, and security. His current focus is (high) technology for developing regions, with projects in India, Ghana, and Uganda among others, and including communications, health care, education, and e-government.

In 1996, he co-founded Inktomi Corporation with a Berkeley grad student based on their research prototype, and helped lead it onto the NASDAQ 100 before it was bought by Yahoo! in March 2003.

In 2000, he founded the Federal Search Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization focused on improving consumer access to government information. Working with President Clinton, Dr. Brewer helped to create USA.gov, the official portal of the Federal government, which launched in September 2000.

He was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering for leading the development of scalable servers (early cloud computing), and also received the ACM Mark Weiser award for 2009.  He received an MS and Ph.D. in EECS from the MIT, and a BS in EECS from UC Berkeley. He was named a "Global Leader for Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum, by the Industry Standard as the "most influential person on the architecture of the Internet", by InfoWorld as one of their top ten innovators, by Technology Review as one of the top 100 most influential people for the 21st century (the "TR100"), and by Forbes as one of their 12 "e-mavericks", for which he appeared on the cover.

Summary of the Seminar
Eric Brewer is Professor of Computer Science at the University of California Berkeley where he leads the Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions (TIER) research group.

Dr. Brewer spoke about the role for technology in effective development strategies at the base of the pyramid.

The history of development to date has been characterized by large agencies funding big projects with strings attached, usually in the form of debt or demands for political allegiance. These kinds of projects are hampered by their scale and the requirement to work with corrupt governments. They typically include little role for new technology as projects move slowly and lack the expertise to facilitate this.

Outside the sphere of traditional development, technology is having a major impact on economic prosperity. The mobile phone revolution, driven by bottom up demand, provides enormous advantages to any worker operating in a large radius. A taxi driver given a mobile phone, for example, will increase his revenue by 60% on average. Other bottom-up businesses have seen major success. The Village Phone scheme, which runs as a franchise model with capital coming from microfinance, now covers the majority of Bangladeshi villages. A village phone lady will make on average two times the income she would have done from farming.

However, the mobile phone remains a largely urban phenomenon since cellular networks require a certain density of users before they can economically justify the installation of a base station. The availability of an internet connection is crucial for the viability of businesses and services in rural areas.  WiFi-based Long Distance networks (WiLDNet) are emerging as a potential low-cost alternative to traditional connectivity solutions for rural regions. Unlike mesh networks, which use omni-directional antennas to cater to short ranges, WiLD networks are comprised of point-to-point wireless links that use directional antennas with line of sight over long distances.

Eric's Berkeley research team has partnered with Aravind Eye Hospital in Theni in the southern India state of Tamil Nadu to use this technology to address the problem of blindness in the region, 70% of which is treatable. The long-distance wireless network they have installed is allowing eye specialists to interview and examine patients in five remote clinics via high-quality video conferencing. 25,000 patients have recovered sight using this system and it is set to expand to 50 centers covering 2.5 million people.

Eric's team has also worked on software that addresses local educational needs in developing regions. In poorly resourced schools, students will often be sharing a mouse and computer screen with a group of others. Metamouse gives each student their own mouse to use; when answering questions all users must agree on a location before progressing. This encourages collaboration between students and has had impressive results in boys in particular, with a 50% improvement in scoring compared to each user having their own PC.

Abstract
Since 2004, Omidyar Network, the philanthropic investment firm of eBay founder, Pierre Omidyar, has been investing in market-based efforts with the potential for large-scale, catalytic social impact. Technology is a significant focus of its work, as it can greatly improve the quality of life, reaching millions of people efficiently and easily. Matt Halprin, partner, and Stephen King, director, Investments, will discuss the organization's pioneering approach to philanthropy, the developing world context for technology, and innovative examples of liberation technology from the field.

Matt Halprin, Partner
Matt leads Omidyar Network's Media, Markets & Transparency initiative, supporting technologies that promote transparency, accountability, and trust across media, markets, and government. Within this initiative, his team pursues investments in Social Media, Marketplaces, and Government Transparency. In his role as Partner, Matt builds Omidyar Network’s team of talented investment professionals and works with portfolio organizations to help them succeed.

Matt has more than 20 years of business experience, including six at eBay. As Vice President, Global Trust and Safety at eBay, he led a team of 90 statisticians, policy managers, and product managers. He also helped coordinate the efforts of 2,000 customer support personnel to increase revenue while minimizing fraud and other trust-reducing behavior. Prior to eBay, Matt served as a Partner and Vice President at the Boston Consulting Group, where he worked with technology clients on issues of corporate strategy and corporate development. Previously, Matt was Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Quadlux, a VC-backed developer of technology-based ovens that was later sold to GE and Hobart.

Matt is on the Boards of Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia), Sunlight Foundation, DonorsChoose.org, Goodmail Systems and Management Leadership for Tomorrow, which supports the next generation of minority leaders in the United States.  He graduated with High Distinction as a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School and holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.

Stephen King, Director, Investments
Stephen brings Omidyar Network exceptional experience in applying media and technology to create positive social impact. Based in London, Stephen focuses on expanding our efforts outside the U.S. in the Social Media and Government Transparency investment areas. He also makes investments across all areas within the Media, Markets & Transparency initiative.

Prior to Omidyar Network, Stephen served as the Chief Executive of the BBC World Service Trust, where he led a period of sustained growth that included building programs in more than 40 countries in the developing world. Stephen helped establish the Trust’s international reputation as one of the largest and most successful organizations using media and communications to improve the lives of the world’s poor and promote better governance and transparency worldwide. Prior to the BBC, Stephen was the Executive Director of the International Council on Social Welfare, an international organization working to promote social development. Stephen has also held positions with nonprofit organizations HelpAge International, Help the Aged, and Voluntary Service Overseas.

Stephen is a board member of CARE International in the U.K. He holds an MA in Oriental and African Studies from the University of London.

Summary of the Seminar
Matt Halprin is a Partner leading Omidyar Network's Media and Stephen King is the Director of Investments and is based in London. They introduced us to the work of Omidyar Network which invests in market-based efforts to give people the technology tools they need to improve their lives.

The network was set up in 2004 by Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, and his wife Pam.  It comprises both a venture capital fund and a grant-making foundation.  The network has a strong focus on individual empowerment and is committed to market-based solutions, believing that business is one of the best mechanisms for achieving sustainable social impact. Omidyar looks to invest in projects that have potential to impact large numbers of people and that show signs of real innovation - for example, new business models or new markets.

So far $307 million has been committed, with $138 million going to for-profit investments and $169 million to non-profit grants. There are two broad areas of focus:

• Access to capital: This encompasses projects around microfinance, entrepreneurship and property rights.
• Media, markets and transparence: This encompasses projects around social media, marketplaces and government transparency. Omidyar are particularly interested in the role of journalism in ensuring accountability of governments.

Projects in the Unities States include:

• The Sunlight Foundation - works to make information about Congress and Federal government more accessible and meaningful to citizens; created the first searchable site for all federal government contracts to monitor where money is going.
• Global Integrity - uses quantitative and qualitative analysis to provide a scorecard tracking governance and corruption in different countries.

In the developing world, Omidyar looks to supports access to greater information and government transparency, which it views as key drivers of prosperity. The network is supporting global organizations, national partners in three African countries (Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya) and is establishing a pan-African mechanism for smaller grants. Current global projects include:

• Ushahidi - an open source platform to report and share data in the aftermath of a crisis. Omidyar will be working to help Ushahidi to build traffic to the site and to tackle the challenge of verifying reports.
• Infonet - a web portal that acts as an information hub for all national and devolved budgets in Kenya; currently used by NGOs, citizen groups and the media.
• Mzalendo - a one stop shop for citizens to track the activities of parliamentarians in Kenya.
• FrontlineSMS - a two way communication tool using laptops and mobile phones for organizations without internet access.

Abstract
Despite the promise, the majority of mobile technology solutions are only meeting the needs of a small percentage of organisations who could benefit from them. In his talk, Ken Banks will discuss how he empowers grassroots NGOs, provide the history and background to FrontlineSMS, and highlight some of the challenges in developing mobile tools which work in resource-constrained environments

Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world, and has spent the last 16 years working on projects in Africa. Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS, an award-winning text messaging-based field communication system designed to empower grassroots non-profit organisations. Ken graduated from Sussex University with honours in Social Anthropology with Development Studies, and was awarded a Stanford University Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship in 2006, and named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow in 2008. In 2009 he was named a Laureate of the Tech Awards, an international awards program which honours innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity. Ken's work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Institute, and he is the current recipient of a grant from the Hewlett Foundation

Summary of the Seminar
Ken Banks, the founder of kiwanja.net, spoke about the importance of technology solutions that meet the needs of those working in the developing world and his own work in this area through FrontlineSMS.

While current excitement in the technology world may be focused on increasing centralization through cloud computing, this means little to people working in the developing world where internet connectivity is unavailable or unreliable.  Too little investment is going into building tools that will genuinely assist the work many non-profits are doing now.

Ken developed FrontlineSMS to tap into the potential of mobile phones, which are now widely available and used in the developing world. This is a two way communication system that can be used anywhere where there is a mobile phone signal.  FrontlineSMS is available as a free download and Ken's approach has been not to dictate implementation but rather to allow people to use this very general tool in whatever ways meet their particular needs. This has resulted in diverse applications, for example:

• Monitoring election practices in Nigeria in 2007
• Sending security alerts to humanitarian workers in conflict areas of Afghanistan
• Encouraging young people to take part in elections in Azerbaijan
• Updating local people on the location of speeches during President Obama's visit to Ghana

There is also great potential to combine FrontlineSMS with traditional media, such as radio, that is already widespread throughout Africa, to make this much more interactive.

Ken offered a number of points of guidance for those thinking about designing technology with social applications:

• Work with the equipment that people already have at their disposal
• Make equipment easy to assemble and intuitive
• Price it at a level people can afford
• Think about how use can be replicated - how will other NGOs find out about it?
• Assume a situation of no internet connectivity
• Where possible, give users an ability to connect with others - for example through a forum (this has been particularly successful at FrontlineSMS, with a third of those who download the software joining the online community)
• Don't let a social science approach dominate - it is much better to think in a multi-disciplinary way
• Use technology that is appropriate to the context - don't bring in tools that require knowledge and equipment not already held in the community
• Collaborate, don't compete. Sometimes NGOs can rush to do the same things; examples of genuine cooperation are hard to find

Looking ahead, Ken will be developing functionality for FrontlineSMS that makes use of internet connectivity where this is available. He is also working on finding additional funding to help organizations pay for text messages.

Professor Joseph previously taught at Emory University, Dartmouth College, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Ibadan (Nigeria), and the University of Khartoum (Sudan). He has held research fellowships at Harvard University, Boston University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Institute of Development Studies (Sussex, UK), Chr. Michelsen Institute (Norway), and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (France). Joseph has devoted his scholarly career to the study of politics and governance in Africa with a special focus on democratic transitions, state building and state collapse, and conflict resolution.

He directed the African Governance Program at the Carter Center (1988-1994) and coordinated elections missions in Zambia (1991), Ghana (1992), and peace initiatives in Liberia (1991-1994). He has been a longtime member of the Council of Foreign Relations. Joseph is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards including a Rhodes Scholarship, a Kent Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2002-03, he held visiting fellowships at the U.S. Institute of Peace and the National Endowment for Democracy. He was a Fulbright Scholar in France and a Fulbright Professor in Nigeria.

He has written and edited dozens of scholarly books and articles including Radical Nationalism in Cameroun (1977); Gaullist Africa: Cameroon Under Ahmadu Ahidjo (1978); Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria (1987); State, Conflict, and Democracy in Africa (1999); Smart Aid for African Development (2009) and the Africa Demos series (1990-94). His article, "Africa's Predicament and Academe", was published as a cover story by The Chronicle of Higher Education (March 7, 2003). One of his recent articles is "Challenges of a ‘Frontier' Region," Journal of Democracy, April 2008. Others are posted at www.brookings.edu/experts/josephr.aspx

» Joseph, Richard, "The Nigerian predicament" (NGR Guardian News)

The presentation by Josephine T. Andrews and Kris Inman entitled, "Explaining Vote Choice in Africa's Emerging Democracies", offers new insight into voting strategies within Africa's seven most-free democracies, including Ghana, Namibia, Senegal, Botswana, Mali, and South Africa. Using data from the Afrobarometer in 2005, they found evidence of retrospective voting: individuals who view their president as more corrupt are less likely to support the president's party with their vote. They also found evidence of ethnic voting, but weaker support for clientelistic voting. In subsequent work, they look forward to exploring whether retrospective voting undermines the prospect of democratic reversal.

Josephine Andrews, Associate Professor, Dept. of Political Science, UC Davis.  Primary research interest is on institutional design in emerging democracies, with recent work on established party systems of Western Europe (recent papers in Electoral Studies and British Journal of Political Science).  Current research involves political participation and corruption in Africa's emerging democracies as well as continuing work on party leaders and party systems of West and Eastern Europe.