Stanford University

Foreign Policy

Mobile Technology: Empowering the Grassroots

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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.

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Ken Banks Founder Speaker kiwanja.net
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An Equilibrium Model of the African HIV/AIDS Epidemic

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An equilibrium search model of the Malawian HIV/AIDS epidemic is presented. Individuals engage in di¤erent types of sexual activity, which vary in their riskiness. When choosing a sexual activity, such as short-term sex without a condom, a person rationally considers its risk. A simulated version of the model is parameterized to match some salient facts about the Malawian epidemic. Some topical policies (e.g., male circumcision, treatment of other STDs, and promoting marriage) are studied and found to have potential to back…re: Moderate interventions may actually increase the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, due to shifts in human behavior and equilibrium e¤ects.

Assistant Professor Michele Tertilt is one of three Stanford scholars awarded a two-year Sloan Research Fellowship.  The Sloan Research Fellowships support the work of exceptional young researchers early in their academic careers.  Michele's research focuses on  family economics, consumer credit, growth and development, and demography.  The Economics department congratulates Michele on the prestigious fellowship.

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Michele Tertilt Assistant Professor Speaker the Department of Economics, Stanford University
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Development and Practice of Arbitration in India --Has It Evolved as an Effective Legal Institution?

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The significant increase in the role of international trade in the economic development of nations over the last few decades has been accompanied by a considerable increase in the number of commercial disputes as well. In India too, rapid globalization of the economy and the resulting increase in competition has led to an increase in commercial disputes. At the same time, however, the rate of industrial growth, modernization, and improvement of socio-economic circumstances has, in many instances, outpaced the rate of growth of dispute resolution mechanisms. In many parts of India, rapid development has meant increased caseloads for already overburdened courts, further leading to notoriously slow adjudication of commercial disputes. As a result, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, including arbitration, have become more crucial for businesses operating in India as well as those doing businesses with Indian firms.

Keeping in mind the broader goal of exploring links between the quality of legal performance and economic growth, this paper is an attempt to critically evaluate arbitration in India as a legal institution. To this end, this paper presents an empirical inquiry into the state of arbitration, as well as a more theoretical examination of the political economy and arbitration as developed and practiced in India. In sum, although the huge influx of overseas commercial transactions spurred by the growth of the Indian economy has resulted in a significant increase of commercial disputes, arbitration practice has lagged behind. The present arbitration system in India is still plagued with many loopholes and shortcomings, and the quality of arbitration has not adequately developed as a quick and cost-effective mechanism for resolution of commercial disputes.

In this paper, the evolution of arbitration law and practice in India has been explored. Part I of this paper lays out the basics of arbitration in India, with a brief discussion of its history, the statutes that govern arbitration, the types of arbitration practiced, the enforcement of arbitral awards, and the costs of arbitration as compared to those of litigation. Part II explores the working of arbitration in India, while Part III is a critical analysis of the success of arbitration under the 1996 Act. Part IV briefly examines arbitration practice across regions, and the relationship between arbitration and commercial growth. Finally, Part V offers a series of recommendations for improving arbitration practice in India.

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FrontlineSMS:Medic - Democratizing mHealth for the Developing World on Their Terms Not Ours

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FrontlineSMS:Medic is a Palo Alto based tech nonprofit startup that began in early 2009 with several Stanford undergraduates and graduate students at the helm. The concept behind the group's software suite is simple: free intuitive mobile phone and computer applications built upon free and open source packages, such as OpenMRS and FrontlineSMS, to allow clinics and hospitals in the developing world to use mobile phones for healthcare services in resource poor settings. Their work has already broken rapidly out of their first pilot site in Malawi and now 2.2 million patients are being covered by their software in Uganda, Tanzania, Cameroon, Kenya, Burundi, Guatemala, Honduras, India and Bangladesh. Their service partners include Partners in Health, Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative, and Village Health Works.

Lucky Gunasekara is currently a student in Stanford University's School of Medicine studying applications of information technology in global health. He graduated from Cornell University in 2006, with Distinction in All Subjects, holding a B.A. in Neurobiology and Behavior, and a minor in East Asian Studies. From 2006 to 2008, he lived in Japan, studying public health and foreign aid as a Fulbright Scholar and working in corporate Japan. He currently serves as the Managing Director of FrontlineSMS:Medic, which he co-founded with partners, Josh Nesbit, Isaac Holeman, and Nadim Mahmud in 2009.


 

Tom Wiltzius is a undergraduate in Stanford's Computer Science program studying systems. Tom's interest in ICT for development began with work in wireless mesh networking as a means of rapidly and cheaply deploying data infrastructure in unwired areas.  Projects with the Urbana-Champaign Wireless Network, South Africa's Meraka Institute, and the Stanford Information Networks Group all contributed to an understanding of mesh networking centered around applications for the developing world. Tom is currently working on a cost-sensitive, intuitive data collection tool designed for community healthcare workers in semi-connected rural environments as his senior thesis in conjunction with the FrontlineSMS:Medic project.

 

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Lucky Gunasekara Student, School of Medicine Speaker Stanford University
Tom Wiltzius Student, Computer Science Speaker Stanford University
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Martin Carnoy

485 Lasuen Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-3096

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Vida Jacks Professor of Education
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Martin Carnoy is the Vida Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University Graduate School of Education and is Co-Director of the GSE’s Lemann Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Brazilian Education. Prior to coming to Stanford, he was a Research Associate in Economics, Foreign Policy Division, at the Brookings Institution. He has also been a consultant to the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, UNESCO, IEA, OECD, UNICEF, International Labour Office.

Dr. Carnoy is a labor economist with a special interest in the relation between the economy and the educational system. To this end, he studies this relationship in the US and many other countries. He is particularly interested in how labor markets treat race, ethnicity, and gender (Faded Dreams; Whitewashing Race). Further, he studies educational systems worldwide using comparative analysis to understand how education influences productivity and economic growth, and, in turn, how and why educational systems change over time, and why some countries’ educational systems are marked by better student performance than others'. He has researched extensively the impact of vouchers and charter schools on student outcomes, as well as larger issues of the impact of economic inequality on educational systems.

In recent years, Dr. Carnoy has carried out major projects comparing educational quality in Latin America (Cuba’s Academic Advantage), Southern and Eastern Africa (The Low Achievement Trap), and among U.S. states (Bringing It Back Home), in the Russian Federation ((Не)обычные Школы), and higher education in the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China (University Expansion in a Changing Global Economy). Currently, he is conducting impact evaluations of various educational reforms in Brazil and using big data to research educational inequality among Brazilian municipalities and schools.

Dr. Carnoy received his BA in Electrical Engineering from California Institute of Technology, MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago.

 

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Authoritarian Governments in Cyberspace

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In the context of authoritarian states the internet has always been viewed as an unambiguous force for good, allowing citizens of such states to mobilise around particular political and social issues, and gain access to previously banned materials. However, many authoritarian governments are now actively exploiting cyberspace for their own purposes; some of them appear to be succeeding in subverting the internet's democratising potential. Have we overestimated the internet's ability to bring democratic change and underestimated? Drawing on numerous recent examples from Russia, China, and Iran, the talk will illustrate the darker side the use of social media in these countries.

Evgeny Morozov is a leading thinker and commentator on the political implications of the Internet. He is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy and runs the magazine's influential and widely-quoted "Net Effect" blog about the Internet's impact on global politics (neteffect.foreignpolicy.com). Morozov is currently a Yahoo! fellow at Georgetown University's E.A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Prior to his appointment to Georgetown, he was a fellow at George Soros's Open Society Institute, where he remains on the board of the Information Program (one of the leading and most experimental funders for technology projects that have an impact on open society and human rights). Before moving to the US, Morozov was based in Berlin and Prague, where he was Director of New Media at Transitions Online.

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Evgeny Morozov

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Evgeny Morozov is a visiting scholar in the Liberation Technology Program at Stanford University and a Scwhartz fellow at the New America Foundation. He is also a blogger and contributing editor to Foreign Policy Magazine. He is a former Yahoo fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and a former fellow at the Open Society Institute, where he remains on the board of the Information Program. His book The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom was published by PublicAffairs in January 2011.

Evgeny Morozov Yahoo fellow Speaker Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University
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