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.

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.

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)

This seminar examines possible explanations for a striking anomaly in the distribution of democracies around the world. While 60 percent of all the independent states in the world are at least electoral democracies, the Arab world is alone among major regions in lacking a critical mass of democracies. In fact, not a single one of the states of the Arab Middle East is classified by Freedom House as a democracy today. This presentation examines possible cultural, historical, economic, political, institutional, and geostrategic explanations for the democracy deficit in the Arab world. Rejecting some of these possible explanations as implausible or untenable, it affirms others and considers what factors might foster transitions to constitutional democracy in the Arab world.

Summary
Larry Diamond's presentation explored the question of why there is no Arab democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. Using Freedom House panel data, he demonstrated the relatively stagnant levels of democratic freedoms that have typified this authoritarian slice of geography for the last several decades: only two countries out of nearly twenty could be considered electoral democracies, and these were the non-Arab states of Turkey and Israel. He next sifted through several potential explanations for the absence of democratization.

The first was the culturalist thesis, that something inherent within Islam or Arab culture precludes the formation of a genuinely democratic set of institutions and values. However, the presence of democracy in other non-Western regions casts doubt on this contention. The second was economic development, a popular variable often correlated with democratic transitions; however, Arab autocracies each have analogues in other regions with similar levels of development but with democratic governments. More plausibly, a variety of political and institutional variables lay at the heart of the problem. For one, these regimes have become extremely adept at repressing dissidents and reformists within their societies. For another, they have adopted an adaptable ecology of liberalization, in which short bursts of political reform relieve temporary demands for reform while leaving intact executive monopolies over state resources. Further, they efficiently divide opposition parties and civic forces, often by imposing electoral rules and regulations that make it impossible for civil society-which is generally weak and fragmented-to mount concerted campaigns against the state apparatus. Finally, the dual conundrums of Islamism and the Arab-Israeli conflict play into each regime's survival strategy.

Authoritarian incumbents play up the nightmare of Islamic extremists gaining power to curry favor with the West and delay reforms; they also use the Palestinian issue to defuse popular grievance by way of rechanneling indignation against Israel.