Tactical Tech are looking for advocacy organisations to test their new mobile advocacy toolkit which they are producing in conjunction with Fahamu. We would like to narrow this first phase of testing to organisations who were represented at the meeting in Nairobi organised by Fahamu in June 2007.

The toolkit is made up of easily accessible tools and materials explaining mobile technologies. This project is carried out in collaboration with the African Human Rights organisation Fahamu.

This toolkit makes the most of the technologies that are currently available in this space to enable advocates and NGOs use mobile phones to:

* Provide access to information such as recorded voice or audio and news updates
* Increase participatory processes and facilitation through polling, voting, surveying and incident reporting
* Enable citizen journalism and remote publishing by using mobiles to blog or to create podcasts, and to upload photographs.
* Conduct awareness raising and outreach through demographically targeted or time based messaging, alerts, ringtones and games or small scale applications
* Co-ordinate meetings or organise ash mobilisation and calls to action
* Provide services allowing the creation of alert/SOS systems for migrant workers and other communities and of early warning and emergency response systems in general.

Tactical Tech is coordinating with a network of 50 of the worlds leading practitioners working with mobiles and advocacy to create the toolkit. It contains a range of tools, case studies and practical how-to guides as well as a set of references for additional resources and reviews of web-based services.

The organisation testing the toolkit should be looking to implement the use of mobiles in one of their projects so we will require some knowledge of the basics of mobiles and computers in order that the most effective use possible is made of the material.

Tactical Tech are looking for the following outcomes from this testing process;

* Feedback on whether the content is understandable, appropriate and well structured
* Feedback on the tone and presentation of the information; whether the language is understandable
* What is missing from the toolkit
* What isn't needed in the toolkit
* Whether the tools included are functional and appropriate

Feedback on the toolkit should be provided not just by the technologists in an organisation but also by programme staff and board members so that a broad range of opinion is canvassed this is vital to ensure that the material is appropriate for those working at different levels of an organisation be it strategic or technical. We will request that full documentation of the testing process is carried out by the organisations taking part.

This process will help us build the final official version of the toolkit in March 2008 so it can be of benefit to advocacy organisations around the world.

If you are interested in taking part please contact [email][email protected]

Demos describes itself as a 'think tank for everyday democracy' which is not linked to any political party but was recently described by a columnist for a leading British paper as "the New Labour's thinktank of choice" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1797573,00.html).

The pamphlet comes as a response to recent activity which has raised the profile of science and technology on the international development agenda. including the UN Millenium Development Goals and the recommendations of the 2005 Commission for Africa.

The first of the three 'global science races' described in the pamphlet is 'the race to the top of the global economy' which takes as a model the explosive growth of the Asian Tigers and the Indian and Chinese economies. This pitches development as a process of modernisation; thus African countries will 'leapfrog' their way out of poverty by "creating incentives and promoting an enabling environment for foreign direct investment is one of the most important mechanisms for building technological capacity" (http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/reports/tf_science.htm).

This is a view seemingly endorsed by Calestous Juma, the Kenyan Professor of the Practice of International Development at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. In a recent publication entitled 'Going for Growth: Science, Technology and Innovation in Africa' he called for a rethinking of the African economic landscape to "..focus on the role of knowledge as a basis for economic transformation. Doing so will entail placing policy emphasis on emerging opportunities such as renewing infra-structure, building human capabilities, stimulating business development, and increasing participation in the global economy. These areas should provide a firm foundation upon which to base international partnerships." (http://bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/BCSIA_content/documents/GoingforGrowth_AME…)

The second race is the 'Universal fix' which the authors describe as 'breakthroughs in science and technology that will have a direct and widespread impact on poverty. These are the types of breakthroughs that are exemplified by the Grand Challenges in Global Health (http://www.gcgh.org/) which is funded by the wealth of Bill Gates (currently standing at around $50 billion). Examples of these 'fixes' are treatments for diseases such as malaria. This approach is often characterised by public/private partnerships and views development as a common moral reponsibility.

The slow race to citizens' solutions advocated by the reports authors takes a different road. Its approach is informed by participatory approaches to development; "Rather than being viewed as passive beneficiaries of trickle-down development or technology transfer,in this race,citizens are seen as knowledgeable, active and centrally involved in both the ‘upstream’ choice and design of technologies,and their ‘downstream’delivery and regulation."

Such an approach means reconceptualising innovation to involve a 'systems approach' which engages multiple actors and rethinks the cultural and social relationships that will enable a technology to work and impact on poverty reduction. This approach requires interdisciplinary research and 'bottom-up' problem definitions.

The importance of access and ownership in what is described as a 'privatised' world of research and development is another aspect of the 'slow race'. This privatised world has resulted in a 90:10 gap in which only 10% of the overall world health research budget is spent on diseases which affect 90% of the world's population (http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/0,,contentMD…). Some public/private partnerships are seen as a viable response to the squeeze on public sector finances caused by structural adjustment programmes. Mobile phone technology is cited as a private sector development which can be of genuine benefit to the poor.

Engaging citizens in debates to shape decisions about technology is seen as a vital part of the 'slow race'. The pamphlet's authors stress the need for public engagement in debates about science and technology and cite the success of the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa as an example of a "campaign to assert the rights of citizens to scientific knowledge".

At the pamphlet's launch in London last week, Dr John Mugabe, the Director of the NEPAD Office of Science and Technology, spoke of the need to get African governments involved in science and technology policies and to create a political culture in which citizen's commissions might operate effectively. He spoke of how new models of public private partnerships with small and medium sized enterprises will offer power gains to the poor.

Dr Suman Sahai, the convener of the Gene Campaign (http://www.genecampaign.org/), which is dedicated to protecting the genetic resources of the South and the rights of farming and tribal communities, critiqued the view of genetic technologies as a 'universal fix' for poverty and hunger. The story of the nutritionally enhanced 'golden rice' which was pitched as a cure for widespread vitamin A deficiency exemplifies this, and on the Gene Campaign website she describes how "...the poor blind children that were held up as the reason why Golden Rice was being developed do not seem to be part of the discourse anymore" (http://genecampaign.org/News/golden-rice.htm). This is a view echoed by Mariam Mayet from the African Centre for Biodiversity, when she spoke to Pambazuka News of how African countries have been subject to pressure to accept GM food; "In May 2003, when Sudan banned the import of GM food aid, it was forced to issue a series of temporary waivers enabling food aid shipments to the country to continue while alternatives were found" (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/34804).

Several people raised the issue of how effective citizen engagement in public decision making about science can be in politically repressive environments. Dr John Mugabe spoke of the need to create a political culture in Africa in which 'citizen's juries' on science and technology might operate effectively.

The issues raised in the pamphlet are of global importance and the authors are to be congratulated for making the pamphlet available under an 'open access' licence, thus encouraging debate and conversation around these vital sigues (http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/theslowrace/).

Yet it is unfortunate that the authors did not spend more time on the significant challenges posed by climate change as a major threat to humanity and on the opportunities offered by information and communication technologies both as a tool for economic development and for participatory approaches to development.

In addition, a debate needs to be had around the issues of how citizen's participation can work effectively in politically repressive environments and how multinational corporations can be held to account when, as Nnimmo Bassey recently described in Pambazuka News, "Oil corporations such as Shell and Chevron, who are major players in the Niger Delta, have admitted to contributing to corruption and violence/civil unrest in the Niger Delta." (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/34801).

"The Slow Race - Making technology work for the poor" is a new pamphlet published jointly by the British 'think tank' Demos and the Institute of Development Studies.

The event Africa Source II, focusing on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) took place between January 8-15, in Kalangala, Uganda. The event specialised in hands on skills development for the Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) sector, bringing together over 120 NGO support professionals, staff and software experts. Becky Faith reports on how participants learnt about using FOSS to increase vital access to information and provide inexpensive and efficient ICT infrastructure.

"When the rules of the game change we have an opportunity to change our circumstances.” With these words Mark Shuttleworth, open source advocate and Afronaut, addressed the 140 participants at Africa Source 2 which was held in a beautiful location at Kalangala, on Uganda's Ssese Islands.

The event was intended to provide NGO activists, educators and technologists space to get hands on experience with Free and Open Source Software, but the participatory and enabling environment meant that participants returned home with more than a handful of free CDs.

The three tracks of ‘Migration for Education and Resource Centers’, ‘Migration for Non Profit Sector’ and ‘Information Handling and Advocacy’ showed how participants from these sectors might use open source tools. What was revelatory was not only the fact that the everyday tools we might use for our work have robust free alternatives but that each and every one of us have skills and experiences that are useful for us to share.

In the information handling track some time was spent exploring collaborative software. An introduction to Wiki's showed how they might be easily set up through sites like http://www.wikispaces.com/ and prove valuable in an educational context. Content management systems (http://www.socialsource.org.uk/pmwiki.php/IssuesAndResources/ContentMan…) were demoed and compared as well as tools for the use of SMS in activism and human rights monitoring such as Txtmob (http://www.txtmob.com/) and Asterisk (http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/). Activists from Egypt discussed the importance of blogging in recent political campaigns (http://www.manalaa.net/egblogs) and how RSS feeds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29) were a vital tool in mobilising participation.

Other sessions saw the concepts of open knowledge explored in greater depth. An introduction to copyright and the creative commons movement (http://www.commons-sense.org/) showed how the burgeoning digital commons can benefit Africa and how adoption of creative commons licenses (http://creativecommons.org/license/) can actually be a smart business model.

Yet computers can only serve to empower communities if they are adapted for local needs. Africa Source provided an opportunity for the localisation (http://translate.org.za/, http://translate.or.ug/) of popular software such as Open Office and showed how others might go about localising into their language.

The empowerment of disabled computer users was also addressed. Arun Mehta called for help for the visually challenged from geeks - (http://wiki.africasource2.tacticaltech.org/post/main/02mAzpaeWZNprwBC). He would like to see open source screenreaders to help blind and illiterate computer users - the proprietary Windows software costs in the region of $900.

Throughout Africa Source 2 participants were encouraged to offer their skills and experiences to benefit others. Most technical environments offer a strict division between 'techies' (usually male) and non techies, yet the atmosphere at Kalangala encouraged those with any skills or experience to share them with the group.

Africa Source 2 also saw major progress in the development of the African Linux Chix community. Women from Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Nigeria, Malawi, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Senegal, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Guinea, and Egypt got together to discuss how they might advocate for open source amongst women. Mentoring for school-age girls to get them to consider information technology as a career was seen as a top priority. The openness of the FOSS community was seen as a great opportunity for learning and participation by women. To join the mailing lists in English and French visit the site at http://www.africalinuxchix.org/.

* Becky Faith is Fahamu’s production manager.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Website links:

http://www.bytesforall.org/
http://foss4us.org