Africa (Sub-Saharan)

MAPUTO, Mozambique -- Considering the rapidly growing presence of cell
phones in the developing world, interest in their role for advancing
development goals is only natural. And, considering the demographic
overlap between those most affected by HIV/AIDS and cell phone users,
it only makes sense that a major focus be put on how this low-cost
technology can fight this deadly pandemic.

APC-member
Women’sNet recently engaged in a UNICEF-driven speed assessment of
fifteen projects that apply cell phones towards development objectives
in Africa, with a particular focus on HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment
and care.

Gender in the HIV/AIDS crisis and the digital divide

Women’sNet
was asked to join the study because of the gendered nature of
development issues in general, and of HIV/AIDS in particular. For
biological, economic, and social reasons, women and girls are at the
greatest risk of contracting the virus and consequently make up a
mounting proportion of the global HIV/AIDS-infected population.
Sally-Jean Shackleton of Women’sNet told APCNews that, among eighteen
to twenty-four year olds in certain areas of South Africa, “one in four
females among eighteen to twenty-four year olds is HIV+, compared to
one in twelve males.”

What is more, women face significant
barriers to accessing and benefiting from information communication
technologies (ICTs), and many ICT for development (ICT4D) projects and
programmes fail to effectively consider the gendered nature of
development issues and/or the digital divide. Women’sNet has
incorporated gender concerns into its research for the rapid
assessment, looking at how women and men use cell phones differently,
women’s levels of access, and whether gender is adequately incorporated
into projects’ design, implementation, and monitoring.

South Africa’s use of low-cost technology

Women’sNet’s
research for the five-month study, which culminated at the end of April
2007, is focused on three projects in South Africa. These are:

•  
 Fahamu’s Umn Yango (meaning ‘doorway’ in isiZulu) project, which
promotes the use of cell phones to access and report information
related to violence against women, women’s access to land, and HIV/AIDS
in five rural villages in the province of KwaZulu Natal;
•  
 Cell-Life’s AfterCare project in Cape Town, which enables home-based
care workers to use their cell phones to collect and transmit data on
HIV/AIDS patients’ well-being and adherence to anti-retroviral drug
treatment (low levels of which contribute to mutations of the virus and
drug-resistant strains);
•     And, SimPill’s award-winning
Adherence System project, also in Cape Town, which uses a real-time
management system to increase adherence to medications prescribed to
treat chronic illnesses – particularly tuberculosis, which is a
significant cause of death of people living with HIV.

While the
projects are experiencing success in the collection and transmission of
medical data and, to a lesser degree, health information management and
drug adherence, most of the projects studied are having little to no
impact on HIV/AIDS prevalence rates just yet. The pandemic “is complex,
deep, and overwhelming, and it would take a lot more than these
projects to make a dent,” said Shackleton. This is especially true
considering that “many projects seem to skid to a halt after being
piloted.”

Challenges

Shackleton
identifies mismanagement as the factor that most constrains the
potential of these projects. Those expected to benefit from the
projects are not always consulted or otherwise engaged, funds are not
always spent wisely, and there is often disconnect between
beneficiaries, health professionals, technologists, and managers. For
example, Shackleton explains, “health care workers who transmit data
from their cell phones may not get feedback as to whether their input
was useful – or received, and police officers who receive messages
reporting violence against women may not be prepared to respond.”

Another
major constraint is crime. Although cell phones are a relatively
low-cost technology, they still hold considerable value in
poverty-stricken areas, and are commonly stolen. And, such theft is
likely to rise as these devices adopt increasingly sophisticated
functions. At the same time, however, the theft of a cell phone
involves much less financial loss than that of a more costly device.

Despite
the challenges that exist in using cellular technology in development
projects, Shackleton maintains that it holds great potential, saying,
“I think cell phones are the way to go. They are useful, relatively
inexpensive tools for networking, decreasing travel time and cost –
especially for rural residents, maintaining relationships, pursuing
opportunities, making money, banking, reporting crime, accessing
services, and managing patient care. The technology can do anything,
really, but people have to drive it.”

Copies of the rapid assessment report can be obtained by contacting Sally-Jean Shackleton at sallys [at] womensnet [dot] org [dot] za.

For more information on the projects mentioned here, visit the following websites.

Fahamu project

Cell-life project

SimPill project

Author: --- (Katherine Walraven for APCNews)
Contact: katwalraven at gmail.com
Source: APCNews
Date: 04/26/2007
Location: MAPUTO, Mozambique

Report from Global Information Network’s Delegation to the National Conference for Media Reform

Memphis, Tennessee, January 11-14, 2007

Prepared by: Lisa Vives, executive director, Global Information Network; with contributions from
Zita Allen, Milton Allimadi, Dame Babou, Karen-Juanita Carrillo, Kenton Kirby, Chaka Ngwenya, Haider Rizvi, Omoyele Sowore, and Bankole Thompson

Edited by: Julie McCourt

If you are good in history, and have been keen on Kenyan's gradual historical shaping, you certainly know of one Mr. Moi, for 24-years, the ruler of Kenya.

I wish to remind you of the hundreds of dead bodies found grizzly chopped necks with their eyes gauged out. In the Ngong, today occupied, and the Karura forests (where Nobel Prize winner Wangari Mathai gruesomely faced goons willing to take her life at the expense of few trees she tried to plant), found bodies belonged to activist students and politicians.

In Kenya then, if someone stepped on your toe- you did not yell. If you did, you earned freely a passport to heaven. If you spoke, you ended up in the torture chambers of the Nyayo house.

Those days and their cold conspiracies are not gone. As far much as the student body, especially from the University of Nairobi, took a front seat in the agitation for Democracy, the university's political voices have been kept checked. The presses, though allowed freedom of formation have met stern cold faces staring.

It is never an easy walk, like one Wilfred Kiboro put it in the IPI, 2005 conference held in Nairobi... " It not always as easy as the stories in the press read, to get those very stories..." And neither did the university presses expect it easy. But what would the world say of the victimization that comes with being associated with the university press today. As a fact, many are gone. Recently a 22-year-old student who wrote a conflicting story on the, "Sex for Marks Scandal Among Lecturers," was given a thousand days expulsion from the varsity.

A thousand days !

Yet the media struggles on, on impulse. People doing Media and literature-oriented courses have got to keep writing. Point blankly.

They write and watch the reaction. Write and pause for a semester. Write and restrict readership to a few students. Write in pseudonymns, like scribes in old tyranny.

In a pretentious act to protect the institution from being exposed of tribalism, bigotry and injustices--the university administration have further strengthened censorship in the name of checking incitement and ill-will.

Kenya says it is free. Students in Universities are Kenyan. Yet like a dragon with far reaching paws, the universities have set solid rules prohibiting the national media from access to the universities. (Accessing it only when called for press conferences.) The have alliances with the media houses' bureaucracies so that no information on their underworks goes public. And thats how the world will never know we are rotting.

It is such conspiracies that casts nets around the organization of media houses in the universities. The Varsity Times, Eldoret has t wice applied for funding from NGOs in the country. When these NGOs refer for testimony from the university administration, they never give a thought associated with it. Their spirits poisoned because the university would hate influential presses in its backyard.

The spirits are high for change. When we break through the blackmail on our eduaction in the coercion of quitting advocacy and reporting, we will break free .

This will need the world's motivation.

Martin Kamau

P.o Box 41110-0100

Nairobi.

Tel: +254 0721707995

kamaucmartin [at] yahoo [dot] com