The Somali Media Centre is an independent forum for the Somali journalists in and outside the country. It is established to promote the profile of the brave, hardworking journalists who devoted their lives to serve their people worldwide.
Somalia has been dubbed as a failed state, a country associated with death, long running civil strife, warlords, terrorism and modern piracy. But one of the most successful stories over the years has been the rise of the independent media and freedom of thought. However, the dedication and reporting of the truth come at a price.

The Centre publishes running blogs by these journalists. Also, the Centre distributes news content and reports by the journalists. The Centre coordinates between the Somali and non-Somali journalists. It gives non-Somali journalists who may be traveling to Somalia with first hand advice and contacts. The Centre also works with high profile international media organizations in commissioning, producing and filing stories and reports about Somalia and the Horn of Africa region.

Solana Larsen writes about the origin of Somali Media Centre project:

In case you hadn't guessed, I'm not Somali.

In journalism school in London in 2002 I had a classmate named Harun Hassan who I used to ask a lot of questions about life in Mogadishu and Somali politics. After we graduated, we remained friends and I introduced him to writing for openDemocracy.net where I was a commissioning editor for a few years. Later on, I became a managing editor at Global Voices Online, where we occasionally also have stories about Somali bloggers.

Harun used to tell me about ideas he had for media projects involving the Somali community in London. He created a newsletter on paper in Somali, and at one point he approached me about making a website for something he called the Somali Media Centre.

Media coverage of the Somali community in the UK was so negative and inaccurate, Harun felt the only way to correct it, was to make it easier for UK journalists to find Somali journalists and researchers to talk to.

We made a website and blog, but we were soon distracted by other work and the project lay dormant.

The website you are looking at now, is our second attempt at creating a networking tool for Somali journalists and others to use to help improve global understanding of Somalis and Somalia.

Below are some of latest blog posts from The Somalia Media Centre:

In a post titled, Affair to Remember, Fathia Absie writes about the conviction of Joshua Asisa, a peace-keeper in Somalia, for engaging in an affair with a young Somali woman:

Military court in Kampala convicted Joshua Asisa to a one-and-half years in prison. Mr. Asisa who is a member of the AMASOM peace-keepers in Somalia have been found guilty for engaging in an affair with a young Somali woman by the name of Nimco Omar and impregnating her after marrying her under a false pretence by telling her that he was a Muslim.
This story took place last year in Mogadisho but no one heard of it till this young woman went to Kampala and took Mr. Asisa to court for lying to her. Mohamed Abukar Ahmed who is the Journalist that broke the story has told me that he has learned the story after it was reported by a news paper in Uganda. After that Mr. Ahmed tried to get in touch with the leaders of the Somali community in Kambala and was able to get in touch with the girl. He told me that Ms. Omar told him about her story and how she met Mr. Asisa who is doctor. He was working at a private hospital for the Uganda military in Mogadisho.

“in the spirit of spreading the word..,” writes Idil Osman:

The recruitment taking place in the Somali refugee camps in Dadaab, Northeastern Kenya has stirred some controversial outbursts by many in and outside the region. However what I am particularly bewildered with is the stand-point of the Kenyan government. I did an investigative report on this issue earlier on at work where the defense minister of Kenya firmly claimed Kenya had not given permission for this recruitment to take place.
Meanwhile witnesses and human rights activists are recording and documenting evidence of these youngsters being put in Kenyan military trucks and driven to Kenyan military training bases.
Many of these youngsters are taken under false pretence and the promise of regular salary and a stable job with a UN/EU/AU backed military project.
In reality they are being recruited to go and fight in the very war they fled from and had turned them into refugees. Many of these young refugees are reported to be underage and taken without their parents' consent. It also violated their international human right as refugees according to the recently released Human Rights Watch press release, because refugees are meant to be kept in civilian conditions.

Solana discusses the issue of “unnamed sources” in Western media reports in her post titled “When Local Sources go Unnamed“:

just picked up the latest edition of National Geographic Magazine for their story on “Shattered Somalia”. The photos of Mogadishu by Pascal Maitre are beautiful, though they show a lot of destruction. And the writer, Robert Draper gives a fair and sympathetic summary of a complicated history. He also definitely makes the challenges of foreign reporting in Somalia clear.

Curiously, Somali journalist Harun Hassan is mentioned by name in a photo caption of a traffic guard in Mogadishu, but as far as I can see nowhere in the text itself. Why the reluctance to reveal sources? If Draper has taken the trouble of contacting and interviewing Somali media sources, why not share this information with the readers?

Is this a typical experience of Somali journalists who assist Western journalists with their reporting? I hope members of the Somali Media Centre will help shed light on what it's like to be on that end of the reporting team.

You can see the list of current members of the Centre here.

These ventures weren’t picked by any scientific method; nor do they constitute any consensus of how ICTs will look in the next few years. These are just projects that caught my eye. Because these projects leverage technology in rural areas, let’s start with a discussion on how public internet kiosks could develop in the next few years.

Broadband? by wseltzer on Flickr.

In his blog ICTlogy, Ismael Peña-López wonders whether public internet kiosks like telecentres and cybercafés will evolve into enhanced e-centers, “where communities will gather and benefit from several community resources, computers and Internet access among others? Or will they just disappear?”

He continues:

As libraries have provided more than books, but a place where to learn to read and find kindred souls, it is my guess that public Internet access points will disappear as such, and will either be embedded within existing structures (libraries themselves, or civic centres, to name a few) or the existing telecentres and cybercafes will evolve into a next stage where the learning and community factors will be much more relevant. We are indeed seeing plenty of examples of this, and it is a matter of time that priorities or the focus turns upside down: instead of going to access the Internet and finding people, one will go and find people and use the Internet as an enhanced way to socialize. At its turn, this should be accompanied by the end of this false dichotomy on whether your a citizen or a netizen, as if the network had a live and a citizenry on its own. But time will tell.

Shilpa Sayura

Shilpa Sayura, which means sea of knowledge, is an interactive digital self-learning system based in Sri Lanka. Shilpa Sayura’s course of study began with eight subjects that parallels the national education curriculum so students in remote and rural areas can prepare for national school examinations in Sinhala, the country's predominant local language. The project has added another three courses, including lessons in Tamil and English.

Shilpa Sayura's open-source software was given away to non-profit educational providers and to rural Nansalas, a chain of government-developed telecentres. These telecentres in Sri Lanka fulfill many roles: Some provide connection to the web, but also offer fax, photocopying and printing services. They make money from phone calls, VOIP, and provide a bill-payment service. They are also places, the government hopes, where other ICT projects can bloom.

Harsha Liyanage, originally from Sri Lanka, blogs at Sustainability First: In search of sustainable telecentres. He records some of the issues Shilpa Sayura is attempting to overcome.

[The] Absence of competent teachers and adequate facilities handicap rural students in 80% of the Sri Lankas population. Now over 500 telecentres at rural outskirts provide a new window of opportunity. Shilpa Sayura enables students to interact with ICT to study 8 subjects digitally at tele centers and develop their knowledge to prepare for national examinations.

In March, 2008, Liyanage explained that Shilpa Sayura was undergoing growing pains.

Having a success story of a very compelling pilot, the project struggles at scaling up. Every telecentre operator of over 500 telecentres in Sri Lanka needs to have Shilpa Sayura installed in their telecentre. But, e-Fusion acknowledges it is not feasible at this present state.
• It needs technological improvements to ensure trouble free smooth run.
• Also needs technical capacity building at the telecentre operators to assist the users.
• Need to improve help-desk capacity to accept escalating demands
All these needs significant capital investments. They recognize it is not reasonable to tax the government to support further. Thus eyes at the CSR goodwill of the corporate partners.
In the mean time they plot the plans for an appropriate business model.

The blog Technology and Cultural Festival in Kandiyapitawew from Sri Lanka explains the educational benefits of the project.

We believe ‘Shilpa Sayura’ could contribute to addressing the issue of the shortage of school teachers, especially in distant rural area one which continues to be a setback to the county’s educational system.

The ‘Shilpa Sayura’ e-learning package covers eight school subjects, in Sinhala from grade six to O level. Shilpa Sayura’s simple interactive means of self study caters to students in remote communities with no access to urban educational resources. Still in its pilot stage Shilpa Sayura now operates in 20 ‘Nenasalas’ or tele-centers located in distant villages and promotes the concept of self learning among students in these secluded communities…The next phase would be the transformation of Shilpa Sayura into a National project to strengthen rural education and bridge the gap between rural and urban students.

M-Pesa

The next project takes place in Kenya, where the blog Global Warming contends the mobile phone is revolutionizing society.

There are presently over 17 million [mobile phone] subscribers and the fact that it is presently facilitating money transfers almost says it all. There are the two things that make everything work. One is communication and the second is convenience of transferring cash. After that you are in business anywhere.

M-Pesa began in 2007 as a way to perform simple banking transactions through cell phones. The telecom firms behind the project didn’t charge registration fees or require customers to have a bank account, often a major hurdle in Kenya because few people deal with traditional banks. Once signed-up, customers can use the M-Pesa application to pay bills, purchase more phone credits and transfer money within Kenya through data-enabled mobile phones. M-Pesa now allows customers to book airline tickets. Safaricom, the company responsible for M-Pesa, is beginning a pilot project to let customers pay for water usage.

M-Pesa agent in Bunda by emilsjoblom in Flickr.

In July 2009 M-Pesa totaled more than seven million subscribers, who collect or send money through a network of more than 1400 bank agents, making it the largest bank in the country. These customers transfer more than $2.5 million every month.

Just a few weeks ago, M-Pesa went international, moving into the United Kingdom by allowing people to send money back to phone numbers in Kenya through a web interface. The transaction costs as little as $8 US for sending 150 Pounds. A 2005 study found traditional money transfer firms charged fees between 2.5 and 40 percent of the transfer for anything below 100 Pounds.

David Zarraga, from the blog Mobile Behavior has a good rundown on how M-Pesa works.

Registered M-PESA customers can “deposit” hard currency with any M-PESA agent in exchange for e-money, which is uploaded into the customer’s M-PESA account. For 38 US cents, the customer can then transfer this money to another registered customer’s M-PESA account via SMS. Once the recipient receives the SMS confirmation, the hard currency can then be withdrawn from the nearest M-PESA agent, completing the money transfer process.

How does the M-PESA service benefit the average Kenyan? Olga Morawczynski, a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh who spoke at the GSM World Congress in Barcelona last February, shared the story of Martin, a shoe-maker in Kibera, an informal settlement just outside Nairobi. Martin makes about US$ 20 a day from his trade and sends a quarter of his earnings to his wife and mother, who live in Western Kenya, over 100 miles away. M-PESA saves Martin time, allowing him to work his trade instead of having to travel far outside his place of work to find a bank. The service also enables him to make frequent transfers – about 5 times a month – thereby allowing him to send a week’s earnings when his family needs the money most.

The blog Bankelele: Nairobi Banker lists advantages and disadvantages for banking with M-Pesa.

Benefits of m-pesa banking
- 24 hour banking: More reach & access than any bank or ATM network
- Mobile banking with operator tends to be cheaper then mobile banking via bank provided services
- Saving in transport costs and banking transaction costs
- Can pay a variety of bills for utilities at a low cost
Challenges of m-pesa banking
- Lack of float at dealers to transact/occasional mpesa system downtime
- No credit history; and the clumsy expensive statement from Safaricom not useful yet
- Calls for discipline to build savings
- Funds are not insured, and are more prone to crime. And dealing with a stolen phone in Kenya is not a pleasant experience.

eChoupal
Indian Tobacco Company, one of India’s largest exporters, created eChoupal, a series of rural information centers where farmers can communicate directly to other farmers, different markets and experts through the internet. These village internet kiosks were first installed for farmers to learn in local languages the latest information regarding national and international prices in soy, wheat, tobacco and shrimp. But the platform has morphed to providing other important information, such as weather conditions and the latest scientific practices. In 2006, eChoupal counted 3.5 million farmers who used 5,200 internet kiosks throughout more than 30,000 villages.

Harvesting Wheat #1 by Meanest Indian on Flickr.

The farmers pay a local coordinator a small sum to use the kiosk, which can also be used to order seed, fertilizers and other goods.

The blog NeoProducts Kiosks, from the UK, makes the point that part of eChoupal’s success comes from leaving behind the traditional buyers.

e-Choupal has been created by ITC Limited to enable rural farmers in India to buy and sell agricultural produce like soya beans, wheat, and coffee. It does this by allowing them directly to negotiate the sale of their produce via a network of PCs and kiosks in 6,500 centres spread across 100 districts in 10 states. Previously, the farmers had to go through numerous and sometime corrupt intermediaries.

What a great idea and what a fantastic use of kiosks! Allowing shared public access to interactive technology is what kiosks are all about. And this is only the beginning.

Chirag Jethmalani is a management student from Mumbai who blogs about Indian business in Squamble. Here he provides his take on e Choupal.

e Choupal was conceived to tackle the challenges posed by the unique features of Indian agriculture, characterized by fragmented farms, weak infrastructure and the involvement of numerous intermediaries…

Traditionally, these commodities were procured in “mandis” (major agricultural marketing centers in rural areas of India), where the middleman used to make most of the profit. These middlemen used unscientific and sometimes outright unfair means to judge the quality of the product to set the price. Difference in price for good quality and inferior quality was less, and hence there was no incentive for the farmers to invest and produce good quality output. With eChoupal, the farmers have a choice and the exploitative power of the middleman is neutralised.
ICT platform that facilitates flow of information and knowledge, and supports market transactions on line.
* It transmits Information (weather, prices, news),
* It transfers Knowledge (farm management, risk management)
* It facilitates sales of Farm Inputs (screened for quality) and
* It offers the choice of an alternative Output-marketing channel (convenience, lower transaction costs) to the farmer right at his doorstep
* It is an interlocking network of partnerships (ITC + Met Dept + Universities + Input COs + Sanyojaks, the erstwhile Commission Agents) bringing the best-inclass in information, knowledge and inputs.

Just because e-Choupal has a good platform and business model doesn’t make it a gurantee for success in India. To do this, people must understand rural markets.

Rural markets are both economic and social networks and there is a strong connection between the operation of social and economic transactions. Understanding the operations is vital before the systems are conceptualized. Use of local population, as much as possible helped the network to get the acceptance closely.

Two Kenyan men on Saturday became the first gay couple to wed in London. Charles Ngengi, 40 and his bride, Daniel Chege Gichia, 39, became civil partners under the controversial Civil Partnership Act which came into effect in the UK in 2005 allowing couples of the same sex to have legal recognition of their relationship.
The couple tied the knot at a civil partnership ceremony at Islington Town Hall in North London at 11.30 a.m. UK time. According to the Act, a civil partnership is defined as a legal marriage between gay and lesbian couples, and any couples who enter into a civil partnership obtain the new legal status of civil partners, instead of the traditional husband and wife status.

Tamaku, a blogger on The Diary of a Gay Kenyan was the first to publish a post expressing his excitement in the transition Kenya is going through and the story hitting the stands:

I am overjoyed that a gay wedding of Kenyans in London has made the news of the national press. We wish the lucky couple all the best in this new chapter of their lives together. George and I are thinking of the same, to deepen our commitment to one another - even though these unions are not recognised here. It's early days yet but we are determined to have a ceremony to exchange rings and vows witnessed by close friends and family. I'll wear white of course, don't even think to mutter but Tamaku's been around the block a few times unless you are a nun yourself. lol!

We hope you'll accept our invitation when the time comes. Tonight we are just both so happy to raise a glass or two to the newlyweds.

Donn, a gay photo blogger says he knows and has heard of a lot of Kenyan gay couples legalizing their union and he is wondering what the outburst is for, he says gay couples have wed in different countries where gay marriage is legal:

The two gay men above, who got married in the UK last Saturday….was really an eye opener for many Kenyans.The news of the marriage was on the airwaves throughout the weekend…I am sure now every corner of this country knows about it…since it was a hot topic in almost every radio station.Well to me they are not the 1st…there are other many Kenyan gay couple i know who got married in Spain, Canada, South Africa, and UK as well, but the

Most bloggers were not happy with the way the story was handled, the journalists have been described as lopsided; hungry-for-story; fame, self benefit and monetary pay. The journalists tracked down the home of the family members of the newly wed and camped outside the compound waiting for a comment from the parents on what they think of their son marrying a man. The family have been tormented as visitors always coming to the homestead just to witness:

Everyone in Kenya is hungry for something, now adding to the pack is journalists, this people are hungry-for-story, they wait for the slightest twitch to hit their headlines. If you think Mohamed Ali from KTN was the only journalist in Murang'a waiting to interview the parents of the newly wed couple, you are wrong, he is not. Well, apparently journalists are actually camping outside his home town, is it Charles, the supposed “bride”, waiting to interview the mother on what she thinks about her son being in a sexual relationship with a man. They went with the wedding pictures to show the parents and the mother was shocked beyond words, she has gone mute, she doesn't talk or eat. The father is since drinking his life away and hasn't gone sober since, but he was heard saying he is waiting for the bride

According to the website misterseed, the newly wed had a telephone interview and they were not pleased in how the Kenya media have portrayed them, they feel journalists had crossed their boundaries, they ask why they had to drag the family into “this”, but they still still remain hopeful that the laws in Kenya are changing and they will have a second wedding back home:

Mr. Seed telephone conversation with Mr. Chege and Ngengi the gay couple who married in London on Saturday 17th October, 2009. “Good morning Ngengi, how are you doing.” Mr. Seed asked on Thursday afternoon (22nd October). “I am fine Mr. Seed although disappointed that the Kenyan media has gone beyond the limits by visiting our parents in Murang'a to interview them. We understand that the KTN and Nation screened the story on Wednesday evening. How can they visit our parents because of our case. The parents and family has nothing to do with our case. We have not committed murder. The law allows this in the UK. Tell them to concentrate on taking the killers to Hague than concentrating with us. We are innocent people. Furthermore we are on honeymoon and they should not try to spoil our honeymoon. You know what Mr. Seed, the law in Kenya is changing soon and we might even decide to go and do another wedding down there.” Mr. Ngengi concluded with a light touch while laughing.

Radio disc jockeys engaged listeners in the debate igniting the rage and callers called in to call the union unafrican, uncultured and sinful:

Interesting, today morning this was a topic of discussion at Kiss 100 and the guy hired to be a comedian a fake ass one said, ” unethical, unpalatable, uncouth and unafrican.” He went further to say that he would throw his brother from a fourth floor flat if he came out to him and said that he was gay. He also said that gays should be burnt. Really! gays have got no place, some callers went on to say not in our culture and again “unafrican” What's that? J