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.

Our underlying theme is investigating how ICTs affect human development. There are many who argue that connection to the internet and/or mobile phone technologies will increase people’s participation in government, in economies, in education and thus increase their standard of living.

Technology and access to internet has advanced so much in the past years, that some will argue that there is no longer a question of whether people in remote areas will soon communicate online. Rather, we should talk about what forms of communication will take place.

The UK-based blog Mainstreaming ICT, says the time to integrate the mobile phone and the computer is now.

The Internet and mobile phones are both communication and information technologies so it makes sense to try to integrate them. We’ve been trying to intergrate them for a number of years with limited success but finally the Internet is becoming widely available and usable on a large number of mobile devices and at a reasonably low cost in many countries.

Of course the mobile browser based Internet is a different experience. You have to think in a different way - for instance: -
• Instead of Email - Think SMS
• Instead of computer sized screen - Think Mobile Phone screen
• Instead of huge functionality - Think MOST IMPORTANT functionality and simplicity
• Instead of flashy stuff and high bandwidth - think SIMPLE design and low bandwidth

…It makes sense to initially look at linking in with the big social networks such as Facebook/My Space & Ning - they all have Mobile Internet Interfaces but .. the sites weren’t originally designed with mobile in mind and IMHO it really shows.

Low bandwidth? No problem

One major problem facing internet users in the developing world is the combination of slow connectivity (or, interrupted connections) and graphic-intensive websites. News websites and social networking sites are often the worst offenders. (Here’s a nice rundown on the popularity of various social networking sites in Africa and Asia.)

Christian Kreutz at the blog Crisscrossed has a theory that many of the world’s languages have not been widely translated for applications, because so many people can’t read popular websites. The reason? Page load times are too long for people with questionable connections.

Here's a few examples:

• Checking up a profile on Facebook or at least access the log in page, which has alone almost 800kb! In a cybercafe, where you have to pay fees per minute, it may take up to 3 minutes with a dial up modem connection.
• Video or audio upload is almost impossible with a low bandwidth connection and can cost you a lot when your tariff is measured in volume instead of time.
• This blog is based on Wordpress, which is a great open source tool, but unfortunately not made for a dial up connections. If you want to publish a new post on Wordpress (2.7.1), you have to download over 750kb first.

Unfortunately even the free and open source community has little activity around low bandwidth solutions.

The blog Aid Worker Daily, based out of the US, has found a solution to viewing these slow-loading websites:

I am not sure how many of you are familiar with Loband but it is one of the best options for viewing websites over low bandwidth connections. It strips out all images, formatting, etc and leaves you with a text only rendering of the page which is still quite legible. You can view Aid Worker Daily over Loband HERE. Loband is the offspring of the geniuses over at Aptivate. (Of course, if you are using Firefox you can always go to Tools -> Options -> Content and deselect ‘Load images automatically’.)

Here is the home page for Global Voices Online via Loband.

Crisscrossed lists other products for low-bandwidth connections.

One really great initiative is Maneno, which not only tries to provide a low bandwidth blogging solution in Africa, but also focuses on offering multilingual options emphasising on various African languages such as Bamanankan and Swahili, beside French, English, Arabic and Portuguese. I got in contact with Maneno recently and their team ensured me that their system is designed as low as 13 kb without images and 33 kb including images…
Twitter can make a difference as it lets you send and receive messages via mobile phone. But, unfortunately, Twitter gave up its free SMS service a while ago. I asked one of the Twitter founders, Jack Dorsey, at the e-stats conference when the free service is coming back, to which he replied ‘on mid year.’ This leaves the question, ‘what can be said in 140 characters?’ Quite a lot when you look at the Mobile Voices project just featured by the Netsquared N2Y2 challenge.

But one thing is for sure, just because you only have low bandwidth connection, does not mean you want to see dull, text based websites. There are various ways to make websites look appealing and still reduce the data size considerable. Aptivate has excellent Web Design Guidelines for Low Bandwidth.

Full disclosure: Maneno, the multi-lingual, low-bandwidth blogging platform, is in part run by three Global Voices authors. Here is a GV post about it.

Micro-blogging for fun and profit

People like micro-blogging, popularized through sites like Twitter and the business-oriented Yammer, because it is fast and relatively low-bandwidth. It’s quicker and easier than email and often even more informal. Micro-blogging has changed the way groups conduct crisis management, event coverage and issue advocacy.

But not everyone wants to attempt to micro-blog on the big sites because of the lack of privacy. There are a number of technologies that allow organizations to put micro-blogging to their own use to facilitate community building online.

Louis Gray, a US-based blogger, explains the federated platform of Laconi.ca, which he describes as a “group Twitter” – speaking to a distinct community rather than to the whole world.

Well, actually, it's more of a small community concept I'm refering to - your business can actually build communities off of this protocol, starting with the software that Identi.ca has provided. Identi.ca and Twitter are both very broad communities. People of all types and tastes are on those services. Those services are good for that - it's a great way to build relationships, meet new people, and find information. However, there is no way currently for me to associate only with those of like tastes and culture. For instance, if I am into college football and you are not, you aren't going to be interested in the details of the games I'm watching….

Now, what if [the US-based sports network] ESPN were to launch a version of Laconi.ca just for sports lovers? It would just take a simple install of Laconi.ca and a little cobranding of their logo, look, and feel and soon an entire community of sports lovers would be sharing their love for sports, communicating back and forth, and showing their other sports-loving friends what they're doing in their sports-loving life. At the same time, they could still follow all of those same friends they follow over on Identi.ca and even other interest communities, all while still on the ESPN sports community, remaining on the ESPN site. Imagine if this same technique was launched for Moms, Dads, religions, or even just your local city or town?

Here is a write-up on another open source micro-blogging platform: OpenMicroblogger.org

My mobile phone, my friend

The last post in this series began with the argument that we need to update the old story of the fisherman using his mobile phone to find the highest prices for his product. Back to the blog Crisscrossed, here is an update on what makes the mobile phone so important.

It is so special because it combines all former media, such as telephone, Internet, and even radio and television, and because one can:
1. Communicate and receive information (radio, television and Internet)
2. Document and collect information
3. Publish information in text, audio and video
4. Can network in different ways on a peer-to-peer basis

He also noted the mobile phone will help shape the public sphere by allowing citizen journalists to take photos. Phones allow people to participate in radio programs and through SMS-based campaigns. And they allow people to monitor elections.

Patrick Meier, from the group DigiActive, argues that people can now become activists simply by using a mobile phone. Portable telephones have been employed to organize and coordinate protests – specifically in the Philippines, Spain and Pakistan. Mobile phones have also been used to document human rights abuses, in Egypt, Tibet and Morocco.

But problems do exist. The cost of SMS communication is very high, especially in Africa. Mobile networks can be controlled by the government, Kreutz says. And, mobile providers are in businses to make money, not facilitate protest marches.

Sending hundreds of SMS texts

FrontlineSMS distributes a program allowing users to send and receive SMS messages in large groups without having to hook up to the internet.

Here is a write up in the blog Pulse + Signal about a FrontlineSMS project in Malawi, where they distributed mobile phones so doctors in hospitals can communicate with health workers in remote villages.

Despite all of the technological advancement surrounding these portable command centers of communication – all the bells and whistles that come equipped – we are at a point in the public/global health world hardly any of it matters.

A large amount of [moble technology for health] mHealth’s impact is being focused into developing, low-resource countries where there are numerous health issues needing to be addressed. The helpful technology that comes into play is SMS (Short Messaging Service). Fondly referred to as texting, SMS is one of the most basic aspects of the cell phone where data entered can be sent back and forth between phones. This service has been wildly useful in the implementation of more effective health initiatives around the world.

Finally, a video of FrontlineSMS staff training community health workers using SMS technology.

Banglalink cell phone advertisement, Dhaka, Bangladesh, by Wonderlane on Flickr (Creative Commons)

This lesson has been passed around as a prime example of the significance of internet and communication technologies – especially the relatively cheap and reliable mobile phone – helping raise living standards in the developing world. This simple technology allows someone from the so-called bottom of the economic pyramid to improve his economic prospects, bettering the quality of life for his entire family. If the mobile phone can help the fisherman extend his contacts and increase his market price, think of what it would do to the working poor all over the world?

This year the number of worldwide mobile phone users hit 4.6 billion people. Much of that growth has taken place in the developing world. And, as phones expanded in some countries, so did economic development. (At least that’s what cellphone companies have said.)

While the numbers remain strong and the digital divide may be decreasing, one problem remains: The fisherman story is a little out of date. Like other things, technology has moved on. If ICTs are going to continue to positively affect human development, they must also keep up.

In the first of two posts, I’d like to explore how ICTs for development, ICT4D, may be changing in the short-term future. Then, I’d like to investigate some of the new cutting-edge projects taking place around the world. As always, if you’ve got some to share, please let us know.

Richard Heeks argues that for this new phase, ICTs will require a new outlook on how they view the poor. People in developing countries should no longer be characterized as passive consumers. Instead, they should be seen as active producers and innovators.

From his blog, ICTs for Development, Heeks introduces a new academic paper outlining where he thinks ICT4Ds should go.

a) New Hardware Priorities: a need for innovation around low-cost, broad-reach terminals, telecommunications, and power. A need to bring the hardware success story of the last decade – mobiles – even more centre stage. The paper also discusses implications of broadband, cloud computing, and individualisation of hardware devices.
b) New Application Priorities: the growth of participatory content creation, and the use of ICTs to create new income and employment for the world’s poor. The paper also discusses implications of FOSS, and the growth of applications to address urban poverty, security, economic growth, and climate change.
c) New Innovation Models: the growing need for – and potential of – innovation that moves beyond top-down, laboratory-type models. This includes collaborative (para-poor) models that work alongside poor communities. It also means greater attention to the grassroots (per-poor) innovation that is arising from within those communities. The paper also discusses the new innovation intermediaries that are emerging in private and NGO sectors.
d) New Implementation Models: based on the limitations of ICT4D 1.0 projects, there will be greater emphasis on sustainability, scalability and ICT4D project evaluation. This will necessitate more process than blueprint approaches to implementation, and better techniques for closing design—reality gaps. The paper also discusses new funding mechanisms and new organisation forms that are increasingly seen.
e) New Worldviews: effective ICT4D 2.0 policies, strategies and projects will require “tribrid” champions. They must understand enough about the three domains of computer science, information systems, and development studies to draw key lessons and to interact with and manage domain professionals. Training programmes and working group formation must reflect this need.

Yochai Benkler is a Harvard University professor of entrepreneurial legal studies and the co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, which hosted the September 23-24 forum Communication and Development: The Freedom Connection.

In an essay written for the forum, Benkler argues the next generation of ICTs must continue to be flexible and dynamic, while also becoming more powerful. Perhaps desiners will leverage cloud applications, social software or organizational tools.

But mobile phones alone will not solve the problem.

The reason mobile phones were such a successful early ICT platform in poorer countries was that they are much cheaper; and they rely on networks that run all the intelligence in the network, allowing for very cheap edge devices. Yet it was precisely the stupidity, or simplicity, of the network relative to the “intelligence” or computational complexity of the edge devices that was so critical to the development of the network information economy and society as it has. A drive to make cheap devices available throughout poorer countries that does not take account of whether the cheapness comes at the expense of a truly open, neutral network will result in a very different kind of ICT platform than the one we imagine as so creative and productive in the wealthier economies…

Here is his recipe for the next generation of ICTs for development.

Devices must be cheap enough to be widely distributed as basic background features, owned by individuals in a pattern uncorrelated with pre-existing power relations. Devices must be accompanied with skills training in the use of the device and the open network, so that the difficulty of use does not continue to drive people to the simpler devices that deliver the more predictable, controlled, and “safe” applications. In the near future, this may mean programs focused on women, much as micro-lending has been, or youths and children. In the longer term, it must mean an emphasis on cheap computers from the lineage of the personal computer, not souped-up mobile phones. Or, in the alternative, it means that we need a heavier focus on regulatory interventions that will require mobile phones and phone networks to be more open and flexible—although this is a harder row to hoe. And in all events it means devices coupled with training.

I wonder if anyone envisions a world where ICTs for the industrialized world will be much the same as those for the millions of users in the developing world? For all the advances ICTs have made in the past six years, it seems we still aren’t at a point where the two worlds converge on technological matters.

Li Rivercruise-2, by Akiwitz on Flickr (Creative Commons)

Here is an interesting investigation from Mira Slavova in the blog Mobile Market Design for Development. She looks at a recent article “The Cloud, the Crowd, and Public Policy” by Michael Nelson, where Nelson “traces the evolution pf ICTs from Phase 1: standalone devices, through Phase 2: the World Wide Web, to Phase 3: the Cloud.”

So, for the developing world?

Certainly, I do not expect that the evolution of technology innovation in developing countries will necessarily follow the same path as that in the industrialised world. But I find it interesting to consider the possibilities for social, economic and technological development…

Looking at it from this perspective, I think it is fair to say that mobile technology in developing countries is probably in Phase 1 of its development. Other events, such as the use (albeit limited) of GPRS and 3G in developing countries and the availability (also limited) of mobile Internet access in suggest that ICT4D might have reached Phase 2.

The parallel story of the evolution of technology for use in developing countries clearly unfolds at a much greater speed than the evolution and adoption of personal computing in advanced industrialised countries. ICT4Ds are also not developing in isolation from technological and business model solutions aimed at advanced industrial countries, and vice versa.

What happens when we separate ICT4Ds from the general conversation of ICTs? Chris Coward in his blog, second recess, makes a good point that not all technologies aimed at the developing world have to do with capital-D development.

One of the problems with “ICT4D” is that it connotes different things to different people – with most definitions swirling around the application of (primarily digital) ICT to interventions that have an explicit developmental goal such as health, education, government transparency, or others of the sort found in the MDGs. As such, there is a tendency to ignore issues that do not correspond to the conventional development goals (quality of life, games, social movements, etc.), or what might be simply described as any use of ICT in a developing world context…

In order to accommodate a broader scope many people have turned to the term “ICTD,” or ICT and development, to place the emphasis on the phenomenon of ICT use in developing countries, irrespective of whether there is a “developmental” goal or not. Despite the good intentions behind this I’m afraid the nuance is lost on most people so I don’t think it serves our community long term. And, I hate acronyms.

There are other problems too – such as what constitutes “development” and is it meaningful to continue to lump countries into developing or developed buckets (I think not) – but these are topics for another day.

One way to help look at what exactly ICT4Ds are supposed to do, let’s try to view them through the eyes of a computer scientist. Beki70, the author of Beki’s Blog, has a good argument for attempting to co-mingle ICT4D and the ICTs aimed at a market like the United States.

The objective of ICT4D is to solve hard research problems that simultaneously make a difference in the lives of people underserved by ICTs. We don’t measure CS by the good that it’s created for the middle class of America, we measure it by the complexity of the solution.

There is a great debate, she says, within the field of Computer Science over its relationship with ICT4D.

Some participants, i.e. those who come from CS orientations, struggle to answer the question “where’s the Computer Science in ICT4D?” And others list numerous opportunities (to empirically show what the potential might be for areas that span the fields of Computer Science, such as low-cost connectivity, getting content into developing regions via novel networking architectures and caching systems, mobile and low-OS footprint applications, power management, computer vision for detection problems in health).

ICT4D causes me, at least, to reflect on economic impact (which favors those who create successful start-ups since they are likely the only people who can easily draw a line between what they’ve done and how many people have purchased it or use it) as a metric for Computer Science’s impact. Additionally, given the difficulties of finding appropriate measures, I can’t help wondering whether ICT4D is being asked to put the cart before the horse, if we’re learning how to measure productivity gains for computer use in corporate America (who have had computers in place for decades) is it perhaps unrealistic to have well-understood metrics for settings where getting the computer in is going to be a significant first challenge?

Trying to bring this discussion down to earth, let’s look at how the role of ICTs plays out in at least one country. (In my next post, I’ll look at next generation ICT projects aimed at the developing world.) In Sri Lanka, the blogger and ICT activist Sameera Wijerathna investigates what happens when the government and mobile phone operators get the mobile phone wrong. Instead of looking at it as a development tool, they market phones as a convenience.

From the blog Information and Communication Technology for Development.

A recent TV commercial in Sri Lanka shows a girl gets a SMS to her phone and says;
“My boyfriend is sending me SMSs too, even after being on phone with me for hours”
The message from boyfriend: “you are beautiful”
She replies: “you are smart”

Most of the mobile operators in Sri Lanka try to position the mobile phone as a mere tool for Entertainment and Keep In Touch (KIT). They mainly target youth for their marketing campaigns.
This has led to various confusions and disadvantages for both mobile subscribers as well as mobile companies. A negative sentiment has been developed among the people and most of the people, mainly the people at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) do not believe that mobile phone has a positive impact on their lives or livelihoods…
The wrong positioning of mobile phone in Sri Lanka has led to even worst policy decisions such as Government of Sri Lanka banning mobile phones in schools http://ict4d-in-srilanka.blogspot.com/2009/08/sri-lanka-bans-mobile-phones-at-schools.html
So, it is a need of the hour to understand the potential of the mobile phone in Development and position it at the right place. Also it is the time to introduce more and more Value Added Services which goes beyond the entertainment.

On one hand, the traditions encapsulated in indigenous knowledge are culturally unique, using local understanding to solve local problems. This makes it an important component in the fields of ecology, education, agriculture and health security. On the other hand, the internet is lauded for spreading information to help people, but it is also a bazaar, tilted towards large corporations and the economies of scale: Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft, PayPal. Indigenous knowledge has certain spiritual and ceremonial components; the internet is largely agnostic, and makes a good deal of money peddling pornography.

For all their perceived differences, the indigenous knowledge and global knowledge systems have become much closer in the past decade. Indigenous knowledge practitioners have begun leveraging different media to exchange ideas and publicize traditional learning to the larger world.

A researcher in Ethiopia argues Internet and Communication Technologies, called ICTs, can be used as cheap methods to capture, store and disseminate various forms of indigenous knowledge for future generations.

ICTs also increase access to indigenous knowledge systems, especially to schools, where this learning can be incorporated into classrooms.

Moving into education systems

As stated above, ICTs provide a perfect example for integrating indigenous knowledge into both formal and informal education systems. Technology could facilitate disseminating ideas about local cultures to students and provide schools the possibility to teach some curriculum in a local language.

Before we get into specific examples, let’s follow this debate with two bloggers on the importance of making students aware of different knowledge systems. For one, does increasing access to traditional knowledge give it more credibility in the eyes' of students?

Perhaps. George Sefa Dei, at The Freire Project blog, argues that in both development and education issues, scholars and practitioners need to find a balance between tradition and modernity.

Students have often queried why and how is it that certain knowledges count more so than other ways of knowing. There is a realization on the part of learners that knowledge is operationalized differently given local histories, environments and contexts. Unfortunately, the processes of validating knowledges fail to take into account this multiplicity of knowings that can together comprehensive speak to the diversity of the histories of ideas and events that have shaped and continue to shape human growth and development. In questioning the hierarchy of knowledges learners also allude to the problematic position of neutral, apolitical knowledge. It is important then in our teaching of Africa we lay bare and grasp the processes through which for example, Western science knowledge positions itself as neutral, universal and non-hegemonic ways of knowing, and furthermore seeks to invalidate and devalue other ways of knowing.

This sounds good in theory. How well does it work in practice?

Passionate Pedagogue, in a comment to the above post, illustrates a major hurdle.

I spend hours combing the Internet looking for sites about the peoples I teach in my history classes written by the peoples I teach. Oftentimes the sites I locate are too complicated or tacit for students to understand. Other times, the sites (rightfully so) are so culturally-specific that a teenager with no cultural capital about the area or peoples involved cannot possibly understand them. This leaves little actual “indigenous” information that is accessible to students.

I trust that during my career as a teacher critical pedagogues will work to create student-centered access to indigenous knowledge. My hope is that the information that we gleam from the invaluable contributions of indigenous peoples does not become relegated to university sociology textbooks or primers in critical pedagogy. While it is of course wonderful for graduate students and academics to take the lessons that Native Peoples the world over have to offer to heart, perhaps we should be weary of becoming Napoleon’s in our own right; publishing surveys of Native history by Natives that only serve the higher echelons of academia.

Where there are no sources

When finding source material becomes too difficult, some teachers have decided to make their own. Here are two examples of projects where technology can be a boon for students learning about different cultures. The first comes from Australia, from Scot Aldred, who writes the blog e-learning.

Specifically, I'm interested in developing a WIKI section devoted to indigenous Australians; their diverse culture, history, language and their land. While there is some publicly available information in hard copy publications, it is not substantial and does not detail all of Australian indigenous nations and their people. Online the situation is much worse with very little accurate information available.
Just imagine if all of Australia's school students had an opportunity to contribute to a public WIKI with information about the indigenous people native to their geographical area. Much of Australia's indigenous history is passed down by an oral tradition of story telling. The old people, the elders and some historians have information that could be shared with all Australians and the world.

… What about having a shared Webspace available to all of Australia's schools (public and private) where schools would submit a list of eligible persons who could create content and collaborate. Additional roles/permissions for moderators who would again be nominated by the schools.

A comment from Ginga, who is from the American state of Alaska.

Your ideas on collecting indigenous knowledge, and sharing it with the world in a collaborative environment (wikis and more) run parallel to several projects happening in the Bering Strait School District in northern Alaska.

Our staff and students are creating wiki-dictionaries in Inupiaq, and Siberian Yupik to document the native languages in our area. Students post a sound file, local image, and other information they have collected. We're also trying to develop other projects that have flexible formats for student sharing and collaboration on our wiki.

The tower of Chinglish?

At least one expert argues that with all the promise of ICTs, many traditional organizations feel they get lost in the “overload” of the Internet. Their websites lag in search engine relevance and (sometimes) lack a polished feel.

One problem is language. It is hard for a website written in say, Greenlandic (spoken in Greenland) or Cha'palaa, a language from Ecuador, or Bisaya, from the Philippines, to compete for page views with websites written in Spanish, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese or Arabic. Translating pages is often difficult and time consuming.

However, ICTs have the potential to expand a language’s reach. Perhaps it is through online classes or through tutorials or small applications for phones and computers. This is especially important because of the sometimes-frail environment indigenous languages now live.

Here is a good discussion of the issues surrounding language and technology from Heather, who lives in the US and blogs at flex your info. She brings up the fact that technology may provide a good means to communicate for members of her tribe living in distant places. However, “[t]echnology can be put to even better uses: cultural revitalization and preservation.” This does come with its own share of issues.

Native languages have long been endangered by a combination of urbanization and modernization, as well as past governmental policies of removal, relocation, and termination of native populations.

Today’s technology is such that you can easily record information and make long-distance contact with others, so it seems as if it should be easy to record, preserve, and make available native language information. However, there are a number of other concerns which must be balanced with the urge to preserve language through recordings, primarily issues around ownership and access. Language is closely tied to culture; even if tribal members don’t use their language day-to-day, they probably use in their ceremonies. Language and ceremonies may only be shared with certain people: sometimes with all members of the tribe, other times with only a select few. There may be people who are protectors of knowledge, language or otherwise. It’s important to make sure that programs created to record and preserve languages are sensitive to these issues.

Another issue to be considered is misappropriation or exploitation of this information. Indeed, some tribal elders have chosen to not share their knowledge with non-tribal members; by recording it, the chance that an outsider will access the information increases. Not recording such information allows tribal members to retain control over their cultural information. Another way to maintain control is to closely involve tribal members and elders in the design and creation of preservation programs. As more Natives become involved in the work to preserve their languages, they inform the protocols and practices used to collect and make available information. Whether a tribe decides to record and preserve language or to continue to share it only with tribal members orally, their positions must be respected.

Language learning on the telephone

With this in mind, she announces a new application for a mobile phone system that will teach the language of the Cherokee Nation, originally from the southeastern part of the United States but in the 1830s forcibly removed by the US government to the center of the country.

…The application includes flashcards, recordings, and games for language learning, and there is also a version for the Nintendo DS. The idea of using popular technology to help preserve and revitalize languages is exciting, because it makes language information available to all tribal members, not just those who live near tribal lands, and in a way that can be easily integrated into their lives.

…The use of technology, such as the Cherokee language iPhone application, can help dispersed tribal members to learn their tribe’s language. Software can be used to create multimedia teaching materials for lessons, while web conferencing technology can be used for teaching and for oral practice with other speakers. However, such programs must be sensitive to the issues of control and access by closely involving tribal members and elders, and respecting their wishes.

Shortly before 7 am local time Wednesday, September 30, an earthquake measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale hit 120 miles off Apia, Samoa’s capital. Almost immediately giant waves at least twenty feet high hit both countries.

The shockwaves immediately spread across the Pacific, where governments and media scrambled to warn citizens – especially those who work on the water or those attending school or living in low-lying areas. Because of the nature of tsunamis (they can travel about 500 miles — 800 km — per hour), and the great distances in the Pacific, some people had to wait nearly three hours anticipating tsunami-like waves.

However, nothing measuring the damage in Samoa or American Samoa was reported. Eastern islands in the Fiji group reported waves over one-foot high just 30 minutes after the earthquake. New Zealand, some 1800 miles from the epicenter, reported waves at 40 cm, or 15 inches.

From footage by a cameraman named Rayner W, who took a walking tour of the damage in Leone, American Samoa.

Erica Wales, a Peace Corps volunteer in Salesatele, Samoa, is lucky to be alive.

From the blog Peace Corps Adventures in Samoa:

I was sleeping when the 8.0 earthquake hit. My house started shaking and things were falling off shelves. Books fell down, the phone mounted on my wall fell down, cans of food fell…I’m smart enough to know when things start falling it is probably wise to get out. So grabbed my phone and left my room. The shaking lasted a long time too, at least a minute. I texted a good friend here with the message of “shit that was big” when it was over. She agreed. About that time I got a call from the Peace Corps medical officer that I should probably move inland because the possibility of a tsunami. So I grabbed an ie and left.

I was walking on the road which parallels the beach when I noticed something wasn’t right. I could see structures like rocks and coral which I have never seen above water, not even at the lowest of low tides. This didn’t bode well. Then I noticed the really odd wave action, something just wasn’t right. I had just turned the corner of the road and was now headed inland, versus parallel to the beach as I had been just one minute before, when the waves hit the beach and surged up the road. At this point I started running, as did my village. As I was running I could hear the water surging up the river, tearing trees down.

I got up to the main road where most everyone was. The matai were directing everyone to head to Siuniu, the village inland. I could see the look of panic and worry as parents asked where their kids were, for they were headed to the primary school which is near me. The matai were organized and knew where to direct the parents to in order to find their kids. I went up to Siuniu and waited with my village. At this point we were getting reports of a school in Poutasi (a few villages to the west) collapsing and killing three kids. Everyone was on phones, calling relatives and friends in neighboring villages, trying to find out what was going on. Reports came that 50 people in Poutasi were dead, buried in the sand. A boy in neighboring Salani died. And 15 in Aleipata were dead. As far as I know at this point, no one in my village died. We are lucky.

Then, she adds, almost in passing:

Then I got a report that my house and another were destroyed. I wanted to go and see if this was true, but I knew to stay. I waited a few hours then went to see what the damage was. Sure enough, my house was flattened. The tsunami ripped the house from its foundation and deposited it 10 feet in front of the house, collapsed beyond repair. I could see all of my stuff waterlogged and muddy. I’m not sure what can be salvaged. I’m going back tomorrow to find out what I can still use, but I know most things will be trashed.

Matt, another Peace Corps volunteer, was posting throughout the day. He takes us through the hurry-up-and-wait reality that often goes along with a natural disaster.

From Matt’s Samoa Blog:

About 8 minutes ago, we just had a big earthquake. Big. No information yet on the exact magnitude, but it was quite long and certainly big enough to knock over stuff around my house. I'm guessing it was at least a 6.0 on account of the stuff flying about. About 40 seconds in, I grabbed my laptop because I was afraid the cinderblock shelf was going to fall on top of it. The quake went on and on and on to the point it felt like it was continuously shaking into the aftershock phase. And we've had a couple aftershocks already.
…
Most of Apia evacuated to higher ground. Uphill roads became one-way highways for cars and buses, but most of us just walked. Tsunami sirens blared across Apia. Church bells rang. My school rang its bell. The Peace Corps sent out mass text messages, which they followed up with phone calls to make sure everyone was heading inland.

I walked with a couple girls from my 11.3 class and held an impromptu geology lesson.

There was much confusion as to where we were supposed t go and where we could stop. Students asked me where we were going, and I could only tell them we were going “Up.” A couple teachers also asked me. “I was following you,” I said.

Eventually I setup camp with a bunch of year 13s where we had plain sight of the ocean. We hung out in the shade, and my cell phone got passed around.

After about an hour some people started heading back downhill, but most of us stayed in place. I wanted to get clear word from the Peace Corps before I left. And then I did.
…
News is sketchy. It sounds like the south, and particularly the southeast, parts of Upolu were most affected. It's difficult to know whether the damage was caused by the quake itself or the subsequent rising water levels. I've also heard the number of fatalities is 14, although it was unclear if that was for Samoa or American Samoa.

Then, Matt provides an inventory of damage to his friends' houses.

I just talked to Asolima and she said Fausaga is okay. They have a marshy inlet that separates the village from the ocean, so it was able to blunt the effects of the rising tide. Nonetheless, many of the families have retreated inland to the more elevated maumaga. As I was on the phone with Asolima, she said the radio was broadcasting new tsunami warnings and they would probably head up the mountain once more. She added they'd probably sleep there.

Much of Fausaga's neighboring village, Tafitoala, sits along the ocean and was badly hit. Much of the Tafitoala Beach Fales have been wiped out as well as a bunch of the other houses along the beach. Neighboring beach resorts, including Sinalei and Coconuts, were also badly hit.

Koa is fine. He lives on the north side of the island and everything in his village is mostly back to normal. Supy evacuated with Dan and Paul and spent the morning drinking niu. He said the water level rose, but his village came through unharmed. Phil lives right on the water, but said the water didn't come onto land. Paul and Dan's village suffered minor damage, and a woman reportedly died from a heart attack.

I've heard Erin's village may have seen a 20-foot wave. That estimate is based on boats lying 200 meters inland. The secondary school in her village collapsed.

Another Peace Corps volunteer returns to her work the day after and learns some bad news. From the blog See Reeves:

I was up at 6 am as usual and saw the neighbors returning home (the entire family had mysteriously packed up and left the house at 10 pm last night). I went over to ask if their family was ok. The neighbor also happens to be the director of the school board, so I asked if school was still on for today. He said yes. So I responded to the numerous emails filling my inbox, took a shower and went to school.

I knew right away that there were not going to be classes. The student population, usually more than 600, had dropped to less than 100 students. Every student and teacher I passed on the walk up the school drive, I asked if their families were ok. Moleli, the P.E. instructor, had lost three members of his extended family. Every one expressed their happiness to see me and their concern for me yesterday. I had hightailed it out of town the minute we got the Peace Corps evacuate message, which was before I had ever made it to school that day. The other teachers had worried about me.

When the evacuation order had come, the school principal and three of the teachers had filled vehicles with students to drive them inland. While they were up the hill a parent of a Year 9 girl student had arrived in a van and picked up nine students to drive inland. On the way up the hill something happened with the van, it lost power and all breaks. The car began to roll down the hill backwards. The driver turned the wheel, thinking he should be facing the way the van was rolling. This sent the van flipping side over side down the hill. All nine students were taken to the hospital and one student, the driver of the van's own daughter, was killed in the accident.

Moleli had transported the students to the hospital himself and sat with them for hours, refusing medical attention for an injury to his head until every student had been seen. He was extremely touched by the concern of visiting medical volunteers, Germaine and Imogen (possibly from Ireland or Scotland). Reaching into his pocket he produced the scrap of paper that contained their cell phone number. He told me he had called them later that night and had spoken with them for nearly two hours.

Talking to the teachers I could sense the raw emotion just under the surface. They were tired and frayed around the edges. Samoa had just experienced the most devastating natural disaster in recent history. Even the cyclones of the early 90's had not claimed as many lives (death toll numbers still vary widely).

“Samoa will remember this day in her heart for ever,” said Moleli.

During my recent visit to his office in Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur, he chats with ease on Skype with another blind friend attending a conference in Los Angeles. When he opens an e-mail, the JAWS screen-reading software installed on his Lenovo laptop reads out the content in a robotic voice, which he seems quite accustomed to. When told that The Nut Graph is in the midst of incorporating disabled-friendly features into its website, he goes to the website to find out how accessible it is to his screen reader and keyboard navigation, and provides some helpful feedback.
Rahim relies on the internet for e-mail, to chat with friends and contacts on Yahoo! Messenger and Skype — which is much cheaper than on telephone — and to find out what's happening in the rest of the nation and world. He is also planning to develop a website to promote his family's body massage and foot reflexology centre, run by the blind, in Penang.

The World Health Organization estimates 600 million people live with disabilities — accounting for one in ten people on the planet. The World Bank claims three-out-of-four disabled people live in the developing world. In any corner of the globe, poverty and disability are often interrelated. For instance, more than 18 percent of disabled adults in the United States live below the poverty line. In Canada, the unemployment rate among persons living with disabilities recently jumped to nearly 15 percent.

Because technologies and communication devices help reduce physical barriers, ICTs provide a model to allow disabled people to better integrate socially and economically into their communities, argues Deepak Bhatia of the World Bank. Another promise of ICTs is they provide access to knowledge, the ability to organize and network. Perhaps most importantly, the education sector is being slowly transformed by technology, providing greater access to a variety of learning materials.

Human development and ICT use were discussed in general terms at a recent Harvard University conference. At the upcoming ITU Telecom World 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland, UNESCO will showcase flourishing ICT applications for people with disabilities.

Yam TW is an automotive engineer from Malaysia who lost his vision last year. At his blog, My Blind Sight, he writes about the importance of technical advances to help people living with disabilities.

Malaysia O Malaysia.. The rapid technological advances today have changed and impacted the lives of so many people, particularly the disabled. For the blind and the visually impaired, medical scientists and researchers, particularly from the west, are excited about the vast opportunities that can be explored and tapped in helping the blind to restore some level of sight. While it is important to create awareness in preventing sight loss among the rakyat(citizens), it is equally important too that more research work to be done in helping those already inflicted, blind due to various medical illness and causes. It is good to have modern assistive, both physical and ICT tools, which undoubtedly will enhance the independence of those concerned in their daily lives.

A few more examples of appropriate technology come from the blog Public dreams of a blind ICT user:

Sometimes dreams become reality, but first they must be dreamed. Hopefully I can find other active eInclusion dreamers in Europe.

I am dreaming of a fully accessible and usable Wikipedia for all. I am working for an accessibility project at the German Wikipedia and for example, on a Wikipedia help page for blind users. Wikipedia is an important part of the information society and should be supported:
http://www.epractice.eu/blog/154
I am dreaming of an independent and multi-lingual Blind Wiki with optimized user interface for blind readers and contributors:
http://blind.wikia.com/wiki/Blind_Wiki:About
I am dreaming of an accessible and affordable mobile ICT device for the needs of blind persons. In the last 8 months, I have written hundreds of direct mails and posted lots of blog comments to inform disseminators and decision makers about the topic but it's a hard and sometimes demotivating work:
http://blind.wikia.com/wiki/Open_Letter_Initiative

The list goes on.

From the United States, Wheel Chair Kamikaze explains the importance of voice recognition tools to help him type and blog.

Multiple Sclerosis is a thief. It is indiscriminate in its larceny, robbing its victims of both the profound and the trivial. The disease has stolen from me elements that were once the very foundations of my life (my career, a large part of my social life, the expectation that I would one day learn to juggle), and things that by comparison might seem somewhat slight, like the ability to type.

Since my right hand now has about as much strength and dexterity as a latke, typing has become a strictly one-handed affair. I was never that great a typist to begin with…

When MS robbed me of the use of my right hand, it made typing, which had always been an arduous two fingered affair anyway, into a one fingered nightmare. My ability to communicate via the QWERTY keyboard was virtually eliminated, a major handicap in this day of Internet bulletin boards, e-mail, and instant messaging. How then, the astute reader may ask, am I able to compose the drivel that I post to this blog?

The answer comes in the form of an amazing piece of technology, a voice recognition software program called Dragon NaturallySpeaking. This wonder allows me to simply speak my thoughts, and see them magically transcribed onto my computer screen. It's like something out of Harry Potter, but without all of the crazy protesters claiming that it promotes Satan.

Without Dragon, I would have been rendered mute to the world of the Internet, and instead would have been left only to rant at Melvin, the giant Kleenex who is my invisible friend. The program has relieved me entirely of the need to type, and if I were to wake up 100% healthy tomorrow, I'd continue using it.

Deaf communities in most developing countries face similar problems, writes Lourdes Pietrosemoli. “One of them is the lack of programmes specifically designed for the local Sign Languages of their communities.”

In Venezuela for example, although the Constitution states the right of linguistic minorities (and the deaf community is globally regarded as such) to receive education in their own language, in practice this is rarely accomplished because, on the one hand, there are no professionals who appropriately handle the two languages involved: Spanish and Venezuelan Sign Language (LSV) and, on the other hand, there are no curricula tailored to the needs of the deaf.

However, Pietrosemoli describes how six deaf participants took part in a IT Essentials training by the Cisco Networking Academy in Merida, Venezuela. It went so well, Pietrosemoli says the idea could be exported abroad.

This course was a milestone for the deaf in our city, who not only acquired basic tools for their individual development, but also the mechanisms to transmit the acquired knowledge to other deaf people in the community.

At the time of this report, the certified deaf students are highly committed to the project of transmitting knowledge to others in the deaf community and a training course to acquire the necessary tools to teach IT Essentials in the community has already been scheduled. With this last step, the potential future problems with (hearing) interpreters are circumvented. Moreover, researchers from the Impairment and Communication project have planned a training workshop on the use of the voice synthesis software which will take place next week. In short, this experience has represented what real human networking is about. More than a happy ending, it is an excellent start.

Maureen de la Cruz, who blogs at Law and ICT reports how common it is now for people living with disabilities to become acquainted with technology, making it easier to bridge the digital divide.

My friends Jay and Rene are quintessential geeks, with one interesting difference: they surf the Internet, use computers and access all their features through a special text-to-speech software. With their virtuoso touch-typing skills and sometimes with the monitor turned off (they don't need it anyway!), they have become expert programmers and have even experimented with web design and adapting compatible open-source software for use with text-to-speech programs. Jay is the first totally blind Computer Science graduate in the Philippines and works from home as a web content writer, and Rene now instructs other low-vision students as a member of ATRIEV's [Adaptive Technology for the Rehabilitation, Integration, and Empowerment of the Visually Impaired] staff. Both of them have attended and given training sessions and specialized courses on adaptive technology locally and abroad.

…Schools and companies often think they have to buy expensive equipment or make extensive technical and logistical adjustments to accommodate PWDs [Persons with disabilities]. As pointed out by blind architect Jaime Silva, buildings and public transportation facilities do not even comply with basic legal requirements such as providing wheelchair ramps or granting discounted fares to people with disabilities. Technology, however, is constantly opening up new doors for people like my cool, talented visually impaired friends. I certainly hope that the digital divide may yet be bridged not just for the economically disadvantaged, but that ICT may help to break down the barriers caused by physical limitations as well.

From the ICTDev Dot Org blog comes a story about Dipendra Manocha, a software developer who created open-source screen reading software in Hindi and other South East Asian languages.

Based on the premise that computer technology was not meant only for the wealthy, Dipendra has changed the way people with print disability read and write. Accessible multimedia is ideal for people with disabilities as well as for the general public to share information and knowledge world wide. The technology is now being introduced in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal as well as India, which provides the exciting challenge of working in 22 languages as well as amongst vast geographical and cultural diversities. Dipendra is deeply dedicated to continue using technology as a catalyst to support the global sharing of human knowledge in the information society, and because of his focus on low-cost and open source technology, his work is highly replicable.

For all the anecdotes and blog posts on the role ICTs play in providing disabled people more access to technologies, I failed to find any statistics detailing the penetration of ICTs into this global community. Participants of the Harvard conference debated the merits of private enterprise pushing and governments and international organizations pulling the development of ICTs forward. Yet we still don’t know what’s driving ICTs into this field or their efficacy in increasing the scale of human and economic development for people living with disabilities. If you do, we’d like to hear from you.

Internet connections allow students in the most rural areas to augment learning through research. Academics can keep up with colleagues across the world. Social media may make it easier for people to organize themselves and facilitate the way immigrants send remittances.

The role ICTs plays in human development is being debated and discussed at a Sept. 23- 24 Harvard University forum, ICTs, Human Development, Growth and Poverty Reduction.

What about the backlash against computers and the fear of technological devices? If the promise of ICTs will lead to poverty reduction, how will technophobia affect this mission? Technophobia certainly remains a global issue. With the influence of ICTs role in development, however, does the fear of technology and misunderstanding of its uses disproportionally affect the developing world? If so, what are people doing about it?

Here are a few examples of fighting and understanding technophobia in Africa. (If you’ve got more, we’d love to hear them. We’ll also be trying to write this issue in other parts of the world, so please pass those ideas along, too.)

Technophobia in Africa, like elsewhere, takes many forms. Resistance to technology by teachers has been cited (.pdf) as a problem of computer expansion in Kenyan classrooms. Both hospital staff and patients in Uganda list “cultural adaptability” as a constraint in implementing ICTs in health centers. Girls around the world view cybercafés – in many places, the only gateway to the internet – as strictly boys’ territory.

James Kariuki, an E-learning specialist from Cape Town, South Africa relates a story of a well educated friend having difficulty with adapting to new technologies. This is from his blog Elearning in Africa:

I engaged with a friend today and he was lamenting about the speed at which the technology is moving. I could see the agony in his face when he told me that he was scheduled to do a presentation in a hall, and the only thing in that lecture hall as a visual aid is a computer and a projector. The old-fashioned overhead projectors have been replaced by these new technologies. The pain of having to redo his presentation, and scanning his images so that they can be used on the computer was profound. I asked him whether he has considered attending any of training sessions:

Most of us have a phobia for technology and most of the jargon used in the training leaves us more confused than we were before training. I know of a number of professors in my department who have the same feelings about the technology and they cannot attend training.

I asked him, is this reasons that some lecturers never use the technology in the lecture theatres? He said:

Yes, and more to that there is a cultural bearing. They should have involved an anthropologist to study the culture of the prospective users of the technology so that they can advice them about what need to change first [in terms of culture] for the technology to be successfully used.

Here I see a problem where the technology is being provided but the constituency that should benefit from it is not. I am not sure of the best approach to dealing with technophobia, especially in situations where the individuals [with the phobia] have all the resources and support and training but they cannot still use the resources available. If you have a clue, feel free to let me know.

In a comment, Neil J says we should all be expanding our definition of technophobia — because each of us have a bit of it.

I suppose, as you said training is the best way to deal with this. I am currently doing a university assignment into technophobia. I think we all have elements of technophobia:
- the anger we display when a computer crashes
- fearing that computers will replace our jobs
- fear that we are being watched!

The digital divide is not just rural versus urban or rich countries versus poor. Gender remains an important factor, says Ore Somolu, writing in The Networking Success Project from Nigeria.

Women face a number of limitations to be able to freely use technology, Ore continues, including lower disposable incomes, limited time for technology use, average lower literacy levels. One solution includes starting technology lessons for girls at an early age.

Young women need to become more involved in science and technology from an early age. This could be formally (primary or secondary school, computer school, after-school program) or informally (learning from family or friends, summer camps with computer classes). The Gender Team at KnowledgeHouseAfrica organises the FOSS Women Bootcamp Workshop, which equips young women with the skills necessary to train other women to use FOSS* (Free and Open Source Software). Fantsuam Foundation offers scholarships to qualified and interested women for ICT training.

Mothers are a big influence on their daughters and if they display feelings of technophobia, some girls may unconsciously adopt similar feelings. It is important that encouragement comes from the home, through introduction from a young age to incrementally more complex forms of technology.

Lauren Clifford-Holmes, a student at Rhodes University in South Africa, at one time felt that ICTs were not living up to their promise because few projects created tangible results. She lists a few examples of best practices when using ICTs to augment development. From her blog, The Soap Box:

What struck me about this story were two key nuances: firstly that dumping technology in a community is useless unless the skills are taught for the consumption of and production using this technology. Secondly, this case study emphasised the importance of focusing on schools and introducing students to technology which can aid their learning experience, and teach them the skills they need to thrive in the knowledge economy/ information society.

She reports on an example that promotes the right kind of appropriate technology, the Intel Teach Program.

Mthebula High School was donated computers by Telkom a few years ago, but none of the teachers were incorporating the technology into their instruction. School language teacher, Mercy Ntlemo, attributed this to most of the teachers lacking “the specific knowledge and training to integrate technology in any substantive way”. This meant the computers were gathering dust, barely used beyond basic information retrieval and simple word processing.

This example speaks to the larger debate within ICTs and development: development needs to happen on a multitude of different levels. It makes no sense to think you are aiding development by donating free technology like computers to those who lack the skills to utilise this technology effectively.

In this particular case, Ntlemo underwent the Intel Teach Program, a professional development program designed to help teachers integrate technology effectively in the classroom with the objective of helping students build 21st century skills. Ntlemo felt she really benefited from the training and following her success, many other teachers did the program, to help “conquer their technophobia”.
This training program exposed the teachers to new approaches for creating assessment tools and aligning lessons with educational learning goals and standards. Additionally, they discover new ways to incorporate the use of the Internet, Web page design, and student projects as vehicles for powerful learning.

As a result of the Intel Teach Program, Ntlemo says that technology is now an integral part of the curriculum at DZJ Mthebula High School, and project based learning is the norm. The training program revolutionised the way the teachers used the computers – a wonderful resource which until then were being completely underused. Ntlemo says the program “has revolutionised the way we teach.”

So what does a story such as this one teach us? It teaches us that we need to have a wholistic approach to development, and that development occurs within a particular context – such as lack of digital literacy. We need to understand the contexts of the communities needing developments in ICTs so that development does not become a worthless endeavour but rather a meaningful process of change.

With banks out of the picture, microlending agencies step into the role usually held by the imperfect combination of relatives and often predatory money lenders. Microlending is most often associated with the developing world, but agencies have begun working in industrialized countries.

The Grameen Bank, the world’s first microfinance institution, was born in Bangladesh in 1983 by Mohammed Yunus, an economics professor who launched it to help alleviate rural poverty by providing much needed funds to entrepreneurs to grow their businesses. Not only would the poor repay these loans, Yunus argued, but the Grameen Bank’s lending style would become a sound investment. In 2006, Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. By 2008 Grameen Bank had lent $7.6 billion.

As the internet age hit, microlenders began looking for ways to replicate the Grameen Bank's success online. With the rise of social networking, especially peer-to-peer media, these lenders found their answer. The question, however, remains: Will social media help create a sustainable market for microfinance?

It’s just one of the debates occurring during a Sept. 23-24 Harvard University conference, Can technologies help reduce poverty in developing countries?

One of the first microlenders to have an impact over the internet is the US-based Kiva, which began a few years after a couple traveled to East Africa in 2004. Kiva claims to be the world’s first “person-to-person micro-lending website.”

Here’s a good description of how Kiva works, from Tales From Beyond the Glimpse, a blog from Austria.

In Kiva's website you can lend to someone across the globe who needs a loan for their business - like raising goats, selling vegetables at market or making bricks. Each loan has a picture of the entrepreneur, a description of their business and how they plan to use the loan so you know exactly how your money is being spent - and you get updates letting you know how the entrepreneur is going.

The best part is, when the entrepreneur pays back their loan you get your money back or use it for another loan (I like this idea because you can give a small loan once and use the same amount over and over)- and Kiva's loans are managed by microfinance institutions on the ground who have a lot of experience doing this, so I suppose you can trust that your money is being handled responsibly.

I made a loan to Adjo Solomé in Togo. I liked her immediately because she's working with a sewing machine!

I love the internet because you can do things like this directly now.

Kiva allows a potential lender to browse profiles of people needing finance. If a entrepreneur is selected and a loan made, Kiva then allocates the funds to one of its microfianance partners, an agency working on the ground. The recipient will then repay the loan, usually at interest. (The use of interest is controversial, but common, within microfinance.) Kiva's site allows lenders to follow the money throughout the loan process, keeping tabs on repayment and other personal updates. This has caught on to other lending sites.

What helps drives these sites isn't just the loans; it's the methods used to make the funds available. “Social networks are important,” writes Jon Camfield in his self-titled blog. “Trust — more commonly called social capital in this situation — is the strength and number of interpersonal connections. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and the like are convenient ways to map out these connections (within a connected group of people), but hardly replace them.”

This is by no means new in development theory, and is often portrayed as either the keystone to successful development or a red herring (and to be fair, it's probably both).
Social Networks also provide a second important role. Beyond increasing trust to enable all sorts of transactions, and providing back-channels to smooth those along, they also improve (if not outright cause) technology diffusion. Spread throughout a network will be innovators, experimenters and early adopters who create, tweak and test new ideas, and then begin to spread them by word of mouth as well as through successful implementations.

The marriage of microlending and social media works two ways. First it allows a disparate group of people, perhaps the entrepreneurs, to communicate and become organized. Secondly, it allows them to reach out and relay their message with the larger world. Microlending organizations have latched on to this, leveraging technology to make sure potential lenders can put a face to recipients’ stories. Perhaps these personal bonds originate from the Grameen Bank, which began lending funds on the basis of trust and used peer pressure to insure the loans were repaid. Or, perhaps microlenders online use interpersonal connections as a bulwark against compassion fatigue.

Here’s an example of the personal touch from an interview in the blog China Philanthropy with Casey Wilson, the co-founder of Wokai, a microfinance site that has been called the Facebook for Farmers. Here Wilson relates a positive experience she's witnessed from microfinance.

On a micro level—one of my favorites is this woman from Sichuan who is 24 years old. When she was 18 she and her husband got married and were basically put into indentured servitude. His family put them in debt for living with them so they worked I the city for 4 years to pay off the debt and she was able to save up a little money when they moved back to Sichuan to start up a duck industry.
She bought a number of ducks. She started the business, and then 3 months in all of her ducks died. It turns out, at the same time she found out about our field partner. She went to them and got support and money to restart her duck business. I’m so impressed with her A—That she is so young and persevered through so much adversity and B—looking to see where she is with microfinance and where she would be without it. If our partner had not been there to help her she would have been left with nothing, her only options would have been to go back to the city, and she would never had the tools to lift herself from poverty. Stories like that are really inspiring to me.

The new French site Babyloan works on much the same manner as Kiva and Wokai, linking donors to entrepreneurs. But it is the first site to specifically target European donors.

It also has visions of building a social community. The Traveling Spouse, a blogger based mostly in France, reports:

Babyloan are hoping to develop the site into a social community, so that lenders can meet others and share experiences, even electing representatives to the board of directors.

By the reaction to this site, it has struck a chord with more than a few bloggers.

From Emmanuel Brunet, who lives and blogs in Paris.

Moi j'ai sélectionné Asfandiyor, Nishon, Gulchehra et Oygul, mes nouveaux amis du Tadjikistan.
Ils cherchaient 810 euros sur 9 mois pour acheter du bétail et ainsi produire du fromage, de la viande et probablement faciliter les activités agricoles. Dans 9 mois, ils nous remboursent les sommes données, sans taux d'intêret. C'est simple, ce n'est pas contraignant puisque l'argent n'est jamais perdu et ça donne un vrai coup de pouce.
L'argent remboursé pourra alors être injecté dans d'autres projets ou vous être rendu directement.
En quelques jours, les amis du Tadjikistan ont trouvé les 810 euros nécessaires à l'achat de bétail, grâce à d'autres participants de France et de Suisse.

C'est peut-être ça le développement (monétaire) durable… !

From the blog Les Enfants du Web.

L’intérêt est bien évidemment de suivre l’avancée du projet. Et on se dit qu’avec se genre de service notre argent arrive effectivement au destinataire…

J’ai donc décidé d’aider le projet de Chanthol Vorn, une cambodgienne qui veut développer sa petite épicerie ! Je contribue à hauteur de 20€ sur les 210€ nécessaire.

Je trouve le concept hyper intéressant mais le site en lui-même mériterait une interface un peu plus sympa. Que se soit au niveau des graphismes et de l’ergonomie, une version 2 n’est vraiment pas du luxe.

From Domi, who blogs at Mood-for:

Mmes Houessou et Gandaho veulent monter une petite boutique à Cotonou au Bénin pour nourrir leurs 4 enfants correctement. Elles ont déjà 340 euros sur les 460 dont elles ont besoin pour l’ouverture de la boutique. Je leur en ai prêté 30 et elles me le rendront dans 10 mois car, le saviez vous, les utilisateurs du micro-crédit remboursent mieux que la plupart des emprunteurs… Mes 30 euros, je pourrai ainsi les prêter à d’autres bientôt. C’est simple et efficace, c’est le micro-crédit à portée de chacun d’entre nous. Ca nous permet d’être utile.

The sites for Kiva, Wokai and Babyloan are full of functionality, great graphics and heart-warming photos. A participant in these projects cannot help but feeling part of a community. Interfaces also make sure the loan-making transparent. With all the technology supporting these sites, however, one blogger wonders whether these schemes will pass the sustainability test that often separates good development project from just good ideas.

David Costa, who blogs at Microfinance.fm out of Zürich, Switzerland:

my primary interest is looking at microfinance as an investment opportunity too and not as a donation.
Even in the case of Kiva the borrower has to pay interests but, at least, unless there is a default, the investor can re-use his capital or withdrawn it.
I am sure that donation and grants to not for profit institution like Wokai are important but from an investment standpoint these are not as scalable.
In the case of kiva there are more options: you can lend 4000$ and receive, if needed, part or all your investment back. In the case of wokai I can only donate
to their organisation – how they use the money is not really important from an investor standpoint. It is really not an investment.

This loose coalition argues the Discovery Channel programming sensationalizes shark attacks and embellishes the dangers sharks pose to humans. While Shark Week may provide a handsome profit to the US-based network, it has created a generation of viewers that feel “sharks need to be hunted to extinction,” the group argues. They are circulating a petition calling for the boycott of Shark Week.

Shark Week, which has run on cable and satellite systems since 1987, offers Discovery Channel viewers a week-long series of documentaries and feature programs. Last year an estimated 29 million viewers around the world viewed Shark Week. As an example of its popularity, a different petition calls for the Discovery Channel to expand Shark Week programming to 24 hours per day.

Shark Week begins in the United States August 2 and runs a few weeks later in different regions.

From the group’s manifesto at the French Polynesia-based blog Discovery’s Shame:

The fact is that no shark species target humans for food and people all over the world swim and dive with sharks for pleasure—the same species that Discovery infers will attack and kill people.

Scientists who's work has been used for Discovery's Shark Week have found it twisted and misrepresented by the company. For those who are familiar with sharks, Shark Week is nothing more than tabloid journalism, and does not reflect modern scientific knowledge.

Until recently, even the dangers to sharks from overfishing was covered up by Discovery, because they considered conservation to be an unpopular subject.

According to most estimates, each year sharks attack 50 to 70 people and kill between 5 and 15. Between 20 and 100 million sharks die annually due to fishing.

The blog Sea Stewards: Sea is Our Sanctuary tells readers to “support rational shark programming.”

Despite promises in a meeting with shark advocates and filmmakers in New York two years ago to promote shark awareness Discovery Channel is still promoting the hype and fear of sharks in their sensationalistic Shark Week programming. We have a responsibility to raise awareness that promote sane and sustainable ocean practices. Sharks are an important component fo a healthy ocean and the fear and hype generated by shark attack films is harmful to sharks.

The Discovery Channel admits it employs attention-grabbing methods to bring in viewers. But the network says its web and television programming educates that audience about the value and plight of sharks. Instead of being sensationalistic, its television programming portrays the complicated relationship between humans and sharks, which is what viewers want to see.

David, a shark conservation graduate student in the United States, blogs under the moniker Whysharksmatter on the site Southern Fried Science. A few weeks ago he interviewed Discovery Channel Executive Paul Gasek on the controversy surrounding Shark Week.

[Whysharksmatter]WSM: Do you believe that how movies, the news, and networks like the Discovery Channel portray sharks affects how the public views sharks? For example, in the scientific community, it is widely acknowledged that the movie Jaws has encouraged public fear of sharks. We can’t help but notice that a poster for this year’s Shark Week bears a strong resemblance to the movie poster for Jaws. Though your website has lots of conservation information, do you believe that some of your programming promotes fear of sharks?

[Paul Gasek]PG: At Discovery Channel, we pride ourselves on telling compelling and accurate stories. Shark Week is no different. Two of our shows this year are based on actual historical events: one is about the first U.S.-based shark attacks on record, off the New Jersey shore in 1916, and the other is about the infamous summer of 2001 when more than 50 swimmers were attacked by sharks off U.S. beaches. It is a fact that sharks sometimes mistake people for prey and attack. In these, and many of our shows, we are digging deeper than the media headlines and telling the stories behind the stories.

WSM: Are you and other Discovery Channel executives aware of the following facts?:

A) Sharks kill less than ten humans a year

B) Less than 1% of shark species have ever bitten a human

C) Sharks play key roles in regulating ecosystems

D) Losses of shark populations have resulted in collapses of economically important fisheries

E) More than 100 million sharks a year are killed in one of the most wasteful, unsustainable, and brutal fishing practices on Earth…

F) Resulting in dozens of species suffering 95% or higher population declines in the last thirty years?

PG: We are absolutely aware of the plight – and importance – of sharks. And while we have millions of people watching our Shark Week programming (29 million people last year) and visiting our Shark Week website (one million people in July alone) we work hard to educate them about the importance of shark conservation.

Each year, Discovery Channel partners with Ocean Conservancy on a Public Service Announcement about the state of sharks which airs throughout Shark Week… We also dedicate a large portion of our website to shark conservation, using it as a tool to entertain and educate people.

The question-and-answer session sparked debate throughout the shark community. Here are a few comments from the Southern Fried Science site.

From Mako:

When it comes to television, people want to be entertained and networks want to entertain. By portraying sharks as menacing eating machines hungry for human flesh, thats entertaining to people. Its the same reason that people flock to the movie theatres for the next lame scary movie. We like to be scared. It may be “accurate”, but its the commercials, camera angles, music, tone of the commentary that bring across fear and misconception to the audience. Its the nature of media, bend the truth a little and sell it better, or give the stone cold boring truth.

From Irradiatus:

No one is claiming Shark Week should be the “Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.”

Quite the opposite.

What everyone is saying is that you can make a million different varieties of insanely fascinating shark programs that aren’t about them being evil killing machines.

Allie says:

There is a HUUUGE divide between the conservation-oriented Discovery Channel website, and it’s television programming. Yes, choosing sensationalistic headlines may reel people in, but for those who don’t take the time to watch, it also sends a message.

While the debate raged on, the MarineBio Blog compared this year’s Shark Week to previous editions.

I hated that the Discovery Channel aired shows with that threatening voiceover, and all the fear-mongering worked into the script. People who fear sharks won’t respect the fact that shark populations are dwindling worldwide. The only thing people were “discovering” during shark week is that sharks are man-eating demons. There was very little mention of the true nature of sharks, which is that they’re apex predators in search of fish, and seals and other marine critters they find yummy. And that more often than not, human encounters with shark in the wild consist of the sharks swimming away – not attacking. Sharks are extremely important to balanced marine ecosystems. Without them, there’s a top-down cascade of ill-effects as shark prey begin to proliferate and take over – causing their prey-species to be depleted.

However, checking up on this year’s website, the author found:

To my surprise, most of the blood and gore has been replaced with messaging on shark conservation and it seems they’re planning to air documentaries about sharks that are informative and educational rather than shocking and gory. They even have a map of shark populations and their conservation status around the globe.

This year’s Shark Week features the following programs: Blood in the Water; Deadly Waters; Day of the Shark 2; Sharkbite Summer; Great White Appetite and Shark After Dark.

The innocuous-sounding Day of the Shark 2 has generated a tremendous amount of dialogue. The program – described as a “harrowing hour” – exhibits three separate shark attacks: the first when a great white breaks through a shark cage, trapping a diver inside; second, a former Navy seal is attacked in shallow waters and third a bull shark happens upon a spearfishing trip in the Bahamas.

In instances such as this, the blog Shark Divers doesn’t directly find fault with the Discovery Channel. Instead, the blogger Shark Diver takes to task film production companies who combine unsound diving methods with luring sharks in hopes of creating a dangerous situation in front of rolling cameras.

The other side of Shark Porn is more direct. Industry members who enable shark disasters operationally. This years Shark Week will feature one such video.

The operator behind that video has been telling anyone who will listen that this video was an accident, “a one time event”.

Unfortunately all of these claims are after event fabrications and he knows, as does the entire industry, that this video is just one of series of cage breaches at the same site by the same operator.

We have had enough. We have had enough of operators who cry wolf when things go wrong to operational errors that are the result of sloppy operations. We have had enough of operators who blame the videographer, or photographer for capturing their disasters and profiting from it. We have had enough of those few industry members who claim the moral high ground for sharks and yet deliver mayhem and disaster upon an entire industry.

If you are a current supporter of these few industry folks take a long, cold look in the mirror. There is no such thing as “an accident” in a baited shark situation and the myth of cage breaches as an acceptable part of our industry is just that, a myth.

Earlier this year production companies were scoping locations to film portions of the upcoming Shark Week. A dive company in Fiji tells why it refused assistance to a team who wanted to film a “Pro-Shark ‘documentary-entertainment’ show’.”

From the blog Fiji Shark Diving:

Titled “Deadly Waters”, the plan is to travel to the five “most dangerous beaches for Shark attacks” where the waters are “infested with Sharks” and conduct a series of “experiments” to determine what causes the attacks. The locations they have chosen are the Bahamas, South Africa, Oz, Florida and… Fiji!
A list of questions includes
- what makes these specific locations so deadly?
- do you have any documented Shark attack case studies….?

Well, we sent them packing - and I herewith formally apologize to those well-meaning friends who sent them our way thinking that they were doing us a favor.

Thing is, we were not only outraged by their unacceptable portrayal of Sharks and the stupidity of their new “experiments” - but also and foremost, because of the damage they were intending to inflict to the reputation of Fiji. Talk of “deadly beaches”and “Shark infested waters” is simply toxic for the Tourism Industry, the principal income earner of most Island Countries. Yes, also for the Bahamas whose image has already been tarnished by past and equally stupid programs.

Photo from www.arkibongbayan.org

This fact makes Raymond “Mong” Palatino the first blogging politician in the Philippines and one of Global Voices’ first contributors to be elected to public office.

Although only 29 years old, Raymond “Mong” Palatino’s CV already runs pages long. He writes a column for an international press syndicate; he’s served as president of the National Union of Students of the Philippines; he’s been a major player in groups like Filipino Youth for Peace, the Estrada Resign Youth Movement and Kabataan Kontra-Kartel, known as Youth Against the Oil Cartel.

Mong began with Global Voices halfway through 2006, covering his home country. By that time he had already been blogging at Mongster’s Nest for more than a year. He moved up to Regional Editor at Global Voices in April 2008.

An office of the UN has compared him to Edgar Jopson, the most famous student leader in Filipino history. He helped usher in TXTPower, a national consumer rights advocacy group. He has long been at the forefront of marrying new technologies to help foster political change.

In a profile in the Washington Post on the use of social media in Filipino politics, Mong admitted that during his work mobilizing students in opposition to President Joseph Estrada in 2001 taught him the importance of tools like texting. But one could argue it’s the plight of the Filipino youth who fuel the many aspects of his work. In 2005, Mong wrote these words:

“The debilitating effects of the labor and education policies of the government account for the cynicism and hopelessness which many young Filipinos feel today. They leave the country in droves because they sense no bright future for them in the Philippines. Those who remain are resigned to the destituteness of the country. “

Two years later, he ran his second national election campaign. His Kabataan Party garnered 225,000 votes on a platform of youth empowerment and the fight against corruption, inequality and promoting social justice. This showing pushed Kabataan past the threshold of two percent of total national votes, making it eligible to sit in the House of Representatives under Philippine’s sectoral allocation law, which provides seats to parties representing minority voices. A recent Supreme Court ruling increased the number of these “sectoral” seats in the House of Representatives from 22 to 55, paving the way for the Kabataan Party to join the House of Representatives.

As Partylist leader, Raymond was sworn in and immediately began work. (A recent tweet has him testing the wi-fi at the House of Representatives. He reported it “seems ok.”)

And a blog post from those first hours in office portrays him tackling the nuts-and-bolts of Filipino politics.

I attended a higher education committee hearing in the afternoon. The committee tackled HB 2380 - Protecting the rights of students requiring professional licensing examinations to enroll in review centers of their choice and providing penalties thereof - which is principally authored by Rep. Teddy Casiño of Bayan Muna. I’m supporting this measure. Most likely this bill will be passed by the committee. During the hearing, Rep. Teves of Negros revealed that there is a school in his province requiring students to live in the school dormitory for two months in order to attend review classes.

Schools should not require students to attend review classes. Enrolling in review schools should not be made as a graduation requirement. Review classes are acceptable if they are part of the curriculum. But the popular practice today involves schools which force students to join expensive review classes.

I had a conversation with Mong regarding the power of the youth and social media in the Philippines.

With all you have happening in your life, why work for Global Voices?

I was invited by Preetam Rai (former Global Voices Southeast Asia editor) to join GV in 2006. I immediately agreed to write for GV. During that time, I was already a fan of GV. I was impressed with its mission to highlight the views of bloggers in different parts of the world. By joining GV, I could more effectively articulate the issues espoused by Filipino bloggers. My initial articles were about reproductive health, nurse migration, election reform and illegal deployment of Filipinos in Iraq. For two years, I contributed 2-3 GV articles per month.

I attended the GV summit in New Delhi in 2006. The summit was influential in broadening my appreciation for the potential of blogging to raise political awareness and improve human interactions in the world. Before the GV summit, my knowledge about the persuasive power of online media was very limited.

It was April 2008 when Preetam asked me to replace him as GV editor in the region. I thoroughly enjoyed my new task for GV. It gave me the opportunity to interact with various bloggers in the region. It allowed me to remain regularly informed about the political developments in East Asia and the rest of the world. I realized too the importance of broadening my perspectives on social and political matters. I noticed that I was satisfied being a Filipino blogger; while I am almost ignorant on what is happening in our neighboring countries. My GV work improved my outlook and my reading habits. Through GV, I learned to appreciate better the need to look for alternative voices which are not usually reported by mainstream media. These blogs, these voices exist. They are out there, waiting to be quoted.

You’ve blogged eloquently about your parents and siblings moving away when you were just an adolescent to live and work abroad. How has this distance from your family shaped your life?

I’ve learned to become more independent. At the same time, it influenced me (during my university days) to ask questions about the social order. For example: Why is labor export a permanent economic policy of the government? Why is migration deemed by many Filipinos as the ultimate solution to poverty? In retrospect I became an activist by starting to ask about the Filipino diaspora.

Social media has been used heavily in Filipino politics. How have these media organized different segments of the youth in the country? (For his answer, Mong sent me to his website, where I found this)

Texting is already the standard mode of communication among Filipinos. It is widely used even in the remote countryside to connect and reconnect with family and friends. Overseas Filipino workers, now numbering more than 8 million, use texting to maintain close relationships with their loved ones back home…

Political forces seek to mobilize millions of subscribers through virtual campaigns which could range from the sending of text messages, downloading of political ringtones, and forwarding of subversive text quotes. It may be impossible to gather more than 50 million cell phone users in the streets but it is easy to persuade ordinary citizens to send political text messages to their friends.

The great number of anonymous prepaid cell phone users is emboldening citizens to express their true political sentiments. A majority of cell phone owners in the country are availing themselves of the prepaid service since this is cheaper. This also allows political groups and disgruntled citizens, fearful of government reprisals, to send daring political messages through texting, without the risk of revealing their identities.

Another important factor which contributes to the popularity of texting is the relative absence of censorship governing Internet usage and mobile communications in the Philippines. The cheap mobile technology and the freedom enjoyed by Filipino cell phone users enhance the opportunities to use the phones for political activities.

Taking a look at the words (quoted above) you wrote of the cynicism and hopelessness of the youth in 2005, What is the difference between the economic situation back then and today?

I see no difference in the situation in 2005 and today. In fact I believe the situation has gone worse. The Philippines is suffering from the global economic crisis because it is too much dependent on remittances sent by overseas workers who are being laid-off in developed countries. Our youth continue to dream of leaving the country to fulfill their simple dream of acquiring a decent job that will uplift the conditions of their families. I have little respect for a government which treats its citizens as commodities to be exported.

Your party, Kabataan, has had more than its share of run ins with authorities. Its members have been threatened by elected officials and even hit by a mayor; a coordinator was arrested and beaten by armed police; during the 2007 elections, two poll watchers were abducted and killed. And yet you continue…

You are correct: our members were harassed; a few were killed in the last elections

The least we can do to honor their bravery and sacrifice is to continue with our advocacy. Our platform for a progressive form of politics is resisted by supporters of the status quo. We will persevere….

You’ve been profiled inside and outside the Philippines as an astute organizer using different forms of social media. Now that you are an elected official, how will you continue?

I will consistently blog my activities in the Parliament. I will use different social media applications like Twitter, Plurk (plurk is more popular among Filipino bloggers) and Facebook to report about my activities. Among our initial activities is to teach some of my colleagues in the Parliament about the potential of using social media in improving transparency and governance in the country.

You spoke these words after learning of the Supreme Court decision to grant your party a seat in the House of Representatives.

“… The Filipino youth have always played a pivotal role in ushering in significant changes in history. We have always been at the forefront of uprisings and revolutions every time the social, political and economic conditions in society became too intolerable for Filipinos to endure.”

Where do you see Filipino youth in the next five years?

I believe the Filipino youth will fulfill an active role in the 2010 presidential elections. They will demand democratic reforms in governance, they will push for a genuine social reform agenda, they will effectively influence the results of the elections.

However, the youth may become more cynical if administration politicians succeed in their plan to postpone the holding of the elections. The challenge is to prevent the spread of cynicism among the youth and transform the mood of hopelessness into a constructive force for change.

Where do you see Raymond “Mong” Palatino in five years?

In five years I still see myself as an activist (this time in the labor sector and human rights advocacy), a public servant, and a blogger; still a member of the GV community and helping with the web translation project involving the several major languages in the Philippines.

You Tube video of a Kabataan Party ad

These are the comments of Commodore J.V. Bainimarama, Prime Minister as he assured that there would be no disruption in the delivery of public goods and services and that to lives of people.

Commodore Bainimarama said that there will be many changes brought about in the coming days and weeks, which will be all for the good of the people and the country as a whole.

He said that the public need not worry about these changes as they are all meant to improve the delivery of public services through simpler processes, quick decision making and improved handling of enquiries and needs of ordinary members of the public.

In response to an April 9 court ruling declaring the military backed government of Frank Bainimarama came to power illegally when he dissolved Parliament and deposed the government of Laisenia Qarase, the country’s President nullified the Fiji's constitution, fired the entire judiciary and appointment himself head of state and the armed forces. He then re-appointed Bainimarama and swore in his entire government.

Bainimarama, Fiji's military leader, came to power in December 2006, he said, to clean up the corrupt Qarase government. He also wanted to replace what he saw as Fiji’s divisive, ethnic-based politics that pits political parties aligned with indigenous Fijians with parties aligned with the Indian ethnic minority, descendants of cane workers brought to Fiji by the British colonial rulers. It was Fiji's fourth coup since 1987, three of which took place to expand the political power of indigenous Fijians.

Before the events of Easter weekend, Fiji had been under intense pressure from neighboring countries and governmental bodies to hold elections, as Bainimarama once promised. However, government supporters maintain that scheduling elections with Fiji's communal-based electoral system will merely perpetrate the country's track record of ethnic-based favoritism in governance.

Bloggers of all stripes are now sifting through the debris of a completely changed political landscape – one that will see the Bainimarama government remain in power until at least 2014.

One blogger has closed up shop for the time being. To another, the situation remains pretty much the same.

From Oceanic: User Experiences from the South Pacific.

The doomsday headline “Fiji military given OK to shoot civilians.” called out to me from UPI.com. I'm not sure what was more jarring, actually. Was it that fear-mongering, sensationalist headline or the fact that UPI.com's tag line is “100 years of journalistic excellence”? Some international media outlets use old video footage of the 2000 coup with soldiers in the streets carrying weapons. I don't believe a tiny “file footage” in the corner of the screen is fair, either.

As an expat, I don't openly comment on any of the politics in the country and for obvious reason. I see positives and negatives in everything anyway and there is also enough noise out there from other sources. However, one of challenges Fiji will continue to face when not enabling open communications with the rest of the world are stories such as the sensationalist one above. I've received well more than a handful of emails and messages from friends in other parts of the world who appear to be getting warped views of what's happening in Suva.

“Are you safe?”, understandably, is the most common question I hear and I still respond with the stock answer I have always used.

“I feel safer here than on the streets of any big city in the world.”

Fiji is a very safe country, even in the face of some rising “petty crime” which include home invasions and robberies. For tourists, though, this is not a risk and the news they are seeing on TV and the warnings from their governments are, frankly, blown well out of proportion. I'm not saying the situation isn't serious, though. It is serious, but things DO NOT feel unstable at all in Suva right now. Could this change? I suppose it could but I'd like to believe it won't. If I felt that there was a real danger, I would not be keeping my kids in school right now.

Because it has no working framework of the constitution, Fiji's new government has ruled through a series of decrees, including the public emergency regulations, which gives extra search, seizure and detention powers to the police. What has made the most news, however, is the new rules for Fiji’s media, which direct government minders to work in editorial offices approving “pro-Fiji” stories and denying stories that negatively portray the President’s abrogation of the constitution. The government claims the rules are temporary measures to insure the media does not publish material that may “give rise to disorder.” The rules enjoy very few supporters within media circles. (Here's what bloggers think.)

I know I covered this issue previously, but this post offers a different take. Loyal Fijian argues a free media is no one's enemy.

Let the media report freely and without censorship. And with the freedom to report freely comes the responsibility to report fairly.

Media freedom is about Economics folks. Media freedom is what made Rupert Murdoch a billionaire. Media freedom is what made Larry Flynt, the publisher of pornography, a billionaire.

Media freedom means money.

The Interim Government accuses the media of being selective in its reporting of employing individuals who have allegiances to political parties or are using their positions to pursue personal agendas.

Loyal Fijian will let the people decide if certain Fiji media outlets at times have been less than balanced due to the influence of certain persons with agendas to push.

Like many media critics when looking at Fiji’s media, the issue of responsibility arises.

With freedom comes responsibility. Can Fiji's media outlets take a good look within themselves and say they are totally dispassionate in their reporting, their journalists don't have “favored” sources or driven by allegiances to political parties or traditional links?

Can they?

The best thing the Government can do is to remove the censorship and let the media go about its work.

As we here at Loyal Fijian have said all along, the people are smart enough to sense rumour and innuendo from facts .

Bloggers like WhyFijiisCrying and its clone Solivaksasama which sprung up after the 2006 are now totally discredited due to their rumour mongering and mindless slander.

But the best defence against such bias is to let them talk or write, present your own side of the story and move on .Censorship is not the solution.

The move to impose censorship is an admission that the information machinery of the Government is not doing its job as it should. Get better at the game , dont take the ball and go running home. That never made anyone any friends.

Getting reliable news from inside Fiji – even for those living in the country – has been difficult. By most accounts, all foreign journalists have left the country. With the local media mostly quiet regarding political issues, Fiji's political bloggers have been publishing nearly non-stop.

A few quick updates: Fiji’s government has arrested the president of Fiji's Law Society, a long-time critic of Bainimarama. He may have been arrested for comments he made to an Australian reporter, who was later deported.

The government sent troops to the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Suva and reportedly fired the Central Bank Governor, who had previously sparred with Baininiarama over the state of the nation’s economy.

Worried that it could lose its diminishing foreign reserves, the bank then tightened exchange controls. Coup Four And A Half reports that Fiji's Dollar has been devalued 20 percent.

The Fiji Times reports that one of its photographers was detained by police for an hour, along with a Fiji TV reporter and cameraman, due to their coverage of a peaceful protest by members of Fiji Law Society. (Raw Fiji News has a few tidbits on the protests.)

Coup Four And A Half reports that Fiji TV reporter Edwin Nand spent his second night in jail. Raw Fiji News reports he has been released.

James Murray, who writes the Views on the News blog at News 3 in New Zealand, reports that people in Fiji can send information via email to foreign journalists who continue to report on the country from afar: freefiji@newspapers.co.nz

The blog at the Soli Vakasama site is also running a defacto forum for those wanting to get their letters to the editor published.

Pat Craddock, a former journalism professor, writes an open letter to Fiji's Prime Minister in Café Pacific blog, wondering what to make out of news by blogs?

So – only good news can be reported. Wow –perhaps the army can try and shut down Al Jazeera, BBC and CNN too? I notice their reporting doesn't praise the army for their actions.

Fiji journalists must be finding it hard to discover what good news there is to report on the army?

Commodore, your actions this week have surely given a new lease of life to Fiji blog sites. For us in NZ – and Oz and elsewhere – where else should we now look for news on Fiji, but through the blogs? I read tonight on a blog site that the army is taking petrol from gas stations without payment – true or untrue? How am I to assess the truth of this comment – not from the Fiji newspapers, surely? They won’t be allowed to print that type of bad news, even if it is true?

So… a wait until possibly 2014 before the citizens of Fiji can vote for the government they want? Most governments voted by the people, would not get that lease of life with long term promises to improve the lives of their citizens. From 2006 until 2014 is eight years… a long time for a visionary leader to prepare policies of political change. Too bloody long.

[Here is a link to the gas station piece.]

Crosbie Walsh, who writes Fiji: The Way It Was, Is, And Can Be is unimpressed by some of the statements coming from New Zealand journalist (and blogger) Michael Field, claiming Bainimarma is “stoking the coup culture,” (something the PM has promised to extinguish), along with former Fiji military Land Force Commander
Jone Baledrokadroka for an op-ed piece which calls Easter weekend’s events a “a naked power grab.”

Most of what I've read and heard, though understandable, seems poorly considered, and the extreme and provocative comments - by Baledrokadroka, Michael Field, one of the Australian judges, and some of the anonymous bloggers - must be condemned for adding fuel to what could develop into a highly dangerous situation.

I think it important to recall earlier emergency regulations that were heavily applied when first announced, but eased back as authorities became better placed to assess the situation.

Let us hope this will be the case again. That will be the time for reasoned comment — and some release of present frustrations. Meanwhile, the fewer inflammatory comments, the better.

The Fiji Sun reports it will not “publish political reports- either from the interim Government or their critics - until it can do so with accuracy, balance and fairness.”

Fiji Television viewers turning into the Sunday, April 12 received this notice over a black screen: “Viewers Please Be Advised There Will Be No 6PM News Bulletin Tonight.”

This reporting by omission is in response to new government “public emergency regulations,” (opens .doc file) which will be in place for 30 days, prohibiting the broadcast or publishing or any material that “may give rise to disorder” or could create “a breach of the peace, or promote disaffection or public alarm, or undermine the Government and the State of Fiji.”

Since April 8, Fiji has been ruled by three different governments. Thursday, April 9 a court of appeals declared that military ruler Commodore Voreqe Frank Bainimarama came to power illegally in December 2006 when he dissolved Parliament and deposed the government of Laisenia Qarase. As directed, Bainimarama stepped down, and the court instructed the country’s President to appoint a caretaker government to lead the country to elections. President Ratu Josefa Iloilo said he had no constitutional authority to install a new leader, so he nullified the country’s constitution, fired the judiciary and appointed himself head of state and the military. The following day he re-appointed Bainimarama and gave him a five-year mandate to complete carrying out his stated reforms of ending corruption and communal, provincial and religious politics.

The new government will rule by decree. Under the “public emergency regulations” it has the power to curtail assembly, expanded search and seizure powers and gives police and military the power to detain “suspected persons” for up to seven days without charges.

In relation to the press, Bainimarama's government installed “information officers” at newspapers, television and radio stations to enforce the regulations against publishing any story “negative in nature” regarding the extraordinary recent constitutional events. In a letter to media organizations, the government pointed out they should broadcast “news that is pro-Fij.”

Thus, the newspapers and television programs have decided to ignore all political events.

In other news,

The government has asked one Australian and one New Zealand journalist to leave the country because of their negative reporting;

One local internet forum has closed until further notice;

The Fiji Times editor, Netani Rika, was arrested Sunday after the government asked him to refrain from publishing blank pages blaming government restrictions.

Writing about Fiji TV's canceled news bulletin, the pro-government blog IG-Fiji explains the new media regulations.

The govt. will not tolerate any forms of sedition, treason or civil disobedience from any quarter. We have stated that all media outlets need to exercise a high degree of caution before publishing any article which may cause riots or civil unrest of any sort.

For the government, this means, publishing stories “by contacting parties such as [opposition political parties] NFP, SDL and other NGO’s who all chose to use the limelight as an opportunity to voice their personal opinions and attempt to cause an uprising against the govt. of the day.”

Back to IG-Fiji:

If the Fiji TV management team chooses not to run their news bulletin as normal, but under the Emergency Decree, then the govt. will not interfere with the decision taken by the management. This also applies to the Fiji Times who were cordial enough to agree that specific news articles would not be run but the requirement was that the company be allowed to publish a censorship message in its stead. This was readily agreed to and it was further agreed that no news that had been censored would be published on any of the media outlets websites. We are of the belief that the media council will be working closely with us in a professional manner in order to ensure the 30 day transition passes smoothly. The Emergency Regulations will be reviewed after this period and renewed IF necessary.

We ask that all the people of this country come together in a patriotic harmony and work with the govt. to help build a better Fiji which is free of corruption and racial politics.

The journalists and media watchdogs at Café Pacific explain how Fiji’s media has its work cut out for them.

[E]ditors, journalism and the news media have an unenviable job ahead of them – trying to pick their way through the Fiji minefield and maintain some level of media freedom and independence in the current climate of censorship and self-censorship. Expulsion of expatriate Australian publishers under the glare of immediate glare of international media publicity over the past year was one thing, the day-to-day unsung hard graft and risks now facing courageous local journos is quite another. Café Pacific believes Fiji is now entering a sinister era where journalists are stepping out of the regional rhetoric of media freedom and may face real dangers as suffered in many other developing nations.

From Intelligentsiya.

It is appropriate therefore that we try to assess why there are such intense attempts to censor the media.

To do that we begin by going back to the Rabuka Chronicles or his “No Other Way” steps to dealing with the media.

Our view is that this time around Bainimarama is aware that the mood of the people in this country will not be as acquiescent in comparison to 6/12. So in their true hearts and minds fashion, they will label every piece of news that does not support them as inciteful (big word there Leweni, sure you know what it means?).

But the real intent is to clamp down and ensure that small pockets of opposition do not become public information in case other people in the country decide to support it and hey presto we have a big protest against being robbed of the right to live in a free and democratic society en masse.

Unfortunately by picking up Rabuka’s tips from ’87 and trying to control the media, the media houses defiance today will instead inspire many others to also stand up and oppose the military junta.

Yes they’re still amateurs. That is why they will continue to be out-done, out-gunned, out-flanked, out-maneuvered and out-numbered.

Note: Sitiveni Rabuka, a once low-ranking officer in Fiji’s military, carried out the country’s first two coups, both in 1987, that overthrow a government headed by an Indo-Fijian political party.

According to most counts, Fiji has endured four military coups since 1987. A new blog calculates the weekend’s actions amounted to half-a-coup. With that in mind, coup four and a half has been covering the media. The blogsters at Coup Four and A Half ran this report.

Sources say Fiji TV reporter, Edwind Nand, was questioned this afternoon because of his interview with ABC journalist, Sean Dorney.

Nand is understood to be still at the Central Police Station in Suva.

Fiji TV have been told it's not allowed to air the Dorney interview.

The internal censorship has given rise to the importance of the foreign press and blogs who are taking comments.

The media has been muzzled, says Soli Vakasama.

REMEMBER, PEACEFUL RESISTANCE IS THE WAY AS THERE IS NO LAW IN FIJI TODAY.

It’s hard to do but try to carry on as normally as you can. There are many supporters who have to work in areas that the ig contro,l to keep the wheels turning, we need to stop vilifying them otherwise we’d all be in the shitpit.
Do not vent in public, come in here and vent your frustrations. We all feel your pain.

Use other sites like You Tube, Twitter and Anti Fiji Coup sites to add your resistance to the illegal stance in Fiji.

From Talking Fiji a few days back:

Other media outlets are exercising caution less they too be censored by the militarised Police.

The only source of uncensored news and commentary in Fiji now come from blogs.

It is an undeniable truth that media censorship is the first step towards creating a police state…

In times of darkness and despair, a free and balanced media is a beacon of hope for a people supressed.

If you take away that hope, then all that is left is misery.

And misery, if left to fester, can turn into resentment and then to anger.

Put another way, State censorship of the media is the first slippery step toward anarchy because the people of Fiji will not remain supressed for very much longer.

Not everyone in Fiji is critical of the recent government moves. A commenter at Fiji Live, Kumar, argues:

Media should work with the government of the day. They have responsibility to use their freedom for the benefit of the country. The media in Fiji is known to incite racial tension and portray one sided information. It has been constantly trying to portray a negative image of the current government which is trying hard to build a better Fiji. Let Fiji move forward … don't kill her!

International citizen journalists have also chimed in. From Kiwi Blog, David Farrar reports:

In the NZ blogosphere there has been a diversity of opinion on Fiji. Most have been highly critical of Bainimarama, but several (mainly on the right) have supported him, as they admired him standing up for the minority Indians and wanting to abolish the race based constitution.

To be honest over the last year I had been creeping more towards the camp that if he does get rid of the race based constitution, and hands over power to a truly democratic Government, then he may be seen one day on the side of the good guys.

But no-one should be defending his regime’s attack on media freedom. Supressing criticism at he point of a gun is what the Stalinist bloc used to do, and what Castro and Kim do.

Australian blogger Andrew Bartlett writing in Crikey Blogs.

Kevin Rudd has said that Fiji is now “virtually a military dictatorship”. I’m not sure what else needs to happen before the word “virtually” gets dropped, but whatever term you want to use, it sure isn’t democracy – especially with the latest censorship crackdown. The dictatorship’s Secretary for Information, Major Neumi Leweni, is kindly providing ‘information officers’ and police to assist every media newsroom in Fiji with deciding what is and isn’t newsworthy. Some more details are on the Talking Fiji blog.

The renewed censorship will mean blogs and other sources of online information will probably become the main way to access uncensored information out of Fiji.

Not long after this current coup first occurred, the military attempted to shut down access to anti-government blogs. No doubt similar efforts will be made now, but at present there is a wide range of blogs providing some information and some vibrant rallying calls.

On Bartlett’s personal site, a commenter, TRS, argues you have to take what you read online with a grain of salt.

The blogs have never really had to try to counter censorship as it’s very nature has allowed bloggers to post without any degree of external influence. Most blog sites contain posts written by anonymouse bloggers.

What is important to note are the truth claims of many bloggers. Whilst the blog posts at the moment seem to carry a lot more information then what is available from traditional media outlets, we have to very careful in absorbing what it’s contents are.

Unlike tradtional media, the stories contained in the blog posts have not been subjected to normal journalistic standards nor have they been vetted properly.

In any case, the only option for any coup related news for many Fijians right now are the blogs sites. Some news is better then nothing.

It was Bainimarama who stepped down as Prime Minister Thursday, April 9 after a court ruled he had come to power illegally in a December 2006 coup that toppled the government of Laisenia Qarase. That day the judges also directed Fiji’s President Ratu Josefa Iloilo to appoint a caretaker government to lead the country into elections. However, Friday morning the President claimed he could not legally appoint a new government, so he abrogated the country’s constitution, fired the entire judiciary and proclaimed himself head of state. He promised to name a government that will rule until at least September 2014.

After being sworn in, Bainimarama re-appointed his former government, and he will now have executive authority with emergency powers. Bainimarama,who is the head of Fiji's military, said this five-year window will allow his government to modernize the country’s government systems, liberalize the economy and do away with corruption. Most of all, he’d like to create a post-racial Fiji.

Many countries that were less developed than us only a few decades ago are economically superior to us today. They have far less resources than us, they have much smaller land size than us yet we are nowhere near them.

Why? Because these countries have a national focus. Their politicians have put their respective countries ahead of their personal interests. They have built strong nations on the platform of equal citizenry, good decision making and absence of systemic corruption. They have been united.

I know we all have our different ethnicities, our different cultures and we should, we must, celebrate our diversity and richness. However, at the same time we are all Fijians. We are all equal citizens. We must all be loyal to Fiji; we must be patriotic; we must put Fiji first.

For Discombobulated Bubu, there is irony this constitutional issue took place over Easter weekend.

If one is looking for any positives, at least the charade and pretenses of the last 2 years have been ripped away from the white tomb stone, and the usurpers, judas's and stool pigeons can no longer hide behind the supposed righteousness of upholding all the right & proper edifices.

To make matters worse we held our collective breath in horror and covered our children's eyes when we saw the parade of rapists of freedom in Fiji at the swearing in ceremony on TV on Easter Saturday.

There was no veidokai [respect] in what they were doing.

Raising their hands and swearing on the holy book - each of them sounded and looked hollow, meaningless, shallow and hypocritical. Like Alice in Wonderland, all of them in a make-believe situation…. nothing real or true in this most sinister and futile of military maneuvers.

“Here we go again,” opines Intelligentsiya.

Well folks we’ve been down this road before. They self-appoint themselves again into seats of power but we knew that they never had the interests of this country at heart. The whispers are that [Former two-time coup leader and also elected Prime Minister Sitiveni]Rabuka will also re-surface as part of their “gang”. It was always about them. Not corruption, not equality, not good governance etc. It was all bullshit.

We now live under martial law no matter how they nice pitch it.

They are monitoring media outlets and are especially singling out foreign correspondents which means they are conscious of the international press they will generate. That means we need to be conscious that a lot of key news will be censored. Let’s hope that this will generate more bloggers as raised voices of dissent against this illegal military regime.

From Soli Vakasama.

The abrogation of the constitution by the sitting president is high treason. Its promulgation brings up another whole set of negative , alarming issues concerning the safety of our people, our way of life and human rights.

Are our laws still in place?

If so, who is upholding them for us.

We can’t have the military or the police acting as caretakers because they are the actual illegal regime that has been confirmed in the court of law on Thursday 9.4.09, so all of them should step down from whatever position they have usurped. In fact they should be herded and locked up, for the interim so there is no dispute about who will be responsible for the next five years in taking the Nation forward.

Iloilos pat on the back for Bhainimaramas ill conceived, illegal takeover of the last 27 months, and frank admission of his admiration for the stupid man and his antics is unbelievable. Whoever writes his speeches needs to be locked up as well.

However, some bloggers feel the court’s decision painted the President into a corner. “Leave aside for the moment the rights and wrongs of events of Friday 9th April 2009,” writes Crosbie Walsh in Fiji: The Way It Was, Is and Can Be. “[T]he Appeal Court's decision that the President's appointment of the Interim Government in 2007 was unlawful.”

First, what on earth did the court (and Qarase who had challenged the earlier High Court's decision that the Interim Government was lawful) expect? That an adverse decision would see the President comply with the Appeal Court ruling — which may yet be appealed? That Bainimarama, the military leaders and the Interim Government would abandon their 2006 takeover objectives and hand everything back to Qarase so that things would be just as they were before, bowing to the racial and religious extremism that had infiltrated the Qarase regime? Because that is exactly what a new election under the existing undemocratic and racially-skewed communal voting system would produce.

Abandon the work done on the People's Charter and the President's Political Dialogue Forum; a fairer electoral system; provision for tri-lingualism in schools and government offices, that could lead to a more tolerant and inclusive Fiji? Abandon work on the renewal of land leases, the sugar industry, rural infrastructure, the NLTB, fairer land rent returns to ordinary Fijians, a minimum wage, and the work on poverty reduction that could lead to a fairer, more equitable Fiji? Abandon work (that has proved exceedingly difficult due in part to the denied absence of overseas forensic accountant experts) to expose corruption and clientism at the highest levels, but which most surely benefits sections of the business and chiefly elite? Throw two and one-half years' work, opposed at every turn by Qarase and others who could have cooperated had they really believed in democracy, into the old Lami rubbish tip?

It wasn’t just the court decision that created the problem, argues New Zealand journalist David Robie in his blog Cafe Pacific. Neighboring governments trying to bully into Fiji holding elections before the proper reforms could be set in place are also to blame.

THE FIGLEAF in Fiji has finally been ripped aside. Now we have an unashamedly naked military dictatorship back in power. Inevitable, of course, given the shortsighted Australian, New Zealand and Forum policies that had boxed an increasingly intransigent regime into a corner. But disappointing given that the recent political dialogue had been providing a glimmer of hope.

The Court of Appeal judgment was the final straw for the regime. The Easter “New Order” imposed by the ailing President Ratu Josefa Iloilo – ie. the regime old order back in a new guise – hasn’t flinched from its mission. Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama still clings to his pledge to change the country’s electoral system away from the flawed race-based system in place since independence (changed after the 1997 Constitution but with no real fundamental difference) and to end corruption.

In an argument on Fiji Board Exiles, real jack argues with fellow poster Gdevreal that while Fiji’s neighbors have reacted angrily to these moves, other of Fiji’s friends have remained calm.

don't worry gdev - the economy is not being destroyed. Fiji will not sink from this thing - we are not Zimbabwe. Australia and New Zealand can mount their sanctions and that would be unfortunate - but Fiji will have to go its own way - now that the way forward is CLEAR and the political issues are CLEARLY determined we can go back to Beijing and put it very clearly that FB's government is the government of the Fiji islands - stability is no longer an issue there because there are no more legal wrnaglings to deal with - and there is no instability.

the only guys talking here are the Kiwi's and Aussies - China hasn't spoken and neither has India nor any of the ASEAN countries. they understand our situation because they have been through similar upheavels throughout their history. its not new. we will have to revitalise and strengthen ties with Malaysia and Singapore - they are the big investors in this country at the moment. the Singaporeans own Denarau - whilst the Malaysians own the Carpenters group.

the only people who are saying this process is illegal are those who had affiliations with the [ruling party deposed in December 2006] SDL - guys who got jobs from the SDL - but thats to be expected - the rest of Fiji, on the other hand, are carrying on withtheir lives - paying their FNPF, paying their taxes, going to work, observing the laws, maintaing the peace - the rule of law is intact - society is functioning as normal. people are carrying on with their day to day lives.

if the Aussies and Kiwi's don't want to work with Fiji towards these reforms then that is unfortunate -but its not going to stop Fiji from having those reforms.

Gdevreal’s response:

Whats the matter Jack, you couldn't live up to your vow to uphold the constitution? You don't understand the role of a Constitution? Do you uphold commitments to anything in life?
First you were going to accept gross conflict of interest by changing the electoral system, voting in whoever, and then having them bless the system which voted them in. Are you too stupid to see the conflict of interest in that? Pathetic. And you call yourself a professional? You sound more like a 3 year old.
Well it does not matter much what your clowns do. I reckon People will just watch with amusement as they waste taxpayer funds doing a charade about a phony election. In the end, the People will take Fiji back and anything they don't like will be reversed. It is just such a horrible waste of time and resources that Fiji can ill afford.
By the way, who appointed Voreqe to play God with the People?

Reforms come from the People, Jack, not demented military leaders. I would imagine Mugabe called his bullshyt “reforms” too. Who asked for it? Who gave that azzhole in uniform a mandate to change anything in Fiji?

The issue stems from a Thursday, April 9 court ruling stating the military leader Frank Bainimarama came to power illegally in December 2006 when he dissolved Parliament and ousted the government of Laisenia Qarase. Later that day, Bainimarama said he would step down and allow the President to appoint a caretaker government as ordered by the three judges.

Speaking to the nation mid-morning Friday, President Ratu Josefa Iloilo said he was incapable of following the Court of Appeal’s ruling to appoint a caretaker government because the constitution provided him no powers to do so. Because a country cannot survive without a standing government, he said he was forced to take over the government and will appoint an interim Prime Minister in the next few days. In perhaps his biggest surprise, the President said this interim body will rule Fiji until elections can be held in five years time, no later than September 2014.

The reclusive Iloilo said the five-year time frame will allow the new government “to put into place the necessary reforms and processes.” This includes fixing certain elements of the now-abrogated 1997 constitution, including voting reform and most likely deleting the provision that provides paramountcy to interests of the indigenous Fijian community over those of other ethnic communities.

The military backed government of Frank Bainimarama that was ousted in Thursday's ruling spent much of the past year drafting and attempting to implement the People's Charter for Peace, Change and Progress, which the military leader claims will do away with communal based voting (where members of different races vote on separate ballots) in a hope to give more power to political parties that attract support across racial and ethnic lines, hopefully delivering Fiji into a post racial society. Here is a review of an early version of the Charter.

Fiji has endured four military coups since 1987. If one could simply categorize the takeovers, the first three occurred to increase the primacy of indigenous Fijian political rights over other ethnic groups, especially the Indo-Fijians, the descendants of indentured servants brought from India to work on sugar and copra plantations around 100 years ago by the British colonial rulers. The Indo-Fijian community, which once made up nearly two-thirds of the country’s population but now constitutes less than 40 percent, has seen its political power marginalized because those three military interventions dissolved governments lead by Indo-Fijian political parties. However, as a whole, Indo-Fijians continue economic success on the islands.

The now abrogated 1997 Constitution, detractors argue, only codified those nationalist tendencies of certain indigenous Fijian political factions. Crosbie Walsh, a New Zealand academic who spent years working in Fiji, argues against the perceived fairness of that document. The blogger Laminar_Flow claims that by forcing Fiji to offer quick elections with a flawed electoral system, the country will continue to be ruled by flawed governments. (Sorry folks, but I can only find detractors of the former constitution. If you’ve got something nice to say about the 1997 Constitution, please email me or place it in a comment below.)

Bainimarama, Fiji’s military leader, carried out Fiji’s fourth coup in December 2006 ostensibly to right the perceived wrongs of past coups and what he saw as the increasingly nationalist (and racist) tendencies of the government of Laisenia Qarase. The Qarase-led SDL government created a controversial affirmative action program only supporting indigenous Fijians entering business and was accused of attempting to pass a law that could have provided amnesty to some of the perpetrators who carried out Fiji’s 2000 coup.

Bainimarama’s coup was first met with very guarded optimism by some of Fiji’s neighbors and regional political bodies. Bainimarama disarmed criticism when he outlined his prospective reforms and promised members of the regional Pacific Island Forum that elections would be held by March 2009. He soon separated himself from that pledge. Tensions from both sides rose, leading the Forum to demand in January Fiji schedule elections by May First of this year or face expulsion. A few weeks later, the Commonwealth of former British colonies gave notice that if Fiji did not comply with scheduling an election date by September, the country would be forced from that body. So far, neither body has commented formally on Friday’s developments or the President’s new five-year date for elections.

In his speech Friday, President loilo applauded the Bainimarama-led government’s progress in moving Fiji to become a more equitable country. He said the five-year plan for the new government should be enough time to “to put into place the necessary reforms and processes.” He then pointed out that 64 percent of people in Fiji decided they wanted electoral reforms along with other constitutional changes found with the Bainimarama-backed People's Charter for Peace, Change and Progress.

Early reactions to the President’s speech largely fell along partisan lines. Supporters of the Bainimarama-led government said there was nothing else the President could do but do away with the flawed constitution. Opposition parties reacted with shock. In a side note: The Fiji Times reports that the government will now closely guard media outlets and that police officers have been appointed to the newspaper. So far, there has been no confirmation from other media outlets.

With that, let’s get to the bloggers.

Much talk has taken place in Fiji's blogosphere over Frank Bainimarama's supposed control he has over the country's President. The blog Luvei Viti: Children of Fiji feels this is how the mini-coup took place.

Fiji witnesses another attempt by falied Military Junta, Frank Bainimarama to ochestrate yet again his last ditch to regain Fiji's Political power via the President, the clock ticks and the world watches.

We are not surprised that Bainimarama has again executed a ‘mini coup within a coup' in order to hang on to power as if it was his dear life. His life on the centre stage almost came to an end but he had his plan B to fall back on. The President who is at the tail end of his Political career is once again signing off letters & making national radio & tv announcements about Fiji state, as dicated from behind the coconut fronds where Bainimarama & his militray junta stand ready with their guns.

Talking Fiji mostly blames the President for his actions.

Did he not consider another option like say FOLLOWING THE BLOODY LAW?

If anything, this recent turn of events has convinced many people in Fiji that this senile old man preteding to be our President must go, as soon as possible!

Whatever happens now, Rt Iloilo will forever be remembered as the man who destroyed our beloved nation.

He was in a unique position (and had the opportunity) to do the right thing and bring our country back to normalcy under democratic rule.

But instead he chose to support an illegal takeover and unlawfully abrogated our supreme law simply because he didn’t like the results of the Court of Appeal judgment delivered yesterday.

Now Fiji can expect further economic sanctions and more hardship and suffering, and for what?

For Raw Fiji News, it's rule of the jungle in Fiji.

The incapable ailing Iloilo has not only abrogated the 1997 Fiji Constitution but in the process has committed treason at its highest order.

His action has proved without doubt that the man is a law onto himself and has no respect whatsoever to the appeals court judgment of yesterday.

It also proves that Iloilo and those around him are very much in the thick of things with Frank’s illegal coup of 2006.

Iloilo couldn’t have whipped this up by himself.

Many peoples intergrity, jobs, money schemes and livelihood was at risk following the appeals court judgment and it these professional lawbreakers who have masterminded all these for Frank and now Iloilo.

The public knows who they are cause over the last 2 years and 5 months, they have revealed themselves voluntarily by serving under Frank’s illegal regime, accepting appointments given to them by Frank & Co., influence or change the law to legitimize their illegal works or to be openly seen supporting these thugs.

Sai, writing at Fiji Coup 2006, comments on a Fiji Times editorial congratulating Bainimarama's decision to step down after Thursday's court decision, arguing it offers a ‘Ray of Hope' for democracy in Fiji.

This Fiji Times editorial was clearly hopeful though premature as we now know! The truth was, it was never on the card. Voreqe and his regime will never accept the court ruling as it went against their wishes so no doubt they were always going to manipulate the ailing President to abrogate the Constitution as their last resort of holding on to power and to bring about their illegal and illegitimate designs on the government and people of Fiji. They will soon to be found out just like they have been in the Appeal Court ruling. They may run for now but they will never be able to hide from the glare of the burning desires of the people to live in a country that is governed by those who they elect through a process that is of their choice and not one that is imposed on them. May they fail miserably as they have up to now.

Intelligentsiya wonders how history — and criminal lawyers — will view the President's decision.

May the ICC welcome you with open arms in due course, as well as all those manipulating you.

The meek and resigned act from Bainimarama at his press conference last night was just that. An act. As we've said before they're not ready to let go of their newfound status just yet.

Is it over? Hell to the No. We’re just getting warmed up.

real jack, a forum poster at Fiji Board Exiles, says it's time for the country to start anew.

its the sledgehammer option - that the Constitution be abrogated.

lawyers cannot be seen to be party to abrogating the Constitution. our oath is to uphold it and work within and around it.

but its now been abrogated.

can't do much except hope that everything goes well now - the whole country will have to pull together to make this thing work.

Rt Iloilo made up his mind this morning. its effectively an abrogation of the 1997 Constitution - meaning a coup d'etat has been effected.

its done.

five years is when the elections will be held - but really we are looking at 2020 for those elections - its not going to happen in 2014.

its done. phuck it. the hardcore crew now has its way. a coup d'etat. finito.

as for Qarase and the SDL they are now well and truly finished - and they are going to be buried now - legislation will be passed to outlaw those ethnonationalist parties.

at least its now a TRULY CLEAN SLATE nd no more thinking has to go into the manouverings - nice and clean. start ALL OVER AGAIN.

Alohabula1 remains a bit torn.

The first thing I thought when I heard the verdict last night was the the constitution was going to be abrogated and then Jack gave me hope that there might be another less painful way to make the whole thing go away.
Too bad, I guess everyone got nervous about what could come back at them and bite them through the years with the constitution. It does stop LQ and SDL dead in their tracks. So in essence LQ fight for “democracy” actually put the last nail in the coffin for a while.
However, I am all for everyone being equal, I assume the land rights are still protected, But I have to admit I wish they had worked out the 15 minute prime minister scenario, on the other hand the constitution has had some aspects that have given rise to problems starting to 2000 and then 2006 until now. Ahhhh Fiji, they should have just done it all in Dec 2006, somehow this feels like we have taken a few steps back before Fiji can go forward again. It feels like 1987 again and we all remember how long it took to get the constitution written and back on track. As they say here, not much you can do, just deal with it, and try to go forward or at least keep the snorkel above water.

Commodore Frank Bainimarama, head of Fiji's military, came to power in December 2006 after months of conflict with the government of Laisenia Qarase over what he deemed its corrupt and racist policies. He claimed a state-of-emergency existed and assumed the role of President. He then appointed an interim Prime Minister, who advised Bainimarama to dissolve Parliament. Bainimarama stepped down as President a month later, and the country’s president appointed Bainimarama as Prime Minister of an Interim Government which would rule without a Parliament. It was Fiji’s fourth military coup since 1987.

Laisenia Qarase challenged his dismissal in court, and in October 2008 Fiji’s High Court ruled the President could exercise prerogative powers during a public crisis. Thursday’s ruling found the President ‘s prerogative powers in this situation “did not continue to exist in Fiji after the 1997 Constitution.”

However, the judges argued that even if Qarase had not formally resigned as Prime Minister, he had not held office in over two years, making a “fresh start” necessary for Fiji. The judges called on the Interim Prime Minister to step down and the country’s President should appoint a caretaker government “independent of the parties to this litigation,” meaning neither Bainimarama or Qarase can become Prime Minister in the new government, which will remain in place until new elections are scheduled. However, because the Bainimarama government held power for two years, the judges deemed the actions and laws of that government legal.

Government lawyers asked the court to grant a stay on the ruling, but were refused.

Bainimarama addressed the nation after the ruling, claiming he would step down as Prime Minister while remaining head of Fiji’s military. This move, he said, effectively leaves the country without “a Prime Minister or any Ministers of the Sate. In other words we do not have a Government in place.” He has consulted with the President, he said, who will make a decision soon on the caretaker government.

At the heart of the country's political problems are poor relations between parties representing indigenous Fijians — who presently make up roughly 60 percent of the population — and the political parties representing Indo-Fijians — the descendants of tens of thousands of indentured workers brought by the British colonial rulers during the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century to help build Fiji’s sugar industry. Bainimarama wanted to abolish the country's communal-based eleciton system in hopes to provide more power to political parties that appeal to people of both races.

The largely anti-Bainimarama political blogosphere in and around Fiji was ecstatic at the ruling. “Justice at last,” claimed one blog while another maintained “what a meaningful Easter it will be for the people in Fiji.”

At the Soli Vakasama Blog, commenter meme expressed relief:

Exciting news…at least Fiji and the whole world can be reminded that Qarase’s removal was unlawful…let’s pray and hope for the best!

Peace Pipe looks forward to this government's fall:

I am so so elated with this great news of joy. Of course it was coming this way as nothing is legal about a coup and if tested by law it will always be found illegal. It was so blatantly shameful the way [Fiji’s Attorney General Aiyaz SAYED-KHAIYUM] iarse was talking about power vacuum and other garbage about catching the bus and so on. Just get the heck out or else he should be charged with contempt. Old puppy puppet pressie should immediately call for a caretaker govt who would work immediately towards elections.

Raw Fiji News said Bainimarama said all the right things in his address to the nation.

Frank has kind of acknowledged that neither he nor Qarase can be caretaker PM but has stressed that he as the Commander of the RFMF will ensure that peace is maintained in Fiji.

That’s the way to go Frank!

Follow the rule of law and fight the fight legally, not with the guns cause your gun holders are now on the masses side.

Not everyone is so sanguine. Intelligentsiya surmises that Bainimarama will not step down as Prime Minister and allow his government to fall.

That’s right folks. Bainimarama as we’ve long known is ONLY about Number 1. Himself. And he certainly does not want anyone else stepping into his shoes or taking over his privileges. So right now at the fourth floor of his Govt Buildings office they are plotting and scheming the possibility of abrogating the constitution ASAP.

NZ PM John Key’s knew this even when commenting after the court ruling was handed down today. Australia also in response reiterated the need for the court ruling should be respected but everyone knows that Frank is an uncompromising terrorist thug.

Over at Intelligentsiya, Fiji Democracy Now begins asking questions on how Fiji will find a way forward.

But what we don't know is whether Voreqe Bainimarama will respect the court's ruling?

Or will he, like the outlaw he his, try and evade the law?

Will today's decision spur Bainimarama to turn his back on the Constitution and formalize his dictatorship?

And, if that happens, can he be confident of carrying the army and his rag-tag opportunist supporters with him?

Or will reason, common sense and decency prevail and will the army disown their commander on the grounds that he is only destroying Fiji in his bid to evade justice?

The other crucial question is the capacity of our President to abide by the court's ruling and appoint an independent person as a caretaker Prime Minister.

No doubt all of these questions will be answered in the next few days and weeks.

In the meantime, we can only hope and pray that, finally, our beloved nation can find the right path leading out of the catastrophe that has been wrought by the actions of an outlaw.

Loyal Fijian has a list of seven possibilities on the near-term future for Fiji.

There a number of possibilities, in order of likelihood:

1. The President re-affirms Commodore Bainimarama as Interim PM

2. Interim Government overrules Appeals Court of Fiji under Doctrine of National Security Exigency

3. New independent PM is appointed who vacates office in favour of Commodore Bainimarama

4. Constitution is abrogated and the People Charter will serve as the framework to return Fiji to Parliamentary rule
5. Independent PM is appointed who calls for fresh elections in 12 months

6. Mahendra Chaudhry is appointed as Interim PM

7. [Spokesman for Qarase] Peceli Kinivuwai is named as Interim PM

The Appeals Court of Fiji is not unexpected given the precedent that was set in Chandarika Prasad case that allowed a return to Parliamentary rule in 2000. As such, the planners in the IG would have sufficient time to work out their options.

[Links added by author to provide context.]