MMD4D

This paper by Jan Chipchase applies the lessons learned from of a number of qualitative research studies into communication practices, mobile phone use to the design of mobile money services.

Here is today’s announcement about a Nokia Life Tools launch in Indonesia. I would be very keen to know what exactly is the technology behind Nokia Life Tools. Would anyone be able to clarify?

By Mike on 04 November 2009

Nokia-Life-Tools-Farmer

JAKARTA, Indonesia – It’s almost a year to the day that we first reported on an intriguing new service called Nokia Life Tools. Piloted and then officially debuting in India, Life Tools was designed to help improve the livelihood and lives of farmers, students and many people in more remote and rural areas in emerging market countries. It does this by offering easily accessible and up-to-date crop prices, education tools and entertainment packages, delivering this valuable information on a simple SMS backbone. Hence we’re excited to see Nokia Life Tools announced for Indonesia, where it has been keenly tailored towards its people’s needs.

Read on to find out more, see photos of folk using the service, and as always, share your comments below.

Nokia Life Tools has been tailored for Indonesian farmers

Nokia-Life-Tools-IndonesiaWhereas in India much of the focus for the agriculture service was aimed at delivering timely crop prices to help ensure farmers were able to get better value for their produce, Life Tools for Indonesia has been tailored to provide precious up-to-date info on livestock, fisheries and horticulture, as well as crops.

In terms of what this actually means, farmers will be able to access market prices (consumer price, wholesale price, mill price and farmer price), and are also able to tap into tips and advice on farming techniques (such as animal health care and alerts on new government schemes), as well as receive all-important weather forecasts.

We’re stoked to see how Life Tools has been tweaked to target the unique needs of the people in this territory – could this approach be suited to other services too? Let us know what you think.

The agriculture service will initially launch in Java and Sumatera, prior to rolling out across the rest of Indonesia.

Help with education through Nokia Life Tools

When you access the education part of Life Tools there are three strands you can pursue – learning English, preparing for school and higher education exams, and improving your general knowledge.

Learning English is broken into beginner, intermediate and advanced levels, making it easy for anyone to jump in at the stage they’re most comfortable with. In terms of an outcome, the information and lessons that are delivered through Life Tools have been designed to help students come out the other side with the ability to read, write and understand simple English pieces of text.

The test preparation part of the education tool provides students with valuable access to material in keeping with the national curriculum at junior and high school levels. As for the general knowledge stuff, much of that information is again tailored to the region, supplemented with more info related to global general knowledge.

Nokia Life Tools injects entertainment

The entertainment tool adds a lighter touch to proceedings, enabling folk pluck news, astrology, jokes, movie news and reviews via subscription or on-demand. Whereas downloads such as wallpapers, animations, themes, music and comics are solely available via on-demand.

Nokia Life Tools will launch in Indonesia in early December 2009, and will debut on the Nokia 2323 classic, Nokia 2330 classic and Nokia 2700 classic. It’ll later become available on the five new devices announced today for Indonesia, including the Nokia 1280 (Nokia’s cheapest ever phone), Nokia 1616, Nokia 1800, Nokia 2220 slide and Nokia 2690.

via Nokia Life Tools lands in Indonesia | Nokia Conversations – The official Nokia Blog.

Wageningen, 2 November 2009. During the CTA ICT Observatory 2009 we interviewed Mike Davies from Esoko, in Ghana. Esoko is a software platform licensed to facilitate the flow of market information between farmers, governments, researchers and other stakeholders involved in agriculture and rural development. It is used to share information on prices, offers, price of fertilizers etc. It is managed by the web, but delivered via mobile phones. Mark underlines the potential positive effects that Market Information Services such as Esoko can bring about, both in agriculture as well as in for other sectors. He then concludes talking about the difficulties he has encountered in this initiative, such as the lack of content available and the lack of right capacities to build and develop such software.

See more at observatory2009.cta.int/

[video by Pier Andrea Pirani - Euforic]

more about "Mobile Information Services for agric…", posted with vodpod

Presentation by Dorothy Okello (WOUGNET) at the CTA ICT Observatory, Wageningen, Nov 2-4.more

Presentation by Stéphane Boyera
World Wide Web Foundationation. Unfortunately, Stéphane was not able to attend the CTA ICT Observatory in Wageningen but Kevin Painting did his presentation. The content is based on the work of the W3C MW4D Interest Group. more

Presentation by Mark Davies (Esoko) CTA ICT Observatory at Wageningen, Nov 2-4. more

TelecomTV and IBM present an informative overview of the current divide in the mobile market between mature and growing markets.The commentators emphasise two significant trends encountered in the mobile markets of developing countries. Firstly, there is a trend of emergence of innovative home-grown operators in developing countries and emergence of home-grown business models, better suited to the needs of low ARPU customers. Secondly, there is a trend in developing markets for the establishment of mobile (as opposed to Internet) data services for banking, commerce, healthcare and education.The particpants in the video include:- John Chambers, Chairman & CEO, Cisco- Prof. John Nkoma, Director General, Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority- Kent Lupberger, Snr Mgr Portfolio & Technology Global ICT, World Bank- Dr. Tim Kelly, Lead ICT Policy Specialist, Infodev- Prof. Dora Nkem Akunyili, Minister Of ICT, Federal Republic Of Nigeria- Adrian Baschnonga, Senior Analyst, Global Telecoms, Ernst & Young- Mike Hill, VP Enterprise Initiative, IBM

Below is a recent announcement by Burkina NTIC and IICD of the forthcoming forum ‘The marketing of agricultural products through ICT’ which is to be held in Ouagadougou. After coming across the announcement I was keen to join the Ning social network/ knowledge sharing platform which is available at http://agri-tic.ning.com/. At the forum I was trilled to find the training videos by TV Koodo, introducing the agricultural market information systems launched by Burkina NTIC and IICD.

The videos are in French and admittedly, my French is not good enough to warrant commenting on the content. But even considering only the visuals of the training materials I think that they clearly demonstrate the challenges to the deployment and introduction of ICTs in Africa. Communicating the relevance of the Internet, Web 2.0, mobile applications, etc. to end users such as African farmers and traders can be a considerable callenge. Enabling und users to find value in ICTs and convincing them to invest in pricey devices can be a challenge comparable to the development of technologies and their localisation to the languages, literacy levels and information needs of African users. This challenge is compounded in the case of the introduction of market services by the fact that users’ value from the service is rooted in network effects.

TV Koodo chooses puppet tv presenters as carriers of the instructional message. This choice demonstrates the significance of efforts to make e-/m- learning technologies more accessible and more responsive to the needs and educational backgrounds of African users. The coupling of learning technologies with ICT services geared towards enabling market transactions, could hold the key to the adoption, the popularity and the value derived from market services.

IICD: Social Network Used to Prepare West African Forum on Agriculture and ICT

Burkina NTIC has launched a social network platform to prepare West Africa’s first regional forum on marketing agricultural products through ICT. The event will take place 23-25 November in Ouagadougou, and the platform will help deepen the discussions and share the outcomes with a wider international audience. Burkina NTIC is the national ICT for development network.

The typical method of collecting market price information in Burkina Faso.

Information exchange about farming techniques, markets and market prices is key to improving the agricultural sector. IICD has supported farmer organisations in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Mali since 1998 to help improve the production, processing and marketing of their produce through the use of ICT. Not without success. Earlier this year the Malian farmer organisation of COPRAKAZAN was awarded by the national government for doubling its profit and declared to be an example to other farmer organisations in the country.

The forum ‘The marketing of agricultural products through ICT’ aims to increase the impact of the lessons learned and build the national network for ICT and development in Burkina Faso. The event is organised by Burkina NTIC, in particular its ICT cluster Agriculture.

The organisers will collect best practice examples of marketing agricultural products through ICT, to understand where the opportunities are and to draw lessons for the future. Best practices will be gathered from Burkina Faso and neighbouring countries.

The forum will bring about 45 participants together from various agricultural institutions in Mali and Burkina Faso, and IICD project partners. Agriterra and the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation SDC will also attend, as well as resource people from the SEND foundation in Ghana, IT company Manobi from Senegal, ANOPACI from Ivory Coast, and the regional trade platform ESOKO (TradeNet).

The Ning social network platform is being used to gather ideas and best practices from experts throughout the region to discuss at the forum. After the forum the platform will be used for further sharing and documenting of experiences and views on the marketing of agricultural products through ICT. A Ning platform is a free social networking tool to help people build their own online social or professional network. The platform is moderated by Burkina NTIC, and membership is open to all: http://agri-tic.ning.com/.

Here is a video dealing with the use of mobile phones in rural development and agriculture. The video was shot at the MobileActive08 conference in Johannesburg, organised by Katrin Verclas of the MobileActive network.

Ugo Vallauri, David Newman and Jonathan Campaigne discuss small farm productivity issues which are key to economic growth and poverty reduction. They discuss how farmers are not effectively linked to the larger industry and therefore how mobiles phones can be used to help with this area. Farmers use these phones which allow people to enter markets and improve access to partners thereby improving their likelihoods and food security.