Interview with Peter Eigen of Transparency International at Open Aid Data Conference 2011 in Berlin
Mr. Eigen, how can Open Data, opening up data treasures, improve the development sector?
Peter Eigen: At Transparency International we’ve observed that countries with an open approach to information, like the Scandinavian countries, rank in the upper spheres of our corruption index, among the honest states. Countries like Germany, on the other hand, where you have a hard time getting insights into official files and information, rank much lower. From our point of view there is a direct correlation between the openness of information and the integrity of the way institutions perform, in administration, important institutions, as well as the private sector.
Of course, you need to consider how this information is generated. Some participants raised the question whether the information is mainly donor-driven. And indeed, the presentation of the World Bank read more »
When we read about technologies in the developing world, they are often accompanied by a certain type of picture. The visual language is: Cultural tradition, as old and different from ours as possible, meets modern technology. Shotgun Shack over at Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like calls this type of visual communication “development + technology p*rn”. For all who look for images on ICTD stories, his ironic analysis is very much worth reading as something to keep in mind when thinking about the next ones to use.
Getting online in Cuba is not an easy task. Only a fraction of the population has access to the internet, which “does not necessarily mean that they have access to the World Wide Web”, as Reporters Without Borders put it. Access is not only expensive and slow but also oftentimes restricted to just a number of approved websites, an intranet, RWB writes. However, there is a small but lively blogosphere on the island. At the same time, accessing content seems to stay difficult for most Cubans. Now, after years of slow satellite access, the first undersea fiber optic cable has been installed, raising hopes that the situation might change. But sceptics doubt that the new cable from Venezuela, supposed to start transmission this summer, will enable Cubans to freely access online-content. read more »
Oh please, not another article on the Facebook revolution…
Much has been written about the role of the internet and social media networks in the recent political uprisings in Northern Africa. But while the world has been attentively watching the people in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya rise up to claim their rights, little attention is being paid to the effects on the rest of the continent. Sub-Saharan Africa is often but a footnote in the global news stream and perceived as the “Dark Continent” in terms of technology by many. It is time to turn the spotlight on sub-Saharan Africa and investigate what role social media play for political communication and why or why not are they being used for organising protests. read more »
“Silicon Savanna” is the title of a Time Magazine article on how mobiles are rapidly changing Africa – and how Africans shape technology. Author Alex Perry collects evidence on how and why Kenya is now becoming Africa’s new tech hub. He reports from the mobile development conference Pivot25 in Nairobi.
Perry gives an informative overview on the topic, recent history of tech in the region, and international and local IT companies based in Kenya, such as m-Pesa, Ushahidi, and Google’s African headquarter. He also points out Kenya’s new and radical adoption of an open data strategy:
In the first week of July, Kenya’s government will become the first in Africa — and one of the first in the world — to be completely data open.
But there’s also criticism. Blogger Robert Alai complains that while Kenya and specifically Nairobi are promoted as new places for ICT innovation, the methods of doing that are not inclusive.
On the bus to last year’s ICTD2010 conference in England I met Islam and Daher from Jordan. They work for the project SOHITCOM, a web and mobile e-Health project aimed at providing medical information for mothers in rural areas. I finally got around to edit the interview, in which Islam explains the strategy of the service. Here it is:
The Global Forum is focusing on the Mobile Applications, Agri-business and Clean Technologies (…). The event is carried out within the framework of a joint program with the Government of Finland and Nokia on Creating Sustainable Businesses for the Knowledge Economy. This €12.9 million program, running from 2010-2012, focuses on enhancing the competitiveness of emerging market SMEs in the information and communication technologies (ICT) and agribusiness sectors in particular. The program will also employ the use of the mobile communications platform to grow content, services and applications for developing countries.
The biennial conference has been held in India and Brasil in previous years. infoDev is, as the website states “a technology and innovation-led development finance program in the Financial and Private Sector Development (FPD) Vice Presidency of The World Bank and IFC.”
To read the discussion on Twitter, the hashtag is #infodevgf. The next InfoDev conference will take place in South Africa in 2013, tweets @MadanRao
Check out these Undersea Cable Maps for Africa by Steve Song of the Shuttleworth Foundation. The latest one is an outlook of what cables could provide Africa with data by 2013, indicating the ones already active:
The Guardian published a World Map of Undersea Cables in 2008 including context info. Greg’s Cable Map mashes information from Wikipedia and the Web and is regularly updated. It’s a pretty cool and detailed map, giving you the names of cables, landings, and more info on each one of them.
This freely available book focussing on technology and business in Africa was recently published by the Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends (STT): “Futures of Technologies in Africa” by Jasper Grosskurth
The editors stress that their approach is not a strict scientific one but rather a way of gathering ideas about innovative approaches for using technologies in development in and for Africa. The book is based on interviews, workshops and research in various countries on the continent, and presents an analysis of the present as well as future scenarios and science fiction. Via Hapee de Groot
Source:
STT Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends / Jasper Grosskurth, http://www.stt.nl, 2010; CC-by-nc-nd 3.0
Mr. Eigen, how can Open Data, opening up data treasures, improve the development sector?
