Center for the Advancement of Mobile Technology mission is the promotion and advocacy of mobile applications in the public and private sectors. The focus of the Center's activities is to enhance mobile learning at all levels utilizing innovative tools and methods. We welcome all visitors to the Center's blog and please contribute your views and comments on the future of mobile delivered technology.
Managing Director of the Center for Advancement of Mobile Technology. PhD in Public Administration: Technology of Management. Over 20 + years of international consultancy providing technical support to public and private sector in management development,and products and services in creating innovation for growth. An advocate of mobile applications in the public and private sectors. Fortech welcomes all visitors to the Center's blog and please contribute to the future of mobile technology.
posted by Center for Advancement of Mobile Technology | 5:58 PM
3 Comments:
Having been in Africa for the last 25 years, I am always apprehensive when tecnology solutions for developing countries are promoted by US and European organisations. They seem more aimed at selling the technology products they produce than addressing the real problems in the countries they claim to address.
Your solutions are probably in English, only one of the many languages spoken in parts of Africa amongst French, Portuguese and a multitude of local languages and dialects within these languages. Most likely, it also assumes reading skills and contextual comprehension.
Technology could assist in development but will never be an end in itself.
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There is already enough evidence confirming that e-Government initiatives can and must be applied in the developing world (examples of India, Phillipines, Turkey among many others). It is a fact that the introduction of eServices as a boosting force for development has to be based on creative business models that incentive the private sector to join forces with governments.
Even though, while web based e-Government solutions are fit for developed countries, m-Government solutions are necessary to reach the masses on developing countries where Internet penetration rates lay below 20% and cell-phone penetration rates are reaching 35-40%. We also need to think in terms of the ubiquosity of the applications when most developing countries are divided in many villages with small local communities.
It is also a fact that easy to use, transparent solutions can reduce the levels of corruption by mitigating the actual micro-regulations that bureaucrats dictate and missuse to obtain bribes from the poor.
So the question in fact lays not in whether this solutions need to be implemented, but in how..
- How can we deliver simple to use, transparent eServices?
- How can we implement solutions that can work on basic, cheap devices?
- Which business models may boost and drive the delivery of this solutions?
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