Map Kibera

Andrea Arzaba with Yvonne Tiany in Mathare

As mentioned in a previous post, we were privileged to have guests from Global Voices visiting the Kibera and Mathare programs on July 1. The intention wasn’t only to share Map Kibera with them, but to work together on some interesting local stories for Rising Voices and our own media sites.

Rising Voices is a great initiative by Global Voices to “extend the benefits and reach of citizen media by connecting online media activists around the world and supporting their best ideas.” The authors of the posts below are part of this project and come from all corners of the globe, where they blog about important local issues. For many of them, the opportunity to travel to the Global Voices Summit is a rare chance to see this part of the world and learn about how Kenyans are practicing citizen journalism like themselves.

Five fantastic posts have so far been written by our visitors, who explored topics in Mathare and Kibera that were of interest to them. One great summary post written by the director of Rising Voices, Eddie Avila, sums up the experience.

• Putting Marginalized Communities on the Map by Leila Nachawati Rego, who is from Spain and Syria, describes Map Kibera’s work in the Kibera community in light of the post-election violence of 2007/8.
• Kenya Needs Political Leaders Not Dealers by Kevin Rennie, shares about a visit to Mchanganyiko hall to learn about their rights and elections work.
• Mathare Youth Blogging for Change in Their Community, was jointly written, researched and photographed by Ylenia Gostoli, Saffah Faroog and Yvonne Tiany (of Map Mathare).
• Kibera Power Women Challenging HIV Stigma, by Ahmed Awadalla of Egypt and Rayna St. of Bulgaria, describes the Map Kibera office visit and a visit to Power Women.
• Mapping Kibera a Visit to Nairobi’s Slums discusses education in Kibera and was written by Salman Latif (Pakistan) in collaboration with Rezwan (Bangladesh) and Juan Arellano (Peru).

Here are some great Flickr photo sets from our visitors, too:

Kibera photos by Laura Schneider.

Mathare photos by Andrea Arzaba.

Breaking news: Kibera News Network’s entry into the Digital Natives video contest won one of the top two jury prizes, and was in the top five for public votes cast! Congratulations, and make sure you watch their winning video about Map Kibera and the use of digital technology in Kibera!

At ICTD London 2010 conference, Kibera mapper and journalist Douglas Namale was inspired to write this post:

ICT4D Should know ICT is NOT Development

The tech and development community appear not to read from the same script the meaning of ‘development’. As budding entrepreneurs cripple with profitability factors, the social school of thoughts, remains skeptical whether ICT is indeed the vehicle to poverty eradication. I agree with Prof. Geof Walsham’s argument that there is need to distinguish between research on ICT in developing countries and research on ICT for development.

Allow me to look at the most mentioned M-PESA as the yard stick to authenticate Prof. Walsham’s belief. One, is it true M-PESA has helped reduce poverty or it has simply lessened the means of money transfer mechanisms? To try and attempt to respond to this question, let us look at it from two perspectives. First, the inventor of the idea, Safaricom, is making close to Ksh. 20 billion profits annually, but the kiosks owners who operate the business on behalf of the company are simply making about ksh. 2 per transaction made though the company deducts ksh. 30 per transaction. On the same note, for every ksh. 20 scratch sold by Safaricom agent/vendor, you only make Ksh. 1.

The above figures leads us to the question, how much does it cost the company to say send one SMS? According to the figures released by Communications Commission of Kenya, for each SMS sent, the cost is about Ksh. 0.30. Until recently, Safaricom was charging an SMS Ksh. 5 and a call was costing Ksh. 7.

The above simple analysis simply explains why this company is making billions in profits and fools people that it’s actually promoting poverty reduction campaigns. Just to borrow a leaf from one of the papers that was presented to ICT4D London yesterday, some communities are actually selling their goats (assets) to get money to buy airtime which already has inflated prices, is it true ICT is promoting poverty reduction?

In my perspective, I can’t indicate any history where ICT alone has fostered development. But history is clear that ICT inventors have used the invention to amass wealth. To mention but a few, Facebook, Microsoft, Dell corporations inventors are today ranked among the world top billionaires, can we be able to locate anything these names have helped in the poverty alleviation agenda?

To conclude, ICTD should be fused in other disciplines if at all it is to achieve its objective use the vehicle to foster development.