ICT for Development - ICT4D

ICT plays far more great role in transforming a society, as compared to other sectors. To be specific, the mass introduction of mobile telephony in Ethiopia in the years 2002-2005 was accompanied by a correspondingly high jump in commodity exchanges, construction, agricultural and other investments.

Currently mobile communication and the services bundled with it are penetrating into all corners of the globe, including least developed countries (LDCs). This may be one potential to access the whole society in education, basic health and other services to develop an information society.

An educated community is able to cater itself within resource limits, in the bounds of sustainability. The power of Mobile communication is intensely profound in this regard.

In countries where the literacy level is low, mobile communication urges citizens to adapt to communication technologies, new services and concepts. The success of M-Pesa in Kenya is one example - individuals not knowing saving were able to adopt banking concepts.

The software additives in mobile terminals are also a crucial value to create interest for learning. The dynamics of a community's thinking will be dramatically changed, according to my observation in my home country Ethiopia. Before mobile 'boom' schools were required to send family counselors to let their children to school regularly; as most children, especially girls, were leaving school early to help their families. Parents not able to use the functionalities of a mobile terminal, which need reading and writing skills, are attracted to educate their children.

The eLearning, eGovernment and eAgriculture are all important facets of ICT, important for enhancing information dissemination. A country with small number of teachers could serve the whole population using TV broadcasts, eLearning etc.

In conclusion, ICT is the best shortcut used in increasing the intellectual level of developing countries.

Workshop on Transportation

Transportation system is one of the key economic drivers. Its directly related to development, in which case many developing countries are pushing to improve their transportation infrastructures. Installation of the infrastructures considers demographic trends, economic advantages, cultural heritages, mobility ...etc. Reducing the cost of transportation may be one source of advantage to decrease gross domestic consumption of oil. For developing countries that may supplement a huge part of their economy by avoiding oil import - there by decreasing carbon emissions.

Thursday's workshop was discussing about feasible solutions to a set of problems associated with transportation systems design. I and my fellow chose to discuss on Low cost implementation of Mobility on Demand.

Implementing a reliable Mobility-on-demand transport system is a more costly option specially for developing countries, besides the infrastructure bottlenecks. It increases gross energy consumption, congestion and indirectly encourages private car ownership.

Mobility on demand can be implemented best if it is handled using a model like Public Taxi System/PTS/, which can admit private cars as a potential pool of resources. Private owners, while giving service to the PTS customers can add their mile/time or money - based on the business model/ count which could be paid back to them in oil, money or free-ride from the PTS system. This idea is more plausible in developing countries where the number of vehicles is incredibly small to provide Mobility on Demand.

The Workshop showed me the matters associated with transportation systems. And a closer look at the problem from socio economic perspective.

Waste Management - Workshop

Last Thursday's workshop was about waste management/WM/ in Kibera in Kenya, one of the largest informal settlements in sub-Saharan Africa. The organization of the workshop was sequenced on the following issues offering idea emergence from the whole class.

• Improving sanitation and liquid waste management
• Solid WM
• Institutions for WM
• Community Mobilization

After the whole class forwarded ideas on the issues, groups were formed to discuss for more time on one of them. I was in the group on dealing with Community Participation.

Mobilizing the local community needs awareness creation to help them understand that the problem is against the healthy livelihood of their families. The stakeholders like the local authorities, NGOs or religious/cultural elites can motivate the community to take the issue seriously. Organizing trainings for awareness dissemination and skill transfer, especially for youngsters at school can be beneficial.

The sustainability of the community mobilization could be further strengthened by setting a leadership system that spans different ages, social and economic backgrounds. In my view, mothers are ideal leaders in developing countries, for community-based issues.

The other important factor, if possible, in encouraging the locals is making sure that they could benefit economically. Recycling centers can be useful for this purposes.

The workshop gave us the opportunity to consider many issues regarding the waste management in slums like Kibera, where no system is established for handling waste.

Waste Management

Waste Management (WM) is crucial not only in the sense of aesthetic importance but also in the healthy social development perspective. In developed countries, due to the high volume of their refuses, WM is being managed and handled technologically, and in fact it is also generating income for some segment of their society. In 3rd world countries, hosting a large population striving for their daily survival, WM is almost a 'neglected' agenda. The people in slums are used to living with wastes from the other sides of cities.
Though there may be some efforts, moslty from local authorities, there are also hurdles which aborted it without bearing fruit. The possible reasons could be

1. Economical constraints
In developing countries, the tax collection system isnot well developed as to supplement public services like Municipal Waste Management(MWM). In some cases, corruption may hamper proper implementation of 'public' services.
Economical constraint will at least block the following

• proper public WM trainings for the community
• efficient technologies adoption
• permanent system building for waste selection, recycling and removal etc

2. Donors' inacquaintance with local WM habits

There are efforts by international donors to help the developing countries in WM. Mostly, however, the efforts remain seasonal community mobilizations which don't last for long. One of the best potential reasons would be that donors lack the knowledge of the nature of local wastes. The local workers responsible for WM are also not getting enough skill how to deal with the technologies provided from donors.

3. Inconsistent and unorganized mobilization for WM

The local communities' awareness for managing wastes is very important to mobilize.In my country, there is a WM week, where local youngsters gone out to clean up their localities. However, since there is no reliable WM system built there may not be effective outputs which could last for long. Rather it would be better to support institutions working in WM, provided that the public is eager to support in terms of finance and materials etc.

4. City plans not considering waste management

City plans in developing nations may not consider waste management. This increases the cost of moving wastes, disposing or recycling etc. The increased cost of waste removal, decreases the incentive of the poor conmmunity to pay for WM.

Sustainable Energy Sources

In the last two days we have been dealing about sustainable energy technologies.

In the lecture on Monday, Jukka Paatero gave us details on the trends of international energy generation and consumption habits in the last decades, how the different energy sources can be harnessed to function - such as hydro, biomass, solar and wind energy sources which are clean and environmentally friendly ones.

Hydro power is the most clean source of energy, although in some cases may affect the local river ecosystem. In developing countries, however, the enormous initial cost of installation may hamper its development.

There is high coal deposits in different parts of the world, unless alternative sources of energy production is curbed, our environment may be polluted by more coal emissions - coal is bad choice in terms of cleanness.

The energy demands of developing communities can be filled by decentralized systems, albeit energy inefficiencies and bulk resource consumption.

Biomass based energy sources are one of the potential sources of energy. With efficient energy extraction, biomass can supply enough amount to rural communities. Biomass energy is mostly obtained by open air cooking(less efficient), but can be more efficient up to by charcoal production(pyrolysis), fermenting, controlled boiling systems or anaerobic digestive bio-gas plants.

Alcohol production and anaerobic digestion are another energy options, except they need too much biomass in the scale that can’t be afforded by rural communities.

The most economically effective ones are micro hydro power generation, if there is a suitable topography for that. Firstly, they need less investment. Secondly, they can serve remote localities well without the need to import oil or any additional resources. Wind and Solar are best although both are dependent on geography and latitude.

Workshop on Sustainable Energy

In the workshop we were consultants for a pro-environmental protection group against the politically inspired BIG dam for electricity in Congo. We had to present alternative solutions to stop the project implementation.

There are some problems associated with the dam – there is too much silt upstream, the dam may force relocation of about 2500 local residents, it greatly affects the natural ecosystem in the local and upstream river and forests…etc.

Accordingly these conditions, we discussed the issue intensively to come up with a solution that outsmarts this big hydro power project. Our ambition was to propose an array of alternative energy sources that could be implemented according to the local available resources.

One important information we got from Jukka was that Congo is a cloudy tropical and non-coastal(non windy) country. This forced us to change our idea of proposing these ineffective solutions.

The best possible solutions may be DECENTRALIZED and LOCAL micro hydropower and bio-fuel productions. A tropical forest can also be a good source of charcoal as a supplementary solution. The problems associated with decentralization could be corruption and inequity depending on localities.

In our discussion we included, if the above proposal fails to fulfill the energy demands of the government, then reducing the side effects of the project may be a plausible idea.

There were three other groups too, they were also using alternative energy sources to electrify Addis Ababa school in a slum, a Burkina Faso turbine driven by a drinking water stored in a big tanker on hilly height and a micro hydro project in a hilly Indian Mynsyari town.

The alternative energy solutions were proposed by different groups were criticized and commented by other groups.

My Conclusions

Both in the workshop and the lecture, I got to know the significance of alternative energy sources. As a student from a developing world, its inspiring to know these easily feasible solutions.

On our group/Group 2/, we were given a national and big project to replace it with the alternative sources. As Jukka latter commented on the assignment, we were a bit perplexed to take the idea seriously – it feels more idealistic to deal with infeasible and incomparable scales.

Over all it was awesome to see the projects of other groups too.

Water Resources and Urbanization.

Today was the day of resolving water related problem.

Problem and solutions

Water in Phnom Penh is not distributed in a healthy and satisfactory way. Based on the movie clip we saw, some times even the issue of water is becoming one reason for dispute. Phnom Penh is a city surrounded by few villages, some of which are illegal settlers, and nearby theres is a garment factory etc. The slums created by the illegal settlers created a safe haven to tap water pipes illegally for own use or selling it for others. The Phnom Penh Water Services Authority(PPWSA) is unable to fetch a fair revenue for upgrading the water system in the area - most of the settlers are either taping it illegally from the water pipes themselves or buying with premium prices from illegal parties. Since the villagers are not legal settlers, its not known about whether they will be evicted or will stay for long.

With all the above unfair play,we were assigned as PPWSA group to provide safe drinking water for as long as villagers are living in the area.

First we considered the all stakeholders, who are directly or indirectly benefiting from the water projects.

-The NGO are expected to fund part of the project.

-Some 'rich' community members, who are able to cover the cost, can have their own tap water

- Most of the community's members are 'poor' so that there is a need for communal tap

/service point/

- The nearby garment factory can have their own water well, and if they wish to get from our water network(suppose garment factory is not water intensive), we can provide them at a fair price.

- Funding and project implementation.

- ...etc.

My idea about the workshop

I was personally assigned in Services Design within PPWSA. I got to know how the practical water provision is demanding in meeting all the desires of different consumers. The task needs a bit of 'mind twist' to formulate a fair and cheap design that suits everyone.

As a group working in PPWSA, we tried to discuss on things based on our assignments, and comments from peer friends.

In the final presentation, we were introduced to the needs of the other stakeholders. I think, it would have been nice if we had inter-group discussion before the presentation to make the workshop feel a bit more close to practical.

Water Resources Mangement

Today we got to know a general insight of the future challenges and possible global changes associated with water. Water, being "blood of the planet" as described by Marko, is expected to be the focus of development discourse in the coming centuries. We also polled on the Ismail Serageldin's expression;

"If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the coming century will be fought on water..."

- whether we agree or disagree with [ polling resulted 13 agree & 6 disagree]

The world population is increasing tremendously, yet the alternative uses of water are also increasing - apart from the basic needs. I was caught, specially, by the fact that most of the usable water in the world is consumed by agriculture specially irrigation projects. Before this lecture, I haven't considered seriously the critical value of water for development, except its importance for home use.

From the ideas forwarded from the audience, the critical regions in terms of water scarcity by 2020 are:

- densely populated areas in North East Africa, Middle East and South East Asian countries

- countries dependent on rivers feed by mountain top ice, likely to melt off by global temperature increase in the coming decade.

- less developed areas, where there is no proper water management

- regions with 'improper' water cycle ...etc.

The impact of water on issues related to global development, demographics, weather changes, and energy is enormous - as I depicted it right after the lecture. I guess that Water may be a theme of future global agendas just like Climate change.

Best said at last was a nice water management policy considers at least environmental, social and economical rationale.

The Right to Land - The "Question" of Housing

Housing is a major problem in developing countries. Lagos, in Nigeria, is one of the most congested and unplanned densely populated urban centers in the world. Ibare is an informal/illegal/ settlement area home to more than 50,000 low income slum dwellers. The aim of today's workshop is to design a sustainable housing solution to this community.

Our group/G-1, as a Local Government/ discussed with different stakeholders from UN-HABITAT, Local Community members, Local Engineers and Academic Scientists to sort out the best path to come up with reliable and long term solution.

At first, we considered the problem from the economic perspective. Nigeria, with oil driven economy, may not face funding problem to improve the lives of its 50K citizens with acute poverty. An idea from UN delegates/G?/ gave us a positive signal to fund part of the housing project.

Most of the community dwellers are living on a daily income of less than 3€. Most of their income goes to housing rent. If their housing problem is alleviated, they are eager to gather for a long term solution. We/as a local gov't/ planned to fund the housing project fully for now,as a long term loan for them. The immediate plan we sketched looks like the following:
1. The goverment will fully fund the project, partly from UN
2.The Local Engineers will provide feasiblity study and the total cost analysis
3.The Academics Scientists will design a business model that can be run by, and suitable for, the local community. Most of the community members are not educated and need some empowering/training/given by the academic stuff.
4. The first phase project, housing project for 1000 households/on average 5000 residents/ will be kicked off. Most of the local community members will get involved in the construction project.
After the training, most of the community members will be organized in Cooperatives for a long term business. The income will help them to pay their loan and make their living.
The business model is decided by the local community and the academicians.
The houses, agreed by the community members, will have certain shared services like water, gym etc.
5. The coming phases take inputes from the first phase, and modify its contents accordingly...

The problems we faced,
We had no practical experience on the nature of the problem and the different stakeholders we were negotiating with. Our fear was that we may end up in infeasible solutions.

Conclusion
Overall I was able think the problem in a dimension I haven't seen before. I got brief, even if not full, insight on how practical community issues will be tackled, how the influential stakeholders are negotiated and the invaluable participation of the local community as an incentive to make it their issue.

Natural Hazards and Risks in Urban Environment

A lecture by Dr. Philip on Risks in Urban areas gave me a wider insight to the risks in urban areas, which are associated with dense population and economically importance than rural areas.

The ovious natural disasters may cause damages if they are not well noticed beforehand. Earthquakes, volcanoes, drought etc may be among them. I have got a different way of seeing the risks, specially those which are taken by careless decisions. There are instances like investing/settling in an area prone to flood, settlements near by mountains where land sliding is common, city planning which makes infrastructures which may cause much damages like air ports in center city etc.

Relocation after a certain disaster is noticed may be a serious case. Because of its demanding socio economical impact, relocation seems an unlikely happening.

In analysing the Hazard Weighting for EU cities in our group, we first put the disasters in order of importance. After that we assigned their weights, percentage figures which are agreed upon by most of the group members.

If I made the same discussion with the dwellers and all stakeholders of my home town the probable results would be

• Drought - 40%
• Flood - 30%
• Land slide - 20%
• Storm/Cyclones- 5%
• Forest Fires - 2%
• Extreme Temperatures and storm surge - 1% each
• Earthquakes, Tsunami and Volcanic Eruption - 0%