Cell phones save lives in Rwandan villages

CNN reports on a Rwanda government program which gives out hundreds of cell phones in an attempt to save pregnant women and babies.

Nearly 500 volunteer community health care workers in the rural district of Musanze have been given free phones so they can keep track of all the pregnant women in their villages.

The cell phones are used to register and monitor expecting mothers. If there are any questions, complications or updates, health workers simply send a text to their local clinic and receive a response within minutes.

Rwanda is ranked among the world's worst for maternal mortality. The majority of Rwandan women have their babies at home with untrained midwives. Many die from bleeding or infection, both easily preventable with the right care.

The cell-phone program, or Rapid SMS scheme, was set up in conjunction with various U.N. organizations to bring the number of maternal deaths down.

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Related: - Text Messages Save Pregnant Rwandan Women

permalink (July 28th, 2010)

Text messages save pregnant Rwandan women

Rwanda's new Rapid SMS service, a joint initiative between three U.N. organizations -- is being tested in the Musanze District where 432 health workers have received mobile phones. Reuters reports.

Health workers register pregnant women in their village via free SMS text messages and send regular updates to a central server in the capital, Kigali. They are monitored during the pregnancy, and those at high risk brought in for check-ups.

... John Kalach, director of the nearest hospital in Ruhengeri, says since Rapid SMS launched in August 2009, his hospital has had no maternal deaths, compared to 10 the previous year.

"We used to get ladies coming here with serious complications just because they delayed the decision because the journey was very long," he says.

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permalink (May 30th, 2010)

A mobile in every pocket is motto of Rwanda

Rwanda is in the midst of an extraordinary development plan to leap into the 21st century, informs The Guardian. More "mobile in every pocket" than "chicken in every pot", the Vision 2020 project aims to rapidly transform a depressed agricultural economy into one driven by information communications and technology. If it works, the percentage of Rwanda's workforce involved in farming will drop from 90% to 50% in 15 years. By then the country should be the regional ICT hub - a kind of Singahttp://www.textually.org/textblog/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&id=13093&blog_id=1&saved_changes=1pore of the Great Lakes. Two-thirds of Rwandans live below the poverty line, half are illiterate and four in five live in rural areas. Aids and the 1994 genocide have created tens of thousands of orphans. Technology is not the main priority, say some. But government officials insist that not only is their plan viable, but that there is no alternative. As one of Africa's most densely populated countries, large-scale farming is impossible. There are few valuable minerals or oil deposits. The country is landlocked. "We are at a huge competitive disadvantage to our neighbours," Albert Butare, the minister of communications and energy, told the Guardian. "Our people are the one resource we have, and we must develop them." permalink (August 1st, 2006)

Community phones change lives of Rwandan farmers

Rwanda's economy is recovering after being hit by the country's 1994 genocide which destroyed most of the roads and telecommunications infrastructure, reports Reuters. In March 2004, MTN Rwanda, the only mobile telecoms company in the country launched a community pay phone dubbed "tuvugane," meaning "let's all talk." It has since penetrated deep into the countryside, transforming the lives of thousands of rural people. "We carried a survey and found that communication needs in the rural areas were greater than those in urban areas," said Emmanuel Hategeka, from MTN Rwanda. "That's why we introduced a community phone that would be affordable to rural folk since they do not have to buy a handset." Manufactured by a South African company, the "Tuvugane" handset looks like a fixed line, but an antenna attached to it picks up signals from mobile phone satellite transmitters. The phone has become so popular that rural dwellers now take out micro-financing loans from locally-based lenders to buy the Tuvugane payphone. "The phone has become a money-making machine," Hategeka said. "You find that instead of someone selling tomatoes which could get rotten and make heavy losses, he invests his money in the community phone." Related: -- GSM payphones bring communications to rural Rwanda communities. permalink (July 7th, 2005)

GSM payphones bring communications to rural Rwanda communities

MTN Rwanda says that in the past year, it has provided over 1,600 GSM based payphones for rural communities, bringing communications to areas that are often not served by landline phone networks, reports Cellular News. "MTN's drive is meant to increase teledensity in rural areas throughout its operations and put telecommunications within the reach of even those who cannot afford handsets. "In addition, this project has created many entrepreneurs who are either running the business themselves or creating employment for others in turn," says Yvonne Muthien, Group Executive: Corporate Affairs, MTN Group. Rural entrepreneurs rely on micro-financing assistance from locally-based lenders to purchase the Tuvugane payphone and start a personal business of selling airtime units to the local community. These entrepreneurs are located throughout the country for easy accessibility by the general public". Related projects: -- Mobile power - Many African phone owners make money by reselling airtime to their local communities. -- Bank gives beggars phones instead of cash - Grameen Bank, famous for pioneering micro-credit programs in Bangladesh, has launched a new idea to empower the poor: arming beggars with mobile phones so they can sell a roving service for cash. -- Coin operated mobile phones may help improve connectivity - Taxi and autorickshaw drivers and bus conductors could in future become mobile public call offices, according to a city inventor and technology. -- Community phones connect SA townships - The BBC reports on the introduction of community telephone shops by Vodacom, which is having a dramatic impact in the Cape Town area, where 40% of the people are unemployed and living conditions are cramped and crowded. -- Rickshaws connect India's poor - Shyam Telecom, which operates in the state of Rajasthan, has equipped a fleet of rickshaws with a mobile phone. Drivers pedal these mobile payphones throughout the state capital, Jaipur, and the surrounding countryside. -- Mobile phones for Uganda's poor - Based on the successful Grameen Village Phone Programme - The "phone ladies" of Bangladesh -, MTN Uganda officially launched “MTN villagePhone” this week. Men and women are encourage to take out a micro-loan - as little as US$230 to be repaid over a period of up to 12 months - for the MTN villagePhone equipment and use the cell phones to operate a business providing much needed communications services to their communities. permalink (March 4th, 2005)

How Mobile Apps are Shaking up East Africa

The Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (Sida) recently published a report, "The Innovative Use of Mobile Applications in East Africa", that provides an overview of the current state of mobile phone applications for social and economic developments in East Africa. The report seeks to answer “what hinders the take-off of m-applications for development in East Africa" and asks what role donors should play. MobileActive.org reports.

While mobile phones are the main channel for information in East Africa, with mobile penetration covering over 40% of the population, sustainable, scalable mobile services for social and economic development are limited. The report is supported by secondary data, statistics, and field work carried out in Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, along with numerous interviews, meetings and discussions with key stakeholders in East Africa. Major trends in mobile usage, barriers for increased use of m-applications, as well as opportunities for scaling are discussed.

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permalink (August 3rd, 2010)

Cellphones open front in global fight against disease

To Rwanda's top HIV/AIDS official, communication within the national health care system can be slow enough to present an actual threat to health, reports the IHT. "Information from clinics is written on a piece of paper that a porter carries by hand to the district before the information can be brought to Kigali," said Dr. Innocent Nyaruhirira, who holds the cabinet-level post of minister for HIV/AIDS. "We are a country of one thousand hills, so it often takes one month to receive a message from the field about a disease outbreak or drug shortage." The travel time cripples drug-supply management, prevents live tracking of disease outbreaks, undermines monitoring of health programs and delays delivery of laboratory test results back to patients. Enter Voxiva, a U.S. company that has built a system for individual health workers to send reports by cellphone directly from the field. ... Voxiva's system is also being used in Indonesia for avian flu reporting and in India to test a new drug for leishmaniasis, a disease spread by sand flies. In Rwanda, the system started tracking HIV/AIDS patients two years ago and now connects 75 percent of the country's 340 clinics, covering a total of 32,000 patients. Read more or Watch video. permalink (March 5th, 2007)

Cell phones mobilized to fight AIDS in Africa

Mobile phones are being harnessed to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa under a new $10-million scheme announced on Tuesday with the backing of leading companies and the U.S. government. Reuters reports. "The "Phones-for-Health" project will use software loaded on to a standard Motorola handset to allow care workers in the field to enter critical health information into a central database in real time. It will be transmitted using a standard GPRS mobile connection or, where this is not available, via an SMS channel. ... The new scheme builds on the success of a pilot project in Rwanda and will focus initially on the battle against HIV/AIDS in 10 African countries. South Africa's MTN is the first operator partner in the program. Longer term, the hope is that the scheme will be extended further in Africa and spread to Asia to address other infectious diseases, including malaria and tuberculosis, the partners behind the launch said at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona." permalink (February 13th, 2007)

Mobiles 'to help track diseases'

Mobile phone technology is being developed to help manage the spread of diseases such as HIV and bird flu. The BBC reports. "The software is designed to allow field workers using handsets to send and receive data on disease outbreaks along with patient and drug information. The project is a collaboration between technology firm Voxiva and the trade association for mobile operators, GSMA. Trials of the relatively low-cost application are underway in Rwanda, Africa and in Indonesia. ...This means a doctor working in the field can send information to a central database about how many people are affected by a disease, patient status, drug inventory levels and receive information such as alerts, treatment guidelines or lab test results. Ben Soppitt, director of strategic initiatives, GSMA, said: "This will allow health officials to see real-time accurate data on the status of the healthcare system in their country so they can make informed decisions about where those resources are applied." Previously: -- Smart-tek To Distribute RFID Technology For Fighting Bird Flu -- Fighting Bird Flu With Cellphones -- Indonesia launches text message hotline to keep tabs on disease -- Cell phones track bird flu in Cambodia permalink (October 18th, 2006)

It's good to talk - even better to sell

Africa is changing fast. Aid and debt relief may help, but mobile phones and trade with China are proving even more vital. A very interesting piece by Richard Dowden for New Statesman. ... " Driving those changes are mobile phones and radio stations and China's appetite for raw materials. The G8's agenda of aid and debt relief may, if delivered, play a secondary role. The external driver is China's search for minerals, particularly oil, which pushes up Africa's mineral prices. ... The mobile phone revolution that has transformed business and politics in Africa in the past ten years. In 2001, only 3 per cent of Africans had telephones of any sort. Now there are 50 million mobile-phone users, with numbers growing by 35 per cent a year. The phone companies completely misjudged the market - they thought that only the super-rich would buy mobiles. But it turned out that the people who really needed them were small self-employed businessmen, market women, taxi drivers and the casual workers who keep Africa going. In some areas, beer sales have plummeted as people have invested their meagre earnings in mobile phone cards instead. The pace of life has picked up hugely. ... Politically, too, mobile phones are having an immense effect ... A better-informed population that can listen to its own voices will put governments under pressure. Dowden even suggests that the Rwandan genocide could not have happened if mobile phones had existed. permalink (October 14th, 2005)

Technologies 'to aid the poor'

Iqbal Quadir, Grameen Phone founder in Bangladesh, told experts gathered for TEDGlobal in Oxford that aid strategies for the last 60 years had failed. Technologies such as mobiles empowered people because they connected them. This, he said fuelled productivity much more than the top-down aid approach. Mr Quadir had the idea for Grameen Phone, a way to get mobile telephony into Bangladeshi villages and rural areas, 12 years ago. Since then, the company has grown to more than 3.5 million subscribers, with more than 115,000 phones in villages across the country. -- GrameenPhone in Bangladesh reaches three million mobile phone subscribers - It took GrameenPhone six years to reach the one million subscriber mark in August 2003, about one more year to reach the second million mark in September 2004 and just about six months to attain the present three million subscriber mark. -- Bank gives beggars phones instead of cash - Grameen Bank, famous for pioneering micro-credit programs in Bangladesh, has launched a new idea to empower the poor: arming beggars with mobile phones so they can sell a roving service for cash. -- GSM payphones bring communications to rural Rwanda communities - MTN Rwanda says that in the past year, it has provided over 1,600 GSM based payphones for rural communities, bringing communications to areas that are often not served by landline phone networks. -- Mobile phones for Uganda's poor - Based on the successful Grameen Village Phone Programme - The "phone ladies" of Bangladesh -, MTN Uganda officially launched “MTN villagePhone” this week. permalink (July 13th, 2005)

Talk is profitable in Ghana

In the West, the mobile phone is often thought of as a luxury or the latest gadget, but in Ghana, the device has been providing new opportunities to transform lives. The BBC reports. [...] There are about 25,000 of these new cell phone minute vending entrepreneurs in Ghana. Called "Space to Space" operators, they are said to be making more in one day than they used to earn in a month. What they sell is phone calls at 2,000 cedis a minute on Ghana's rapidly expanding mobile phone system. Minutes of call time to people who have not yet managed to scrape together the money to buy a phone for themselves. And only 8% of the population have access to a phone". Related articles: -- GrameenPhone in Bangladesh reaches three million mobile phone subscribers - Being the largest telecommunications service provider in the country, GrameenPhone is playing a crucial role in increasing the country's mobile telephone penetration rate, which is still one of the lowest in the world with less than four telephones per 100 people. -- Bank gives beggars phones instead of cash - Grameen Bank, famous for pioneering micro-credit programs in Bangladesh, has launched a new idea to empower the poor: arming beggars with mobile phones so they can sell a roving service for cash. -- GSM payphones bring communications to rural Rwanda communities - MTN Rwanda says that in the past year, it has provided over 1,600 GSM based payphones for rural communities, bringing communications to areas that are often not served by landline phone networks. -- Mobile phones for Uganda's poor - Based on the successful Grameen Village Phone Programme - The "phone ladies" of Bangladesh -, MTN Uganda officially launched “MTN villagePhone” this week. permalink (April 24th, 2005)

GrameenPhone in Bangladesh reaches three million mobile phone subscribers

Telenor's mobile arm in Bangladesh, GrameenPhone, celebrates another important milestone, reaching no less than three million subscribers, reports hugin. GrameenPhone started operations in Bangladesh in 1997. t took GrameenPhone six years to reach the one million subscriber mark in August 2003, about one more year to reach the second million mark in September 2004 and just about six months to attain the present three million subscriber mark. Being the largest telecommunications service provider in the country, GrameenPhone is playing a crucial role in increasing the country's mobile telephone penetration rate, which is still one of the lowest in the world with less than four telephones per 100 people. The internationally acclaimed Village Phone Program of GrameenPhone is another unique initiative, which provides telephone services in remote rural areas where no such facilities existed before. This initiative also provides the Village Phone operators, mostly poor village women, a good income-earning opportunity. There are now more than 110,000 Village Phones in operation in some 44,000 villages around the country." Related articles: -- Bank gives beggars phones instead of cash - Grameen Bank, famous for pioneering micro-credit programs in Bangladesh, has launched a new idea to empower the poor: arming beggars with mobile phones so they can sell a roving service for cash. -- GSM payphones bring communications to rural Rwanda communities - MTN Rwanda says that in the past year, it has provided over 1,600 GSM based payphones for rural communities, bringing communications to areas that are often not served by landline phone networks. -- Mobile phones for Uganda's poor - Based on the successful Grameen Village Phone Programme - The "phone ladies" of Bangladesh -, MTN Uganda officially launched “MTN villagePhone” this week. permalink (April 11th, 2005)

Mobile power

Across the poorest regions of Africa and South Asia telecoms operators are rolling out mobile phone networks and making a tidy profit, reports the BBC. "Their customers, meanwhile, reap their own benefits, by checking out commodity prices or connecting with business partners or family. In Nigeria, the average mobile phone generates $55 in revenue every month. In Rwanda and Mozambique, two of the world's poorest nations, it is $20. It's not that Africans are mobile phone crazy. Rather, many phone owners make money by reselling airtime to their local communities. And here is the opening for the next profit niche with a social purpose, says Rory Stear of Freeplay Energy, the company that develops and sells 'wind-up' energy generators best known in the 'wind-up radio'. "Kenya has 30 million people and three million cell phone users - but only 200,000 households that have electricity," he says. "People mail their mobile phones to relatives with electricity at home just to recharge them... Now think of the possibilities of selling an energy solution together with a telecoms partner", says Mr Stear." permalink (January 28th, 2005)