Stanford University

Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Africa

Mobile phones are transforming lives in low-income countries faster than ever imagined.  The effect is particularly dramatic in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa, where mobile phones have often represented the first modern infrastructure of any kind.  The iconic image of cell phones in Africa is the market woman, surrounding by her goods while making calls to potential clients in the capital city.  Equally common are the slogans of mobile phone companies promising a better life for those who use it. 

Yet do these images and slogans reflect the reality of what cell phones can do?  Cell phones are being adopted by the rural and urban poor at a surprising rate, far exceeding cell phone companies' projections. An emerging body of research suggests that mobile phones are improving households' access to information and reducing costs, thereby making markets more efficient and increasing incomes.  These impacts have occurred without NGOs or donor investments - but as a positive externality from the IT sector.

Governments, donors and NGOs have noticed the potential of information technology in achieving development goals in a variety of sectors, including agriculture, education, health, financial services and governance.  Mobile phones can greatly facilitate the effectiveness of development programs, but are needed in partnership with the private sector. And while cell phone coverage reaches over 60% of the population in most African countries, other constraints to cell phone adoption - namely pricing and handset cost - should be addressed.

Jenny Aker has worked extensively in Central, North and West Africa for the past ten years for NGOs, international organizations and universities. Her research uses field work and field experiments to better understand field-driven development problems, primarily by teaming up with NGOs and program implementers in an effort to link research with policy and implementation.

Jenny is currently involved in three main areas of research. The first assesses the impact of information technology (mobile phones) on development outcomes, namely farmers’ and traders’ welfare, market performance, labor outcomes, literacy rates and early warning systems. Based upon her previous work in Niger, she is collaborating with Catholic Relief Services in Niger on Project ABC (Alphabétisation de Base par Cellulaire), which uses cell phones as a learning tool to allow literacy participants to read and write in their local languages via SMS. The project takes a rigorous impact evaluation approach, assessing the impact of cell phones on literacy rates and farmers’ marketing behavior. Her second area of research involves assessing the impact of climate change on farmer-herder conflicts in the Sahel, with a particular focus on Mali. Her third area of research evaluates the impact of specific development interventions -- including food aid distributions, local purchases, and cash vouchers – on producers’ welfare and market performance in the Sahel.

In September 2009, Jenny joined Tufts University as an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

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Jenny Aker Assistant Professor Speaker Fletcher School, Tufts University
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series

Using Technology to Catalyze Large-scale Social Change

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Abstract
Since 2004, Omidyar Network, the philanthropic investment firm of eBay founder, Pierre Omidyar, has been investing in market-based efforts with the potential for large-scale, catalytic social impact. Technology is a significant focus of its work, as it can greatly improve the quality of life, reaching millions of people efficiently and easily. Matt Halprin, partner, and Stephen King, director, Investments, will discuss the organization's pioneering approach to philanthropy, the developing world context for technology, and innovative examples of liberation technology from the field.

Matt Halprin, Partner
Matt leads Omidyar Network's Media, Markets & Transparency initiative, supporting technologies that promote transparency, accountability, and trust across media, markets, and government. Within this initiative, his team pursues investments in Social Media, Marketplaces, and Government Transparency. In his role as Partner, Matt builds Omidyar Network’s team of talented investment professionals and works with portfolio organizations to help them succeed.

Matt has more than 20 years of business experience, including six at eBay. As Vice President, Global Trust and Safety at eBay, he led a team of 90 statisticians, policy managers, and product managers. He also helped coordinate the efforts of 2,000 customer support personnel to increase revenue while minimizing fraud and other trust-reducing behavior. Prior to eBay, Matt served as a Partner and Vice President at the Boston Consulting Group, where he worked with technology clients on issues of corporate strategy and corporate development. Previously, Matt was Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Quadlux, a VC-backed developer of technology-based ovens that was later sold to GE and Hobart.

Matt is on the Boards of Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia), Sunlight Foundation, DonorsChoose.org, Goodmail Systems and Management Leadership for Tomorrow, which supports the next generation of minority leaders in the United States.  He graduated with High Distinction as a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School and holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.

Stephen King, Director, Investments
Stephen brings Omidyar Network exceptional experience in applying media and technology to create positive social impact. Based in London, Stephen focuses on expanding our efforts outside the U.S. in the Social Media and Government Transparency investment areas. He also makes investments across all areas within the Media, Markets & Transparency initiative.

Prior to Omidyar Network, Stephen served as the Chief Executive of the BBC World Service Trust, where he led a period of sustained growth that included building programs in more than 40 countries in the developing world. Stephen helped establish the Trust’s international reputation as one of the largest and most successful organizations using media and communications to improve the lives of the world’s poor and promote better governance and transparency worldwide. Prior to the BBC, Stephen was the Executive Director of the International Council on Social Welfare, an international organization working to promote social development. Stephen has also held positions with nonprofit organizations HelpAge International, Help the Aged, and Voluntary Service Overseas.

Stephen is a board member of CARE International in the U.K. He holds an MA in Oriental and African Studies from the University of London.

Summary of the Seminar
Matt Halprin is a Partner leading Omidyar Network's Media and Stephen King is the Director of Investments and is based in London. They introduced us to the work of Omidyar Network which invests in market-based efforts to give people the technology tools they need to improve their lives.

The network was set up in 2004 by Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, and his wife Pam.  It comprises both a venture capital fund and a grant-making foundation.  The network has a strong focus on individual empowerment and is committed to market-based solutions, believing that business is one of the best mechanisms for achieving sustainable social impact. Omidyar looks to invest in projects that have potential to impact large numbers of people and that show signs of real innovation - for example, new business models or new markets.

So far $307 million has been committed, with $138 million going to for-profit investments and $169 million to non-profit grants. There are two broad areas of focus:

  • Access to capital: This encompasses projects around microfinance, entrepreneurship and property rights.
  • Media, markets and transparence: This encompasses projects around social media, marketplaces and government transparency. Omidyar are particularly interested in the role of journalism in ensuring accountability of governments.

Projects in the Unities States include:

  • The Sunlight Foundation - works to make information about Congress and Federal government more accessible and meaningful to citizens; created the first searchable site for all federal government contracts to monitor where money is going.
  • Global Integrity - uses quantitative and qualitative analysis to provide a scorecard tracking governance and corruption in different countries.

In the developing world, Omidyar looks to supports access to greater information and government transparency, which it views as key drivers of prosperity. The network is supporting global organizations, national partners in three African countries (Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya) and is establishing a pan-African mechanism for smaller grants. Current global projects include:

  • Ushahidi - an open source platform to report and share data in the aftermath of a crisis. Omidyar will be working to help Ushahidi to build traffic to the site and to tackle the challenge of verifying reports.
  • Infonet - a web portal that acts as an information hub for all national and devolved budgets in Kenya; currently used by NGOs, citizen groups and the media.
  • Mzalendo - a one stop shop for citizens to track the activities of parliamentarians in Kenya.
  • FrontlineSMS - a two way communication tool using laptops and mobile phones for organizations without internet access.

Wallenberg Theater
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Matt Halprin Partner Speaker Omidyar Network
Stephen King Director of Investments Speaker Omidyar Network
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series

Mobile Technology: Empowering the Grassroots

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Abstract
Despite the promise, the majority of mobile technology solutions are only meeting the needs of a small percentage of organisations who could benefit from them. In his talk, Ken Banks will discuss how he empowers grassroots NGOs, provide the history and background to FrontlineSMS, and highlight some of the challenges in developing mobile tools which work in resource-constrained environments

Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world, and has spent the last 16 years working on projects in Africa. Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS, an award-winning text messaging-based field communication system designed to empower grassroots non-profit organisations. Ken graduated from Sussex University with honours in Social Anthropology with Development Studies, and was awarded a Stanford University Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship in 2006, and named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow in 2008. In 2009 he was named a Laureate of the Tech Awards, an international awards program which honours innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity. Ken's work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Institute, and he is the current recipient of a grant from the Hewlett Foundation

Summary of the Seminar
Ken Banks, the founder of kiwanja.net, spoke about the importance of technology solutions that meet the needs of those working in the developing world and his own work in this area through FrontlineSMS.

While current excitement in the technology world may be focused on increasing centralization through cloud computing, this means little to people working in the developing world where internet connectivity is unavailable or unreliable.  Too little investment is going into building tools that will genuinely assist the work many non-profits are doing now.

Ken developed FrontlineSMS to tap into the potential of mobile phones, which are now widely available and used in the developing world. This is a two way communication system that can be used anywhere where there is a mobile phone signal.  FrontlineSMS is available as a free download and Ken's approach has been not to dictate implementation but rather to allow people to use this very general tool in whatever ways meet their particular needs. This has resulted in diverse applications, for example:

  • Monitoring election practices in Nigeria in 2007
  • Sending security alerts to humanitarian workers in conflict areas of Afghanistan
  • Encouraging young people to take part in elections in Azerbaijan
  • Updating local people on the location of speeches during President Obama's visit to Ghana

There is also great potential to combine FrontlineSMS with traditional media, such as radio, that is already widespread throughout Africa, to make this much more interactive.

Ken offered a number of points of guidance for those thinking about designing technology with social applications:

  • Work with the equipment that people already have at their disposal
  • Make equipment easy to assemble and intuitive
  • Price it at a level people can afford
  • Think about how use can be replicated - how will other NGOs find out about it?
  • Assume a situation of no internet connectivity
  • Where possible, give users an ability to connect with others - for example through a forum (this has been particularly successful at FrontlineSMS, with a third of those who download the software joining the online community)
  • Don't let a social science approach dominate - it is much better to think in a multi-disciplinary way
  • Use technology that is appropriate to the context - don't bring in tools that require knowledge and equipment not already held in the community
  • Collaborate, don't compete. Sometimes NGOs can rush to do the same things; examples of genuine cooperation are hard to find

Looking ahead, Ken will be developing functionality for FrontlineSMS that makes use of internet connectivity where this is available. He is also working on finding additional funding to help organizations pay for text messages.

Wallenberg Theater
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Ken Banks Founder Speaker kiwanja.net
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series

An Equilibrium Model of the African HIV/AIDS Epidemic

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An equilibrium search model of the Malawian HIV/AIDS epidemic is presented. Individuals engage in di¤erent types of sexual activity, which vary in their riskiness. When choosing a sexual activity, such as short-term sex without a condom, a person rationally considers its risk. A simulated version of the model is parameterized to match some salient facts about the Malawian epidemic. Some topical policies (e.g., male circumcision, treatment of other STDs, and promoting marriage) are studied and found to have potential to back…re: Moderate interventions may actually increase the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, due to shifts in human behavior and equilibrium e¤ects.

Assistant Professor Michele Tertilt is one of three Stanford scholars awarded a two-year Sloan Research Fellowship.  The Sloan Research Fellowships support the work of exceptional young researchers early in their academic careers.  Michele's research focuses on  family economics, consumer credit, growth and development, and demography.  The Economics department congratulates Michele on the prestigious fellowship.

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Michele Tertilt Assistant Professor Speaker the Department of Economics, Stanford University
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Developmental Governance and the African Predicament: Research and Policy in the Obama Era

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Professor Joseph previously taught at Emory University, Dartmouth College, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Ibadan (Nigeria), and the University of Khartoum (Sudan). He has held research fellowships at Harvard University, Boston University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Institute of Development Studies (Sussex, UK), Chr. Michelsen Institute (Norway), and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (France). Joseph has devoted his scholarly career to the study of politics and governance in Africa with a special focus on democratic transitions, state building and state collapse, and conflict resolution.

He directed the African Governance Program at the Carter Center (1988-1994) and coordinated elections missions in Zambia (1991), Ghana (1992), and peace initiatives in Liberia (1991-1994). He has been a longtime member of the Council of Foreign Relations. Joseph is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards including a Rhodes Scholarship, a Kent Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2002-03, he held visiting fellowships at the U.S. Institute of Peace and the National Endowment for Democracy. He was a Fulbright Scholar in France and a Fulbright Professor in Nigeria.

He has written and edited dozens of scholarly books and articles including Radical Nationalism in Cameroun (1977); Gaullist Africa: Cameroon Under Ahmadu Ahidjo (1978); Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria (1987); State, Conflict, and Democracy in Africa (1999); Smart Aid for African Development (2009) and the Africa Demos series (1990-94). His article, "Africa's Predicament and Academe", was published as a cover story by The Chronicle of Higher Education (March 7, 2003). One of his recent articles is "Challenges of a ‘Frontier' Region," Journal of Democracy, April 2008. Others are posted at www.brookings.edu/experts/josephr.aspx

» Joseph, Richard, "The Nigerian predicament" (NGR Guardian News)

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Richard Joseph John Evans Professor of Political Science Speaker Northwestern University
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New books released by CDDRL faculty

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Philosophy, Politics, Democracy: Selected Essays, released Oct 2009 (by Joshua Cohen): Over the past twenty years, Joshua Cohen has explored the most controversial issues facing the American public: campaign finance and political equality, privacy rights and robust public debate, hate speech and pornography, and the capacity of democracies to address important practical problems. In this highly anticipated volume, Cohen draws on his work in these diverse topics to develop an argument about what he calls, following John Rawls, "democracy's public reason." He rejects the conventional idea that democratic politics is simply a contest for power, and that philosophical argument is disconnected from life. Political philosophy, he insists, is part of politics, and its job is to contribute to the public reasoning about what we ought to do.

When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation: All over the world, democratic reforms have brought power to the people, but under conditions where the people have little opportunity to think about the power that they exercise. In this book, James S. Fishkin combines a new theory of democracy with actual practice and shows how an idea that harks back to ancient Athens can be used to revive our modern democracies. The book outlines deliberative democracy projects conducted by the author with various collaborators in the United States, China, Britain, Denmark, Australia, Italy, Bulgaria, Northern Ireland, and in the entire European Union. These projects have resulted in the massive expansion of wind power in Texas, the building of sewage treatment plants in China, and greater mutual understanding between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. The book is accompanied by a DVD of "Europe in One Room" by Emmy Award-winning documentary makers Paladin Invision. The film recounts one of the most challenging deliberative democracy efforts with a scientific sample from 27 countries speaking 21 languages.

Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action, released Aug 2009 (edited by James Habyarimana, Macartan Humphreys, Daniel N. Posner, Jeremy M. Weinstein): Ethnically homogenous communities often do a better job than diverse communities of producing public goods such as satisfactory schools and health care, adequate sanitation, and low levels of crime. Coethnicity reports the results of a landmark study that aimed to find out why diversity has this cooperation-undermining effect. The study, conducted in a neighborhood of Kampala, Uganda, notable for both its high levels of diversity and low levels of public goods provision, hones in on the mechanisms that might account for the difficulties diverse societies often face in trying to act collectively. Research on ethnic diversity typically draws on either experimental research or field work. Coethnicity does both. By taking the crucial step from observation to experimentation, this study marks a major breakthrough in the study of ethnic diversity.

Political Liberalization in the Persian Gulf: The countries of the Persian (or Arab) Gulf produce about thirty percent of the planet's oil and keep around fifty-five percent of its reserves underground. The stability of the region's autocratic regimes, therefore, is crucial for those who wish to anchor the world's economic and political future. Yet despite its reputation as a region trapped by tradition, the Persian Gulf has taken slow steps toward political liberalization. The question now is whether this trend is part of an inexorable drive toward democratization or simply a means for autocratic regimes to consolidate and legitimize their rule. In this volume, Joshua Teitelbaum addresses the push toward political liberalization in the Persian Gulf and its implications for the future, tracking eight states as they respond to the challenges of increased wealth and education, a developing middle class, external pressures from international actors, and competing social and political groups.

Promoting Democracy and the Rule of Law: American and European Strategies, released Aug 2009 (edited by Amichai Magen, Thomas Risse, and Michael A. McFaul): European and American experts systematically compare US and EU strategies to promote democracy around the world -- from the Middle East and the Mediterranean, to Latin America, the former Soviet bloc, and Southeast Asia. In doing so, the authors debunk the pernicious myth that there exists a transatlantic divide over democracy promotion.

Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Postcommunist World, ships Dec 2009 (edited by Valerie Bunce, Michael A. McFaul, Kathryn Stoner): This volume brings together a distinguished group of scholars working on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to examine in depth three waves of democratic change that took place in eleven different former Communist nations. The essays draw important conclusions about the rise, development, and breakdown of both democracy and dictatorship in each country and together provide a rich comparative perspective on the post-Communist world.

Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can, ships Nov 2009 (by Michael A. McFaul): This book offers examples of the tangible benefits of democracy – more accountable government, greater economic prosperity, and better security – and explains how Americans can reap economic and security gains from democratic advance around the world. In the final chapters of this new work, McFaul provides past examples of successful democracy promotion strategies and offers constructive new proposals for supporting democratic development more effectively in the future.

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Global Justice, Individual Autonomy and Institutional Legitimacy

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Nicole Hassoun (Ph.D. University of Arizona) is an assistant professor in philosophy and international relations at Carnegie Mellon University. Last year she was an American Association fellow and she has held visiting positions at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and Duke University. Nicole writes primarily in political philosophy and ethics, and focuses in particular on global economic and environmental justice. She is also interested in methodological issues in philosophy and the other social sciences. Nicole has published articles in environmental and bioethics and has been invited to give talks at Georgetown University, the University of Washington (Seattle), the University of Colorado (Boulder), Kwazulu-Natal University (South Africa), and the University of Alberta (Canada) amongst others.

Workshop co-sponsored by the Department of Political Theory

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Nicole Hassoun Assistant Professor, Philosophy Speaker Carnegie Mellon University
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Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop on Global Justice

Climate Change and Conflict: What are the links and where is the evidence?

Despite recent high-level statements suggesting that climate change could worsen the risk of civil conflict, until now we had little quantitative evidence linking the two. Unfortunately, our study finds that climate change could increase the risk of African civil war by over 50 percent in 2030 relative to 1990, with huge potential costs to human livelihoods. - David Lobell

2009 CISAC Zukerman Fellows announced

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Emily Meierding and Michael Sulmeyer have been awarded Zukerman Fellowships for the 2009-10 academic year. The fellowships are awarded to "exceptionally promising young scholars" working in the field of security studies at CISAC.

Meierding, a predoctoral fellow, studies territorial dispute dynamics, international conflict mediation and the political implications of climate change. She is pursuing a doctorate in political science at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation examines how the presence of petroleum resources affects the initiation and escalation of international territorial disputes and, to support this work, she has conducted research in Syria, Morocco, Nigeria and Cameroon. Meierding earned a bachelor's degree in history from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a master's in political science from the University of Chicago.

Sulmeyer, this year's teaching assistant in CISAC's Honors Program in International Security Studies, graduated from the program himself in 2002. He applied after taking one of the center's signature courses, International Security in a Changing World. "I hadn't a clue about international security, but I was blown away listening to Dean Wilkening describe the three different layers of a national missile defense system," he recalled in an interview for CISAC's 2007 annual review. "I didn't know you could study something like that. This was a real treat. I went on to take as many courses as I could from CISAC-affiliated faculty and was first in line to sign up for the new CISAC undergraduate honors program."

Sulmeyer went on to spend a year working at the Pentagon and, later, as a Marshall Scholar, began a doctorate at Oxford University. His dissertation is titled, "Weapons under Fire: Terminating Major Weapons Contracts for the U.S. Military." While finishing his doctoral research, he is a second-year student at Stanford Law School where he has written about the legality of targeting killings in U.S. military operations. Sulmeyer is Oxford Analytica's U.S. defense budget and procurement writer and is a consultant at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

The Zukerman Fellowships are funded through a gift from Stanford alumna Karen D. Zukerman and Morris E. Zukerman, president of M.E Zukerman & Co. in New York and chairman of M.E. Zukerman Investments in London.

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