Co-located at 1st International Conference on “M4D” – Mobile Communication Technology for Development, http://m4d.humanit.org/
December 11-12, 2008, Karlstad University, Sweden

Sponsored by SPIDER (Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions)

Background

As countries of East Africa work towards creating the East African community, mobile operators are also responding by creating networks that ignore traditional national boundaries. For example, it is now possible to make and receive a local call using a Zain SIM card anywhere in East Africa without worrying about roaming charges. While mobile phones are predominantly used for voice calls and SMS, they have the potential to be leveraged for other mobile applications. Unfortunately, mobile applications and services beyond voice are still few and/or limited geographically.

For mobile applications and services to be successful in East Africa, there is need for multi-institutional cooperation both at the regulatory level as well as within the private sector. This is the case because successful applications will touch on many areas that have historically not been regulated by a single entity; e.g. for mobile payment applications telecommunications regulators will need to collaborate with financial regulators, and mobile operators need to work with financial institutions. Therefore, there is a need to bring together various players from different sectors to explore avenues of collaboration to create successful mobile applications.

Kampala: Outcomes and Plan of Action

In an attempt to bring together relevant stakeholders and to chart a way forward regarding M4D in East Africa, a workshop was organised in Kampala November 5-6, 2008 (http://m4d.kcl.co.ug). Participants from various key institutions, companies, and organisations from the East African region were present with the general objective to discuss and explore the current and future use of mobile applications in East Africa. Collaboratively, the participants identified obstacles hindering the success of mobile applications and generated a way forward as a response. The Plan of Action (still a draft) can be found here (http://groups.google.co.ug/group/M4DinEA/).

Karlstad: Objectives and Participants
The SPIDER workshop held at the M4D 2008 conference in Karlstad December 11-12, 2008, will build directly on the Kampala workshop, identifying actors within the SPIDER network that can contribute to filling out some of the gaps identified in Kampala. The Karlstad workshop will have as its goal to discuss the Kampala outcomes as well as define projects and draft proposals for funding where this is necessary.

In particular, the goals of the Karlstad workshop are the following:
• Bringing the knowledge and experiences presented in Kampala to Sweden
• Experts (academics and practitioners) within SPIDER’s network + some additional experts meet around the Kampala theme
• Selected project ideas/proposals raised in Kampala are investigated and discussed to form strategic alliances with already formed groups in East Africa for further collaboration.

The workshop will naturally also produce a short report to be disseminated through, e.g., the web sites of SPIDER, the Centre for HumanIT at Karlstad University and the Kampala workshop site. It will also present the results and outcomes at the M4D 2008 conference.

The participants at the workshop will be summoned from public sector, private sector, and academia. It is also necessary to provide for expertise in such diverse fields as International Development, Data Security, Programming, and Business Development.

The first presentation is by Richard Heeks who has authored quite a number of academic papers and articles one of which is ICT4D 2.0 – The next phase of applying ICT for International Development.
Some of the interesting insights I picked were the different models of research.
Pro-poor innovation: innovation undertaken in the north for the poor populace.

Pra – poor: innovation alongside poor people

Per-poor: innovation driven from the grassroot.
Now we are talking, as the best solutions are best developed by those in the inside looking out.

The mobile phone should be sen as a means of production as opposed to consumption.

Book of note: The Bottom Billion
The book suggests that, whereas the majority of the 5-billion people in the “developing world” are getting richer at an unprecedented rate, a group of countries (mostly in Africa and Central Asia but with a smattering elsewhere)[1] are stuck and that development assistance should be focused heavily on them. These countries typically suffer from one or more development traps:

* The Conflict Trap – civil wars (which cost c $100bn each) or coups.
* The Natural Resource Trap – excessive dependence on natural resources which can stifle other economic activity and lead to bad governance and coups/conflict[3].
* Landlocked with Bad Neighbours – poor landlocked countries with poor neighbours find it almost impossible to tap into world economic growth.
* Bad Governance in a Small Country – terrible governance and policies can destroy an economy with alarming speed

He suggests a number of relatively inexpensive but institutionally difficult changes:

1. Aid agencies should increasingly be concentrated in the most difficult environments, accept more risk. Ordinary citizens should not support poorly informed vociferous lobbies whose efforts are counterproductive and severely constrain what the Aid agencies can do
2. Appropriate Military Interventions (such as the British in Sierra Leone) should be encouraged, especially to guarantee democratic governments against coups
3. International Charters are needed to encourage good governance and provide prototypes
4. Trade Policy needs to encourage free-trade and give preferential access to Bottom Billion exports. At present “Rich-country protectionism masquerades in alliance with antiglobalization romantics and third world crooks”
Ref:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bottom_Billion

Juniper Research published a new report claiming that operators (MNOs) will need to change how they work with mobile content if they want to avoid being dump pipes in the future (quotes from their press release):

A new study from Juniper Research has found that Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) will need to fundamentally change their mobile content business models by emphasizing ‘shared value creation’ in order to avoid becoming ‘dumb pipes’ in the future. Only if they can transform their businesses into ‘smart pipe’ service providers, can they significantly increase their income from mobile content – estimated at $23bn in 2008, rising to $52bn by 2013 according to Juniper.

The global mobile content market will be worth $167bn by 2013, shared among players such as MNOs, Content Providers and third parties such as content aggregators and billing companies.

Currently MNOs take a significant percentage of the revenues generated by Content Providers when they use their networks. This has resulted in high prices for end-users and consumers being deterred from accessing mobile content on a wider scale. This unattractive situation has become a disincentive for MNOs and Content Providers alike, with some Content Providers attempting to bypass the MNOs or exit the sector altogether. Clearly, the situation needs to change. But it will be down to the MNOs to make the first moves, says the report.

The report examined 3 main scenarios that can effect operators and the whole industry – the Dumb Pipe, the Smart Pipe and On-Portal. the report author, Andrew Kitson, was quoted saying:

“One single scenario will not win out since different business and revenue models have to co-exist in the mobile content market. Players will adopt multiple approaches that best fit their markets. Crucially, if MNOs are to benefit financially, they need to move away from their Dumb Pipe roots to the Smart Pipe model, though they will clash with the content providers which already dominate the Smart Pipe. A compromise needs to be found.”

Kitson also found these:

• Under the Smart Pipe model, MNOs will not see their share of the overall mobile content market rise appreciably, but revenue will rise in value by 125% over the 2008-2013 period.
• Under the On-Portal scenario, content providers will see their share of the market rise from 54% in 2008 to 68% by 2013, providing they can secure more attractive terms from MNOs.
• Third parties – especially aggregators and billing service providers – will come under pressure from larger players (such as MNOs) seeking to achieve horizontal integration and economies of scale.

http://mobilegd.com/2008/11/25/smart-pipe-biz-model-to-get-operators-52bn-on-mobile-content-by-2013

We will have our first title out in the first quarter of ‘09.