Technology for development | virtual economics

Crowdsourcing: Fix my road

Written by Matt Morris on July 18, 2011

Imperfect information on the delivery of basic services make its difficult for policy-makers to manage principal-agent problems in the delivery chain and for recipients to hold their governments accountable. Crowdsourced information can help to fix feedback loops and new technologies and apps are making this feasible. I wanted to test out one of the most talked about platforms–Ushahidi. So before a recent trip to PNG I set up the FixMyRoad website using Crowdmap–a web-based version [...] Read more »

Virtual economy report

Written by admin on April 19, 2011

A new study by the World Bank Group’s infoDev program shows that virtual online currencies and digital work now provide real income opportunities to poor and unskilled workers in developing countries. infoDev is a global technology and innovation-led development finance program of the World Bank and IFC. The new study, Knowledge Map of the Virtual Economy, finds that more than 100,000 people in countries such as China and India earn a living through online games [...] Read more »

How many people on Twitter?

Written by admin on April 3, 2011

I’m a big fan of infographics–such a powerful way to communicate–and especially liked these ones on Twitter’s stellar growth. Read more »

The future of aid beckons

Written by Matt Morris on January 29, 2011

The long delivery chain of aid programs and a lack of feedback can lead to little accountability. How can technology and active stakeholders help to fix the feedback loop? The long chain of delivery The starting point for this article is the long delivery chain for aid programs. Imagine a set of relationships that link aid funders in one country (taxpayers), to aid managers/intermediaries (aid agencies), to recipient governments/multilateral agencies/managing contractors (aid implementers), to poor [...] Read more »

Virtual frontline for emergencies

Written by admin on September 2, 2010

Getting reliable and up to date information on humanitarian emergencies and conflicts is a major challenge for development agencies. Often, global crises are met by too little, too late. News of events on the ground become lost and we are left learning lessons for the future rather than tackling the causes of the crisis. The rights of those in the centre of crisis and conflicts are often pushed aside and innocent people are killed or [...] Read more »

How can beneficiaries monitor aid projects?

Written by admin on May 23, 2010

Monitoring it happen There is a growing movement among NGOs to use technology to involve communities in the monitoring of projects, so that people can hold donors and governments accountable for the delivery of services. Owen Barder highlights a promising approach by Daraja in Tanzania which is going to use SMS messaging to provide feedback about which water points are working. GlobalGiving is using Ushahidi and working with Map Kibera. They’ve been training volunteers to collect stories [...] Read more »

How can donors use the crowd to monitor projects?

Written by Matt Morris on April 30, 2010

The recent million t-shirts debate has shown the power of crowd-sourcing for appraising projects. Do you have ideas on how to improve project implementation? This photo for an AusAID project to distribute 500,000 textbooks in Papua New Guinea got me thinking. How do we know if the books reach the 3,400 or so schools and the pupils? The containers arrived on two ships, one unloading its precious cargo in Lae and the other in Port [...] Read more »

More mobile phones, better apps

Written by Matt Morris on April 17, 2010

We’re big fans of mobile technology for development, so it’s great to read about some good apps. It is well known that India now has nearly 600m mobile phones. But is this technological revolution reaching the poorest parts of the country? We’ve gone through the data on mobile phone subscriptions and found that the poorest states are experiencing the fastest growth in connections. There were 150m mobile phone subscribers in India’s four poorest states (Bihar, [...] Read more »

Bihar leads on mobile phone growth

Written by admin on February 21, 2010

It is well known that India now has more than 500m mobile phones. But is this technological revolution reaching the poorest parts of the country? We’ve just gone through the TRAI data on mobile phone subscriptions and found that the poorest states are experiencing the fastest growth in connections. There were 130m mobile phone subscribers in India’s four poorest states (Bihar, Orissa, Madyha Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh) as of end Nov 2009). Growth of subscriptions [...] Read more »

Ideas worth sharing on poverty reduction

Written by admin on February 13, 2010

TED2010 at Long Beach – innovative ideas from the World’s best minds. A highlight of Day One was Esther Duflo bringing the lessons from Poverty Action Lab and its rigorous impact evaluations to a larger audience – great stuff! The message is powerful. With technology we spend so much time in experimenting to find the best solution, but we don’t do the same in social policy. Why not? Read more »