This report commissioned by SIDA – Swedish International Development
Cooperation Agency, gives an overview of the current state of mobile phone use and services in East Africa. It outlines major trends and main obstacles for increased use as well as key opportunities and potential for scaling-up mobile applications. The report draws on secondary data and statistics as well as field work carried out in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya during 2008 and 2009.

The report identifies relevant applications in an East African context for reaching and empowering the poor and contribute to social and economic development. The identified mobile applications, listed in Appendix 2, range from small pilots to scaled-up initiatives – from simple agricultural, market or health information services to fairly advanced financial and government transaction services. (more…)

We had our 4th MoMo meet up at the IHub on the 26th of July. The meet up was moderated by our favorite group of techie ladies, Akira Chix. Kicking of the meet up was Linda Kamau (twitter @lkamau) of Ushahidi, who walked us through the new Ushahidi Android application, interestingly the core developer of the app Henry Addo was present at the iHub though he didn’t chime in. I had the pleasure of chatting with him for a few minutes and picking is brain.

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“Once I was deliberating on matters constitutional with a friend and needed to refer to a certain clause in the now famous document …while i had the doc in softcopy as pdf, how could I refer to it while away from my laptop? Next time I was going to be prepared. – Joe Njeru”

This is how Joe Njeru of Zilojo came up with the idea of the mobile constitution. It is to be found on www.katiba.mobi and even offers the document in Swahili using Google translate. Simple and it works…now you can argue from a point of knowledge next time you are engaging in constitutional discourse.

Kenya Postel Directories has launched a new short messaging service (SMS) that makes the telephone directory accessible on mobile phone handsets.

By sending a message with the name of the company one is looking for to 5991 (on all networks), a customer will receive the contacts as well as a physical address of the company for Sh10.

Kenya Postel Managing Director Jose Saldanha said the new platform is aimed at connecting listed businesses directly with clients.

Mr Saldanha explained that with close to 20 million mobile users, the SMS service has the potential to reach a wide range of new customers.

“Postel Directories is excited about the technological developments in the ICT sector. Using this new platform, we can now extend the reach of our directory information to all Kenyans,” Mr Saldanha said.

Currently, Kenya Postel only distributes directories to customers who have contracts with Telkom Kenya and it is expected this latest move will help increase its penetration especially in rural areas.

And with mobile phones becoming increasingly popular especially for Internet use, the company has introduced an online directory on www.yell.co.ke  for use on mobile phones. The online directory includes the address and available maps to the desired location for people who may want to visit the required office.

“We have now fulfilled a need that has been expressed by our customers – to access their directories whilst on the move. The Postel SMS service is a first to benefit our current telephone directory customers, whose contacts are now also accessible at a touch of a button,” he said.

The online directory aims at incorporating mobile phone contacts, which are currently not listed for all companies.

“Our new services can accommodate all these customers. These businesses can now list their contacts online by posting their details via the websites or via the Kenya Postel Directories’ contacts listed in our directories,” he said.

Postel publishes the Kenya Telephone and Fax Directories, incorporating the official Yellow Pages and distributed free to all Telkom Kenya customers. The company also publishes the pocket size Kenya Tourism Guide now in its fifth edition.

Freedom Fone – in a nutshell

Freedom Fone is an information and communication tool, which marries the mobile phone with Interactive Voice Response (IVR), for citizen benefit.  It provides information activists, service organisations and NGO’s with widely usable telephony applications, to deliver vital information to communities who need it most. (more…)