The INFO Project Blog

Umniah, one of Jordan’s largest mobile phone companies, has signed a Letter of Agreement with the Jordan Health Communication Partnership (JHCP) to support and spread the messages national family planning campaign (Hayati Ahla”- My Life is More Beautiful). Umniah will send health awareness SMS messages to all Umniah subscribers (addressing a number of health issues, includin reproductive and sexual health), free of cost, which will reach a total of 300,000 people. Umniah will also be distributing JHCP health education materials at point of sales and include birth spacing and small family size related messages on their pre-paid cards, reaching over 1.3 million subscribers.

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“Can the cellphone end global poverty?” Sara Corbett’s article in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine points to new ways Nokia and other mobile phone manufacturers are getting their product to remote rural areas, way off the land line grid.

At the moment, Africa makes up just 7.2% of the 2.7 billion mobile phone users worldwide. But the numbers are growing fast:  in 2006, 55.3 million more mobile phone subscribers were added, and already, 45% of African villages are covered.

To expand access, Corbett writes that Nokia asks its developers to think about how the other half lives:

How do you make a phone that can be repaired by a streetside repairman who may not have access to new parts? How do you build a phone that won’t die a quick death in a monsoon or by falling off the back of a motorbike on a dusty road?

Other manufacturers are, so to speak, dreaming of Africa (or at least, Africans’ growing buying power). Corbett writes that, since access to reliable electricity is a major barrier, Motorola now provides free solar-powered charging kiosks to female entrepreneurs in Uganda. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, we attended a Forum One seminar on Social Sites for Social Good. Among the savory kernels of digital marketing truth we sampled, among a audience packed into DC’s National Press Club, was this presentation by Jonathan Colman of the Nature Conservancy on an influential social bookmarking tool. We Digg it, y’know?

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Science Blogging Session: Open Science Discussion leader is Dr.Hemai Parthasarathy (former editor at Nature and PLoS). Thanks to Wayne Sutton for capturing this–view his other footage here.

Len Cornish sent out this event announcement on the HIFA2015 network.

The 5th IET International Seminar on “Appropriate Healthcare Technologies for Developing Countries” is to be held on 21-22 May 2008 at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Savoy Place, London WC2R 0BL.

The deadline for the submission of abstracts is Friday 4 January 2008.

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