The Praekelt Foundation has received an $825 000 (R5.6 million) grant from the Omidyar Network, in support of its use of mobile technology to drive social change.
The Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm established by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam, is funding the grant through its Government Transparency investment arm.
The Praekelt Foundation, which develops scalable mobile technology solutions aimed at benefiting people living in poverty, will use the money to extend its platforms across Africa.
According to a release, these mobile platforms will provide the technological foundation for various initiatives focusing on healthcare, education, and government transparency.
“Omidyar Network is deeply committed to furthering the use of mobile technology to engage citizens on issues of importance to them, advance economic opportunity, and catalyse positive social impact,” said Stephen King, investment partner at Omidyar Network.
The firm invests in organisations that use technology and media platforms to provide access to information and help citizens engage in the governing process. In the past two years, it has granted over $30 million to groups including Ushahidi, Refugees United, and FrontlineSMS.
Speaking at the grant announcement in Johannesburg today, Praekelt Foundation founder Gustav Praekelt said building several core technologies had made it possible to develop low-cost campaigns, most of which have been piloted in SA.
“The key now is to scale these through the rest of Africa, and we'll use the funding to take these technologies and build relationships with network operators across the continent.”
The Foundation has projects in the pipeline in countries including Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia and Liberia.
“The ultimate goal is to speak to every single person in Africa and bring them life-saving and important information, especially people at the base of the pyramid,” says Praekelt.
“Traditionally, a lot of these programmes failed to reach people in poverty, because of logistics and funding; mobile provides the opportunity to really speak to those people.”
Praekelt points to Africa's rapidly growing mobile penetration, as well as increasing affordability and functionality, as vital elements in driving cellphone-based solutions.
The foundation points out there are now more than 450 million mobile phones in Africa, with over 80% of SA's population owning a cellphone. “Then it was a promise, now it's a reality and in five years' time we're going to have universal coverage,” adds Praekelt.
Spreading youth's voice
On 1 December 2009, the Praekelt Foundation introduced Young Africa Live (YAL), a mobile youth portal hosted by Vodafone Live, as a space for young people to talk about relationships, HIV/Aids, and sex-related issues that affect their daily lives.
“We were working with Vodafone to develop other content portals and realised there's a massive audience. At the same time, there was nowhere in SA you could find HIV information for free on a mobile platform, so that was obviously a gap.”
According to the organisation, in the past year, 226 989 people visited YAL and it received a total of 21 876 354 page views. Praekelt notes YAL is now one of the most popular youth sections in SA and the Vodafone Live portal.
In December this year, the Foundation re-launched the portal with the aim of taking the content portal and “blowing it out into a complete social network”, according to Praekelt. “The plan for the year forward is to build social features into it, grow it into Africa, and find new channels to reach more people.”
Target markets for expanding YAL include Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania. Praekelt says it looked at these countries because they're the most populous and have similar mobile penetration to SA. “You also need a great relationship with the network operators and we have fantastic relationship with Vodacom and MTN, and are working on developing ties with other big players such as Orange, Airtel and Globacom,” he adds.
“Youth connect via social media to those who really matter to them. So if we want to drive behaviour change in areas like HIV, we need to understand how messages are received in the social network and be in that space,” explains Praekelt.
“It's an incredible opportunity to start behaviour changes like practicing safe sex and using condoms by passing along the message, incentivising it, and then measuring how it spreads. We can identify the people who are most influential in spreading the message and target them to achieve the biggest impact.”
Future focus
Praekelt believes the foundation received the grant because of its solutions' ability to scale. “There are a lot of great solutions out there that will solve a lot of problems in Africa, but many don't scale well - either by being very expensive or logistically hard to roll out. Scalability and affordability were probably two key factors in their decision.”
His vision going forward is one he believes will have a profound impact and is realistically achievable. “We should be able to communicate to every single person in Africa regardless of income level and provide relevant, free information related to heath, education and financial services.
“I certainly believe we can be part of achieving that vision in the next five years.”
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