Civil Society archive at saidia.org

Archive for the 'Civil Society' Category

Run, don’t walk to vote for Pambazuka News in Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics

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September 20, 2007 in Africa, Civil Society, nptech, Kabissa, Web 2.0, Politics, Create Peace, Democracy and Poverty. 0 Comments

If you haven’t done so already, go now to vote for Pambazuka News!

It’s easy to do. No login required, just go to http://tinyurl.com/2yo3vy, look for PAMBAZUKA NEWS on the list and click the “Vote” button.

Vote for Pambazuka News!

For the third year running, Pambazuka News has been selected as one of 25 finalists for the Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics.

Pambazuka News is produced by a pan-African community of some 300 citizens and organisations - academics, policy makers, social activists, women’s organisations, civil society organisations, writers, artists, poets, bloggers, and commentators.

Winning this award would be a tribute to all the many contributors who have made Pambazuka News essential reading for all concerned with the cause of justice and freedom in Africa.

With your help, we could win this award. Please vote for us at: http://tinyurl.com/2yo3vy

NGOs going mobile… join the nGOmobile.org competition for grassroots groups in the third world

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Tobias Eigen

September 18, 2007 in Africa, Civil Society, nptech, Kabissa, Web 2.0, ICT4D, Loband, web2fordev, SMS and MobileActive. 2 Comments

Via the mobileactive mailing list, I learned today about the nGOmobile competition, which is kicking off today! Grassroots groups in the third world seeking the tools and resources to use mobile phones and SMS in pursuit of their missions are invited to participate.

I am particularly excited because I have observed over the last two years, since participating in the first Mobile Active Convergence in Toronto back in 2005, that the opportunities of mobile phones for advocacy in the third world have been out there and available, but not fully exploited. The case studies (what works and what does not work) have not been widely shared and discussed for others around the continent to benefit from. More civil society groups need to see examples of how this technology is empowering others - and can empower them.

This competition will go a long way to remedying that problem - so hats off to kiwanja.net, 160 Characters and the others involved in putting on this competition. Read on to see the announcement, or go straight to ngomobile.org to learn more. Please help spread the word about this terrific initiative. Continue reading ‘NGOs going mobile… join the nGOmobile.org competition for grassroots groups in the third world’

Interview with Walter Turner on Kabissa, Web 2.0, African civil society and more…

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Tobias Eigen

September 4, 2007 in Africa, Civil Society, nptech, Kabissa, Web 2.0, Social Networking, WordPress, Blogging, Free/Libre Open Source Software, Democracy and web2fordev. 0 Comments

I was pleased to learn from Nunu Kidane (Priority Africa Network) this morning that an interview Kim Lowery and I did with Walter Turner back in May aired on KPFA in Berkeley yesterday and is available online.

The interview came on the heels of the Netsquared conference on “remixing the web for social change”, so Kim and I were very much jazzed up by - and no doubt still processing - the attention our Kabissa 2.0 proposal received at the conference and the many remarkable projects and ideas we were exposed to. We discussed Web 2.0 concepts but Walter Turner also challenged us to go into detail about the history and justification for Kabissa, on what we think civil society is and how we support the important work of organizations in Africa.

Gathering stories about Web 2.0 in African civil society

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Tobias Eigen

August 17, 2007 in Africa, Civil Society, nptech, Kabissa, Web 2.0, Social Networking, Blogging, ICT4D and web2fordev. 2 Comments

Hey folks - I’m going to web2fordev in September and in the lead up to that am finalizing various outputs, including..

A paper I have been working on for the University of Washington’s Evans School about Web 2.0 in African Civil Society and which will be published on the Kabissa Wiki
An article about Kabissa and Web 2.0 for ICT Update
A presentation to give at the web2fordev conference about Kabissa and Web 2.0

As part of this, I wanted to get an update from Kabissa members and others in African civil society about their use of blogging and other social networking tools - remarkably, there are not that many case studies available despite the clearly active use of these nifty new tools and the massive potential dangling out there.

So I wrote a post on the Kabissa blog inviting grassroots groups to share their stories and sent out a quick mailing to members to invite them to come check it out. It should be interesting so stay tuned. If you have some good stories and links to share, please do so!

Nicht mit uns! Let’s join the noisy Germans protesting censorship on Flickr

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Tobias Eigen

July 11, 2007 in Civil Society, Web 2.0, Politics, Germany, Free Speech, Flickr and Internationalization. 0 Comments

I’m on my way to Germany today, so it’s timely that I come across this post on the development seed blog:

This week Flickr greeted its new international audience with a surprise: radical censorship. Originally I planned to write about how wonderful it was that Flickr added multilingual support for seven more languages. I was going to predict that its number of users and photos would quickly explode. That was before Alex clued me into the buzz from the German Flickr community, people who have been blocked from accessing a good chunk of Flickr’s content.

To access all content on Flickr you need to sign in with a Yahoo! ID. And now if you’re Yahoo! ID says you’re from Germany – or Singapore or Hong Kong or Korea – you’re blocked from accessing “moderate” and “restricted” photos. Because of the country you live in.

I am also heartily against censorship, and join the ranks of the noisy Germans in calling for an end to censorship on Flickr. May Yahoo respond quickly and find it in their hearts to reverse this decision!

This incident is a reminder also that we need to keep in mind that Flickr and other powerful Web 2.0 sites are not merely appliances that we can expect to continue using forever as we are using them today. Just yesterday I went looking for a tool to retrieve some of my favorite flickr photosets to copy onto my brand spanking new Sansa e250 mp3 player, and found that it was tricky to do so. Indeed Flickr does not offer a simple way to do it and you have to use a 3rd party tool that takes advantage of Flickr’s API.

Movin’, Movin’, Movin’…

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Tobias Eigen

July 10, 2007 in Africa, Civil Society, WordPress, Blogging and Free/Libre Open Source Software. 0 Comments

Anyone attempting to visit saidia.org today most likely encountered some fairly hideous database connection errors. Pole sana = many apologies! Especially after asking a bunch of people on the DDN list to come and help me identify the best Open Source in Civil Society book. D’oh! It’s not too late - please come and add your suggestions.

In any case, it’s good to have the move behind me. I had been planning to move to a new server for a bit now but the timing was decided by some severe errors I was suddenly getting on the old server relating to posting comments and a bunch of other things. Now I’m happily moved to this ridiculously powerful Dreamhost server and I can’t wait to see how I will take advantage of the space and cool features. Let me know if you notice anything unusual after the move.

Civil Society, Open Source and Me: what is your favorite book?

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Tobias Eigen

July 10, 2007 in Africa, Civil Society, nptech, Bainbridge Island and Free/Libre Open Source Software. 4 Comments

If there is one book that needs to be in the local public library on the importance of Open Source in Civil Society, what would it be? Add your comments to this post.

I am open to all suggestions - I just want to know why. Special points for books that talk specifically about Africa, and do a good job explaining what Civil Society is all about. The most suitable book will be purchased for the Bainbridge Island library by the local Rotary Club in my name, so I want to be able to read it and recommend it to friends and neighbors that want to know more about why I do what I do in Africa.

Update: as luck would have it, various things seem to be broken on my blog including commenting. I’m trying to fix it - in the meantime, please email me your suggestions and I’ll post them here later. Thanks!
Sorry for the confusion for those looking for this site earlier today and getting error messages or blank screens when submitting your comments. I had been planning to move saidia.org, but the errors I was getting at the old place this morning precipitated things. Please go ahead and add your book suggestions now!

Africa Source Photo: GNU/Linux loyalty. Photo by Frederick “FN” Noronha. Creative Commons. Attribution. Some rights retained. 2006.

Near a radio? Join talk about Nigeria election in BBC World Have Your Say

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Tobias Eigen

April 23, 2007 in Africa, Civil Society, nptech, Web 2.0, Blogging, Nigeria and Democracy. 4 Comments

I got an email this morning from BBC inviting me to join their talk on today’s Have Your Say program is the Nigerian election. It’s on at 6pm GMT today, Monday April 23. They appear to be interested in hearing about how technology is being used, and my post last month on Blueprint for a Nigerian Civil Society Election Blog.

Seems since then alot has happened in that department - but perhaps not enough. I’m still digesting it all, and trying to get my head around the tragedy that is the election results filtering through. The greenlightnigeria.org blog was set up by SDN, and NMEM, a to me unknown group, used the Frontline SMS tool by Ken Banks to do some election monitoring by SMS. I don’t know yet how the SMS experiment worked out, but the greenlightnigeria.org blog has been very inspiring to monitor, with audio and video testimony posted just about daily for the last two weeks.

Are you in Nigeria? Text your election observations to 0808-4032739

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Tobias Eigen

April 20, 2007 in Africa, Civil Society, nptech, Web 2.0, Blogging, Media, Free/Libre Open Source Software, Nigeria and Democracy. 3 Comments

According to this Texts monitor Nigerian elections article on the BBC News website,

Anyone trying to rig or tamper with Saturday’s presidential elections in Nigeria could be caught out by a team of volunteers armed with mobile phones.

The number to text to is 0808-4032739. Note that number and tell everyone you know! According to the Network of Mobile Election Monitors (NMEM) website, here is how it works:

The success of our endeavor rest solely on the effectiveness of our volunteers. To participate is simple. First of you have to register as a volunteer, simply text the following information to 0808-403-2739. We will send a reply sms indicating we have signed you up as volunteer.

As a volunteer, you are expected to go out on Election Day and vote. This is the only way you can participate and report correctly on the election.

Volunteers are required to send in two reports on the conduct of the polls in their location.

The first report should be sent in before 12noon and should cover the following aspects of the polls.

Poll opening times

Voter accreditation

Ballot box / materials delivery times

2nd report at the close poll should be sent in before 6pm

Vote counting / result

Turn out at polling station

General conduct of election

Exit polls

And some more details from the BBC article:

The Network of Mobile Election Monitors (NMEM) will use SMS to feedback their observations to a central computer hub.

The collected text messages will then be passed on to other monitoring groups and authorities including the EU.

NMEM hopes the system will stop fraud, especially in areas considered too dangerous for other groups to enter.

“We want to set a precedent,” said Emauwa Nelson of the Human Emancipation Lead Project, a Nigerian NGO that helped set up the project.

“We want people to know that if they are trying to rig the election, there could be someone behind them and that person may send a text message saying what happened.”

… and don’t forget about blogging the election!

Then, if you are able to get to a computer with a microphone, please share your voice so the world can hear about what you are seeing and experiencing. Record a voice message to be posted directly on the greenlightnigeria.org election blog website. Or, if you prefer, send in your submissions via the greenlightnigeria.org contact form.

This is terrific news and I am very pleased to see that election monitors are making use of Ken Banks’s Frontline SMS tool to make this possible. These examples of SMS use for defending democracy are extremely important and can be applied everywhere in Africa.

Congratulations, Ken and NMEM, and may you succeed in helping to keep Nigeria from erupting tomorrow. All eyes are on you.

(If you can, please share your observations about your experience using this technology in a comment to this post - I’m very interested to hear about it.)

Casting a ballot for Africa at netsquared.org

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Tobias Eigen

April 10, 2007 in Africa, Civil Society, nptech, Kabissa, Web 2.0, Social Networking, Blogging, Free/Libre Open Source Software, Web Development and ICT4D. 1 Comment

I was psyched to see my Casting a ballot for Africa blog post on the frontpage of the Netsquared.org website, and various blog postings about the Kabissa 2.0 proposal at WhiteAfrican.com, globalvoicesonline.org, and Meandering Passage - wow, thanks everyone for helping to get the word out. It would be stunning if plenty of projects oriented towards Africa and the global south were to be among the finalists for the Netsquared Innovation Award, which is being decided between now and Saturday, April 14th at noon. And I certainly hope Kabissa 2.0 is among them!

Netsquared.org is an initiative of Compumentor (the same folks who created Techsoup.org) and is creatively challenging advocacy groups and nonprofits to make good on the promises of the Internet for revolutionary change. According to http://www.netsquared.org/about:

Our mission is to spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations.There’s a whole new generation of online tools available – tools that make it easier than ever before to collaborate, share information and mobilize support. These tools include blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasting, and more. Some people describe them as “Web 2.0″; we call them the social web, because their power comes from the relationships they enable.

Last year I attended their first conference, which was a rather loosely organized event exploring the power of Web 2.0 for social change. I was interviewed then, in fact, about Kabissa 2.0. This year promises to be more “action oriented” - especially given the grandiose competition going on at netssquared.org right now. Last month they issued a call for proposals for innovative Web 2.0 for social change projects, and this week the Netsquared community is voting on the amazing 150 proposals submitted. The top 20 will be represented at the conference - all expenses paid - and duke it out for the top prize for the Netsquared Innovation Award. Of those even the losers are no doubt going to get plenty of attention.