Features Articles

I am currently entering my 11^th year in the once fledgling field of “mobiles for development.” The story of “m4d,” as it is fondly known, and the countless stories of how mobiles have impacted the lives of hundreds of millions of people throughout the developing world, are ones that are closely tied to my own.

I would like to share some of those stories with you, along with a few highlights from my own journey—lessons learned, the impact of mobile phones on the lives of ordinary (and not so ordinary) Africans, the background to my own FrontlineSMS project, and how mobile technology fosters “democratized development” across the world. But let us start at the beginning.

In Nigeria, hundreds of government-hired enumerators armed with GPS-enabled smartphones have systematically been visiting schools, water points, and health facilities across the country. At each location they take a photo, record a GPS point, and with the aid of a mobile data collection form, assess local capacity based on the availability of necessary human and material resources—such as basic infrastructure, staffing, furniture, and tools—to deliver a given service. For example, is a water point functional and being used? Does a clinic have adequate equipment, medicines, and staffing to deliver care? Does a school have a roof, teachers, desks, and books?

Over the last forty years, a strong and principled argument that privacy is a fundamental human right deserving special protection in an age of high technology has confronted more pragmatic considerations from a variety of interests. The messy twists and turns of this international struggle have produced a sort of consensus on what it means for an organization to process personal data responsibly. But it is an uneasy consensus, hedged by exemptions and qualifications, and regularly shaken by monumental shifts in the processing powers of technology, and by game changers like the 9/11 attacks. 

On June 4, 1989, I fled through the streets of Beijing as government officials crushed the student movement we had so passionately held in Tiananmen Square.  It was soon reported that our earnest attempt to have peaceful dialogue with our nation’s leaders had been a total failure, though some still say otherwise.  For 10 months, I hid underground in China, running for my life from those who should have protected us.