Accelerating Development Using the Web: Empowering Poor and Marginalized Populations George Sadowsky, ed. George Sadowsky Najeeb Al-Shorbaji Richard Duncombe Torbjörn Fredriksson Alan Greenberg Nancy Hafkin Michael Jensen Shalini Kala Barbara J. Mack Nnenna Nwakanma Daniel Pimienta Tim Unwin Cynthia Waddell Raul Zambrano Cover image: Paul Butler http://paulbutler.org/archives/visualizing-facebook-friends/ Creative Commons License Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 This work, with the exception of Chapter 7 (Health), is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. Chapter 7 (Health) © World Health Organization [2012]. All rights reserved. The World Health Organization has granted the Publisher permission for the reproduction of this chapter. Accelerating Development Using the Web | Foreword from the Rockefeller Foundation i Foreword from the Rockefeller Foundation For almost 100 years, the Rockefeller Foundation has been at the forefront of new ideas and innovations related to emerging areas of technology. In its early years, the Foundation advanced new technologies to eradicate hookworm and develop a vaccine for yellow fever, creating a lasting legacy of strengthening the application of new technologies to improve the lives of the world’s poor and vulnerable. By the middle of the 20th century, this approach led the Foundation to the pre-cursor to the modern day comput- er. At the dawn of the digital era in 1956, the Foundation helped launch the field of artificial intelligence through its support for the work of John McCarthy, the computing visionary who coined the term. More recently, the Foundation has supported the use of mobile information and communication technologies in expanding access to healthcare services, in providing farmers with commodity prices and weather related information, and in providing web-based employment opportunities for individuals in low-income areas of cities and rural towns. At the Rockefeller Foundation, we have a deep respect for the myriad innovators, entrepreneurs, and forward- looking thinkers who are using the web to expand economic opportunities for social development. As expressed so eloquently by the many contributors to this book, we share an abiding concern that the benefits of the web be marshaled to improve the well-being of all people. In so doing, we anticipate that by expanding access to and use of the web, we will ensure that a greater number of individuals and communities will become more resilient and better able to respond to unexpected man-made and natural shocks, and that societies will grow more equi- tably over time through improved access to new opportunities. Our support of this compendium is just one part of a suite of thought-provoking efforts to rethink the ways in which new technologies could be better positioned for greater impact across the development landscape. How- ever, technology is only one – albeit very important – driver of social change. At the Foundation, we take an integrated approach that considers the interactions among the various political, economic and environmental complexities of a system. This holistic perspective, we believe, allows for a more nuanced understanding of the different dimensions that need to come together to solve critical problems and implement novel solutions. As the web continues to define the 21st century, we are grateful to the World Wide Web Foundation for bringing together such a diverse array of experts from different backgrounds and disciplines to share their points of view. We are excited to hear your thoughts and reactions to this publication, and we hope that this will be a useful resource to all of those in the public, private, and civil society sectors that are committed to working to make the web a tool for social innovation on a global scale. Zia Khan and Evan Michelson The Rockefeller Foundation Accelerating Development Using the Web | Foreword from the World Wide Web Foundation iii Foreword from the World Wide Web Foundation The World Wide Web is just over 20 years old. It has transformed how knowledge is created and shared. It has transformed how people and nations communicate. The Web is now an essential component of modern life, a significant driver of economic value and a powerful enabler of political and social change. For all these reasons, most Web users will be surprised to learn that they are in the minority – only about 30% of the world’s population are using and benefiting from the Web at this time in history. However, in terms of its potential contribution to economic, political and social development, the need for access to and effective use of the Web is greatest where such access is most rare. The poor, the underrepresented and the vulnerable can in theory gain immensely from what the Web has to offer, but for a variety of reasons — poverty, illiteracy, remoteness, language, restrictive regulation — they are unable to benefit from it. There is an urgent opportunity to accelerate Web usage and impact for these billions who need it most, and the Web Foundation aims to close this gap. For example, we are working in Mali and India to explore ways to provide voice access to the Web on simple mobile phones, thus opening the Web to people without Internet connectivity and/or with low literacy. We are giving bright, young entrepreneurs in Senegal, Ghana and Kenya the technical and business skills and nurturing environment to create applications on the Web that could address commercial and social needs. We are testing and demonstrating the potential value of Web access to address real-world problems, by empowering rural community radio stations and journalists, and helping farmers share information needed to push back the Sahara desert to claim useful agricultural land. Our objective is that our interventions will, like the Web itself, be able to scale to reach all those around the world who could benefit from them. This book explores the fundamental factors that are shaping the use of the Web for social and economic de- velopment. It describes the contributors that shape how the Internet grows, and how the Web can be made available to and effective for those billions in need. It addresses issues currently restricting access to the Web — political, technological, economic, cultural and linguistic — and suggests what mechanisms can be brought to bear to accelerate its utilization for poor and underserved populations. The Web has brought many changes to our world. It is increasingly difficult to remember how we functioned in our pre-Web existence. The Web Foundation is working to accelerate the growth of the community of Web users, and to accelerate the value of the Web for that entire community. It is our hope that this volume and the insights within it will enable policy makers, practitioners, funders, and all others concerned with development and the realization of human potential everywhere to contribute more effectively toward that goal. Steven Bratt The World Wide Web Foundation Accelerating Development Using the Web | Preface v Preface This work is the result of the contributions, large and small, of a significant number of people. The evolution and application of ICT for Development has grown far beyond its initial stages, and ICTs are now thoroughly enmeshed in many substantive and policy aspects of social and economic development in its broadest sense. This publication therefore is necessarily the result of contributions by specialists in various dimensions of this field, and we are grateful to them for having shared their considerable knowledge and experience. Any discussion of the role of ICTs in economic and social development is aiming at a moving target. While the problems that affect developing countries specifically, and all countries to some extent, are well identified, the technological environment changes rapidly and it takes some time to explore how such changes can be ex- ploited to ameliorate the problems. Such a focus sometimes appears to be very “tool oriented,” and may give a misleading impression that the focus has been directed away from the more fundamental social and economic goals. The focus is rather upon how the rapidly evolving tools of ICT can assist in achieving these goals and the nature of their strengths and limitations in doing so. One might question the need for another exposition of the role of ICTs in development when much has already been written about it. One reason is that most writing in the field concerns itself with specific application areas or pilot applications, rather than surveying the field more generally. Furthermore, as the Internet spreads, the is- sue of accessibility by poor, vulnerable and underserved individuals and communities becomes more important to achieve true inclusiveness, regardless of whether they are in a developing or a developed country. If the use of ICTs and the Web have proven so beneficial for the developed world, surely their extension for use by others cannot be withheld. This monograph specifically addresses this issue and reports on current policy and techni- cal initiatives in this area. In addition, technical progress in this area is rapid, and we believe that it is useful to present a current picture of tools, needs and possibilities. This is a book about both ICTs and the World Wide Web. While the Web is one application of many existing on top of the Internet, it is the application that provides the principal window through which users increasingly access ICTs and which is evolving to permeate many aspects of daily life. The rapid evolution of the Web from its static beginning to the rich interactive interoperable media platform that it is today indicates that it is likely to be the principal platform for new development for the foreseeable future.