Gov 2.0 Online Conf: txts 4 africa

Please note: the audio for this session was recorded over a mobile phone line from Jordan and periodically becomes choppy. International aid organizations continue to address Africa's public health, economic, and educational problems, but often find their efforts hindered by the continents uneven telecommunications and transport infrastructure. Towards this end, the UNICEF Innovations Unit has been spearheading the RapidSMS project, an Open Source platform for SMS application development. In this session, Merrick Schaefer, technical project coordinator, discusses in depth some of the lessons on using ICT for international development learned through these deployments, and discusses how SMS can be used to make government and quasi-governmental efforts, like international development, more efficient and accountable.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• o'reilly
• oreilly
• gov 2.0
• sms
• africa
• ict
• international development
• foreign aid
• unicef
• rapidsms
• open source
• government