Global Voices Online

Building mobile phone applications in Africa, from Ethan Zuckerman's “Geek tracking, African hacking”:
Eagle’s new project - EPROM (entrepreneurial programming and research on mobles) - is trying to encourage people in developing nations to learn how to build applications for mobile phones. This involves building a community of mobile developers and providing curiculum for students to learn how to build applications in this space. EPROM is running an “SMS bootcamp”, encouraging developers to build tools around SMS. There’s a real challenge in teaching this course in Ethiopia, where the local telephone company ETC is blocking most SMS traffic. Teaching in Addis Ababa, he managed to convince ETC to provide a small supply of unlocked SIM cards, which has let students try applications like movie listings, weather information, craig’s list-type applications, and “crush lists” for automated online flirting.

Posted by Ndesanjo Macha

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Recent Links also in Sub-Saharan Africa

Can eating leeks help your singing voice? Intrigued? well The Ethical co-op blog ponders this, the need to flouridate water, eggs and a new net-metering law in South Africa.

A week after the 10 hostages (including 8 foreign nationals) kidnapped by the Bakassi Freedom Fighters were exchanged for the release of 13 prisoners, Cameroonian blogger Le blog du Prési wonders what a hostage is worth. ”I don't mean ‘what does a hostage cost?'”, he writes. “Even though these would be the worst criminals, are their lives so futile that they can be exchanged for those of other human beings? At the very least, on this path, Cameroon is redefining the rule of clemency, liberating prisoners under duress, and at the same time exposing the victims of these prisoners to their terrorizers.”

From the Kabissa Newletter, a project is profiled: The organization aims to plant trees in thirteen Village communities of Ngoketunjia Division, as a means to fight climate change in Cameroon and the world at large.