You are cordially invited to participate at our next MoMo mHealth meeting to be hosted by Hive Colab Monday 29th April starting 5:30 PM.

Mobile phone ownership by health facility workers is quickly becoming universal. With advances in the electronic management of human resources and powerful SMS communications tools, it is now possible to eliminate the traditional bottlenecks of distance and time. Whether mobilizing health workers for an immunization campaign, polling them on whether the most recent delivery of medicines arrived, or simply connecting them with their District supervisors to answer basic questions, mobile phones have already changed the way in which we communicate.

New opportunities call for new strategies, as the mobile phone revolution in Africa has opened doors that didn’t exist even a few years ago. In our next MoMo event, we will be discussing with Government, United Nations, Non Government Organizations, and the Private Sector emerging strategies and best practices, as well opportunities to create further synergies between existing tools.

An international panel of experts will describe the current state of play,  emerging trends, and will want to hear your views. We expect a good turnout so please register if you intend to participate.

You are cordially invited to attend MoMo Kampala’s next meeting on the theme How can ICT help farmers?, to be hosted by Victoria University, on Monday 11th February starting 5:30 PM.

Agriculture is critical to Ugandans — probably our most important sector.  Almost 70 percent of Ugandan households farm for their livelihoods.  Our farmers’ productivity is far lower than it could be for a variety of reasons, many out of their control.  But things can improve if farmers know about better cropping techniques, know more about what types of seeds and fertilizers to use, and what do to if a disease breaks out.  Even knowing their plot sizes can help them apply the right amount of inputs and save money.   Sharing local knowledge and solutions also helps.

Our next Mobile Monday Kampala meeting will focus on ways public and private sector players are trying to harness ICT to help Uganda’s farmers.  This includes mobile phone applications for entry level, feature or smart phones, but also better ways to use radio, images and low cost video.  Our speakers will discuss what they have learned, what the biggest challenges are, what appears to be working in Uganda and across sub-Saharan Africa.  They will touch on how hard it is to make such ICT applications sustainable without on-going donor support and scalable to the millions of farmers who might benefit.  They will also zero in on efforts to measure the impact of these ICT applications and determine whether or not they are just “cool” or actually cost effective approaches to helping farmers.

“The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed”

You are cordially invited to attend MoMo Kampala’s next meeting to be hosted by Hive Colab, catering sponsored by Smile Telecom, at the Hive on Monday 19th November starting 5:30 PM.

Our panel of speakers will help us to visualize the possibilities, in our increasingly connected world, brought to us by broadband. These include new ways of working, tools that enable us to Work from home, video conferencing, cloud based storage and backup. How will images and sounds be brought to us by faster Internet to stimulate our minds and souls, IPTV, music downloads, streaming movies, online multi-player gaming, mobile education? And consider how mobile diagnosis, health consultation at home or on the move will help keep us healthy and happier.

And how will improved access to the Internet of things, digital interactions between people and things, make our lives simpler and enable us to manage our affairs more effectively, by our making better decisions more easily, and our transactions more convenient? How will E-commerce, m-agriculture, mobile financial services actually create wealth, especially in under served communities, with Mobile Broadband as a key Business Enabler?

Our mobile phones have become a key social object capable of empowering us to multitask. Mobiles influence our patterns of behaviour, consumption, in all-pervasive ways. Internet-enabled mobile phones now exceed desktop computers; mobility, touch-screen devices have revolutionized how we find and view content, how we get things done, and act as a motor for change and innovation.

What are the prospects for ubiquitous broadband; what are the obstacles and how can we overcome them? Come get a glimpse of the future of broadband in Uganda. Please Register in Advance Here.

You are cordially invited to How technologies can serve the poetics and politics of everyday life, hosted and sponsored by Victoria University Monday 8th October.

Technology is usually framed in terms of efficiency and productivity. Happily, life has much more to offer, and paying attention to the particular, the ephemeral, and the contentious, can lead to significant innovation. The Center for Civic Media built technologies for geographic communities, and resulted in well-known enterprises such as publiclaboratory.org andsourcemap.com. His other research group, the Computing Culture group, focused on technologies of poetry and politics.

Prof Chris Csikszentmihalyi will describe the work of his two research groups at the premiere technical campus in the United States, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and how they used inspiration from art, activism, and politics to create popular new sociotechnical systems.

An Xiao Mina, a renowned expert on Internet memes, will also talk about the role of memes in both China and the English-speaking world. Mina is known for her work as designer, as well as her contributions to the studio of Ai Wei Wei. Mina is currently a graduate student in the Media Design Practices department at Art Center.

Csikszentmihalyi and Mina are part of a larger group of researchers from Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. They are working with UNICEF to prototype new designs for youth engagement and expression, so they will also talk about the projects they will be conducting in Uganda, and what they are hoping to learn from the local technology community.

Please register at: http://momoklatechpoeticspolitics.eventbrite.com

Sure to be one of the highlights of the year!

You are cordially invited to Get the vision: Geospatial Infrastructure Points the Way to more Efficient Development, to be hosted by Outbox on Monday 13 August starting 5:30 PM. The aim of our next MoMo Kampala meeting is to help us to better appreciate the concept of geospatial information and its relevance to our daily lives.

Outbox Hub, Soliz House, 4th Floor
Lumumba Avenue, Kampala, Uganda
Monday, August 13, 2012 at 5:30 PM
Please Register in Advance Here.

Do you have any idea how tremendously valuable geospatial information is to national development and planning? Indeed it is a powerful force for good for your own family’s prosperity.

In a nutshell, Spatial Data Infrastructure, SDI, and Geographical Information System, GIS, are closely related tools that can assist us in visualizing the world around us, improving our visual acuity, as it were, as one who is near sighted may do simply by being fitted with a pair of eyeglasses. And it is through the accurate mapping of those blank spaces you may have noticed on Google Maps or Open Street Map, that we pave the way ahead for more efficient development.

Mapping parties organized by indigenous youth groups such as the Scouts or Rotaract Clubs identify the names and locations of streets, schools, water points, health facilities, latrines, fuel stations etc., complete with contact details, one town or village after another, until the map has been populated and we see more clearly what infrastructure is already in place there and what may be missing.

These improved views afford us opportunities to work together in greater harmony as a community and as a nation. They enable us to be more circumspect in our planning, in scouting out and selecting better ways to move forward. As a consequence we will have greater confidence in our development planning abilities.

It’s all about mapping, and one of the exciting things about SDI and GIS is that it should soon be literally at our fingertips; we shall all have a role to play in this venture, so plan to get mapping today! Please note that you do NOT need to print out tickets.

Incidentally the Urban TV Innovate programme broadcast about our MoMo on How can innovative mHealth strategies improve healthcare in Uganda is available online here.

You are cordially invited to MoMo Kampala's next meeting  on the theme, Can innovative mHealth strategies overcome bottlenecks in delivery of healthcare in Uganda? Hive Colab Monday 25th June, starting 5:30 PM

To ensure healthy outcomes in underserved communities, households need to be able to access essential health, HIV and nutrition information and services for pregnant mothers and their children along with the continuum-of-care. To bridge the access gap to basic healthcare, the Ministry of Health is increasingly reliant upon front-line Community Health Workers to link mothers & their children to the larger healthcare system.

Mobile technologies offer an unprecedented opportunity to address longstanding bottlenecks that have long been a barrier to healthy outcomes. Strategic use of these technologies can solve problems of time, distance and coordination in the delivery of health services. The Ministry of Health and development partners have demonstrated that integrating mobile technologies into health systems can help overcome bottlenecks.

Solving these issues can provide opportunities for linking community health services to the formal health system in underserved and remote communities, and offer the ability to directly target and interact with even the most remote health consumers.

Yet challenges remain. Many of these mHealth initiatives have focused on addressing bottlenecks within a single vertical programme and may not always link to foundational eHealth systems such as DHIS2 (District Health Information Software) being adopted by partner governments. Others lock government into systems that have hidden costs, or require extensive support.

In light of the recent moratorium on new eHealth initiatives in Uganda, we have an unprecedented opportunity to step back and reflect on what guiding principles should be adopted; what support can be provided to the Ministry of Health for developing policies and coordination mechanisms required to guide development partners and the private sector.

Some key questions to consider include:
What is the national vision for contributing effectively to the growing eHealth ecosystem; what guiding principles need to be adopted with regard to governance, ownership, costing, sustainability, piloting and scale-up? What role should the Ministry of Health play in ensuring that newly emerging eHealth tools will fit into an overall scheme of healthcare guidelines, and ensuring that they will be interoperable? What role do institutional capacity building initiatives such as DHIS2 have in mediating healthcare outcomes? How do we empower government to help create an enabling ecosystem that provides a space for innovation and testing, while allowing outside interest groups to assist in mapping the way ahead?

These are some of the issues we will address through our presentations and panel discussions.

For more details and to register visit: http://innovativemhealthstrategies.eventbrite.com/

You are cordially invited to attend Mobile Monday Kampala’s Startup Showcase to be hosted by Victoria University on Monday 14th May starting at 5:30 PM.  Ten startups will each be presenting a five-minute elevator pitch about their products.

After the pitches our Chair and Moderator will ask pertinent questions, and then we will pass the cordless mike around to our delegates for further questions and comments.

See below the list of ten companies, click here to download/view the Programme .pdf

Please register early as seats will be at a premium!

http://momokampalastartupshowcase.eventbrite.com/

Looking forward to another scintillating Mobile Monday Kampala.  Thanks go out to Victoria University for their kind hospitality!

Kind regards, Daniel

We shall enjoy elevator pitches for the following ten applications:

DataBud              MyZiki           Bet OTM          2chakale          Mambu Mobile Credit Union

Sonda                  Story Spaces          mPoultry          Easy Order          Wordbook

Our next Mobile Monday Kampala meeting, on the theme, “Research & ideation to design & development innovation for mobile financial services: Lessons learned from the ideation process” will be a further exploration of the theme of our February meeting, with more of a focus on ideation.

We are pleased to announce that our MoMo meeting will be hosted by Google Uganda Monday 19th March from 5:30 PM. The event will be available live on G+ hangout. Thanks very much Google!

We want to learn from speakers about their companies’ experiences in discovering the needs of their clients in the mobile payments arena, by their sharing with us the learnings they gained, even through making mistakes along the way towards developing a successful product.

We are living in times where innovations are the drivers of the economies. ICT as a sector is witnessing tremendous changes and it is these changes that are shaping our economies, and lifestyles. The power of a smartphone far exceeds that of a personal computer ten years ago. The full potential that these devices have demonstrated will only be realized if we pay attention to adding value by developing applications that bring meaning to life and simplify.

The design process is at least as important as the application coding, and we must we pay attention to understanding the needs of the communities while designing these applications. The usability of the product is paramount. The design topics and issues that are to be discussed are extremely important and timely to the Uganda community.

Google Uganda
Soliz House, Lumumba Avenue
Nakasero, Kampala, Kampala
Monday, March 19, 2012 at 5:30 PM

If you missed last month’s MoMo you can see the keynote on YouTube, here’s the link for Part One. For other parts see momokla.ug, and for some context you might like to read the blog, Brave new cash-lite society, in the Latest News section.

Looking forward to seeing you at Google next Monday 19th March.

You will be glad to know that Mafuta Go won the Ringmasters Award at the Mobile World Congress Premier Awards in Barcelona.

Subsequent to Mafuta Go's having been selected by the six jurors at our MoMo Kampala AppCircus as the Uganda AppCiircus nominee, Christine Ampaire having given the three-minute elevator pitch on behalf of her team, AppCircus organizers selected Mafuta Go, out of fifty or more contenders, as one of twenty finalists to present on stage at one of the preeminent mobile events of the year, the  Premier Awards, as a prelude and opening to the Mobile World Congress.

And yesterday evening the big event was capped by Christine's accepting the Ringmaster's Award on behalf of her team in front of a thousand or more delegates, including more VIPs than you could shake a stick at! They have done Uganda proud, and no doubt a time for celebration.

“The Mobile Premier Awards is now one of the traditional highlights at MWC in Barcelona. Organized by App Circus, the event comes as the conclusion of a one-year international competition process to showcase the best apps. For the finalists, which were shortlisted among regional winners, the event came as an opportunity to pitch their project to a professional jury, the event’s organizers and to the audience, who all picked up a winner” Here's a link to the full article about the event: http://thenextweb.com/mwc/2012/02/27/the-mobile-premier-awards-announce-winners-at-mwc/  (There are links to the finalists in the article) There's a lovely photo of Christine, together with Terry Karungi on the MoMo Kampala website's photo carousel.

Thanks to all for helping to make this happen.

With kind regards, Daniel

Event: MoMo Kampala Presents: Research & ideation to design & development innovation: lessons learned

Dear MoMo Kampala Delegate,

On behalf of Mobile Monday Kampala I would like to thank you for contributing to making our MoMo Kampala meeting, Research & ideation to design and development innovation: lessons learned another truly memorable event.

Thanks to our Chair, Sean Paavo Krepp, Grameen Foundation Uganda Country Director who did a superb job of moderating the meeting, and to Sean and the AppLab team who played a major role in organizing the event.  Thanks to Victoria University, their Executive Director, Simo S Dubajic, for hosting at a most inspiring venue with every facility, and thanks to Orange Uganda for sponsoring the delicious catering, by Endiro Coffee and supplying the Orange Internet everywhere to over 170 delegates.  Thanks to Media 256, Isaac Oboth, for sponsoring the filming of the meeting, thanks also to SMS Media for their fantastic reception crew who welcomed delegates and handed out the MoMo name tags, thanks also to Mountbatten for sponsoring the hosting of MoMoKla.ug, and to Joseph Owino and Douglas Onyango our webmasters.  And thanks also to Yo Uganda and UGO for their continued sponsorship and support.

We are grateful for the warm welcome extended to delegates by Victoria University’s Vice Chancellor, Dr David Young, and we extend hearty thanks to our Guest of Honour, the Honourable Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, Uganda’s Minister for ICT, for opening the meeting and giving opening remarks that set the scene. 

I am sure you will agree that it was an exhilarating evening, with a scintellating keynote address given by frog founder and Strategy Director, Ravi Chhatpar, who was visiting Uganda from Shanghai,and a fine presentation on Design in Service Delivery by Design without Borders’ Project Manager Kristoffer Leivestad-Olson, who had come from Oslo, Norway, at –20 degrees Celsius, with the fifty degree difference in climate it was quite an abrupt change and challenge.

I am glad to announce that the Programme for our Design and Develop MoMo, with bios of speakers, together with presentation slides, and photos on our carousel, have been available since almost a week, and quite pleased to announce that the keynote address is available on YouTubeYouTube of MoMo Kampala Design & Develop Keynote with Ravi Chhatpar.  Congratulations to Isaac Oboth and the Media 256 team for an amazing job of putting together the film.  Have a look.

Part One: http://youtu.be/rLROaMLXIYs

Part Two: http://youtu.be/n-0DOtBk_BQ

Part Three: http://youtu.be/VdhhjKf4-hk

Visit www.momokla.ug for more details.

We are organizing our next MoMo on a mobile financial services theme, for March so keep your ear to the ground.  Apropos of which you should be able to get a foretaste if you look in the February edition of Dispatch.ug under Technology or Business.

If you or your company would like to sponsor or host a Mobile Monday Kampala event please don't hesitate to contact us.

Best to all, Daniel