Contributors
Tags


Filed under

Obama

 

 

Apps4 Africa: State Department Driving Collaboration through Competition | The White House

July 30, 2010

More and more, Africans are behind some of the most effective digital tools for driving social change and economic inclusion. Ushahidi, a Kenyan crisis response platform, was used by the U.S. government and the United Nations for emergency response purposes in Haiti; and M-Pesa, Kenya’s mobile money platform, is among the most successful in the world. There are now physical spaces where new ideas live, in the form of tech incubators and co-working spaces, including the Hive Colab in Uganda, the iHub in Kenya, and Limbe Labs in Cameroon with similar spaces set to open in the near future.

Building on the momentum of the President’s Summit on Entrepreneurship and on Secretary Clinton’s call for American support of “Civil Society 2.0,” the State Department has launched Apps4Africa in collaboration with an amazing group of local partners – Appfrica Labs, SODNET and iHub. Apps4Africa, part of Secretary Clinton’s 21st Century Statecraft Initiative, is a regional competition for the best digital tools built by local developers in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania to improve the lives of people in their communities. While small doses of fame and fortune will be awarded to the most creative and useful apps, the most prized outcome of Apps4Africa will be a connected ecosystem of local talent, civil society organizations, and mentors from around the world.

This is how it works: Citizens, civil society organizations, and the public can submit ideas for problems that can be solved through the use of digital technology. For example, the following two ideas were recently introduced by local NGOs in Uganda and Kenya:

  • Vote Duplication Prevention: Governments in East Africa are working to publish voter registration databases. One idea generated was to develop an app that allows election commissions and authorized election observers to keep a real time tally, geo-located by constituency, of who has voted, to ensure that the final tabulation does not exceed the number of votes actually submitted. Such tools could be layered on existing mobile applications to report voter intimidation and fraud.
  • Mobile Math Tests: Assessing the quality of primary school education in rural environments by under-resourced NGOs working on education is a tremendous challenge. Perhaps a well-designed app could provide these NGOs with the ability to assess primary school math education through a set of 5 questions received and answered through mobile phones.

Promising ideas like these can be submitted in a variety of ways, including the www.apps4africa.org website, via Twitter (tweet to @Apps4Africa), and via SMS text message if you are in Kenya. Citizens around the world can then participate by voting good ideas to the top of the site, where technologists can build apps to solve the top challenges.

via whitehouse.gov

The WhiteHouse Blog explains why they feel it's important to nurture local innovators in developing countries, and their involvement in the Apps4Africa contest I'm co-facilitating. Also references my project Hive Colab in Uganda and another TED Fellow's, Erik Hersman, work with the iHub in Kenya!

Filed under  //   ghana   TED   clinton   obama  
Posted by Jon Gosier 

Comments [0]

 

Olivetti Is Typecast Again While Obama Takes The Stage at West Point

December 1, 2009

It's 1:25 am in London and I am watching a live transmission of President Obama talking at West Point about his new Afghan strategy. But I'm distracted by The Guardian website and this article about the writer of No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy parting with his beloved Olivetti typewriter after 50 years:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/dec/01/cormac-mccarthy-auctions-typewriter

Half listening to Obama and half reading the tale of a writer saying good-bye to his much treasured writing companion, I am overcome by a glow of nostalgia about another Olivetti love affair. One called affectionately "Olive" by its owner Louise Brindley, who featured in a Channel 4 documentary I made back in 1997.

http://www.amiranifilms.com/work/documentary/mad_about_machines/dear_olive 

Now back to Obama and Afghanistan. He's saying the US does not seek world domination and America is the nation he most wants to build. I wonder what machines his speech writers wrote those words on. And if they will have a lasting impact.

 

Taghi Amirani

http://www.amiranifilms.com/

@tagz23

Filed under  //   Afghanistan   Amirani Films   Cormac McCarthy   No Country For Old Men   Obama   Olivetti   The Guardian  
Posted by Taghi Amirani 

Comments [0]

 

Obama Takes His Cue from a TED Fellow - Thank you for listening Mr President

March 20, 2009

Just over a week ago, on 14th March 2009, I posted a blog here with a story about my chance encounter with the then Senator Obama on his campaign trail in New Hampshire.  With my tongue loosely in my cheek, but my heart in the right place, I ended the post with some outlandish claims and pie in the sky thinking. Just a plan in embryo to change the world. As Groucho Marx once said in a letter to Sam Zolotow at The New York Times Drama Department:

December 5, 1945

Dear Sam
My Plans are still in embryo. In case you've never been there, this is a small town on the outskirts of wishful thinking.

Before that, in another post on March 10th, I played around with my collection of Nokia mobile phones, using them as a clever writing device to turn myself into an agent of peace and dialogue between our two nations, connecting people, as Nokia would say.

In fact browsing through my posts - a new blogger gets excited when people actually read his stuff, and keeps checking his "hit rate" - I notice I have been banging on about Iran, USA, Obama, dialogue, yada yada...more or less since my first post in January when becoming a TED Fellow dragged me kicking and screaming into the blogosphere. Blogging is on the list of your duties as a TED Fellow as well as shining the shoes of all TED staff and feeding them grapes.

Now, I used to be dismissive of blogging and bloggers, considering the activity the preserve of geeky losers in dingy dirty apartments surrounded by empty Coke cans and dried up pieces of pizza. Going on interminably about inconsequential stuff like the inner workings of their minds - yeah really - computer games and second, third lives, having forgotten to get a first one.

No more. Bloggers are cool. Blogging is the activity of smart, profoundly engaged human beings with good hearts, poetry in their soul, wanting to change the world.

And so as I was busy free-associating in my own blog,  little did I realise that the ramblings of this insignificant blogger in a bright and clean apartment nestled in a lovely London neighbourhood, would have such far reaching consequences on the global stage. Yes, dear reader, President Obama and his staff actually READ my blog, and what's more, ACT on it. 

This morning, on the occasion of Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, first day of spring (Vernal Equinox), I wake up to the news that President Obama has sent a direct video message to the Iranian people. 

Cup of tea in hand watching it on the White House's own site - here for best wide screen HD quality - made a small drop of tear of joy roll down my spring rosy cheeks. 

He does listen! 

Here's another example: One of the people I follow on twitter is Evan Williams (@ev), the co-founder of twitter. Through him I started following Chris Sacca (@sacca) who on his twitter page describes himself so:

Bio When not making people laugh, I advise startups like Twitter, ski, kitesurf, and eat. Lots of eating.

On 5th March @sacca posted the following tweet: 

I am going to the White House tomorrow morning, and I need your help: http://bit.ly/5OKHq

10:09 PM Mar 5th from web

 

And then the next day this:

Unless the Secret Service decides that my prior overheards disqualify me for entry, I should be in Barack's house soon. Last min thoughts?

6:36 PM Mar 6th from Tweetie


To which in a moment of impulse  I replied to his tweet thus:

@sacca engage with Iranian/American entrepreneurs: they have serious proven business sense and connections to Iran -> Mid East Peace

6:45 PM Mar 6th from web

 

Did he pass on the idea? In his video message today Obama acknowledges the contribution of Iranian/American community. So, who knows?

Let me wish all my Iranian friends a Happy Happy New Year and all non Iranians a glorious spring time. New beginnings indeed. Thanks Barack. You're the man!

Taghi Amirani
TED Fellow 2009

@tagz23

Filed under  //   Iran   Norouz   Obama   TED   TED Fellows  
Posted by Taghi Amirani 

Comments [0]

 

Today Iran, UK and US, tomorrow the WORLD

March 10, 2009

Phone

 

Some random fragments of TED reflections: 3

When I visit my home country Iran, I take an old Nokia 6320i with me. It uses an Iranian SIM with my Iranian number. Reception is great in almost all corners of the country. The phone which carries my 300 or so contacts out there, is pretty basic, has some useful features including an OK camera. Of course this Nokia listens to me speaking Persian all the time and witnesses all manner of peculiar conversational gymnastics and maneuvers, that make communication between Iranians one of the most complex and multi-layered puzzles in the world. Try to decipher at your peril. You can talk to an Iranian for an hour and not receive or impart any useful information whatsoever. Or you can utter a short sentence and speak volumes with depth, meaning, poetry and emotion all wrapped in subtle and delicate nuance. It's frustrating but I love it! This Nokia is well versed in "Persian speak" and can soon negotiate its own way around the maze of linguistic challenges. It has had a pretty hard time on my last two visits researching the "Fatherland" documentary.

When in the US I use a Nokia 6030 with my American T-Mobile SIM and number. This phone is so basic and innocent I have just recently introduced it to the joys of text. It has all my US based friends and work colleagues on it and its ring-tone is the jingly ring ring, like the ones your hear in B&W movies with Bogart and Bergman. The conversations this phone listens to are often over-excited and long (me), are about arranging brunches all day, every day, take place at airports, car rental offices, railway stations, and sometimes are with PBS/Nat Geo people and cool filmmakers. These American conversations are generally "what you hear is what you get" with two exceptions: US Foreign policy* (see below), and talking to Iranians (see above). But most of my US calls normally leave me uplifted and light.  It's that American upbeat, can do, positive thing, or it's just me projecting. Either way this phone has a pretty easy time most of the time. 

When in the UK which is where I spend most of my time I'm on the Nokia 6300 on the Orange network, who have a great reputation for supporting British cinema and filmmakers. This phone is slim, elegant and easy to use. Its camera is actually quite good, taking pictures with a certain level of grain that gives the photos a textured painterly look. It has hundreds of contacts on it covering just about everyone I know, including late night pizza and curry delivery joints, friends from 20 years ago to the new dentist I called today for an appointment. This Nokia gets the English version of me, sometimes witty in a self-deprecating way, sometimes bitingly sarcastic, but usually restrained. The 6300 has heard it all; late night calls from friends with a broken heart needing a listening ear, me talking nervously in clumsy Woody Allen style to girls I've had a crush on, me ranting at the plumber for not showing up, cold calls from marketing weirdoes, me pitching ideas to BBC execs...the lot. Boy, if this Nokia could talk...

Now, we can have a whole lot of very profound and complex discussions about cultural identity, how the language we speak shapes our personality, the different masks we wear, or how we think, feel or even experience the world depends on what language we speak. But that's another blog. 

My multi phoned split identity world changed on 2nd February 2009 at the TED Fellows opening reception when the lovely Afdhel Aziz, Nokia's Senior Marketing Manager, Global Sponsorships and Partnerships, pulled a fantastic magic trick out of a gift bag: Ladies and gentlemen, he gave us the Nokia E71.

The surprise sound of the fellows' jaws dropping on the deck was deafening. Apparently this device can do just about everything short of making the tea in the morning when you wake up. And as if that wasn't enough Nokia have also unlocked it so it can work anywhere in the world.

And THERE is my chance at last.  No more 3-phone Tags. Now that I can merge all my contacts from Iran, UK, US and all over, into one single phone with unlimited contact memory; now that I can talk to any of them at anytime from anywhere from one phone, anything could happen. I applied to the TED Fellowship on the premise that if the TED community is to survive and flourish it needs someone like me bridging East and West. Making peace and love between Iran and the US first, and the West in general.

Let my new Nokia E71 be the metaphor for that bridge, let it connect people by talking via me. Let it bring peace to all mankind and women who are just as kind.

*In the dark days of Bush foreign policy in relation to Iran, whenever he said "all options are on the table", that meant we're willing to bomb the hell out of people, if they don't do as we say. Now the options on Obama's table seem to include talking to everyone. Why even just this week he said he would consider talking to the Taliban. Well, bombing the hell out of two ancient civilisations in the Middle East doesn't seem to have made them love Americans more. So talking may be an option. Afdhel, sponsorship and partnership opportunities here for Nokia?!

Now, my dear Fellow Rom, what was all that stuff about latest firmware, download this and that, etc? Are you telling me this thing is out of date before I've even unpacked it?!

 

Taghi Amirani
TED Fellow 2009

@tagz23

Filed under  //   Iran   Nokia E71   Obama   Orange   TED Fellows  
Posted by Taghi Amirani 

Comments [6]