Blog entries

How people move money in Africa

Simon Batchelor

Some early results from the new Ria studies - yeah them!

Two week weather forecasts please

Simon Batchelor

So Nigel tells me from his recent research asking farmers in 4 countries about their information needs that many of them are frustrated by the current weather forecasts. A daily forecast is not so much use - they want a two week forecast so they can take those stategic decisions whether to plough, plant or harvest. Makes sense.

Do not shake hands

Simon Batchelor

Nigel made an interesting observation from his trip to Uganda - that whereas in the recent past shaking hands was a long ritual, it has now changed to touching knuckles with a closed fist. This was more so in the villages. When asking why, people say that it is due to ebola - fear of, keeping contact to a minimum. Interesting rapid shift in a very basic cultural greeting! Will it revert to a shake once the ebola fears subside?

Open hardware

Simon Batchelor

At the GK3 recently, Steve Song pointed out that open hardware was becoming an option. Mobile phone circuit diagrams opened up in Australia, were picked up by two small factories in China, and the designer invited to come and see them making his design. Interesting -the factories made circuit but had not previously made phones.

Mind you the working conditions sounded a bit dodgy - soldering by dipping the board into a pan using fingertips!

C4D lunches

Simon Batchelor

Since Jackie is the only person I know who reads this, I should highlight her lunches. C4D is a networking lunch foranyone into C4d and lives near enough to London to make it worthwhile. Jackie is founder and keenie. And it is growing and useful. Kudos to Jackie.

Want to join - email Jackie Davies - wont give you her email without her permission but google her and she will come up, and she is building a c4d site.

Research into use

Simon Batchelor

Met with Research into Use, who are conducting a multi million pound programme for DFID on Natural Resources and Livelihoods. The short version seems to be, DFID spent 200+ Million over the last 30 years on research in Natural Resources, this resulted in 2800 projects. 3 years ago they considered enough was enough and reassessed what they were doing. They noted that the important bit was to get the research used. So they have committed 35+ million to the next 3 (or 4?) [...]

MPesa gets going

Simon Batchelor

I heard yesterday at Chatham House that since its launch 3 months ago, MPesa has 150,000 customers, 430 agents signed up, $6,000,000 in transactions, and 2,500 signing up every day.

This is impressive given that it was about 1000 for the pilot - so almost from standing start!

Interesting report from Vodafone - The Transformational Potential of M-Transactions

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Gamos blog officially open

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