Information Systems Research Forum

Mobile technology, grassroots NGOs and the entrepreneur: The picture from Africa

Ken Banks
kiwanja.net

1200 - 1330
Thursday 4 February 2010

Room NAB 4.21

Despite the promise, the majority of mobile technology solutions are only meeting the needs of a small percentage of organisations who could benefit from them. This talk will discuss the impact of mobile technology in developing world - with an emphasis on the African continent - and how local entrepreneurs are finding new and innovative ways of exploiting this rapidly advancing technology. It will also discuss how this empowers grassroots NGOs, provide the history and background to his FrontlineSMS text messaging platform, and highlight some of the challenges in developing mobile tools which work in resource-constrained environments.

Ken Banks is  founder of kiwanja.net; he devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world, and has spent the last 17 years working on projects in Africa. Ken graduated from Sussex University with honours in Social Anthropology with Development Studies, and was awarded a Stanford University Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship in 2006, and named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow in 2008. In 2009 he was named a Laureate of the Tech Awards, an international awards program which honours innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity.

Ken's work was initially supported by the MacArthur Foundation, and he is the current recipient of grants from the Open Society Institute, Rockefeller Foundation, HIVOS and the Hewlett Foundation

If you are a visitor from outside LSE, please send a confirmation to b.d.eaton@lse.ac.uk. You will need to sign in at the reception desk of the New Academic Building. Please note places will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis - registration is not required for LSE students and staff.

Please note that public events organised by ISIG are normally videoed and streamed from our website. If you do not wish to appear in the video please inform the camera operator before the start of the session and seat yourself where you will not be inadvertently be in the field of view of the camera. If you do not inform us of your wish not to be recorded we will presume your consent to being included in the video.

For any further queries regarding this seminar or to request information about future events please contact Frances White. Research Coordinator.

page last updated 08 February, 2010

^