Stanford University

Mobile Technology: Empowering the Grassroots

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Abstract
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. In his talk, Ken Banks will discuss how he empowers grassroots NGOs, provide the history and background to FrontlineSMS, and highlight some of the challenges in developing mobile tools which work in resource-constrained environments

Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world, and has spent the last 16 years working on projects in Africa. Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS, an award-winning text messaging-based field communication system designed to empower grassroots non-profit organisations. 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 has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Institute, and he is the current recipient of a grant from the Hewlett Foundation

Summary of the Seminar
Ken Banks, the founder of kiwanja.net, spoke about the importance of technology solutions that meet the needs of those working in the developing world and his own work in this area through FrontlineSMS.

While current excitement in the technology world may be focused on increasing centralization through cloud computing, this means little to people working in the developing world where internet connectivity is unavailable or unreliable.  Too little investment is going into building tools that will genuinely assist the work many non-profits are doing now.

Ken developed FrontlineSMS to tap into the potential of mobile phones, which are now widely available and used in the developing world. This is a two way communication system that can be used anywhere where there is a mobile phone signal.  FrontlineSMS is available as a free download and Ken's approach has been not to dictate implementation but rather to allow people to use this very general tool in whatever ways meet their particular needs. This has resulted in diverse applications, for example:

  • Monitoring election practices in Nigeria in 2007
  • Sending security alerts to humanitarian workers in conflict areas of Afghanistan
  • Encouraging young people to take part in elections in Azerbaijan
  • Updating local people on the location of speeches during President Obama's visit to Ghana

There is also great potential to combine FrontlineSMS with traditional media, such as radio, that is already widespread throughout Africa, to make this much more interactive.

Ken offered a number of points of guidance for those thinking about designing technology with social applications:

  • Work with the equipment that people already have at their disposal
  • Make equipment easy to assemble and intuitive
  • Price it at a level people can afford
  • Think about how use can be replicated - how will other NGOs find out about it?
  • Assume a situation of no internet connectivity
  • Where possible, give users an ability to connect with others - for example through a forum (this has been particularly successful at FrontlineSMS, with a third of those who download the software joining the online community)
  • Don't let a social science approach dominate - it is much better to think in a multi-disciplinary way
  • Use technology that is appropriate to the context - don't bring in tools that require knowledge and equipment not already held in the community
  • Collaborate, don't compete. Sometimes NGOs can rush to do the same things; examples of genuine cooperation are hard to find

Looking ahead, Ken will be developing functionality for FrontlineSMS that makes use of internet connectivity where this is available. He is also working on finding additional funding to help organizations pay for text messages.

Wallenberg Theater
Bldg 160

Ken Banks Founder Speaker kiwanja.net
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series

Fractured Militaries: Armed Forces and Transitions from Authoritarian Rule in Asia

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Under what conditions are autocratic regimes apt to break down when popular protests against them break out?  Prof. Lee will showcase and explain the decisive role of armed forces in reinforcing or undermining the prolongation of authoritarian rule.  He will offer a theoretical framework and illustrate it with two contrasting cases:  the June 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square, where the Chinese military suppressed protesters and safeguarded the regime; and the People Power revolt in Manila in February 1986, when the Philippine military swung its weight in favor of liberalization.

Terence Lee is associate editor of Armed Forces and Society.  His writings have appeared in Asian Survey, Armed Forces and Society, Comparative Political Studies, and Foreign Policy.  He studies civil-military relations, military organizations, and international security; other interests include Southeast Asian politics and political science theories.  He was formerly an assistant professor in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), and a postdoctoral fellow in the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard.  His PhD and MA are in political science from the University of Washington, Seattle.  Other degrees include a master’s in strategic studies from NTU and a University of Wisconsin-Madison BA (with Distinction) in political science and Southeast Asian Studies.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Terence Lee Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science Speaker National University of Singapore
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Payne Distinguished Lecture Series 2009 Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence and National Security, Lecture 3: Anticipating Opportunities: Using Intelligence to Shape the Future

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Thomas Fingar, the 2009 Payne Distinguished Lecturer and former Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis and Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, will give the third Payne Distinguished Lecture on October 21, 2009, in the Bechtel Conference Center, 616 Serra Street.

The theme for the 2009-10 series is Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence and National Security.  Dr. Fingar's third lecture will be titled, "Anticipating Opportunities: Using Intelligence to Shape the Future."

Dr. Thomas Fingar is Payne Distinguished Lecturer in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. From May 2005 through December 2008, he served as the first Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis and, concurrently, as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

Dr. Fingar served previously as Assistant Secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary (2001-2003), Deputy Assistant Secretary for Analysis (1994-2000), Director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-1994), and Chief of the China Division (1986-1989). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including Senior Research Associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control. Dr. Fingar is a graduate of Cornell University (A.B. in Government and History, 1968), and Stanford University (M.A., 1969 and Ph.D., 1977 both in Political Science).

The Payne Lectureship is named for Frank E. Payne and Arthur W. Payne, brothers who gained an appreciation for global problems through their international business operations.

The Payne Distinguished Lecturer is chosen for his or her international reputation as a leader, with an emphasis on visionary thinking; a broad, practical grasp of a given field; and the capacity to clearly articulate an important perspective on the global community and its challenges.

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Bechtel Conference Center

Thomas Fingar

Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C-327
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-9149 (650) 723-6530
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Affiliated Scholar at The Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC)
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Thomas Fingar is an affiliate at the The Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow from 2010 through 2015 and the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 2009.

From 2005 through 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Fingar served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-01 and 2004-05), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001-03), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994-2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-94), and chief of the China Division (1986-89). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

Fingar is a graduate of Cornell University (A.B. in Government and History, 1968), and Stanford University (M.A., 1969 and Ph.D., 1977 both in political science). His most recent books are From Mandate to Blueprint: Lessons from Intelligence Reform (Stanford University Press, 2021), Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford University Press, 2011), The New Great Game: China and South and Central Asia in the Era of Reform, editor (Stanford University Press, 2016), Uneasy Partnerships: China and Japan, the Koreas, and Russia in the Era of Reform (Stanford, 2017), and Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China’s Future, co-edited with Jean Oi (Stanford, 2020). His most recent article is, "The Role of Intelligence in Countering Illicit Nuclear-Related Procurement,” in Matthew Bunn, Martin B. Malin, William C. Potter, and Leonard S Spector, eds., Preventing Black Market Trade in Nuclear Technology (Cambridge, 2018)."

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. Fingar Former Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis; Chairman of the National Intelligence Council; Payne Distinguished Lecturer Speaker
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Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Lecture Series

Promoting Clean Development Competing Market Mechanisms Post-2012

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(Excerpt) According to climate scientists, averting the worst consequences of climate change requires that the increase in global temperature should be limited to 2°C (or 3.6°F). to achieve that objective, global emissions of green house gases (GHGs)—the main human cause of global warming—must be reduced to 50 percent of 1990 levels by 2050.

The key to successful climate change abatement at those scales lies in leveraging the collective actions of developed and developing countries. Cumulatively, developed countries have been responsible for most human emissions of GHGs. that picture will be quite different in the future as emissions from the developing world take over the top mantle. Given this dynamic, there is a general agreement internationally that developed countries will lead emissions reductions efforts and that developing countries will follow with “nationally ap- propriate mitigation actions.” turning that agreement into environmentally beneficial action requires close international coordination between the developed and developing countries in allocating the responsibility for the necessary reductions and following up with credible actions. However, the instruments employed so far to promote the necessary collective action have proved to be insufficient, unscalable, and questionable in terms of environmental benefit and economic efficiency.

Currently, the most important and visible link be- tween developed and developing countries’ efforts on climate change is the Clean development Mechanism (CdM). the CdM uses market mechanisms—the “carbon markets”—to direct funding from developed countries to those projects in developing countries that lead to reductions in emissions of warming gases. In reality, the experience with the CdM has been mixed at best since its inception in 2006. while the CdM has successfully channeled funding to many worthy projects that reduce emissions of warming gasses, it has also spawned myriad projects with little environmental benefits. overall, the CdM has led to a significant overpayment by developed countries for largely dubious emissions reductions in developing countries.

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Harvard International Review
Authors
Varun Rai

Shared Responsibilities for Nuclear Disarmament

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Interest in nuclear disarmament has grown rapidly in recent years. Starting with the 2007 Wall Street Journal article by four former U.S. statesmen-George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry, and Sam Nunn-and followed by endorsements from similar sets of former leaders from the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Australia, and Italy, the support for global nuclear disarmament has spread. The Japanese and Australian governments announced the creation of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament in June 2008. Both Senators John McCain and Barack Obama explicitly supported the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons during the 2008 election campaign. In April 2009, at the London Summit, President Barack Obama and President Dmitri Medvedev called for pragmatic U.S. and Russian steps toward nuclear disarmament, and President Obama then dramatically reaffirmed "clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons" in his speech in Prague.

There is a simple explanation for these statements supporting nuclear disarmament: all states that have joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are committed "to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament." In the United States, moreover, under Clause 2 of Article 6 of the Constitution, a treaty commitment is "the supreme Law of the Land." To af1/2rm the U.S. commitment to seek a world without nuclear weapons is therefore simply promising that the U.S. government will follow U.S. law.

A closer reading of these various declarations, however, reveals both the complexity of motives and the multiplicity of fears behind the current surge in support of nuclear disarmament. Some declarations emphasize concerns that the current behavior of nuclear-weapons states (NWS) signals to non-nuclear-weapons states (NNWS) that they, too, will need nuclear weapons in the future to meet their national security requirements. Other disarmament advocates stress the growth of global terrorism and the need to reduce the number of weapons and the amount of fissile material that could be stolen or sold to terrorist groups. Some argue that the risk of nuclear weapons accidents or launching nuclear missiles on false warning cannot be entirely eliminated, despite sustained efforts to do so, and thus believe that nuclear deterrence will inevitably fail over time, especially if large arsenals are maintained and new nuclear states, with weak command-and- control systems, emerge.

Perhaps the most widespread motivation for disarmament is the belief that future progress by the NWS to disarm will strongly influence the future willingness of the NNWS to stay within the NPT. If this is true, then the choice we face for the future is not between the current nuclear order of eight or nine NWS and a nuclear-weapons- free world. Rather, the choice we face is between moving toward a nuclear- weapons-free world or, to borrow Henry Rowen's phrase, "moving toward life in a nuclear armed crowd."

There are, of course, many critics of the nuclear disarmament vision. Some critics focus on the problems of how to prevent nuclear weapons "breakout" scenarios in a future world in which many more countries are "latent" NWS because of the spread of uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing capabilities to meet the global demand for fuel for nuclear power reactors. Others have expressed fears that deep nuclear arms reductions will inadvertently lead to nuclear proliferation by encouraging U.S. allies currently living under "the U.S. nuclear umbrella" of extended deterrence to pursue their own nuclear weapons for national security reasons. Other critics worry about the "instability of small numbers" problem, fearing that conventional wars would break out in a nuclear disarmed world, and that this risks a rapid nuclear rearmament race by former NWS that would lead to nuclear first use and victory by the more prepared government.

Some critics of disarmament falsely complain about nonexistent proposals for U.S. unilateral disarmament. Frank Gaffney, for example, asserts that there has been "a 17 year-long unilateral U.S. nuclear freeze" and claims that President Obama "stands to transform the ‘world's only superpower' into a nuclear impotent." More serious critics focus on those problems-the growth and potential breakout of latent NWS, the future of extended deterrence, the enforcement of disarmament, and the potential instability of small numbers-that concern mutual nuclear disarmament. These legitimate concerns must be addressed in a credible manner if significant progress is to be made toward the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world.

To address these problems adequately, the current nuclear disarmament effort must be transformed from a debate among leaders in the NWS to a coordinated global effort of shared responsibilities between NWS and NNWS. This essay outlines a new conceptual framework that is needed to encourage NWS and NNWS to share responsibilities for designing a future nuclear-fuel-cycle regime, rethinking extended deterrence, and addressing nuclear breakout dangers while simultaneously contributing to the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.

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Daedalus
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Scott D. Sagan

A New Look at The Generalissimo - and at China

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Jay Taylor, former Director of Analysis for Asia and Pacific Affairs at the State Department and a staff member of the White House National Security Council for East Asia, is currently a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. He obtained his MA in Far Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan and BA from Vanderbilt University. He is the author of The Generalissimo's Son: Chiang Ching-kuo and the Revolutions in China and Taiwan (Harvard, 2000), and The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China (Harvard, 2009). 

Taylor will give a talk on Chiang Kai-shek's role in modern and contemporary China. For historians, a new, balanced, more complex, and uniquely sourced examination of the life of Chiang Kai-shek may reshape the history of the rise of communism and the failure of democracy in China. For political scientists, it may suggest that the vision that drives China today is that of Chiang Kai-shek, not Mao Zedong.

Stauffer Auditorium
Herbert Hoover Memorial Bldg.
Stanford University

Jay Taylor Research Associate Speaker Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University
Seminars

Giving Farmers a Voice

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Abstract
Improving the productivity of small farmers is essential for economic development in most poor countries.  Providing access to timely and relevant information could improve the opportunities available to farmers.  However, there are significant challenges related to literacy, infrastructure, access to technology and social, cultural, institutional and linguistic gaps between producers and consumers of knowledge.  The increased adoption of mobile phones is rapidly reducing the physical barriers of access.  Providing voice-based services via low-cost handsets could empower farmers to become producers as well as consumers of knowledge.  In this talk, I discuss several applications my students and I are developing to explore this potential.  Avaaj Otalo (Gujarati for "voice stoop") is the voice-based equivalent of an online discussion board. Farmers and agricultural experts call a toll-free line to ask questions, provide answers, and listen to each others questions, answers and experiences.  We conducted a six-month trial deployment of Avaaj Otalo with fifty farmers in Gujarat, India. Farmers found it useful to learn both from experts and other farmers, sharing advice on many topics - including the best time to sow fodder, recipes for organic pesticides, and homemade devices to scare away wild pigs at night. Digital ICS allows coffee cooperatives to monitor quality and organic certification requirements, and to be more responsive to farmers' needs.  Field inspectors use mobile phones to document growing conditions and record farmers questions and comments through a combination of text, audio and images.  In a six-month trial deployment, the system significantly reduced operational costs, saving the cooperative approximately $10,000 a year.  The cooperative also obtained richer feedback from its members, which can be used for targeting extension, improving decision-making and reaching out to consumers.  In both of these systems, voice provides not only an accessible interface to information, but a medium for aggregating and representing knowledge itself.  We found this approach more suitable for engaging communities more comfortable with oral forms of communication, for whom text and structured data represent significant barriers to expression.  Most importantly, we have found that rural communities have a deep desire to be "heard", and simply need the tools required to define and achieve "development" on their own terms.

Tapan Parikh's research focuses on the use of computing to support sustainable economic development across the World. I want to learn how to build appropriate, affordable information systems; systems that are accessible to end users, support learning and reinforce community efforts towards empowerment, economic development and sustainable use of natural resources. Some specific topics that I am interested in include human-computer interaction (HCI), mobile computing and information systems supporting microfinance, smallholder agriculture and global health

Summary of the Seminar
Tapan Parikh, of UC Berkeley School of Information, spoke about a number of projects that are using mobile phone based technology to give small businesses the information they need to improve productivity. He argued that voice technology has distinct advantages over text, because it overcomes challenges of illiteracy while responding to a strong need people feel to be heard. 

Information is key for economic development and empowerment. But information is worthless unless it is also useable (leads to decisions the business owner can actually take), trusted (comes from a source he respects) and relevant (speaks about the issues he is facing). For information to be really empowering, it must also be two way: there must be ways for individuals to create content themselves.

Tapan described three current projects he is involved in:

Hisaab: Microfinance groups in India often suffer from poor paper based record keeping, making it difficult for the group to track loans and repayments. The Hissab software was designed with an interface suitable for those who may be illiterate and/or new to computing. The use of voice commands and responses in the local language, Tamil, prevented the software from feeling remote and inaccessible and contributed to the success of this initiative. 

Avaaj Otalo: Agricultural extension workers provide advice to farmers on pests, new techniques etc to help improve yields. But often they have limited reach, visiting areas only rarely, or perhaps lacking the expertise to respond to all the problems they encounter. Avaaj Otalo is a system for farmers to access relevant and timely agricultural information over the phone. By dialing a phone number and navigating through simple audio prompts, farmers can record questions, respond to others, or access content published by agricultural experts and institutions. The service has been hugely popular, with farmers willing to spend time listening to large amounts of material to find what they want. The opportunity to be broadcast was a major attraction, reflecting the desire to be heard and to create media rather than be a passive consumer of it.

Digital ICS: Smallholders' compliance with organic, fair-trade and quality requirements is usually measured via paper based internal inspections. The data uncovered by these is vital but often lost. Digital ICS is a mobile phone based application that allows inspectors to fill out the survey digitally, enhance it with visual evidence (e.g. from camera phones) and upload it onto a web application. This is being piloted with coffee farmers in Mexico. A key finding from the work is that farmers want to know who ends up drinking their coffee, what they pay for it and what they think about it. Greater links between producers and consumers may therefore be another area for this project to investigate.  

Wallenberg Theater
Bldg 160

Tapan Parikh Assistant Professor Speaker University of California, Berkeley; affiliate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Washington
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series
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