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. 

What happens to armed organizations after they sign peace accords? Why do they dissolve, return to war, or form non-violent political parties? This seminar addresses and seeks to explain this empirical variation in former armed groups’' trajectories, using extensive micro-level data on the Colombian paramilitaries. In so doing, it seeks to contribute an organizational-level study of peace-building. The trajectories explored in this seminar fundamentally shape prospects for peace, state-building, and democratization, influence post-war patterns of human rights abuses, and impact the legalization of war economies.

Sarah Zukerman Daly is a 2009-2010 Predoctoral Fellow and Visiting Scholar.  She is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sarah holds a BA (2003) with Distinction in International Relations from Stanford University and a MS (2004) with Distinction in Development Studies from the London School of Economics. She is also an alumna of the 2002-2003 CISAC Undergraduate Honors Program.

Sarah's dissertation analyzes variation in demilitarized groups' post-war trajectories. Specifically, it asks, why, in the aftermath of peace agreements, do armed actors form political parties, remilitarize, or go out of business? Her other current projects seek to explain sub-national variation in insurgency onset in Colombia; state strategies towards ethnic minorities in the former Soviet Union; and the role of emotions in transitional justice.

Please join the Forum on Contemporary Europe for a first assessment of the September 27 German elections by FSI Senior Fellow Josef Joffe.

Josef Joffe is publisher-editor of the German weekly Die Zeit, and was previously columnist/editorial page editor of Sddeutsche Zeitung (1985-2000). Abroad, his essays and reviews have appeared in: New York Review of Books, New York Times Book Review, Times Literary Supplement, Commentary, New York Times Magazine, New Republic, Weekly Standard, Prospect (London), Commentaire (Paris). Regular contributor to the op-ed pages of Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post; Time and Newsweek.  In 2005, he co-founded the foreign policy journal "The American Interest" in Washington (with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Francis Fukuyama).

His most recent book is Überpower: America's Imperial Temptation (2006, translated into German and French). His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, International Security, The American Interest and Foreign Policy as well as in professional journals in Germany, Britain and France. He is the author of The Limited Partnership: Europe, the United States and the Burdens of Alliance, The Future of International Politics: The Great Powers; co-author of Eroding Empire: Western Relations With Eastern Europe.

Event Synopsis:

As Professor Joffe describes, political scientists predicting the outcome of the recent German elections based on economic factors were surprised by the victory of the Center Right, expecting a "Red-Red-Green" (Social Democrats-Left-Green Party) coalition instead of Merkel's "Black-Yellow" (Christian Democrats and Free Democrat) coalition party. He sees the outcome more as a loss for the Social Democrats, Lefts, and Greens - who should have done better in tough economic times, and capitalized on left-leaning ideology in Germany - than as a decisive victory for the winners.  He disagrees with the New York Times' declaration of a "mandate for change" in Germany for several reasons:

1. The proportional representation party system based on coalitions rather than majorities makes it impossible to enact wholesale change
2. The "stalemate system" features too many centers of power and makes change difficult
3. Germans like these features of their political system too much to change them

Professor Joffe asserts that the outcome of the elections is a good one for Germany. A victory by the "Red-Red-Green" coalition would have brought about years of instability under a grand coalition that would be characterized by high taxes and spending, pacifism, and the status quo, and which would soon have broken down. In the coming years, Joffe predicts a medium-term exit of German troops from Afghanistan, resistance of US calls for more troops in the Middle East, a pro-Israel stance, and little to no change in domestic policy.  He believes there should be greater focus on preventing the collapse of social support programs, but admits this does not fit into the electoral cycle of domestic politics and will likely be overlooked.

In conclusion, Joffe views the election outcome as the best possible one given alternatives, and as a message to Angela Merkel that Germans are realistic and want German politicians to be less timid.

A discussion session following the talk addressed such issues as: Will Germany revise its position toward Turkey's EU integration under Merkel's leadership? Will the election outcome affect the competitive position of German business? How are rising debt levels in Europe felt by Germany? How do the German people feel about their economic situation and competitiveness?

Carolyn A. Mercado is a senior program officer with The Asia Foundation in the Philippines. In this position she manages the Law and Human Rights program. She assists in the development, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of other selected activities within the Foundation's Law and Governance program and handles mediation and conflict management, and other forms of dispute resolution processes. She has also served as a temporary consultant to the Asian Development Bank on the Strengthening the Independence and Accountability of the Philippine Judiciary project and the Legal Literacy for Supporting Governance project.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Ms. Mercado was an intern with the Center of International Environmental Law in Washington. Previously, she served consultancies in Manila for the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the International Maritime Organization, NOVIB, and the Philippines Department of Environment and Natural Resources. She has served as lecturer on environmental law at Ateneo de Manila University, San Sebastian College of Law, and the Development Academy of the Philippines. She also previously served as executive director of the Developmental Legal Assistance Center, corporate secretary of the Alternative Law Groups, and as a legal aide to a member of the Philippine Senate.

Education: B.A. in political science from the University of the Philippines; LL.B. from the University of the Philippines College of Law. She was also a Hubert Humphrey Fellow in international environmental law, University of Washington and a European Union Scholar in environmental resource management, Maastricht School of Business in the Netherlands.

CO-SPONSORED BY SEAF

Paul Romer is a Senior Fellow in the Stanford Center for International Development (SCID) and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). His contributions to the field of economics include being the primary developer of New Growth Theory, which reduces the traditional emphasis on the scarcity of objects and directs attention to the power of new ideas. His theory has brought renewed optimism about the potential for growth in both advanced and developing economies.

For his work on the economics of ideas, Paul was named one of America's 25 most influential people by TIME magazine (1997), elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2000) and awarded the Horst Claus Recktenwald Prize in Economics (2002). He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Fellow of the Econometric Society. Prior to his current Stanford University position, he taught in the university's Graduate School of Business as the STANCO 25 Professor of Economics and was honored with the Distinguished Teaching Award (1999). Before moving to Stanford, Paul taught economics at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago and the University of Rochester. He received his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.

In addition to his career in teaching and research, Paul founded Aplia, Inc., which is now part of Cengage Learning. Aplia, which develops and applies technologies to improve student learning, grew out of Paul's conviction that it is possible to use information technology to raise productivity in education. This lesson has important implications for how societies keep up with the growing demand for highly educated workers-a demand that is driven by the use of new technology in all other sectors of the economy.

This dialogue will bring together distinguished experts from Stanford and Silicon Valley, top specialists from around the region, and leaders in various fields such as business, politics, academia, and media.  We will begin with an exploration of the influence of energy competition on international relations in Asia.  After establishing the geopolitical context the group will explore new ideas on how to promote energy efficiency, clean technology, and the reduction of carbon emissions.

Experts will look closely at the Japanese experience in the development and dissemination of energy efficient and pollution-control technologies, critical elements of meeting growing demands for energy without causing greater harm to the environment.  We will discuss how the United States, under the new Obama administration, may contribute more to the reduction of carbon emissions and the advance of alternative energy technologies.  And we will analyze how the growing energy consumers in developing Asia can join a post-Kyoto Protocol that effectively mitigates the environmental impact of energy use and reduces the tensions arising from competition for energy resources.