Sasa Nairobi
Hosted by Goethe-Institut, contemporary artist Michael Soi presents a series of 17 paintings celebrating women from all over Nairobi, bringing you different takes on the...
UPnext
Apr
16
Freedom To Tweet And Beef-How elections are being monitored
What was meant to satisfy a mere need to connect with friends via the Web has grown into a tool for freedom. All you have to do is surf YouTube videos, blogs, Facebook and Twitter to realize that social media has become more influential than some of society’s most powerful men and women.
Such Internet venues have ceased to be just for “meeting and greeting”. Take, for example, the 2011 revolution in Egypt. When most print and other forms of communications were blocked, the Internet provided much-needed space for both mobilizing and rallying pro-democracy supporters. While social media fueled the fight in North Africa, how has it been revolutionizing politics in East Africa?
How Africa Tweets, a recent study by international consultancy firm Portland and Tweetminster, establishes that 68% of all Twitter users in Africa use this medium to monitor news. It also ranks Kenyans as the second most-active Twitter participants in the continent, after South Africans.
Professor Paul Mbatia chairs the Department of Sociology at the University of Nairobi and is an expert in surveying relevant trends. “In my lingo, we term social media as digital technology. It’s now so powerful that a lot of the public don’t buy newspapers to access news on the socio-economic and political fronts,” he says. As Kenyans make their way to the ballot box in the year ahead, their votes will count more than ever.
After all, we’re now voting under a new constitution and with the 2007/2008 post-election violence, one of Kenya’s darkest hours, still lingering on our minds. And election monitoring will be more critical than ever. Such scrutiny involves keen observation of independent parties to ensure that the process meets international standards. Could the Internet cast a keener eye on the whole electoral scene better thantraditional media?
Among elections groups who are applying social media is Kenya Elections Observation Group (ELOGThe organization observes voter registration, monitoring implementation of political parties, campaign monitoring, advocacy and media monitoring. “We mainly use the social-media platform to update users on topical issues within the electoral environment. We encourage debate and voice opinions on the same,” says Mulle Musau of ELOG’s Programs Desk.
Mulle admits that it’s difficult to filter the kind of opinions that comes through social media. However, ELOG is currently employing two control measures: They take down inflammatory statements from their site and block users who post salacious comments. Monitoring groups must be very vigilant about the information being passed through social media, reckons Mbatia. “However, an expert will miss out on the characteristic of the respondents. How old are they or of what sex are they?
The internet generalizes and doesn’t represent the entire population,” says the professor. “Internet use is associated with the young, educated middle class from urban areas.” Mbatia’s advice regarding the freedom of users as applied to election monitoring is simple: Exercise caution!
By Anyiko Owoko
Apr
16
Re-Kindling the Mojo
If you walk into a library in Nairobi, what hits you first is the smell of old age and disuse. Stacks of books rest on counter tops, collecting dust, their pages no longer flipped or caressed by someone yearning for the knowledge within them.
Students no longer delight in the printed page, brought to life by colorful illustrations, and words in black and white. Emerging trends are not making the situation any easier. Instead, in world rife with digital content, viral services and social media, one-time book lovers Tweet away and chat on Facebook.
However, the international non-profit organization WorldReader has decided to salvage the literacy situation in developing countries, Kenya being one of them. Realising that technology is taking over the excitement that once resided in books, WorldReader has embraced this brave, new world by exploring the use of digital content in classrooms. That is, using e-readers such as Amazon Kindles to create a fresh buzz around learning.
According to Betty Muigai, the representative in Kenya, gadgets bring a certain excitement
to the classroom setting. “It is like combining class and play,“ she says. “Our aim is to put a library of books within reach of everyone using electronic book technology. Having as many
books as you want in one platform makes reading less of a task and more exciting for the kids.”
After successfully implementing programs in Ghana and other countries where children are provided with Kindles, WorldReader is currently carrying out a pilot project in Kenya. The organization’s primary goal is to increase access to books at a lower cost of distribution while simultaneously increasing the immediacy of books available online. With the use of Kindles in the classroom and at home, kids get four things at their fingertips: everything, anywhere, quickly and easily. Since the beginning of 2011, WorldReader has conducted
a number of trials in several schools. “We have trained the teachers in Intimigon Primary School and provided them with 65 Kindles for the children in lower primary school,” explains Ms. Muigai.
To support local teaching practices, as well as encouraging leisure reading, WorldReader has partnered with local publishers to digitize textbooks and story books. They then provide them to participants at no cost. In Kenya, they are working closely with Longhorn Publishers who offer books in PDF. Subsequently, the books are first sent to WorldReader headquarters in Spain for digitization, and then forwarded to
Amazon for feeding into the Kindles. The non-profit also works closely with the Ministry of Education in executing its e-reading programs.
And as much as many in Kenya might prove inflexible to the wind of technology, stuck to the traditional method of print, and yellowing paper as books age, WorldReader believes that e-readers are the cheapest and the easiest way to go for a country that is committed to eradicating illiteracy. Their setbacks also lie on the disinclination from many who look at it as an impossible leap. Not many developing countries would embrace this easily, given the cost of e-readers. Betty Muigai is quick to respond to this, saying that the eventual cost of print is incomparable to the number of books that are available in one Kindle.
While some Kenyans may resist these winds of change, hardwired to traditional methods of printing and reading, WorldReader believes that e-readers are the cheapest and easiest
way to go for a country that is committed to eradicating literacy. And despite the price of this technological breakthrough in today’s market, Ms. Muigai is quick to respond that the eventual cost of printing is incomparable to the number of books that are available on just one Kindle.
“The wealth of a nation is tightly bound up in its level of literacy,” adds Ms. Muigai, “a wealth that is being lost because of the death of reading. And it goes deeper into the loss of
imagination, culture, creativity and intellect.”
How the New Safaricom Cloud will Help You
In partnership with Seven Seas Technologies and EMC2, Safaricom recently launched a “computing cloud”, a cutting-edge infrastructure for Kenyan businesses. Through virtual machines and virtual servers within the cloud, a business can access everything relevant to their operations, from data storage and recovery to software and digital content.
Companies will no longer have to invest in expensive hardware or servers to manage
their growth, competitive edge and security. Simply log on to the Internet, and the Safaricom Cloud acts as a customizable service provider.
Speaking at the launch of the cloud, Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore said that the country’s full potential will not be tapped unless world-class solutions are deployed. “We need to match the world class corporate and public sector requirements, and Safaricom and its partners are focused on achieving this end through an unmatched cloud computing offering.”
The Safaricom Cloud’s first client is the government. Their mission: To make education more accessible and more costeffective throughout Kenya. Safaricom’s vision embraces 21st century schoolchildren who will no longer have to buy and carry heavy backpacks full of books. Instead, through a simple Internet connection, they’ll further their education by accessing lessons, homework and digital content through their very own e-readers.
By Jacque Ndinda
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