ICT4D: Developing Countries and the Globalization of the World Wide Web

At VU University Amsterdam the annual Multi Cultural event will take place on June 6th 2012, with interesting talks, expositions, and even music and dance. The Web Alliance for Regreening in Africa will be well represented during this event.
In the morning, after the welcome by the Rector Magnificus Lex Bouter, Hans Akkermans will chair the first part of the International workshop on Cultural Diversity, and the guest speaker is our South-Afican partner, Etienne Barnard, from the Multilingual Speech Technology Research Group, North-West University. Etienne will present: "
Speaking Different Languages: Can Speech Technology Make the World a Better Place?"
In the afternoon Hans Akkermans and Stephane Schlobach will present:
“ICT4D: Developing Countries and the Globalization of the World Wide Web”

Organization of this event is done by the VU Centre for International Cooperation, the Network Institute and the Institute fro Environmental Studies.
For more information or registration, please visit http://www.vu-multicultural.nl/

New students' community for Re-greening in Africa

The first W4RA Student mini-symposium was held at the Intertainlab of VU Amsterdam, on 20th April 2012. It was organized by Victor de Boer, to promote exchange of ideas amongst the students that are currently working on ICTD related topics. The Web 4 Regreening in Africa has really been inspiring, and has brought a variety of topics for further research. Wendelien Tuyp from the VU Centre for International Cooperation, and Pieter De Leenheer, who is supervising these students together with Victor, were also present at the symposium.

This meeting was also the kick-start of a new community, named Computer Science students for Regreening in Africa. Read more about this on the blogs by Pieter de Leenheer and Victor de Boer.

The students presented the following topics:

Henk Kroon is creating a client application that uses the Linked Data based on the voice-based market information system RadioMarché.
Rokhsareh Nakhaei is working on extensive models to design a serious game for gathering voice fragments in different languages.
Albert Chifura is working on sustainable business models for deployment of voice-services in Mali
Binyam Tesfa is developing a crowdsourcing application for digitizing pluvial data from the Sahel. He targets a specific niche (the African ‘diaspora’) to do this.
Deepak Chetri is doing literature research into the design of Voice-based interfaces for low-literate users in developing countries.
Gavarni Winter is the newest addition to the W4RA family, he is still contemplating the specific research questions.

Foroba Blon project on full speed

The newest project by W4RA, nicknamed Foroba Blon is now fully on speed.The W4RA team met again in Mali, 12-16 February, and selected the most suitable use case, together with the partners from Radio Ségou and Radio Moutian. The Foroba Blon system will now be developed. The first cycle is due in May 2012. The project is funded through a grant from the International Press Institute (IPI). The proposal by W4RA was one of the three winning projects amongst 376 submissions to the 2011 IPI News Innovation Contest. Read more on our news page.

In November 2011 the W4RA-VOICES team travelled to Mali, to show the Malian partners the first version of the Radio Marché voice system. Radio Marché will be used by local NGO Sahel Eco and by two community radio stations: Radio ORTM Segou and Radio Moutian. Radio Marché supports the work and trade of farmers in the Tominian area.

Radio Marché is based on mobile voice and web technologies. It has been designed to automatically generate voice communiqués of market information, that can be broadcasted on the radio. Farmers in the Tominian area produce sheanuts, sheabutter, honey and other products. Radio advertisements increase their number of customers.
On a weekly basis Sahel Eco aggregates market information from the farmers. By using Radio Marché, it becomes very easy for them to have the offerings broadcasted on the radio.

The Radio Marché system facilitates the work of Sahel Eco and of the two participating radio stations. Formerly the market information was entered into a spreadsheet by Mr Tangara from Sahel Eco. The speadsheet was printed on paper and brought to the radio by bicycle. Now, Mr. Tangara enters the market information into a webform on his computer, and then he notifies the radio. The radio journalist simply dials a phone number and hears the voice communiqué. He can broadcast the communiqué directly on the radio, even several times if he likes. It saves him time and ensures that the offerings are broadcasted accurately.

To create the automatic voice messages, we recorded and processed the personal voices of the radio journalists Mr. Dakovo from radio Moutian and Mr. Fousseyni from ORTM Segou. Although the voice communiqué is a computer genetared message, it sounds very natural, using this typical malian french accent. In 2012 the Radio Marché system will be extended so that it can automatically generate voice communiqués in Bambara and possibly also in Bomu, two African languages, spoken in Mali.
Mr. Tangara from Sahel Eco, and the radio journalists from Segou and Moutian were pleased with the Radio Marché system. They will test and deploy the new system in their daily routine.

During the trip we met farmers from the Tominian area and asked them their opinion about Radio Marché. The farmers were happy with the efforts currently undertaken to support their farming business by providing this new match-making platform that connects them to new customers. The farmers showed us their products and we could finally taste the honey and appreciate the sheabutter.
We took note of all remarks from our stakeholders, so that we can improve and extend Radio Marché and add functionality in the next coming months. We expect to be back in Mali in May 2012. Apart from the next version of Radio Marché, we will start working on other voice-based systems that may support Regreening in Mali. To be continued....