Dumping Smartphones on West Africa is a Bad Idea
November 17, 2014 2:06 PM   Subscribe

 
Spookily, one review of the Fire phone actually did say it was worse than ebola.
posted by w0mbat at 2:11 PM on November 17, 2014 [19 favorites]


Yeah, but it wasn't Amazon's idea. There was an app that someone said could be useful in the field, the people there didn't have the equipment needed to make it work. Amazon had the handsets available and was asked if they could donate them.

No one is forcing the aid workers to use them. If they're useful, great. If not, then they just won't use them.
posted by inturnaround at 2:13 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


It can see in, like, five dimensions or something so it should be useful as a tricorder.
posted by Artw at 2:17 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


So, they literally can't give them away?
posted by cjorgensen at 2:21 PM on November 17, 2014 [10 favorites]


Ok, now that I've RTFA, I think the first guy is worrying about a bunch of nothing. If they get there and they can't be effective people won't use them. If they do and can they will. 1,000 phones isn't going to matter much one way or another.

I could break down each of his excuses. You keep them charged like any other device. It won't break the economy. If you need training to use the phone it probably sucks. Etc.
posted by cjorgensen at 2:25 PM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Out of the fire, and into the-

Maybe they should've called it something else.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:26 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


You seem to be confusing "I think it will be fine therefore it will be fine" with a reasoned argument.
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 2:32 PM on November 17, 2014 [5 favorites]


I'm kind of confused what's going on with those two links from people that don't seem to be involved in the technology decision-making process on either side. I'm going to pretend they're sending over 10,000 E.T. cartridges and move along.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 2:44 PM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Pretty sure West Africa has seen a android phones before. Tech driven charitable initiatives as well, though admittedly with a spottier track record.
posted by Artw at 2:48 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Ok, now that I've RTFA, I think the first guy is worrying about a bunch of nothing. If they get there and they can't be effective people won't use them. If they do and can they will. 1,000 phones isn't going to matter much one way or another.

Yeah. Of the dozens of problems he's worried about, the only one that seems even a little reasonable is that maybe the infrastructure can't handle the load. It's not like the economy of Liberia revolves around repairing and selling accessories for old Nokias.

sometimes known in the development community as “Stuff We Don’t Need or Want”

Who exactly is "we?" Is it the "development community" or the people who are actually getting the stuff?
posted by cosmic.osmo at 2:52 PM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Just send yer cash...
posted by littlejohnnyjewel at 3:16 PM on November 17, 2014


Ok, now that I've RTFA, I think the first guy is worrying about a bunch of nothing. If they get there and they can't be effective people won't use them. If they do and can they will. 1,000 phones isn't going to matter much one way or another.

Yeah. Of the dozens of problems he's worried about, the only one that seems even a little reasonable is that maybe the infrastructure can't handle the load. It's not like the economy of Liberia revolves around repairing and selling accessories for old Nokias.

Seriously? Have you guys ever been to a developing / third world country? How are the phones going to be charged - is there regular power without unpredictable brownouts? Is there running water, let alone wifi? How are you expecting local people to use wifi, which may be extravagantly expensive, to a community that may subsist off of prepaid sims and regular top-ups just to send SMSes?

You keep them charged like any other device.

It's not like the solution is going to be "oh, just plug it into a wall charger". The power coming from the wall itself may not be stable. Power may only be available for a few hours a day, if at that. The target audience may not even have power at home.
posted by suedehead at 3:19 PM on November 17, 2014 [6 favorites]


Just send yer cash...

Yeah, seriously. Money to the right people is almost always better than unsolicited donations of actual objects.
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:20 PM on November 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


Many years ago I was getting drunk in a Wall Street bar and these two con artists tried to sell me. They were pretty relentless and pretty funny though they didn't know it. When they finally realized I wasn't into their get rich quick schemes, they changed to charity and one of them said, "I'm on the board of directors of a company bringing computer literacy to the third world."

This reminded me of that story...
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 4:03 PM on November 17, 2014


Seriously? Have you guys ever been to a developing / third world country?

I've worked in a developing third world country the the region, though not any of the countries effected. There are areas with no cell service or extremely limited access to power, but a great number of people have cell phones and cell service. They're an important part of the informal economy. It's not uncommon to pull up in a village and find that there's someone selling refreshments and access to a power strip running off of a small generator. I stayed in a village with no power and where the women had to walk around two miles to fetch water in the morning, and all the adults had a phone.

Data plans (other than text) are still too expensive for most people, which is part of the reason why there is such high cellphone usage but such low smartphone internet usage. (More people are buying smart phones but they usually aren't connected.) Cell modems are also available in many areas for laptops, though again--expensive. I purchased 5GB/1mo for around $20 -- way out of reach for most of the people I worked with, but it's a resource that can be shared.

The target audience may not even have power at home.

The target audience appears to be Ebola response workers, not people who would need power at home in order to use the phones.

If people on the ground are asking for it, I see no reason to think it wouldn't be helpful. It's very hard, with the flurry of coverage from people far removed from the source, to tell what people on the ground actually want or need, though.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 4:20 PM on November 17, 2014 [12 favorites]


I did some volunteering once with a group that took donated old computers from big companies and sent them to Malawi. The only practical way to send heavy packages to Malawi was in a shipping container, so they stuffed a shipping container full of computers and packed them in with clothing bought in bulk from Goodwill. They filled one shipping container and sent it on its way.

When the container arrived in Malawi almost 6 months later, we were told that the computers were completely trashed. Some of them were probably broken in the first place, they had been at sea for six months, and in any case electricity and safe clean rooms were hard to find at the destination. But the clothing used as packing material proved very popular and we got many thank you letters.
posted by miyabo at 5:00 PM on November 17, 2014 [7 favorites]


The (Amazon) gods must be crazy!
posted by fuse theorem at 5:42 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


You seem to be confusing "I think it will be fine therefore it will be fine" with a reasoned argument.
A) he didn't say "it will be fine"--just that it won't be a disaster if they turn out not to be useful in practice.
B) if you're going to snark about someone not providing a reasoned argument, mightn't it be an idea to provide one for your position?
posted by yoink at 5:55 PM on November 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


A friend of mine works on local low-cost power in the developing world, and says that phones and SMS are used for communication and sometimes payment (via SMS) even in villages that don't have grid power. In some, there's a single store owner / businessperson who runs a charging station (solar or gas generator plus car batteries). In others, there's a jeep / scooter / other vehicle that goes from village to village with facilities to recharge phones.

There are multiple projects now bringing affordable solar to very poor villages, and aside from working with local infrastructure, they also often aim to support exactly two use cases: 1) a low power LED light source in the home, 2) cell phone charging.

Cell technology has leapfrogged past wired infrastructure in the developing world because it's easier to set up than an electrical grid, and it's transformative technology. For example, farmers who know the price at the city market have a better position when negotiating with middlemen to sell crops.

tl;dr - there are plenty of dirt-poor off-grid villages where people use cell phones
posted by zippy at 5:58 PM on November 17, 2014 [6 favorites]


I'm surprised by the pushback to the first link here. I think this part makes sense, at least:

The Government of Liberia has specifically asked for solutions that build up its existing infrastructure. I haven’t been in discussions in the other countries – but it seemed very reasonable to hear representatives of the Government of Liberia say recently:

“Please do not bring in things like VSATs. We don’t want them, and we don’t need them. We would rather have you build up our existing phone networks, and add capacity to those.”

The recent article on the Fire phone ‘donation’ says: “The app was based on expressed needs of aid groups in the region, who said that getting data quickly from the field is one of their biggest challenges.”

I agree that “getting data quickly from the field” is a prime challenge. However – when we are building systems to address that challenge we have to build those systems at the point of need, and look at the infrastructure in which we are creating them...

One of the big problems in Liberia is not “people don’t have access to smartphones.” People do. Health workers, teachers, that type of person can get access to a phone that is pretty OK. They may not have data – because the networks are thin. But the problem is not lack of devices.

There is a big problem with lack of information – and lack of data – but you don’t get that by dropping More Devices on an already broken system – you get data, and information, by working with what people are already doing, and making it better.


There's been a lot of discussion here in the past about well-meaning but useless corporate and NGO aid work; questioning something like this "solution," which doesn't appear to have been developed with any kind of rigor at all (representative surveys of folks in the field, participation of end users in the planning, etc.), seems like a very important step before jumping on the "Aw, isn't that sweet" bandwagon. A bit of skepticism about Big Plans To Do Good like this is more than warranted.
posted by mediareport at 6:42 PM on November 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


During the month I spent in Liberia not one time did I hear any Liberian technologist, government expert, or anyone else say that smartphones apps would make their life easier.

Sorry, this is dumb. A full-bore, general-purpose personal computer - which smartphones are - with everything a personal computer can do, that fits in a pocket and requires less electricity to run than a lightbulb, designed from the ground up to require little to no training for end users, won't make life easier. Suuuuuure. This is about the most clueless and condescending bullshit to come out of a purported aid co-ordinator. The benefits of personal computing are immediately obvious to any modern or modernizing culture, and have been adopted to fantastic use everywhere they've been able to be deployed. Pretending your constituency doesn't want or need computers to make their operations more efficient shows a profound and vast ignorance. It's borderline racist/classist in the way "first world problems" jokes are. I am very disappointed to see this attitude in someone at that level. It's like pretending that donating a few Toyota Land Cruisers to traveling doctors wouldn't be wanted or needed because no-on in the Liberian government said anything about a 4x4 being useful in the entire month you were there. I don't believe it for a moment.

With regard to network capacity - as has been noted, there is a plethora of feature phones in the area. Here's the secret: you don't need an internet connection. You just need the apps, which are typically well engineered front ends for sophisticated databases. You can use the smartphone to call someone, and read to them what the app says, like you would have with the feature phone you used to have.

There's going to be a problem with theft or misappropriation, sure, but welcome to any aid you send ever. There will be enough of them in the right hands to make a small difference. In the case of a smartphone with an app that's a database for tracking and/or treating disease, small differences have a big force multiplier.

I get that there's a whole "Radiators for Norway" problem with clueless dilettantes. In this case, the upsides far outweigh the downsides - the solution is to help steer it in a direction that can derive the most benefit, not kill it before it gets off the ground. It's shocking, and might be more indicative of a political turf war than an honest assessment.
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:59 PM on November 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


Oh christ. Don't kid yourselves. Those phones are going to west Africa regardless. Amazon is trying to make political hay here, but the fact is that all those e-waste laws are circumvented by letting corps "donate" "used equipment" thereby setting up toxic ghettos in places we don't care about.

The hubris amazon is displaying here, crowing about something they are going to have to do anyway to satisfy the bottom line of having to bury those crappy handsets domestically...

(And please. West Africans have seen and used every goddamn stupid phone you have ever seen, and more besides. Every trading block in the world wants these emerging markets, so they get everything everyone makes. Jesus, Accra and similar port cities host metric shit-tonnes of containers from literally everywhere. It all filters down to a street vendor somewhere.

And you think you live on your phone? West Africans have been doing that for longer than you have, with three phones at a time. )
posted by clvrmnky at 7:15 PM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Sorry, this is dumb. A full-bore, general-purpose personal computer - which smartphones are - with everything a personal computer can do, that fits in a pocket and requires less electricity to run than a lightbulb, designed from the ground up to require little to no training for end users, won't make life easier. Suuuuuure. This is about the most clueless and condescending bullshit to come out of a purported aid co-ordinator.

Saying that a smartphone is a "personal computer" and immediately valuable is to completely disregard the other networks (cell service, power, training, etc) that come into play when you deal with technology, as well as UI/UX, as well as training, staffing, labor, etc.

It's like pretending that donating a few Toyota Land Cruisers to traveling doctors wouldn't be wanted or needed because no-on in the Liberian government said anything about a 4x4 being useful in the entire month you were there. I don't believe it for a moment.

No, the analogy would be something like someone saying: "Gas is incredibly expensive here, roads are unpaved, uneven, too narrow, and steep, and so horses would be a better mode of transportation", and someone saying in response, "but a car is a PERSONAL AUTOMOBILE - how can it not be helpful? The benefits of personal automobiles are immensely obvious..."

Efforts such as what Ushahidi are doing, or SMS-driven Uber for autorickshaws in India, are perhaps more interesting ways to augment existing (and relatively robust) SMS systems in developing countries. Aid at the level of sms-driven map-making / data gathering would be possibly brilliant. Dropping a bunch of Amazon Fire phones, not so much, 'personal computer' or not.
posted by suedehead at 8:09 PM on November 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


And assuming that computers will make their operations more efficient is magical thinking.

No, it's pretty much settled science, and has been for a long, long, long time. Insisting that Africans are different than the rest of the whole human experience will require an unusually high standard of proof.

"Gas is incredibly expensive here, roads are unpaved, uneven, too narrow, and steep, and so horses would be a better mode of transportation"

And that would be obvious as a total lie or deranged delusion from the outset as well. There are some tools that have proven themselves, in formal studies and in general experience, as being indispensable under almost any condition. Horse vs. 4x4, even under extreme conditions, such as nonexistent roads and fuel shortages, has been a settled question since the 2nd World War. Personal computers are in that category, smart phones especially, as smaller, more efficient and easier to operate personal computers.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:48 PM on November 17, 2014


If one's problem-solving strategy, when faced with a multitude of scenarios, is to demand on the complete efficacy and the supposed "settled science" of a singular tool rather than to understand the holistic scenario, then I can't help but shrug. All tools work with a given context.

To argue otherwise would be to think along the lines of: "Yes, these Amazon Fire phones are totally going to make life easier for Ebola coordinators in West Africa. They're totally going to punch these (not-easily-disinfected) phones through their Dupont Tychem QC full-length suits with flaps over the zippers and rubber aprons and goggles, yes, and a sleek interface to a database without wifi is completely going to help them solve the Ebola crisis.

Never mind that one of the primary reasons behind the spread of Ebola is the inefficiencies of quarantine based on bad public knowledge and fear about Ebola, which renders most preventative measures much more difficult. (One recent doctor in the area recently told me that, in his opinion, the 1995 movie Outbreak was partially unhelpful as the confusing messages of what-to-do within the movie were being spread to locals in the form of bootleg DVDs.) Never mind that, as another recent doctor returning from Sierra Leone told me, "You can't treat your way out of Ebola - you can only quarantine and prevent." Never mind that locals' inabilities to observe proper funeral rites in the region (as they involve touching the body, kissing the face of the deceased) lead to further distrust of foreign/local aid workers. Never mind that this is especially so as the same workers who are responsible for throwing bodies into a grave are also dressed in the same way that those doing outreach and prevention/quarantine work are. Never mind that as such Ebola aid becomes less about the technological aid of a smartphone without data that's supposed to be a magic database, and more about an anthropological/sociological understanding of why it is that quarantine is so scary. If you don't believe that it's a huge sociological issue, ask the eight aid workers killed by locals.

So yes, uh-huh, yeah, the "settled science" of the smartphone is completely going to help the scenario. It's not going to waste valuable manpower and coordination effort to receive the package, distribute, figure out a coordinated plan to best distribute and manage the phones, deal with breakage, loss, etc. etc. etc. Not at all.

And if you cry "Scarecrow argument! I never said it would solve Ebola - I just said that it's undoubtedly going to help!", then I'd say, well, the burden of proof is on you to explain and propose exactly how, in what way, this magic computing device is going to help beyond just being "well engineered front ends for sophisticated databases".
posted by suedehead at 10:35 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Maybe we can give this experiment a few months before passing judgment either way.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:38 PM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


tl;dr - there are plenty of dirt-poor off-grid villages where people use cell phones

Thing is, it's much easier and more practical to use a feature phone that you need to charge once every week or two if you're dependent on the local shop's renting generator power (or even the travelling generator power that might only come to your village once or twice a week) to you than it is to use a smartphone that basically needs charging every day.
posted by Dysk at 1:48 AM on November 18, 2014 [4 favorites]


So yes, uh-huh, yeah, the "settled science" of the smartphone is completely going to help the scenario.

A database to keep track of victims, their locations, their network of friends and relatives, in a form factor where they can do data entry on location unobtrusively (compared to setting up a laptop), yeah. It probably would. There are some pretty nice apps to do this on the Amazon app store. Management and IT is something people study intensely. Ethereal notions of holistic systems are pseudo-science.

Thing is, it's much easier and more practical to use a feature phone that you need to charge once every week or two if you're dependent on the local shop's renting generator power (or even the travelling generator power that might only come to your village once or twice a week) to you than it is to use a smartphone that basically needs charging every day.

Unless you're a government official, NGO employee or doctor with access to electricity. You know. Who these phones are going to be distributed to.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:06 AM on November 18, 2014


Maybe we can give this experiment a few months before passing judgment either way.

I think the point of the exasperated first link is that we've seen this sort of "helpful" assistance go wrong, or be ridiculously wasteful if not actively counterproductive, many, many, many times in the past when dealing with well-intentioned outsiders Trying To Help With Technology.

That the tech in this case is aimed at healthcare workers ameliorates things a bit, it seems to me, but I can totally understand folks who live and breath aid work rolling their eyes at yet another corporation taking a tax write-off by dumping excess product while getting tons of free press for its benevolence.
posted by mediareport at 5:48 AM on November 18, 2014


It's not like the solution is going to be "oh, just plug it into a wall charger". The power coming from the wall itself may not be stable. Power may only be available for a few hours a day, if at that. The target audience may not even have power at home.

And in this case they are no worse off, no? The article stated the individuals would choose to charge their personal devices before worrying about the Fire phones, so I was presuming they would have access to power, since it said so in the article. But again, if not, bah. We're talking 1,000 phones here. That's not going to change the equation much one way or another.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:24 AM on November 18, 2014


The article points out there's a second foundation that plans to dump 8,000 phones as well. And snickerdoodle's last paragraph nails the problem for me. Is getting trained on a new smartphone and app really the highest priority for healthcare workers in the middle of the West African ebola crisis right now? We don't know.
posted by mediareport at 6:47 AM on November 18, 2014


(I suspect not, though.)
posted by mediareport at 6:48 AM on November 18, 2014


Also possibly slightly relevant, and extremely cynical: Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like (previously) on the sexy allure of development and technology porn.
posted by mediareport at 6:55 AM on November 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


> And that would be obvious as a total lie or deranged delusion from the outset as well. There are some tools that have proven themselves, in formal studies and in general experience, as being indispensable under almost any condition. Horse vs. 4x4, even under extreme conditions, such as nonexistent roads and fuel shortages, has been a settled question since the 2nd World War.

Deranged? Is it so unreasonable to think that this situation is unusual enough to merit discussion? Horseless carriages have displaced the mounted soldier, but mules and horses are being used by the non-Luddite American Army in the 21st century.
posted by Monochrome at 9:55 AM on November 18, 2014


Hello there! I'm on the Ebola Care project and we received the Fire phones.

You can find out more about the project here: www.appsagainstebola.org

I'm happy to answer any questions, but perhaps start by looking our response to the post: Malan's comment

Key points:
  • Before this donation we were operating 40+ phones that were purchased either by us or aid organizations in Liberia as our pilot. The results were great – the guys doing the hard work in Liberia wanted to roll out more phones.
  • This is not an Amazon project! Amazon did donate phones, but in no other way are they associated with the project.
  • We are working with one of the largest Telecoms providers to handle logistics and network capacity. The phones will be distributed through existing cellphone shops etc. We have a comprehensive plan we’re creating with that Telco partner to make the data connectivity work (and free for users of this app).
  • We’re working with the small aid organizations who don’t usually get access to the very useful, large impact, solutions that operate on a government and UNICEF level.
Hope that helps clear things up!

Philip
posted by Philipjoubert at 11:58 AM on November 18, 2014 [16 favorites]


So would additional phones help or hurt or not make a dick's worth of difference?
posted by cjorgensen at 5:52 PM on November 18, 2014


Hello Phillip, maybe you can help us understand the project by answering Chris' questions following Malan Joubert's comment, to which you linked.
Hey malan – would be great to hear more – my questions in-line

>>1) This is not an Amazon initiative, Amazon very kindly donated phones to the initiative but they are not driving it.

got it.

>>2) We are working with local aid organizations in Liberia who have already tested the application intensively, and have already logged 100′s of patients and field visits over the last few weeks.

To my questions in the article: who are you working with, and how are they testing this?

>>3) The need and request for additional phones came from aid organizations battling Ebola on the ground.

Which aid organizations?

>>3) We have done training in the field and verified that data capture works well after this training.

How many trainings? what’s the training budget for the whole programme? who is paying for that?

>>4) We are working with one of the largest Telecoms providers to handle logistics and network capacity.

Which one?

>>The phones will be distributed through existing cellphone shops etc.
For free?

>>We have a comprehensive plan we’re creating with that Telco partner to make the data connectivity work (and free for users of this app).
What’s the plan?

>>There are more details about how we’re planning on limiting the possible side effects of increased data usage that we’re happy to share if you find it valuable.

Yes, i would.

>>5) Sustainability is a key consideration. The team behind this have >>been part of successful mHealth projects in a number of African countries that have run over multiple years. Behind the scenes we are already working on strategies to ensure that this project continues adding value far beyond this outbreak.

If you want it sustainable, it must be open source… what’s the roadmap to getting there?

>>7) We’re working with the small aid organizations who don’t usually get access to the very useful, large impact, solutions that operate on a government and UNICEF level.

Ok.

chris fabian
posted by asok at 2:02 AM on November 19, 2014


We Skyped with Chris yesterday and had a very productive discussion.

Based on the call, Chris wrote a follow-up post. Between that and Malan's comment on this new post I think we cover almost all of the questions.
posted by Philipjoubert at 10:59 AM on November 19, 2014 [2 favorites]


Chris raises really good points. I'm glad you guys are paying attention.
posted by mediareport at 3:23 PM on November 19, 2014


As Chris says, 'those 10 questions are important, ...the internet is amazing in how it lets us open up a space for conversation. The Jouberts (Apps Against Ebola) and Vulcan Inc both responded on Twitter, and wanted to chat. How cool is that? Very'
posted by asok at 5:57 AM on November 20, 2014


Interesting piece in the NYT today about the conflicts between and among NGOs and the government in Liberia, possibly relevant to this discussion (looks like thermometers might be more immediately useful than smartphone apps, e.g.). No one comes out looking great but these two bits struck me:

American military helicopters ferrying doctors to remote areas were forbidden to fly back not only patients but even blood samples; recently samples from a village had to be walked to a road four hours away. At Monday’s meeting, according to the minutes, Dr. De Cock called this “unacceptable,” adding, “This has to change this week.”

Dr. Hans Rosling, a Swedish epidemiologist and consultant to Liberia’s Health Ministry, said that the helicopter order came “from somewhere in America.” In an interview, he cited problems not listed in the minutes: one Asian and two European donor countries are insisting on building new Ebola field hospitals in Monrovia, where hospitals have empty beds, rather than in remote counties where beds are desperately needed; they insisted because they announced those plans two months ago, he said.

posted by mediareport at 1:52 PM on November 20, 2014


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