C4D Network

Global community of professionals working in Communication for Development

Young Lives: How Youth in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe Consume Media (Discovery Learning Alliance, 2019)

Discovery Learning Alliance commissioned the Research, Insight and Evaluation team at M&C Saatchi World Services to help deepen their understanding of the rapidly changing media consumption habits of young people in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe. The study offers a new analysis of existing data on youth media habits, alongside newly conducted targeted interviews with relevant experts to produce insights that will help us and others harness the opportunity for impact.

The report gives valuable insight into the preferences, interests and consumption habits of African youth. It also helps to understand what kind of content young people are seeking.

Click here for full report.

mHealth in Malawi – Landscape Analysis (Ministry of Health and Population, Malawi, 2018)

As mobile technology has become ubiquitous, Malawi has seen several robust service delivery mobile applications for healthcare deployed with different levels of success. SMS and phone hotline projects have reached national scale and have been widely regarded as having both high impact and ease of use. Unfortunately, to date, no smartphone applications have been able to scale to a national audience and systems remain in silos both geographically, topically, and technically. With limited resources, how do we determine which solutions should expand, where pilots can provide
new insights into existing gaps, and how to create a national policy that allows for both innovation and scale?

To aid the Kuunika: Data for Action project in developing and implementing mobile technology in Malawi, and to a larger extent, to aid the Ministry of Health and Population in the governance of mobile technology, Cooper Smith conducted an independent evaluation of mobile health technology systems currently being implemented in Malawi. This assessment provides a concrete way that Malawi can adapt high-level frameworks and tools into assessments that provide evidence for policies, standards, and strategies in mobile health.

Click here for full analysis.

Innovation in the Horn, East and Central Africa (HECA): Perspectives from on-the-ground experiences (Oxfam Case Study, 2017)

Innovation involves applying information, imagination and initiative to get greater or different value from resources, and includes all processes by which new ideas are generated and converted into useful processes or products.

These case studies showcase some of the innovative ideas that are being implemented by Oxfam in six countries: Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi.  Each project was selected for its potential to bring greater impact in the future. They include turning ‘excrement into income’ in urban slums in Kenya; giving citizens a voice through empowering them to use their mobile phones to report and share information on justice issues in Rwanda; and using a logistical ‘hub’ in Uganda to enhance service delivery and cost-effectiveness across a region.

Click here for full case study.

Real girls, real lives, connected: A global study of girls’ access to and usage of mobile told through 3,000 voices (Girl Effect/Vodafone, 2018)

Around the world, mobile and internet access is rapidly increasing. Unique mobile user penetration reached 68% in January 2018, up 4% year on year and internet penetration reached 53% – up 7% year on year (Kemp 2018).

However, mobile and internet access is not growing equally. In low and middle income countries, women are on average 10% less likely than men to own a phone. Globally, 184 million fewer women own a mobile phone than men. This gap is even wider with regard to mobile internet, with women 26% less likely to use it than men in these countries (Rowntree: 2018). If this gendered access gap is to be effectively addressed it needs to be understood. In particular, little is known about mobile access for adolescent girls.

This was reaffirmed through the expert interviews that were a component of this study. Experts in international development, gender, and mobile technology noted that adolescent girls are generally subsumed within the broader category of ‘women’. However, they often experience different and additional challenges. This difference could affect their knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour regarding mobile phones. This study was born out of the need to understand the intricacies of girls’ access and usage of mobile phones.

Click here for further details and full report.

 

The Gender Analysis & Identification Toolkit: Estimating subscriber gender using machine learning (GSMA, 2018)

The GSMA’s Gender Analysis and Identification Toolkit (GAIT) addresses an issue many mobile operators face: the absence of reliable gender-disaggregated data on mobile ownership and usage. This information gap is an important one to solve, as understanding the nature and scale of the mobile gender gap is a prerequisite for closing it.

GAIT is a machine learning algorithm that analyses mobile usage patterns to estimate the gender of subscribers. This allows operators to predict the gender of their subscribers on an individual, MSISDN level. GAIT was developed in partnership with Dalberg Data Insights.

This document provides an overview of what the toolkit allows operators to do, how it works and what is required to apply the algorithm successfully. GAIT is freely available to all operator members of the GSMA.

Click here for more information.

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