Flood, Famine, and Mobile Phones

Katrin Verclas
Co-founderMobileActive.org

Mobile Technology is transforming humanitarian relief— and shifting the balance of power between donors and recipients. The number of mobile-phone subscribers in sub-Saharan Africa increased sevenfold between 2000 and 2006, India nearly doubled its mobile-phone subscriptions last year to 150 million subscribers with 500 million expected by 2010. According to recent reports, in several disasters victims surprised their benefactors by asking for money instead of medicine. Concern, a UK aid organization, responded by providing cash aid via mobile phone in Kenya. A new mobile application on the Google phone, Rapid Android, is used in Nigeria for large-scale supply chain management. Zimbabwe's diaspora living in Britain can go to a website called mukuru.com, order and pay for goods online—and have them delivered to family members back home with a code texted to a mobile phone to redeem the goods. We will discuss how mobiles are used in emergency and disaster response, supply-chain management and logistics, and what this means for aid organizations on the ground.

Katrin Verclas is a recognized expert in mobile communications for social impact. She is the co-founder and editor of MobileActive.org, a global network of practitioners using mobile phones for social impact. She is also a principal at Calder Strategies, focusing on mobile strategy, impact evaluation, effectiveness and ROI assessment, and interactive capacity building. Katrin has written widely on communication strategies and new media in citizen participation and civil society organizations, and for development. She is a co-author of Wireless Technology for Social Change, a report on trends in mobile use by NGOs with the UN Foundation and Vodafone Group Foundation. She is a frequent speaker on communications and ITCs in civil society at national and international conferences, and has published numerous articles and publications on technology for social change in leading popular and industry publications.