Incorporating Biometric And Mobile Systems In Social Safety Nets In Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper measured poverty and corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa and modelled a biometric/mobile solution for curbing corrupt practices in social safety programmes. This is against the backdrop that efforts to better the lives of the vulnerable groups - unemployed, rural poor, women and persons with disabilities - are being frustrated by corruption in social security schemes mounted by various government to cater for these groups. The fallout is that planned benefits don't get to the target audience, precipitating conflicts and social tensions. Even more worrisome is that this segment of the society becomes easy recruits for social menace like kidnapping, terrorism, vandalism, prostitution, among others. Using Nigeria as case study, the study applied biometric system for the documentation and authentication of social safety net beneficiaries so that only genuine persons get the social benefits. Equally, mobile applications and devices are integrated for disseminating information about planned and released social packages from government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to the target audience. The research resulted in an integrated Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) design that substantially mitigates corrupt practices in social safety nets

Government Workspace Digitalization and Socioeconomic Development Outcomes in Ghana

The study sought to understand how the structurational environment shapes socioeconomic outcomes of government workspace digitalization in Ghana based on a qualitative, interpretive case study and the structurational model of technology as a theoretical lens. The findings show how the availability of electronic transactions law, government borrowing, and extendable system design can positively influence socioeconomic outcomes of government workspace digitalization. However, use of multiple system development environments, bureaucracy, a within-country digital divide, and a persistent physical signature and letterhead culture can negatively influence the socioeconomic development goals of government workspace digitalization

Ghana\u27s E-zwich System and the Characteristics of Innovation

In 2008, the Central Bank of Ghana launched the first ever biometric money, e-zwich, in hopes of promoting branchless banking and financial inclusion. Despite been hailed as an innovative policy aimed at transforming the financial industry of the country e-zwich has yet to realize its full potential. A number of studies has been conducted to highlight the many challenges the system faces. This study was also aimed at seeking an explanation to the relative ineffectiveness or failures of e-zwich system but through a theoretical framework. Using Rogers\u27 (2003) framework on the characteristics of innovation, the study seeks to explain why the e-zwich system continues to face significant challenges despite several attempts that have been initiated to help revamp it. Rogers argues that the decision to adopt innovation depends on the innovation\u27s relative advantages, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability and in essence, the success of the innovation dwells on these characteristics. Therefore, the study attempts to investigate if e-zwich as an innovation exhibited these characteristics prior to it been adopted by the Central Bank

Ghana\u27s E-zwich System and the Characteristics of Innovation

In 2008, the Central Bank of Ghana launched the first ever biometric money, e-zwich, in hopes of promoting branchless banking and financial inclusion. Despite been hailed as an innovative policy aimed at transforming the financial industry of the country e-zwich has yet to realize its full potential. A number of studies has been conducted to highlight the many challenges the system faces. This study was also aimed at seeking an explanation to the relative ineffectiveness or failures of e-zwich system but through a theoretical framework. Using Rogers\u27 (2003) framework on the characteristics of innovation, the study seeks to explain why the e-zwich system continues to face significant challenges despite several attempts that have been initiated to help revamp it. Rogers argues that the decision to adopt innovation depends on the innovation\u27s relative advantages, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability and in essence, the success of the innovation dwells on these characteristics. Therefore, the study attempts to investigate if e-zwich as an innovation exhibited these characteristics prior to it been adopted by the Central Bank

UNBLACKBOXING TECHNOLOGY THROUGH THE RHETORIC OF TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION: BIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGY AND GHANA\u27S 2012 ELECTION

In this project, I seek to “unblackbox” technology; by which I mean, I seek to, in the words of Latour, “open up” or “debug” the biometric technology used by Ghana for its 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections. Through the process of “unblackboxing,” I demonstrate the value of technical communicators to technology studies by analyzing technical documents that accompanied the biometric verification device which was adopted and used by Ghana to conduct its 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections. I argue in this dissertation that technical documentation does not merely accommodate users to technologies, but also it provides avenues to articulate broader issues like localization, ideology, subjectivity, and the social justice implications of the various technologies we adopt and use. We are also positioned to understand how a society reacts to issues that are historically, politically, culturally rooted in their context. I maintain that documentation writing is one of the defining activities of technical communication. Thus, it is important to continue to build upon and expand the analyses of these types of documents to critically assess the role they can play in discussions about technology especially in international contexts. By performing a rhetorical-cultural analysis of various technical documents that accompanied the biometric device used in Ghana, I hope to aid technical communicators to reconsider received knowledge about the purposes and uses of technical documentation, such as instructional manuals. More importantly, by embarking on this project, I am able to: interrogate the “international” in international technical communication; discuss documentation design in international context; expand research on the importance of technical documentation to technology studies in a non-Western context (Ghana); demonstrate how rhetorical and cultural theories can be combined to study technology in international contexts

Introduction to Development Engineering

This open access textbook introduces the emerging field of Development Engineering and its constituent theories, methods, and applications. It is both a teaching text for students and a resource for researchers and practitioners engaged in the design and scaling of technologies for low-resource communities. The scope is broad, ranging from the development of mobile applications for low-literacy users to hardware and software solutions for providing electricity and water in remote settings. It is also highly interdisciplinary, drawing on methods and theory from the social sciences as well as engineering and the natural sciences. The opening section reviews the history of “technology-for-development” research, and presents a framework that formalizes this body of work and begins its transformation into an academic discipline. It identifies common challenges in development and explains the book’s iterative approach of “innovation, implementation, evaluation, adaptation.” Each of the next six thematic sections focuses on a different sector: energy and environment; market performance; education and labor; water, sanitation and health; digital governance; and connectivity. These thematic sections contain case studies from landmark research that directly integrates engineering innovation with technically rigorous methods from the social sciences. Each case study describes the design, evaluation, and/or scaling of a technology in the field and follows a single form, with common elements and discussion questions, to create continuity and pedagogical consistency. Together, they highlight successful solutions to development challenges, while also analyzing the rarely discussed failures. The book concludes by reiterating the core principles of development engineering illustrated in the case studies, highlighting common challenges that engineers and scientists will face in designing technology interventions that sustainably accelerate economic development. Development Engineering provides, for the first time, a coherent intellectual framework for attacking the challenges of poverty and global climate change through the design of better technologies. It offers the rigorous discipline needed to channel the energy of a new generation of scientists and engineers toward advancing social justice and improved living conditions in low-resource communities around the world

THE POLITICS OF BIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGIES: Borders control and the making of data citizens in Africa

Biometric technologies are complex hardware and software infrastructures that link biometric data such as fingerprints, iris scans, face scans, or DNA data with personal data. A handful of foreign private actors have implemented biometric solutions in more than half of African countries. This paper investigates the politics of biometric artifacts, it looks at how biometric data furnish the basis for the emergence and institutionalization of certain political discourses and power configurations. To this aim, we link the study of biometric data artifacts to the role of private contractors and the full-scale involvement of public institutions in the establishment of border control markets. The empirical context of the research is the work practices of the actors involved in the export of biometric technologies for border security solutions in Namibia. Preliminary findings suggest that the technological and political rationalities of biometric solutions introduce a set of novel problems in the making and management of data profiles. Border control as a political issue seems to be increasingly intermeshed with a logic of economic profit and technological efficiency raising questions of data justice and political accountability

1ST International Conference on Science and Sustainable Development (List of Abstracts)

The role of Science in Novel Research and Advances in Technolog

The application of a biometric identification technique for linking community and hospital data in rural Ghana

Background: The reliability of counts for estimating population dynamics and disease burdens in communities depends on the availability of a common unique identifier for matching general population data with health facility data. Biometric data has been explored as a feasible common identifier between the health data and sociocultural data of resident members in rural communities within the Kintampo Health and Demographic Surveillance System located in the central part of Ghana. Objective: Our goal was to assess the feasibility of using fingerprint identification to link community data and hospital data in a rural African setting. Design: A combination of biometrics and other personal identification techniques were used to identify individual's resident within a surveillance population seeking care in two district hospitals. Visits from resident individuals were successfully recorded and categorized by the success of the techniques applied during identification. The successes of visits that involved identification by fingerprint were further examined by age. Results: A total of 27,662 hospital visits were linked to resident individuals. Over 85% of those visits were successfully identified using at least one identification method. Over 65% were successfully identified and linked using their fingerprints. Supervisory support from the hospital administration was critical in integrating this identification system into its routine activities. No concerns were expressed by community members about the fingerprint registration and identification processes. Conclusions: Fingerprint identification should be combined with other methods to be feasible in identifying community members in African rural settings. This can be enhanced in communities with some basic Demographic Surveillance System or census information