Kasadaka: a Voice Service Development Platform to Bridge the Web's Digital Divide

The World Wide Web is a crucial open public space for knowledge sharing, content creation and application service provisioning for billions on this planet. Although it has a global reach, still more than three billion people do not have access to the Web, the major ity of whom live in the Global South, often in rural regions, under low-resource conditions and with poor infrastructure. However the need for knowledge sharing, content creation and application service provisioning is no less on the other side of this Digital Di vide. In this paper we describe the Kasadaka platform that supports easy creation of local-content and voice-based information services targeted at currently ‘unconnected’ populations and matching the associated resource and infrastructural requirements. The Kasadaka platform and especially its Voice Service Development Kit supports the formation of an ecosystem of decentralized voice-based infor mation services that serve local populations and communities. This is, in fact, very much analogous to the services and functionalities offered by the Web, but in regions where Internet and Web are absent and will continue to be for the foreseeable future

W4RA Road Trip Report

<p>W4RA road trip report</p

Tibaηsim: Information Access for Low-Resource Environments

In Africa, and other places around the world, there are numerous people who do not have access to information from the World Wide Web or other digital sources. This is not an issue of infrastructure only, but also of cultural and social factors, including low literacy. Most rural communities in the Northern Region of Ghana fall in this category, where information in written form and/or English is not accessible due to the inability of majority of community members to read and write. This paper presents Tiba η sim (originally “RadioNet”); a case-study of an appropriate ICT4D methodology in the development of an information delivery system hosted in low-resource areas, with empirical data from context analysis from the rural communities and other stakeholders. The paper also presents an evaluation of the system and the methodology, by way of User Evaluation and System Monitoring. The paper also shows how contextual issues are catered for through the methodology used. Tibaηsim focuses on available technologies and appropriate information formats by providing a system that relies on GSM and FM Radio, in the local language(s) of the community. Tibaηsim was deployed in 5 rural communities, reaching a total of almost 1000 people, providing them primarily farming-related information

Use Cases and Requirements

<p>Project deliverable report</p