Zambians voting or monitoring the September 20 elections had a
pleasant surprise in store for them when Bantu Watch, a joint platform of Civil Society
and (social) media representatives in Zambia, was unveiled showing the use of the SMS
(Short Message Service) as a tool for monitoring and reporting electoral
malpractices.
HIVOS, Coordinator ICT election Watch, Sanne van den Berg, said she
was pleased with the way Zambians sent in quality reports although she
said the numbers of SMSs was low in terms of numbers. She explained
that this was due to technical difficulties with Airtel messages.
She was also happy that by monitoring the SMSs and tweets sent to
Bantu Watch from both monitors and the general public, there were an
incredible high number of actionable reports of which SACCORD acted
upon.
Meanwhile, SODNET’s Program Associate Innovations and Knowledge
Management, John Kipchumbah, said his participation in Bantu Watch has
been an amazing experience that shows what the power of the people can
do.
“Their vigilance and their commitment to protecting their vote has
been very visible,” he said.
“I had the privilege of viewing the citizens’ voices streaming into
the platform, the level of commitment, the passion, shows that people
do know what they want and increasingly they are using channels
presented to them to get action on their issues. I take home a very
clear message that what we as individuals do can or will make a very
big difference by making that decision to care for what affects us and
others among us and that we have the power to make a difference,” said
Kipchumbah.
He added that the platform under the guidance of committed individuals
in both the Southern Africa Centre for Constructive Resolution of
Disputes (SACCORD) and the Africa Interactive Media representatives
has a very huge potential to be a citizens channel to give feedback on
specific issues on governance, development and economic grown for
young people presenting connections at different level.
Verifying SMSs and twitter reports on the Bantu Watch platform Lukonga
Lindunda, a Tech Enthusiast, said being part of the Bantu Watch team
has been a learning experience for him and the Tech minds who have
been motivated to map this year’s elections.
“On Election Day there was an increase in reports and we really had to
work under pressure to verify the reports from Zambians sending SMSs
on electoral malpractices. The Ihub shows that many reports were from
Lusaka and the Copperbelt provinces,” said Lindunda.
He explained that the people verifying the Bantu Watch Ihub were Tech
minds who were graduates from Evelyn Hone College of Applied Arts and
Commerce, University of Zambian (UNZA) and NIPA.
We have been interested in what Ushahidi was all about and discovered
that it was an open source tool with roots in Kenya. When we got to
play with Ushahidi we discovered that we could use it for other things
and soon after elections we will be trying to use it for something
else.
He added that they also monitored tweets under the hushtag #BantuWatch .
BantuWatch is a joint initiative of civil society and (social) media
representatives in Zambia under leadership of SACCORD. Hivos and
SODNET provided technical support to the project.BantuWatch is an Ushahidi-based technology platform that allows citizens and civil
society to monitor and report incidences around the electoral process.
It provides a way for citizens and civil society to use phones or the
internet to report on electoral offences such as intimidation, hate
speech, vote buying, polling clerk bias and voting misinformation.
Reports from citizens were collected and visualized online together
with those of trained observers from civil society partners. Incidents
that needed to be responded to were channelled to the electoral or
security authorities after trained persons from civil society verified
citizen messages with contacts on the ground.The compiled data of allsubmitted reports was used for reporting to the media and interested
parties – at any point in the process. At the end of the election
exercise, the data becomes part of a report with recommendations for
future improvements to the election process.
After my interview with Global Voices Online last month on the “State of the Zambian blogosphere” I decided to call for a face to face bloggers meeting for Lusaka based bloggers in Zambia. I sent out the call on facebook for Bloggers to meet.
About 10 bloggers came to the meeting to see how we could strengthen the state of the Zambian blogosphere which is currently weak and also address issues which were limiting bloggers daily blogging.
The bloggers agreed on setting up a formal network for Zambian Bloggers. The bloggers also agreed on setting up a facebook group which is up and running already called Zambian Bloggers which will act as a discussion platform. The bloggers also agreed to meet monthly and discuss issues related to their well being and how they can make money.
They also identified their capacity building needs that can enable them become knowledgeable. It is important that Zambian bloggers have a platform online and offline. The offline space makes it rich for bloggers to meet and add a face to the daily online talks and share their different experiences while the online space remains a link and meeting place for their daily discussions and pointers online.
There is also a need to grow the Zambian blogosphere. It is also important for the bloggers to be trained in citizen journalism, web2.0 applications and social media and how these tools can be used for citizen engagement and advocacy around Zambia.
Zambians need to know how to add content to Wikipeadia, delicious, tag some stories, vlog, social bookmark, how to podcast, leverage RSS feeds, share websites, photo-blog, skype and the use of many more applications and tools.
Bloggers can also use many free and open source tools which include and not limited to GIMP, Audacity, Scribus, Inkscape, Chisimba, Django and Drupal.
There is need to teach Citizen Media techniques to underrepresented communities in Zambia if the blogging community was united and made decisions as one.
The World’s leading search engine Google and leading video sharing website You Tube has partnered with local Internet service provider (ISP) AfriConnect to host the internet giant’s local cache operations.
AfriConnect Marketing Manager Janice Maliwa-Chipenzi announced in a statement in Lusaka today that AfriConnect will become the host operation for the Google and YouTube servers in Zambia.
“The effect of hosting this caching equipment is that all Google searches are carried out locally in Zambia (rather than in Europe or further afield), and that ‘popular’ searches from around the world are ‘pre-fetched’ or ‘saved’ on the servers – meaning search results are already on a server in the country, making searches notably faster, and saving international bandwidth. She said.
Since Google also own YouTube the same facility applies to searching for and viewing all popular videos – now held locally.
Ms Maliwa-Chipenzi said to make this service available to local internet users, AfriConnect has installed several high-powered computer servers linked to their own dedicated high-speed Internet link, all housed in a secure facility with fully resilient power and cooling systems.
She said the partnership with Google and you tube shows the level of confidence the international ICT sector has in the local ISP’s, a situation which will further enhance Zambia’s internet connectivity to the world.
“AfriConnect has been tirelessly building capacity on our network and thus Google choosing to partner with us as the Zambian location for hosting because of our ability to provide the necessary infrastructure to an international standard.” She added
Ms Maliwa-Chipenzi said AfriConnect is now working to ensure that users of other ISPs in the country can take advantage of the speed and savings.
“Our integration into Vodacom Business has also seen more resources put into upgrading our technical support. Our call centre has been expanded and now has more staff to handle all manner of technical queries. Our call centre which is open from 07hrs to 23hrs daily now has more dedicated lines. Our customers can reach us through our customer support email. We will continue to improve upon our infrastructure and support as we push to offer more than just internet.” said Janice Maliwa-Chipenzi.
AfriConnect Zambia Limited was established in 2005.
AfriConnect’s brand portfolio includes iConnect, iSpot, iSMS, iControl and iPutt (at The Lusaka Club).
Among AfriConnect’s achievements are:
iConnect.zm was Zambia’s first WiMax broadband ISP
iSMS.zm was one of the first integrated SMS communication platforms in Zambia, allowing the development of tools such as the ZNFU Commodity Prices service
iConnect.zm was the first Zambian ISP to offer its customers an exclusive internet portal (myConnect)
iConnect.zm was the first Zambian broadband ISP to offer 7 days a week, 07:00-23:00 support
iConnect.zm was the first Zambian ISP to trial broadband connectivity in a rural area with its Namwala.com project
iConnect.zm was the first Zambian broadband ISP to offer broadband in all nine provincial capitals
iConnect.zm broadband is currently available in: Chingola, Chipata, Choma, Kabwe, Kasama, Kitwe, Livingstone, Lusaka, Mansa, Mongu, Namwala, Ndola and Solwezi, Luanshya, Chililambombwe, Mazabuka, Mufuliria and many more towns to follow..
iSpot has more than 100 hotspot locations across Zambia
AfriConnect invested heavily in the iSchool.zm project, which has now been spun-off as an independent company.
Became a part of the VodaCom Business group of companies in 2010.
Join the iConnect facebook page
