9 Considerations for Seamless Mobile MERL Solutions

9 Considerations for Seamless Mobile MERL Solutions

Published on: Jan 02 2017 by Praekelt Org - 1 Comment
With mHealth a fast growing component of health delivery systems, many organisations are developing mobile and digital solutions to tackle health problems around the world. Presentations at MERL 2016 Conference showed that...
The Unequal Diffusion of Big Data Capacity

The Unequal Diffusion of Big Data Capacity

Published on: Dec 29 2016 by Guest Writer - 1 Comment
A 2014 White House report from the office of President Obama underlined that Big Data leads to ‘vexing issues’. Big data technologies can cause societal harms beyond damages to privacy, such as discrimination against...
Farmers Will Benefit Most from Mobile Financial Services

Farmers Will Benefit Most from Mobile Financial Services

Published on: Dec 28 2016 by Wayan Vota - 3 Comments
The world’s population is projected to reach 9.2 billion by 2050. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that farmers will need to produce 70% more food than in 2006 to meet this demand. While agriculture...
Surprise! More Internet Bandwidth Leads to Worse User Experiences

Surprise! More Internet Bandwidth Leads to Worse User Experiences

Published on: Dec 22 2016 by Wayan Vota - Comments Off on Surprise! More Internet Bandwidth Leads to Worse User Experiences
In rural developing communities, access is often provided through slow satellite or other low- bandwidth long-distance wireless links, if available at all. As a result, the quality of Internet access is often poor and, at...
President-Elect Trump’s USAID Briefing Book on the US Global Development Lab

President-Elect Trump’s USAID Briefing Book on the US Global Development Lab

Published on: Dec 18 2016 by Wayan Vota - Comments Off on President-Elect Trump’s USAID Briefing Book on the US Global Development Lab
Whenever a new political administration ascends into power in the USA, each government agency writes a briefing book describing their efforts and aspirations. USAID is no different. Agency staff wrote a briefing book describing...
12 Question to Ask Ourselves for 2017

12 Question to Ask Ourselves for 2017

Published on: Dec 15 2016 by Wayan Vota - 1 Comment
2017 is a few short weeks away, and it’s time to start thinking about how we might approach our work differently in the new year. On that theme, Troy Etulain and I came up with a few questions that can help us all think...
Getting Better, Faster Feedback with Mixed Methods in mHealth

Getting Better, Faster Feedback with Mixed Methods in mHealth

Published on: Dec 14 2016 by Guest Writer - Comments Off on Getting Better, Faster Feedback with Mixed Methods in mHealth
There are several projects that use mobile multimedia for health education in hard-to-reach rural settings, where video, being non-textual, enables the educational content to reach populations that cannot read. The missing...
The Biased State of Gender Disaggregated M&E Data

The Biased State of Gender Disaggregated M&E Data

Published on: Dec 12 2016 by Guest Writer - Comments Off on The Biased State of Gender Disaggregated M&E Data
  Recently, we sent out a survey on international development experiences with gender data to help inform the MERL Tech conference. We asked whether international development staff collected it in their work, how they...
3 Things We Can Learn From Porn, Sports, and Soap Operas

3 Things We Can Learn From Porn, Sports, and Soap Operas

Published on: Dec 08 2016 by Wayan Vota - 6 Comments
Did you ever worry about the lack of porn in cybercafés? Or work on increasing World Cup viewership? What about a TV drama dissemination program? I thought not. So what can we learn from the most popular online activities? Entertainment...