Mass Text Messaging Made Easy

Interview: Ken Banks

Ken Banks in Zimbabwe

Ken Banks is founder of kiwanja.net, developer of low-cost, sustainable ICT solutions for local, national, and international non-profit organizations. Here, he describes FrontlineSMS, a free, text messaging application available for download by non-profits through his FrontlineSMS website. (See related story: Citizens Use SMS to Monitor Nigeria's Presidential Election.)

What are the origins of kiwanja.net and what is its mission?

In 2003, I started working on a consulting project for Fauna & Flora International (FFI) which involved exploring the potential uses of mobiles in global conservation, a project which was to ultimately become wildlive! (see related story: Wildlive!: Raising Awareness and Funds for Conservation). In the process, I began exploring how I might offer the knowledge and skills I was building to other people. Soon afterward, kiwanja.net came into being. In terms of the name, I was looking for something that had an earthy feel. "kiwanja” is a Swahili term meaning earth, the ground. We all come from the earth and ultimately go back to it. What we do in between those events is what gives our lives meaning. kiwanja simply felt – and sounded – right.

My mission is to help non-profit organizations interested in using mobile technology explore and understand what can be done, offer them technical solutions and then put all our accumulated knowledge to good use. NGOs read about all the amazing things that are happening – with text messaging in particular – but the information that’s out there can be very fragmented, confusing, hidden or too technical for them. There aren’t many people looking at how this technology can be applied specifically to the needs of non-profits, particularly those working at grassroots level. The bigger NGOs, on the other hand, tend to have much more exposure and access to these sorts of tools and generally have the resources to better make use of emerging technologies. But when you’re talking about a couple of women leading a women’s empowerment project in a rural village in central Africa, or a small grassroots conservation project in Brazil, they tend to be less visible and have much less access to the technology and supporting information. These are the people I want to support. I’m very aware from my own experiences of how far money can be stretched at the grassroots level, how far you can take it and how much can be achieved.

What first sparked your interest in the use of mobile communications for conservation and development?

Up until 2003 I had been working in the IT industry for about 20 years. I hadn’t much interest in mobiles until I started working on the FFI/Vodafone project, which was very cutting edge. It seemed as though this was something at a tipping point. People were only starting to look at how they could use mobile technology to share valuable information on health, or promote economic empowerment opportunities. The momentum was starting to build, but it was at the very early stages back then. Today, everyone’s talking about it. Then there’s the fact that mobiles are fun to work with, and people love working with them. It’s a fun platform. What you’re doing is also very tangible – a phone fits in your hand, after all – as opposed to a lot of IT work where you tend to be part of a larger process. All of the projects I have been involved with since 2003 have enabled me to get involved at every stage – this way you get to relate to the end users in a different way and gain a better understanding of their wider needs and issues.

What are some of the barriers NGOs have encountered in using SMS technology in their work?

In 2003-2004, when I was researching mass SMS services for non-profits in developing countries, almost everything seemed to be Internet-based. People were taking a mobile phone technology and putting it on the web, when the web wasn’t easily available in many of the places I was working. They weren’t keeping it on the “GSM network in the sky”, so-to-speak, which seemed like the most obvious thing to do. Also, people couldn’t reply to many of these web-based systems, which made it feel like more of a top-down intervention to me. It didn’t make sense – the people with most of the relevant information didn’t have the ability to get that information out. On top of all that, those NGOs that were interested in exploring the use of SMS in their work were often hesitant because of the perceived expense, and technical expertise required. Nobody seemed to be thinking from an NGO mindset which was a real eye-opener.

What is FrontlineSMS and how does it work?

The FrontlineSMS 'SendConsole' screen

It’s a piece of software that you download from the web and install on a laptop or desktop computer. You then attach a mobile phone to the computer with a cable. Then, using FrontlineSMS, you can add the mobile numbers of your stakeholders and put them into different groups, for example, by category or geographic location. To broadcast a message, you type the message into the FrontlineSMS ‘SendConsole’ and press “Send”. It will then be sent to everyone in the group that you indicate. The beauty of doing it this way is that you can look back at all the messages that you have sent using your laptop. You can also see what’s come back in because people can reply to messages on FrontlineSMS. So it’s like an audit trail, and one you can export to Excel.

How does FrontlineSMS support itself?

I received seed funding to develop the concept from two former Vodafone directors back in 2005. The idea was to offer an easy-to-use, no cost solution. Many of the commercial outfits didn’t seem that sympathetic to the needs of NGOs. When you start charging for software, services, support contracts and so on, it immediately puts barriers up. I was trying to bring them down. The MacArthur Foundation recently awarded me a grant to build the next version. This will take FrontlineSMS to a whole new level, and also support the development of a portal where users can learn from each other and share experiences. The next version will be fully open source. The hope is that it will develop into a self-supporting community where users contribute to expanding what’s possible. If you could get hundreds of organizations using a standard, open source platform, there could be a huge amount of shared learning. I am very excited about the potential of this.

Who has been using FrontlineSMS and for what purpose?

The biggest use so far was by the Network of Mobile Election Monitors (NMEM), a Nigerian NGO. They used it to collect information on what was happening at the ballot boxes during April’s Presidential election. Ordinary citizens submitted their observations by text message to a FrontlineSMS hub. NMEM were able to collect information on what conditions were like, if the polling booths were set up properly, or if there was any unrest or coercion occurring. Over three to four days, more than 11,000 messages were received documenting what went right and what went wrong. A full report on the process is available on my website. Coverage by the BBC helped raise the profile of the entire effort. Because this involved citizen monitoring, as opposed to representatives of other large, official organizations, there was a greater likelihood of spotting improprieties. People don’t tend to do things illegally when they see people with big “I’m a monitor” badges on. We think this might be the first time text messaging has been used by citizens to help monitor an election in Africa.

FrontlineSMS was also used in the Philippine elections two weeks later to get information out to field workers, as opposed to receiving messages as in the Nigerian example. A report on this is due out soon. Human rights organizations have expressed an interest in using it to record violations, educators to communicate with pupils and teachers, and farmers to get prices, among many, many others. Although it is a single platform, it can be used for almost anything. This is what makes it so exciting.

What significant trends are you witnessing in the use of SMS technology by NGOs?

The number of non-profit organizations beginning to understand what text messaging can do for them is growing. With the release of Vodafone’s SIM report (Social Impact of Mobiles) and a continuing stream of books and academic papers - and websites like this one - more and more NGOs are becoming aware of potential applications in their work. My Mobile Database is an attempt to capture all of this information and make it available to NGOs from one central location, whilst a mobile-based Facebook group which I recently started is an attempt to bring interested parties together. Of course, the networks in some countries are still lagging behind and there are technology and cultural issues that may pose significant barriers. I spend a lot of my time these days talking about these cultural issues, and the growing role that anthropology can play in helping us understand them.

Right now I think we’re still only scratching the surface with what’s possible, which just goes to show that there’s a lot more work to be done.

You can read more about Ken’s work at http://www.kiwanja.net, where “Technology meets anthropology, conservation and development.”