At 5:38 PM -0200 11/26/05, Carlos Afonso wrote: >I agree we should worry about it, but I am not sure about Adam's >example. It looks like a commercial service to me -- with a pinch of >social responsibility etc. There are many examples of people working >on ICT for development who are not necessarily companies, so let us >discuss this further. Of course there may be companies worth getting >involved in this, but let us take a good look at ourselves >(non-profits) first. Idea is that it's sustainable, not just relying on donor funds. Perhaps look at OneWorld rather than OKN Mobile itself. Alice Wanjira, new ALAC member, may have some ideas. An article about the project below. Adam April 19, 2005 Kenyans Text Messaging Their Way to Jobs By REUTERS NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) - In the rural parts of Kenya, jobseekers wishing to use the Internet used to have to travel long distances to the nearest town with a cyber cafe. That changed last year with the creation of OneWorld International, a Kenyan firm offering a mobile phone text messaging service that advertises jobs and allows candidates to apply from wherever they are. ``It's relatively easy. All you need is access to a mobile phone with a Safaricom connection,'' said Antony Mwaniki, OneWorld International's business manager. ``The moment we get a job advertisement and put it on the system, it is automatically sent to the subscriber's phone as a text message,'' he told Reuters. Safaricom, one of Kenya's two mobile phone service providers, is a subsidiary of state-owned Telkom Kenya and Vodafone Group Plc , whose charitable arm helped set up the service. The text message costs just 3 Kenya shillings (4 U.S. cents). The Internet, often slow and unreliable in Kenya, is at least 10 shillings, with an additional per-minute charge of one shilling. Kenya's official unemployment rate is nearly 15 percent, with many people on poverty-line wages in the informal sector. When a new government was elected in late 2002, it promised to fight poverty and create new jobs in east Africa's largest economy, where corruption and poor economic growth has deterred the foreign investment needed to kick-start growth. PHONES MORE WIDESPREAD Statistics from the communications regulatory board, Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), show that there are about half a million Internet users in Kenya. Of these, 90 percent live in the capital Nairobi. On the other hand, CCK said there are 3 million mobile phone users in the country of 30 million. Mwaniki added that one mobile phone is often shared by several people, especially in the rural areas, so the numbers could actually be higher. He said the rapid broadcast to so many potential employees at once means employers get a much faster response than via the Internet, where jobseekers often look at message boards and applications trickle in as they see the ads. ``This morning I was reading an e-mail from one employer who put out an advertisement on Thursday morning. By Thursday afternoon, they had already short-listed candidates,'' Mwaniki said. The service targets mostly low paid, unskilled jobs. ``We are actually doing the lower cadre jobs,'' he said, adding that the most sought-after people were drivers, salespeople and house helps. Among the companies that using the service are a soda bottling company, a new cinema chain and a promotion company. ``I was using their service to recruit lower-cadre workers for us. The service has an advantage. It reaches as many people as possible within the shortest time,'' said Kenneth Kimani, who worked in human resources at Softa Bottling Company. Mwaniki said that the company has at least 5,000 subscribers using the job search service in Kenya. OneWorld, which employs seven people, also uses the service to distribute health information, especially about HIV/AIDS and breast cancer.