The Century of Africa
January 2005
Banner photo: ©SEKAI BUNKA PHOTO
Building Technological Bridges in Africa
Uwem Robert Otu at the Junior United Nations Eco-Conference in Tokyo, November 2003
Africa, like the rest of the world, is heading into a great transformation. We are moving from a society that we know toward another that is unfamiliar, different from the industrial and agricultural worlds of our parents and grandparents, toward the networked, knowledge societies of our children and grandchildren. Knowledge and brainpower are replacing brawn and muscle power as the essential elements for economic well-being and social cohesion.
An essential lesson of human history is that great transformations never happen on their own; they are the work of women and men of vision, courage and action. They are created by leaders. Leaders at the national level, but also leaders in their own local communities and, increasingly, leaders in the new territories of cyberspace. They use the most appropriate technologies and services to create more choices for local people, choices they lacked before.
Innovations in Health
Health professionals in Africa face a devastating array of crises yet have little or no access to the knowledge resources that could help them do their jobs better.
In response to this need, HealthNet Uganda and U.S.-based SATELLIFE have developed creative and cost-effective applications of information and communication technologies (ICT) to support health practitioners and policy-makers in Uganda. Their shared goal is to overcome the barriers to communication and knowledge building and sharing that inhibit improved health-care delivery and policy-making. These barriers include poor tele-communications infrastructure; health personnel's limited access to expensive medical journals, computers and computer literacy training; and the limited reach and affordability of the Internet.
Building on their success, HealthNet Uganda and SATELLIFE are now in the planning stage of a countrywide deployment of handheld computers to facilitate the exchange of e-mail, medical information, training materials and data between rural and urban health facilities.
Health-care workers can now provide remote consultation, diagnosis and treatment, and collaborate with colleagues without traveling long, costly distances.
ICT has played a pivotal role in controlling river blindness in West Africa. Local inhabitants use computers and satellite radio to transmit data collected by sensors along 50,000 kilometers of rivers to entomologists who then calculate the optimum time to spray against the disease-carrying blackfly.
Creative Use of Technology
The Tygerberg Children's Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, implemented a tele-medicine system in 1999 with funding from the local Rotary Club. The system uses affordable, off-the-shelf computer equipment and software--a hard drive, scanner and digital camera--to enable rural hospitals to scan and send X-rays and blood-test results to Tygerberg. A Tygerberg health-care worker reviews the data and forwards it to the appropriate diagnostic specialist, and the specialist then e-mails treatment recommendations to the rural hospital. This system not only provides rural children with life-saving medical care, but saves families costly transportation fees. Sending a child to Tygerberg would cost a farmworker the equivalent of one week's salary.
SATELLIFE handheld computers being used to conduct a community health survey. See www.healthnet.org
In 1996, the Ugandan Ministry of Health, the United Nations Population Fund and the Uganda Population Secretariat initiated the Rural Extended Services and Care for Ultimate Emergency Relief (RESCUER) project to reduce a maternal mortality rate estimated at 506 per 100,000. The project was designed to improve maternal health by connecting traditional rural community health providers with a cost-effective formal health delivery system. Ugandan officials decided to employ very high frequency (VHF) radio technology that operated on fixed base stations, mobile walkie-talkies and vehicle radios. In 1999, three years after the project was implemented, a study sample of the Iganga district concluded that the maternal mortality rate had decreased by nearly 50 percent.
TB Treatment
Cape Town, South Africa, has one of the highest rates of tuberculosis (TB) worldwide. In order to treat and contain TB, patients must adhere to a strict treatment of four tablets, five times a week for six months. The treatment too often fails because patients forget to take their medication. In 2002, South Africans tried a different approach that led to tremendous success. They used mobile phones, Short Messaging Service (SMS) technology and a pilot computer database.
Health center staff receive training on use of SATELLIFE handheld computers as part of the Uganda Health Information Network project
Every half-hour, the database scans a list of patients and sends an SMS text message to those patients needing to take their medication. Of the 138 patients participating in the pilot, only one treatment failure occurred.
Improved access to information and ICT skills, similar to the enhancement of a person's writing and reading skills, is already enhancing Africans' capabilities to make strategic life choices and to achieve the lifestyle they value.
Uwem Robert Otu is president of the African Youth Movement, a not-for-profit organization based in South Africa and Nigeria, working in the fields of education, health (HIV/AIDS), poverty eradication and environment, within the broad context of sustainability.
