We’ve been seen as an ICT shop, wrongly. To us ICT is a domain. We apply the tools of economics, law and public-policy analysis to various domains. In the past it has been primarily ICTs. But agriculture is a domain we have been active in for some time, with the engagement increasing qualitatively in recent [...]
CPRafrica 2012/CPRsouth7: call for abstracts and young scholar applications. Click here for details.
Sri Lanka: Census asks question about Internet and ICT use
We have yet to see the actual questions, but this is very satisfying news. If the questions are good, it justifies our continued engagement with National Statistical Organizations since 2006. If we are still working on indicators, we’ll do our best to spread the word on Sri Lankan good practice. Sri Lanka will collect information [...]
Launch of Teleuse@BOP4 findings
LIRNEasia CEO, Rohan Samarajiva, presented the findings from the six-country study of teleuse at the Bottom of the Pyramid on 9th December 2011 in Bangkok, Thailand. The presentation took place on the first day of the CPRsouth conference to an audience of about 75 people that included senior-mid level academics and media personnel. Presentation slides [...]
3rd Joint National Conference on IT in Agriculture
We had the pleasure of participating in the 3rd Joint National Conference on Information Technology in Agriculture at the University of Ruhuna, Mapalana Campus, on the 29th of December 2011. Papers were presented by scholars in ICT (primarily from U of Moratuwa) addressing agriculture problems and by scholars in agriculture (primarily from U of Ruhuna) [...]
LIRNEasia data at CPRsouth
Sangamitra Ramachander, PhD, won the best paper competition at the sixth Communication Policy Research South (CPRsouth6) conference while Faheem Hussain, PhD, was judged as the runner up. Sangamitra, currently attached to the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford, UK, presented the paper titled, “The Price Sensitivity of Mobile Use Among Low Income Households in [...]
LIRNEasia benefits from social media
At LIRNEasia, we have used social media to drive traffic. As people spend more time on social media, they have to spend less time on something else. We were beginning to see the drop in blog readership (could have been caused by other things too). When we started tweeting and using Facebook, traffic picked up [...]
Cyclone Thane: Early warning and preparedness saves lives
We complain every time early warning is not given or false warnings/evacuation orders are issued. But praise must be given when right action is taken and lives are saved. Indian authorities are to be praised. Witnesses in Chennai and Pondicherry said trees had been toppled, there had been power outages throughout the night and disruption [...]
Data flood/tsunami/avalanche: Whatever the name, the problem is real
We’ve been talking about the qualitative increase in data volumes that will result from the conversion of mobile networks into carriers of data since 2010. Is it a flood, a tsunami or an avalanche? The name does not seem to matter (though tsunami is the term that seems to be catching). Unless the problem is [...]
IBM predicts the end of the Digital Divide
Every year, IBM make five tech predictions that it is confident will be realized in the next five years: five in five. Number four this time is the prediction that the Digital Divide will be bridged, thanks to mobile devices. Mobile devices are decreasing the information-accessibility gap in disadvantaged areas. In five years, the gap [...]
Disagreeing with Smith Dharmasaroja: Importance of focusing on the most important issue
Smith Dharmasaroja is a hero of mine. Disagreeing with a hero does not come easy. But he is wrong to give equal or greater weight to national tsunami detection and monitoring systems than to communication of last-mile warning. It may be that the fault lies in the reporter in ordering the comments, but it does [...]
Good bye Europe; hello emerging markets
The pendulum swings again. It was around 10 years ago that the great retreat was in full swing, with US and European telcos retreating from emerging markets (and even masking their investments as France Telecom did by making Mauritius Telecom the holding company for its African operations). Now they’re unloading European businesses to go where [...]
Sri Lanka: Seven years after tsunami, lack of information and preparedness prevails
The government itself has found the early warning actions of the designated national authorities deficient and is talking of setting up workaround mechanisms. Nothing really new, other than sadness that seven years and large commitments of resources have not taken us much farther than we were back in 2004. What is even more worrisome is [...]
Sri Lanka exports e-waste
Back in 2008, I had a knock-down policy debate with current Provincial Council Minister and then Chairman of the Central Environmental Authority Udaya Gammanpila (mostly in the Sinhala newspapers, so difficult to give all the links, but here is one). In the short-term he won: the two percent envi levy was not rolled back at [...]
Big data, location-based apps and smartphones
We’ve been thinking about the potential of big data (large, continuing streams of computer-readable data) for development applications. There is nothing about development in the marketing campaign below, but can any zealous privacy advocate identify a problem with it? A mobile campaign by Blue Chip Marketing Worldwide, which is based in Chicago, places the ads [...]
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