betterplace lab around the world 2014 - english

Report 2014: How the internet and mobile phones are improving lives globally
Tanzania
p.24
India
p.14
Israel
p.20
Kenya
p.22
Rwanda
p.26
China
p.2
Indonesia
p.8
Germany
p.48

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Dear Reader,
Can digital gadgets make the world a better place? In spring 2014, the
betterplace lab, armed with rucksacks and notebooks, set off around
the world.* Our goal was to research how aid organisations, NGOs,
activists and social entrepreneurs are using the internet and mobile
phones in 2014 – from India to Senegal, from Rwanda to Brazil.
Our first findings: There’s a revolutionary atmosphere building in a
lot of the communities we met. An era is dawning globally in which
the internet is no longer just for consuming banal content, where mobile
phones do far more than communicate. Instead, these resources are
being used to involve more citizens in the democratic process, deliver
aid resources more efficiently, or educate disadvantaged children.
In this brochure we would like to present a small selection of some of
the most engaging examples we came across. Like the “Breastfeeding
Dads” in Indonesia, who have managed to lower child mortality
by mobilising against the mighty milk-powder multinationals.
Or “SokoText”, a text message service which lets Kenyan market-stall
vendors cooperate to increase their income.
We have also developed some initial hypotheses about why social
digital innovation is more successful in some countries than others.
And about how dynamic innovation is in these countries, and why.
This trip is just the beginning of this research – and something of a
leap into the unknown. All the more reason to thank our partners who
supported the Lab Around the World: Ashoka, Deutsche Lufthansa AG,
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the BMW Foundation,
the Millicom Foundation and Mozilla, as well as our media partner
ZEIT Online.
But enough preamble. Now to dive into the whirring global network
of hard-drives, websites, apps, and mobiles – and the new wave of
idealism they’ve unleashed. We hope you enjoy your whistle-stop
tour through our fifteen countries.
Your betterplace lab team
*The Lab Around the World was very much a backpacking trip and not some
first class tour. Dennis, for example, paid €1.65 for his “room” in Indonesia.

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A highly digitalised urban middle class
meets a very young NGO landscape.
In recent years large technology companies have built big donation platforms and, along
with the Communist Party, now promote philanthropy as part of a modern lifestyle.
Trailblazer foundations such as the One Foundation lead the way in social digital.
Well-known bloggers with millions of fans initiate and accelerate campaigns using popular
social media platforms like Sina Weibo and WeChat. These typically focus on “safe” issues
such as education and child poverty, whereas online campaigns on sensitive issues like
working conditions or human rights are strictly policed.
Explorers: Joana Breidenbach and Pál Nyíri | joana.breidenbach@betterplace.org | p.d.nyiri@vu.nl
No.29 on the Global
innovation index No.91 on the Human
Development index
oNly 1500
Organisations
are allowed to
collect donations in China
45.8% use the INTERNET
88.7 mobile phone
subscriptions
per 100 inhabitants
“If there’s an earthquake, people
donate. If there’s no earthquake,
they don’t.”
Bei Xiaochao, CSR Director, Sina Weibo

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Find more examples, including Tan Wan (“The Eagle”), once China’s most legendary hacker, now entrepreneur
with a social digital agency – go to: bit.ly/chineseeagle
Case study: Sina Weibo Gongyi
With 500 million users, Sina Weibo accounts
for 80 percent of the Chinese micro-blogger
market. In 2012 the company launched
what has since become one of China’s
three largest donation platforms (gongyi).
More than 10,000 projects so far have
used the site to raise
over 30 million USD. In
contrast with the gongyi
run by competitor Tencent,
which is heavily focussed
on long-term donations,
Sina Weibo Gongyi hosts
one-off projects. Any
user of the Weibo site can set up a project
to gather donations – e.g. to finance
the school fees of their child. There is a
verification process; other users register
as voluntary inspectors and assess the
seriousness of appeals for help, either
through phone calls or site visits. After
that the CSR team from Sina Weibo tries
to connect the project to one of the (mostly
state-run) foundations permitted to collect
donations. Every donor has a user profile,
with graphics showing how many other
people each has enlisted to engage through
social media activity.
Some “super-users”
manage to mobilise
up to a million people.
The large Chinese social
media and tech platforms
cooperate closely with
the government. At the
same time, they bankroll the infrastructure
of the new philanthropic lifestyle, which
is allowing Chinese people both to build
greater trust between individuals and
engage in helping the socially dis-advantaged.
gongyi.weibo.com
One person gets
one million others
to engage.

4
The One Foundation is one of the organisations permitted to gather donations in China – e.g. with this lovely app
China’s civil society is conquering the web
Chinese citizens are using the internet to collect donations.
The Party regulates these initiatives closely. But shrewd
dissidents find loopholes to support each other.
Three years ago, as journalist Deng Fei
travelled through rural China, he came
across a miserable sight: children in a
schoolyard cooking themselves a meagre
meal over an open fire. The children were
going hungry – like millions of other Chi-nese
schoolchildren.
The journalist wanted to help. He started
a donation drive on the micro-blogging
platform Sina Weibo, and called it “Free
Lunch”. The initiative was a huge success:
three years and 40 million Weibo-follow-ers
later “Free Lunch” is a nationwide
movement and has collected 11 million
USD in donations – enough to provide 360
schools across China with free meals for
their pupils.
Deng’s initiative was totally in the inter-est
of the Party. Back in 2008 the then
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao had highlight-ed
malnutrition among school children
as a problem. Two years later journalists

5
from the state broadcaster CCTV picked
up the issue. They managed to interest Liu
Yunshan, head of propaganda in the
Communist Party, in the fate of these
children. The journalists produced a
documentary which they were allowed to
broadcast at prime time.
After this coverage the issue was considered
unproblematic. One week after CCTV had
shown the documentary Deng Fei started
his campaign on Weibo. Soon afterwards
the government itself announced that it
was going to provide around 240 million
USD per year to provide meals for school
children in the country’s poorest regions.
Deng’s success story forms part of a great
current of social change in China. In a
country without a modern culture of mak-ing
and collecting donations, in which all
forms of organised civil society were out-lawed,
a diverse landscape of NGOs has
developed, supported by the new possibili-ties
the internet provides.
The event that triggered this change was
the major Sichuan earthquake in 2008.
In response to the crisis film star Jet Li
founded the One Foundation (which only
coincidentally shares its name with the
development organisation set up by U2
front-man Bono). The Chinese One Foun-dation
appeals to citizens to place standing
order donations online. Their slogan is:
“One person, one month, one Yuan”.
“Philanthropy shall
become part of the
Chinese lifestyle.”
Internet giants Tencent, Sina Weibo and
Alibaba also all set up large donation
platforms in the aftermath of the disas-ter.
Thanks to their enormous numbers
of users – at times, QQ-Chat alone, run by
Tencent, can have 180 million users online
at once – these media outlets have given
a serious boost to the nascent donation
culture. No false modesty from Tencent
CEO Dou Ruigang; his stated ambition:
“Philanthropy shall become part of the
Chinese lifestyle.”
So far, the figures are rather modest: the
big platforms have collected around 80
million USD in donations. By way of com-parison,
in Germany annual donations
come to over 9 billion dollars.
Many observers see digital campaigns like
Deng Fei’s “Free Lunch” as proof of an
emerging civil society and of digital tech-nology
creating new liberties. Some even
interpret them as covert political protests
from the big, aspiring middle class against
Journalist Deng Fei has raised 11 million USD
in online donations for school meals

6
the inadequacy of the current political sys-tem.
This middle class – according to this
interpretation – can see massive social
problems and, unable to directly influence
state politics, is finding other ways to engage.
Unlike NGOs in Europe and the USA, most
of China’s new NGOs don’t see themselves
as a critical counterweight to the state and
commercial economy. On the contrary:
the communist government supports civ-ic
engagement and such groups often take
on tasks and functions in line with Party
interests. The state lacks the means for an
effective social policy and so it pushes re-sponsibility
for social services – as many
Western countries are doing – onto private
initiatives, companies and donors.
But as soon as an initiative disrupts exist-ing
taboos, the rules of the game change.
For example, factory workers blogging
about poor working conditions are re-pressed
by the Party. The Party hires
commentators – so-called “50 cent Party
members” – who effectively disable critical
debate on blog sites.
Any NGO that wishes to raise donations
needs to be accredited with an official
foundation. This grants the government a
very effective filter: they only permit initia-tives
which do not threaten their interests.
But the state surveillance has its cracks,
which Guo Yuhua, who works to support
political prisoners, has managed to slip
through. By day, Guo is Professor of An-thropology
at the well-regarded Tsinghua
University. In his spare time he engages,
along with around 10,000 other Chinese
citizens, as a member of the Meat Party.
Some say it’s the only real opposition party
in China.
Donating to the opposition
The Meat Party was founded by Xu Zhi-rong,
better known by his online persona
Rou Tangseng, which he chose in honour
of a classical literary character. Rou
became active when the dissident blogger
Ran Yunfei was arrested. This meant the
Yunfei family lost the greater part of their
livelihood, and Rou wanted to help. He
appealed for donations on the Weibo plat-form.
Rou’s appeal was so successful that
the Party immediately ordered his Weibo
account to be closed.
At the beginning of 2013 Rou opened a vir-tual
shop on Taobao, the biggest of China’s
e-commerce portals. Taobao is comparable
to eBay. At the “Roupu”, which translates
as “Meat Store”, Ran’s supporters could
buy a thank-you note for a few Yuan. These
purchases, however, were just a camou-flage
for donations to Ran’s family.
In the first three days alone 4,600 cus-tomers
donated a total of 120,000 Yuan
(20,000 USD) at the Meat Store. Then the
platform operator closed the shop. But Ruo
“As soon as an initiative
disrupts existing taboos, the
rules of the game change.”

7
opened a new store under another name.
This time he sold meetings with people
well-known people. A bank employee paid
months’ wages for a dinner with a political
scientist. An hour over tea with the anthro-pologist
Guo went for 800 Yuan (130 USD).
Rou’s online store is unique in China. He
has managed to motivate a young and,
since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massa-cre,
largely apolitical population to engage
in political action. Intellectuals, students,
shopkeepers and even government offi-cials
shop at the Meat Store. Within eight
months 10,000 Chinese people donated
over 200,000 USD for political prisoners.
Gou puts this success down to the on-line-
shopping procedure serving to de-politicise
the act. Furthermore, film stars
like Chen Kun have used social media plat-forms
to inform millions of fans about the
Meat Store’s auctions.
Meanwhile, the store takes care of sever-al
of the families of political prisoners.
The distribution of funds is organised
through a grassroots democratic process.
As soon as enough money has come in
for a family, nine shop members are se-lected
from within the shop’s database.
These members discuss anonymously via
chat which family shall receive the money.
This organisational structure also has the
advantage that the Meat Store can contin-ue
operating even if its founders are ar-rested.
Guo herself has been taken in for
police questioning on several occasions.
Pressure on the government
The rise of digital media in China has
opened up new spaces in which old taboos
have become socially acceptable. A cou-ple
of years ago the US embassy in Beijing
started to tweet the air pollution measure-ments
taken by instruments on its roof.
This led to public pressure for the Chinese
authorities to also make their measure-ments
public, which they eventually did.
The Chinese figure, however, was always
much lower than the American one. So
developers programmed an App that sim-ply
posted both values next to each other
– without comments. It worked: today’s
published data is reliable, and now there is
a slew of hackathons focussed on improv-ing
air quality.
The size of the domestic market, the al-most
universal digital infrastructure and
the enthusiasm of the Chinese for digital
communication may set in motion a tre-mendous
movement. But there is also fear
of the powerful digital wave that could be
unleashed, which sometimes causes peo-ple
to hold back. When activists post on so-cial
media, they often have little influence
over what happens next. And so far, this is
a risk few are prepared to take.
“In the first three days,
customers of the Meat Shop
donated 20,000 USD.”

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Sparks are flying in Indonesia.
Jakarta is one of the world capitals of Twitter usage, with 65 million users. What’s more,
Indonesia has the fourth biggest army of Facebook users. Everybody wants to be online!
Above all, it seems, in order to post selfies and chat. Civil society, mostly organised in loose-knit
networks, focuses on fighting corruption and stemming environmental destruction.
The country, then, is both quite thoroughly digitised and socially engaged. But these two
elements haven’t really united yet. Online fundraising and other social digital applications
are few and far between. But there is effective online campaigning and Twitter, above all
others, is a powerful tool for this in the country of a thousand islands.
Explorer: Dennis Buchmann | dennis.buchmann@betterplace.org
70% of indonesia’s
total bandwidth
is used on Java and 70%
of this in Jakarta
121.5 mobile phone
subscriptions
per 100 inhabitants
“We’ve built planes, we’ve
built satellites – so why not
build an Indonesian Silicon
Valley?”
Dr. Budi Rahardjo, Professor at the
Institute of Technology in Bandung
No.87 on the Global
innovation index
No.108 on the Human
Development index

9
Almost as active as Indonesia’s civil society: Mount Merapi (see overleaf).
Case study: The Breastfeeding Dads
AyahASI, a network of young fathers who
also go by the name “the Breastfeeding
Dads” know how to have fun with their work.
They campaign for more mothers in Indo-nesia
to breastfeed. Fathers campaigning for
more breast-milk: it might sound comical,
but it’s a deadly serious topic. Large multi-national
“If you breastfeed
for six months, you’ve
saved enough money
for an iPhone!”
companies pay
midwives and hospitals
to recommend their milk
powder to young mothers
in place of breastfeeding,
leading to the death of
around 30,000 newborns
every year. That’s because in rural areas the
water, which the milk powder is mixed with,
is often unclean. The Breastfeeding Dads
concentrate on the advantages of breast-feeding
and have their target audience firm-ly
in mind when they communicate this: “If
you breastfeed for six months, you’ve saved
enough money for an iPhone!” – one advan-tage
calculated to appeal to other fathers.
This somewhat offbeat attitude obviously
has wide appeal: to date the Breastfeeding
Dads have accumulated a Twitter following
of over 120,000. Their network of more
than 50 engaged fathers scattered across
21 cities throughout the
country also uses Twitter
to answer questions
from uncertain parents –
typically between 50 and
300 per day. Their tweet-ing
reached such a pitch
that it has got the issue onto the Indonesian
government’s agenda. If things continue to
progress at the same rate, their thousands
of tiny pin-pricks could add up to a dagger
in the heart for the milk powder companies.
Twitter.com/ID_AyahASI

10
Sukiman Pratomo on one of the steep roads in Sidorejo village, where he runs the volcano information
radio service Lintas Merapi.
The crowdsourced early warning system
When the volcano Mount Merapi in Indonesia used to erupt,
the government was rarely of much help to those in its way.
Now the people organise disaster protection for themselves
– and do it better.
When Mount Merapi erupts, everything
depends on the right people getting the
right information. Their lives depend on
it. They need a clear answer to the most
pressing questions: Where are the nearest
evacuation routes? Where is there safe
accommodation? Where is there drinking
water? If these things aren’t clear, then
rescue missions are impeded by panicked
people fleeing without knowing where to
go – and the probability increases that
many people will die. Merapi is one of the
most active volcanoes on Earth. When it
erupted in 2006, the authorities proved
unequal to the situation. “Some villages
which were evacuated which weren’t in
any danger,” complains Sukiman Mochtar
Pratomoy, “and then we had to stick it out
for three months in refugee camps in poor
conditions.”

11
To prevent this mismanagement from
happening again, several villages around
Merapi teamed up after the eruption. They
agreed that in the event of future eruptions
they would warn one another, and founded
the Jalin Merapi network. Since then Pratomo
and others have set up the Linas Merapi
community radio, an important part of the
new warning system.
“When Merapi erupted again in 2010,”
Pratomo says, “we evacuated our village
ourselves.” Three hundred people died as
a result of the eruption – but without the
network it might have been many more.
The flexible network reacted rapidly – in
contrast with the authorities, which had
to struggle with bureaucratic approvals,
budgets and coordination between local,
regional and national decision makers.
Just one day before the eruption on 26th
October 2010 the volunteers of Jalin
Merapi registered the Twitter account
@jalinmerapi. Within a few days it had
35,000 followers.
In parallel radio stations warned the inhab-itants
of nearby villages, and text messages
further helped to spread warning messages.
When Twitter came along, it made an ideal
addition to the system – perfect for rapidly
spreading information and organising
response efforts. After the 2010 eruption, for
instance, a single tweet was able to provide
meals for 6,000 refugees within half an hour.
Today, in spring 2014, all is quiet in
Sidorejo, the village where Lintas Merapi
is based. Just a thin wisp of smoke trails
leisurely from the volcano. At times like
these the radio team sends out tips for
farmers, weather forecasts, or general
information about what to do in the event
of an eruption – interspersed with regular
updates about the state of the volcano. The
station receives these from observation
outposts. Volunteers from surrounding
villages keep constant watch on the slopes
of the volcano.
Noer Cholik in front of the seismometers at the
Institute of Volcanology in Yogykarta, communicating
with the volcano-watchers by CB radio.
Together with observation cameras,
sensors and measurement equipment –
measuring, for example, dilation of the
crater – the volunteers are an irreplaceable
source of information. They don’t let the
crater out of sight, and thanks to CB radio
(citizens band radio, a means of short-range,
two-way communication) they’re
in constant contact with community radio
stations, as well as with the Institute of
Volcanology in Yogyakarta, a neighbouring
major city thankfully not threatened by
the volcano.
“When Merapi erupted again
in 2010, we evacuated our
village ourselves.”

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Sukiman Pratomo in the radio studio, through the window he has Merapi’s crater constantly in view.
It’s in this institute that Noer Cholik rolls
his office chair diagonally across the large
observation room, to where the CB radio
receiver crackles in the corner. With one
hand he operates the mouthpiece, discuss-ing
the shape of the smoke plume. With the
other hand he’s already tweeting.
“At first we were pretty sceptical,” says
Cholik, “but Twitter is a good channel for
keeping people constantly up to date with
the most important information.”
The room contains more than 30 flat-screen
monitors, showing measurement data and
live feeds from the observation cameras.
Every few minutes Cholik takes screen-shots
and tweets the weather report for the
volcano’s summit along with the hashtag
#merapi. At the moment it’s raining,
everything seems calm. But less than half
an hour later there’s a rush of activity in
the observation room. Cholik’s colleagues
have heard through Twitter that a medium-sized
wave of lava has formed and is
flowing down Merapi’s slope. Now the
observation cameras are showing a digger
and a lorry getting swept away. Cholik’s
colleagues fall silent. Their communication
has narrowed to tweets and retweets.
“Twitter is a good channel
for keeping people constantly
up to date with the most im-portant
information.”

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“Twitter works so well for us because it
forces people to get to the point,” says
Elanto Wijoyono. He’s one of the people
who look after the @jalinmerapi account.
When disaster strikes, ten volunteers help
to feed the Twitter account with relevant
information.
“Twitter doesn’t just let you reach a lot
of people, but precisely the right ones,”
Wijoyono explains. Not only that, the
crowd quickly verifies some tweets, while
quickly weeding out mistaken reports. In
addition to categorising hashtags such as
#supply, #alert or #trans (transportation),
both helpers and those in need always
tweet their names and phone numbers,
which aids verification.
So the flow of information from different
sources converges, and is then disseminated
through various channels: the outposts use
CB radio to report to the volcanologists
and the radio station, and information
is spread by SMS, WhatsApp, Twitter and
Facebook. And if they need to, people can
always phone directly to check details.
Merapi is sacred to the people in
surrounding villages – and it erupts regularly.
Therefore essentially the entire community
is engaged in the early warning network.
When Merapi is calm, the guys from Jalin
Merapi also help people living in the shadow
of other volcanoes. For instance, those near
to Kelud 300 kilometres away, or Mount
Sinabung on Sumatra, where the last eruption
two weeks ago killed 14 people. There are
community radio stations there too, and
Jalin Merapi wants to help them incorporate
other media channels too.
There are many lessons we can draw from
the principle of the self-organising disaster
information network. Even the UN Special
Adviser on Social and Economic Issues
was impressed when Sukiman Pramoto
explained Jalin Merapi to him in 2013.
Signs, omnipresent around Merapi,
showing evacuation routes
In the meantime the government
authorities have also become more open to
cooperation. Following the 2010 eruption
they were won over by this civil society-led
catastrophe management, and the way it
handles information.
“Twitter doesn’t just let you
reach a lot of people, but
precisely the right ones.”

14
A land of extreme contrasts
In technological and digital terms, India’s major cities are comfortably keeping pace with
countries like the USA – the latest smartphones, digital co-working spaces, hackathons:
these things are the norm. But at the same time some parts of the countryside lack basics
like healthcare and adequate food provision. More and more social entrepreneurs are try-ing
to resolve these contradictions, intervening above all around healthcare, education and
agriculture. The megacities of Bangalore and Pune are now referred to as the Silicon Valley
and Palo Alto of Asia. In recent years the government has been very active in digitising even
rural areas and in financing successful digital solutions.
Explorer: Medje Prahm | medje.prahm@betterplace.org
every village
should have
Broadband internet BY 2020
No.76 on the Global
innovation index
70.8 No.135 on the Human
mobile phone
subscriptions
index Development per 100 inhabitants
“Because of our vast geography and the
number of people we have technology
is going to be important if you want to
deliver any kind of service.”
Nelson Moses, Editor at SocialStory,
India’s biggest blog on social entrepreneurship.

15
Good flow of information: Nextdrop sends information about clean water by text message.
Read more about this and other projects at: bit.ly/indiansms
Case study: Babajob
Around 90 percent of the Indian population
work in the informal sector. That means they
are gardeners or maids, with slim chances of
getting a “legal” job and earning lower wages
than workers in the formal labour market.
The platform Babajob helps to make jobs
in the informal sector, which are normally
filled just through word of
mouth, more visible and
accessible. That means
more freedom for people
without formal training
to switch employers, and
more wage transparency,
since pay-rates are also
published on the site. Founder Sean Blagsved
describes having the idea for Babajob:
“I thought: we needed a LinkedIn for
the poor! We need to digitise the social
networks that exist between people, to help
them escape poverty.” So he developed
a marketplace for job offers, where those
seeking work could apply using their
computer, by text message, or by phoning a
call-centre – depending on what means they
had access to and whether they could read
or write. Today the site unites 1.6 million
“I thought: we need a
LinkedIn for the poor!”
jobseekers with 100,00
potential employers and
lets the former compare
the payment rates on
offer and how far away
the workplaces are. On
average users of Babajob
can increase their income
by 20 percent. By creating a new “digital
formal” job sector in which employers and
workers meet, the platform also increases
how well regarded such jobs are in general.
babajob.com

16
Santosh Ostwal with his invention, the Nano Ganesh mobile water pump controller © Santosh Ostwal
Watering the fields with a phone call
Engineer and farmer’s son Santosh Ostwal developed a
phone-operated remote controlled water pump for his
grandfather. Today farmers right across India are using
his invention.
Santosh Ostwal can still clearly remember
how tough life used to be, back when he
was a young boy and his family lived working
the land. Every night Ostwal’s octogenarian
grandfather had to head out across the
fields – often multiple times. He had to
walk a mile to turn on the irrigation pumps.
Otherwise his crops would have died for
lack of water.
The pumps need electricity, but in rural
India it’s scarce. Even today, farmers there
operate their water pumps mostly at night.
And because the power often cuts out, they
often stand idle; on the other hand, if the
power supply remains stable the pumps
run right all night, both wasting a huge
amount of precious water and also rinsing
a lot of nutrients out of the earth.

17
So the farmers have to go out at night. But
then who tends the fields during the day, or
takes the produce to market? “Access to elec-tricity
and water is a big problem for Indian
smallholder farmers,” says Santosh Ostwal.
The unreliable electricity supply was some-thing
Ostwal couldn’t do anything about –
but he did resolve to find a way to operate
the pumps remotely. That way he could at
least spare his grandfather the nocturnal
commutes.
That was twenty years ago, and now Ostwal
has done what he set out to do. The engi-neer,
now 49, pulls out his mobile phone,
dials a number, enters a code, and a distant
water pump turns on or off. It’s operated
by the mobile signal and a small box con-nected
to the pump: the box serves as on-off
switch and it’s operated by phone signal.
Ostwal named his invention Nano Ganesh
after the elephant god Ganesha, the re-mover
of obstacles and god of knowledge,
commerce and fortune. “Nano Ganesh is an
ultramodern technology, encapsulated in a
very simple and robust way to present it to
the farmers in remote areas in rural India,”
he says. His grandfather is among those
who benefit. But thousands of other small-holder
farmers in India now profit from the
technology. Ostwal has sold 20,000 boxes
so far – but there are millions of pumps
across the country still operating without
remote control.
Sontosh Ostwal has told his tale count-less
times: the story of the young boy who
wants to help his elderly grandfather and
who, after countless failed attempts, finally
succeeds. Nonetheless, he still tells it with
pleasure and pride. He responds to every
question with a loud “ha!” before answer-ing,
and is delighted when people want go
into detail. He explains everything slowly
in a melodious, rolling Indian English.
He wants the person he’s addressing to
understand everything.
Ostwal started his journey by getting a
degree in engineering, then he started look-ing
for ways you could operate irrigation
pumps remotely. It took him ten years until
he’d created a product that was ready to
market. Because he could not find a creditor
to support the project, he had to finance its
development using the savings of family
and friends. Unlike many successful Indian
entrepreneurs, Ostwal has never studied in
the US or UK. And he plays up his humble
background: “I am the grandson of a farmer,
my entire family is a farmer family. That is
“Nano Ganesh is an
ultramodern technology,
encapsulated in a very
simple and robust way.”
From a Nano Ganesh promotional pamphlet.

18
An Indian farmer tests the remote controlled pump using his mobile phone.
why I can proudly say I know the purpose of
the farmer and understand their thoughts.”
The breakthrough came five years ago. Ostwal
entered the “Nokia Calling All Innovators
Award”, a competition for innovations built
on mobile phone technology. In Barcelona,
where the final of the 2009 competition
took place, he stood on a stage and, using
his phone, turned the pumps in his home
village of Pune on and off again. The crowd
went wild. Ostwal won.
From that moment he spent the rest of
that year in the limelight. The Economist
reported on Ostwal’s invention, he spoke
at TEDx conferences, at the Mobile World
Congress and to an audience from USAID,
the US-American national aid agency. He
invested the prize money and speaking fees
in the development of Nano Ganesh. He
still didn’t have any outside investors.
“I wanted to help farmers
all over the world. Until
that event I couldn’t reach
a global platform.”
That was also the moment that Ostwal’s
perspective on the scope of his invention
changed. “I realised this is the dream that
I have been working on the last 15 years of
my life. I wanted to help farmers all over
the world. Until that event I couldn’t reach
a global platform.
The first step is spreading his invention
within India. “If there are 30 million water

19
pumps in India, why should I just take
care of twenty thousand? That passion
doesn’t allow me to settle down with less!”
enthuses Ostwal.
There are Nano Ganesh pumps now in
almost every Indian province. At the time
of researching Ostwal is in discussions with
some regional governments that want to
promote the use of the pumps with sub-sidies.
He’s also in talks with an investor.
Ostwal doesn’t want to disclose details of
these discussions. But he’s optimistic that
soon many millions will be able to use their
mobile phones to remotely operate their
irrigation pumps, meaning they will no
longer have to set off into the night. His
grandfather would surely have approved.

20
Technology, education, entrepreneurial spirit – it’s all there.
At least, it is in the secular Jewish population: 75 percent of Israelis are Jewish, and of these
10 percent are ultra-orthodox and eschew the internet completely. There is fertile ground for
social digital innovation in Israel: education levels are very high, particularly in high-tech
sectors; the entrepreneurial spirit is widespread; and financing is widely available, be
it through crowdfunding, foreign investment, or well-maintained personal networks.
Innovations are developed with the international market in mind from the very outset, most-ly
because the domestic Israeli market is tiny. At present social digital entrepreneurship
is not viewed as particularly sexy. Most potential innovators want to convert this into a
successful business.
Explorer: Sarah Strozynski | sarah.strozynski@betterplace.org
60% of israeli Schools make use of
E-Learning
70.8%
use the INTERNET
No.19 on the Human
Development index
No.15 on the Global
innovation index
122.9 mobile phone
subscriptions
per 100 inhabitants
“Israel is definitely a start-up nation.
But none of this brainpower is used to
solve social problems. Everybody just
wants to create the next Angry Birds.”
Nir Shimony, Founder, Tech For Good

There’s plenty of co-working spaces in Israel, the Social Lab or Tsofen for instance. Or if solo-working is more
your vibe, head to the beach.
Case study: “Making History: Israel on a Timeline”
21
“Making History: Israel on a Timeline”
uses Facebook to teach history. The proj-ect
was set up by two young Israeli en-trepreneurs
who wanted to take history
lessons, previously the
preserve of the educa-tionally
privileged, adapt
them for the sensibili-ties
of young people and
It began with the
Second World War.
make them available free
of charge. To do this the
team, comprised of software developers
and teachers, have presented history, be-ginning
with the Second World War, so
that it appears in chronological order as a
live-steam on the Facebook newsfeed. The
team selects material on the basis of the
national Bagrut, the exam taken by stu-dents
at the end of secondary education.
Spurred on by initial suc-cess
and popularity, they
began to create other
timelines, documenting
the creation of the Israeli
state and the creation of
Israeli settlements in the
Middle Ages. Facebook can be more than
just videos of kittens – the site is what you
make of it.

22
In Africa’s social digital landscape,
most view Nairobi as the pinnacle.
Yes, there’s a lot happening in Kenya, but the social digital scene should not be overesti-mated.
In particular the iHub in Nairobi, a co-working space from which over 150 digital
projects have already emerged, enjoys quite a lot of attention from international media
and investors. There are also various social digital awards and innovation challenges. But
critics believe Kenyan start-ups are over-funded. What’s clear is that a lot of Kenyans are
well educated and skilled in the art of elevator pitches. These entrepreneurs are always
online and never without their smartphones. But at the same time, only around 40 percent
of the population has internet access. The digital elite stands in contrast to the population
at large, half of whom live below the poverty line – and this gulf is getting wider.
Explorer: Kathleen Ziemann | kathleen.ziemann@betterplace.org
39. use t0h%e INTERNET
No.85 on the Global
innovation index
No.147 on the Human
Development index
70.6 mobile phone
subscriptions
per 100 inhabitants
“Social entrepreneurship has
come on a long way in Nairobi.
Nairobi acts like a hub, both
attracting and promoting these
ideas. It helps that the city is so
strong economically.”
Victoria Nyakundi, Financial Officer,
Ashoka East Africa
>17M Kenyans
use the mobile
payment system m-Pesa

23
The iHub in Nairobi, probably the best known social digital co-working space anywhere in the world.
Vegetable sellers and kiosk owners play an
important role in feeding the inhabitants
of Nairobi’s slums. However, because they
can only buy and sell
in small amounts,
their prices stay high.
Bulk-buyers can buy
produce at a much-reduced
rate, and then
SokoText aggregates the
orders of vegetable sellers
in the slum and buys them
in bulk for a lower price.
pass the better prices
onto the end buyer. The
social business Soko-
Text lets these small-scale vendors buy at
wholesale prices by aggregating their orders
with an SMS system. Here’s how it works:
the vegetable seller sends his or her order in
text message form to the SokoText number:
12 kilos of beans and five kilos of
tomatoes, say. SokoText
adds up the orders of the
different sellers from
the slum, buys the total
amounts from the
wholesale merchant,
and divides them up.
Five international
students started the
project in May 2014 with a first shop in the
Mathare slum and have already won several
prizes and grants for their idea. sokotext.com
Case study: SokoText

24
Social digital innovation is only just getting going.
Power cuts are frequent, and the network of sand roads in Dar es Salam defeats Google
Maps. Only 4.4 percent of the population has access to the internet. That may sound low,
but it marks a rapid development: the number of internet users has more than doubled
in just five years. More than half of Tanzanians now have a mobile phone. In the major
cities, social digital workspaces and ideas are growing in significance. Dar es Salam is
already home to three co-working spaces and one of them, BUNI Hub, receives government
support. But the Tanzanian tech level is still more focussed on learning HTML basics than
refining elevator pitches. Hence there are only a few established examples of social digital
initiatives from Tanzania, as well as several exciting pilot projects.
Explorer: Kathleen Ziemann | kathleen.ziemann@betterplace.org
none of the 3 TECH hubs is in the capital Dodoma
No.123 on the Global
innovation index
No.159 on the Human
Development index
55.7 mobile phone
subscriptions
per 100 inhabitants
“We’re mainly working here to create
the mindset of successful entrepreneurs ...
but people don’t share their ideas, and
that’s really important if you want to
keep improving.”
George Mulamula, CEO,
DTBi Business Incubator

25
A less controversial Facebook floatation. Read about examples including Habari Mazao, informing farmers about
market prices by text message, at: bit.ly/tanzanianfarmers
“In Tanzania more people have access
to mobile phones than to clean drinking
water,” says Annie Feighery, CEO of
mWater. The project gets healthcare
workers to test water quality and publish
the results on an online
map using smartphones.
First they register the
spring or well and its
GPS coordinates in the
database. Then they
take a water sample.
The samples just need to be left over-night
90,000 will be able
to drink clean water
thanks to the app.
in clear plastic bags, which have
been treated with chemicals that show by
colouring the water whether it contains the
dangerous E. coli bacteria. If it’s yellow the
following morning, it’s safe to drink; if it’s
green then it contains too many bacteria.
The healthcare worker then uploads the
test results using the app, which are plotted
on the online map. Healthcare authorities
can use this information
to improve overall
access to clean water. So
far 400 water sources
have been tested, and
many more will follow.
Around 90,000 people
will benefit from the implementation of
the app in a pilot in the Mwanza region.
mWater is also an open source project:
they have published their code for anybody
to use. mwater.co
Case study: mWater

26
“Vision 2020” has caused a small
internet boom in Rwanda.
This government programme aims to speed up the transition from a subsistence economy
to a knowledge economy. The kLab, a co-working space with top facilities, was set up in
2012 and has given birth to a tiny start-up scene in Rwanda. The first ideas are there,
but few have been implemented. The government, headed by the controversial President
Kagame, is itself leading the way: in its five focus areas of agriculture, local government,
health, education and finance, they already offer half a dozen social digital services. Some
NGOs are adapting digital systems which have already been successful elsewhere to local
conditions. Use of mobile phones is widespread, but the internet is still far from being
a mass medium. That’s part of the reason why there’s (as yet) not much social digital
innovation in this small, East African country with few natural resources.
Explorer: Moritz Eckert | moritz.eckert@betterplace.org
No.102 on the Global
innovation index
No.151 on the Human
Development index
56.8 mobile phone
subscriptions
per 100 inhabitants
but only 15% have electricity
“Great ideas used to just die in people’s heads.
Thanks to the internet, and the low barriers to
entry it allows, now many more ideas can be
implemented.”
Emmanuel Amani Kayitaba,
Director of ICT, Ministry of Infrastructure

27
The kLab in Kigali offers ideal conditions for entrepreneurs and table-football aficionados.
Case study: TechnoServe
Coffee farmers in Rwanda used to have it
tough. All accounting had to be done by
pen and paper. Analysing the figures, to
compare yields with other farmers or learn
from previous mistakes, was difficult. And
perhaps the most important problem:
scattered across rural
areas far removed from
digital communication,
farmers had only very
limited access to invest-ment
capital for new
Helps not only farmers
to become more efficient
but also helps investors.
machinery. The NGO
TechnoServe addresses
all of these problems with a text message
service. More than half of Rwandans
today own a mobile phone. Farmers use
their phones to send figures about their
production and stock levels to a central
server. This creates a database that allows
analysis, which in turn not only helps the
farmer to become more efficient, but also
helps investors. For the first time investors
can see transparently which cooperatives
are working well and which are not –
hence where they might be able to invest or
provide support and
advice. The system was
originally financed by
the Gates and Rabobak
Foundations. In 2014 it
aims to become sustain-able,
financing itself by
charging farmers a mod-est
fee to use the service. 53 of the 215 co-operatives
in Rwanda are already using the
system with success. Let’s drink to that –
I’m having a fairtrade latte.
technoserve.org/our-work/
where-we-work/country/rwanda

28
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Studies, reports
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develop and implement concepts, such as
social innovation competitions or hackathons.

29
Workshops and
resources
Making NGOs and
foundations more
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Capability building in the social sector
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Talks and lectures
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30
There is boundless optimism around technology.
From the government to aid agencies, many are heralding entrepreneurship generally,
and tech start-ups specifically, as a central motor for the country’s future prosperity. This
optimism is embodied in a large cohort of early-stage entrepreneurs – young, educated,
and with big plans. They are the beneficiaries of new sources of funding – foundations
and investors gradually interested in looking beyond Kenya and South Africa. They are
predominantly based in the capital Accra, probably in one of several new tech hubs there
to avoid otherwise punishing overhead costs. They view themselves as fundamentally dif-ferent
from the older NGOs (which are often digitally backwards) and they have no qualms
about making big profits along the way. Despite this, they have a strong sense of social
impact, and conviction that the solutions to the country’s major problems will be digital.
Explorer: Ben Mason | ben.mason@betterplace.org
the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of technology 15.000 USd/Month
for internet
108.2 mobile phone
subscriptions
per 100 inhabitants
No.96 on the Global
innovation index
No.138 on the Human
Development index
“In Africa, to become really big
you have to be solving one of the
biggest social problems.”
William Senyo, Co-Founder, SliceBiz

31
The colourful iSpace Hub is home to several social digital projects including a crowdfunding platform to help
farmers, and the equality warriors at Tech Needs Girls.
Case study: Open University of West Africa
Why haven’t MOOCs taken off in West
Africa? After all, “Massive Open Online
Courses” contain lectures from world-leading
professors for free; meanwhile
tens or hundreds of
millions of young
Africans wanting a
university education
cannot afford one, but
do have increasing in-ternet
access. And yet
The rate of students
completing a course
increased sevenfold.
take-up so far has been disappointing.
The Open University of West Africa
(OUWA) hopes to change that. OUWA
quickly discovered that providing free
internet access and offering a modest
financial incentive caused a sevenfold
increase in the proportion of students
completing a course. Several hundred
students have passed through OUWA
so far, and its combination of offering
freely available digital
content and exploiting
existing offline infra-structure
makes its
model hyper-scalable.
A crucial step in getting
people to sign up will
be the promise of recognised accreditation
– OUWA are currently discussing the
possibility of awarding degrees to OUWA
students through universities in Europe
and the USA. ouwa.org

32
Senegal, in terms of social digital, is the light that
shines brightest in francophone West Africa.
While there are plenty of sprouting seedlings of social digital innovation in Senegal, we’re
still waiting for major impact. Many people are inspired by the ideal of social entrepreneur-ship,
and as internet and smartphones use increases (at least in the cities), more and more
people are trying to use them for social good. Helping the enthusiasts along are numerous
hubs and informal networks, but social digital initiatives also face obstacles such as a lack
of directed government policy and, above all, scarce funding opportunities.
Explorer: Ben Mason | ben.mason@betterplace.org
5 Tech
Hubs
founded
in dakar since 2010
No.98 on the Global
innovation index No.163 on the Human
Development index
92.9 mobile phone
subscriptions
per 100 inhabitants
“Social digital innovation in
Senegal – it’s cooking but it’s
not cooked yet.”
Alexandre Rideau, Founder, RAES

33
No shortage of hardware at RAES, a digitally-focussed NGO in Dakar. But does Senegal have
a language problem? Answers here: bit.ly/senegallanguageproblem
When in 2012 President Wade attempted to
stand for a constitutionally questionable
third term, passions ran high, with clashes
erupting between support and opposition.
The episode has left a
lasting mark (beyond
the strongly-worded
roadside graffiti): the
crisis brought people
together around several
online initiatives, and
forged networks which
still persist today. One of these, the
SUNU2012 initiative, provided the elec-torate
Citizens can comment
online, whether election
promises have been kept.
with information about the different
candidates and their policies. They created
a basic online profile for each of the 14
candidates and then emailed them the
login details so they could expand it
themselves – all but one did. On election
day itself, a nationwide network of
volunteers played an important role in
monitoring the vote using the Twitter-hashtag
#sunu2012.
Since the election, the
project has turned into
an online platform for
fact-checking and civic
engagement. Several
hundred specific pledges
from the government’s
manifesto are individually listed and
people can give their opinion about
whether these have been adequately
fulfilled. Founder Cheikh Fall has gone on
to set up the ‘Afriktivistes’ activist blogging
platform; and in the end, Wade lost the
election. twitter.com/sunu2012
Case study: Sunu2012

34
A digital giant
With 86 million users, Brazil has the fourth-highest internet usage of any country; it also
has the world’s second-largest Facebook community. More than half of the population is
under 30, meaning more than half of Brazilians are digital natives and receptive to almost
any app or online service. Moreover, a middle class is currently emerging, living mostly
in major cities with access to state-funded digital technology. Social digital innovations
are aimed above all at problems around urbanisation, political transparency and civic
participation. There are apps for urban gardeners, maps of infrastructure problems,
platforms for petitions and watchdogs for (or against) the government – almost all of
them arising from the actions of a few engaged citizens.
Explorer: Anja Adler | anja.adler@uni-due.de
No.61 on the Global
innovation index
No.79 on the Human
Development index
135.5 mobile phone
subscriptions
per 100 inhabitants
“When the dictatorship ended in 1985,
we fought for the right to speak but we
didn’t fight to be heard. Now we’re creating
a culture in which the government listens
to its citizens!”
Leonardo Eloi, Product Director, Meu Rio
90% of people under 30
In Rio’s biggest Favelas have Internet access

35
Centre of operations: the IBM-sponsored nerve centre of the “Smart City” Rio de Janeiro.
Case study: Pimp My Carroca
If there’s a problem the government
doesn’t want to see, you’ve got to paint
it in very bright colours. At least, that’s
what young street artist Thiago Mundano
is trying to do with his project Pimp My
Carroca. Seven years ago
he began to paint Sao
Paulo’s fleet of around
200 rubbish trucks, to
draw attention to the
plight of a marginalised
and ostracised group.
The Carrocas collect over 90 percent of
the rubbish in Brazil’s major cities, but
the authorities don’t want to acknowledge
the problems facing this group. The rub-bish
Thiago’s currently
working on an app
which plots recycling
stations on a map.
collectors work in the black market,
so nobody wants to associate with them.
Mundano started using Facebook and
Twitter and the brightly coloured trucks
to organise online and offline protest
campaigns. So far he has financed the
project entirely through the crowdfunding
platform Catarse. He’s also currently
working on an app which will plot not
only the various recycling stations but
also the rubbish collec-tors
on a map. To make
it work, the Carrocas
will be given GPS-en-abled
smartphones. This
means that for Sao Paulo
alone Thiago needs
20,000 phones and around 150,000 USD
over the next two years to fund courses,
phones, and to develop the platform. He’s
currently seeking support – for example
from foundations – but for now wants to
remain independent. That might mean
turning once again to his online supporters
for assistance. pimpmycarroca.com

36
Bolivia is lagging behind.
Digital infrastructure in Bolivia is developing sluggishly, and few people seem to be
conscious of the potential for technology and the internet to boost social progress. While
it’s true that more and more Bolivians are using mobile phones, it’s mostly just to make
calls because internet coverage is patchy and slow. The government is currently seeking
to expand internet coverage and there are some promising social digital projects in
agriculture and education, as well as a small blogger community. There’s no dynamic
start-up scene to speak of. One reason for this is a highly regulated and monopolised
telecommunications market. Bolivia is home to few IT specialists and the atmosphere is
pervaded by a low-level techno-scepticism.
Explorer: Mareike Müller | mareikemueller@outlook.com
295M USD spent on the first bolivian Telecommunication satellite
N0.111 on the Global
innovation index
No.113 on the Human
Development index
97.7 mobile phone
subscriptions
per 100 inhabitants
“There’s no digital culture
yet in Bolivia.”
J. Eduardo Rojas, Fundación Redes

37
Farmers filming a tutorial video for the PROINPA Foundation | © Jaime Cisneros
PROINPA uses digital tools, above all
videos and text messages, to keep
smallholder farmers in rural parts of
the country up to speed with technical
and technological developments in agri-culture.
This knowledge
transfer is important
to ensure that farmers
maintain competitiveness
and secure their liveli-hoods.
PROINPA does
PROINPA has reached
more than 11,000 potato
and quinoa farmers.
this by training promoters
and kitting them out with cameras and
laptops. Some communities of farmers
who already have expertise about
advanced techniques, for instance in the
use of natural fertilizers, learn how to
record this knowledge in instructional
videos. These videos are then taken to other
communities and shown using a screen
and projector, so that others can profit
from the knowledge. PROINPA is active
right across Bolivia and has reached more
than 11,000 potato and
quinoa farmers, meaning
that around 45,000 people
in 400 communities have
benefitted indirectly.
As a result of increased
yields, these farmers
have increased their annual income by
a total of five million USD. PROINPA
belongs to the RED TIC Bolivia network,
and is supported by the Dutch consortium
Connect4Change. proinpa.org
Case study: Proinpa

38
Old languages live on – thanks to the internet
For centuries the languages of native Bolivians have
been suppressed. Now due to online software Quecha
and Aymara are flourishing again.
The 18-year-old Karina grew up in Sucre,
Bolivia’s capital city. She wears modern
clothes and speaks Spanish. Her grand-mother
lives more than 90 miles away
in Villa Orías in the countryside, wears
traditional dress and speaks Quechua,
the language of the people of the same
name. Everyone in her village speaks it. To
Karina’s grandmother Spanish is a foreign
language. Karina doesn’t speak Quechua,
however. “My parents didn’t think that
speaking Quechua would be important
any more after we moved to the city,” she
explains. “That’s why they only taught us
Spanish.” To be able to communicate with
her grandmother, Karina now studies
vocabulary on YouTube, watching free video
tutorials. Soon, she hopes, her Quechua
will be good enough. Indigenous languages
were never taught Karina’s school. For a
long time Bolivia’s indigenous peoples, their
cultures and languages, were neglected
Amara in traditional dress © VocesBolivianas

39
or even disparaged by official institutions.
That’s another reason why many parents
have not passed on their mother tongue
to their children, raising them instead
speaking Spanish.
Ever since Evo Morales of the Aymara
people was elected president, old traditions
have been accorded more weight. It’s a
stated objective of Morales’s policies to
preserve them. This is no small under-taking:
alongside Spanish, Bolivia today
has 36 official national languages. Most
have far fewer speakers than Quechua and
Aymara, both of which have been declared
endangered languages by UNESCO.
More than 6,500 languages are spoken
worldwide. Every ten days one of them
disappears and at least half of all languages
are predicted to die out over the course of
the twenty-first century. Above all the lan-guages
of minority groups are threatened
with extinction. This remains the case in
Bolivia as well, despite Morales’s efforts.
However, his government has introduced
compulsory lessons in indigenous
languages at schools. If Karina Valda were
still at school, she’d probably be studying
Quechua. And maybe she’d be using Itati
Tórrez’ software to do so.
Itati Tórrez is herself still at school. The
14-year-old has developed a piece of
interactive educational software called
“Aymarat aruskiptasiñani”, which translates
as “let’s talk Aymara”.
Guided by an interactive tutor, the student
completes four different units before
taking an evaluation – all in Aymara.
It has taken Itati two years to develop the
software. It all began with a homework
assignment at school. Itati’s IT class had
to build a piece of educational software.
It was Itati’s mother, a linguist working in
adult education, who gave her the idea of
making it an Aymara program. “My mother
helped me with developing the content”,
Itati says.
Itati is now working on a more advanced
second edition of the programme and
has had the software patented. This year
“Aymarat aruskiptasiñani” will be used
in Aymara classes in elementary schools
across Bolivia. Itati has already exported
her product to Chile, where it will be used
to teach Mapudungún, the language of the
Mapuche people.
“Besides Spanish,
Bolivia has 36 official
national languages.“
A teacher using educational software. © Educ@tic.org

40
Jaqi aru, one of several initiatives working to preserve and promote Aymara
There are many more examples in Bolivia
alone of modern technology being used
to preserve old languages. For instance,
the non-profit organisation Educ@tic
has developed more than 200 comput-er
games for teaching Quechua, Aymara
and other languages.
The blogger community Jaqi-Aru
(“The People’s Voice”) wants to extend
the Aymara language into cyberspace.
Jaqi-Aru is now associated with Global
Voices.org, a global blogger movement
that gives voices outside the mainstream
media a platform.
“The blogger community
Jaqi-Aru (‘The People’s Voice’)
wants to extend the Aymara
language into cyberspace.”
Atamiri (“Communicator”) is a programme
for simultaneous translation into twelve
different languages developed by the
Bolivian mathematician Ivan Guzman de
Rojas, and it can now be used worldwide.
Atamiri is designed specifically for the
grammar and syntax of Aymara and out-performs
standard online translators like
Google Translate. The associated chat soft-ware
“Qopuchaqi” can be downloaded for

41
free. It allows a Frenchman, for instance,
to communicate with a Brazilian in his
mother tongue and to receive translated
answers in real time.
Quechua, the language of Karina Vladas’
grandma, has also been digitally revitalised.
Even multinationals Google and Microsoft
have played a part in this renaissance:
Google has started a search engine in
Quechua and Microsoft issued a Quechua
version of Windows and Office.
Transcription and exchange through digital
media lead to the standardisation of
indigenous languages. This helps to
preserve them, experts say. Languages
present on the internet form a vital
connection to the world beyond and
manifest the identity of their respective
speakers, explains Nikolaus Himmelmann,
chairman of the German Association for
Endangered Languages. Karin Valda, with
her thoroughly modern upbringing, would
probably agree.

42
There’s visible progress and an air of excitement.
In Colombia’s young but highly dynamic social digital start-up scene, projects are springing
up out of hubs and coworking spaces like weeds after a downpour. The government has
cottoned on to the potential of digital technology and is promoting the extension of digital
infrastructure, for instance in Arepa Valley, Colombia’s answer to Silicon Valley. The
government’s Apps.co initiative supports the development of smartphone applications.
Last year the first wave of apps with the greatest social impact were awarded prizes.
Enterprises in the social business sector jostle with each other, courting the CSR budgets
of large companies, as there’s little start-up funding available from venture capital. So far
there hasn’t been a smash-hit social digital success that has been successfully exported,
since most solutions take a localised approach and only scale up slowly.
Explorer: Mareike Müller | mareikemueller@outlook.com
Government initiative Apps.Co has supported
the development of 896apps
No.68 on the Global
innovation index
No.98 on the Human
Development index
104.1 mobile phone
subscriptions
per 100 inhabitants
“In March 2013 the Urban Land Institute
selected Medellín as the most innovative
city in the world that year – ahead of New
York and Tel Aviv. We may not be at the same
level technologically, but in terms of social
innovation we are.”
Rocío Arango Goraldo, Ruta N

43
The bogohack innovation lab in Bogotá. Medellín is doing even better; the one-time drug-trafficking nexus is
now a metropolis of innovation.
Case study: Conexión Colombia
Conexión Colombia is the local equivalent
of betterplace.org. The online donation-platform
was set up in 2003 and in the past
ten years has passed on over 26 million
USD to social projects in Colombia. The
projects on the plat-form
tend to be small,
local initiatives, which
are screened for effec-tiveness
and quality. In
More than 360,000
people in Colombia have
benefitted from donations
on the platform.
total more than 360,000
people have benefitted
from the donations – in
money, time, and in kind – raised through
the platform. Originally Conexión Colombia
was intended to raise money from the
Colombian Diaspora for projects back
home. However, most of the donations
now come from within the country,
followed by Mexico, the USA, Spain,
France and the UK. The platform passes on
100 percent of donations to the respective
projects, though donors have the option
to make a small supplementary donation
to support the running
of the platform. But the
platform’s financing
comes primarily from
cooperation with
various companies,
including DHL Express,
CedibanCo and PwC.
Conexión Colombia places great impor-tance
on transparency and publishes all
of its figures and impact measurement
reports alongside reports from the projects
they host. conexioncolombia.com/

44
Costa Rica’s transformation into a digital society
is running at breakneck speed.
Thanks to a good education system, proximity to the USA, and widespread internet
and mobile phone coverage, a small start-up scene has established itself in Costa Rica.
Alongside this, there is also an emerging social digital scene. Social digital remains
something of a niche topic, as well as a very young and urban one. Innovations emerge
from small groups of social entrepreneurs, mostly in university incubators. Some
companies are also joining in, for example from the local tech or agency scenes. The
government has organised hackathons on topics like reducing smoking. NGOs use the
internet as a matter of course, but are rarely the drivers of change in the most innovative
and most stable country in Central America.
Explorer: Moritz Eckert | moritz.eckert@betterplace.org
No.57 on the Global
innovation index
332% increase in mobile INTERNET
Traffic in 2012-2013
“There are no role models here when
it comes to social entrepreneurship –
we’re always having to look to the USA.”
Federico Halsband, Entrepreneur
No.68 on the Human
Development index
146 mobile phone
subscriptions
per 100 inhabitants
46% use the INTERNET

45
Ignorance is bliss: this app linked to a mouthpiece to let the smoker know, which harmful chemicals
he or she is inhaling.
“Upe! Be a traveller – not a tourist,”
instructs the motto UPEPlaces. The
platform matches adventurous travellers
with small local communities, where they
get the chance to live mixed in with the
locals. Founder Omar Castillo had the idea
during a trip to
Peru: “One evening
I was stranded
somewhere in the
countryside and
I only had two
options: roughing
it on the street or
knocking on somebody’s front door.” He
opted for the latter and the days that
followed provided the most intense
travelling experience of his life. As opposed
to massive competitors such as AirBnB,
UPEPlaces sees itself not as an inter-mediary
not for accommodation but
for experience. In 2013 the first 500
travellers used the service. If all goes well,
UPEPlaces will offer both a good oppor-tunity
for communities otherwise cut off
from tourism revenues and to the growing
number of trav-ellers
searching
for individuality
and authenticity.
UPEPlaces con-siders
itself to be a
social business:
they keep 20
“One evening I was stranded
in the countryside and I only had
two options: roughing it on the
street or knocking on somebody’s
front door.”
percent of the amount paid, which allows
them to keep expanding to new communi-ties.
And what’s with the weird name? Well
“Upe” is an affectionate term of welcome in
Costa Rica. upeplaces.com/home
Case study: UPEPlaces

46
In terms of social digital, the USA leads the world.
No other country boasts so many NGO websites, digital campaigns and functioning
platforms for donating, crowdfunding, petitions or pooling non-profit data. The
combination of a strong NGO sector, a mature IT market, transparency requirements,
and a large population quick to take up new technologies has given rise to a diverse
social digital landscape over the past 20 years. This culture is fuelled by foundations,
companies, and impact investors who invest hundreds of millions of dollars every year
in technological infrastructure for civil society. Admittedly, social digital innovation in
the USA is relatively fragmented and many enterprises lack a sustainable business model.
Explorer: Joana Breidenbach | joana.breidenbach@betterplace.org
No.6 on the Global
innovation index
23% annual increase in “Civic-Tech“ Organisations 2008-2012
No.5 on the Human
Development index
95.5 mobile phone
subscriptions
per 100 inhabitants
“There’s never been a better
time to make preparations
for a social digital society.”
Lucy Bernholz, Founder, Digital Civil
Society Lab, Stanford University

47
Don’t settle for anything less than changing the world. The “Declaration of Innovation” at the 1776 Incubator.
Case study: Feedback Labs
The Feedback Labs are an agglomeration
of different organisations which try to
incorporate feedback loop mechanisms
into the work of NGOs and governments.
While the organisation operates inter-nationally,
its driving
force for the time
being comes from the
US. Feedback loops
are based on the
many-to-many and
crowdsourcing principles.
The objective is to
channel the opinions of citizens to ensure
that philanthropic and public funds are
well spent. International aid and devel-opment
The government has
a clearer picture of
the needs and wishes
of citizens.
is a focus of the Labs’ work. The
organisation was founded in 2013 with a
pilot project in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
The Tanzanian Ministry of Finance and
the NGO Development Gateway created
an “aid management platform” which
displayed the finances of 50 organisations
working actively on the
ground in delivering
aid. The Tanzanian gov-ernment
was able to use
this information when
deciding on the alloca-tion
of state funds. This
means the government
has a clearer picture of the needs and wishes
of its citizens and can work more effectively
with development organisations to give
people the kind of support that they
actually need. feedbacklabs.org

48
Digitisation of civil society infrastructure
is moving sluggishly.
Several larger German NGOs have invested considerably in their internet presence. For a
lot of small and medium-sized organisations, on the other hand, it’s more about getting an
online presence in the first place, and understanding how to use social media effectively.
A lot of established institutions, including large foundations and government ministries,
view the digital agenda as more of a threat than an opportunity. Nowhere is social mistrust
of tech giants like Facebook and Google greater than in Germany. Financial investment
in social digital innovations is thin on the ground, particularly compared with countries
with similarly strong economies such as the USA. Hence there is a wide gulf between state
and philanthropic institutions on the one hand, and on the other a young and engaged
cohort of digital natives, who have set up several innovative platforms for donations,
crowdfunding and political transparency, but need considerably more support.
No.13 on the Global
innovation index
119 mobile phone
subscriptions
per 100 inhabitants
28 german Crowdfunding Platforms
currently active
“The internet is unchartered
territory for all of us.”
Angela Merkel, Chancellor No.6 on the Human
Development index

49
Germany is seeing more and more social digital hackathons, such as the SAP InnoJam, where techies rapidly
build solutions to social problems.
Case study: wheelmap.org
Wheelchair users can check quickly and
easily on wheelmap.org whether cafes,
shops and other public places have
wheelchair access. This information is
crowdsourced: anybody can make an
entry on the map, mark-ing
which places have
stairs, a ramp, or nar-row
doorways. Rates of
The information is
available in 21 languages
and 450,000 points
have been plotted
all over the world.
participation are high,
showing how useful the
tool is for a large number
of people – there are an
estimated 1.5 million
wheelchair users in Germany alone. The
information is available in 21 languages
and 450,000 points have been plotted all
over the world, from pharmacies to local
authority buildings to restaurants. The site
uses an easily under stood traffic-light
system: red means inaccessible, orange
means limited accessibility, and green
means fully wheelchair-friendly. Grey
markings show places that have yet to
be rated. As with other
location or travel apps,
users can filter by
category, for example
searching for accessible
cafes near to their
current location. Thus
wheelmap.org promotes
freedom and inclusion.
Wheelmap is a project from the Sozialhelden
(“Social Heroes”), a group of engaged
individuals which draws attention to,
and devises solutions to, social problems.
wheelmap.org

50
Catalysts and obstacles for digital-social
innovation: an overview*
Germany:
 good IT training
 active civil society
 lack of investors
 passive government
Israel:
 digitally savvy population
 culture of entrepreneurialism
 techies prefer profit
to social enterprise
 small domestic market
Senegal:
 using existing infrastructure
 widespread use of mobile phones
 lack of sustainable financing
 no role models
Ghana:
 established digital
social community
 widespread use
of mobile phones
 poor infrastructure
USA:
 digitisation of
everyday life
 large domestic market
 access to finance
 market fragmentation
Costa Rica:
 highly educated “returnees”
(predominantly from USA)
 digitally active government
 no local role models
 no entrepreneurial mindset
Colombia:
 widespread use of mobile phones
 lack of investors
Bolivia:
 international financial aid
 widespread use
of mobile phones
 tech-scepticism
 lack of IT skills
Brazil:
 scepticism towards NGOs
 techies prefer profit to
social enterprise

51
* We understand “digital-social innovation” to include any instance in which individuals and
institutions – irrespective of their legal status or financing model – make use of digital technology
to further the social good, that is, aiming to allow as many people as possible to lead the life which
they consider to be right and good.
India:
 making use of
existing infrastructure
 scepticism towards NGOs
Indonesia:
 mobile phone saturation
China:
 financing through CSR
 aspirational middle-class
 repressive government
Kenya:
 widespread use of
mobile payment
(M-Pesa)
 culture of
entrepreneurialism
 well-educated
“returnees”
 lack of sustainable
financing
Tanzania:
 making use of existing
infrastructure
 digitally active
government
 lack of IT expertise
 no local role models
Rwanda:
 agencies specialising in digital-social
 making use of existing infrastructure
 lack of sustainable financing

52
Apples and oranges: the challenge of
international innovation comparison
What’s the difference between China and Bolivia? Nope, there isn’t a
punch-line coming. That’s just one of the many questions we asked
ourselves after returning from Lab Around the World. Because we want
to answer the über-question: what’s the universal formula for social
digital innovation?
Culturally, economically, politically and
historically, Bolivia is very different from
China. Making a comparative list of their
respective catalysts and obstacles for in-novation,
or trying to gauge the overall
dynamic, might seem like nonsense. It’s a
kind of inductive reasoning: trying to piece
together general theories from thousands
of individual factors. It’s laborious, but we
dare to try.
So, what do Indonesian fathers promoting
breastfeeding on Twitter have in common
with an SMS service for farmers in Ghana?
Well for one thing, the fact that both are
trying to make the world better, and are
using digital technology to do so. Increase
the resolution and categories emerge,
such as financing strategy, organisational
structure or target group. And it’s clear that
we’re dealing with something that’s complex,
qualitative, and constantly in flux. Goodbye
universal formula, hello mind-map of causes
and connections.
We aren’t deterred, therefore, by our deeply
heterogeneous findings across various
countries, and begin by remaining on the
descriptive level. What next? Well even if
you’re comparing apples and oranges, you
can at least say that both are kinds of fruit.
The point is that social digital innovation
is a worldwide phenomenon, but its mani-festations
are diverse. In some countries
it’s found more in loose-knit civil society
networks which make use of widely
available technology (as in Brazil, Indonesia,
and to some extent China). In other
countries, you find more people building
their own tech innovations (such as the new
apps coming out of India and Kenya).
The population is engaged,
but the government is
slumbering.
Another common feature uniting all
countries: they all have a national
government. And about half of the
countries we visited had a national digital
policy, promoting the digitisation of civil
society through various initiatives and
providing infrastructure.

53
These tend, with the exception of Ghana
and Tanzania, to be among the more
dynamic countries. In many countries,
particularly those with more dynamic
economies such as India, Brazil or Kenya,
people are excited about ICT. These
countries have more or less reached
mobile phone saturation and smartphones
are becoming ever more affordable. Apps,
social media and instant messaging bridge
the gap between city and countryside.
This solves a handful of social problems
indirectly, such as by allowing city-dwellers
to send money home to families in remote
villages using the SMS-payment service M-Pesa.
Are we seeing silos rather
than social digital networks?
Another thing we found interesting: in
almost all the countries we visited, we barely
found any innovation within “classic”
NGOs, that is, in charities, aid organi-sations,
or large foundations. We found it
instead in smaller networks of activists,
techies and young entrepreneurs, who are
coming up with ideas and following through
with them. Hence in many countries
parallel structures have developed, with
classic government and charity working on
one side, and digital entrepreneurs on the
other – at least, that was our first impression.
There’s a lack of exchange and collaboration
between the two sides. One encouraging
exception is India, where many NGOs are
establishing partnerships with innovators
and social digital service providers to
increase their impact and efficiency.
Something similar is increasingly being
attempted in other countries, often
mediated through hubs, incubators and
innovation competitions.
Lab Around the World 2014 was only the
beginning of a long journey. Not only are
there many more digital civil societies to be
explored and researched – we also want to
better understand the different make-ups
of those societies, to understand the optimal
conditions for stimulating innovation
for the general good. A universal formula?
Maybe it’s out there after all.
Our ranking of social
digital dynamic:
1. India
2. USA
3. Brazil
4. Kenya
5. Rwanda
6. Colombia
7. Indonesia
8. Israel
9. China
10. Costa Rica
11. Germany
12. Ghana
13. Tanzania
14. Senegal
15. Bolivia

54
The authors
Anja Adler
Anja Adler is an Associate
Researcher in the better-place
Sarah Strozynski studied
Political Science and works
for the betterplace.org
platform as a concept
designer, developing
online fundraising tools
for social organisations.
Joana Breidenbach
Joana Breidenbach holds a PhD
in cultural anthropology
and is author of numerous
articles and books,
focusing particularly
on the cultural conse-quences
of globalisation.
Joana co-founded the
betterplace.org platform
in 2008 and then the
betterplace lab in 2011.
Ben Mason
Ben Mason is the prodigal
son of the betterplace
lab. He first came to the
lab as in intern in 2011
whilst still a student
of Philosophy and
German, only to return
full-time two years
later as Captain
of International Projects.
lab and is also cur-rently
studying for a
doctorate in Political
Science.
Mareike Müller
Mareike Müller has an MA
in Social Communication
and wrote her thesis on
online communication
by NGOs. Before
joining the lab
team in 2013,
Mareike worked at
the Deutsche Gesell-schaft
für Internationale
Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
Kathleen Ziemann
Kathleen Ziemann graduated
with an MA in Politics and
Cultural Sciences, and
more recently trained
as a Design Thinker.
Kathleen worked as
an editor at Médecins
Sans Frontières before
joining the lab in 2012,
and she now has chief
responsibility for our primary
publication, the Trendreport.
Sarah Strozynski

55
Dennis Buchmann has a
background initially as
a biologist and then as
a journalist – deciding
this wasn’t broad
enough, he more
recently he added
a Masters of Public
Policy to the mix. Dennis
co-founded the better-place
lab with Joana and is
the editor-in-chief for our publications. He is
also founder and CEO of meinekleinefarm.org.
Pal Nyiri is a Professor of
Global History from an
Anthropological
Perspective at
Vrije University in
Amsterdam and has
co-authored several
publications with
Joana. Helpfully, he also
happens to be fluent in
Mandarin.
Moritz Eckert co-founded
the betterplace.org plat-form
and only in 2014
migrated to the lab, to
have a more analytic
perspective on using
digital tech to improve
lives. Mo is the Get-The-
Word-Out Guy, making
more people aware of what
Medje Prahm studied
Philosophy and Economics,
writing her Masters
thesis on impact
measurement in
non-profits, a topic she
was able to pursue
further at Stiftung
Neue Verantwortung.
Medje is the lab’s Interior
Minister, holding the whole show together
on a practical level, alongside researching.
we do.
Dennis Buchmann
Pál Nyíri
Moritz Eckert
Medje Prahm

56
Imprint
betterplace lab
Lab around the World Brochure 2014
Produced by:
betterplace lab
gut.org gemeinnützige AG
Schlesische Straße 26
10997 Berlin
Germany
www.betterplace-lab.org/projects/lab-around-the-world
Authors:
Anja Adler, Joana Breidenbach, Dennis Buchmann,
Moritz Eckert, Ben Mason, Mareike Müller, Pál Nyíri,
Medje Prahm, Sarah Strozynski, Kathleen Ziemann
Translated by:
Ben Mason, with contributions from Theresa Valenta
Editors:
Dennis Buchmann, Moritz Eckert, Ben Mason, Olivia Parkes
Sources:
Human Development Index 2014 (HDI):
hdr.undp.org
The Global Innovation Index 2014:
globalinnovationindex.org
International Telecommunication Union 2013
itu.int
The fifth figure for each country we researched
on the ground.
Proofreading:
Franziska Kreische, Jonathan Back
Design concept, artwork and layout:
Rico Reinhold
Printed by:
Ruksaldruck, Berlin

Ghana
p.30
Senegal
p.32
Brazil
p.34
Bolivia
p.36
Costa Rica
p.44
USA
p.46
Colombia
p.42

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