Smart phones open up a new world in remote Tanzania

It’s 3am. My alarm goes off. I’m tempted to hit snooze but the feeling that I might miss a flight hits me. I quickly jump out of bed. I get ready and grab a taxi to the airport. I will be away from my house for three weeks…

Hi, nice to meet you. I’m Bill Marwa, a digital media coordinator with Oxfam in Tanzania. Pardon me – I should have started with the introductions. I will be writing about my work with Oxfam and how that is helping change people’s lives. I travel a lot so there’s always going to be something new. I want to show you my beautiful country, the people, our culture, and our foods.

Me - nice to meet you!

Me and a colleague of mine, Kefar, are heading to Kahama in northwestern Tanzania. We are going to train 22 activists to use smart phones to interview other residents in their villages about what information is important to them, how they can access it and how local government can be more transparent. After three days of training, they will go back to their wards and interview at least 60 people each. Their responses are automatically sent to us, which makes this a very quick and easy way to gather responses from more than 1,200 people. It’s going to be interesting.

We land in Mwanza and spend a night there before driving to Kahama. This is about a five-hour drive. We are chatting in the car and listening to loads of Bongo Flava – Tanzanian music.

Kefar will train the activists on an initiative to make local government more transparent called the Open Government Partnerships. I will train them on how to use smart phones and particularly how to collect data using an app called Mobenzi.

My colleague Kefar asking how many people had used a smart phone before

Kefar asks how many of the activists have used a smart phone before. Only four people out of the 22 participants raise their hands. This hits me, but equally motivates me. I will have to change my strategy to start with basic things like how to scroll through pages, search, etc before we move on to the Mobenzi tool itself. It’s going to be fine, I say to myself.

We do a quick Google search for ‘Mbogwe’ district, and the activists are excited with the results. Realising that they can do a lot with search, most of them will be glued to their phones for the next hour doing different searches. I walk out for a cup of coffee. When I get back to the room one of the activists, Gabriel, is playing a speech by one of the prominent members of parliament to the rest of the room. I say to myself, what have I got these people into?

After three days, everyone is confident to use the phones and they all have understood the questions. We distribute the smart phones and the activists go back to their villages to begin the data collection.

Me and Kefar are hopeful that the activists will get on with the new technology and that responses will start flowing in soon. In my next post I’ll let you know how they get on…

Cheers,

Bill

This blog was originally published on Broad Street. To read other blog posts by Bill Marwa and go behind-the-scenes with other Oxfam staff around the world, please visit: http://oxfamblogs.org/broadstreet/