Advocating with mobile apps

Apps are highly popular with users of mobile phones and tablets, especially when they are free, entertaining and informative. Many companies and non-profit institutions attempt to tap into this. Few capture the popular imagination by developing something that is both fun and meaningful.

Environmental advocacy group WWF has struck on a clever formula of charging a small sum for a game that has clear entertainment value, while informing users and raising funds for the cause that it is talking about.

As a measure of success, 500,000 people have already downloaded Rhino Raid. The game puts players in the shoes of an angry black rhinoceros in southern Africa, chasing poachers and avoiding traps. Proceeds from the $1.99 game support WWF rhino projects and the game also educates players about illegal poaching and the myths surrounding the use of rhino horn.

The app is available on Apple and Android.

WEB-BASED
Taking a very different approach to a very different issue, UN Women, UNICEF and UN-Habitat have launched a website that also works as a smartphone app. This is designed to provide information on support services for women and girls who are survivors of violence in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

The needs, benefits and inspiration behind the service are described on the UN Women website.

Creating a website in a mobile-friendly format helps to make the information as widely available as possible with minimal complications. The women and girls using the site are highly likely to be stressed and impatient. They could be using one of hundreds of different models of phones or accessing the site from a computer or other device. There is no need to visit an app store to download anything, which makes it faster and less of a burden on users who might have limited data allowances or minimal storage space available on their device. It also helps the developers by overcoming the guessing game of which mobile devices or operating systems to cater to: Apple, Android, Blackberry, Windows or even Firefox.

These recent examples provide a good indication of the diverse options for making information available on mobile devices.

Mobile phones boost democratic processes in Africa

With mobile phones becoming more affordable and available, users are finding new ways to employ them. CNN reports that improved communications are helping election officials, journalists and citizens ensure transparent and accurate election polls.
25 August 2008, LONDON, England (CNN) -- The humble mobile phone is driving a new revolution which some experts hope could bring fairer elections and democracy to some African states.
Visiting African political expert at Indiana University, Sheldon Gellar, said cellphones were much more accessible than the internet in most parts of Africa, and therefore had greater potential to influence transparency.
Leonardo Arriola, Associate Professor at University of California, Berkeley, is wary about the potential of the technologies to make some situations worse. "... a lot of misinformation can get out that way..."
...scholars and observers agree that pockets full of mobile handsets will not be enough to build stable democratic states and hold future fair elections.
Gellar said a number of other factors needed to progress before a state could move towards a more democratic model of governance: strengthening independent media; growing and ensuring freedom of civil society; decentralizing power, ceding more control to local governments; empowering women; improving judicial systems to ensure independence and power to punish.
"New technology is not a panacea, but it can speed up processes of democratization and should be encouraged," he concluded.
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