Category: Technical Innovation Scale up Grant
Grant amount: $30,000
Country: South Africa
Organisation name: University of the Western Cape
Project Title: Libre Router
Website: http://zenzeleni.net/
Description:Community Networks depend on modifying existing off-the-shelf routers to adapt them to their particular needs. Software development that originated in Community Network groups and the Free Software movement as a whole has pushed the barrier of innovation and helped commercial enterprises develop new products over the years. This virtuous relation between hardware vendors and the community has been threatened by new regulation from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) - U.S.A., which has led vendors to globally close up their routers to third party modifications, hindering open innovation and effectively closing the door to Community Networks in terms of access to the hardware they depend on. The Libre Router project will design and produce a high performance multi-radio wireless router targeted at Community Networks' needs. The reality of life in the Global South, and that of Africa in particular, will be specially considered in terms of cost, power consumption, respect for orality and legal viability.
Click Here to Download Final Report
Category: Community Development
Grant amount: $25,000
Country: Nigeria
Project Title: eTrash2Cash
Website: www.etrash2cash.com
Description:eTrash2Cash's goal is to use ICT to register online and collect all varieties of waste (paper, plastic, glass, electronics, metal, food) from 10, 000 pre-registered households and commercial hubs in Kano City and awards them instant online incentives based on the quality and quantity of their waste, redeemable by cash. eTrash2Cash turns the waste into valuable and reusable materials, like tissue paper from paper waste and lumber from plastic waste. The overall aim of the project is to positively impact the environment through reducing pollution, flooding, deforestation, and mitigating effects of global warming as well as to create more jobs, empower households with little income through awarding them incentives for their waste. Another goal is to use the power of ICT to raise awareness and advocate for climate change and to educate, encourage and illustrate to the local communities how ICT could be deployed to drive positive social change.
Click Here to Download Final Report
Category: Community Development
Grant amount: $25,000
Country: Kenya
Organisation name: AfChix
Project Title: Boosting the pipeline of Women in Technology through role modelling and information dissemination
website: http://www.afchix.org/
Description: AfChix is a network of women in Technology who consider gender diversity in the Computer Science and ICT industry as very critical for increased creativity and innovative performance of the industry. AfChix's activities impact over 25 African countries and the network is involved in mentoring girls to consider careers in Computer Science and IT. They achieve this through visits to schools, celebrating annual Girls in ICT Days, running technical workshops such as the AFNOGChix Linux Administration Series and sponsoring members’ participation in tech conferences such as the Grace Hopper Conference for Women in Computing and the Africa Internet Summit (AIS). AfChix believes that by exposing young girls and women to possible career opportunities in Computer Science & ICT, they empower them to join technical fields confidently. They target the upper primary and high school girls between the age of 9 and 18, young women who have freshly joined careers in ICT/Computer Science at Universities and workplaces and those established and looking to grow into technical leadership positions.
Click Here to Download Final Report
Category: Education Scale up Grant
Grant Amount: $30,000
Country: Tanzania
Organisation Name: Ubongo
Project Title: Ubongo Kids Gamified Lesson and Quizzes for Dumbphones and Smartphones!
Website: www.ubongokids.com
Description: Through this project, Ubongo provides gamified Ubongo Kids lessons and quizzes to viewers via interactive SMS (for basic mobile phones and feature phones) and via an Android App. Ubongo has already created a library of over 3000 quiz questions that go along with its Ubongo Kids TV episodes and topics, and have delivered these to over 120,000 users on the Tigo Mobile network in Tanzania during a 1 year beta test. Through this project Ubongo plans to: Expand the library of quiz questions to include lessons and tutorials in maths and science for Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda for Classes 2-5 in both Kiswahili and English, build an API (application program interface) to allow other mobile learning partners, including Eneza Education and Shule Direct, to directly pull quiz questions to their platforms, and build an Android game which delivers the same quiz questions in through a series of fun games starring Ubongo's cartoon characters.
Click Here to Download Final Report
Category: Education Scale up Grant
Grant Amount: $30,000
Country: Zimbabwe
Organisation Name: Purple Zoom (Private) Limited
Project Title: The NatiV Project
Website: http://mynativ.com
Description: At NatiV, we are advocates of mother-tongue learning. We are also passionate about the conservation of African languages using ICT. Thousands of children in Zimbabwe and millions across Africa have little or no access to early-learning material. UNESCO points out the advantages of mother tongue based education in the early years: when children are offered opportunities to learn in their mother tongue, they are more likely to engage and succeed in school. Digital tablets offer an intuitive, rich platform for children to learn, in comparison to the ordinary pen-paper methods. Research has shown that children who have had a more interesting way of learning a certain concept will commit it to memory and apply it better. NatiV is an award-winning project that aims to create mobile mother-tongue learning solutions for children, including those that have reading disabilities and those that live in marginalized communities. Our solutions span mobile games and apps that are feature-rich and engaging, as well as native language text-to-speech technologies.
Click Here To Download Final Report
Category: Education Grant
Grant Amount: $25,000
Country: Cameroon
Organisation Name: BIBLIOTHEQUE LE PAVILLON BLANC
Project Title: Library for blind and sight impaired people
Website: http://www.lepavillonblanc.org/
Description: The Pavillon Blanc library in Yaounde is specially dedicated to the blind and partially sighted. Its main aim is to spread knowledge and to positively influence the academic and socio-professional inclusion of the blind and partially sighted in general as well as those with Albinism in particular. The Yaounde library will train youths with visual impairments in the following professions: Computer maintenance, Computer graphics and Secretarial skills.
Click Here to Download Final Report
Category: Governance Enhancement
Grant Amount: $25,000
Country: Rwanda
Organisation Name: Association Pour l’Encadrement Sûr des Enfants orphelins et autres enfants vulnérables de Kivumu
Project Title: Rwanda GBV Monitor
Website: http://www.unicef.org/rwanda/protection_9508.htm
Description: Rwanda GBV Monitor aggregates data on gender based violence from disparate sources in Rwanda including GBV Helpline, Isange One Stop Centers, online news, and NGO reports, among others. Data and insights on GBV available through Rwanda GBV Monitor aim at sensitising the public and media on the extent of gender based violence in Rwanda. Monitor also provides details on the extent to which victims are able or unable to access psycho-social, medical, legal services and remedies in various state and civil society institutions. Availability of such data in the public domain empowers civic groups and media to compel such institutions to deliver and improve the timely delivery of such services to the victims.
Click Here to Download Final Report
INTERNET SOCIETY ACCESS GRANT
Category: Access provision
Grant amount: $25,000
Organisation name: Bosco Uganda
Country: Uganda
Project Title: Expanding Bosco Uganda Internet/Intranet Network Access to the Rural Remote Communities in Northern Uganda
Website: boscouganda.com
Description: BOSCO-Uganda plans to provide an efficient communication infrastructure as well as access to information as one of the vital pillars for innovation, creativity, economic opportunity, peaceful coexistence, recovery and development in North-Uganda. This project will enable BOSCO-Uganda to provide free Internet access to the already existing free entry remote ICT youth centres. This will enhance Internet access to all community members irrespective of sex, gender, age, language, religion, physical or mental abilities. The project will also contribute to rural development as it aims to enhance socio-economic growth whereby farmers can advertise for their goods and communities can learn about new innovation and creativity which will lead to poverty reduction in Northern Uganda. This will be achieved by installing point-to-point network infrastructure to bring connectivity to these remote places. BOSCO-Uganda will also increase to 1.5 mbps Internet bandwidth to cater for the remote sites' Internet demand and expand intranet access, which is rich in content, to the rural communities.
Click Here to Download Final Report
Category: Access Provision
Grant amount: $25,000
Organisation name: Mucho Mangoes Ltd
Country: Kenya
Project Title: The 21st Century Digital Farmer!
Website: http://muchomangoes.com/
Description: Mucho Mangoes works with rural smallholder farmers. They empower them to mass produce better quality mangoes, and then provide a ready, reliable market for their produce by buying their mangoes at a good price and selling to overseas clients at competitive prices. To equip the 21st Century rural smallholder farmer in order to optimise production, Mucho Mangoes realise that rural farming populations have challenges in accessing training sites, affording the cost of training, and creating time for a new skill. They intend to setup mobile ICT centres which will provide a two- month training course to rural farming populations on a two hour per day model. The cost of training is cut down by ensuring that the project is located within the village or administrative location and thus participants hardly need to spend extra money on transport and other related costs. Participation is drawn from the farming community but includes women and youth. The training program is free and is provided after undergoing another three days to one week training on Horticultural Crops Pre and Post Harvest Handling skills and Crop Husbandry, which is also free. Every participant interested in getting a certificate pays a fee of Kenya shillings 500 (USD 5) for each training program. With support from the Fire Africa Grant, Mucho Mangoes intends to reach 400 farmers with its training program. After graduating from the training, participants have access to a computer lab which will be set up at Mucho Mangoes offices in Taveta town, with Internet facilities where they can access the Internet and do online research, sales, and access online agricultural materials and further training.
Click Here to Download Final Report
FIRE AFRICA AWARDS
Award amount: $7,000
Country: South Africa
Project Title: Tobetsa and WiFi TV Extension Project
website: http://www.projectisizwe.org/
Description: Tobetsa is Tshwane Free WiFi’s unlimited access content portal which provides users with content and resources to develop and grow the knowledge and skills of low-income, under-served communities who benefit from Free WiFi. Tobetsa features WiFi TV content: hyper-local, mobile video content produced by young, aspiring videographers from local communities. As Tobetsa grows into its next phase of development, this project will enable the opportunity to further extend the impact and reach of WiFi TV, including a more integrated and collaborative approach to ensuring the content on Tobetsa and WiFi TV is more closely aligned across the platform as a whole, enabling a consolidated strategy towards ensuring the platform’s continued development towards sustainability.
Award amount: $7,000
Country: Ghana
Project Title: DocmeUP, Prenatal care for communities and remote ultrasound imaging
Website: http://www.alessandrocrimi.com/docmeup/
Description:DocmeUP promote antenatal care. A health worker can monitor her own community, and is able to continuously communicate with her community and remind them to go to the closest clinic. Moreover, health workers can also detect dangerous signs on her patients and report them immediately to the clinic or ambulance. An easy way to support community health workers is to equip them with a mobile app which contains medical advice and is connected to the main server so that tracking can be enabled. Even with continuous reminders from the health workers, some pregnant women still find it difficult to attend gynecological visits, therefore the system will enable health workers to remotely check ultrasound scans.
Award amount: $7,000
Country: Kenya
Project Title: Kids Comp Camp,
Website: http://kidscompcamp.com/
Description: The overall goal of Kids Comp Camp is to equip young learners in marginalised communities with digital literacy skills. The specific objectives are to expose young learners, who have no prior experience with digital devices, to their ‘First Digital Experience’ through interacting with different digital devices, to teach the learners to operate these devices for productive learning and leisure, and to broaden learners’ horizons and scope as they use the acquired digital literacy skills in accessing more information and knowledge on the internet.
GOOGLE AFRICA AWARD
Award amount: $7,000
Country: The Gambia
Project Title: All Girls Tech Camp
Website: http://www.give1projectgambia.org/
Description:All Girls Tech Camp builds awareness of the various career options in STEM field for girls. The aim is to Improve digital literacy among girls. All Girls Tech Camp aims to create a platform that will build and nurture self-esteem and confidence in girls, help them compete and succeed in the world of computers and information technology and create positive and productive networking opportunities for participants. It also aims to encourage and empower the next generation of coders, designers and programmers for sustainable development, empower and encourage more females into the field of technology to break the stereotypes most of the girls are facing, cultivate and nurture the spirit of leadership and entrepreneurship and, finally, provide mentorship opportunities for participants to help in career guidance.
