BackgroundAfrica is labelled the world's fastest-growing ‘mobile region’. Considering such growth and the fragility of the continent's healthcare, mHealth has flourished. This review explores mHealth for community health in Africa in order to assess its still ambivalent evidence base.MethodsUsing PubMed, Web of Science, OvidSP and Google Scholar, a systematic review was conducted of one decade (2005–2015) of peer-reviewed literature on mHealth in Africa. Data analysis focused on qualifications of success and failure. Impact evaluations of project assessments (n = 65) were complemented with general analyses/overviews of mHealth's effectiveness (n = 35).ResultsReview of these texts reveals ambivalence in the appraisal of mHealth; essentially, the critical stance in general analyses/overviews is absent from project assessments. Especially weak evidence concerning sustainability and scalability is stressed in overviews. Project assessments are more optimistic. Their analysis suggests a causal connection between simplicity and success. Effective interventions are thus characterized by straightforward design and modest objectives. Greatest impediments of impact are general technology-related issues and intervention inappropriateness due to insufficient understanding of beneficiaries and specific context of use (circumstantial complications).ConclusionDistinguishing between these two categories of complications helps to break the deadlock that marks the mHealth debate and add nuance to claims that mHealth's evidence base is weak. Constructive realism – rather than unfounded optimism or pessimism without nuance – should guide the design of interventions. Besides anticipative of technology-related complications, such realism must lead to either basic interventions or to smart mHealth shaped by deep understanding of the context of implementation.

This paper discusses an explorative study of emerging Dalit activism in online realms. It is the aim of this study to provide empirical content to debates that link the advance of social media to shifts in citizenship and the manifestation of democracy. It seeks to unravel the complexity and hybrid appearance of online activism in practice by focussing on underexplored subaltern spheres. After some contextualizing reflections concerning literature on Dalit media and online political participation, it assesses attempts of prominent Dalit bloggers to employ social media in their battle for justice, representation and socio-economic mobility. Contributing to current debates on collective (and connective) action and 'new' or personalized politics -especially since Web 2.0 -the article stresses the importance of embracing a broad conceptualization of online political practice and the need to explore such practice as part of contemporary projects of self. It is argued that, in order to explore the dynamics of personalized politics within marginalized communities, one needs to assess the way in which the intertwinement of these individual projects of self and the collective emancipatory project appear in online social networking strategies of digital activists. As such, the analysis adds to the understanding of every day activism at grassroots level in the age of the Internet.

No abstract

The study concerns the qualitative assessment of three e-payment methods that are tested to optimize cash transfers for the sake of social protection and poverty alleviation throughout Ghana. These methods include: (e-Zwich) smartcards with biometric identification; e-wallets using mobile phones; and cards with PIN to access a bank count ´in the cloud´. The pilot is joint venture of the government of Ghana, the United Kingdom's Department For International Development (DFID) and UNICEF. Besides the innovative use of technology, a unique trait of the project is the initiators acknowledgement of the crucial importance of a thorough and holistic understanding of the context and conditions of implementation. As a result, ethnographic fieldwork is conducted to maximize chances of success. Our presentation in Cape Town involves some reflections on the fieldwork as well as a contemplation of the potential of such applied anthropology in the field of ICTD, both contextualized by means of the ethnographic depiction of the complex transition from unbanked to e-banked in northern Ghana.

No abstract