The most popular campaign over the past year is Warid’s Pakalast promotion, in which they offer 24 hours of “FREE CALLS” for 1000UGX (~$0.50 USD). Based on my surveys so far, people in charge of the private health facilities in my study spend a little more than 20,000 UGX (min 1,000 UGX, max 80,000 UGX) per week on airtime.   So, 7,000 per week for unlimited calling has the potential to change calling and mobile usage patterns, to change how people conduct business.

The impact is clear.  Where MTN has been the dominant provider by far in the past, my survey has shown that 47.5% of my survey respondents also own Warid lines.

The graph above depicts three columns.  The first column which mobile networks are used by each of the health service providers (HSPs) as their primary phone line.  The second indicates the distribution of mobile networks used for the secondary phone line (often swapped into the phone on demand, if the HSP only owns one phone). The final column indicates total ownership of phone lines, since many HSPs own more than two phone lines.

Most of my survey respondents own one (59.3%) or two (28.3%) mobile phones. On average each subject carries 1.93 SIM cards (i.e. phone lines) and 1.49 mobile phones.

People love this campaign.  And the other providers have scrambled to copy it, with Orange offering “free calls this festive season”. Zain’s February promotion is seasonally appropriate: “Share UNLIMITED LOVE this Valentines!”, but costs 2000UGX and is valid only from 6am to 6pm.  We all can only surmise that Warid is bleeding profits in order to increase their customer base…. with some success. It’s not uncommon to hear Ugandans say “Pakalast, pakalast” just for the sake of saying the word.  While “busha” means “free” in Ruyankole, “Pakalast” doesn’t really have any meaning – it’s just a made up word that makes us think of something that lasts.

In any case, I’ll fully admit I’ve been taking advantage of Pakalast to talk to my fiance when he’s been out in the field.  When a 10 minute conversation can cost 1000UGX, it’s pretty amazing to be able to talk for an hour and only pay 1000UGX. But it’s not without its hiccups.  Often we’ll activate the service (send an SMS with the word “paka” to 149) and it won’t actually start working until 30 min, or sometimes even 3-4 hours later.  Sometimes it won’t even work at all.  The notification messages are garbled. And yet, I’ve never heard a complaint about this from anyone.  TIA. This Is Africa.

But speaking of bleeding, on January 26th, I received a message from Warid: “Now send PAKA to 149 to get 24 hrs of pakalast at Ush 1,500. To get 4 days at Ush 4,500 send PAKA 3 to 149. For help dial 100.”

The price was increased by 500 to 1,500 per day.  Okay so now – for 7 days of pakalast, if you don’t plan ahead is 10,500 (~5.25USD), or if you do plan ahead you can pay for 5 days at once, and get 2 days for free at 7,500 (~3.75USD).  Now, bear in mind, that this expense is only useful for calling people on Warid, and by my estimates, at least 50% of users are not on Warid, and for those that are on Warid, their Warid lines are not active most of the time.  So this uses up 50% of their weekly average budget for airtime.  This will either 1) force everyone to switch to Warid, or 2) make pakalast too expensive…

So far it seems like people are still using Pakalast.  The alternative: is too expensive to consider.  It almost costs more to call another mobile in Uganda than it costs for me to call someone in the States.  And yet – I find that now I am not using Pakalast anymore.  Most of the people I’m calling are on MTN, and if I’m only doing one call in a day to Warid, there’s just no value in activating Pakalast.  It’s easier to just keep my call short.  Perhaps that’s good for Warid..

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The first is a lit review and historical overview of the area:
Ho, M., Smyth, T., Kam, M., & Dearden, A. (2009). Human-Computer Interaction for Development: The Past, Present, and Future. Information Technologies & International Development, 5(4). http://itidjournal.org/itid/article/view/420/188

Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in research into the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the context of developing regions, particularly into how such ICTs might be appropriately designed to meet the unique user and infrastructural requirements that we encounter in these cross-cultural environments. This emerging field, known to some as HCI4D, is the product of a diverse set of origins. As such, it can often be difficult to navigate prior work, and/or to piece together a broad picture of what the field looks like as a whole. In this paper, we aim to contextualize HCI4D—to give it some historical background, to review its existing literature spanning a number of research traditions, to discuss some of its key issues arising from the work done so far, and to suggest some major research objectives for the future.

The second is a paper drawing on the field experiences of all of the authors, a group of (mostly) graduate students:
Anokwa, Y., Smyth, T., Ramachandran, D., Sherwani, J., Schwartzman, Y., Luk, R., Ho, M., Moraveji, N., & DeRenzi, B. (2009). Stories from the Field: Reflections on HCI4D Experiences. Information Technologies & International Development, 5(4). http://itidjournal.org/itid/article/view/427/195

Human-computer interaction for development (HCI4D) requires considerable time in the field interacting with users. While this is true for most HCI work, fieldwork in developing regions presents unique challenges due to differences in culture, language, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. As a group of nine HCI4D researchers, we have adopted a systematic approach to reflect on the challenges we have encountered in the field. Arising from this exercise are three contributions: The first is our research method itself, which uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative instruments to elicit and synthesize individual experiences. The second, intended for beginning researchers, is a set of lessons learned and suggested strategies for navigating the unique challenges of HCI4D research. The third, intended for the HCI4D community at large, is a critical reflection on the field itself, inspired by our findings. Topics covered include the incentives and agendas of the research world, the importance of managing expectations, the nature of “participation” in HCI4D, and the conflict between research and development more generally.

I really like researchers and the projects written about in the articles, so I encourage you to peruse the entire issue.

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