Over 8 million Cameroonians and hundreds of millions more in Africa have access to the mobile Phone. This means Africans of voting age, farmers, Human rights defenders can make good use of information and communication Technology by combining internet connectivity with mobile technology. Cost and in-country bureaucracy and unfair trading continue to stop the very poor Africans from making maximum us of technology.
This year in the North West Region of Cameroon, poor farmers missed the timing of the raining season as a result of climate change. These poor rural farmers including my mother planted their farms at the right time but are now doing it all over again because the rains stopped just after they planted. If some good guys had sent a weather forecast via SMS, it could have saved my mother a lot of money and pains. So how much should we continue to respect bad laws? looks like breaking bad laws is the best way of upholding justice and just laws.
Think about how SMS can be used for civic education and monitoring of electoral processes as well as reporting issues of human rights abuses and corruption. Think about how by knowing the market prices of her farm produce, a rural poor woman can better bargain with the wolves from the cities. These are all what creative and innovative application of technology can do to a poor nation.
FREE YOUR MIND, FREE YOUR NATION. ITS RIGHT TO DO SO
Do you know that the Cameroon elections commission has OK that Cameroonians can check their status in the electoral list by SMS? LUKMEF-Cameroon proposed this option last year during the presidential elections. Had they accepted the system, the issues of hunting voters cards should have been solved by voters simply sending an SMS to the system to get a detailed response about where their voters cards were located. If ELECAM finally hold through this innovative position, it will complement the biometric system which unfortunately will not be delivering voters cards on the spot. Use of applied technology should move beyond the elections to other e-governance issues in Cameroon.
Click here and start sending SMS now
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