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Africa suffers widest extremes of tech adoption

Admire Moyo
By Admire Moyo
Johannesburg, 29 Jul 2015
There is latent potential for technology to deliver massive benefit to people's lives across the world, says Ian Ferguson, VP of segment marketing at ARM.
There is latent potential for technology to deliver massive benefit to people's lives across the world, says Ian Ferguson, VP of segment marketing at ARM.

Africa has the widest of extremes when it comes to adoption of technology.

So says Ian Ferguson, VP of segment marketing at ARM, speaking following the launch of the Wearables for Good Challenge, which calls on innovators across the globe to look at the potential of designing wearable technologies for social good.

The challenge is the brainchild of Unicef, semiconductor IP company ARM, and product strategy and design firm frog.

According to Ferguson, in Africa, "on the one hand, we have fisherman using technology to decide where best to make port to sell their catch and consumers using $20 smartphones to get information about the state of their health.

"On the flip side, it is estimated that between 30% and 50% of water pumps across the continent don't work and tens of millions of people have no access to the Internet."

He says together with a range of other initiatives, the Wearables for Good Challenge is trying to help level the playing field and offer benefits from technology irrespective of location and income.

The term "wearables" is a very broad one, says Ferguson, pointing out it's important to note for the purposes of this challenge, use cases such as a sensor that can be attached to a bed to monitor a body's movement would also count.

"We know many of the aspects making commercial wearables successful are exactly the characteristics required for addressing certain social impact use cases."

He adds monitoring and measuring vital signs and other bodily statistics, sensing environmental conditions, real or near-real-time collection of data, alerts and communications, and gesturing and controlling other parts of the system are all features of consumer wearables that are directly applicable.

This initiative is about encouraging and inspiring innovative individuals and companies to solve challenging problems with unique approaches as opposed to simply repurposing a device created for a different purpose, Ferguson explains.

"ARM supports this initiative as we firmly believe that there is latent potential for technology to deliver massive benefit to people's lives across the world. We need more diversity in the types of devices and tools being developed. One size does not fit all applications.

"Realisation of this opportunity will give the collective brainpower of individuals and organisations that understand local issues and tailor their designs accordingly rather than simply shipping technology from New York, London, San Francisco etc."

Entrants will be guided by the 'Use Case Handbook' created by Unicef and frog. The handbook outlines the challenges that need to be addressed, as well as considerations, context and principles for good design.

Two winners will be selected at the end of the design challenge. Each winner will receive $15 000 funding alongside incubation and mentorship support from ARM and frog.

Click here for more information.