Deployments

Freedom Fone trainers have been in Nairobi this month to assist with the first deployment of the platform for a reproductive health hotline.

Thanks to support from Women on Web / Women on Waves, reproductive health activists from Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya were able to use the opportunity to gather in the east African city to learn how to use the Freedom Fone software and discuss its potential as a channel for sharing information with mobile phone users.

As part of the Quality Assurance testing of Freedom Fone's new Dialer version, Kubatana engaged citizens in Zimbabwe around the thorny issue of billing by the country's sole energy supplier - the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC).

Posted on Telecentre.org blog by Cleopa Timon Otien

On a recent visit to Nairobi I had the the chance to follow up on a few people who are beginning to use Freedom Fone in Kenya. 

Old hopes are still alive in some quarters that Information Technologies (IT) are the magic bullet for development and social change. This sentiment has been most obvious amongst commentators who suggest that the successes of the 2011 Arab Spring were built upon new media in the form of Twitter and Facebook. Hard working grassroots activists in Egypt and Tunisia have been quick to challenge these assumptions.

By Amy Saunderson-Meyer - Media Shift Idea Lab

Development:
Freedom Fone version 1.6 is now available. This version builds on existing core features and adds some useful new functionality.

Fred’s diary is rather full these days. We have been testing and debugging a pre-release copy of version 1.6 and eagerly anticipate its imminent launch at the end of June.