Support AfriGadget’s Young Mobile Reporters

If you donated before your funds never made it to us and are lying unclaimed in your PayPal account. Please consider re-sending that money via the new widget below. (this one does work, I have tested it)

The Grassroots Reporting Project is one of the initiatives that we’ve been talking about for a little while here at AfriGadget. It’s where we put smarter mobile phones into the hands of young Africans and get them to report AfriGadget stories. We’re at a point now where we’ve identified the right people, what we need is your help in raising $500 to make it happen.

The pilot project

As this is our pilot project, we want to start small and learn lessons before we expand to other parts of the continent. Our first group is made up of some youth from the Khayelitsha township outside of Cape Town. Local blogger Frerieke van Bree is acting as their blogging and multimedia mentor as they are taught how to find and tell stories about local inventors, innovators and local people doing ingenious things around Cape Town.

Two of the individuals that will be taking part in the program are Lukhona Lufuta and Zintle Sithole. Both live in Khayelitsha Township near Cape Town. They are 12th grade students who are part of a 12 week leadership program called COSAT (Centre of Science and Technology, a High school for science, IT and Math).

Lukhona Lufuta

Zintle Sithole

What the money is for

We had originally thought to use the Nokia N95 that we were so kindly given by Pop!Tech, this is a fairly costly device to have an accident happen to, so we have decided to ask the AfriGadget community help us purchase the Sony Ericsson C702. According to Frerieke,

“The phone that was most convincing to me due to it’s nice robust appearance – no sliding or flipping to open, it’s solid, easy to use, doesn’t look too fancy and it is splash and dust resistant (useful in the sandy township).”

Sony Ericsson C702

Your part

We could use your help in a number of areas. First and foremost, just help spread the word about the project. If this pilot project turns out well, we’ll be doing this in many other untapped parts of the continent, and we’ll need even greater support.

Second, donate using the Chipin widget above, or to main@afrigadget.com

Lastly, thank you for being part of this community, for helping it get traction and grow all over the world.

[Update: After talking with support at ChipIn, they told me it is no longer supported, unless you create it through their new service SproutBuilder. I have done this, and a new widget is available above.]

Author: Erik Hersman

Erik is the owner of White African, a blog about technology and Africa. He is the co-founder of Zangu, a new web and mobile phone application that he hopes will change communication in Africa. AfriGadget is another web project of his, not that he doesn't have enough of those already...

21 thoughts on “Support AfriGadget’s Young Mobile Reporters”

  1. @Amy, thanks so much for donating! Others have donated and contacted us as well, and I’m not sure why it’s not showing up on the widget. I’ve contacted the ChipIn folks to figure it out too. I’ll update here when I hear from them.

  2. Hey, Erik. Could it be an error in the email address used for setup? The email address’s domain is listed as afrigadget.com, I believe.

    Anyway! This is a fantastic idea, and I contributed to! Good luck with this project!

  3. Erik, do you have any update on the progress of this campaign. The ChipIn widget is still not working.

    I am very excited about his initiative and can’t wait to to see the fruits of Lukhona and Zintle work sometime in the future.

  4. Okay, the widget now works and we are receiving new donations. Any of the old donations that were sent in during the first 3 days didn’t go through, so if you’d resend we would greatly appreciate it!

  5. I personally use the C702 and its superb! It has an inbuilt GPS that can tag photos to show the lat and longitude as of where the photo was taken.

  6. Is it possible to send text messages between africa, usa, asia, or europe? I was wondering about the possibility of communications via text message instead of using email. any information would be great. I would like to know if people could even communicate via text messages between african countries, such as South Africa to say Benin or wherever.

  7. hi Amy

    yes it is possible to send and receive text messages between an African prepaid card and any mobile number in the world. (I am only 100% sure about this for South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique)If you would like to test this: my number here in South Africa: +27(0)782080548. Or Lukhona: +27(0)735993435 and Zintle: +27(0)781607603

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