Professor Christelle Scharff teaches mobile tech in Senegal

Professor Christelle Scharff of the Seidenberg School recently returned from a mobile technology “boot camp” in Thies, Senegal. With the help of two colleagues from Stony Brook and Thies, Scharff taught 24 Senegalese students how to program socially beneficial applications on mobile phones.

Funding for this project was provided by National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators (NCIIA);  The grants provided to Professor Scharff by NCIIA were for $35,000 and $48,000. The monies were spent on traveling, equipment, organization of the boot camps, training for faculty and a national competition and lodging among other things.

Prof. Scharff expressed how difficult the living situation of the students is. For this reason, portions of the money also had to be used to pay for their transportation.  “Students need to share one laptop for up to four students to practices their programming skills,” Scharff said of the lack of equipment in the University.

Mobile technology has proliferated through many of the developing countries. China boasts over 500 million mobile phone connections with India leading them slightly with 525 million. At the end of 2007 there were 280.7 million mobile phone subscribers on the African continent.

Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt are the fastest growing markets. Senegal has 3,434,000 subscribers in 2007 and 1,537,000 respectively in 2005. With only an 11 percent Internet penetration rate, mobile phones remain most of the population’s only form of electronic communication.

Prof. Scharff worked in Thies, the second city of the Republic of Senegal. Earlier having worked in Cambodia, she was familiar with both the tribulations and unlimited potential of a developing country.  Having grown up in France, Prof. Scharff was able to work with these students in her native language.

The push for mobile applications in Senegal is a response to the abundance of English language applications present in developing countries. Those behind the competition wish to spread the social benefits of this technology to French speaking countries.

While French is Senegal’s officially recognized language, they retain pride in their regional language of Wolof. The language is very prevalent and was incorporated into many of the applications.

In whatever space that could be acquired, students of the mobile technology “boot camp” worked for one week on programming for mobile phones. Using the JavaME programming language, the students worked in teams on laptops provided through the project’s funding.        

While in 2009 the majority of the programs being developed were targeted towards small business owners, the theme for 2010 was on improving students’ life on campus. In 2009, each student was paired with a small business owner who was given a cell phone with the prototype software. These applications allowed the business owners to manage their expenses and income as well as their personal and professional expenses.

To spur the development of these applications, Scharff and colleagues from local universities held a competition. The Competition of Mobile Application Development for Senegal was held this year and last.

It pins students against each other to “develop the mobile phone application that will have a social impact on the populations to Africa,” Prof. Scharff said.  For the 2009 boot camp project, student teams developed many applications. Four of these are X-revolutionary manager, KomKom, Waññigame and Bana Bana 1.0.

X-Revolutionary manager was designed to help separate personal and professional expenses. While also considering expense categories such as daily expenses, pocket expenses and product expenses.

KomKom was targeted more toward business owners managing their sales to better manage their spending. One feature of KomKom was to send a bill to the client via SMS.

Bana Bana 1.0 is an application designed for women of the fishery industry. It would compute the lowest price they should sell the dry and smoked fish in order to meet expenses like wood, salt and transportation. Waññigame went a different direction than business and is intended to teach young children numbers.

Two of the students who won the 2009 competition went on to internships at Senegal’s largest mobile technology company Manobi, with the possible chance of a future job after graduation. Those who don’t find internships will certainly leave with the knowledge to find rewarding and secure work.

There is a variety of potential for these applications and others like it. Especially with other larger well-funded organizations getting behind the technology. United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is presently carrying on programs throughout Africa and India. Still, some factors like funding, distribution and illiteracy inhibit the potential.

Within Senegal, there is a burgeoning business for those who repair the mobile phones. Scharff believes this may be the outlet for distribution of this software out to the people.

The people who are repairing phones are making a side business uploading music and other media to the phone. Through these business people the software could be made affordable for a low price.

Scharff is teaching Mobile Application Development, Software Engineering and Software Reliability and Quality Assurance within the Computer Science Department. Many of the skills being taught within these courses are implemented within the project “boot camp.”

There is also a need for the skills among University students. Prof. Scharff spoke of the need for distribution and proper marketing of the mobile applications and how many of the students within the Lubin and Dyson schools could greatly aid her program and others like it.