This page is referenced by:

• 1 2020-09-23T15:48:28-04:00 African Voices For Electricity Access 101 visual_path 2020-12-18T16:05:53-05:00

  Introduction / Topic Selection

  During the process of selecting topics for this project, I spent some time exploring African-specific datasets related to social and political movements around quality healthcare and electricity access. I decided to focus on African voices on electricity access because of the heightened availability of datasets in comparison to health access on the continent.

  Background & Introduction

  In the area of access to electricity, I came across this video: 
  
  In the video, Akon, a Senegalese-American singer, talks about his experience in leveraging his music platform to work on the Akon Lighting Africa project. The goal of the project is to provide electricity to 15 countries on the continent.

  Problem Specification Within the Status-Quo

  When tracking the progress and problems of energy access on the continent, it is vital to have access to:

  1. Local African voices
  2. Voices of Africans in the diaspora
  3. Global/international representatives and voices on the issue

  A part of the current problem of energy access on the continent is that these different groups of voices are separated or isolated in silos. 

  Most of the voices on the issue want to make progress in this area continuously. However, currently, there is no platform --that we are aware of-- that allows us to have access to all different stakeholders to:

  1. Understand the issue as it affects locals/people on the ground.
  2. Gather the resources to make an actionable effort.
  3. Communicate with and inform international representatives of the issues that are important to the people most affected.

  Therefore, this project aims to explore the best way to integrate all the different voices and stakeholders on a digital platform.

  Approach

  To integrate all the different voices advocating for the increase of access energy on the continent, I implemented a mobile application with the goal to :

  1. Provide direct access to the different groups of voices
  2. Inform advocates of the news/events around energy access on the continent
  3. Encourage more dialogue and communication between different representatives
  4.  Keep representatives and leaders accountable for continuous  progress

  App Demo

  General App Flow--Displayed on iPhone 11

  
  App Name: ElecAfrica
  
  App Set - Up:
  This app is currently implemented in an iOS environment.
  In the app, the user session begins when he or she registers as a new new in the ElecAfrica app.
  1. After registration, the user is then added to the database of users in the backend. Alternatively, the user can just log in with his or her username and password, if already registered.
  2. Once they are in the app, users can swipe left to get to the "News on electricity access by country" page.
     • On this page, users can filter to get news updates from a specific country by swiping up to find their country of choice.
  3. Once a specific country is selected, users can swipe through all the different access updates which are inputed by other users and verified with other web sources on the backed for accuracy using web-scraping methodologies.
     • For example, users can check updates on the current population size, rural and urban access, energy leadership, and non-solid fuels percentage for each country of their choice
  4. Additionally, users can also click on the "CONNECT WITH AFRICAN VOICES BUTTON" on the "News from ___(Country of Choice)___ page where they can select to connect with other users and organizations classified in either the Local Voices, Diaspora Voices, or Global Voices category.

  Connect with Others Interested in the Issue:

  On the connect page, when two users choose to connect, they can choose to use an-in app iMessage system to chat if both users are using iOS devices.
  

   

  Discussion 

  Overall, this app could be useful to organizations or individuals interested in energy access across Africa or in specific countries.  Also, since this is more of a social app, based on social-network principles, the app would become more useful over time as more people join and upload news updates to the database. Over time, we can increase the frequency of news updates to real-time updates in the app. Currently, news updates are fetched for the the database every hour.
  
  Additionally, the in-app messaging system could help connect locals affected by energy access directly to leaders in charge of addressing the issue. This connection would make sure that local voices are heard in every step of the energy access decision-making process.
  
  The next step in the app cycle is to adapt it to an android environment. This would allow more users to use the in-app messaging system across both Android and iOS devices.

   

  Code for the App / and Database System on Github

  Please see the following repo for the code for the app: https://github.com/EstherBrown1/EnergyAccess_app/tree/master
  
  
  Thanks for visiting this project page!