Wael Abbas himself to the crowd at Microsoft’s Social Media Symposium saying, “I’m just a blogger.” Yeah, and Clay Shirky, who introduces him, is just some bald dude. Here’s my attempt to transcribe Wael’s talk.

I want to talk about social media in Egypt from 2004 through the revolution and why we needed to use social media. In our country where we’re told we have freedom of speech, where they’ve convinced us we have independent media, we weren’t being told the whole truth. The media is not covering everything.

In 2004, we started seeing movements calling for change in Egypt like Kefaya calling for Mubarak to be impeached, for Gamal, his son, not to follow his father. They were getting coverage in foreign media – BBC, Al Jazeera – but not in the domestic media. That foreign coverage wasn’t reaching ordinary people.

I was blogging in Arabic slang because I wanted to reach Egyptian youth. I believeed that these guys were the ones who would make a change. So I used language they would understand… including lots of profanity. I avoided the language of journalists and scholars and I was reaching a good audience.

Before 2004, I was anonymous, posting to newsgroups. But with the rise of Kefaya, I picked up my camera and was photographing movements and talking about how big these demonstrations were, beyond the three lines a demonstration would get in domestic media.

Wael shows us pictures of a demonstration against the Gaza war in 2006 to show the size and impact of these movements. “The police were using techniques including plainclothes operators. Foreign media thinks that protesters are clashing with one another, but it’s actually protesters clashing with police.”

One of the biggest movements asking for change in Egypt were the judges, who were calling for judicial independence. Bloggers were great supporters of the judges, as were the Muslim Brotherhood. (We see a video where police use force to control a demonstration.)

(Video footage of the Kefaya movement in 2005 – “At that time, you did not see things like this on TV”.)

It wasn’t only about the activists or politicians – we covered workers’ strikes because we believe strikes and sit ins play a big role for change in Egypt. (Footage of a demonstration by garbage collectors.) In Egypt, no one would care about covering garbage collectors on strike.

Maybe you heard about the Mahana general strike of 2008? (A video that shows the living conditions of a Mahana worker.) Video like this helps people realize why people are protesting and why they have those demands.

Bloggers were part of the movements, starting movements on their on or reporting on movements for change. Here’s a demonstration that was very unexpected – it was a flash mob. The organizers didn’t trust the media to cover it, but alerted the bloggers so they could cover the events.)

When the border opened with Gaza, I was able to get in with a camera and document the living conditions there, including people warming themselves with open fires. When the borders opened, we used social media to document the smuggling of essential goods.

Bloggers even covered the US presidential elections. (A video of a Mexican-American immigrant to Egypt who’s happy about Obama’s candidacy.) This taxi driver was happy because his children would be able to run for president in America.

Bloggers organized demonstrations as well, including one for Christian/Muslim unity in Egypt – no other political groups did this. I guess that’s when they realized bloggers were dangerous: when we started organizing protests instead of drinking Nescafe in our pajamas.

You may think the first Tahrir Square protests were January 25, 2011, but here are photos of the sit in in Tahrir we organized in 2006. They used firehoses to prevent us from sitting on the ground, and turned off the lights, but we slept for the night in the garden. This was a movement organized entirely by the bloggers.

We made fun of them, too. It’s a traditional song, it talks about how sitting on the floor is lovely and sitting on chairs is not healthy. I used it to make fun of President Mubarak, because it was forbidden to talk about Mubarak’s health – journalists were sent to prison for writing about Mubarak’s health. I made the song about Mubarak being unhealthy because he’d been sitting too long.

They used to scare us back then, saying talking about the President’s health was affecting the stock exchange and the economy, and we shouldn’t talk about it.

Using video meant that television stations could take our video and borrow it – here’s video shown on Al Hurra, the American-backed TV station, using video from bloggers. Bloggers became a source of information for international news agencies and television channels. Some borrowed our material and others just stole it. (Video of an Al Jazeera video, retitled “Al Jazeera stole my video.”)

Other people started bringing us video. Here’s footage of a train crash, shot by a bystander – he brought it to me so a wider audience could see it. This happened before CNN iReport, when the network started asking people to contribute their footage.

Some of the videos were of taboo nature, and could not be aired on traditional media. People shared the video because they saw a problem that needed to be solved. (Video of women being sexually harassed.) People shared this video with us because they wanted people to pay attention to this issue and look for solutions.

We had video on rigging of elections. No matter how powerful a blogger is, he can’t be all over the country to watch the polls. But people would send us footage. Here’s a video of someone taking ballots and throwing them out, unaware that someone was taking video of him.

In Egypt, we all talked about torture taking place in police stations. We made fun of it. But you can imagine the shock people felt when they saw video of it. (A video of police torture.) People were very uncomfortable when we started showing videos. It coincided with videos and photos leaked from Iraq of Abu Ghraib. But in these videos, it was Egyptians torturing Egyptians, so people started asking questions. These videos had been available for years, but they were of a taboo nation and no one wanted to get in fights with the authorities.

We started getting videos from other countries – here’s a video of torture from a police station in Kuwait. Here’s an Indian worker in Kuwait being humiliated in a police station. Thank god, we were able to break this taboo in Egypt and were able to put an officer on trial for the first time. Here’s an officer who sodomized a bus driver who’d been taking into a police station and video’d it.

He was only sentenced for three years, but it set a new precedent. Wael started receiving threats via the phone that he would be sodomized like the man in the police station. Egyptian politicians began publicly accusing Abbas of crimes, of converting to Christianity, of being homosexual. I was able to fight back on my blog.

I had a problem with YouTube – YouTube removed some of my torture videos. (CNN report on Wael being silenced by YouTube.) YouTube claimed I was not providing enough context for the videos I was posting, and that the content was not appropriate from the YouTube audience. I got a lot of support from US bloggers, from CNN and from Fox News. People asked, “Why did you post these on YouTube? Why not put them on your own hosting site?” I believe YouTube is a platform where everyone can post everything. According to Ethan’s Cute Cat theory, people go to YouTube to watch funny cats – let’s get their attention and get them to watch something else. On YouTube, these can get a greater audience than on a website specialized about torture. It helps get the attention of people who did not know about these issues.

Anil Dash asks about using titles for videos in English. Wael admits that he used Arabic for some titles, English for others depending on what audience he thought he wanted to reach.

At this point, Clay and Anil begin asking questions about how Wael curated videos – Wael tells us that the videos that received the largest audience were the ones about sexual harassment – Wael speculates that it’s because they were about sex.

The consequence for posting videos was that Wael began to be stopped and searched when he left the country. He was no longer allowed to travel with a laptop, CDs, DVDs or flash drives – he needed to upload presentations and show them online.

It’s clear that Wael could talk for much longer, but the session turns into a Q&A at this point.)

Question: How much did social media matter in the Egyptian revolution.
Wael: Social media is a tool. But revolution is the decision of many people. Once we decided to have a revolution, once people decided to stay in the square, social media was a helpful tool to call for support, ask lawyers for help. I will not give social media all the credit, nor will I take away all the credit from social media.

danah boyd: How will social media help in the elections?
A: We’re not beyond the revolution. We now have a military junta, and people are being shot by armed officers, defending their interests. The army is protecting American, Israeli, Saudi interests in the country. They are protecting their own interests: the military aid from the US. The army is building factories and roads, and they’re not paying taxes, electricity or water. The labor for these projects are soldiers acting as slave labor.
Q: Are there ways to use the technology to increase communications amongst citizens?
A: We’re trying, but now there’s a war in social media itself. Once they realized we were powerful, the authorites took to social media. They are attacking the revolution, asking for stability, security and for the revolution to end. We are also fighting traditional media, which is still central, and in the hands of the regime and pro-regime businessmen. They are all attacking the revolution and our image.

Q: How did you grow an audience for your blog? How did you grow your audience?
A: I never studied the topic – I simply did what I needed to do. I put links in forums, used chat lists on Yahoo, send links to new posts. I began posting on Facebook and Twitter once people started using them.

Gilad Lotan: How dangerous is it for people to support you in Egypt, to connect to your social media or to like your videos?
A: Some people clear their caches, but it’s not really that dangerous – they are after us, not after people watching our material. But they gave orders to cybercafes not to allow people to look at torture videos. But it’s only dangerous when you take to the streets.

A few days back, I wrote a post about the Occupy Nigeria movement. As with many of my posts, my main goal was to research the issue and get a better understanding of what was going on and what I thought about it. The post has generated a good deal of feedback, some of it quite confrontational, some skeptical, some helpful in helping me understand the situation better. I’m particularly grateful for the last two types of feedback, as I feel like I understand the situation better than when I wrote the first post.

In my first post, I argued that removing the fuel subsidy is ultimately the right thing for Nigeria to do, as it is riddled with corruption, offers massive benefits to a few companies fortunate enough to have been awarded import contracts, and dominates the government budget at the expense of critical infrastructure projects. What I hadn’t understood fully is that the protests aren’t against removal of the subsidy per se, but about a lack of trust in government. As Nicholas Ibekwe, one of the organizers of the Occupy Nigeria protests in London explains, “Most organizers of the protest believe that removal of subsidy is not a bad thing. And I share that sentiment as well. However, the removal of subsidy in Nigeria is not about economics, it is mostly about trust, corruption and timing. The Nigerian government has not given the ordinary Nigerian reason to trust it.”

Put more simply by Chude Jideonwo on YNaija, “This is good policy badly executed, not because of timing necessarily as because of trust.” In the long run, Nigeria needs to eliminate a fuel subsidy that buys imported fuel – it makes very little economic sense for a nation to produce raw petroleum, export it to countries that refine it and subsidize its reimportation. It would make much more sense for the Nigerian government to help rebuild the nation’s refineries so the oil could be processed locally.

The problem is that, as Ibekwe and Jideonwo both explain, people don’t trust the Jonathan government to repurpose the subsidy to build infrastructure. Many of the arguments against subsidy removal focus on overspending in the Nigerian government, particularly on salaries and benefits to elected officials. The assumption – not without some justification – is that any savings from the subsidy will line the pockets of politicians at the expense of ordinary Nigerians.

Based on the feedback I’ve gotten from Nigerian friends, there’s no doubt that the subsidy removal was implemented poorly. Removing the subsidy in one fell swoop may have been designed to minimize opportunities for dissent (as each step of a gradual increase might invite protest), but it maximizes harm to the ordinary Nigerians who are struggling to cope with cost increases. The removal of the subsidy during the Christmas season had the additional complication of stranding some Nigerians in their home villages without sufficient funds to pay for transport home. And, as the commentators I quote above have pointed out, the Jonathan government simply doesn’t enjoy enough popular support and trust to have implemented these changes so unilaterally.

Alex Thurston at Sahel Blog argues against two arguments he sees me making in the piece. The first argument he sees me making is that removal of the subsidy is a good thing. I don’t think that’s what my argument was, precisely – I think removing the subsidy, ultimately, is something Nigeria needs to do. But as I’ve conceded here, I agree the move was made badly, without sufficient consideration of the harms to ordinary Nigerians, and I hope it will be rolled back and implemented in a more careful, considered way.

The second argument Thurston disagrees with is my contention that a protest against the subsidy is reactionary. Here I think he and I genuinely disagree. Thurston suggests that removal of the subsidy favors the 1% over the 99%, and suggests that because the World Bank and IMF would like to see the subsidy removed, the interests of the powerful favor subsidy removal. I don’t think it’s especially fair to equate the oft-maligned IMF and World Bank with the globally rich and powerful. There are lots of smart economists – including Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Managing Director of the World Bank – who are looking for solutions to Nigeria’s long-term economic woes, and who see removing the subsidy as a step towards economic reform.

There’s no doubt that removal of the subsidy is hurting the 99% in the short term. But poor and middle-class Nigerians were experiencing a great deal of economic misery before removal of the subsidy. In the long term, one way or another, Nigeria needs a functioning infrastructure, a working power grid, better roads and rail, better health care and education. In the long term, some of these services need to come from the government… and the government will gain legitimacy by providing services that people want and need, beyond cheap fuel.

Thurston and the Occupy protesters seem to be arguing that the government can’t and won’t provide those services, and therefore we should focus on the short term: maintaining a large subsidy on the import of foreign petroleum products. That mistrust of government’s ability to provide any services sounds more like the Tea Party than the Occupy movement to me. I’m not saying that the protesters are wrong in their mistrust of Jonathan’s government. I am saying that a government taking steps towards modifying a budget to provide essential goods and services appears more progressive than supporting a massive subsidy.

In US terms, this argument sounds like a very typical right-wing argument: we can’t trust the bloated, lazy government to produce public goods, so we should have very low taxes and rely on the private sector for any goods and services. In practical terms, removal of a fuel subsidy is a tax increase. It’s a badly implemented tax increase and it affects people who are ill able to afford it. But the goal is a progressive one, so long as you accept the notion that Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Jonathan are genuinely trying to build infrastructure and help the economy recover. If you don’t trust their motives, obviously, you won’t see this move as anything other than an opportunity for more corruption.

Do I think the subsidy removal was a good idea? I think it’s an admirable goal in the long run, but was badly implemented and should be rolled back and implemented gradually in closer consultation with a variety of non-government groups. Do I support the Occupy Nigeria movement? Yes, inasmuch as I think it’s great to see organized, peaceful, popular opposition to corruption in Nigeria. But I am deeply worried that the movement is focused on rolling back a change that, in the long run, is intended to correct some of the major problems of the Nigerian economy. Do I still think the movement is reactionary? Yes, in the literal sense that protesters are trying to roll back a change made by government, and more figuratively, because the movement questions the ability of the government to create positive change for the people. I hope the movement will become a broader anti-corruption movement, which I would see as less reactionary, more progressive and more in line with global Occupy movements.

Do I expect that this post will reduce the amount of angry email I’ve recently received? Probably not. :-) As several correspondents have pointed out, passions are understandably running very high around these issues. It’s hard to both critique and support a movement, but I think the issues here are complicated enough that it’s worth trying to do both simultaneously.

On January 1st, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonthan put into place a reform that he and key ministers have been discussing for years: he ended a 20-year old subsidy that kept Nigeria’s petrol prices the lowest on the continent. When Nigerians went back to work on Monday, the 2nd, they discovered that not only had petrol increased from $0.40 to $0.91 a litre, but the cost of private taxis, minibuses and other forms of transit had increased in price as well.

By Tuesday, the 3rd, protesters in Lagos were blocking access to petrol stations and shutting down stretches of motorways by building and burning barricades. On the 4th, protesters in Kano shut down petrol stations and threatened to burn down a newspaper they believed was supporting the removal of the subsidy. They occupied Silver Jubilee Square in the center of the city and attempted to maintain an encampment overnight, though police responded by firing tear gas and, allegedly, working with armed gangs to clear the square through violence and intimidation. The protests are led, in part, by two powerful trade unions, National Labour Congress and Trades Union Congress, who have promised to “occupy” Nigeria until the subsidies are restored. They plan a nationwide strike, beginning January 9th.

Michael Bociurkiw, writing in the Huffington Post, notes that it wasn’t obvious that petrol price increases would trigger such widespread protests. After all, there’s lots to protest in the country. Despite being sub-Saharan Africa’s largest producer of oil, most Nigerians are quite poor, the nation’s infrastructure is shambolic, and political corruption is widespread and well-documented. A rigged election in 2007 (and controversy over a mostly-clean election in 2011) led to some heated rhetoric, but little visible protest.

But petrol prices affect every aspect of life in Nigeria. The country has no (functioning) mass transit systems, which means urban dwellers are reliant on a complex system of minibuses, taxis and motorbikes, operated as private businesses. Those businesses will be sharply affected by the petrol price increase and pass the costs on to their customers. And because Nigeria’s electrical grid and power producing stations are notoriously unreliable, most businesses use generators to power their operations. Those generators have just become at least twice as expensive to operate, which is likely to increase prices at a wide variety of businesses. Complicating matters, Nigeria is least stable in the north, where tensions between Muslim and Christian groups have erupted into violence, and where the terrorist acts of Boko Haram, an extremist organization which wants all non-Islamic education and culture banned from Nigeria, have pushed President Goodluck Jonathan to declare a state of emergency in the North. Because the north is distant from the ports where Nigeria lands imports, goods are likely to increase sharply in price in the already troubled region.

Jonathan is not the first Nigerian leader to try to remove the fuel subsidy. Two of Nigeria’s military leaders – General Ibrahim Babangida and General Sani Abacha both tried to end the expensive program, and both were forced to back down due to popular opposition.

On the one hand, it’s exciting to see a Nigerian population that’s often overwhelmed into inaction taking to the streets. Stories about Muslim and Christian protesters finding agreement over shared prayer space – and images of Nigerian Christians encircling and protecting Muslim protesters at prayer in Kano – are genuinely encouraging. And there’s no doubt that making a living was a tough prospect for ordinary Nigerians with the subsidy in place and that a tough situation will get worse without it.

That said, ultimately, I think Nigeria needs to get rid of the subsidy. It’s incredibly expensive – depending on how you account for it, it cost between $8 billion and $16 billion in 2011. Nigeria’s tax authority collected just under $18 billion in 2010, and budgets for key sectors of the Nigerian economy are substantially smaller than the cost of the subsidy: defense spending is proposed at $6 billion, education at $2.5 billion, health at $1.8 billion. And while the subsidies make life easier for ordinary Nigerians, they’re a massive boon to the few companies the government allows to import refined petroleum… and contracts to import those petroleum products are a likely source of patronage revenues for corrupt government figures.

The IMF has pressured Nigeria to remove fuel subsidies for years, and Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo–Iweala, an internationally celebrated economist and anti-corruption reformer has been a powerful champion of reforms, offering long briefings to the President and other leaders on the importance of the reform effort. (Rumors have circulated that she threatened to resign if the subsidy wasn’t eliminated. She refuted those rumors in classic Nigerian fashion… on Twitter.)

Ideally, the Nigerian government would use the monies freed by eliminating the subsidy to address some of the country’s chronic problems: weak road and rail infrastructure, unreliable power, run-down refining facilities. It’s possible to imagine a Nigeria where imported petroleum products were less necessary, if the country had functioning rail systems, a reliable power grid minimizing the need for generators, and refineries that could produce diesel and gasoline locally. Given the history of corruption in the Nigerian government, it’s not hard to understand why many Nigerians are skeptical that the monies released from the subsidy will go anywhere other than in politicians’ pockets. As the BBC observes, many Nigerians feel like the fuel subsidy is the only government service they actually see.

If you want to understand opposition to removal of the subsidy, an oddly partisan view can be found on the Occupy Nigeria wikipedia page, which is quite far from NPOV, but a very interesting read nevertheless. Statements from Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Lamido Sanusi make the case for subsidy removal in a piece on Bloomberg News. His basic argument: Nigeria needs to borrow a lot of money to build infrastructure, and responsible lenders won’t give the country money as long as it keeps doing boneheaded stuff like subsidizing oil consumption instead of building infrastructure.

Even though I think Nigeria needs to end the subsidy, I would be surprised if Jonathan can sustain these changes in the face of a sustained strike. There’s tension already over the idea that this isn’t Jonathan’s “turn” at the presidency – there’s a popular notion that Nigeria’s presidency should rotate between northern Muslims and southern Christians. The previous president, the Muslim northerner Yar’Adua died in office, and Jonathan finished his term. Some believe that, by this rule of thumb, the 2011 president should have been a northerner… Some northern activists and some labor activists have made threats that they will make Nigeria “ungovernable” during a Jonathan administration. It’s not hard to see how protests over fuel could make Nigeria vastly harder to govern.

I’m interested to see Nigerian take on some of the rhetoric and tactics of the Occupy movement, including the occupation of a public square in Kano. I’ll be intrigued to see whether any of the global energy over Occupy goes to support the Nigerian protesters. The irony, I fear, is that while the global occupy movement seeks to equalize income disparities and fight government corruption, the Nigerian movement is currently pursuing radical and important reforms, and the Occupy Nigeria protesters are fighting against that change. Read one way, Occupy Nigeria is a conservative movement fighting to keep a dysfunctional status quo in place, which seems at odds with other branches of the movement.

It’s a few days after Christmas, and if you overextended yourself in buying gifts for your family and friends, you may be thinking about options to tide you over until the next payday. For years, payday lenders have offered short term loans at extortionate interest rates to people desperate for cash. Some loans are tied to collateral: the title to an automobile or deed to a house. Others offer unsecured “cash advances”, usually requiring evidence that a borrower is employed and that paychecks are deposited into an individual’s bank account. Borrowers secure the loans with a check to the lender dated in the future, or by giving the lender permission to debit from their checking accounts.

Payday loans charge extremely high interest rates, as high as 400-800% annually. The theory behind these rates is that they’ll be paid back in a few weeks, so finance charges aren’t competitive with more conventional bank loans. But payday lenders allow borrowers to “roll over” loans, using a new loan to repay a previous loan – a paper on payday lending coauthored by Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren explains that as much of 90% of the profits in the payday lending industry comes from loans rolled over 5 or more times. When these loans extend for months or longer, their interest rates mean that the cost of borrowing rapidly exceeds the initial sum borrowed.

In a few American states, these high interest rates violate usury laws, and payday lending is prohibited. The Pentagon, worried about the impact payday lenders were having on military families, asked Congress to prohibit this form of exploitative lending to military personel. The Talent Amendment, passed in 2007, helps protect servicemen and women… but civilians are still fair game. And while the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was intended in part to help regulate payday lending, lobbying from payday lenders has helped keep the business from being one of CFPB’s early priorities. (Law professor Nathalie Martin makes a compelling case that payday lending should be an early priority for CFPB. But CFPB’s website makes no mention of payday or title lenders.)

Home for the holidays, I’ve been catching up on Top Chef reruns on Bravo. Watching late night satellite TV exposes one to some unusual ads. I saw an extraordinary ad last night: A handsome Native American man in a suit tells me that, if I need money transferred to my bank account right now, Western Sky Financial may be able to help me. His name is Thomas Morgan, and he warns, “Yes, the money’s expensive, but there’s no collateral required, and you can keep the cost down by paying it as fast as you can.”

He’s not kidding about the money being expensive. If I borrow $1500 from Western Sky, $500 is immediately reclaimed by the company as a loan fee. I pay 234% interest on the loan, payable in 24 payments of almost $200 each. In exchange for $1000, I pay $4,756.56 over the next two years. Larger loans offer lower loan fees and interest rates, but the interest rates start to create truly surreal situations. Borrow $5,075 and the 84 scheduled payments add up to $40,872.72.

It’s not a coincidence that Western Sky’s spokesman is Native American. The commercial and website both emphasize that the business is
“owned wholly by an individual Tribal Member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and is not owned or operated by the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe or any of its political subdivisions. WESTERN SKY FINANCIAL is a Native American business operating within the exterior boundaries of the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, a sovereign nation located within the United States of America.”

That’s a fascinating legal construction. It’s important for Western Sky to assert its status as a Native American-owned business so it can assert the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Court as the legal jurisdiction for the loan. And Western Sky’s default loan agreement forces borrowers to waive their rights to a jury trial, and to seek arbitration within the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Nation’s jurisdiction. Borrowers also waive the ability to participate in a class action lawsuit, and certain rights of discovery in the case of a lawsuit. It’s possible to opt out of this clause, but only through a convoluted procedure involving a written request.

(I don’t have a good answer to why the legal verbiage makes it clear that it’s an individual, not a tribal business – my guess is that if high-rate lending were an official tribal business, it might come under the purview of a federal regulator… but I’d be grateful for anyone’s insights on why Western Sky insists that this is an individual tribal member’s business.)

In the case of Western Sky, the lender is Martin Webb, who is a member of the South Dakota-based Cheyenne River Sioux tribe. Courts in West Virginia have determined that Webb’s legal status doesn’t protect his business from state and federal regulation, at least as regards loans to West Virginia consumers. (Western Sky’s website won’t let you apply for a loan if you are from West Virginia. The company faces similar bans in Maryland, California and, ironically, South Dakota.) And the Federal Trade Commission, while not ruling on whether Western Sky is based in Cheyenne River Sioux territory or South Dakota, has ordered Webb to stop collecting on debts by attempting to illegally garnish customers’ wages.

Perhaps it’s only fitting that Native Americans – cheated out of their lands by unfair treaties, politically and economically isolated since the foundation of the United States – are seeking economic development by preying on America’s least fortunate. Businesses run using sovereignty include casinos, discount cigarette sales and payday lending, all businesses that target vulnerable populations in the US. That’s the case, eloquently made, by Thomas E. Gamble, chief of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, which is involved in several lending businesses. In response to a request for information from reporters from the Center for Public Integrity, Gamble argues that tribes exiled to remote and desolate areas have had to find creative ways to develop “a diverse economy that can provide jobs, housing, education, infrastructure, health care and other vital services for our members.” How many of the 3,500 members of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma are profiting from their lending business is unclear, but Gamble argues that by permitting lenders to operate within tribal lands, “is no different that South Dakota passing favorable laws in order to attract Citigroup and the like to set up niche industries within its jurisdiction.”

(Here, Gamble is referring to the exodus of banks like Citibank to South Dakota in the late 1970s. Under heavy lobbying from banks, South Dakota overturned its usury laws, allowing banks to issue credit cards with high interest rates. A Supreme Court decision in 1978, Marquette National Bank v. First of Omaha Service Corp., allowed banks to “export” the interest rates of the states they were based in to states where they had customers. States responded with “parity laws”, allowing locally chartered banks to offer competitive rates… so their banks didn’t all decamp to South Dakota. Gamble is correct that South Dakota made these changes to attract business and that these changes were legal. But he’s also making the case that his tribe should be allowed to engage in the sorts of practices that have created financial crises for millions of Americans, faced with punitive interest rates and fees from their credit card issuers.)

I’d find Gamble’s argument slightly more compelling if it were clear that his tribal members were the main beneficiaries of usurious loans. Generally, they’re not. Payday lenders are remarkably creative in finding loopholes in state laws that prohibit usury, and one of the most recently exploited loopholes is “rent a tribe“. Lenders based outside of Native American lands strike agreements with tribal members to “rent” their sovereignty in exchange for a small share of proceeds. A suit from the Colorado Attorney General uses financial documents to demonstrate that the tribes are generally making about 1% of proceeds from the lending business in exchange for “owning” the companies. The rest of the proceeds go to the lenders, whose offices are generally far from tribal lands.

Those proceeds go to guys like Scott Tucker.

Scott Tucker, race car driver, entrepreneur, apparent scumbag.

Chief Gamble’s letter in defense of Native American lending refers to AMG Services, a “tribal business” that manages several payday lending operations. Center for Public Integrity and CBS argue that AMG Services is actually run by Scott Tucker, the alleged gentleman pictured above. Gamble states that Tucker is an “employee” of AMG Services, and Tucker refuses to speak about his relationship to the Miami Tribe, citing a confidentiality agreement. CPI’s investigation discovered that Tucker and his brother were the only parties authorized to write checks on behalf of AMG, suggesting that the Miami tribe’s “ownership” of the company is nominal at best.

The CPI investigation finds that Tucker is one of the pioneers in using “rent a tribe” to protect otherwise prohibited payday lending businesses. Tucker is a convicted felon, who served time in Leavenworth in the early 1990s for mail fraud associated with a bogus loan scheme. After his release, Tucker turned to payday lending, managing a set of shell companies from an office in Overland Park, Kansas. When regulators in Colorado began investigating a Tucker-owned lender, Cash Advance, they faced an interesting challenge: the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and the Santee Sioux Tribe announced that they owned the lenders, arguing that this put the business’s operations outside of Colorado’s subpoena powers. A Colorado court responded by citing Tucker for civil contempt.

Oddly, the citation for civil contempt hasn’t cramped Tucker’s style. He maintains an $8 million home in Aspen in his wife’s name, though AMG Services (the “tribal business”) pays the property taxes. And he likes to drive fast cars. When Tucker was recently ticketed for speeding in Olathe, Kansas, AMG donated $1000 to the campaign of the Kansas district attorney whose office processes tickets. In an odd coincidence, Tucker’s ticket was turned into a parking offense, leaving his driving record clean.

It’s important that Tucker’s driving record stay clean because driving is his passion and pastime. A breathless 2010 Wall Street Journal article celebrates Tucker’s participation in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a massively popular auto race described as “the Super Bowl of international sports car racing”. The Journal – which has never met a bank it doesn’t like – describes Tucker as “a wealthy private investor from Leawood, Kansas” and marvels at the fact that Tucker apparently has “world-class talent” at motorsports. Nowhere does the WSJ article mention Tucker’s felonious past, or suggest that his driving skills may have developed as an attempt to outrun bank regulators.

A recent article on Tucker’s Level 5 Motorsports notes that Microsoft Office has recently signed on as the company’s chief sponsor. I guess Microsoft looks more sightly on a racing jumpsuit than the logos of payday lending firms. And I wonder whether Microsoft’s marketing department knows they’re supporting the hobby of a man whose money is made by bankrupting vulnerable borrowers.

I started writing this post because I saw Western Sky’s ad and immediately concluded, “That’s got to be illegal.” What’s remarkable, of course, is that it’s not necessarily illegal. Four of 50 American states have taken action against Western Sky, and at least one (Colorado) have attempted to cripple or shut down Tucker’s businesses. But it’s going to take a long time for 50 states attorneys general to bring proceedings against these semi-virtual lenders. And it wouldn’t be surprising to see lenders attempting to service this market across international borders.

One of the most interesting businesses in this space is Wonga.com, an English company that offers short-term loans online, much like Western Sky does. Like Western Sky, Wonga charges very high interest rates – their website advertises a 4214% annual percentage rate. Unlike Western Sky, Wonga claims to be a responsible lender, and does not seek to extend loans beyond their initial term (which, remember, is where payday lenders generally make their profits.) They give money to Kiva.org, and have taken investment from responsible venture capital firms and from one of the UK’s leading charities. They appear to be expanding and now operate in South Africa. It’s hard for me to know whether Wonga competing in the US against Western Sky and others would be a good or bad thing.

When I tweeted about Western Sky last night, a couple of people responded by arguing that if payday lending is too closely regulated, it will simply send the business underground. The opposite seems to be happening at present. Payday lenders have traditionally targeted the poor, and neighborhoods in the US where poverty is endemic tend to feature check cashing, auto title and payday loan businesses. (Nathalie Martin’s article notes that in states where payday lending is legal, there are more payday lenders than Starbucks franchises.) Businesses like Wonga claim to be targeting a wealthier set of customers who see high-cost loans as a convenience. (Why Wonga loans would be more convenient than a cash advance on a credit card, which though expensive, tend to cost less than these loans, is unclear to me.) Perhaps “overregulation” would mean a rebirth of illegal loan sharking – in the meantime, the appearance of TV ads for high-interest loans suggests that legalized loan sharking may be becoming more socially acceptable.

If you’re considering a payday loan or an online, high-interest loan, please read this article first. It’s from the Center for Responsible Lending, and offers a number of less expensive alternatives, including cash advances from employers, cash advances on credit cards, consumer loans from credit unions, payment plans from creditors and military loans.

Kudos to Center for Public Integrity and CBS News, and specifically to David Heath, Laura Strickler and Armen Keteyian for their stories on payday lending and the Native American connection. I cited these four stories (1, 2, 3, 4) in this post. It’s a reminder of the importance of investigative journalism in exposing complex stories like this one.

I’m traveling too much this fall, not getting enough time with my family or my students, but there are occasional trips that would simply be a mistake to miss. For the past two years, I’ve traveled to Nigeria with my friends and colleagues Colin Maclay and Mike Best. On our last trip, we ended up working with Nollywood directors and producers to brainstorm new business and distribution models for the field. This week, Nollywood filmmakers are in Atlanta, Georgia, visiting Georgia Tech and engaging in a discussion on the future of the industry.

They’re having some fun, too. Zik Zulu Okafor is working on a film while he’s here, a story of a Nigerian hero who finds himself at university in America, wrestling with relationships at home and abroad. As we’re having a discussion about the aesthetics and business model of the industry, Georgia Tech students are auditioning for the production in the next room over.

And we’re surrounded by some marvelous folks who, who’ve been generous in sharing their talents.

That’s Hausa rapper Ziriums – Nazir Ahmad Hausawa – performing his hit “This is Me” in front of an appreciative crowd, who looked up from their goat and jollof rice to cheer him on. The handsome dude dancing with him is Zeb Ejiro, one of the fathers of the Nigerian film industry. The beautiful lady who comes into the frame is Monalisa Chinda, one of Nollywood’s hottest contemporary stars. On the surface, it’s the sort of warm moment that happens often when you’re lucky enough to hang out with groups of Nigerians. But it’s richer and more complicated than that.

There aren’t many Hausa rappers in Nigeria. The language, spoken primarily in the predominantly Muslim north, isn’t heard as commonly in the commercial capital, Lagos, and when Ziriums looked for a contract from a Lagos record company, he tells us that he was not warmly received. And his work has proven pretty controversial at home as well.

While Ziriums’s music is rooted in his culture and faith (he’s the son of a religious singer, and his early performances were Boyz To Men songs rewritten to praise the Prophet), it’s also deeply political. One of the tracks he’s best known for is a reworking of Busta Rhymes’s “Arab Money” as “Government Money”, a satirical track that busts on money-obsessed Abuja. When Ziriums dropped his own album, it featured a track called “Girgiza Kai” – “Shake Your Head” – which pilloried the governor of Kano State.

The governor wasn’t pleased, and the song was banned from local radio. According to this report from Carmen McCain, his website was also blocked in Kano – while I can’t verify that, this would be a very unusual instance in Nigeria, where the internet has remained largely uncensored. (Carmen has contacted me – while the song was banned from local radio, his site was not blocked.) Ziriums now lives in New York, for fear of arrest or harassment in Kano, and is using digital means to ensure Nigerians at home can hear his music and his message.

So it’s not just a warm moment when one of the pioneers of Nollywood cinema shares the mic with a controversial political Hausa rapper – it’s a reminder that Nigeria, for all its complexity and conflict, is a place where respect for each other’s culture and creations can cross lines of language, religion and generation.

Award-winning Nigerian filmmaker Zik Zulu Okafor is one of the first speakers at today’s New Media Nollywood Conference at Georgia Tech. In conjunction with this academic gathering, Okafor is shooting a new Nollywood film at Georgia Tech this month, taking advantage of access to the campus to tell the story of a Nigerian student in the US.

While Nollywood has come to public notice in the past few years, Zik Zulu wants us to know that Nigeria has been making films for decades. In the 1990s, the military governments and economic austerity measures nearly killed the film industry. Television was tightly regulated, and there were fewer than 20 stations – now there are more than 100. But in the mid-1990s, the situation was “placid”.

At the moment of placidity, the Yoruba in southwest Nigeria were making home videos. And a group in the Southeast who spoke Ibo thought they could do something around video production around their language. They made a film called “Living in Bondage”, which Zik describes as “a little miracle”. Despite the fact that it was in Ibo, it became a hit throughout the whole country. Unemployed youth started to look for opportunities to make films and make money. At the peak of the Nollywood miracle, we saw 100 films produced in a week.

While films made in India and Hollywood were more professional, the Nigerian films were pushing them off the shelves. Why? They were films that spoke to our lives, our issues and our problems. But there were limits to how broad an audience these films could reach – questions about technical and commercial limits. Our need to consider Nollywood and new media is the chance to look at the current limits of the industry and how we could transcend those limits.

Documentarian Franco Sacchi tells us that, when you hear a story like Zik’s, want to tell a new and different story about Africa. “There is nothing more original and refreshing than a story like this one.” Sacchi was born in Africa, and knew he wanted to create a different story and narrative.

His film, This is Nollywood – made in 2005 – follows production of a Nollywood film as a window into understanding the creativity and power of this practice. The success of the film led to an invitation to speak at TED Africa, which connected him with people interested in media and social change.

Jay Winsten, public health scholar at Harvard, brought the Scandinavian concept of the “designated driver” to the US in the late 1980s, as a way of addressing death via drunk driving. To popularize the concept, he worked with the producers of the situation comedy, “Cheers”. The mentions on Cheers weren’t especially heavy-handed or paternalistic, but they generated interest in the concept. Shortly after the mentions, the Harvard initiative was able to measure a 30% fall in drunk driving fatalities.

Nigerian films reach the most rural areas, towns where there’s no electricity. He tells us about a man pushing a wooden wheelbarrow filled with films, selling in a rural area. Given this reach and power, we need to consider the possibility that these films are a tool for social good and social change.

Burkinabe cinema scholar Aboubukar Sanogo tells us that he was literally born into cinema. As his parents rushed to the hospital in Ouagadougou, his mother gave birth in taxi in a crowded downtown intersection, next to the Ciné Réal. While not a Nigerian, he’s an expert on older traditions of African cinema, the sorts of films that get shows at FESPACO, the biennial film festival in Burkina Faso that features African film and is the center of academic culture around these films.

aonogo sees Nollywood as the harbinger of a post-cinematic age. Homes, churches and other infrastructures have taken over the function of the cinema. “But some of the properties we associate with 35mm, 16mm, 8mm film are now associated with video. You can be a filmmaker with a VCR.” You can shoot, edit and create a narrative with inexpensive equipment and cameras. He offers his sense that Nollywood may be the future of cinema, and part of its creative and innovative genius.

He references Chidum Okwe, a young Nigerian who has started an alternative distribution channel called Izogn Movies. The website offers subscription-based access to Nigerian films, and builds a community around review snd and comments. Izogn represents a way that media that has powerful domestic reach can influence the diaspora and anyone else excited about Nigerian culture. “We’re shifting to a moment when the content consumed in a country is the content created in that country,” which is the dream of the people who began making cinema in Nigeria.

Jade Miller, a postdoc student at Tulane, wrote her PhD dissertation on the structure of Nollywood while at USC. Her academic interest is in media policy and the development of creative industries. Nollywood, as an industry, developed without any policy interventions from the government, and she notes that it’s possible that the government may not be able to influence Nollywood in positive ways.

She urges us to talk about monetization strategies that work within the current structure of Nollywood distribution. We can’t just talk about piracy – we need to think about models like product placement which could support our work. She wants to hear more about international distribution: are rumors that international distributors offering $5k a film true? She’s heard that satellite channel Africa Magic is commissioning and paying for movies – is that true?

The audience expresses some skepticism about Izogn Movies and other streaming models – are producers actually seeing any money from these services. Sanogo tells us that the site has registered 80,000 subscribers, registers personal data for subscribers, and tracks precisely what is being watched. He notes that one lady had watched 700 films in a year. There’s active spectatorship outside of Nigeria, with 35% of the audience is in the UK, 30% in the US.

What about syndication on airplanes? The revenue from one airplane for 3 months, Sacchi argues, represents 10% of a Nollywood film’s budget. The problem at present, he argues, is the lack of good curation.

It’s sponsor week at the Media Lab, the semi-annual “open house” where Media Lab students and researchers share their work with the foundation and corporate folks who pay for it. It’s Joi Ito’s first sponsor week as director of the lab, and there’s an emphasis on making this week more open and visible to the outside world. Our sponsors are now “members”, and our hope is to be sharing the new research happening here at the Lab with the members and with the wider world. Most of the meeting is being streamed online, if you want to follow along. There are journalists in the crowd, for one of the first times. And my blogging is my modest attempt to help on this front.

César Hidalgo, a year into his teaching career at the Lab, is the program chair for the conference, and has brought us together around the idea of knowledge networks. He invites us to think about what “media” means. He shows us a Van Gogh painting and points out that the gallery label associated with the painting. It lists the artist, the work’s name, the date painted and the media, oil on canvas. “What is left if you remove the oil and the canvas?” Hidalgo wonders. Nothing physical is left – what remains is the media as a vehicle for knowledge, the unique perspective Van Gogh had.

We can think of physical objects as containers for insights. Michael Faraday’s work on uniting magnetism, electricity and light is embodied in the electric motor. As a result, we can see a vacuum cleaner as a vehicle for Faraday’s laws, or a harp as a vehicle for Pythagorean thought about geometry and harmonics.

How do you get knowledge into a knowledge vehicle? “If you have a bad dental infection, would you rather have a good article on root canal surgery or a dentist?” You want knowledge embodied in people. And you want those people to have knowledge embodied in their equipment – the metalurgy to build dental tools, the skill to build an x-ray system. Dentists don’t usually build their own tools – we each hold only a little knowledge personally. If knowledge means understanding something well enough to build it, most of us don’t know enough individually to do everything we need to do.

To function in the modern world, we need an enormous amount of knowledge. Hidalgo suggests we consider the “personbyte”, the amount of knowledge a person can know. Generations ago, it might be possible for a person to know most of what was known by people. Now there’s no possible way one person to know all of human knowledge. A project like a root canal requires may peoplesbytes of knowledge, embedded in tools and systems. Rather than knowing everything, as we did in prehistoric days, we distribute knowledge through networks.

If we understand that knowledge lives in networks, we discover that markets make us wiser and organizations make us smarter. Knowledge began to accumulate as people got together in towns and cities, but now we organize within organizations. But there’s a limit to the ability of that model to scale. Add 50,000 people to a 50,000 person organizationm, and you are unlikely to double the amount of knowledge you can hold. At very high levels of knowledge, people need to share knowledge between firms, to learn through networks of organizations.

This is an unfamiliar situation for humans. We’re used to trying to horde our knowledge. At low levels of knowledge, this works. If you know how to make a really good spear point, protecting that knowledge gives you a huge advantage over your comeptitors. But once knowledge gets bigger, you need to share knowledge within your firm, but you’re unlikely to share it more broadly. But we’re now reaching a world of knowledge where we can only understand what we need to know by building networks of networks and networks of firms. He leaves us with the provocation, “Anything that is worth doing can not be done alone.”

Zambia held presidential elections this week, a contest that’s had interesting implications beyond the borders of that southern African nation. When I speak about international news, I’m often asked about stories I think people should be following – this election is a great example of an important and underreported story. A quick update on what happened, and then three reasons why it’s important to watch.

The Zambian contest pitted incumbent Rupiah Banda against long-time opposition leader Michael Sata. Banda represented the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, the party that ruled in Zambia since Kenneth Kaunda, an autocrat whose one party “African Socialist” state ended in 1991. Banda was vice president under Levy Mwanawasa, who suffered a stroke in office, and narrowly won election in 2008. His rule was characterized by outreach to nations around the world to seek investment in Zambia, especially in the country’s lucrative mines… and by dismantling much of the anti-corruption mechanisms installed by his predecesor.

On the other side, Michael Sata is a firebrand who’s been nicknamed “King Cobra” for the ferocity of his attacks on political rivals and other targets. One of the targets of his ire have been Chinese mining companies, which Sata has argued aren’t protecting worker rights or sharing the wealth with Zambians. In 2006, he made statements so provocative that China threatened to stop investing in Zambia if Sata were elected to office. He’s softened many of those stances, but should be viewed as a populist who’s promising more equitable distribution of wealth within Zambia.

Sata believes he won the 2008 election, and there were worries about whether this year’s election would be free and fair… and whether a disputed election could end in violence. The just-concluded election didn’t start well. It took three days for votes to be tallied, and riots broke out in some southern cities, reflecting fear that the election might be stolen. But early this morning, the electoral commission gave Sata the win. Fingers are now crossed that a) the violence will cease and b) that Chinese investors won’t pull out of the country abruptly out of fear or dissatisfaction with the election.

So why pay attention to the story?

China in Africa. One of the major trends of this decade is China’s emergence as a major power on a world stage. We are entering a multipolar world, where American and European influence are complemented and counterbalanced by Chinese, Indian and other influences. This multipolar future has been unfolding more quickly in Africa than in other parts of the world, because so many weak economies are dependent on international aid and investment.

Global Voices held a meeting between African and Chinese bloggers in 2007, talking about China in Africa, and the perceptions each group had of the other. Chinese bloggers pointed out that state media was urging Chinese people to relocate to Africa, both in the hopes of growing rich and out of a sense of duty to “improve” lives on the continent. African bloggers saw the Chinese as a source of investment, but weren’t naïve about the idea that strings were attached (a promise not to recognize an independent Taiwan, for instance.) Some argued that smart African nations could play China off against the US and other powers and gain investment; others worried that Chinese investors would outcompete local business.

In Zambia, attitudes towards the Chinese have soured, both because of failed infrastructure projects and safety issues in the mines. Some have argued that the “fast and loose” culture of Chinese business can only succeed in more closed African societies, where protection of an autocratic ruler (like Mugabe) can shield investors and entrepreneurs from public pressure. Zambia suggests that this may be the case – a comparatively free African country appears to be voting, in part, against Chinese investment with the election of Sata.

Inequality Africa is growing, and fast. The World Bank forecasts 5.3% growth this year, a much faster rate than in most of the developed world. That growth is from a low base – many Africans are extremely poor. But there’s an emerging middle class, complementing a small and very wealthy upper class.

This growth hasn’t been evenly distributed, and in more democratic African countries, this rising inequality is manifesting as political dissatisfaction. Ghana’s 2008 election saw the ouster of the New Patriotic Party, associated with economic growth and the expansion of the middle class, at the expense of the NDC, seen as more likely to aid the poor and redistribute income. There’s a long history of socialist politics in sub-Saharan Africa. Some of that history is simply about Cold War geopolitics, but some reflects local attitudes that economic success needs to benefit society as a whole, not just those lucky enough to have good-paying jobs. As African nations get wealthier, expect to see more tensions over inequality and efforts to ensure redistribution of income. (God only knows when we might see such trends in the US.)

Democracy in Africa Do a quick Google search for “democracy in Africa”. You’ll find a number of stories bemoaning the failures of democracy on the continent, worrying about failed elections in Kenya and Nigeria. Don’t take these articles too seriously. They talk about important political situations, but they may be failing to see the forest for the trees.

Africa is becoming a hotbed for democracy. Freedom House (whose methods I sometimes disagree with, but who offer a global view of political freedoms over a long period of time) identifies three “free” states in West Africa (Ghana, Benin and Mali), and three in southern Africa (South Africa, Botswana and Namibia) as well as three of the small island states. And more than twenty states meet Freedom House’s “partly free” criteria, including powerhouses like Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal. Zambia is listed as partly free, but this year’s successful election might lead to an upgrade. Nigeria, often dismissed as a basket case, had a pretty good election this year as well.

Contrast this to Freedom House’s map of the Middle East and North Africa, issued before the Arab Spring unfolded. It’s a sea of purple, the color of “not free”. From Algeria to Iran, nations are not free, with the sole exceptions of Israel, Morocco, Lebanon and Kuwait. Compared to its neighbors to the north, Africa looks like it is getting its act together.

We don’t hear much about the spread of democracy in Africa. Mugabe’s absurdities get a lot of ink, as do Bashir’s. And the current refugee crisis is affecting Somalia (not free) and Kenya (partly free). Rwanda, an increasingly popular spot for American investment and aid, and Ethiopia, home of the AU, aren’t free, but gain their share of ink, while stable democracies like Botswana and Mali are often too boring to report on.

There’s a danger that we miss a major story here: democracy is taking root in Africa and spreading rapidly. Nations like Zambia, which survived autocratic rule and then dominance by one party are now seeing democratic change. It’s important to cover African crises and tragedies, but not at the expense of the hopeful news of democratic success and change.

Two days ago, I wrote about a terrific effort to help people in the Ivory Coast by convincing mobile phone operators to offer free services to citizens there who aren’t able to top up their phones.

Professor Laura Seay, who’s helped organize the effort, reported some excellent news today. Orange Côte d’Ivoire announced that they’d be giving credit of 2000 CFA (a little under $5) to all customers, a week of free calls to a landline number of their choice or an Orange number and a week of free Internet access. Most touchingly, they closed their announcement (posted to their Facebook wall) with this statement:

Par ces gestes de solidarité, Orange Côte d’Ivoire et Côte d’ivoire Telecom apportent leur soutien à tous leurs clients pour leur permettre de garder le lien avec leurs proches en ces moments difficiles.

(Rough translation: With these acts of solidarity, Orange Côte d’Ivoire is providing support to all their customers to help them stay connected with loved ones during this difficult time.)

Big, big props to Orange for doing the right thing. If you’d like to send them a thank-you note, please do so here.

Orange’s actions are a great example of what responsible companies can do in moments of crisis. Here’s hoping that other operators in the Ivory Coast will follow their lead, and that when crises emerge in other countries, companies will look to the excellent example Orange has set.

Update – MTN Cote d’Ivoire has joined in as well and is offering free internet access and top up to customers. Great to see two of the three operators in the country taking steps to help their customers get through this difficult time.

For those following global events, the past few days have been filled with extremely bad news: government troops firing on civilians in Yemen and Syria, a crackdown on dissent in Bahrain, a NATO air strike that killed Libyan rebels. An ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, compounding the tragedy caused by earthquake and tsunami. Perhaps the ugliest news has come from the Ivory Coast, where more than 1,000 people were massacred in the town of Duékoué, the latest development in a civil war between a president who won’t leave and one who’s using violence to claim the office he was elected to.

At times like this, when international news turns dark and hopeless, it’s pretty common to hear media analysts talk about “compassion fatigue”. The term has a legitimate clinical use – it’s a helpful concept to understand how professional caregivers can become overwhelmed by the suffering their patients are feeling and lose the capacity to fully empathize.

I’m not convinced that people watching the news from the Ivory Coast are so fatigued from caring about earthquake survivors that they’re having trouble empathizing. I think what’s going on is much simpler – if there’s no clear way you can provide help and support to people affected by tragic events, you feel helpless and stop learning more about the situation that’s ongoing. I have no data to support this contention, but I’ll go a step further out on the ledge and suggest that some methods of helping are lots more effective than others in helping us avoid a state of helplessness – while donating to the Red Cross is a worthwhile thing to do, I think people get very tired of being asked for money when faced with tragic events. If we can find other ways to lend a hand, I think we may be able to overcome “compassion fatigue” through constructive engagement.

With that as background, I’m very fond of an idea put forward by Senam Beheton and promoted by Professor Laura Seay, the author of the excellent Texas in Africa blog. At moments of crisis, mobile phones are critical sources and transmitters of information. They bring news out of war zones and to international audiences. They allow families who’ve fled violence to reconnect and avoid separation. In Ivory Coast, mobile phones and Twitter are turning into a network to help people communicate urgent humanitarian and medical needs, using the hashtag #civ2010.

Here’s the problem: with violence in the streets of many cities in Ivory Coast, it’s really hard to go out and buy top-up cards for your phone. And since many people haven’t been to work – and since there’s been a currency crisis in the country – most don’t have the money to top up. Beheton’s solution: ask the mobile phone companies in Ivory Coast to offer free SMS during the crisis. It would be extremely good corporate citizenship for the networks to simply make SMS available at zero cost for the foreseeable future, allowing a network that’s otherwise going to go dark from lack of use to be a critical informational backbone for the troubled country.

Dr. Seay has done the hard work of looking up ways to contact the executives at Orange, MTN and Moov who might be able to help. So if you’re feeling helpless and disengaged, here’s something you can do - put some pressure on the folks who run the three networks in Ivory Coast to make a small, important change that will impact everyone in that country. It may not stop violence in the streets, but it will help Ivorians stay in touch and to coordinate efforts to make sure the sick are cared for and the needy fed.