BongoHive
On Tuesday 18 March 2014 at 17:45hrs, BongoHive will host Christopher Fabian, a technologist and mobile designer who runs UNICEF‘s Innovation Unit, along with Erica Kochi. He is best known for his work on tools for children and communities in low-infrastructure environments, including Digital Drum and RapidSMS.
In 2013, he was selected by Time Magazine to be on the Time 100 list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Life and work
Fabian studied philosophy at the American University in Cairo and at Trinity College in Dublin.
He talks frequently about south-to-north innovation, and developed a “Design for UNICEF” course which he taught at New York University (co-taught with Clay Shirky) and Columbia University.
Some of his work and research is into education technology. He and Kochi wrote a chapter on “Using Mobile Technology to Unite (for) Children” in the 2009 book Mobile Technology for Children.
Innovation Unit
The Innovation Unit, which Fabian co-founded in 2007, has developed a number of large scale open source tools for improving basic health and communication in low-infrastructure regions.
RapidSMS was used to register 7 million births in Nigeria, and u-Report gave 190,000 Ugandans a way to directly comment on national policy. Programme Mwana, in Zambia, helps improve the work of community health workers with real-time data.
To attend, please register here.