1. Web Alliance for
Regreening in Africa (W4RA)
Frank van Harmelen | Victor de Boer
With input from Christophe Guéret, Hans Akkermans, Anna Bon

2. Regreening
• Knowledge sharing issues
– Distances between rural communities in Sahel
– Infrastructure and access
• Commonly: no electricity, no computer, no internet
• But: mobile and radio
– Lack of relevant content
• Literacy and education
– Languages
Hans Akkermans e-Biz Innovation course, 22 Sep 2011 2

3. Aim: integrate Web with mobile
access & voice services
• service development toolbox, field deployment
in Africa & make a sustainable business out of it
Hans Akkermans e-Biz Innovation course, 22 Sep 2011 3

4. Field pilots in Mali
Web-mobile-voice services
• Field pilot use cases Mali (to start end 2011):
1. Web-based market info by mobile voice service to radio stations for broadcast
2. m-event field organizer facilities Web-mobile-voice
Hans Akkermans e-Biz Innovation course, 22 Sep 2011 4

5. Web in Society:
the big picture R&D questions
• Q1 [immediate]: Can the Web (be made to)
mean something for knowledge sharing even
under very constraining conditions?
– No internet, no computer, no electricity
– Multitude of languages, levels of literacy
• Q2 [Web future]: Can we have a Web of
Speech?
– After all, human communication:
talking >> writing
Hans Akkermans e-Biz Innovation course, 22 Sep 2011 5

6. Linked Data without the
Web

7. Not having the Web != Not sharing data
Market prices Educational content
 They would benefit from Linked Data
 but they can not use it!
 And we don't want a new divide, do we?

8. 1) think de-centralised
Instead: chunks of data
served by different peers

9. 2) think small, think micro-servers
Not designed for developing countries Designed for developing countries
Multi-core fast 433Mhz x86 CPU
CPU 256MB of RAM
Gigabytes of RAM 1GB of flash
Terabytes of disk storage
Can be solar powered Dust proof
Affordable

10. 3) think vocal
Because not everyone can read and write

11. SemanticXO
 Deploy Linked Data on the XO from OLPC

12. Voice-based access to Linked
Open Market Data in the Sahel

13. A Bit of Context:
RadioMarché

14. Digital Divide
Source: ITU Digital Access Index, World's First Global ICT Ranking

16. Voice-based services in a rural African context
• Integrate local community radios and mobile ICT for
knowledge sharing
• Better support and integrate local languages in voice-based
services
– Development of appropriate speech elements (text-to-
speech and Speech recognition)
• Develop a free and open source toolbox for local developers.
• Investigate self-sustainability
– Develop appropriate business models
– In collaboration with local communities.

17. Use Case 1
Onno Wassenaar

18. Context: Web For Regreening in Africa (W4RA)

20. RadioMarche
Radio broadcast
French
Radio 1
Market info Bambara
Sahel Eco
aggregates
market info
French
Radio 2
Bomu

21. Data management
RadioMarche.com

22. Audio communiqué
• Audio communiqué generated by
concatenating prerecorded phrases
– Each radio host uses own voice (!)
• Text-to-speech where possible
• Currently only for French
• Audio quality is an issue

23. Voice XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<vxml version="2.0" lang="en">
<form>
<prompt bargein="false">
Welcome to RadioMarche!
<audio src=“audio/communique_1_bambara.wav"/>
</prompt>
<option dtmf="1" value=“1">Press one for X</option>
<option dtmf=“2" value=“2">Press two for Y</option>
...
</vxml>

25. Linked Data Prototype

26. An Outrageous Idea

27. Linked Data Cloud
VoiceXML-to-
SPARQL
Market data Linked market data
Voice browser
ClioPatria Linked Data server (Voxeo Evolution)
Web access Voice access

28. http://purl.org/collections/w4ra/radiomarche/offering_68
Browser Application
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix rm: <http://purl.org/collections/w4ra/radiomarche/>
.
rm:offering_68
a rm:Offering ;
rm:com_number "6" ;
rm:contact_address "" ;
rm:currency "CFA" ;
rm:has_communique rm:communique_4f2918bc6a7af ;
rm:has_contact rm:Fidel_Kone ;
rm:price "450.00" ;
rm:prod_com_id "3" ;
rm:prod_name rm:product-Graine_de_nere ;
rm:quality "Graine propre" ;
rm:quantity "120.00" ;
rm:store_id "68" ;
rm:ts_date_delivered "2012-02-01 10:54:57" ;
rm:ts_date_entered "2012-02-01 10:18:27" ;
rm:unit_measure "Kg" ;
rm:user_id "6" .

29. *
<VoiceXML>
PHP to SPARQL
Linked market data
+31208080855
+990009369996162208 (Skype VOIP)

30. DBpedia
GeoNames
Agrovoc
Institute of
Linked market data Development Studies
LOD
Sahel Pluvial Data SemanticXO

31. Questions?

32. ICT4D course

33. w4ra.few.vu.nl
semweb4u.wordpress.com
worldwidesemanticweb.wordpress.com