No doubt if you have some interest in mobile technology or ICT4D you have heard of FrontlineSMS, the SMS platform that makes it really simple to use mobile phones as a means of gathering field data or running SMS campaigns.

By leveraging basic tools already available to most NGOs — computers and mobile phones — FrontlineSMS enables instantaneous two-way communication on a large scale. It’s easy to implement, simple to operate, and best of all, the software is free. You just pay for the messages you send in the normal way.

FrontlineSMS has also been adapted to other fields (verticals) such as health services (FrontlineSMS:Medic) and micro-finance (FrontlineSMS:Credit). Here’s a quick intro video to FrontlineSMS:

We got to chat a bit with Ken Banks one of the main guys behind FrontlineSMS and Kiwanja.net founder,  about FrontlineSMS and other things Mobile.

Afrinnovator.com: Tell us a bit about your background. How did you end up being involved in mobile?

Ken Banks (Kiwanja.net, FrontlineSMS): My venture into mobile is a little accidental. Despite having around 25 years experience in the IT industry, the mobile revolution was largely passing me by as I completed my Anthropology degree at Sussex University, helped roll out digital TV in the UK, taught English in Finland and then ran a primate sanctuary in Nigeria in 2002. It was later that year that a motorbike accident and a broken leg saw me return home early. During my recovery, I received a call out of the blue from a former colleague at Jersey Zoo (Jersey, Channel Islands – not New Jersey!). His wife was now running a Vodafone-funded project looking into the application of mobile technology in conservation and, as someone with IT skills and conservation experience, I was offered the work.

We had a successful year rolling out a mobile-phone based conservation information service called wildlive!, and my interest in mobile really started from there. It’s worth remembering that these were early days. Back in 2003 few people expected mobile phones to have the impact they’re having today, not even the phone companies themselves.

Afrinnovator.com: What strikes you the most about mobile technology? Specifically in Africa.

Ken Banks (Kiwanja.net, FrontlineSMS): I think the most exciting thing about mobile right now is two-fold. Firstly, it has the potential to level the playing field by providing access to information to anyone, anywhere with a phone. With costs coming down, more and more people are able to benefit from that access, assuming they know how to, where to get it, and that the information they seek is digitally available (these are all challenges at various points).

Secondly, mobile is able to empower an entirely new generation of change agents, anywhere in the world – including in developing countries themselves. If you look at Africa alone, increasing numbers of students and entrepreneurs are developing their own solutions to local problems, rather than waiting for outsiders to come in and do it. Sites like AfriGadget and Ushahidi show what’s possible now. With a computer, access to the Internet and a software development kit (SDK), anyone with an idea can learn and write an application which can be made immediately available to millions, and which has the potential to improve or change their lives for the better. We’ve never experienced this kind of opportunity before.

If you look at this in development terms, it would be the equivalent of heading out and running your own dam building project in the 1970′s. Traditional development back then was largely inaccessible to the individual. ICT4D, and M4D, have fundamentally changed that. In a sense, it’s now crowd sourced, although you could argue either way whether or not that’s a good thing.

Afrinnovator.com: FrontlineSMS is a real success in the use of mobile technology and particularly SMS. Tell us how you got started with this project.

Ken Banks (Kiwanja.net, FrontlineSMS): The idea for FrontlineSMS came out of the original conservation work I was doing around 2003/2004. Part of the work involved a number of research trips to South Africa and Mozambique, and on one of those trips we started looking at how mobile phones – and SMS in particular – could be used by the National Parks Authorities in South Africa to connect local people with their conservation efforts.

After spending some time trying to find a tool which would allow, say, a hundred text messages to be sent to a number of people in a group, it became apparent that if you didn’t have access to the Internet, you couldn’t do it. Basically, all group messaging tools were Internet-based. Getting on the Internet in Kruger National Park was impossible back then, and likely still is in large part today.

A few months after returning home, I came up with the idea of developing some software which used a laptop computer with an attached mobile phone to send messages through the mobile network, not the Internet. And we knew there was mobile signal in these areas, because the communities were starting to own phones. In the summer of 2005, after raising around $15,000 of private funding from two ex-Vodafone Directors, I spent five weeks writing an early prototype for FrontlineSMS. I developed a website, and then pushed it out to the world to see if other people were experiencing the same problems that the Parks Authority in South Africa were facing. It became quickly apparent that there were, and within a couple of weeks an NGO in Zimbabwe – Kubatana – became the first official user of the software.