Rapid Pro: Developers Across the Global South Harnessing Technology for Change

Towards a Solution

RapidPro is currently being used to support development and humanitarian work in more than 40 countries, with software programmers and development experts working together to build the solutions that support vulnerable communities throughout the world. The tool lets users send personalised messages over social media channels, SMS and voice channels, with responses analysed in real time. This helps power the ways governments connect, engage and collaborate directly with the most important - and often most marginalised - voices in their communities, including children, adolescents, and communities struck by emergencies.

From youth engagement programs like U-Report, to education monitoring systems like EduTrac, to health platforms to boost immunization in Indonesia or antenatal support for mothers in Cameroon, RapidPro has become UNICEF’s common platform for developing and sharing mobile services that can be adapted for different contexts and sectors. Key to its success is its community of coders and developers across the global South, sharing ideas and creating solutions to fit their contexts. Since its launch, developers from Brazil, Cambodia, and South Africa have contributed programming time and code to RapidPro and related products.

The collaborative model also encourages government partners to pool their needs to further improve and tailor the open source platform. For example, UNICEF’s Global Innovation Centre identified common needs among Uganda and South Africa for functions that eventually became the tool CasePro, a case management dashboard for RapidPro. A single solution was designed to avoid duplication in their spending, and to meet not only their own needs, but also with the needs of 49 others who use the platform in mind. Once launched, CasePro was quickly adopted in Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Pakistan and Indonesia.

RapidPro applications are constantly updated and shared with the community of users across the developing world as new challenges emerge and the programmers work together to tailor solutions and share new ideas with peers, government partners, the development community, and non-profits.

RapidPro now reaches even more people by integrating with popular channels including Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Telegram, Line, Viber, and JioChat. With easier access through these everydaychannels, expectant mothers in Mexico can get essential health information, young people in

Pakistan and Mozambique can access free counselling advice, and commune officials in Cambodia can report their supply of birth registration forms using interactive voice response. Below are some indicative examples of results achieved in just a few of the more than 40 countries using the platform to benefit women and children:

Indonesia: Aiming to eliminate measles and rubella (MR) by 2020, UNICEF is working with the Government of Indonesia to ensure 70 million children were vaccinated across the country. RapidPro is credited with helping to ensure the first batch of 35 million immunizations this year reached every child in Java, by providing real-time coverage analysis at the level of the community health centre.

Mexico: Every two months, heads of 7 million poor households —over 95% are women—receive conditional cash transfers from the Mexican Governments’ Prospera programme, under the condition that their children attend school regularly and they take their children to visit the clinic. Prospera has improved school enrolment and child nutrition rates in the country. To reinforce these results, UNICEF Mexico leveraged RapidPro in the implementation of Prospera Digital, using new data-driven tools and mobile technologies to innovate the largest social programme in Mexico. In August 2015, Prospera and the National Bank for Savings and Financial Services started delivering the Comprehensive Financial Inclusion (CFI) programme. CFI provides financial education, savings programs, access to microcredit and insurance, as well as additional financial services to Prospera beneficiaries. The financial education component of Prospera Digital utilizes automated two-way SMS communication to reinforce the financial education channelled through the CFI program, and promote best practices in the use of the complementary financial products such as credit and savings programmes. After piloting content delivery, the financial component will also involve electronic delivery of cash transfers through mobile phones to reduce costs and risk of cash delivery, and to allow women to receive their cash transfers more safely and at their convenience.

Zambia: Eastern and Southern Africa is home to 50% of the world’s HIV/AIDS population, even though only 5% of the world’s population lives there. To address HIV/AIDS prevalence in Zambia, UNICEF deployed U-Report, a RapidPro-based youth-targeted mobile messaging system, to firstly understand the reasons why prevention is such a challenge and then to launch a campaign of behaviour change to address the reasons identified. The initial stage of polling determined that fear of results was the main reason that young Zambians did not get tested for HIV/AIDS. Using a Randomised Control Trial approach, groups of U-Reporters were subsequently asked if they had been tested in the last 12 months. Those who said “Yes” were offered counselling advice if they had tested positive, and those who said “No” received messages encouraging them to check their status. After 21 days, U-Reporters in both control and exposed groups were asked if they’d had a test during the campaign. The results showed that having received the SMS messages designed to reduce fear increased testing by up to 31% for adolescent boys and 30% for adolescent girls.

As an example of an open source software platform that is generic and flexible enough to meet the needs of many organizations and local contexts, running in multiple languages with application in multiple sectors, RapidPro will continue to grow and develop as long as there is a need. Each week, frontline workers find a new way to apply it or a new need that it can be adapted to address, while others appreciate the ease of adopting and adapting the body of flows and functions that have been created. Support from UNICEF ensures an enduring foundation for developers and partners across the world to continue to work together to respond to the demand for new features or functionalities, and to direct the evolution of the tool as technology itself evolves. To ensure sustainability in introducing the tool, it is advisable to work with local communities and developers by default, to help catalyse their growth, and to work with local governments to ensure integration at national and local levels.

The development and deployment of RapidPro applies UNICEF’s Principles of Innovation which ensure everything is designed and developed with the involvement of all user groups, to ensure the solutions developed are appropriate to the context. In addition, the development must: (1) fit within the existing ecosystems; (2) be designed for scale to ensure any development can be replicated in different countries and contexts; and (3) be collaborative by engaging with diverse groups to use their expertise. Every 18 months, UNICEF’s Global Innovation Centre and Information Communication Technology Division convene a meeting with developers to review existing projects. Such innovation is vital to improving the state of the world’s children. The speed at which global problems -- from disease outbreaks, to the global refugee crisis, to millions of out-of-school children-- disrupt the lives of children around the world is only getting faster. As illustrated by the RapidPro experience, solutions to these evolving challenges are increasingly appearing in the places that UNICEF works before they emerge in the “global North.”