One of the things we get most excited about when it comes to mobile technologies in Africa is that putting a mobile phone in the hands of every single family on the continent gives people access to information. Its a great big two way flow of data which allows societies to learn more about its citizens (in a good way) and citizens to find out more about the people who claim to govern them.

There are loads of ideas around these themes, from access to open data to fact checking services to the the ability to report a pothole in the road with a click of a phone camera. The problem is that they all cost money, and are generally not profit-making endeavours.

So hurrah, then, for Making All Voice Count (MAVC), a new body which is sort of like an all-star squad of luminaries from the do-gooding industry. It’s an alliance of the UK Department for International Development, USAID, the Swedish Development Co-operation Agency, Open Society Foundations, Omidyar Network, the Institute of Development Studies (who once turned me down for a job, incidentally), Hivos and Ushahidi.

What is MAVC for? It’s for focussing grants and sharing knowledge around mobile and web technologies that improve citizen engagement, improving government accountability and transparency and democracy. MAVC pitches it as “repairing the broken lines between governments and citizens”, which all sounds pretty worthy to us.

In other words, if you’ve got the Open311 app for Africa, or have an idea around voter engagement in next year’s elections, you should probably consider talking to them. Especially as the application stage for the first round of grants has just kicked off, and closes on 8th November.

Applications for this stage are invited from 12 countries around the world, including South Africa, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda.

Full details are on the MAVC website.

(Via Ushahidi blog)