Hacker News Reader

Comment by sdiq | Hacker News Reader

I work in the humanitarian field in a poor country ravaged by war and famine. We have a number of humanitarian actors currently working in this country and no one actually has access to accurate population statistics. Well, none exists. The last census was conducted in 1975. I believe someone could use technology to get a much better estimate of the population. One thing that always springs to my mind is the possibility of using aerial imagery. It doesn't have to be exactly that, though.

I think this need, a real need that is, can potentially make millions for the enterprising type, here.

Why don't I try the same, you might ask. But, while I have some ideas, I am may not be able to raise the resources needed, at the moment.

View on HN

I've been working in Kenya as a technical Co-founder of a startup in the ag space. We focus on smartphones, but I used to work with the telecom operators a lot in my previous work (where basic GSM connections gives some indication of population connected).

Some of the best stats you get for telecom coverage will come from the annual reports of commercial telecom companies. Eg in Kenya you can look at safaricom. In somalia I guess you can look at Telecom Somalia and some of the others (keeping in mind their market share).

GSMA do research every few years on the number of SIMs on average per market. This is how they get to a figure about subscribers (ie people) rather than connections (number of SIMs). The latter is what is usually reported by commercial companies.

You can quite easily do some online digging for a given market to get fairly current numbers (ie last year). For doing anything with sizing markets etc I'll always start here. Not with World Bank or similar data which is really outdated and not indicative of current trends in technology at all (which is important for me).

The international development sector is unfortunately so slow to realise what's going on technologywise - i'd wager Facebook will know a huge amount more about populations in a lot of these African countries than their governments or the international development sector do. Perhaps if they were a bit more genuinely philanthropy inclined they could do some amazing socially impactful stuff right now. But I don't think any of us will count our chickens on that one.

Why do you think there are millions to be made here? I'm sort of familiar with international development, and I'm surprised by that estimate.

I'm curious how exact you would need. Like within 90%? 80%? 50%?

For those that want to follow up on this, you could use current satellite imagery to make population estimates, but it wouldn't be really accurate. You could wait for companies like Planet Labs[1] to get daily photos of the Earth (IIRC 4m resolution), and increase accuracy. You could also hire pilots to strap a camera and survey the interested areas. There are also, IMO, unethical spins (especially in oppressive regimes) that you could do with that data (ie: civilian surveillance). Or even cheaper, use drones (because you don't need daily or real time surveillance). That could also have other spinoffs. Or you could literally just send people to go count. Don't know which would be the cheapest.

[1] https://www.planet.com

I am not exactly an expert on matters demography but I think 50% would be low. At the moment, we have a study that was done by one of the UN agencies and the figures they came up with seem very disputed. They used 1975 census as the base for their extrapolations. Quite a lot happened since and their figures are not really believable.

How much penetration do cell phones have into a lot of these countries? May be a way to tease out a rough population from cell phone use statistics.

Somalia, is the country I am talking about and cellphone penetration is quite high. Most people might not have smartphones, though. I have been thinking about this too. Using cellphone network data and come up with estimates.

What I can tell you from my experience in the Gambia is that there many people have cellphones (not smartphones), but most have 2 or 3 because provider have lower rates when calling to the same provider, so one phone for Qcell, one phone for Africell,... Not sure if it's like that in many other places, there is a lot of tourism on the coast and returning tourists often bring their old phones to give to the locals.

Not sure how it is where OP is, but in many African countries it's common to have multiple SIM cards, to take advantage of in-network calling deals or to compensate for spotty coverage maps.

Any way to get in touch?

my username 77@gmail.com

Reply on news.ycombinator.com