AT-Info-Map — Mapping Assistive Technology Suppliers Across Southern Africa

In Sub-Saharan Africa, an estimated 85-95% of people who need assistive technology (AT) do not have access to it, largely because they cannot find out where it is available. The Southern Africa Federation of the Disabled (SAFOD), headquartered in Gaborone, Botswana and representing ten national disability federations, set out to close that information gap.
With a $717,728 grant from Google.org's $20 million Impact Challenge: Disabilities fund, SAFOD worked with the University of Washington, Stellenbosch University and the digital-platform developer Dimagi to build AT-Info-Map, a mobile app on the CommCare/Open Data Kit platform designed to work offline in low-connectivity settings, mapping the location of AT suppliers such as NGOs and private companies.
The pilot launched in Botswana in 2016 and expanded stakeholder recruitment across the region; SAFOD's national affiliates identified and trained 352 individuals in total — 112 in Zambia, 87 in Lesotho, 86 in Malawi and 67 in Botswana — and the original 23-category AT taxonomy was simplified to 18 plain-language categories for usability.
The published evaluation is candid about limits: high mobile-data costs and difficulty accessing public health-sector information restricted uptake among the poorest users who needed AT the most, and the team ultimately scaled back the app's ambition from real-time product tracking to a simpler supplier directory, judged more sustainable to maintain. No public record was found of the app continuing beyond the Google.org grant period, which ran through April 2019.

Read the full analysis: https://scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2226-72202018000100014&lng=en&nrm=iso