Last weekend, a petition signed and formulated over SMS and Email was presented to over 40 representatives from the African Union Commission, African governments and the African women’s movement, which convened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the Conference On The Protocol On the Rights of Women. The petition was in support of a campaign that urges African governments to ratify the African Union’s Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa.

The petition has over 3,615 signatures, 468 of which where submitted using SMS. 15 countries need to ratify the treaty in order for it to take effect. To date only 13 have signed.

The organization behind the SMS petition is Fahamu (which means understanding or consciousness Swahili), an English & South African based organization that promotes the use of information communication technology to support the struggle for social justice in Africa. I had the pleasure of meeting with three representatives of Fahamu while at the MobileActive convergence in Toronto, one of which was the groups director Firoze Manji.

Already well known for their online newsletter Pambazuka News, this was the group’s first SMS campaign and as far as they know, the first time SMS technologies have been used on such a massive social scale on the African continent. “We hadn’t a clue what would happen,” Firoze told me, “it was a white stick approach. We went into the SMS thing completely blind.” Fahamu needed a way to reach a vast amount of people in a continent where access to Email and the Internet are a problem. According to their statistics, there are 81 million cell phone users in South Africa, compared to 15 million email users. “The Mobile Phone has helped us leapfrog the poor Internet and landline infrastructure,” Firoze points out.

The SMS campaign really took off when, at a rally in support of the initiative, Graca Machel (Nelson Mandela’s wife) told the media and those present to take out their cell-phones and sign the SMS petition. According to Firoze, the effect that had was substantial. “The issue was that what we were doing was 'sexy' and innovative. The press coverage it received was enormous let alone it’s being a fantastic way of getting people to sign the petition immediately.” At this point Firoze, smiling, starts rapidly tapping his thumb against his index finger, as if sending a text-message at that very moment.

The "here and now" immediacy of the medium and its impact on social justice activism in Africa are apparent. Like most of Fahamu’s campaigns, the word spread beyond South Africa. Since that time thousands from all over the African continent and abroad have texted or Emailed their support. Those signing the petition via SMS texted the word “Petition” along with their name to a telephone number in South Africa. The SIM card, with that number, is attached to a computer which converts the message to an email and places it into a send box. A script was then written to frequently check the send box, the contents of which get delivered to a mysql database (which of course then has to be moderated to weed out un-welcome and or rude remarks). Once in the database the information can be presented any which way you want. You can see a list of signatures at the Famamu website for the petition. And, as I already mentioned, the list was printed out and presented to the AU last week.

Fahamu is also currently deploying the same SMS technology in a campaign for African debt relief. GCAP SMS is part of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty call for debt cancellation, trade justice, better governance and increase aid for countries in Africa. The service allows anyone from around the world to “text-in” his or her support for debt cancellation by sending an SMS with the text “No to Debt’ along with any other comment to +27-829-043-425. This is an all SMS petition which has already gained 1,885 signatures.

The group is already looking into using the SMS technology they have harnessed in new ways for future campaigns. The group hopes to better improve the technology so that it allows members of a grassroots organization to create web-content using nothing but their mobile phone's SMS service. “What we have now cracked is how to get an SMS message directly onto website,” Firoze tells me. “This makes a huge difference in Africa where there are lots of grassroots organizations where only one person has a computer but everyone has a cell-phone.”

Have Fahamu's petitions had an effect? Firoze would like to think so. “When we started the [Women's Solidarity] petition only 3 countries had signed the protocol.” But Firoze is also quick to point out that SMS is only one of the many tools that his and other African organizations use for the purposes of communicating social justice in Africa. "The thing about using mobile technology is that there was a need. We are driven by purpose and use technology to support that purpose, not the other way around."