In Liberia, a techie fights crime, improves the hood, digitally

 

Liberian Oliver Klark’s innovative solution, My Watchman, works with police and emergency response services to improve security in Monrovia.

By Tina S. Mehnpaine, bird story agency

In their office in a tall building on 15th Street, in Sinkor district, Monrovia, a group of young men and women are caught in an intense and clearly, important flurry of activity.

Some are huddled over computers speaking into headsets, others have mobile phones to their ears and some are giving and taking orders against a constant beeping noise in the background. This is a normal day at My Watchman, according to the chief executive, Oliver Klark.

He is seated at the far end of the room, strategically stationed behind a big wooden desk, its surface filled with files, papers, a computer screen and a laptop and from where he keenly follows the activity.

Klark is CEO of Advanced Converged Technologies LLC, owner of the My Watchman application. The app offers a service that many in the city depend on.

Described on its website as a “dependable, user-friendly SOS / 911 Mobile App with a command centre for emergency dispatch and 24/7 guarded monitoring” Klark says the app provides basic services that many in other African cities take for granted,

He adds that the app is helping to fight crime in the city, especially in the informal settlements where policing and infrastructure to fight insecurity – ranging from armed robbery to gender-based violence – and even to respond to emergencies, is often inadequate.

“Monrovia has a high rate of crime, which includes armed robbery. The Liberian National Police are too few to control the situation and this leaves the residents at the mercy of criminals, who attack them and steal their possessions almost at will,” Klark explained, from his desk.

“Police lack the capacity in terms of equipment – equipment and other policing resources – to stop or identify crime, or to respond to emergencies anywhere in the country. Crime rates are significantly greater at night.”

According to macrotrends.net, a private site that aggregates crimes investigated by police between 2007 and 2022, homicide as a result of gender-based violence, armed robbery and inter-gang violence top the list.

The population of Monrovia – a city founded as a settlement of freed American slaves in early 1800 during the administration of US president James Monroe and named after him – stands at around 1.6 million. It is growing at just over 3 percent a year. The country’s population is just over five million.

Klark recalled an incident as a child growing up in New Kru Town, one of Liberia’s largest informal settlements, when he witnessed a single house on fire destroy an entire neighbourhood, rendering thousands homeless and destitute.

It was the helplessness, anguish and anger of the residents as they watched all their earthly possessions go up in smoke that he says catalysed his decision to launch his app – and be part of “the solution”.

“Our goal is to guarantee those residents have access to basic emergency services,” Klark said.

Initially hoping to include a phone camera with the service, Klark developed the app to run on mobile devices, with free downloads for Android devices or laptops from Google Play.

To start with, uptake was slow because of the cost and lack of digital literacy among ordinary citizens. To address the cost element, the company reduced the subscription fees for each of the five categories of emergencies – medical, fire, security, health awareness testing, and sexual and gender-based voice.

“Our basic cost is 2 (US) dollars per month for our single plan, 5 dollars per month for the family plan that allows you to have three additional people. We also have the ‘Village Plan’ which is 10 dollars per month and caters for five people. Payment is done via mobile money, Tipme, Visa and MasterCard,” Klark explained.

My Watchman has partnered with both government and non-government service providers in the five categories on its menu.

“For the health emergency, we have partnerships with Wellness Partners and PLAN International. We have doctors and nurses on call who respond to our calls. Once a call has been received, the medics take down basic information about the patient’s condition, offer emergency via telemedicine, and depending on the condition of the patient, they can decide whether we should dispatch an ambulance or not,” said Klark.

To deal with the challenge of digital literacy, Advanced Converged Technologies hired volunteers from communities and trained them to help subscribers download and operate the app.

“In the informal settlements of Monrovia City, when you have an emergency such as a spouse in labour or a sick family member who needs medical attention, the first worry is how do you go out of the relative safety of the house, and if you do, the next headache is where to find an ambulance or even a vehicle.”

So far, more than 1,000 residents are subscribed to the app, the first of its kind in the country. In case of an emergency, subscribers can select from the menu the type of emergency they are in. And immediately they tap on it, a real-time signal is relayed to the command centre where a team is at hand to contact the subscriber and respond.

Fire remains a huge issue for informal residents and in the first year of operation, some 65 per cent of SOS calls involved fire crises.

“According to the information we were able to collect, all of the fires were caused by an electric fault. Our average reaction time to all emergencies has been 10 minutes or less.”

Dixson Fayiah, a resident of Parker Paint Community, with saving his life, after succumbing to smoke in a fire. Luckily, his neighbour, Galima Kamara, had subscribed to the app and called an ambulance.

“God first, the app second. I am sitting here today because of the app” Fayiah said.

Kamara said the app, which she had had on her phone for several months without using it, was what saved her neighbour’s life.

The Liberia National Fire Service (LNFS),  has lauded the app and vowed to work closely with Klark’s team to address fire incidents and fight crime, across the country.

In the roll-out phase, My Watchman app ran a project with 150 victims of gender-based violence and survivors of gender-based violence in six slum communities, including New Kru Town, West Point, Soul Clinic, AB Tolbert Road, Chicken Soup Factory, and James community, in collaboration with the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

“We provided the app free of charge to survivors and targets of sexual and gender-based violence for four months,” Klark said.

To ensure efficient response to medical emergencies the app stores subscribers’ critical personal data such as blood type, current medications and any other medical information.

After overcoming the many challenges during its first year of service, the app’s popularity has begun to grow.

“For instance, in Montserrado County and some areas of Margibi County, we currently have close to 10,000 downloads and approximately six thousand subscribers. We allow subscribers to maintain basic personal information in the app because there are cases where patients are taken into hospitals while unconscious and for them to get immediate attention even without the full medical records,” he said.

Klark now has plans to expand – and perhaps even go continental – by creating partnerships with service providers in medical emergency and safety in other cities in the region.

bird story agency