MMTI Theses and Dissertations (2013)

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Browsing MMTI Theses and Dissertations (2013) by Subject "Kenya"

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    Citizens on patrol: mobile technology in enhancing community policing
    (iLabAfrica, 2014) Mutheki, Tropister Njeri
    Economies the world over thrives on the existence of security and the upholding of laws, police departments are entrusted with both of these roles. Policing has evolved over many centuries having begun back in the 900 A.D. With time the policing modes and styles have changed to suit the needs of people. An emerging concept in the policing world is known as community policing. It’s a policing model that views communities as police partners in solving crimes. This concept is being adopted both in the developed and developing world with visible success. A notable example is the city of Singapore that has been ranked safest city in the world since 1996. Kenya has also adopted community policing and has implemented it in varying degrees throughout the country. This study found out that communities and police officers are not satisfied with the current implementation of community policing. Among the reasons cited was communication, community members are fearful of being seen at the police stations and thus shy away from reporting crimes to the police officers. This study explored ways mobile technology can be used to counter such problems in community policing making it more efficient and effective. From the research 85% of the respondents regarded mobile technology as a practical and simple way to ease communication in community policing. Confidentiality is an issue that community members regard very highly and they want their communication with the police to maintain confidentiality. Both parties involved in community based policing indicated that they would be willing to use technology in implementing community based policing.
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    Establishing the success factors for adoption of mobile shopping in Kenya’s retail industry
    (Strathmore University, 2013) Ndegwa, Evans Ndungu
    Globally, mobile shopping is a multi-billion industry which has been observed to grow at a fast pace. Mobile shopping is one of the electronic commerce types and is at times referred to as mobile storefront. In Kenya, the retail outlets have not been able to deploy mobile shopping for their stores. Despite the high mobile penetration experienced across the country and the relatively high literacy levels, we are yet to see the first mobile shopping deployment. What could be the problem? Why is this multi-billion industry not breaking ground in Kenya? This research paper intends to find out what are the success factors that can lead to adoption of mobile shopping in Kenya viewed from both a retailer and a consumer perspective. The paper also sought to find out if there have been other successful models in other parts of the world and if these models could be replicated here in Kenya. To achieve this, this research made use of different research tools. The research involved development of a mobile shopping model application that was used as a proof of concept in this research. It is against this application together with a questionnaire and a set of interview questions that data was collected and analyzed. From the results obtained, the main factors that could lead to successful adoption are ease of use, usefulness, availability of reliable real-time prices, reusable shopping lists and the ability to compare features and prices of related goods. However, problems in delivery of goods ordered, poor security, fraud and poor application design are some of the factors that can lead to lack of adoption of such an application. It was also found that other successful models have been launched by retail giants such as Wal-Mart, Kruger and Costco, which with few modifications to suit the Kenyan scenario, can be replicated. This paper recommends further research in the factors that make customers prefer one retail outlet to the other to shed more light into other dynamics that may influence introduction of mobile shopping strategy.
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    Investigating the success factors to the adoption of baby monitor in Kenya : A case of D’Baby Monitor
    (Strathmore University, 2013) Strathmore University
    Baby monitors are not a new phenomenon in the developed world. Despite their wide and common use and new revolutions each day, little or no research has been done to identify their impact in the community. One of the famous reviews conducted by epinions.com showed how users were used to the idea of baby monitors and explained them “as indispensable as diapers” but no study was done to find out their impact. With introduction of a new and affordable baby monitor application(D’babymonitor), this study reviews usage of baby monitors in Kenya and any benefits articulated with their usage. Observations, questionnaires and interviews were used as the method of data collection to find out the readiness and awareness of the people using the application, hence giving a clear response on how its usage will impact either negatively or positively to the community and to the babies too. Out of the Sample population,21% were male while 79% were female and amongst them 75.3% were willing to use baby monitors to monitor their babies against a minority (24.7%) who were not willing. With a majority of the population having phones that could record voice and were java enabled, it is a good prerequisite for installation of the new baby monitor application. A careful observation indicated time taken to complete a task by baby attendants when using a baby monitor reduced by almost half as compared to not using a baby monitor.
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    Leveraging information access in E-Government using mobile services in Kenya
    (Strathmore University, 2013) Strathmore University
    The purpose of this research paper is show the possibility of applying mobile web services using open source software. With the increase in the mobile penetration in Kenya, there is a need to provide access to the Government services in a cost effective and accessible manner. Effort and resources have been put in place to provide the services by the introduction of E-Government. This has however focused mainly on using a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that is optimized for the personal computers (PCs) and other powerful computing devices. Nowadays, most of the mobile devices that the citizens have are characterized by limited resources such as processing power, memory, display screen and connection bandwidth. To address this I propose a mobile web services design that allows access to these services to these devices, allows easy inclusion of new and improvement to existing services and uses the available open source platform to achieve this. This research shows a mobile service (m-service) delivery platform that allows dynamic inclusion of other services without requiring the users to update their applications. Finally, it also shows how the same m-service can be adopted to be integrated with multiple presentation methods namely; short message services (SMS), unstructured supplementary services data (USSD), mobile web and user downloadable applications e.g. Java ME.