User:Kenkiwanja/sandbox

As per recent conversations on the Talk:Ken Banks page, here's my attempt to provide a clean, appropriately-cited version of my page. This follows a more recent message exchange with User:Z1720 who suggested posting here would make most sense. I'm a real novice at Wikipedia editing so please excuse any issues with how I've compiled this.

Ken Banks (born 1966) is a British social entrepreneur, author, and consultant in areas covering technology and global development. He is best known for developing FrontlineSMS, a mobile messaging platform that enabled people in remote areas of the world where Internet access is scarce to connect with each other for free.

Early life
Banks was born and grew up in Jersey.in the Channel Islands. He has an older brother and two younger sisters and was raised by his mother, who was an amateur naturalist.

He taught himself computer programming on a Commodore PET at the age of thirteen in a youth club he attended. After leaving school in 1985, he worked for Hambros Bank, where he gained experience in commercial computing operating Burroughs B1900 mainframe computers, and as a systems analyst for NatWest Finance, before starting his own computer consultancy.

Banks studied Social Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Sussex and graduated in 1999.

Career
In 2001, Banks worked in a primate sanctuary in Nigeria, helping rescue and rehabilitate a range of primate species. In December 2002, he began working on one of the earliest mobiles for development initiatives with Fauna and Flora International, a global conservation organisation based in Cambridge, UK. His work resulted in the launch of the wildlive! mobile portal in December 2003, which provided images, animal sounds, conservation-themed games, and live news to subscribers.

In 2003, he established kiwanja.net, an NGO focused on applying mobile technology for social and environmental change in the developing world, especially in Africa. In a special report on the use of mobile phones in development, World Watch Magazine described Banks as "probably the world's leading voice in promoting mobile phones as an appropriate technology".

Use existing photo: Ken Banks carries out a demo of FrontlineSMS (2009)

In 2004, Banks was approached by Kruger National Park (South Africa) officials asking for a solution to update Bushbuckridge community members on changes and developments in the park using their mobile phones. After research it turned out that all solutions at the time required Internet access which, back in 2004, was a problem in the area. In early 2005, Banks realised that a simple piece of software could be developed to send and receive multiple text messages (SMS) to and from mobile phones using a laptop with no Internet connection. Banks started to develop FrontlineSMS in summer 2005 and completed it within 5 weeks. The software was officially launched in October 2005.

Just over two years following its launch, FrontlineSMS was used by a Nigerian organisation called Humanitarian Emancipation Lead Project to help Nigerian citizens report on their 2007 national elections. Since then, it has been used in many other countries including India where it was used to help run a rural care network, in Afghanistan to keep humanitarian workers safe from Taliban attacks, and in Cambodia and El Salvador to communicate commodity pricing information.

In 2007, Banks’ organisation, kiwanja.net, in collaboration with Stanford University, were awarded a $200,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to further develop FrontlineSMS. His work later received funding from the Hewlett Foundation, Open Society Initiative, Rockefeller Foundation and Omidyar Network.

Use existing photo: Ken Banks presenting his Means of Exchange initiative at PopTech in 2012

In 2009 Banks was made a Laureate of The Tech Awards and in 2010 he was named one of ten National Geographic Explorers. He was named an Ashoka Fellow in 2010. and in March 2012, Banks won the Cambridge News Business Excellence Award thanks to a special "Corporate & Social Responsibility" nomination. In 2011 Tides Foundation awarded him the Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest for creating FrontlineSMS and the Curry Stone Foundation awarded him the Curry Stone Design Prize. In 2016, the Association for Computing Machinery presented Banks with the Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics. In the same year, Banks became the first Entrepreneur in Residence at CARE International. In 2018 he was appointed a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School.

In 2011, he was invited to join the UK Prime Minister’s delegation to Africa.

In 2012 Banks launched a new startup and his first initiative was a "cash mob" which took place during the London Olympics.

He has written about technology and global development for The Guardian Global Development and for a number of years ran a regular series on technology-for-good on the National Geographic website.

Publications
Banks' first edited book, The Rise of the Reluctant Innovator, with a forward by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was self-published in late 2013.

His second book, Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation, with a forward by musician Peter Gabriel, was published by Kogan Page and released in March 2016.