Using the SMTP API for Educational Purposes in Africa

The SMTP API is flexible enough to allow educators to provide support to learners in remote African regions.

In remote Kilifi, a town on the Kenyan coast, inhabitants had the pleasure of following each world cup game on the Open Air Cinema. While this may prove that soccer is perhaps one of the most popular sports around, the emphasis here falls on the Open Air Cinema and the opportunity it brought to this area: providing an educational advantage to local girls in the form of workshops during the day that focus on technology. This initiative was made possible by Moving the Goalposts , a non-profit organisation in Kenya. But initiatives like these often raise the question, “How will those individuals in even more remote areas be able to receive the same benefit?” One option is using the (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) SMTP protocol to easily distribute information via the mobile phone.

Mobile Penetration in Africa

It’s all about communication really. We receive a substantial amount of real world, real time information from friends and family. We also receive a fair amount of education from them – we learn from their experiences in terms of common interests and needs. While South African mobile penetration is currently at 98%, African mobile penetration is currently in the 40% region. And you can bet your bottom dollar that this is a figure that will definitely increase as mobile phones become more affordable – with a CAGR of 22.5% between 2005-2011 and an estimation of a penetration rate of 42% in Africa next year, it is becoming clearer that the mobile is the de facto global communications device. And seeing as all mobile phones currently in use have the ability to send and receive SMS text messages, it only stands to reason that educators will be able to reach more people using bulk text messaging on the mobile device. And SMTP is what makes this possible.

What is SMTP and How can it be Used to further Education?

In terms of bulk SMS, SMTP is an application programming interface (You’ll hear your developer friends refer to it by its abbreviated name, “A-P-I”) – or rather, one of several. These application programming interfaces allow for the easy connection of, say, a desktop computer or a server to an SMS gateway, which enables the transmission of bulk text messages.

But, unlike the other application programming interfaces, SMTP doesn’t require any real programming skills – if you can create a normal plain text email where the body contains the parameters as indicated below, you can use the SMTP application programming interface to use bulk text messaging.

Using the SMTP API (as indicated in the image), bulk SMS can be used to:

• Distribute school and class schedules
• Fuel attendance
• Open a direct and inexpensive line of communication between parents and teachers
• Provide students with study instructions
• Distribute concise subject related information, e.g. “Both plant and animal cells are eukaryotic, with the major difference being plant cells have a cell wall”
• Provide students with potential test questions, e.g. “Newton’s laws of motion consist of 3 separate laws. Name them and elaborate on them.”
• Etc.

The 160 Character Conundrum

Arguably, it’s because of its concise nature that the SMS has become so popular – it’s only 160 characters and makes for a message that can be read in under 5 seconds and replied to (depending on tapping speed) in under a minute. But, can you say all you want to say in 160 characters? In some cases yes, in others no. Bulk SMS text messaging, much like normal text messaging, provides a platform for message spanning, or concatenation. This means that messages can exceed the 160- character limit to ensure that all relevant information is transferred to the recipient via the SMTP API.

In the message above we’ve added the ‘concat’ parameter because the character count of the message exceeds 160 characters.

What About Cost?

Bulk SMS messaging is traditionally seen as an expensive way to communicate, by and large as a result of the of the many premium-rated SMS advertisements on television. In reality it was and will, for the foreseeable future, be an inexpensive method of communication, whether messages are sent with SMTP or any other technology – messages credits are bought in bulk and are therefore cheaper than SMS messaging through from mobile to mobile. From the recipients’ point of view, the text messages are free, unless a premium rated service is implemented by the sender.

All things considered, it’s easy to see why SMS text messaging is the preferred choice for educators, businesses and organisations who are looking for an effective, inexpensive and, perhaps most importantly, ubiquitous way to communicate with their customers and other contacts. And using the SMTP API just makes it so much easier.

For more information, go to our SMTP page today.

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