Armed
robbery in Ghanaian cities is on the increase. The capital city Accra tops the
list. Now a software company has developed an SMS-triggered alert system to
reduce the number of robberies in the country.
All that is
required is a blank text message and the rest will be taken care of by a
security system called "Hei Julor". In the local dialect "Hei
Julor" means "Hey thief!"
It is a
mobile phone based security system developed by leading Ghanaian software
engineer Herman Chinery-Hesse and his company SOFTribe.
By sending
a blank SMS to the server, a security team will be dispatched and up to ten
friends and neighbors will be notified of the user's plight.
Chinery-Hesse's
invention was launched a year ago. He was inspired by the increasing use of the
Internet and mobile phones around the globe.
He was
impressed by the way these tools played a role in the Arab Spring and he
decided to make use of the technology to protect his countrymen against armed
attacks and robberies.
A
neighbor's keeper
 |
| "Africa's Bill Gates" - Herman Chinery-Hesse |
"We
are having armed robbery problems in our country. If they could coordinate in
Egypt and suddenly get thousands of people to show up, this is in line with our
culture," said Chinery-Hesse.
"In
our culture everyone is a neighbor's keeper. If your neighbor is attacked and
you know about it, the very least you can do is to shout"Hei Julor!"
and the robbers will run away."
Herman
Chinery-Hesse is known as Africa's Bill Gates. Putting the Hei Julor concept
into practice was not a problem for him and his colleagues.
"We
had all the tools we needed, so we sat down and thought what it would take to
have a cheap product that everyone could afford," he told DW.
The service
costs 10 cedis (4 euros / $5) per month.
A warning
sticker
To
subscribe to the service, customers must first buy a starter kit which provides
them with a code. The code must be sent to the SOFTribe company via SMS. The
customer then receives a phone call from the company for confirmation.
 |
| A Hei Julor sticker serves as a warning to potential robbers |
In the
starter kit, there is also a sticker that can be attached to a house or garden
wall as a warning to potential burglars.
If someone
does try to break into the house, the customer only needs to send a blank SMS
to "Hei Julor" and the team will be on its way to help.
"We
want to protect Ghana from becoming a rogue state full of crime," said
Chinery-Hesse.
Some people
have been saved through this service confirmed the company owner. One old man
who suffered a stroke was taken to hospital after he sent a blank SMS to Hei
Julor. He survived.
In another
case, the wife of a Hei Julor customer contacted the company who rescued her
from her intoxicated husband who was beating her up.
"When
the team came, the drunkard started kicking and shouting. He said he was the
one who has signed up and that he should be left alone. The neighbors came and
it was quite embarrassing," Chinery-Hesse said.
"Unfortunately
he unsubscribed. But that is OK if we lose him. His wife was safe, that's
what's important."
A growing
company
The Hey
Julor's call center facility is small with servers spread across the world. By
using their laptops, workers are mobile and connected all the time.
Because of
its automated character, the system can sometimes trigger false alarms. But the
big advantage is that people who need the service receive a swift response.
"There
is no human intervention in this system. It is background machines that carry
out the messages. So once you trigger it, no one can stop it," Anthonio
Tettey, the CEO of SOFTribe, told DW.
Since its
launch a year ago, more than a thousand customers have subscribed to the
service, and the number is on the increase, Tettey says.
"We
just signed on security partners which have country-wide reach and I am sure in
the next couple of weeks we will be able to roll out into other regions."
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