With the increasing number of internet and mobile monitoring by different regimes across the world, Abayima, a non-profit organisation has decided to come up with a solution that will assist activists, journalists and human rights organisations in oppressive regimes to communicate simply by using specially designed SIM cards.

Abayima, which means ‘guardian’ in Uganda language Luganda, was founded back in 2011 with the objective of making communication possible for citizens during crisis scenarios, such as when internet and mobile networks go down whether by circumstance or by malicious intent.

“When the project started in 2011, we set out to circumvent a surveillance network that was rumored to be in place in Uganda,” Jon Gosier, founder of Abayima, told ITWebAfrica in an interview.

“This network was supposedly monitoring and filtering all SMS traffic and censoring what people were saying,” added Gosier, “To my knowledge, no one in government ever admitted to it, but a number of tests confirmed something was up.”

Abayima developed the Open SIM Kit (OSK), an open source software solution that allows anyone to hack the contents of a SIM card, which is the primary network communication tool found in 90% of phones in the global market.

With SIM cards used to store contact details and text messages, Abayima set out to make it more useful by allowing users to repurpose the storage and use it to store programs that could change what the phone can be used for.

Governments are becoming more sophisticated in monitoring online content, and for that reason, Abayima decided to take a low-tech approach in providing a solution.

“We wanted to ensure it didn't require new technology, that it wasn't complicated, and that it could be used with the most affordable phones on the market (very low-end feature phones),” said Gosier.

With the redesigned SIM cards, citizens and other people in repressive regimes communicate simply by storing information on the SIM cards and swapping with one another, providing an alternative way to circumvent network surveillance.

Gosier said that it was not until the Arab spring in North Africa where telecom infrastructure was being deliberately shut down during times of crisis that they realised that there might be greater applications.

However, it hasn’t been easy establishing this initiative, Gosier.

“It's difficult to find partners who are willing to support the effort because of the sensitivity of some of the issues it can be used to address. It has been a struggle to find additional support but we're committed.” added Gosier.

Despite the challenges they are facing, Abayima has so far received several awards, with the latest being recognition being the winner of the Knight News Challenge 2012: an achievement that has seen the organisation receive accolades from both Knight Foundation and Indigo Trust.

Gosier said that his organisation will continue to develop technologies that can be used in both critical scenarios and in non-crisis scenarios.

A non-crisis scenario for instance could be situations where there are rural populations who have phones but no reliable mobile network coverage, or in schools, where teachers need digital textbooks, but can't afford to outfit the entire class with tablet computers.

“Access to the internet and information was recently declared a 'human right' by the United Nations. If it is a modern necessity, like access to clean water, affordable health care etc, then Abayima's mission is to protect that human right,” Gosier concluded.