Catching the Mobile Wave

Mobile commerce is quickly becoming one of the most cost-effective, far-reaching means of giving the 'un-banked' poor their first taste of financial services. Yet many of these services are almost entirely informal, connected to neither banks nor traditional forms of regulation. A new initiative -- CreditSMS -- aims to integrate m-commerce with traditional financial management tools, thereby formalizing the informal and bridging the financial divide.  read more »

We read a lot about the delivery, and popularity, of SMS services such as market prices, health advice and job alerts in developing countries, information there is clearly a need for. Only last week Grameen's AppLab initiative, in conjunction with Google and MTN, launched a suite of SMS services in Uganda. These are the services you'll get to hear most about when you search the Web, trawl the blogosphere and attend various conferences on the subject. It all seems pretty sewn up on the content side -- I mean, what else could people earning a few dollars a day (at most) possibly want?  read more »

What happens when a rural farmer needs to arrange transport to get his produce to market? Or a health care worker wants to check the availability of a drug in a nearby clinic? How about a trader who wants to find out the price of a commodity in a nearby store, or a person who needs to get in touch with a nearby family member in an emergency? Right now, in almost all cases, these people would either jump on a bike, run, send someone else to do it, not bother, or reach for their mobile phone.  read more »

"An article recently published in the popular press has suggested that there may be a link between the increase in numbers of mobile phone masts and the reduction in local sparrow populations. The number of sparrows in Britain has effectively halved from 24 million approximately thirty years ago to a present day figure of 14 million, a decrease of almost 50%."  read more »

If you were thinking of designing or building a Web site, you'd be in luck. If you were thinking of writing a suite of financial management software, you'd be in luck. If you were even thinking of creating the next big video game, you'd be in luck. Visit any good bookstore, and the selection of self-help books and "how-to" guides leave you spoilt for choice. People have been working on these things for ages, and good and bad practice in Web site, financial software or games development -- among many others -- is well established. The biggest challenge you'd likely face is deciding which book to choose. If you're anything like me, you'll leave the store with at least a couple.  read more »

In Ghana, it's popularly known as susu. In Cameroon, tontines or chilembe. And in South Africa, stokfel. Today, you'd most likely call it plain-old microfinance, the nearest term we have for it. Age-old indigenous credit schemes have run perfectly well without much outside intervention for generations. Although, in our excitement to implement new technologies and solutions, we sometimes fail to recognize them. Innovations such as mobile banking -- great as they may be -- are hailed as revolutionary without much consideration for what may have come before or who the original innovators may have been.  read more »

It's official. Or so it seems. Already the most active handset manufacturer in the developing world, Nokia this week made an announcement that places it well and truly at the heart of the international development effort. It's a move that mirrors the company's "developed world" strategy -- a move from out-and-out hardware supplier to one of a more inclusive services-based outfit. As if (very) successfully designing and building low-cost handsets for emerging markets wasn't enough, Nokia will now start offering emerging-market specific data services through its low-cost phones. And we're not talking music or games here. We're talking agriculture and education, and that's just for starters.  read more »

ICTs are regularly touted as holding great potential to enhance the work of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), working for positive social and environmental change around the world. With many NGOs working in difficult and challenging conditions, any technology that enables improved communication is sure to be welcomed. However, while the development community has traditionally been quick to grasp emerging technologies -- mobiles in particular -- the same cannot be said for their conservation counterparts.  read more »

For NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and developers alike, the ICT4D space can be a tough nut to crack. While NGOs generally struggle to find the tools to meet their particular needs, developers face the opposite problem -- getting their tools into the hands of those who need them the most. Attempts to connect the NGO and developer communities -- physically and virtually -- continue to this day with varying degrees of success. There is no magic bullet.  read more »

The October 7, 2001, invasion of Afghanistan did more than mark the beginning of the "War on Terror." It also paved way for the introduction of the first mobile phone networks into the country, networks that today find themselves pawns in the fight between the Taliban, the government and security forces.  read more »