WHAT ARE SOME PROBLEMS FACING THE DEVELOPING WORLD?

WHY ARE
THEY POOR?

PROBLEMS

A live-in housekeeper in China does not leave the home because she is
afraid to lose work.
A porter spends his days hanging around outside of department stores and
construction sites because he hopes to be hired to carry other peoples
loads.
You walked your cattle for two weeks to Khartoum. There was a better
price for livestock in Port Sudan.
A nurse in rural Uganda does not know the treatment of a disease.
A mother has a small child with malaria. She carries the child for three
hours to the nearest doctor. When she arrives the doctor is not there.
You cannot get a government official to help you unless you pay a bribe.
Your local government did not repair the road.

THE SOLUTIONS
.in the poorest regions of the world, affordable mobile phone access has caused
a quantum leap in services -- like calling for medical help, sending a quick letter
to loved ones or starting a savings account -- that Americans and Europeans have
taken for granted for generations, analysts say. CNN
"Poverty is almost equated with isolation in many places of the world. Poverty
results from the lack of access to markets, to emergency health services, access
to education, the ability to take advantage of government services and so on,"
Sachs said. "What the mobile phone -- and more generally IT technology -- is
ending is that kind of isolation in all its different varieties." Jeffrey Sachs CNN
Poor countries are poor because they are wasting their resources, says Iqbal
Quadir, who is now the director of the Legatum Center for Development and
Entrepreneurship at M.I.T. One resource is time, another is opportunity. Lets
say you can walk over to five people who live in your immediate vicinity, thats
one thing. But if youre connected to one million people, your possibilities are
endless. NYTIMES
Having a call-back number, Chipchase likes to say, is having a fixed identity
point, which, inside of populations that are constantly on the move displaced
by war, floods, drought or faltering economies can be immensely valuable both
as a means of keeping in touch with home communities and as a business tool.
NYTIMES
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In developing countries books are scarce. 4,000 Worldreader users in Ethiopia,
Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan and Zimbabwe were surveyed on their
reading habits.
Overall, 62 percent of respondents said they are reading more as a result of
mobile reading. More than 10% of respondents said their primary reason for
reading on their phone was because it was more affordable than reading in print
and another 9% said it was because they dont otherwise have access to books or
stories. http://time.com/74584/unesco-study-mobile-phones-book-readingliteracy/
The report heralded mobile reading as a potential way to empower women in
countries where they may face cultural or social impediments to accessing
books. While the majority of mobile readers are male, according to the survey,
female respondents read nearly six times as much as men.
http://time.com/74584/unesco-study-mobile-phones-book-reading-literacy/
The Internet offers virtually free access to a huge amount of information and
expert advice on subjects from engineering and plant cultivation to birth control
and health care. A single Internet connection can be shared by many, giving

schools access to the world's top libraries when they previously did not even
have books. Distance learning gives students the chance to be taught by better
teachers. The African Virtual University, which is partly financed by the World
Bank, uses satellites to broadcast televised courses to students in 15 African
countries, who communicate with teachers by e-mail, fax and telephone.
http://www.economist.com/node/375645
In Bangladesh the BBC World Service Trust sponsors a service called BBC
Janala that allows people on a few dollars a day to improve their English. After
dialling 3000, they can listen to hundreds of English lessons and quizzes,
updated weekly. Mobile operators charge about two cents for each three-minute
lesson. Since BBC Janala was launched in November 2009, 3.1m people have
used it. THE ECONOMIST Mobile services in poor countries 27 Jan 2011
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Theres the live-in housekeeper in China who was more or less an indentured
servant until she got a cellphone so that new customers could call and book her
services. Or the porter who spent his days hanging around outside of department
stores and construction sites hoping to be hired to carry other peoples loads but
now, with a cellphone, can go only where the jobs are.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/magazine/13anthropology-t.html?
pagewanted=all&_r=0
Paul Polak, author of Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches
Fail and former president of International Development Enterprises, a nonprofit
company specializing in training and technology for small-plot farmers in
developing countries.
Part of I.D.E.s work included setting up farm cooperatives in Nepal, where
farmers would bring their vegetables to a local person with a mobile phone, who
then acted as a commissioned sales agent, using the phone to check market
prices and arranging for the most profitable sale. People making a dollar a day
cant afford a cellphone, but if they start making more profit in their farming, you
can bet theyll buy a phone as a next step, Polak says. NYTIMES
1996 creation of Grameen Phone Ltd. and has since started the careers of more
than 250,000 phone ladies in Bangladesh, which is considered one of the
worlds poorest countries. Women use microcredit to buy specially designed
cellphone kits costing about $150, each equipped with a long-lasting battery.
They then set up shop as their village phone operator, charging a small
commission for people to make and receive calls. Grameen Phone is now
Bangladeshs largest telecom provider, with annual revenues of about $1 billion.

NYTIMES
a 2006 University of Michigan study found that every 10% increase in cell phone
penetration grows the local economy by 0.6%. CNN
"The growth of GDP in Kenya would be half what it was the past 10 years if it
wasn't for the mobile phone," said Joseph. CNN
Safaricom, in partnership with the U.K.'s Vodafone, started M-PESA (short for
mobile pesa, Swahili for "money") services in 2007 that allow customers to
digitally transfer cash via mobile phones. Two years later, 10% of the country's
GDP was being circulated through M-PESA, according to a 2010 World Bank
report. Now Kenyans make $1 billion a month in transactions via M-PESA, where
cash can be deposited and transferred at one of 20,000 stores, Joseph said. CNN
"Now that money is being delivered locally, they didn't have to physically go to
the nearest urban center to get cash," said Olga Morawczynski, CNN
A women's weaving co-operative in a remote village in Guyana is selling
hammocks over the Internet for $1,000 each. Firms in Africa can now bid online
for procurement contracts tendered by America's General Electric.
http://www.economist.com/node/375645
Furthermore, by bringing down the cost of communicating with someone on the
other side of the world, IT makes it easier for multinational firms to move
production to emerging economies to take advantage of low labour costs, but
ensure close contact with head office. http://www.economist.com/node/375645
Farmer's Friend in Uganda, for instance, sends out market prices and other
agricultural information in text messages. THE ECONOMIST Mobile services in
poor countries 27 Jan 2011
Esoko, a Ghanaian communication platform, in the words of Mark Davies, its
founder, allows two-way communication: people and businesses in 15 African
countries can upload their own market or other data, which then become
accessible via the internet and mobile phones. THE ECONOMIST Mobile
services in poor countries 27 Jan 2011
In India, Babajob.com lists low-skilled jobs. ECONOMISTTHE ECONOMIST
Mobile services in poor countries 27 Jan 2011

Dialog Tradenet in Sri Lanka lets farmers check market prices and text in offers,
helping them to time their harvest to maximise income. ECONOMISTTHE
ECONOMIST Mobile services in poor countries 27 Jan 2011
Mobile phones also unlock entrepreneurship: porters, carpenters and other selfemployed workers can advertise their services on lamp-posts and noticeboards
and ask potential clients to get in touch with them. Mr Quadir likes to tell the
story of a barber in Bangladesh who could not afford the rent for a shop, so he
bought a mobile phone and a motorbike instead, scheduling appointments by
phone and going to his clients' homes. This was more convenient for them and he
was able to serve a larger area and charge higher fees. THE ECONOMIST
Eureka Moments
Globally such micro-entrepreneurs account for 50-60% of all businesses, and in
Africa nearly 90%, says Jussi Impio, the head of Nokia's African research arm,
based in Nairobi. Mobile phones make micro-entrepreneurs vastly more
productive: a plumber no longer has to return to his shop to pick up messages
from clients, for example. THE ECONOMIST Eureka Moments
Roshan is Afghanistan's largest private company, largest investor and largest
taxpayer, and with its network of 25,000 agents who sell top-up vouchers it is
one of the country's largest indirect employers. Roshan's success in Afghanistan
attracted MTN and Etisalat, two big foreign operators, who provided further
investment and created more jobs. By generating taxes, creating jobs that are
not related to opium production and promoting prosperity, says Mr Khoja, the
telecoms industry provides a bubble of hope for Afghanistan. THE

ECONOMIST Eureka Moments

One example is the analysis of fish prices on the coast of Kerala, in southern
India, carried out in 2007 by Robert Jensen, an economist at Harvard University.
Fishermen could call several markets while still at sea before deciding where to
sell instead of taking their catch back to their home market and throwing it away
if there were no buyers for it. This eliminated waste, dramatically reduced the
variation in prices along the coast, brought down consumer prices by 4% and
increased fishermen's profits by 8%.' THE ECONOMIST Eureka Moments
Jenny Aker of the University of California at Berkeley carried out an analysis of
grain markets in Niger, published in 2008, to see how the phasing-in of mobilephone coverage between 2001 and 2006 affected grain prices. She found that it
reduced price variations between one market and another by a minimum of
6.4%, and often more in remote and hard-to-reach markets. As a result, prices
for consumers were lower and profits for traders higher. During a spike in food
prices in 2005 grain was 4.5% cheaper in markets with mobile coverage. THE
ECONOMIST Eureka Moments
Google Trader, a text-based system that matches buyers and sellers of
agricultural produce and commodities. Sellers send a message to say where they
are and what they have to offer, which will be available to potential buyers within
30km for seven days. Mr Makawa says his father used the service to look for a
buyer for some pigs, which he sold to pay school fees.
China Mobile offers a service called Nong Xin Tong in conjunction with the
agriculture ministry, as part of its push into rural areas. It has already signed up

50m users and is aiming for 100m within three years. The service provides news,
weather information and details of farming-related government policies. THE
ECONOMIST 'Beyond Voice'
The mobile service that is delivering the most obvious economic benefits is
money transfer, otherwise known as mobile banking (though for technical and
regulatory reasons it is not, strictly speaking, banking). It has grown out of the
widespread custom of using prepaid calling credit as an informal currency.
The biggest successes in this field so far have been Gcash and Smart Money in
the Philippines, Wizzit in South Africa, Celpay in Zambia and, above all, M-PESA
in Kenya, which has become the most widely adopted mobile-money scheme in
the world. Launched in 2007 by Safaricom, Kenya's largest mobile operator, it
now has nearly 7m usersnot bad for a country of 38m people, 18.3m of whom
have mobile phones. M-PESA's early adopters were young, male urban migrants
who used it to send money home to their families in the country. But it has since
become wildly popular and is used to pay for everything from school fees to taxis
(drivers like it because it means they are carrying less cash around).
Once you have signed up, you pay money into the system by handing cash to an
agent (usually a mobile operator's airtime vendor), who credits the money to
your mobile-money account. You can withdraw money by visiting another agent,
who checks that you have sufficient funds before debiting your account and
handing over the cash. You can also send money to other people, who will be sent
a text message containing a special code that can be taken to an agent to
withdraw cash. This allows cash to be sent from one place to another quickly and

easily. Some mobile-money schemes also allow international remittances;

THE ECONOMIST Beyond Voice
3..............................................................................................................
A just in time moment afforded by a cellphone looks a lot different to a mother
in Uganda who needs to carry a child with malaria three hours to visit the
nearest doctor but who would like to know first whether that doctor is even in
town. It looks different, too, to the rural Ugandan doctor who, faced with an
emergency, is able to request information via text message from a hospital in
Kampala. NYTIMES
Mobile technology is now being used in Gambia to track medication stock levels
in rural villages, Gardiner CNN
Stop Stock-outs, another African group, has used Ushahidi to map where
essential medicines are sold out. THE ECONOMIST Mobile services in poor
countries 27 Jan 2011
"We're able to do very quick mapping and needs assessments with smartphone
with GIS capability," said Sachs, project director. "We can cover an area of
assessment in weeks, something that used to take years." CNN
health workers can use the devices to extend their reach to regions that lack
adequate health care infrastructure. - Karl Brown, Rockefeller's associate
director of applied technology
For example, mobile health tools could improve clinic management, facilitate
disease surveillance, and enable clinical research, Brown said.
Satellife's GUIDE system converts large clinical documents into formats that are
easily readable on the small screens of mobile devices. Sideman says the system
allows physicians and nurses in developing countries to access current medical
research and literature. "The idea was to put it on a device that was small
enough so that they could carry it around with them during their working day,"
he said. IHEALTHBEAT
Satellife's GATHER system is an open-source mobile phone application that
allows health care workers to electronically submit reports to district health
centers or health ministries. Officials then can use the data to monitor health
trends or diseases in a particular region. IHEALTHBEAT
Brown said he believes the next step will be to use mobile technology to promote
patient-centered health. He said, "If you can put the patient at the center of the
health care system and empower them to make better decisions, their portal and

the way that they interact with the health system is going to be their mobile
device."
4 ........................................................................................
Interestingly, the recent post-election violence in Kenya provided a remarkable
case study for the cellphone as an instrument of both war and peace. After the
government imposed a media blackout in late December last year,
Kenyans sought news and information via S.M.S. messages on their phones and
used them to track down friends and family whod fled their homes. Many also
reported receiving unsolicited text messages to take up arms. The government
responded with an admonition, sent, of course, via S.M.S.: The Ministry of
Internal Security urges you to please desist from sending or forwarding any
S.M.S. that may cause public unrest. This may lead to your prosecution.
In the Indian state of Karnataka, corrupt officials would often demand a bribe
before issuing landownership certificates, which farmers need, for instance, to
obtain a loan. The Bhoomi project helps them directly, by using the internet and
mobile phones. THE ECONOMIST Mobile services in poor countries 27 Jan 2011

CNN http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/09/tech/mobile/mobile-phonepoverty/index.html
IHEALTHBEAT http://www.ihealthbeat.org/insight/2009/Mobile-Phones-DrivingHealth-IT-Innovation-in-Developing-Countries
FrontlineSMS, a system that allows groups to communicate via text messages, is
being used to report human-rights violations and co-ordinate aid and
conservation projects, among many other things. ECONOMIST 'Eureka
Moments'
In India's election this year voters were able to use their handsets to call up
information about candidates, such as their educational background and any

criminal charges they might be facing. THE ECONOMIST 'Eureka Moments'

Mobile phones have been used for election monitoring in countries including
Nigeria, Kenya and Sierra Leone. Reporting vote totals by phone from polling
stations to local radio stations makes it harder to fiddle the results later. And text
messaging has been used to co-ordinate political protests in many countries.
THE ECONOMIST 'Eureka Moments'
Mr Impio cites the popularity of call-in radio shows in Kenya as another example
of how mobile phones can make politics more transparent. People have phones,
and when politics is being discussed they can call anonymously and say things
journalists cannot discuss, THE ECONOMIST
5................................................................................
According to the U.N. Foundation, about 80% of the world's population lives in a
region with mobile phone coverage and about 64% of all mobile phone users live
in the developing world. http://www.ihealthbeat.org/insight/2009/Mobile-PhonesDriving-Health-IT-Innovation-in-Developing-Countries
"The mobile phone is much more suited to a lot of these environments in some
cases than a computer or a laptop or an Internet connection because it doesn't
use a lot of power." Karl Brown- IHEALTHBEAT
batteries can last for seven or eight hours between charges, and then they
charge very quickly from a solar charger, we can circumvent the issues of not
having a strong electric grid infrastructure." Andrew Sideman Satellife
Mobile phones are the world's most widely distributed computers. Even in poor
countries about two-thirds of people have access to one
After the country's disputed elections in 2008, Ushahidi (which means
testimony in Swahili) mapped reports about violence, most of them text
messages, on a website. Now the organisation offers software and even a webbased service to monitor anything from elections to natural disasters THE

ECONOMIST
. Prepaid billing saves operators sending out bills and chasing up debts. THE
ECONOMIST Eureka Moments
Mobile phones could not work in Africa without prepaid because it's a cash
society, says Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese businessman who established Celtel,
THE ECONOMIST Eureka Moments

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