Yes, that ubiquitous handheld device has done wonders for the poor around the world.
It all started in Bangladesh
Bangladesh is often used as the case study for the impact that mobile telephony can have on the economically disadvantaged. In the late 1990s Grameen Bank, a Dhaka-based for-profit enterprise long known in Bangladesh for making microloans to fund microenterprises by villagers, set up Grameen Telecommunications, a non-profit organization that provided low-cost phone services in rural areas. Using money borrowed from Grameen Bank, village entrepreneurs purchased mobile phones which they then used to sell phone services to customers -- other villagers -- by the call. The result: mobile phone entrepreneurs -- 95 percent of whom were female -- made a tidy profit while villagers reaped the benefits of instant communication. These benefits included communicating with distant family members, making it easier to find employment opportunities, having more options during emergency situations, enabling farmers to check prices in different markets before selling produce, and eventually allowing the quick and easy transfer of funds. The mobile phone microenterprise platform spread rapidly through the country and stimulated other economic activities among the rural poor, who have proven to be much more technology-savvy than many originally anticipated.
The success of Bangladesh's microphone operators has not gone unnoticed. In Uganda, Grameen Foundation USA [web site] worked with mobile operator MTN to develop villagePhone, an initiative that enables poor rural individuals to become "Village Phone Operators" through partnerships with Ugandan microfinance institutions. MTN boasts on its web site that "these Village Phone businesses can be established in areas where electricity is unavailable and in areas where the MTN network can only be accessed with a booster antenna." Grameen Foundation USA has since piloted another program in Rwanda in partnership with MTN Rwanda and is publishing a free manual to encourage microfinance institutions and telecoms to create joint ventures for establishing cell phone franchise businesses for microloan clients.
Leapfrogging technology
Cell phones not only offer opportunity through voice services but emerging technologies that bring Internet access to phones, bypassing the need for a computer for connecting to the World Wide Web. Since computers are rare in much of the region due to poor wire-line infrastructure -- a recent study found 97 percent of people in Tanzania said they could access a mobile phone, while only 28 percent could access a landline -- and unreliable electrical grids, a technology that offers Internet access without a costly PC promises to pay dividends for Africans. Research in India has found Internet connectivity can be key to improving the livelihood of rural poor by giving them access to information -- everything from crop prices to the legal protocol to acquiring tenure to land. Internet access can simplify interaction with government institutions for mundane tasks like acquiring an identity card as well as potentially increasing transparency and reducing corruption in transactions with officials. Also, because calling plans are often pre-paid there is no need for a bank account or credit check.
Cell phones have become a prime example of a technology that helps many different user groups. There are several beneficiaries of mobile phones at the village level:
• Entrepreneurs who make money by selling phone services to villages on a per use basis.
• Sellers of prepaid phone cards including poor urban youths and small business owners.
• Users of phones who gain business and employment opportunities mentioned above.
Posted July 11, 2005
Mongabay.com is an environmental science and conservation news website.
