News: Low-cost technology

WOUGNET has explored the use of SMS in information sharing and carrying out SMS campaigns around different themes. In a test of Mobile Advocacy Tools a campaign on ICTs and poverty reduction, was successfully carried out in April/May 2008 and proves that SMS is a powerful tool of information sharing. WOUGNET members, partners and interested persons discussed questions sent out by the secretariat on the theme, ‘ICTs: Is your wealth a click away?

Journalist Miguel Peirano finds that "Many people think that a laptop for every child is a magic solution and that just giving the children a machine will make them happy," in his well-documented opinion piece about the CEIBAL Plan. This Uruguyan adaptation of the One Laptop Per Child project turns this South American nation into the only country in the world that has adopted, as government policy, the proposal to endow every schoolchild with a low-cost laptop connected to the internet.

Considering the demographic overlap between those most affected by HIV/AIDS and cell phone users, it only makes sense that a major focus be put on how this low-cost technology can fight this deadly pandemic. APC-member Women’sNet recently engaged in a UNICEF-driven speed assessment of fifteen projects that apply cell phones towards development objectives in Africa, with a particular focus on HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care.

APCNews interviewed Nicholas P. Sullivan, author of ‘You Can Hear Me Now: How Microloans and Cell Phones are Connecting the World’s Poor to the Global Economy’, a book published in February 2007 by Jossey-Bass. Sullivan argues that ‘inclusive capitalism", combined with the ‘external combustion engine’ are better approaches to development than foreign aid. Do you agree?

In 1993, Bangladesh was considered a no-go zone by foreign investors. Foreign direct investment in the country totalled USD 3 million that year. Today, it has multiplied to around USD 1 billion, three quarters of which feeds the telecommunications industry. How did foreign investment skyrocket in such a short period of time? The answer lies in the story of the GrameenBank, if we are to believe Nicholas P. Sullivan, author of You Can Hear Me Now: How Microloans and Cell Phones are Connecting the World’s Poor to the Global Economy.

The ping of a text message has never sounded so sweet. In what is being touted as a world first, Kenya’s biggest mobile operator is allowing subscribers to send cash to other phone users by SMS. Known as M-Pesa, or mobile money, the service is expected to revolutionise banking in a country where more than 80% of people are excluded from the formal financial sector.

The good news is that mobile phones are becoming cheaper. But the not-so-good news is that the mobile global industry is yet to take up creative solutions to ensure that the mobile handsets increasingly being used by the less-affluent are not stolen from them.