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Jake Corkin

World Bank and private sector blog - 0 views

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    here is a blog about the private sector and the world bank. this entry is specifically about transparency in the world bank. they want people also to participate via twitter, facebook and other digital medium.
Kristen Nicole Cardon

Third World first - The Boston Globe - 1 views

  • The technology used to bring slum-dwellers like Das their first bank accounts is so advanced that it isn't available to even the most tech-savvy Americans
  • But today, some emerging economies are starting to leapfrog ahead. Why build a network of telephone wires out to remote areas when you can go straight to a cutting-edge mobile network at a fraction of the cost? Why burn fossil fuels for electricity and cooking if cleaner - and in some cases cheaper - alternatives, like solar and biogas, are available? Why electrify rural villages with incandescent bulbs if longer-lasting, environmentally friendly options like LEDs or new fluorescent bulbs exist? In many cases, it is mature markets like the United States and Europe, tethered to older systems, that find themselves playing catch-up.
Kristen Nicole Cardon

Cellphones - Third World and Developing Nations - Poverty - Technology - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • The premise of the work is simple — get to know your potential customers as well as possible before you make a product for them. But when those customers live, say, in a mud hut in Zambia or in a tin-roofed hutong dwelling in China, when you are trying — as Nokia and just about every one of its competitors is — to design a cellphone that will sell to essentially the only people left on earth who don’t yet have one, which is to say people who are illiterate, making $4 per day or less and have no easy access to electricity, the challenges are considerable.
  • Text messaging, or S.M.S. (short message service), turns out to be a particularly cost-effective way to connect with otherwise unreachable people privately and across great distances. Public health workers in South Africa now send text messages to tuberculosis patients with reminders to take their medication. In Kenya, people can use S.M.S. to ask anonymous questions about culturally taboo subjects like AIDS, breast cancer and sexually transmitted diseases, receiving prompt answers from health experts for no charge.
  • A cellphone in the hands of an Indian fisherman who uses it to grow his business — which presumably gives him more resources to feed, clothe, educate and safeguard his family — represents a textbook case of bottom-up economic development, a way of empowering individuals by encouraging entrepreneurship
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  • For this reason, the cellphone has become a darling of the microfinance movement
  • companies like Wizzit, in South Africa, and GCash, in the Philippines, have started programs that allow customers to use their phones to store cash credits transferred from another phone or p
  • urchased through a post office, phone-kiosk operator or other licensed operator
  • Interestingly, the recent post-election violence in Kenya provided a remarkable case study for the cellphone as an instrument of both war and peace.
  • Carrying a full-featured cellphone lessens your needs for other things, including a watch, an alarm clock, a camera, video camera, home stereo, television, computer or, for that matter, a newspaper. With the advent of mobile banking, cellphones have begun to replace wallets as well.
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    Chipchase has a cool job :)
Kristen Nicole Cardon

Africa calling: mobile phone usage sees record rise after huge investment | Technology ... - 1 views

  • Uganda, the first African country to have more mobiles than fixed telephones, is cited as an example of cultural and economic transformation. Penetration has risen from 0.2% in 1995 to 23% in 2008, with operators making huge investments in infrastructure, particularly in rural areas. Given their low incomes, only about a quarter of Ugandans have a mobile subscription, but street vendors offer mobile access on a per-call basis. They also invite those without access to electricity to charge their phones using car batteries.Popular mobile services include money transfers, allowing people without bank accounts to send money by text message. Many farmers use mobiles to trade and check market prices.
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    Thank you for the links, this is exactly what I was actually going to post about.
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