Group items tagged

Farmers in LEDC's using mobile phone technology to aid them in irrigating their fields

Mobile phone use has exploded in the last seven years, according to a U.N report. The number of global subscriptions quadrupled from around 1billion in 2002 to 4.1billion at the end of last year.

This website has some great data on various developing countries' rates of adoption of ICT (in particular, mobile phones, internet, radio and television) - click on "country profiles" to see which countries are available. While there is slightly less data available for Haiti, Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique, the dedicated mini-sites for each of the other countries include data on access to various forms of "traditional media" (newspapers, radio) and "new media" (internet and mobile phones). There is also data on usage of the various forms of media by age group, gender and socio-economic status. I particularly like the annotations on the graphs, which will hopefully help students focus on the key data and show them how annotations can help add clarity and further information to figures (graphs, maps etc).

Mobile phone uptake in Africa - excellent case study.

M-PESA is a new Safaricom service enabling money transfer using a mobile phone. Kenya is the first country in the world to use this service, which is offered in partnership between Safaricom and Vodafone.

The idea of using renewable energy to power cell phone base stations in rural areas is nothing new. The latest variation on this comes from Ericsson and Orange Guinea Conakry which plan to deploy more than 100 solar-powered base stations:

"The conditions that need to be present to text in Liberia do not necessarily exist simply because someone has access to a phone; if there is one major assumption that many of us in ICT for development are guilty of, it's this one." - an interesting piece which could be used to critically examine the adoption of mobile phone technology in sub-Saharan Africa and its role in civil society. Just having access is not always enough...

India is the fastest-growing mobile communications market in the world. The rural poor are rapidly adopting phones, so the technology could become a platform for providing banking services. Sanjay Swamy, CEO of the mobile-payment platform mChek, talks about the potential.

Mobile phone uptake in Kenya case study. Lots of great data to use with HL students. 

Africa's mobile economic revolution

Mobile phone technology linked to clean water supplies in Africa

Competition within the mobile phone industry