Hi Anke, have you heard of this initiative? [quote]A new way of making calls directly between phones, for free, is being trialled by a Swedish company. It is hoping to dramatically improve communications in the developing world. Swedish company TerraNet has developed the idea using peer-to-peer technology that enables users to speak on its handsets without the need for a mobile phone base station. The technology is designed for remote areas of the countryside or desert where base stations are unfeasible. Projects backed by TerraNet recently launched in Tanzania and Ecuador. [/quote] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6987784.stm http://www.terranet.se/

I agree with Joakim Lagerqvist "that we are coming to an end of an era where the telephone has been seen as only a audio communication tool." The mobile phone will become an all purpose tool or as [url=http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jan_chipchase_on_our_mobile_phones.h… Jan Chipchase says ones identity[/url]. Technological wise the African Carrier MTN seeks to have $10 Phone and [url=http://www.redherring.com/Home/25543]"MTN's engineers also will be looking for higher-end smartphones that it can retail for about $40."[/url] One trend will be hopefully more disruptive innovation around mobile phones especially in Africa. If it is hardware or software, the creativity and ingenuity is happening - through adapting or hacking, new means and uses are developed right where they are needed. Open operation systems allow to create various needed features for the local context in the respective language. Hopefully users can built, arrange and adapt application like they can do already on the web nowadays (mashups, widgets, etc.). Another trend will around the local context, where increasing mobile features such as videos, photos, sooner or later GPS or sensors allow to analyse and document the environment. The mobile becomes a research tool to give its user the capacity to collect and share information. Open information repositories will be build. A fascinating example is the openstreetmap initiative (http://www.openstreetmap.org/) For example compare it with Google maps on Baghdad and Kabul. One outcome is increasing transparency. Mobile phones can be key for collectivity contributing to new information systems and receiving all sorts of information. The mobile as a publishing and broadcasting tool. Text, audio and video is already possible - its contributions can support own communication channels and coincide with existing forms of citizen journalism. Check Voices for Africa as an example with over 400 reporters. (http://voicesofafrica.africanews.com/) Here we already witness overlappings with other information and communication technologies such as radio. Surely, some form of data exchange has to work for that, which still inhibits several challenges. But that form of information exchange will happen, whatever technology is behind it. Tools for information exchange solely relying on SMS prove this is possible for all phones. [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKB8HQB0w7s]Or it works with voice response software as the impressing Freedomfone Application shows. [/url] But we shall always ask whether mobile phones are the appropriate tool. There many others out there, which might fit better the need. Ken Banks says it nice in his article: [url=http://www.pcworld.com/article/154274/mobile_finance_indigenous_ingenio… Finance: Indigenous, Ingenious or Both?[/url] [quote]Should technology solutions aimed at the developing world, and mobile solutions in particular, seek to build on and enhance indigenous, traditional activities -- economic or otherwise -- or, where necessary, is it okay just to replace and lose them? That isn't the only question, either. How does the introduction of emerging mobile services shift the balance of power in traditional African societies? Will women, for example, remain as economically active participants in the new mobile-powered world, or will men take more control? Do mobiles narrow or widen gender inequalities? Is technology exacerbating the gap between the haves and have-nots, or is it truly proving as transformational as we all believe or hope?[/quote] [quote][/quote]

For macro impact check out this publication by the Worldbank from June 2008: THE ROLE OF MOBILE PHONES IN SUSTAINABLE RURAL POVERTY REDUCTION on page 9 http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTINFORMATIONANDCOMMUNICATIONANDTEC… [quote]Impact of Mobile Telephony Before we can make policy recommendations concerning the role of mobile phones in sustainable rural poverty reduction, let us consider some of the benefits (or impact) that results from the provision of affordable access to mobile telephony. Although, as we have demonstrated, mobile telecommunications is a substantial driver of economic growth, there are very few indepth studies which have been carried out to document the impact of the mobile phones on economic development and on sustainable poverty reduction. This section makes an attempt to bring together a few of the existing impact evaluation studies and draw lessons from these for sustained development.[/quote]

First of all I wonder whether it is all useful to focus on the mobile phone itself to measure impact? Isn't the mobile phone just an mean for another end? Wasn't that the mistake done by older ICT4D projects to expect technology will solve itself something? But let me add some other perspective. How about mobile phones themselves can make a difference to measure impact. One example is a cooperation between Voices of Africa, Mobile Reporters (http://voicesofafrica.africanews.com/site/page/mobile_reporters) and Akvo.org, an open source initiative for water and sanitation. On Akvo all kind of projects are presented and mobile reporters now report from the field about the implementation and the impact. Mobile phones and collective action or crowdsourcing have a great potential for transparency. There is a project called Ushahidi (http://legacy.ushahidi.com/), which made it possible by all challenges, that people in Kenya during the post-election conflict faced, to report through their mobile phone about the critical situation. This way they collected information from all over Kenya and documented incidents such as riots, deaths, property loss, looting, rape etc. This degree of transparency was hardly achieved by the media and certainly not intended to be publicised by the government. Now imagine the potential to measure development projects from a grassroot level. Or to collect information about how many governmental services have arrived in villages. This could be possible by harnessing the wisdom of crowd. * Using mobile phones to collect information. * Present all information on a website with maps and databases. * Use the website to connect the people who send information and aim to get more accurate information. Beneficiaries of projects could collect information in teams, send feedbacks to the platform and create their own map of development projects or their timeline with accurate information on how government services are fulfilling their duties. This kind of transparency should be an all-win-situation.

Thanks for these very interesting remarks. I think also the social effects cannot be, but are often, underestimated. However I am a bit puzzled about your statement that "so care must be taken to safeguard them." First I think that the mobile is so widely distributed, that there is no return. In Tanzania it is estimated that 98% of the population are in reach of a mobile phone to use it. Second I wonder to who it is to decide that other shall or not get a mobile phone? This reminds me of two interesting publication, which you might find interesting publication: Use of Mobile Phones by Microentrepreneurs in Kigali, Rwanda (The): Changes to Social and Business Networks by Jonathan Donner: http://www.comminit.com/en/node/243320/2754 and from Heather A. Horst, Daniel Miller called The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication. It is a long term study or observation about mobile phone use in Jamaica. http://books.google.com/books?id=DMheTLnCK3sC&dq=The+Cell+Phone:+An+Ant…

Dear Josh, nice to see we share the enthusiasm for EPROM. Really find your remarks interesting and agree with you that not enough, or surprising little, of these innovation are picked up by users. What are the reasons behind it? Is the technology not good enough? Or is it maybe that people simply do not want to do more with their mobile phones? Here in Germany for example, companies try for years to convince mobile users of new application without any success yet. Probably many users simply do not see a benefit in most applications. I imagine nowadays mobile phones will make a difference, because they are complete little computer and allow to use them for all kind of purposes. Yes I agree more memory can make a difference that you can get the data at different places. For example Ethopian universities have toasters, where you can burn CD-ROMs with material. I imagine too, that these application cannot only be just text driven such as market information systems. Observing youngsters in Cambodia changing files on mobile phones through bluetooth it was all about video and audio. Interaction, sharing and learning will definitely happen also on mobile phones, but they certainly have to offer more then many low-cost models. Best Christian

Dear Josh, nice to see we share the enthusiasm for EPROM. Really find your remarks interesting and agree with you that not enough, or surprising little, of these innovation are picked up by users. What are the reasons behind it? Is the technology not good enough? Or is it maybe that people simply do not want to do more with their mobile phones? Here in Germany for example, companies try for years to convince mobile users of new application without any success yet. Probably many users simply do not see a benefit in most applications. I imagine nowadays mobile phones will make a difference, because they are complete little computer and allow to use them for all kind of purposes. Yes I agree more memory can make a difference that you can get the data at different places. For example Ethopian universities have toasters, where you can burn CD-ROMs with material. I imagine too, that these application cannot only be just text driven such as market information systems. Observing youngsters in Cambodia changing files on mobile phones through bluetooth it was all about video and audio. Best Christian

Dear Josh, I tend to disagree that there is a need of "affordable higher spec handheld devices become available in developing contexts". Contrary I believe the biggest mobile innovations are coming from countries in Africa and not from Europe, where besides ringtone sells, not much has happened to say it a bit provocative. Have a look the some examples from the EPROM project, what amazing applications they have developed with old low cost mobile phones mostly only using SMS.http://eprom.mit.edu/entrepreneurship.html My favourite is the Mobile Phone Based Auto Security System http://www.afrigadget.com/2008/08/19/mobile-phone-based-auto-security-s… In this regard the mobile web might never be a killer application in developing countries. Best Christian

Hello all, I am fearing that mobile phones for development becomes a hype like once the start of ICT4D projects. There are lot of amazing and valuable examples for the usage of mobile phones, but there are not enough studies and analysis for the impact of projects around mobile phones. Promising however is the innovation through mobile phones by users themselves. They apply, hack and adapt existing technologies for their own needs. Here some critical, but interesting articles: There is an interesting study by Kathleen Diga in a rural district of Uganda (http://mobileactive08.org/node/982), whether mobile phone drive people further into poverty, or is it advancing the livelihoods of the poor? The study found that owning a mobile phone did both, depending on how it was used. It also stresses that women were still disempowered in terms of access. [quote]The research looked broadly at technology spending patterns, specifically mobile phone use in households and what people were giving up to get mobile phones. This ethnographic study in rural Uganda focused on women. The study found that the women got income either from husbands - about $1 a day, or from small business. In 2007, when the study was conducted, 3 minutes off-peak talk time on the same network cost about 40c - which equated to about 40% of the daily household budget. Given this substantial comparative cost of communication, the question was hence what were they giving up in order to use mobiles? Giving up travel, for instance was seen as a benefit given the costs of transport. Other households were giving up store-bought food - sugar, flour, oil, etc. In this case, those who had gardens could substitute with home produce while those without gardens actually gave up food. [/quote] Syed Mohammad Ali from Pakistan also stresses on women and access: (http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008624story_24-6-2008_pg…) Development: Development through mobiles [quote] Unless the prevailing range of gender-related hurdles in availing the opportunities being provided by communication technologies, it is likely that women may become further marginalised from the economic, social, and political mainstream of their countries.[/quote] Another critical article: Mobile Activism or Mobile Hype? http://www.comminit.com/en/node/270107/38 Best regards Christian

Dear Grace, when I read your question I thought immediately about CellBazar (http://www.cellbazaar.com), a fascinating initiative from Bangladesh, where mobile phone users can send small advertisements to a website to find sellers. You can add and receive them via SMS. As you can see on the website it is used for all kind of products. Here is an article on mobile active about it: http://mobileactive.org/cellbazaar-sms-marketplace-bangladesh I personally find it very interesting, because the users contribute themselves the content. So it is many to many communication and not from one to many. Imagine that with different kind of information exchange on a peer-to-peer basis. Hope that is interesting. :-) Christian Best regards Christian