Christian, I expressed myself badly. I was certainly not disagreeing that there are some innovative uses of mobile phones happening in and being driven by users in developing world context (e.g. money transfer by phone, networks of people communicating by voice about market prices etc...) and indeed some interesting solutions developed using 'low cost' phones and SMS. However, many of those don't appear to have really taken off - e.g. Sokoni (I may be wrong about this). EPROM has come up with some nice ideas but are they being commercialized and coming into wide use? Are they reaching rural areas and of use to rural users? From my enquires I don't believe that is the case yet. The mobile phone car-lock idea is indeed ingenious but I'm not sure it is really low-cost (given the hardware and care requirements) or addressing any of the questions in this thread specifically about rural users needs e.g. "...bridging the rural digital divide, bringing tangible economic benefits ... acting as agents of social mobilization through improved communication". Innovation can happen without high-spec handsets but I do believe today's high-end handset will allow all kinds of new opportunities e.g. delivery of audio-visual training information, local language audio-visual pest identification and treatment encyclopedias on the phone memory without having to pay per query, etc... So, the question was just can we assume such handsets will be affordable one day? If so how far in to the future? How long ago would it have seemed that the handsets currently in use in rural Kenya for example would never have been affordable? Incidentally, my favourite stuff related to EPROM and/or Nathan Eagle's work are Medical Data Collection on Mobiles [url]http://eprom.mit.edu/research.html[/url] and Mobile Crowd sourcing [url]http://txteagle.com[/url] josh underwood VeSeL Project [url]http://www.veselproject.net[/url]

I think this depends where you live, what kind of access you have and what income you have. My feeling is that we are only just beginning to see really innovative uses in wealthier countries as connection charges drop and more sophisticated handsets become available. In this context the future possibilities are enormous as described here [url]http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/future-of-mobile.html[/url] In poorer contexts, with less infrastructure my feeling is that the innovation has largely been that mobile phones have begun to enable voice communication amongst widely distributed groups that previously had no access to this kind of communication and that this has enabled information networks that can support improved business opportunities (as with the fisherman example that is frequently cited) and access to otherwise inaccessible information (e.g. health). The other truly interesting innovation in these contexts is the ability to transfer money as airtime. This combined with the increased ability to form extended communities of interest/information networks supported by voice communication may lead to more interesting innovations. However, until infrastructure and affordable higher spec handheld devices become available in developing contexts the kinds of innovation described here here [url]http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/future-of-mobile.html[/url] are some way of. My question is how far in to the future should designers of innovative agricultural solutions be thinking? In how many years time might the kinds of handsets currently used in the USA and Europe be being used in rural Africa? How many years old are the majority of handsets currently in use in rural africa? Josh Underwood VeSeL Project - [url]http://www.veselproject.net[/url]

Héléne, Could you provide a link to some examples of the colour training comics you provide? We have produced training posters to accompany solar powering equipment and Macbook laptops we have provided in 2 rural communities in Kenya. We are interested in comics and are using them in other projects. Josh Underwood VeSeL Project - http://www.veselproject.net

I think this project by Farm Africa is a well thought out example of how mobile phones can support rural livelihoods. In this case they describe[url=http://www.farmafrica.org.uk/documents/212.PDF] the role of telephony in delivering community-based decentralised animal health services in Mwingi and Kitui Districts, Kenya[/url]. Mobile phones are used to link key participants in a community based decentralized animal health system. I know of this from a very convincing presentation. I do not know about how this activity is actually working now in practice now but would be very interested to hear more if anyone else does know.

I would be very interested to hear any accounts of mobile phone applications that are successful in rural Kenya. We hear much about how mobile services are very developed in Kenya but that did not necessarily tie with what we have found in 2 rural communities. We are working with 2 communities in different rural areas in Kenya and we found that nearly all use of phone was for calls (virtually no SMS). In the farming communities we met phones did not seem to be being used very much to find out about market prices though certainly the middle men were using phones. Phones were being used sometimes to arrange pick up points and time for transportation. The safaricom "SMS Sokoni" service, which provides daily agricultural commodity prices by text did not appear to be in use by these farmers. Obviously, these are rather subjective impressions and quite probably not generally true. Does anyone have good information about who in rural areas is using SMS services in Kenya, where and what for?

Hi Helene, Do you know anything about the current status of DrumNet? On paper it looked like a very interesting system/approach but the website you point to and other information about the project is now somewhat out of date. We tried to find out more about activity in one area they did have an information centre about 2 years ago and could find nothing and we met someone from DrumNet. It does not look like they have so far been successful but I may be wrong. I would love to know more about their current activity, if they have been successful and if not why not?