Comments on: Technology can ease poverty, but tech companies need to get on board

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:33:44 +0000

It’s worth reading Thomas L. Friedman’s The World is Flat. He sets out some ideas alot like this and provide some incredible anecdotal and statistical evidence for this, there is a particularly good example of Kodak both making life a little easier in developing countries and enhancing its own business from that book that always sticks with me (it’s too long to explain here.)

By: Chris Brinkworth

Chris Brinkworth — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:38:19 +0000

Great post. Im a massive fan of looking at how technology fills a ‘need’ in a completely different way to how we perceive/use it in the western world.

Some great fodder here on mobile phone usage at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’
https://digitalcommons.georgetown.edu/blogs/isdyahoofellow/category/mobile/

By: sascha70

sascha70 — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:05:52 +0000

“Today over 3 billion of the world’s 6.6 billion people have cellular connectivity and it is expected that another billion will be connected by 2010. But what is often overlooked is the disproportionate impact of mobile phones on different societies, which is one of the reasons why, as researchers, we increasingly prefer to spend time in places like Cairo and Kampala: there is simply more to learn. These are places where for many, it’s the first time they have the ability to communicate personally and conveniently over distances – without having to worry whether someone can overhear the topic of their conversation – communicate with whom they want, when they want. It makes new businesses viable and creates markets where there was none. For many it’s the first time they can provide a stable fixed point of reference to the outside world – a phone number, which in turn creates a new form of identity that in turn enables everything from rudimentary banking to commerce. And not least – each new feature on or accessible through the mobile phone brings new modes of use – unencumbered by my, and probably your entrenched (and increasingly outdated) notions of entertainment, the ‘right’ way to capture and share experiences, the internet. If you work or study in the mobile space and you’re expected to innovate, these are places that bring fresh thinking and new perspectives.”

Small objects travel further, faster: Jan Chipchase in receiver magazine

http://www.receiver.vodafone.com/small-objects-travel-further-faster

By: ourman

ourman — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:51:43 +0000

Entirely agree. Here in Cameroon you could solve 80% of its problems overnight by simply sorting out the roads – they are so bad that any kind of trade and travel between regions is so difficult as not to be worthwhile.

That leaves the mobile phone – and despite the relative poverty everyone has one. You can buy credit for it anywhere – starting from just a few pence worth.

By: louise

louise — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 09:21:05 +0000

This is a great article – it hight lights some major, often overlooked points in how technology can bring bring communities together in battling poverty. “Banker To The Poor” illustrates this very well too, in the introduction of mobiles into the poorest rural regions India. If nothing else over the next five years, we may loose alot of home comforts but the advance of technology will give people the power to help build wealthier communities for a more durable future.