Posted 231 days ago

Cell Phone Empowerment of the Global Poor

Penny Carothers

Many of our poorest neighbors have been devastated by the global recession.  Now they are being hammered by climate change that is likely to put large numbers of the global poor at risk in this decade.  Even though we are not likely to see rapid improvement in reducing the impacts of climate change, there is hope that churches and mission organizations can imagine new ways to enable the poor to deal with these impacts.  Believe it or not, the cell phone might be an important resource in enabling our poorest neighbors to help themselves.


Jeffrey Sachs called the cell phone “the single most transformative tool for development”.  Many academic studies over the past several years have confirmed what development professionals have seen first-hand for some time: mobile phones drive economic growth because they increase the flow of information, which makes markets more efficient, reduces transaction costs, and increases productivity.

Anecdotal evidence coming out of the developing world for some time has suggested that mobile phones have driven economic growth.  And those living in the developing world seem to understand this connection: spending on cell phones outpaces even basic necessities like water and electricity.  Across the globe, the total number of people with mobile phones is estimated to be 3.6 billion.  China is the world’s largest market for cell phone use with 700 million subscribers, and Africa is the fastest growing.  In Africa, 90% of businesses are micro-entrepreneurs, and cell phones make these businesses much more productive and efficient.¹

In the developing world access to cell phones is much greater than the Internet (via computers) due to their relative low cost.  Cell phones are now seen as the platform upon which to develop applications and technologies for the global poor, and innovations are everywhere. 

• In the Philippines, rural residents can make withdrawals and use cash via text-messaging.² 
• This summer (2009) in Uganda, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya and Botswana, MIT students working with a non-profit company called Moca tested a new open-source software system that can be used on cell phones to increase access to health care.  Rural residents who need medical care can access a menu of questions downloaded to a cell phone and even send a picture to a physician or nurse in a remote location in order to get a preliminary diagnosis, determining whether a costly visit to the clinic is necessary.³ 
• Solar phones have recently become available, reducing the high cost of traveling to use a generator to charge one’s phone.  This is an incredible time and money saving tool considering an estimated 1.6 billion people have no access to electricity at all, while another 1 billion people have no electricity for much of the day.⁴

• In Bangladesh, a country with high rates of natural disasters and a dense population, authorities have signed an agreement with two mobile operators in the country to provide early warning disaster alerts to subscribers in remote areas not serviced by existing early warning systems.⁵  This is an innovation that could be replicated in other remote areas to help reduce loss of life.
  
  Putting cell phones in the hands of farmers helps them reduce their vulnerability by connecting them to markets, weather pattern information, and agricultural experts and scientists. For example, the Grameen Foundation is currently piloting a Community Knowledge Worker Initiative (CKW) in Uganda where 75% of the population depends on agriculture for their livelihood.  The Initiative helps farmers track diseases and connect with scientists who are studying diseases that affect their main staple crop.  According to The East African newspaper, there is an initiative in two districts of Uganda where CKWs send text messages to farmers in a given locality. The information may include how to arrest the diseases and where to buy uncontaminated seeds, as well as tips on how to improve soil quality to increase yields.  Aided by these mobile phone messages, farmers in a pilot scheme in the districts of Mbale and Mbusheni have arrested the spread of banana wilt and banana bunchy top virus through early diagnosis and treatment.⁶
  
  This kind of connectivity and data transfer will be increasingly important as the decade continues and farmers experience more instability because of climate change.

1. How can your church, or the mission organizations you support, imagine new ways to use cell phones and other forms of innovation to help those impacted by climate change and other global change in this volatile new decade?

2. What are creative new ways those of us in western countries can reduce our carbon footprint to slow the rate of climate change?

As we launch into a new decade of growing challenges and opportunities, we will need new solutions.  Although not an answer in and of itself, the constantly expanding world of technological innovation has led the way with some of the most promising developments in the fight to combat global poverty and vulnerability.  And cell phones are the most promising of these technologies.  These handheld devices are revolutionizing the developing world: putting information in the hands of farmers about changing weather and soil conditions and serving as early response warnings for natural disasters, both trends that will continue and grow with climate change in the coming decade.

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