• Stories

Stories/Use Cases/Projects/Papers

Introduction

This section gathers information about successful stories (or failures) about deployment of ICT in Developing Countries in general, and more specifically using mobile phones. those stories and use cases are essential to understand what are the most useful (type of) applications and content for rural communities and under-privileged populations. There is also a dedicated section for papers and articles providing information or view about MW4D.

Note to the contributors: cite your source, provide a date and short information about the content

Resources

Stories

• The Digital Provide: Information (technology), Market, Performance, and Welfare in the south Indian Fisheries Sector
  A paper describing the impact of the use of a mobile based service for fishermen in Kerala
  August 2007

• Education for All
  A teaser from India-based mobile phone company Idea cellular about the potential of mobile phones in Education
  June 2008

• Livelihood Changes Enabled by Mobile Phones-the case of Tanzanian fishermen
  A story about the impact of mobile phones for tanzanian fishermen
  2007

Projects

• EPROM
  An MIT project based in Kenya focusing on offering Mobile Phone Programming curriculum.
  August 2008-Still running

• EU FP7 project Digital World Forum
  An EU FP7 project focusing on the use of ICT to leverage economic development in Africa and Latin America
  From 1st Jan 2008 till 30 June 2009

• Bridging the Global Digital Divide
  A network of four academic projects with a common objective to explore ways to give access to those currently excluded from world telecommunications and digital networks
  August 2008-still running

• Trade at Hand
  An ITC project which objective is to make innovative use of mobile phones to empower exporters from developing economies. It started by delivering international fruit and vegetable market quotes by SMS. Other business applications are being built.

• Mistowa
  MISTOWA was an USAID-initiated project to increase regional agricultural trade and food security by improving and linking the regional efforts to generate, disseminate (including by SMS), and make commercial use of market information.

• KACE
  The Kenya Agricultural Commodity Exchange (KACE) provides crop growers with up-to-date commodity information - farmers can access daily fruit and vegetable prices from a dozen markets through SMS.

• mobility
  A collaborative project which brings together some of the leading academics, technicians, educators and practitioners in the IT and mobile fields with the common goal of developing an exciting and empowering range of tools and resources to unlock the power of mobile applications development for users in the developing world.

• crowdsources crisis information in Kenya and South Africa
  a collaborative project to develop a platform for gathering crowdsources crisis information. Currenlty deployed in Kenya and South Africa

Papers/Articles/Report

• The Power of Mobile Phones to end poverty
  a TED talk by Iqbal Qadir
  july 2005

• Doing HCI Differently in the Developing World
  A talk by Gary Marsden from University of Cape Town
  May 2007

• Wireless Technology for Social Change:Trends in NGO Mobile Use
  UN Foundation report including case studies
  April 2008

• Mobile Phone Banking and Low-Income Customers: Evidence from South Africa
  UN Foundation report about the potential of m-banking for the BOP
  2006

• The GSMA Development Fund Top 20: Research on the Economic and Social Impact of Mobile Communications in Developing Countries
  a report from GSMA Development funds which includes an exhaustive list of references at the time of writings about the impact of mobile phones and applications on Social and Economic Development
  July 2008

• Mobile Services Evolution 2008-2018
  This report takes a look at the potential evolution of mobile technology and services over the course of the next 10 years and discusses an M-Services framework for building and deploying diverse mobile services.
  July 2008

• Designing an Architecture for Delivering Mobile Information Services to the Rural Developing World
  PhD Thesis by Tapan S. Parikh
  2007

• The Role of Mobile Phones in Sustainable Rural Poverty Reduction
  a World Bank Report examining the role of mobile telephones in sustainable poverty reduction among the rural poor.
  June 2008

• The innovative use of mobile applications in the Philippines – lessons for Africa
  a SIDA report examining the usage nad impact of mobile phones in the Philippines
  September 2007

• Mobile phones and development The future in new hands?
  ID21 Insight issue on mobile phones and development
  September 2007

• Compendium of ICT Applications on Electronic Government - Volume 1: Mobile Applications on Health and Learning
  a UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Report focusing on the use of mobile technology in the areas of health and learning
  2007

• Livelihoods and the mobile phone in rural Uganda
  a report commissioned by Grameen regarding mobile phone practices and need in rural Uganda
  2008

• Shared Phone Practices: Exploratory Field Research from Uganda and Beyond
  introduces the results of a Nokia study of Shared Phone Use, drawing on research in Uganda, Indonesia, Nepal, India, China and Mongolia. Introduces the concepts of Sente, Step Messaging, Pooling et al..
  2006

• m-Powering India:Mobile Communications for Inclusive Growth
  The report also details some successful and low cost mobile projects in rural India which have positively impacted its communities in both social and economic ways.
  2008

• Rwanda gets locally made handsets
  A Chinese electronics company, has unveiled its first mobile phone handsets manufactured in Rwanda. This makes Rwanda the first country in the region to sell locally manufactured mobile phones.
  Sept. 2008

Newspaper article

• The Meek shall inherit the Web
  The Economist
  September 2008

• Nokia Expanding Horizon Q3 2008: How mobile public services can transform lives
  September 2008

• The digital war on poverty by Jeffrey Sachs
  The Guardian
  August 2008

Other repositories of similar information

• kiwanja.net mobile applications database
  Another initiative organized bykiwanja.net keeping track of existing projects involving mobile phones in Developing Countries
  August 2008-Still maintained

Misc