There have been a lot of things done in the past years to try and improve access to mobile phones for the bottom of the pyramid. Grameenphone in Bangladesh for example offers pre-paid mobile phone affordable to the poorest, Vodafone recently released the Vodafone 150 and Vodafone 250, two ultra low cost handsets that cost between $15 and $30, along with pre-paid plans. Indeed many things have been done to allow those people to communicate. But is the phone only used to communicate there?
The power of the mobile phone is much more out there. The mobile phone, as we will see in much more details in this post, is in the LDCs a tool that has the power to alleviate poverty, develop the competitiveness of a country and its people, bridge gaps between the population and bring business to the most remote areas of a region.
Mobile phones, microfinance and micro businesses
The first example I would like to mention is how companies manage to link mobile communications and microfinance all together. Let’s go back to Grameen Telecom. Some of you reading this post also know them as “Village Phone”. The village phone is the system developed by Iqbal Quadir that allows the rural poor to own a cell-phone and use it to generate business and thus revenue. The owner of the village phone will charge other villagers to use the phone, pay back its micro-loan (courtesy of the Grameen Bank) and keep the profits for him. The program has been so successful that it has been replicated in other countries (Uganda and Rwanda[1]) and in 2010, 13 years after its launch; it reached the milestone of 270,000 Village Phone Operators. The Village Phone thus allowed that many people to generate revenue thanks to mobile communication. Can you also imagine how many customers or Village Phone operators have been able to find jobs and to increase their quality of living, only because they had access to a phone?
Another example is FrogTek.They offer software applications for phones, designed to micro-entrepreneurs at the base of the pyramid. Thanks to the FrogTek application, that currently runs on smart phones, micro-entrepreneurs can use their phone to scan barcodes (through the camera), record all store expenses and revenues and, once connected to their Web servers, turn this into financial reporting, personalized recommendations and additional value-added services[2]. Their program answers one problem that micro-retailers have: the fact that virtually none of them have cash registers or other tools to keep track of their expenses and inventory, therefore highly limiting the scope of their businesses and its potential growth.
Safaricom and the development of branchless banking and micro insurance for farmers
We also all know of the initiatives taken by banks to allow transactions be made on cell-phones. M-Pesa for example is a service ran by Safaricom, a phone service provider in Kenya, that allows its user to pay bills, purchase airtime for their phone, deposit and withdraw money and make transfers. In my opinion, for people at the base of the pyramid it means a lot, it opens up the banking world (which can mean “savings account”), makes transactions easier for micro-finance institutions and customers alike, while connecting people. Also when you think of the amount of money that is currently lying under mattresses in Kenya, Tanzania or what not, imagine what it does to the economy of a country when it starts being accounted for in the banking world.
M-Pesa is not the only initiative Safaricom has worked with. Recently (March 2010), Safaricom has partnered with insurance provider UAP and the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture to provide micro-insurance to farmers in Kenya. The program, called “Kilimo Salama” (Kiswahili for “safe farming”) uses mobile technology to connect the insurance provider with the Kenyan farmer and to pay or receive money, thanks to the branchless banking system available in the country[3].
PerfectSight, or how to use a phone to improve healthcare
PerfectSight is a semi-finalist in the MIT $100K’s development track this year. I would like to give a special mention to them in this post for two reasons: first, their product rocks. They developed a tool that scans and makes a diagnosis of your eye, looking for the most common eye problems (myopia, astigmatism and so on), then uses data connection to transmit the information to appropriate facilities, and dispense spectacles if needed. The second reason I will give them a special mention is for the tremendous potential this has: not only will it allow leveraging the most common (and most treatable) eye problems, thus increasing ability to get a job and get an education, but it can also be used as a business opportunity. Since the software and the tool on the phone do everything, by teaching villagers how to use it, themselves can own the business of eye correction for their village and make a profit while improving the quality of life in their village.
Those examples are few among countless of operations that are being developed while I am typing this article. It only shows that a simple tool can be used in many different ways to solve global poverty by developing and securing business at the BOP. And I did not even mention how mobile phones can be used by governments to warn about crises, diseases, aid etc, by NGO, hospitals and schools to educate about health, AIDS or what have you… Yet.
[1] http://www.grameenphone.com/index.php?id=79 Accessed on June 2, 2010
[2] http://frogtek.org/solution Accessed on June 2, 2010
[3] http://www.scidev.net/en/new-technologies/kenyan-farmers-get-micro-insurance.html Accessed on June 2, 2010
