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In this paper we argue that mobile banking offers the opportunity to diminish the financial exclusion suffered by the poor by offering access to credit and to savings which are key tools capable of transforming the livelihoods of the poor as well as the efficiency of the market. However, mobile phones need a complete ecosystem that supports its application to a functioning mobile banking service.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to existing knowledge of mobile money across the value chain by providing insight into the mechanisms of m-money, the value propositions within the business of m-banking and what is preventing its swifter adoption and usage in the developed world. We develop a taxonomy of the key drivers of the business model which provides insights for assessing the replicability of these models in other countries. We focus on models developed in Kenya and the Philippines and explore what is lacking for a widespread adoption in Latin American countries, such as Mexico, in order to observe what is preventing the creation and usage of m-money models for the BoP.

Drawing on ideas from the sustainable livelihoods approach to poverty reduction and the concept of technology appropriation, this article discusses findings from a mixed methods study exploring mobile phone use in Ghana. The results suggest that most respondents value their phone for the connectivity it affords with a variety of personal and professional contacts. In this sense, the mobile phone is not an overt means of poverty reduction for respondents but an integral part of their lives, in which it serves multiple functions. The study contributes empirical data to the emerging body of research on mobile phone communication in African countries

If communications and high-tech companies are to achieve their growth targets over the next few years, they must look to the emerging economies. These markets, with large populations, hold great promise. Although many consumers in these areas live in rural areas and rely on more limited means, their disposable income has risen in recent years. Many such consumers have become more confident about the future, and are now willing to buy aspirational products such as mobile phones and services, even on credit.

To achieve high performance in this environment, companies must understand the key mobile trends as they evolve in developing economies. They must develop a deeper understanding of the mobile value proposition to emergingmarket consumers as well as their distinctive service needs. New distribution networks must be created. Content, products and services need to be tailored to local populations. These challenges will require new models of collaboration to succeed in a more complex ecosystem.

Enthusiasm amongst international development agencies about harnessing the potential of Information and communications technologies (ICTs) for development has waned as observers have recently questioned the Impact and sustainability of such interventions. By presenting the findings of research specifically designed to measure Impact on livelihoods, Strengthening Rural Livelihoods offers new evidence for the development benefits of ICTs.

The book presents an overview of SIX research projects within the 'Knowledge Networking for Rural Development In Asia Pacific' (ENRAP) research programme. It asks if ICTs enabled farmers to sell beyond local markets and at better prices, and whether there have been social gains in linking geographically disparate households and social networks.

Using a control trial approach In four out of the SIX project case studies, and critically assessing the pros and cons of this methodology including the ethical Implications, the authors have provided significant new Insights Into how to overcome the challenges of mainstreaming lCTs Into rural livelihoods and more effectively measuring its effects. This book will appeal to academics, civil society organizations, practitioners and students who are Interested In what works and what doesn't work when applying ICTs to rural livelihoods.

Service providers periodically publish different tariff offers with the objective of both customer acquisition and customer retention. Transparency in the provision of telecommunication services and tariff offers has always been and continues to be of prime concern to the Authority. TRAI has in the past taken several steps to enhance transparency in tariff offers.

The Authority, however, is receiving several complaints and representations from consumers and their representatives seeking further effective transparency measures. In view of the increased competition as well as the spread of telecom activity to rural areas, the relevance of having a more transparent regime for tariff offerings cannot be overemphasised.  At the same time, service providers and their associations have also raised certain concerns. This consultation paper brings out various issues that have a bearing on telecom tariff offers.

Excitement around branchless banking is rapidly turning into action by the private sector. Of the 79 live mobile money deployments tracked by the GSM Association (GSMA), two-thirds have launched in 2009 and 2010. Nokia and Paypal are investing in mobile payment platforms available to any client regardless of his or her mobile network or bank, a development that could shake up markets. And early branchless banking leaders are launching out in new directions. Brazilian banks are increasingly eager to use agents equipped with point-of-sale (POS) devices to originate loans. In Kenya, Safaricom has teamed up with Equity Bank, the country’s largest bank, to offer M-Kesho, a service that uses M-PESA’s mobile payments platform to offer a full range of Equity’s bank products.

Will these sizeable investments pay off? Many in the private sector believe reaching large numbers of mass market clients is a precondition to large-scale profits, but at the same time, they are uncertain about how quickly branchless banking will gain traction with the unbanked, low-income clients who make up the mass market. In other words, the prospects of branchless banking are still unclear.

We argue that access to prepay data will be as essential to the widespread adoption and use of the mobile internet in developing countries as access to prepay airtime is/was to the adoption of the mobile telephone.  In late 2009, we conducted a desk assessment of the availability of pre-pay (payas-you-go) data from the major operators in 53 African countries. In 36 cases we were able to identify at least one operator in each country which offered pre-pay data, and in 3 cases we could determine that no prepay data was available.  

Information available from operators was vague, incomplete, and hard to obtain, suggesting a threshold in general awareness and enthusiasm on the part of operators may not yet have been crossed. We describe an ongoing follow-up “crowdsourcing” activity underway to fill in information from the remaining 14 countries, and suggest topics for further research, both on the demand and supply sides of the prepaid data equation. 

This paper uses data from nationally representative household survey conducted in 17 African countries to analyse mobile adoption and usage. This paper shows that countries differ in their levels of ICT adoption and usage and also in  factors that influence adoption and  usage. Income and education vastly enhances mobile adoption but gender, age and membership in social networks have little impact. Income is the main explanatory variable for usage. In terms of mobile expenditure the study also finds linkages to fixed-line, work and public phone usages. These linkages need however be explored in more detail in future. Mobile expenditure is inelastic with respect to income, ie the share of mobile expenditure of individual income increases less than 1% for each 1% increase in income. This indicates that people with higher income spend  a smaller proportion of their income on mobile expenditure compared to those with less income. 

The study provides tools to identify policy intervention to improve ICT take up and usage and define universal service obligations based on income and monthly usage costs. It help to put a number to what can be expected from lower access and usage costs in terms of market volume and number of new subscribers. Linking this to other economic data such as national household income and expenditure surveys and GDP calculation would allow to forecast the economic and social impact of policy interventions. Concrete recommendations are being made for policy interventions and regulatory measures to decrease access and usage costs.

While mobile phones have found broad application in reporting health, financial, and environmental data, there has been little study of the possible errors incurred during mobile data collection. This paper provides the first (to our knowledge) quantitative evaluation of data entry accuracy on mobile phones in a resource-poor setting.

Via a study of 13 users in Gujarat, India, we evaluated three user interfaces: 1) electronic forms, containing numeric fields and multiple-choice menus, 2) SMS, where users enter delimited text messages according to printed cue cards, and 3) voice, where users call an operator and dictate the data in real-time. Our results indicate error rates (per datum entered) of 4.2% for electronic forms, 4.5% for SMS, and 0.45% for voice.

These results caused us to migrate our own initiative (a tuberculosis treatment program in rural India) from electronic forms to voice, in order to avoid errors on critical health data. While our study has some limitations, including varied backgrounds and training of participants, it suggests that some care is needed in deploying electronic interfaces in resource-poor settings. Further, it raises the possibility of using voice as a low-tech, high-accuracy, and cost-effective interface for mobile data collection.

A discussion on mobile application security must address the current issues facing mobile devices and the best way to mitigate them. This chapter aims to provide content on the following subjects:

• Top issues facing mobile devices
• Tips for secure mobile application development

The issues covered in this chapter are not exhaustive and appear in no particular order; however, they can be used to begin the conversation on mobile application security in your organization.

This paper aims to explore the use and impact of mobile telephony on the performance of companies in developing countries through a nationwide survey comprised of thousands of enterprises representing a true sample of the business sector in Palestine. This paper complements studies that make the linkage between mobile communications and economic activities at micro or enterprise level. It analyses the adoption patterns and rational behind these patterns as revealed by the business owners and managers of Palestinian enterprises.Porter’s value chain is used as a framework to assess the impact of mobile telephony in work processes.

The survey covered thousands of enterprises of all sizes and economic activities,selected to embody a representative sample of the Palestinian business sector. It further explores the views of the owners and managers of these enterprises regarding the use of ICTs.The study reveals that mobile phones have meaningfully enhanced internal processes and the overall value chain. Most notably, mobile phones were effective in bridging the information and connectivity gap businesses in developing countries ordinarily suffer.

The study has also found that small and micro enterprises gain from the use of mobiles the same as what large enterprises do, especially in mainstream operations like marketing and sales, information flow, and provision of customer services. This is happening at the time when there is a huge difference in resources between the two categories of enterprises. The study came to conclude that mobile benefits are not favoring one business sector from the other, in the sense that all business sectors are capable of tailoring mobile phone services to suit their needs

This compendium of articles (available at a cost) attempts to critically investigate the use and utility of mobile phones in Africa. Contributors include Nathan Eagle who writes about ‘Economics and power within the African telecommunication industry’,  Amanda Atwood’s report on Kubatana’s experiences in Zimbabwe setting up mobiles as a means of sharing news outside of government propaganda, to Bukeni Waruzi’s essay on collecting data on children’s rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2004.  SMS Uprising is published by Fahamu, a British-based organization with a focus on information services for Africa. For a critique of the book see our aticle here.

This paper examines the rapid evolution of branchless banking technologies and development of financial education as a tool to help low-income households better manage their money.

While focusing on getting delivery systems right, promoters of branchless banking often lose sight of the consumer. Despite recent enthusiasm regarding these new banking services, uptake and usage has been limited, and often does not include many of the poor. Reasons for lower usage rates among low-income populations include:

• Lack of familiarity with banking services;
• Limited trust in new financial delivery systems;
• Lack of understanding and experience using the technologies.

However, low-income households are willing to cross the digital divide and conduct their financial transactions through branchless banking. Higher usage is possible, but will require financial education to facilitate this process. This can be delivered through a variety of channels, such as radio, print media and class room training.

Finally, the paper presents a case study from Malawi which demonstrates the viability of branchless banking when potential clients have proper knowledge of how to use it and stresses that well-conceived financial education programs will achieve this aim.

If communications and high-tech companies are to achieve their growth targets over the next few years, they must look to the emerging economies. These markets, with large populations, hold great promise. Although many consumers in these areas live in rural areas and rely on more limited means, their disposable income has risen in recent years. Many such consumers have become more confident about the future, and are now willing to buy aspirational products such as mobile phones and services, even on credit.

To achieve high performance in this environment, companies must understand the key mobile trends as they evolve in developing economies. They must develop a deeper understanding of the mobile value proposition to emerging market consumers as well as their distinctive service needs. New distribution networks must be created. Content, products and services need to be tailored to local populations. These challenges will require new models of collaboration to succeed in a more complex ecosystem.

This report draws on the experiences of projects using mobile phone-based information and communication technologies (ICT) applications in a number of situations, including mobile monitoring and evaluation, m-banking, community development, literacy, anti-corruption, agricultural extension and agricultural value chain information and access.

The report begins with a general overview of the role that mobile phone-based ICT can play in development and commercial projects, focusing on the situations in which mobile phonebased applications are particularly appropriate, on the potential impacts that they can achieve and on their comparative advantages vis-a-vis other forms of mobile ICT.

The report then considers in more detail the experience of the projects in using mobile phone-based ICT, shedding light on such issues as the appropriateness and relevance of the systems used, their replicability and scalability and their sustainability.