MobileActive.org

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.

At the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000, world leaders adopted the Millennium Declaration, committing nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and address pressing challenges of hunger, gender inequality, illiteracy, and disease. The year 2015 has been affirmed as the deadline for reaching these Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets.

The goal is to show how an integrated approach to community-level development can translate the international MDG agreements into ground-level breakthroughs throughout rural sub-Saharan Africa. Villages are located in deeply impoverished rural areas that were considered hunger hotspots—with at least 20% of children malnourished. Sites were selected to reflect a diversity of agro-ecological zones, representing a range of challenges to income, food production, disease ecology, infrastructure, and health system development.

The Millennium Villages Project is a ten-year initiative spanning two five-year phases. The first phase focuses on achieving quick wins, especially in staple crop production and disease control, and on establishing basic systems for integrated rural development that help communities escape the poverty trap and achieve the MDGs. The Project involves the coordinated community-led delivery of a locally tailored package of scientifically proven interventions for agriculture, education, health, and infrastructure. Over the first five-year phase, interventions are delivered at a modest cost, totaling approximately $120 per capita per year, of which MVP brings about half to complement funds from the host government, the local community, and other partners. The second five-year phase will focus more intensively on commercializing the gains in agriculture and continuing to improve local service delivery systems in a manner that best supports local scale-up.

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.

Anno 2010 the mobile phone seems to be an everyday device in African societies. The phone culture is a given, especially in cities but increasingly as well in rural areas where almost everybody lives in a circle of 50 km from mobile reach. It is only 20 years ago that the first cities in Africa were connected and only since a few years that the rural areas are within mobile reach. It is because of this short implementation phase that the 'normality' of the mobile phone in Africa raises many questions. Why the mobile phone was so easily adopted? What changes did it bring to African societies? Was the revolution in technological change a societal change as well; and if so in what sense and for whom?

In this paper we investigate these questions for so called 'marginal' mobile populations in Africa. These are people from marginal areas who have been pushed out of these areas for creating a better livelihood, for political reasons, etc., leading to the formation of mobile societies/communities. These are people whose relationships expand over vast social spaces, and for whom communication is a pivotal importance for their social life. Especially in these populations we expect social change due to new ICT's, especially the mobile phone. Case studies from Cameroon and Mali (pastoral nomadic societies), and Chad and Angola (refugees, displaced people for political reasons) show that we should consider mobile phones in a sequence of communication strategies of the people living in these mobile societies, that indeed means social change and economic change, but at the same time is a continuation of existing social patterns. The phone culture is part of existing communication cultures in Africa

The report entitled  "Innovative ways of appropriating mobile telephony in Africa" is published by the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

The democratization of mobile telephony in Africa, its availability, ease of use and, above all, the extent to which it has been appropriated by the public, have made it a major success story. Very low-income populations are not only actively demanding access to mobile telephone services but also innovating by creating the functions and applications they can use. Development is thus happening “from the bottom up” and an entire economy, both formal and informal in nature, has come into being to meet people’s needs. Many different actors – private, public, NGOs – are now mobilized.

Operators and manufacturers have successfully changed their economic model and adapted their products and applications to allow access to services at affordable prices. NGOs have in addition created a range of messaging- based services in different sectors. However, the future evolution of mobile telephony is not clear. A range of different approaches will co-exist, from SMS up to full Internet capacity, including experimental initiatives using smart phones and “netbooks”. Falling costs will lead to an increase in the number of phone devices with data receiving capacity.

Individuals and companies involved in creating services or applications for development will need to take account of their users’ demographics and incomes, as well as the pricing systems of telecommunication companies in countries where they wish to operate. In this, states and regulating authorities have grasped the crucial role which they must play in promoting an investment-friendly environment with the goal of achieving universal access and stimulating innovation – key factors in achieving a “critical mass” of users.

The advent on the African continent of high-capacity links via submarine cables will change the ground rules and force operators to seek new sources of revenue. The inventiveness that has already been evident in mobile voice telephony will be needed once again if the “mobile divide” (in terms of costs, power supply, and so on) is not to widen.

This report takes stock of developments in this sector, which is crucial to Africa’s economic development, and suggests a number of possible directions it might take.

The electronic delivery of cash can be achieved through a variety of mechanisms - debit card, smart card or cellphone, using a range of financial infrastructure -banks, automated teller machines (ATMs) and point-of-sale (POS) devices. This brief outlines recent experiences from across Africa, with a focus on Kenya, Malawi, Namibia and Swaziland.

The benefits of electronic delivery systems to both governments and recipients are well known in terms of improved cost efficiency and flexibility of access, so this brief emphasises issues that are relevant to private sector partners, who are vital to the introduction of such systems.

The rapid penetration of cellphones in Africa, including both signal coverage and handset ownership, makes distribution of cash transfers by cellphone an increasingly viable proposition, as shown in Kenya through the M-PESA mechanism. Additionally the availability of cellphone signal has been instrumental in facilitating use of ofline smart cards for electronic delivery of cash transfers in Malawi and Namibia.

The growth of financial infrastructure and opportunity for banks to increase their market share has increased the favourability with which banks view potential participation in government-to-person cash transfers.

Evidence from Malawi and Swaziland shows that cash transfer recipients who are provided with bank accounts to receive their cash transfers tend to then use them to save money and to receive person-to-person transfers (e.g. remittances) – thus making further use of financial infrastructure and services.
In terms of scalability of electronic delivery systems, the time- and cost-intensive nature of the payment mechanism setup relative to the operating costs means that the incentive for private sector partners to engage is much greater for long-term programmes than short-term pilots.

Undertaking cash transfer programme registration formalities concurrently with private sector partner registration procedures (in terms of opening bank accounts or distributing SIM cards or smart cards) thus makes sense, wherever possible. It is also imperative that contractual obligations for the government implementer and private sector partner be agreed upfront, smart cards) thus makes sense, wherever possible. It is also imperative that contractual obligations for the government implementer and private sector partner be agreed upfront, desmart cards) thus makes sense, wherever possible. It is also imperative that contractual obligations for the government implementer and private sector partner be agreed upfront, defining respective roles and responsibilities, together with a grievance procedure in case of non-compliance.

As well as the growing base of evidence from projects and programmes in Kenya, Malawi, Namibia and Swaziland, other countries that have expressed interest in the use of electronic delivery systems include Ghana, Lesotho and Mozambique.

It is believed that once groups acquire information and communication technologies (ICTs), they will prosper. When the most marginalized members of society have better access to information and knowledge, the likelihood of improving their livelihoods also increases. Past literature has dealt with the difficulties that such groups have had in accessing and acquiring technology because of institutional obstacles. This thesis examines the institutional obstacles and constraints faced by groups once they have
acquired ICTs.

I intend to examine why, despite the rapid diffusion of ICTs in developing countries over the past decade, there has not been a dramatic improvement in the alleviation of poverty. In particular, this thesis will explore the use of mobile phones in the context of development and poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa and the relationship between institutions and local stakeholders to strengthen livelihoods.

This thesis hypothesizes that development initiatives using a collaborative, hybrid approach that integrates effective institutional involvement with inclusive grassroots participation will be more sustainable and scalable than those that attempt solely topdown or bottom-up approaches. In other words, initiatives devised by institutions that rely upon structures incorporating local communities into projects will be found to be more successful in both the short-term and long-run. Case studies have been selected to illustrate how this hybrid approach is ultimately more successful in improving the livelihoods of the rural poor than approaches that are either primarily driven by the topdown or bottom-up.

The four cases considered in this thesis will describe the extent to which projects or initiatives using mobile phones have been successful in meeting the needs of local beneficiaries and improving their livelihoods.

In the context of the rapid growth of mobile phone penetration in developing countries, mobile telephony is currently considered to be particularly important for development. Yet, until recently, very little systematic evidence was available that shed light on the developmental impacts of mobile telecommunication.

The Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) program of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada, has played a critical role in filling some of the research gaps through its partnerships with several key actors in this area.

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the case of mobile phones as a tool in solving development problems drawing from the evidence of IDRC supported projects. IDRC has supported around 20 projects that cut across several themes such as livelihoods, poverty reduction, health, education, the environment and disasters. The projects will be analyzed by theme in order to provide a thematic overview as well as a comparative analysis of the development role of mobile phones. In exploring the evidence from completed projects as well as the foci of new projects, the paper summarizes and critically assesses the key findings and suggests possible avenues for future research.

Due partly to costly information, price dispersion across markets is common in developed and
developing countries. Between 2001 and 2006, cell phone service was phased in throughout Niger, providing an alternative and cheaper search technology to grain traders and other market actors. We construct a novel theoretical model of sequential search, in which traders engage in optimal search for the maximum sales price, net transport costs. 

The model predicts that cell phones will increase traders’ reservation sales prices and the number of markets over which they search, leading to a reduction in price dispersion across markets.  To test the predictions of the theoretical model, we usea unique market and trader dataset from Niger that combines data on prices, transport costs, rainfall and grain production with cell phone access and trader behavior.  We first exploit the quasi-experimental nature of cell phone coverage to estimate the impact of the staggered introduction of information technology on market performance. 

The results provide evidence that cell phones reduce grain price dispersion across markets by a minimum of 6.4 percent and reduce intra-annual price variation by 10 percent.  Cell phones have a greater impact on price dispersion for market pairs that are farther away, and for those with lower road quality. This effect becomes larger as a higher percentage of markets have cell phone coverage.  We provide empirical evidence in support of specific mechanisms that partially explain the impact of cell phones on market performance. 

Robustness checks suggest that the results are not driven by selection on unobservables, nor are they solely a result of general equilibrium effects.  Calculations of the four-firm concentration index suggest that the grain market structure is competitive, so the observed reductions in price dispersion are not due to greater market collusion.  The primary mechanism by which cell phones affect market-level outcomes appears to be a reduction in search costs, as grain traders operating in markets with cell phone coverage search over a greater number of markets and sell in more markets.  The results suggest that cell phones improved consumer and trader welfare in Niger, perhaps averting an even worse outcome during the 2005 food crisis.