A global network of people using mobile technology for social impact.
The authors study the economic effects of the roll-out of mobile phone network coverage in rural South Africa, addressing identification issues which arise from the fact that network roll-out cannot be viewed as an exogenous process to local economic development.
The authors combine spatially coded data from South Africa's leading network provider with annual labor force surveys, and use terrain properties to construct an instrumental variable that allows us to identify the causal effect of network coverage on economic outcomes under plausible assumptions.
The study finds substantial effects of cell phone network roll-out on labor market outcomes with remarkable gender-specific differences. Employment increases by 15 percentage points when a locality receives network coverage. A gender-differentiated analysis shows that most of this effect is due to increased employment by women. Household income increases in a pro-poor way when cellular infrastructure is provided.
Souktel, an SMS service based in the Middle East and East Africa, is all about connections. The service, launched in 2006, uses SMS to connect users to everything from jobs and internships to humanitarian aid and youth leadership programs.
The name comes from "souk," the Arabic word for "marketplace," and "tel," or "telephone. Although at least 80 percent of people in Palestine have access to mobile phones, most people have Internet access only in cafés or public places, said Jacob Korenblum, co-founder of Souktel. "Getting information about medical care, jobs, and food bank services can be difficult," he said. And even at Internet cafes, Korenblum said that many people, especially women, lack access to these services. "We wanted to develop a very simple service," he said. "That's how Souktel started."
Souktel works to connect job seekers with employers and to connect humanitarian groups with people that are seeking aid.
Using Souktels' JobMatch, users can create mini-resumes, which are then accessible by employers. Employers can post job listings, which users can search by factors like job or location. With AidMatch, humanitarian agencies can send messages to field staff, or send create mailing lists and let recipients know when aid is available.
youth, aidworkers, general public
Matching people with jobs has been one of Souktel’s biggest successes, said Korenblum. “When a woman who can't go to Internet cafes finds a job through Souktel, that’s a huge success,” he said. Souktel has also been successful in partnering with other organizations, like universities and humanitarian organizations such as Mercy Corp, UN-OCHA and the Red Cross/Red Crescent. For the university partners, this is the first time that they have used mobile technology and none of them have job centers.
Challenges have included working with the different mobile carriers. The cost of SMS, which averages about $.05 US in Palestine, is also a challenge.
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phlebotomistd37
Macmillan South Africa
SMS Media