mobile communications
Posted by fredericknoronha on Aug 25, 2008
Beauticians in Pakistan, sex-workers in Serbia, taxi drivers in Thailand. What do they have in common? They're all being helped by mobile phones which make it cheaper to start up businesses, and reduce the cost of operating. Besides sparking off "entrepreneurship," mobiles across the globe are giving a spurt to productivity, says a June 2008 World Bank report on The Role of Mobile Phones in Rural Poverty Reduction.
This report was missing from the citation of the GSMA Development Fund just produced, so we are reviewing it here.
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Aug 25, 2008
In our exploration this week of the social impact of mobiles phones on livelihoods, the GSMA Development Fund has aggregated key research studies from the last few years on the social and economic impact of mobile telephony in developing countries.
We are very pleased that key practitioners and researchers from the field cited in the report will be leading sessions at MobileActive08 such as Jonathan Donner, Microsoft and Jesse Moore, GSMA Development Fund.
There is a growing body of impact studies that indicate the substantial effect that mobile telephony has on the lives and livelihoods of poor people. The GSMA Development Fund compendium (attached for easy download) lists 20 studies conducted between 2005 and early 2008, and cites other, related reseaech in a well-done overview.
A few examples:
