Mobile technology's world-saving mission
Published: 29 May 2008 16:45 BST
The 3.5 billion mobile phones in circulation worldwide represent more than half the world's 6.6 billion population. Of course, many people carry more than one mobile device, but that still means a large proportion of the world has access to wireless communications.
While almost all modern technologies are concentrated in rich countries — economies where the average person earns more than $30 a day — when it comes to mobile phones, the technology is just as prevalent in poor countries, where average income falls below $10 a day. Five-sixths of the world live in such areas.
The commercial success of the wireless industry is obviously impressive, but how is wireless technology changing the world? Is it, in fact, helping to make life better on earth?
For most people reading this, it is obvious that wireless technology has totally transformed the way we live. If we get lost in an unfamiliar part of town, we can use Google Maps on our smartphone to lead us back to familiar territory. Or when traffic has made us late for an important meeting, we can still get hold of the people we need to talk to.
The mobile phone is an ideal instrument for enabling the world's poorest individuals to help themselves
Danny Quah, LSE
In poorer countries these simple acts of hooking up and looking up are much more than mere convenience. In Kenya, finding the best price for a crop before starting a long, arduous journey to market can mean a substantial difference in daily income; for a contract labourer, being reachable while on the move can mean the difference between being employed for a day or missing out.
Given the impact mobile technology can have, it is right that we should have high expectations of its potential to tackle the world's most pressing problems in economic and social development. The majority of mobile phones are already in the hands of people living in poor countries.
Those sheer numbers, together with the technology's timeliness, speed, dispersion and decentralisation, make the mobile phone an instrument ideal for enabling the world's poorest individuals to help themselves.
A growing number of examples show how individuals and groups in the poorest countries use mobile technology in ingenious, important and even life-saving ways: for example, violence prevention under armed conflict in Kenya, or co-ordinating humanitarian relief in Syrian refugee camps and tsunami-stricken Indonesia.
Yet, because the stakes are so high, we need more than just anecdote and isolated case studies to understand the impact mobile technology can have in the developing world — useful though these can be for shedding light on the issues at hand. What succeeds in a small village might fail when rolled out...
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