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Development

Democracy in Development: An Update on Mobile Technology in Development

<p>A vendor hawks second-hand mobile phones at the sprawling Kibera slum, one of the largest and poorest slums in Africa, near Ke&#8230;ne of the largest and poorest slums in Africa, near Kenya&#8217;s capital Nairobi on August 26, 2011 (Noor Khamis/Courtesy Reuters).</p>
A vendor hawks second-hand mobile phones at the sprawling Kibera slum, one of the largest and poorest slums in Africa, near Ke…ne of the largest and poorest slums in Africa, near Kenya’s capital Nairobi on August 26, 2011 (Noor Khamis/Courtesy Reuters).

By experts and staff

Published
  • Isobel Coleman
    Senior Fellow and Director of the Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Initiative; Director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program

This week on my blog, I featured a two-part series on mobile technology in the developing world. On Tuesday, I wrote about how mobile phones are enabling people in the developing world to access banking services and obtain life insurance. On Thursday, I discussed how mobile technology helps NGOs extend resources and aid to those in need—and how it helps evaluate the impact of these projects. As I write in Tuesday’s post:

In the past, one reason why banks did not court the poor as clients is because the cost of processing their small transactions outweighed any advantage to the bank; but mobile technology is significantly decreasing transaction costs.

You can read part one here and part two here.