Using Mobile Technology to fight poverty, Blog Action Day 2008

Today is blog action Day, a day when bloggers around the world focus on a particular topic and write up on it, The topic for 2008 is poverty and I am currently attending MobileActive (My Coverage).

I previously wrote about how mobiles can assist people in  poverty

In a study (PDF) by Harvard economist Robert Jensen he reported that when mobile phones were launched in kerala in 1997, Fisherman used the phones to call local markets while still at sea. This in turned helped raise profits by 8%, lowering consumer prices by 4% and reduced catch wastage from 6.5% to practically nothing.

Mobiles have proven to assist in lifting people out of poverty, though how do we capitalize on this and unlock the potential?

One of the ways i believe this can be done is by offering mobile solutions and using mobiles to assist people in the Informal market (Micro Enterprises). StartupAfrica hosted a session at MobileActive to discuss Online Market Places & Assisting the informal sector with mobile technology and there were some great ideas that came out of this.

Where can mobiles assist in the informal sector?

• Price Information
• Market Information
• Sourcing of raw materials / services
• Self organization between members
• Financial Services
• Customer Relationship Management
• Inventory Management

Examples

Cell Bazaar is a market place, for your mobile that allows people, without regular access to the internet to post classified listings and view them as well. They offer listings via SMS, Voice, and the Internet. Cell Bazaar lists one of the stories of Abdul, who is a farmer of Jack Fruit, and every year he is at the mercy of the buyer. Though once he finds out about Cell Bazaar, he is able to post his crop for sale and get the best possible price. Watch the video

Kazi 560 is a marketplace for jobs, where job alerts are sent via SMS. Registration can be done via any phone via a simple SMS and can be posted via SMS as well. Kazi 560 posts on average 100 jobs per a week, with 30,000 subscribers receiving alerts of jobs.

My take

Both of these solutions are great, Cell Bazaar is more general and applicable to any type of business while kazi 560 is pretty specific. Since mobile solutions are pretty limited (SMS Characters & Screen sizes), solutions need to be specific and created for specific niches. There are other informal industries out there that could benefit with the use of mobile technology.

Further Reading, Jonathan Donner’s research into the use of mobile technology by the informal sector.

Hat Tips: Juliana Rotich at Afromusing and Swati at Google for the Tip on the two sites.

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