Mobile For Development (m4dev) Roundup

This week I discovered a couple of very interesting articles on mobile for development (m4dev). This roundup includes is on a wide variety of players in this field - from Harvard and the Economist to Nextbillion.net and MobileActive.

• Bottom of the Pyramid using Social Networks (Nextbillion.net)
  

The internet is coming to the BoP and we must think ahead of radical innovations in new media that will better serve the BoP and maximize opportunities for economic upliftment, public-private partnerships, and overall development of local BoP communities.

• How Microsoft and Marico Harness Billions of Innovators (Harvard Business)
  

... you don't need to invent a solution for the socio-economic problems affecting BOP communities. The solution is already invented by social entrepreneurs in these communities. Rather than reinventing the wheel, firms should broker and finance the transformation (replication) of these grassroots inventions into large-scale applications for use across multiple communities worldwide.

• The Meek Shall Inherit the Web (Economist.com)
  

The developing world missed out on much of the excitement of the initial web revolution, the dotcom boom and Web 2.0, largely because it did not have an internet infrastructure. But developing countries may now be poised to leapfrog the industrialised world in the era of the mobile web.

• The Mobile Web is NOT helping the developing world (Mobileactive.org)
  

Furthermore, in the small Kenyan village where I live it's significantly less than 1 in 10 phones that can support the traditional 'mobile Web' experience, and it's probably closer to 1 in 1000 phones that have ever successfully connected to the web.

I believe we need to start thinking about how to leverage the existing infrastructure of phones present throughout these regions to serve as portals to the internet for the masses.

Image is by whiteafrican.