How Mobile Technology has Changed the Life of the Poor
By - SynapseIndia
Introduction Mobile or wireless technology has reshaped the face of human communication for once and all. Today, out of the 7 billion people in the world, approximately 6 billion are cell phone subscribers. Not only communication, mobile technology has helped in changing a lot more things. In this presentation, we will be discussing how this particular technology has helped in addressing today's most pressing global challenges.
#1 - Education In education, mobile technology has helped provide schools, teachers, and parents access to meaningful data and tips to help students succeed. Eneza is one such platform which allows students to access quizzes, mini-lessons and tips and tricks on local content via the web, mobile web, and an USSD/SMS-based system. So far, Eneza has around 100,000 students at over 400 schools across Kenya, and over 20 schools subscribing to their data. Their next goal is to obtain 200,000 students to its platform by 2014.
#2 - Surveys and Polling Grants for projects in international development are heavily data driven. New developments in surveying and polling on mobile devices has allowed international development workers to easily collect data in rural communities and take an evolutionary leap from paper surveys. Such tools include formhub, an open source project of the Earth Institute, allows surveys to be created in minutes. The platform is accessible from any Android device with offline features, allowing for easy data collection and analysis anywhere.
#3 - Agriculture Mobile technology has also been extremely transformative tool for rural agriculture. Mobile phones have allowed farmers to gain access to market prices before traveling long distances to markets. The Kenyan text messaging platform SokoniSMS64 uses SMS to quickly transfer exact information about wholesale retails of crops, allowing farmers to be able to negotiate deals with traders and improve upon timing to get crops to the market.
#4 - Banking Mobile phones are quickly helping change this statistic. Today more than 55 million Africans use basic phone services to transfer money with each other, take out insurance policies, and collect payments from government agencies. M-Pesa is one such platform helping users to pay bills or buy products.
#5 - Data Analysis Data extracted from cell phones and mobile networks amount to a trail of information and powerful evidence for tracking, identifying, and prosecuting traffickers. Mobile technology also helps create awareness among vulnerable communities and generating neighborhood awareness for criminal activity. Global Initiatives such as the Polaris Project have used data to map and identify existing anti-trafficking hotlines worldwide to enable better coordination for victims to receive protection across borders.
#6 - Mobile Health In recent years, the growth of mobile health technologies, including health text messaging projects, remote monitoring, portable sensors, and mobile phone apps, have changed the way healthcare is delivered globally, with the potential to provide individuals with an unprecedented amount of access to health resources. Perhaps one of the biggest breakthroughs is the potential of mobiles to end life threatening disease. At present the international NGO,Malaria No More is tackling the spread of Malaria, both on the ground and internationally through mobile technology.
Conclusion These examples have proved it again that technology can really touch and change lives for good. Way to go... More to come..!!
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