Ken Banks, who invented a cell phone messaging service which has revolutionised how people communicate with one another in developing countries, said: “People are using mobile phones to lift themselves out of poverty by creating small businesses.”
He spoke about how entrepreneurs, from cities to rural areas, were using cell phones in ingenious ways, to transfer money, deliver important public health messages and monitor the supplies of life-saving drugs.
There are £350million cell phone users across Africa. In Botswana, vets in remote areas are using the technology to create a comprehensive map of cattle diseases, which allows them to act quickly in case of a serious outbreak, immunising cattle before the animals die needlessly.
In South Africa, an informal economy has emerged with people setting up small businesses such as mobile chargers in areas where there is no electricity. And in Kenya, people are using phones to transfer money and set up banking systems.
However, there has been very little progress in these areas in Zimbabwe. One area where the technology has been reasonably successful is political accountability, where subscribers have used cell phones to spread vital messages about state-sponsored violence, rigged results and visions of hope for a new Zimbabwe.
They achieved this through the use of Frontline SMS, a free tool invented by Banks which can be used with the most basic of mobile phones.
It was used extensively in Zimbabwe by NGOs to monitor the progress of Operation Murambatsvina and in the last elections by Kubatana which updated people on the latest election news and also asked people to send in their visions of what the future of
Zimbabwe looked like.
Banks said: “It empowered Zimbabweans who realised they could express their opinions and that they could have a say in the democratic process.”
Zimbabwean inventors are looking at other ways to use the service.
Banks said: “There is a guy from Zimbabwe who has built a mobile phone voting system, but governments do not want to use it because they can’t fix it. Governments often see mobile phones as a nuisance. In 2006, the Zimbabwean Government passed the Interception of Communications Act in Zimbabwe to monitor emails and sms under the guise of national security, but they did not know how to do it.”
Mobile phone reception is good, even in most of the rural areas, and although Zimbabweans do not yet have access to the internet, the government is investing US$15million in a 261km fibre optic cable from Harare to Mozambique via Mutare.
Post published in: Business