The Grameen Foundation has lifted some of the world’s poorest through
lending circles dealing in the smallest amounts of money. Now it is
trying to use mobile phone texts, cloud computing and software to scale
its successful microfinance model to reach more people around the
globe.

Many of the tech ideas behind that vision are being formed here, in an
office building off downtown Seattle’s bustling Belltown area. In their
10th floor suite, two dozen former high-tech industry workers are using
the skills they honed at Microsoft, Oracle and McKinsey for global
development.

They have created mobile phone and Internet applications to warn
farmers in Uganda of banana crop rot, remind pregnant women of medical
checkups, keep microlending programs in check through cloud-based
applications and use Web-based data to make sure their program are
working.

“Tech is an enabler, not the end goal. It’s about putting information
into people’s hands and empowering them,” David Edelstein, vice
president of technology programs for Washington D.C.-based Grameen,
says in a recent interview.

Grameen is one of several organizations, including the World Bank and
the U.S. State Department that have grasped onto the power of mobile
phone technology in their objectives for development work. Ironically,
cutting-edge information applications and the ubiquitous availability
of mobile phones in some of the poorest of nations have made cell
phones a new platform for development work. Mobile phones -- 5 billion
globally -- are being adopted faster than any technology. A family may
share one phone or, for as little as $1 in some African nations, it may
buy a SIM card to use in a village phone.

That spells opportunity, development groups say. If the world's
neediest are already using the technology, it can also be used to
transfer and gather information and create commerce, they say.

“Our ultimate objective is to get people to save and to deal with even
the smallest of transactions of a few dollars, which banks don’t do now
because of high transaction costs," Ignacio Mas, deputy director of
financial services at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, says in an
interview. "That is how to reach the world's poorest."

Seattle, home to the Gates Foundation, has become a magnet for
high-tech global philanthropists. Mas is using mobile banking
technology to help villagers in Africa and Pakistan save money by
converting cash into electronic money in villages that banks are
overlooking. The Gates Foundation has funded a $34 million initiative
for central bank officials around the world to learn from countries
such as Kenya. That nation’s biggest telecommunications firm and a bank
have transformed small shops into virtual banks for rural villagers,
who are able to convert cash into electronic currency through text
messaging of deposits and withdrawals of money through mobile phones.

The Grameen Technology Centre, formed nine years ago by a former
executive at Microsoft, has deployed applications in Uganda that send
text-message reminders for neo-natal patients in Ghana to take
medication and tests. Through a partnership with Google and the local
telecom service provider, Grameen is able to collect data through smart
phones on how farmers are dealing with crop disease and then serve up
instructions from the cell phones on how farmers can keep their crops
from getting infected.

Culled from Washington Post

 

 

 

 

 

 

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