Most mobiles…

The BBC reports that Ericsson is providing equipment to bring mobile coverage to the Millennium Villages in Africa.  These villages are the foci of major pilots/experiments in holistic approaches to poverty reduction.  The partnership is great news, as ICTs (and mobiles in particular) are part of the puzzle.

Many of my former colleagues at the Earth Institute at Columbia University are working on the Millennium Villages Project, which is coordinated in collaboration with the UN.

Thanks to a (rare?) confluence of market forces, steady innovation and careful regulation, Most of the world’s population now lives under mobile phone signal, yet the economics of reaching the remain poor rural populations remain challenging. Experiments and pilots like the one announced by Ericsson and the Millennium Villages will be very helpful at this stage.  It is imporant to carefully track how phone ownership and use takes off in the villages, since the patterns that emerge will give us more information on the strength of demand, and the conditions under which any micro/targeted interventions might be necessary (and feasible).