I find the recent growth of mobile phone use by low-income Africans to be fascinating. They are quickly showing us that mobiles phone, not PCs, are the computers of the future for the developing world.
The growth of mobile phone use amongst low-income Africans will be beneficial to the developing world as a whole. It will provide a laboratory for creating a sustainable relationship between technology and the developing world.
Mobile phones provide an excellent platform for meeting the needs of low-income users. They’re an excellent platform because they provide a cost-effective way for companies to bring uniquely tailored products and services to the poor via the internet.
The future for creating mobile phone applications for low-income Africans is so bright that MIT recently opened its Entrepreneurial Program for Research on Mobiles (EPROM) in coordination with University of Nairobi (Thank you Tim O’Reilly for the heads ups).
The mobile phone programming curriculum will teach both Ethiopian and Kenyan computer science students to build mobile phone applications for the African market.
I’m sure this MIT/University of Nairobi relationship will prove to be vastly successful.
