The Role of Mobile Telephony in Sustainable Rural Poverty

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This paper, produced by the World Bank Group's Global ICT (GICT) department, examines the role of mobile telephones in sustainable poverty reduction among the rural economically poor. It discusses the role of information in rural poverty, explores whether mobile phones are the appropriate delivery mechanism, and examines growth of the mobile phone sector, availability of service, private sector growth, benefits to the rural economically poor, and emerging trends.

The document states that the barriers - educational, economic, and infrastructure-related (lack of electricity, in particular) - once thought by economists to limit information and communication technology (ICT) uptake, seem to be outstripped by the benefits. "This is not to say that these barriers no longer exist, but rather that developing economies have found ingenious ways around them, given the obvious benefits that the use of mobile telephony can bring, e.g., the lack of electricity in rural areas was believed to be an insurmountable barrier to mobile take-up. However, rural communities developed various ways to adapt to this obstacle: (a) collecting several mobiles from one community and heading to another village to charge them, as at an Issuana mission in Tanzania; (b) using car batteries to charge mobile phones."