For many years, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has, through educational initiatives and work in the field, been attempting to help bridge the digital divide that disenfranchises so many in the developing world from the benefits of modern communications and thus stunts economic growth.Now the United Nations (UN) is sponsoring a programme to help alleviate poverty in rural Africa, an area characterised as being populated by "the poorest of the poor."
Research conducted and published a couple of years ago shows that in developing areas the availability of just 10 mobile handsets per 100 head of population rapidly translates into a 0.6 per cent rise in National Gross Domestic Product, a truly remarkable statistic. Meanwhile, in South Africa, the government says that every additional mobile phone introduced into economically deprived areas results in the creation of at least one new job.
Under the UN's Millennium Villages initiative, an additional 500,000 individuals in 79 remote villages across 10 different African countries are be provided with a mobile handsets and it is expected that at least half a million new jobs will be created as the result, boosting local economies. The UN also expects that heathcare and education will also be improved.
Under the terms of the programme, mobile network infrastructure is being extended to far-flung areas that are presently well-beyond the reach of even the most basic telecoms services. The UN says these are places that "would not normally be considered a priority for mobile phone companies" and are "located in hunger 'hotspots' where chronic hunger is widespread, often accompanied by a high prevalence of disease, lack of access to medical care and a severe lack of infrastructure."
In Africa the Millennium Villages are situated in countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Senegal and Uganda and, in addition to allowing remote settlements to be in easy contact with the rest of their nations, the new networks (almost all of which are based on satellite communications) will be used to exchange agricultural market data allowing farmers to decide when and where to sell their products to best advantage.
Additionally, the UN hopes a well-known knock-on effect of the arrival of mobile telephony, the introduction of basic banking facilities and "micro-payments" systems will be repeated in the Millennium Villages
A UN spokesperson says, "From day one [of the introduction of cellular telephony] farmers will be using mobile to get business as will taxi drivers and even casual labourers and soon other people will begin to source the information they need.
Past lessons have shown that many Africans are entrepreneurial enough to develop their own services and solutions once a technology arrives."
Most of the infrastructure supporting the Millennium Villages initiative is being provided – free of charge – by Ericsson of Sweden but the services themselves are designed to be managed, and billed, by local operators.
Ericsson is installing robust and proven 2G technology capable of providing data services at download speeds of up to 200 kbit/s as well as voice. Carl-Henric Svanberg, Ericsson's CEO says, "That is basic but fairly good broadband-capable network."
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