POVERTY: Kenya: mobile phone use

August 28, 2010
A STREET beggar's dirty hand is drawn to his mouth in the universal sign for hunger. A busy foreigner bustles past and shrugs, indicating he does not have any local coins.
''I take SMS,'' calls the beggar.
This truly is the digital economy. While Melburnians struggle to work out how to use a myki card, Kenya's capital, Nairobi, buzzes on a banking system based on short messages sent from mobile phones.
Known as m-pesa - ''pesa'' is Swahili for money - the mobile service works on a debit and credit principle. A vendor nominates a price, the buyer sends a text message to transfer funds between accounts. Should a person need hard currency, booths are dotted around the country so people can make withdrawals.
The service is booming. Almost 12 million Kenyans used m-pesa in the past year, sending $A462 million in small transactions.
Ready access to cheap mobile phones, even for the poor, gives the mobile money system many advantages over a traditional cash-based economy. Security is one thing - for Kenya's many slum dwellers, finding a safe place to stash savings is tricky.
M-pesa is the sort of thing that inspires hope for alleviating chronic poverty, using modern technology to best advantage. This was one of the ambitious Millennium Development Goals set by world leaders a decade ago to lift people out of poverty.
But with five years to run before these targets are due to be fulfilled in 2015, the world is falling far short of its ambition.
The number of people living on less than $1 a day is growing, so too the rate of women who die in childbirth. HIV/AIDS is spreading and the aim to give every child a chance of primary education is far from being met.
Add to this a global financial crisis that left the rich world feeling poor and the failure of last year's Copenhagen summit on global action on climate change, bringing a lopsided impact on those in greatest need.
The leaders' draft leaves this message: ''Our shared vision of development and the urgency to take decisive action to make the Millennium Development Goals a reality for all is more important than ever.''
Some have progress at their fingertips, but for others pain and poverty linger
http://www.smh.com.au/victoria/some-have-progress-at-their-fingertips-but-for-others-pain-and-poverty-linger-20100827-13w26.html