id21 insights 69. Mobile phones and development: The future in new hands?

From:: Department for International Development
Published: 1 January 2007

Country:: Zambia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Jamaica
Document Type:: Briefing
Theme:: Research Communication and Uptake
Authors:: id21

Abstract

Half the world's 6.5 billion people now use a mobile (up from two billion just two years ago). There are more than twice as many mobile owners in developing countries as in industrialised countries. Subscriber growth rates in developing countries are 25 percent per year – and double that in Africa. This issue of id21 includes brief articles on Micro-entrepreneurs in Nigeria, the use of mobile phones to deliver information to Bangladeshi villagers, unequal gender relations in Zambia, mobile banking, and the various impacts of mobile phone use on different groups in Jamaica.

Citation

id21 insights 69, IDS, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, 6 pp.