Reflection 11/06 – Mobile Techonolgy in Kenya & Afghanistan

The M-Pesa is a good example of “teaching them how to fish instead of giving fish”. The author and his organization hied local company and employees for the project, offered the training and all other related knowledge in order to maintain the service, shows that it is not just a short-term mission from the foreign private companies who just want some money and run. We all need to realize how hard and yet important it is to maintain a good service and keep the good quality going.  The mission of M-Pesa not only introduce a secured online banking service to people who didn’t even have bank accounts before, and it also changes people’s life.

I believe the development of mobile phones in Afghanistan dramatically changed people’s life there as well. For a nation that was constantly in the war and nobody was allowed to communicate with each other till almost three years ago, bringing cell phone communication defeniltely opens up the world for them and they can contact families who are not in the country much easier. Here in this case, we are not talking about the convenience of SMS, cellphone cameras and MP3 players, we are talking about the basic function of the phone – communication. When thinking about how long it took for Afghanistan to adopt this techonolgy, it is not hard to understand why mobile phone grows rapidly there, it matches Prahalad’s theory, the bottom of the pyramid represents a huge market.

The two mobile communication development missions in Kenya and Afghanistan both seemed very difficult, and yet the latter one required the risk of being killed by the bombs. I need to mention that I am truly impressed by these people who was willing to try that hard to improve others life quality and again let me see the hope of humanity.