The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has launched an electronic food voucher pilot project — the first of its kind in the world to use mobile phone technology — to aid 1,000 Iraqi refugee families in Syria. Iraqi refugees living in Damascus will receive a text message on their mobiles providing a code enabling [...]
Trevor Prideaux, who was born without his left arm, used to have to balance the smartphone on his prosthetic arm or put it on a flat surface to use it. But now Mr Prideaux, 50, can call and text his loved ones without moving the mobile, which is embedded into his fibreglass and laminate limb. [...]
In early September, 29 community health workers (CHWs) began using Nokia cell phones as the latest tool in the fight against cholera. The specially programmed phones help track information about cholera patients in isolated communities throughout Haiti’s Central Plateau – an important step in gathering the up-to-date infection data that could prevent more deaths. In [...]
Some of the farmers who lost their crops in the Horn of Africa drought this year may be able to afford farming next season, with the help of a ‘micro-insurance’ scheme. Kilimo Salama — Swahili for ‘safe farming’ — was launched last year, providing small-scale farmers in Kenya with crop insurance by combining mobile phone [...]
The ability to contribute to your favorite California political candidates will soon be just a text message away, after the state’s ethics agency took a step Thursday to bring campaigning into the 21st century. The state Fair Political Practices Commission voted to allow contributions by text message as long as the candidates report the identity [...]
Africa is in the midst of a technological revolution, and nothing illustrates that fact than the proliferation of mobile phones. Consider this: more Africans have access to mobile phones than to clean drinking water. In South Africa, the continent’s strongest economy, mobile phone use has gone from 17 percent of adults in 2000 to 76 [...]
