A little while back Fast Company published an article on Grameen Phone’s phone ladies:
Unplanned Obsolescence
Grameen’s famous Village Phone Program lifted thousands out of poverty– and helped Muhammad Yunus win the Nobel Peace Prize. The problem: It’s not working anymore.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/118/unplanned-obsolescence.html
There is a counterpoint to this article on the website for one of the about-Yunus books:
Primarily, the FC article notes that the “phone lady” model is no longer working in Bangladesh; mobile phones have become too ubiquitous. The counterpoint says FC is missing the forest for the trees; the fact that mobile phones are more ubiquitous speaks to the growth in the overall income of the area (or to the drop in price of mobile phones).
In most of the villages I went to in Uganda, the VillagePhones (a collaboration between Grameen and MTN) operated alongside mobile phone vendors from a variety of service providers (Celtel, UTL/Mango), and there was mostly ubiquitous coverage. However, that wasn’t always the case – generally the Village phones start out in areas where a mobile phone would need a rather unwieldy booster antenna in order to have reception. Eventually the mobile service providers are able to extend their coverage and build a nearby cell tower, allowing more traditional mobile phones to work, and lowering the barrier to entry; the capital required to be a “village phone”. I don’t think it’s clear that it is the village phone that causes the mobile service providers to expand their networks, although certainly MTN‘s presence in a particular area causes some “first-to-market” fears in Celtel and UTL. At the same time, I suspect the development of rural telecommunications infrastructure is much more driven by goverment policy (and certainly rural subsidy taxes), and the Ugandan Communications Commision’s (UCC - the FCC of Uganda) forward-looking efforts to find ways to help rural areas benefit from communications infrastructure.
Replication of the Village Phone in other countries (e.g. Uganda) aside it goes to say that the ultimate goal of most development projects should be obscelescence. Wouldn’t it be great if extreme poverty were eradicated and everyone would have the power to (as Jeffrey Sachs might say) raise themselves on the ladder of development?
p.s. Another interesting article – on how housing/property demands are changing the lives of farmers in India. I think this guy is faring better than the lottery winners in the US.
Heidi J. Shrager, Chronicle Foreign Service
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Great Site – really useful information!k