Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and special adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals, was interviewed on allAfrica on how mobile devices could potentially revolutionize how development assistance works.
“It doesn’t take more than a few phones to make a transformative difference in an area. We’re seeing small businesses develop by virtue of people having phones, being able to find clients, make purchases, get supplies. There’s e-banking or mobile banking, which has been pioneered in a few places, like Kenya, but I think it’s just going to spread dramatically now. And more and more we’re seeing new services added to the cell phones, and especially as we move from 2G to 3G [second- to third-generation] mobile standards I think we’re going to see an incredible burst of new uses of the phones.”