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Text messages open window in developing countries

Mobile technology a lifeline, a source of news and inspiration

By Kara Rowland (Contact) | Sunday, June 15, 2008

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First of two parts

"Text your dreams for a new Zimbabwe to +2639124522201." The rate of inflation is more than 160,000 percent, food and fuel are hard to come by, torture victims flood private clinics and the government for five weeks wouldn't disclose results of the presidential election. Maintaining a sense of hope in Zimbabwe is difficult, if not impossible.

But Kubatana, an alliance of human rights groups in the small southern African nation, is trying. And one of the most effective ways of reaching people, they have found, is through text messaging.

"The mobile phone is used much more widely in Zimbabwe than any other communication tool," says Bev Clark, an activist who manages Kubatana.net. "Thus we see SMS [short message service] as a way of bridging the digital divide."

The organization uses texts to interact with more than 2,000 citizens signed up to receive their messages, which aim to lift morale as well as update those who might have no other access to media. During the country's recent elections, Ms. Clark said, residents of Beitbridge, a southern border town, said the group's texts were the only source of news during power outages.

More than 60 years after the first mobile telephone call, cell phones have evolved into perhaps the world's most revolutionary device. And with 3.3 billion of them worldwide, they're touching everyone, regardless of class, gender or nationality.

"It's the printing press. It's the telegraph. And it's happening right in front of our eyes," said Dr. Joel Selanikio, a physician who co-founded DataDyne, a D.C. maker of mobile software for public health officials in developing countries.

Unlike the Internet, access to cell phones is affordable enough that the number of mobile subscribers in developing countries has tripled in the past five years. The majority of the world's cell-phone subscribers - 58 percent - are now found in the developing world, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

"People may well not have shoes, but they have a cell phone," said Brian Richardson, chief executive officer of Wizzit, a South African mobile banking firm that targets the low-income population. "It just shows how important communication is."

In the West, mobile technology means keeping in touch, checking e-mail, listening to music, watching videos. In the developing world, it's a source of news and inspiration, a tool for reporting violence or distributing food, a lifeline.