Title: Tweaking technology for the bottom four billion
Author: Kafil Yamin
Source: SciDev.Net
Date (published): 30/07/2010
Date (accessed): 03/08/2010
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
Texting is great if you are literate. But for those who cannot read and write it is a useless feature of a piece of technology — the mobile phone — that is otherwise beautifully pro-poor.

Romdoul Kim, who works for the nongovernmental organisation Innovative Support To Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters [InSTEDD] in Cambodia, would muse on this problem as she witnessed its consequences: the poor could not benefit from the flow of information that could otherwise have been passing between health workers and patients in her area.

The solution, Romdoul told a conference earlier this year in Jakarta, Indonesia, was GeoChat, a facility that turns the spoken word into the written word and allows information to be gathered on subjects ranging from disease outbreaks to rural businesses.

GeoChat is an example of a technology that has been tweaked and adapted so it can reach the poorest people — those who inhabit the "base of the pyramid", or BoP.