Mobile for the poor

On February, 2012 I attended an event organized by Orange labs in Egypt. The event was entitled "Mobile for the poor, a luxury or necessity?"

Problem: They speakers  introduced the problem of no technology in rural areas in Egypt and Africa, where people don't enjoy even connectivity by mobile phones.

Goal: With the bless of being an engineer, we should use our technology knowledge to help rural areas to enjoy mobile connectivity. This will improve their living, and health.  

 

How can we help the poor?

The event hosted a competition. The competition aimed at finding a real problem affects people. Then propose a solution for it. My friend and I spotted the picture below. The picture was supposed to show the misery of poor sellers. We did not provide a solution, because we missed the deadline of the contest. However, you can check the winners here.

Did the contest solve all the problems for the poor ?
The contest is a good brainstorming for the topic. But there are a lot of opportunities to help the poor with our technology knowledge. To be more clear, we don't need to invent new technology. The aim is to use the current technology (which is awesome!) to aid the poor improving their living.

Ideas?
The topic was discussed with a lot of my colleagues. Although there are many opportunities to help the poor,  my colleagues and I were not able to find another idea along with the one mentioned above. Please, if you have any idea in mind, just message me and we can discuss how to implement it as soon as possible.

Examples:

• Allocate one phone with  the tribe's leader. The phone should be always connected to nearest hospital, to make sure that the poor get medical descriptions.
• One person can collect the tribe's needs from food and beverage, and send them by short message to nearest market.