Don't tell Flannery about any cell phone shortages! (
From his blog)
Jess graduated two weeks ago. I had a lot of time to sit around with my family and read. I picked up Forbes Magazine. A cover story on African business reads:
With few banks around the continent, mobile networks pick up the slack. A South African company called Wizzit allows rural farms and other employers to pay their workers in credits that are good on a credit card or via cell phone. People can send one another money over the network or withdraw sums from a cash machine. With 160,000 users, stores are already using Wizzit to accept cell phone payments.
I heard about Wizzit this January and my mind raced. A few days later I heard of similar services across East Africa. In Kenya, Safaricom is following suit and so is K-Net in Uganda. Cell phones are life in East Africa. Sometimes it can feel like nothing works in East Africa -- except mobile. Even the poorest, most remote towns in Uganda are colored red and yellow with the Celltel brand. It seems like everything the govt touches goes to hell. Celltel, a banner to privatization, is thriving.
My imagination fades into the future. Can Kiva one day enable a loan directly to a Ugandan phone? It might not be so far off. Hold on Dirk.
