The digital divide is beginning to close. The flow of digital information – through mobile phones, text messaging, and the Internet – is now reaching the world’s masses, even in the poorest countries, bringing with it a revolution in economics, politics, and society.

Extreme poverty is almost synonymous with extreme isolation, especially rural isolation. But mobile phones and wireless Internet end isolation, and will therefore prove to be the most transformative technology of economic development of our time.

Intel once again has both dominance and momentum in the chip world, so when it opened its biggest conference of the year on Tuesday the company didn’t need to resort to chest thumping. Instead, it aimed to inspire.

Chairman Craig Barrett delivered the keynote address at the Intel (INTC) Developer Forum in San Francisco, an event that the company uses to rally the technology community behind its products and vision. But rather than take an us-versus-them view of the world, Barrett used the stage to urge technologists to use their skills to improve healthcare, education, global economic development and the environment. He also announced the Intel Challenge, in which Intel will give four $100,000 prizes to entrepreneurs with the boldest ideas in those areas.

At a press conference this morning in Mumbai, mobile-banking company Obopay announced an alliance with Grameen Solutions -- an alliance with an extraordinarily ambitious goal. In ten years' time, the companies said, they would like to see 1 billion of the world's poor -- people living on less than $2 a day -- receiving banking services via their mobile phones. It probably won't happen, but it would be amazing if it did.

The Indian government wasn't interested, so OLPC partners with Reliance ADA Group to bring computers to India's primary school kids.

By Nandini Lakshman

Nicholas Negroponte has found it tough going in India. For years as the head of MIT's Media Lab, the famed computer scientist promoted radical ways to use technology to transform society. His best-known idea is the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program (BusinessWeek, 6/5/08), a plan to make a simple, $100 laptop that would create a digitally literate generation in the hardscrabble classrooms of emerging-market nations. The laptop, now dubbed the XO, is finally being mass-produced in China.

In 2001, the computer scientist came to India to promote the Media Lab, but failed to impress New Delhi. Negroponte clearly fell off the India map, when then-Information Technology Minister Arun Shourie dismissed his efforts as "pedagogically suspect" and wanted more accountability. When Negroponte's nonprofit One Laptop per Child foundation approached the Indian government in 2006, his project was again rebuffed by India's then-Education Secretary, Sudeep Banerjee (BusinessWeek.com, 8/16/06).

In the higgledy-piggledy streets of Bethelsdorp, a sprawling South African township once designated for people of mixed race, what at first glance appears to be a colourful new youth movement is gathering strength. Adherents sport blue T-shirts and baseball caps and lug brimming satchels. They roam the streets, knocking on the doors of the township's shacks and simple bungalow homes.

In the anarchic days of the apartheid era such youths might have been "comrades" rallying local morale against the police. More recently they might have been members of a nattily dressed new gang. But they are not. They are salespeople for a mobile-telephone-based community-banking scheme.

"We are telling people how easy it is to have a bank account," says Antonio Loots, the community banker for Standard Bank, South Africa's largest bank, who cruises around the township in his ancient BMW overseeing the salespeople. "Places like Bethelsdorp are very remote from traditional banking structures. For an initiative like this to work it must have local input."

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If one believes in the story of a relentless, meteoric rise, Bangalore-based Affordable Business Solutions or ABS as it is well-known, is just the right case in point. The quintessential trail blazer, true to its name, has achieved steady success in just a matter of four years since its inception, and strictly on its own terms. Co-founders, Srikant Rao and Ravindra Kini, recount their story, which abounds in interesting facets of the company's continued tryst with the SME.

Breaking the Mould: The SME Way
Setting up a joint business in 2004 was a conscious decision for the two friends, who decided to pool in their expertise in the industry and leverage it for their own venture. Recalls Rao in jest, "We plunged head-long into ABS to resolve a mid-life crisis. I am a sales and marketing person, while Kini has a finance and HR background; so our combined experience was quite vast and diverse."

After ruling out obvious business options like ITES and IT solutions for large enterprises, Rao and Kini started ABS. In a marked departure from the convention prevalent then, ABS was going to center itself on overall functional solutions for the SME market. 

The duo had to counter ‘well-meaning' advice from various quarters that intended to deter them from the SME market, since technology would never be well-received there. The other obvious hurdle was the fact that the mid-size manufacturing industry in India was virtually over. The next evident question was, "Who actually would be ABS's clientele?" Recalls Rao, "We did not know any better, so we decided we would walk-in and meet prospective customers directly and have impromptu sessions with them to understand their needs, and then work out where we could add value."

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AUDITIONING of participants for the Entrepreneur TV Series sponsored by ECOBANK and Vitamalt has moved to Aba, Abia State. The Aba auditioning is coming barely two days after the Kano show, which had participants from most of the northern states scuttling for place in the TV reality series. Producer of the TV series, Inspire Media Production Company says the Aba auditioning is meant to take care of interested participants from the South East and South South part of the country.

Executive Director of the company, Goke Dokun, in a chat with the media in Kano, venue of the first auditioning, said so far the TV series has been highly successful as prospective entrepreneurs from the northern part of the country daily thronged the Kano venue to get a place in the show.

Dokun assured the public that the Entrepreneur TV Series promises to be rewarding for prospective and growing entrepreneurs, as well as an entertaining TV show, the first of its kind in Nigeria.

For Dokun, the Entrepreneur TV Series is designed as a platform to invest in innovative social enterprises that will help achieve a positive social impact, alleviating poverty and empowering small businesses.

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The shortest distance between a U.S. shopper and the product he or she craves: credit, preferably of the card variety.

For many Latin American consumers hoping to get their hands on a personal computer, the barrier is the same - or more precisely, it's the lack of credit.

"Really, nobody but a couple companies will finance consumers," said Peter Weigandt, head of Dell Inc.'s business in Latin America.

Dell and other computer makers are developing novel ways to tap into the rapid growth in Latin America and other emerging markets. In Mexico, Dell and Telmex launched a program five years ago that allows consumers to buy a PC, then pay for it in installments on their monthly phone bills. Because Telmex controls nearly all the phone lines in Mexico, Weigandt says, the program has had a very low default rate.

By David Lehr and Daniel Greenstadt

For this receiver contribution David Lehr teamed up with Daniel Greenstadt, an international trade, sustainability and economic development partner at Thomas Associates International, to take a look at the leveraging effects mobile technology can have on the base of the global economic pyramid.

Four billion of us live at the base of the global economic pyramid. We face staggering challenges related to health, housing, energy, the environment and access to appropriate and emerging technologies. Much of the economic development assistance in emerging economies comes from charity, grants or loans from organizations such as the United Nations, World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Asian Development Bank (ADB), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and a variety of other multilateral, bilateral and NGO agencies. Despite their good work, the myriad problems of poverty continue to plague communities in the developing world.

Today, new models are appearing that recognize not merely the immense need but also the tremendous opportunity that may be waiting at the base of the economic pyramid. A new class of entrepreneurs are seeing the potential to make money for themselves from upcoming technologies while building wealth for their communities with market-based approaches. From local micro-businesses to global commercial giants, a range of profit-motivated enterprises are deploying innovative technologies, novel approaches and communication tools to solve some of the most pressing problems faced by the vast majority of the world's population. Against such an entrepreneurial backdrop, the mobile phone is emerging as an unexpectedly effective and flexible tool. In many impoverished places, opportunity is calling, and those calls are being answered on a rapidly growing scale.

Leading microfinance lender SKS Microfinance will join hands with Nokia and Airtel for providing cheap handsets to the poor. "This is our pilot project. We are in the process of it and the MoU is soon to be signed," Vikram Akula, CEO of SKS Microfinance said here today.

The company will launch the project in Andhra Pradesh first. "As much as 15 per cent of the customers of SKS are already having handsets. We expect 75 per cent of our customers to go for these cheap mobiles," SKS chief operating officer M R Rao said. 

The company has also approached the Reserve Bank for mobile banking, on which there are regulatory constraints, he said while announcing the performance of the company in the last fiscal.

The NBFC also has plans to venture into newer areas of microfinance and is planning to provide non-financial services like food, consumer durables, health, disaster management to the poor.