Cellphones Leapfrog Poor Infrastructure in Mali

Hugh Pickens writes "CBC News has up an article by Peace Corps volunteer Heidi Vogt, a woman who served in the small village of Gono in Mali five years ago and remembers letters dictated and hand-carried by donkey cart or bicycle to the next town. Vogt recently returned to see the changes that cellphone communications have made in a village that still doesn't have electricity or decent drinking water. 'Gono's elders say the phones can keep them in touch with their village diaspora,' writes Vogt. 'Villagers depend on far-off relatives to send money in time of crisis — if someone is sick, if a house has caught fire, if there's been too little or too much rain and the harvest is poor. There's a new sense of connection to a larger world. In a village where most people can't read or write, they can now communicate directly with far-off relatives.'"

Phones before guns

[bornwaysouth]

Nice article. Positives and negatives, with the mum worried by her sons who do not call.

The effect of cell phones is to allow a village to remain much the same village, despite the children dispersing. Over time, the kids will marry away, but the blow gets softened, and the children are stabilized by contact with home.

So it is a good thing over all. The interesting bit is: who pays for the village phones. Just the children. When you think that this is a force for stability, and how cheap phones are compared to machine guns, it is a pity that some military dollars didn't go into these phones.

Preemption

[clarkkent09]

Ok, if you are going to be the first person to post "what do they need cellphones/computers/internet for, give them food instead" type of post in this thread, I have something to say to you. You are an idiot. Please try to understand that you are an idiot and shouldn't be posting your idiotic opinions on slashdot or anywhere else. Instead, try to improve yourself somehow, take some classes or whatever. It won't help, but at least it will keep you busy.

Wrong Solutions?

[WhiteWolf666]

I hate to be a first-world asshole, but why would be happy that a third world village is dependent upon its diaspora? Why is this an acceptable state of affairs? Doesn't it bother anyone that these means of communication aren't really sparking commerce?

Instead of sending them food, cellphones, water, or weapons, why not send them some capitalism? Microloans, an active press to fight corruption, and education in systems of law and governance?

Decades of assistance to the third world, and all manner of socialist leaders ready to aid and reform have done little except generate more poverty. Perhaps, instead of giving to the third world, we should start taking; in the form of purchasing agricultural goods, in ecotourism, and other friendly means to transfer money to these areas while simultaneously encouraging (and rewarding!!) hardwork?

It is very, very difficult to motivate yourself to do anything, and create anything, particularly in terrible conditions, without payoff. I think the current state of the third world proves this.

It is difficult for me to watch people prescribe aid, because foreign aid tends to be useless, and siphoned off into corruption. It would be far better to encourage a vibrant economy, both here (by ending 1st world agricultural subsidies), and abroad (by buying good and products from "known good" third world sources).

Re:Wrong Solutions?

[WhiteWolf666]

No, but that's mainly because I've got a limited budget, and existing business interests in other places in northern and western africa, eastern europe, and latin america.

I've a feeling I've seen similar villages to the one discussed in the article, though.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. One of the biggest shocks to me in my life was when I visited a small village in Ethiopia dominated by a former communal farm. One of the middle level farm workers asked me, in English, why the U.S. maintained such high subsidies on cotton and rice; why wouldn't the U.S., master of free trade, import Ethiopian cotton and rice?

They didn't want aid; they didn't want "education". They wanted to know why we refused to buy their products, even though their products were produced more cheaply than ours.

How do you answer that? Coming from someone who makes less in a month than I might spend in a night.

Maybe it is just me, but there is only one answer; abject shame, apologies, and a decision to try one's hardest to pursue business in the forgotten realms of this planet.

Re:Good start.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

People have been killing each other in the absense of American weapons for millennia. All that's needed to kill is a rock. Sometimes not even that. The abundance of rocks suitable for killing probably doesn't cause the demand for weaponized rocks. The same with pointy sticks. I think it's basic human nature. People with any sort of power are willing to kill to keep it. Others wanting power are willing to kill for it. The same goes for resources. It's quite a vicious feedback loop, but the availability of a weapon isn't the root cause.

I also really don't think it's fair to single out US weapons suppliers when probably every country that makes weapons sells them too. Russia, China, France, the UK and maybe every other "major" country exports weapons.

Re:Good start.

[Neuticle]

I'm forgoing using my shiny new Mod-points to say- ^^This^^

Look at Kenya, once a bastion of African stability (corruption not withstanding). Pretty much the nicest, most progressive and most developed sub-Saharan country in Africa, second only to SA (and what Zimbabwe once was)

In the space of a few weeks, they went from stability to killing each other with pangas, bows and arrows. Guns aren't the problem.

Re:with out power it is hard to keep your phone ba

[networkBoy]

Not as impressive if you consider that there is little to no spectral interference either.

Re:Good start.

[spleen_blender]

Why add fuel to the fire though? If the end result of any action is supposed to be peace (I can't imagine an argument against wanting peace at large), and all people are equal, than how can you accept knowingly that there are businesses around you built on perpetuating (Or at least de-incentivized to stopping) a violent cycle for the sake of taking the resources of a land which should be used for the betterment of the people of the nation.

All I'm saying is that the economic wealth we enjoy (and if you're using a computer on the internet right now, you're probably one of the "we" I am referring to) is built solely on the pain and suffering of many throughout the globe.

Furthermore, just because something has been going on for a long time doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to make things better. Is this the ideal world you want? Is this the kind of world you want to hand down to the next generation? We all have different desires, and we all in our own way try to push the world around us in the direction of these desires, be it wanting to get a good job so you study hard or wanting to get up to get a drink. But peace is a common desire we all share, and this isn't something we should laugh about, or mock someone for being an idealistic hippie.

I acknowledge that violent conflict is sometimes unfortunately necessary to achieve peace, however. But pursuing violent conflict which doesn't have the immediate intention of achieving peace is an assault on the dignity of human kind, a blow to the single thread which gathers together all sane, reasonable men.

I was going to put the obligitory "sure go ahead mod me down" thing here, but this is really what I believe, so if you don't like it, then maybe I'm the crazy one.

Re:Good start.

[Neuticle]

Now you may have been joking, but as a former Peace Corps Volunteer, I think I can safely speak for all Peace Corps Volunteers, past and present:

UP YOURS!

That kind of bullshit, paranoid thinking reared it's head at me and some of my friends through our service. Rumors get spread, and some un-trusting chap would come up and confront one of us for being an "agent" of the USA, and accuse us of plotting nebulous, vague "bad" things in projects like, oh say BOOKS FOR THE SCHOOL, or TEACHING PEOPLE TO MAKE JAM. It didn't matter that the person couldn't make a logical connection between JAM/BOOKS and EVIL, their trust was broken.
Trust that is hard enough to earn in the first place.
Trust is what keeps a volunteer safe.
(Not to sound melodramatic, but off the top of my head I can think of at least one situation I was in where my life might have been in danger had some paranoid-ass started saying I was CIA.)

The Peace Corps goes to great lengths to distance itself from any inkling of spying. If a person has ever been in an intelligence gathering position, they can pretty much kiss their chances of volunteering goodbye. After you have volunteered, you are PREVENTED from taking any job in the intelligence services for something like 5 years at a minimum. Volunteers are not allowed to make political statements relating to the host country, and are discouraged from pretty much anything political in nature i.e, do it and you could go home. There is no fucking spying going on in the Peace Corps.

If you still don't believe me, let me clue you in on a non-secret: Peace Corps volunteers by and large get sent to rural areas. Why the fuck would the CIA or NSA give a rats ass about what is going on in some forgotten backwater of a country, let alone care enough to put a covert agent there for extended time? As for the few volunteers who go to large cities, there would be no need for a "Peace Corps cover" with all the other options (State Department, USAID etc), and a Peace Corps cover would be a pretty shitty one at that, because you probably wouldn't get a ton of useful intel out of schoolchildren and aids patients.

Sorry, but that really touched a nerve.