Mobile Ministry Magazine (MMM)

One of the commonly heard statements when I speak with various ministries and organizations is that there’s a lack of case studies and research towards the use of mobile in ministry practices (#mobmin) or just mobile technology as it relates to various community/culture initiatives (#mhealth, #ict4d, #m4d). Part of that is because many who are doing the projects haven’t published their data yet, and part of that is because there’s interest for more. Here are two items that jumped on the reading list this week which may help both of those parts become whole information.

Movirtu: Life at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) Study

Life at the BoP study is a joint work of the team here at Movirtu and our strategic research partners TNS. We listened in detail to nearly a hundred end users in Senegal, Tanzania and India during the course of this work. We selected ‘leading edge’ users: those likely to be engaged with and influential in technology. We spoke with women entrepreneurs, smallholder farmers, and youth.

There are many stories and characters here: a Senegalese student who lives far from her family, prays every day and is as rapturously devout in her study as she is in her life. There are a group of teens in Coimbatore, a city akin to the UK’s Manchester, where boys can quote you an ad for the latest megapixel phone. Women entrepreneurs in Senegal shake their heads and commiserate about the increased cost of living.

Read the rest of this study

Call for Expressions of Interest for case studies of Mobile use at the Base of the Pyramid

infoDev is looking for organizations with experience in rigorous research directly related to the topic and who are able to design and execute the studies from start to finish. Please note that we will shortlist proposals for Kenya and South Africa first, as these studies will be completed in the first phase of the project, with the remaining proposals (for Armenia, Pakistan and Vietnam) shortlisted later. Organizations may submit proposals for any number of the selected countries.

This request for expressions of interest (EOI) concerns research and production of five case studies (one each in Kenya, South Africa, Armenia, Pakistan and Vietnam) to examine the economic and social potential of mobile devices in the “base of the pyramid” market segment, i.e. among the poor who live on less than $2.50 a day. infoDev is looking for organizations with experience in rigorous research directly related to the topic and who are able to design and execute the studies from start to finish. Please note that we will shortlist proposals for Kenya and South Africa first, as these studies will be completed in the first phase of the project, with the remaining proposals (for Armenia, Pakistan and Vietnam) shortlisted later. Organizations may submit proposals for any number of the selected countries.

Proposals need to be submitted by October 10; read more about this call for interest/proposals at infoDev.

Additional Cases Studies and Research Materials

We also have a listing here of several cases studies, statistics, and other types of research material. Yes, there’s not a lot, but again, that’s because there’s not been a lot written to date. View our resources and if you have something that should be noted here, submit it to us or point to it using the #mobmin, #ict4d, and #m4d Twitter hashtags so that it can be searchable and shared to all.