CELLPHONE evangelists often claim mobile telephony and internet access are revolutionising life in the developing world. Nations without landlines can leap into the 21st century, pushing their economies into overdrive as they do so.
Like many a convenient orthodoxy, this one does not stand up to close inspection. While the cellphone may be changing lives in the cities of the developing world, the same is far from true in rural areas.
“Economists are head-over-heels in love with cellphones, but so far they have been a largely urban, big-city phenomenon in the developing world,” says Eric Brewer, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “The…
