Wadango has already distributed around 10,000 solar-powered lanterns. Photo: **Mary** (flickr)

In rural Kenya nearly everyone uses kerosene as their main source of power. For those living on less than $1 a day — as about half the population does — this expense takes away a significant portion of their income. Kerosene costs the average African family almost $100 a year, according to the blog White African. And that's why Evans Wadongo's goal of providing solar-powered lanterns to rural Kenyans is so admirable.

In fact, Evans Wadongo and his work with solar lanterns was featured in a recent "CNN Heroes" video. In the video, Wadongo shows how these simple lanterns can do much good for rural Kenyans.

Families with solar lanterns can now spend the money they used to spend on kerosene on necessities like food and medicine. The lanterns are also much better for studying at night. Kerosene lanterns smother kids in smoke and can be harsh on their eyes because the light they give off is so dim. Solar lanterns provide brighter light without all the pollution — giving both kids and the environment a brighter future.

Thanks to Wadongo and his nonprofit sponsor Sustainable Development for All-Kenya, 10,000 of these lanterns have been distributed to rural Kenyans for free. You can help out by clicking here and donating to Sustainable Development for All-Kenya. A $20 donation provides a solar lantern for a family in need.

OLPC instructors teach students how to use their laptops in Kigali, Rwanda. Photo: cellanr (flckr)

Rwanda's President Paul Kagame wants to secure a piece of the growing technology market that has already brought so much change to sub-Saharan Africa, and he’s starting young.

Kagame recently announced that he would provide a laptop for every child in his country between the ages of six and 18, reports The Economist. The magazine suggests the move is based on both economic as well as educational motives: The President has made it clear that he intends to have 50,000 computer programmers by 2020 as a result of the laptop program.

To reach that goal, he is working with the American non-profit One Laptop per Child (OLPC), an organization that is the first of its kind to provide durable and affordable laptops to many in the developing world. According to their website they believe (as I do) that a laptop can be a key for children to engage in their own education more fully than traditional rote learning. OLPC claims their laptops offer a way for the user to connect with both their local and greater communities in order to expose them to a world that is often not available.

The more practical economic benefits of such a program are also apparent. The president has already purchased 100,000 laptops from OLPC, according to the Economist, and plans to buy 1.2 million more as early as 2012. Over the long term, the initiative will create more jobs for computer teachers and repairmen.
And Government agencies and businesspeople have already started programs to help educate a computer-savvy population reports The New Times of Kigali.

Understandably, the plan has been criticized by many who think the money would be better spent on more visible and perhaps more necessary projects for the impoverished nation, including food distribution, health care subsidies and infrastructure development. Although the country must never lose focus on these persistent problems, there must also be room for the Rwandan Government to take risks on other fronts. The overall benefits of education are difficult to quantify but are nevertheless unquestionably valuable. Technology markets are on the rise throughout Africa, and President Kagame doesn't seem to want to let this opportunity pass.

Glasses are one key to improving the economic productivity of poor people in developing countries. Photo: deepchi1 (flickr)

Poor vision may not seem like an economic problem at first glance. But according to the World Health Organization, workers with poor and uncorrected vision cost the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars in lost productivity each year.

Many of these workers struggle to put food on the table, much less purchase an expensive pair of glasses, so their vision problems go untreated. This situation may change thanks to an innovative new series of affordable glasses designs that the New York Times recently highlighted. Their genius lies in two factors: their low cost and how easy it is to adjust them. Production is cheaper when a single model can be made to fit almost anyone, which also cuts out the need for expensive doctors to write vision prescriptions.

How can glasses be one-size-fits-all? One type highlighted by The Times has lenses whose refraction can be adjusted by injecting a clear liquid into them, while another has overlapping lenses that can be adjusted by the user. These models are already improving the lives of wearers in countries like Rwanda, Afghanistan, Ghana, and Tanzania and cost $19 and $4, respectively.

Despite their potential, low-cost eyeglasses still face problems. As The New York Times explains, the glasses could cost only $1-2 per pair if produced in great enough volumes, but supply chains don't yet exist to distribute such quantities of glasses to those who need them.

The field of low-cost eyeglass production and distribution is in its infancy, but keep your eyes open for great things to come.

China's carbon-capture technologies help reduce emissions from coal plants. Photo: ishmatt (flickr)

At first glance, China appears to be exacerbating global climate change. The world's most populous country is the fastest growing industrial economy and the single biggest source of carbon emissions.

On the other hand, China may be helping green the world by making environmentally friendly technologies more affordable, says The Wall Street Journal.

China's vast market and economies of scale are bringing down the cost of solar and wind energy, as well as other environmentally friendly technologies such as electric car batteries. That could help address a major impediment to wide adoption of such technologies: They need heavy subsidies to be economical.

In other words, manufacturing anything in China makes it cheaper, and that applies to green technologies, too. That's been a major factor in the 30-percent drop in the price of solar panels over the past year, reported NPR.

The WSJ goes on to note that the country's research into carbon-capture technologies is also cutting-edge, working on procedures that could cut down on emissions from coal plants by storing some of the carbon produced underground rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. Manufacturers in developed countries are already interested in how they can apply it to their own facilities.

It's hard for any country to make the switch to greener energy sources, but if China succeeds in fostering innovation and cutting technology costs, the process could make the transition easier for countries all over the world.

Cell phones are touching the lives of Tajikistani women in many ways. Photo: Kate B Dixon (flickr)

Technology, migrant labor, and patriarchy: three world systems that bring benefits to some have become a tragic combination for the Tajik women whose husbands are divorcing them remotely via text message, reports Radio Free Europe.

Tajikistan's struggling economy means that as many as one in seven Tajiks works abroad, often spending most of the year away. The country is also heavily dependent on the remittances that constitute half of its GDP. If migrant men decide to divorce their wives back home, some do so via cell phone by texting the word "talaaq," Arabic for "divorce." In Sunni Islam, saying the word three times is a recognized way for men to end their marriages.

Migrant Tajiks are largely beyond the reach of their country's laws. Neither text messages nor "talaaq" are legal methods of divorce there (unlike in other countries like Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, where courts have sanctioned the combination), but courts can't enforce this or other divorce proceedings — like alimony payments — on an absent husband.

These Tajik women are often left without homes or means of support when their marriages end. Respite may only come when they are fully integrated into the legal system — to match their immersion in the technology that has already deeply touched their lives.

Samasource works with entrepreneurs in developing countries like Jon Grosier in Kenya. Photo: Appfrica (flickr)

Students around the world face a particular paradox these days: what's the good of an education if there's no work to be found afterward?

Samasource — a small non-governmental organization based in San Francisco, California — is hoping to change this. They are partnering with U.S. companies and connecting them with people looking for work in places like Kenya and Pakistan using a several different methods, among them crowd sourcing website called CrowdFlower through which workers are paid small amounts for tiny increments of work (such as a few cents for filling in one blank in a spreadsheet).

As Samasource tells it, it’s a win-win situation: the cheap labor allows U.S. firms to cut costs, while providing higher wages for their 500 or so beneficiaries than they would likely have earned otherwise. So far, Samasource has focused on work in developing countries like Kenya (where the organization works with Somali refugees), Zambia and Pakistan — but also plans to expand into Mississippi, the poorest state in the U.S., notes the web magazine Reality Sandwich.

In all cases, Samasource's efforts hinge on the idea that work — not handouts — is what changes lives. "When you look at what the developing world really needs, it's a connection to markets," says Janah on the blog "Boing Boing." Markets provide an outlet for skills like English and computer literacy that students around the world have worked hard to obtain, and a livelihood for those who can put them to use.

A photo of what is believed to be William Kamkwamba's first windmill. Photo: whiteafrican (flickr)

When I was fourteen, I was busy going to drama rehearsals, shopping at the mall and fighting with my brother. But when William Kamkwamba was fourteen, he built a windmill to bring electricity to his rural village in Malawi by studying pictures in a library text book and using whatever materials he could find.

Watch this video, from Yes! Magazine, for his truly inspiring story:

You can follow William's current projects on his blog and and support his work in Malawi by donating here.

A new, low-cost water filtration system will make it easier for poor Indians to access clean drinking water. Photo: Jackol (flickr)

Here's some conventional marketing wisdom: People who live on less than $2 per day simply aren't a worthwhile target demographic.

But recently, some Indian companies are challenging such ossified thinking with innovative products designed to fit the needs of India's poor, reports The Wall Street Journal:

Such inventions represent a fundamental shift in the global order of innovation. Until recently, the West served rich consumers and then let its products and technology filter down to poorer countries. Now, with the developed world mired in a slump and the developing world still growing quickly, companies are focusing on how to innovate, and profit, by going straight to the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

As the Wall Street Journal explains, Indian companies started to change the way they looked at impoverished consumers after they snapped up low-priced cell phones. Then companies began to design products that they hoped would find a similarly huge demand. Soon, Tata Motors released the Nano car, a small $2000 vehicle that made car ownership a possibility for a whole new slice of Indians since it sold for less than half the price of the next-cheapest car on the Indian market. Tata plans to export a more luxurious version of the Nano to Europe — providing an example of how the goods designed for local markets could increase global competition between Indian and Western companies.

There are several other examples of products redesigned with the poor in mind. Cheap battery-powered refrigerators are a huge help to families without electricity in their homes. The solar-powered cell phone base station won third place in The Wall Street Journal's Technology Innovation Awards earlier this year. And the introduction of mobile banking is revolutionizing banking and money transfers in rural areas via cell phones in many poor countries.

It's a newer way of thinking about poverty, and one driven by bottom-line concerns: How can firms sell the poor what they need now, rather than waiting until they have the money to buy what others already have?

Add banking to the growing list of things your cell phone can do.

A September special report in the Economist took a look at the expanding use of mobile banking in Africa and explained how it could play a large part in improving personal financial stability in the region. In essence, here's how it works:

You take your cash to a mobile banking agent and tell the agent that you want to send money to a friend or family member. They credit your mobile banking account. Once the funds are available, you transfer money by sending a text message to whomever you want. The recipient then goes to his or her local agent to access the transferred money. People can even pay utilities or pay for cab rides with the service.

There is a strong correlation between the increase in a developing nation's cell phone use and it's rise in GDP, notes the World Bank. Mobile money offers similar effects on the individual level. A study by researchers at the University of Edinburgh found that users of the Kenyan mobile money service M-PESA have seen a 5 to 30 percent increase in their incomes since the service began in 2007.

One reason for this is the increased convenience that M-PESA offers. Like many men in Kenya, Nairobi resident David Omuchilili used to have to take time off from work and pay for travel costs to deliver money to his family, whose village is nearly 200 miles away. With M-PESA, he is now able to avoid the traveling and can be more available for work, as he explains to Business Week.

Mobile money transfers also offers a safer, more reliable way to send cash. Citizens without the means for traveling no longer have to take the risk of giving an envelope full of cash to a middleman — like a bus driver — and telling him where to deliver it. In the aftermath of the 2008 Kenyan election, M-Pesa was used to send money to those trapped by the rampant violence.

One thing is for certain. As mobile banking continues to grow in popularity and scale, users will find opportunities for better financial stability.

Plasmodium falciparum (malaria) parasite taking over red blood cells. Photo: Eric Fortin (Flickr)

A team of engineers at the University of California at Berkeley are pushing the limits of cell phone technology with the development of their newly minted Cellscope.

The device is a six-inch microscope that attaches to a cell phone’s digital camera lens to take high resolution microscopic images of blood and sputum samples. The Cellscope's compact size and durability makes it ideal for use in the field, nearly eliminating the health worker's need for expensive tabletop microscopes.

The Cellscope team, led by Principal Investigator Dan Fletcher, has been able to reliably identify pathogens from two of the most prominent diseases in the underdeveloped world — malaria and tuberculosis. Combined, the World Health Organization estimates that the two diseases kill 2.7 million people each year, although both are treatable if caught early. (The vast majority of malaria and tuberculosis cases are found in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia respectively.) The Cellscope offers healthcare workers in remote areas a valuable diagnostic tool, aiding in reliable early detection of these two diseases.

Right now the Cellscope is still being tested in the field. But the UC Berkeley team hopes that in time, data captured by the Cellscope will be uploaded to a central database, allowing medical workers to track the spread of diseases more efficiently than ever before.

A fruit farm in South Africa. Photo: flickr (Harris S)

Do you have ideas that might help African farmers be more successful?

If so, a new Peace Corps initiative called African Rural Connect, or ARC, wants to know about it.

Through its website, ARC hopes to connect people with ideas to the development community and even the farmers themselves. The site is relatively new, but a solar-powered irrigation system and an easy-to-build and inexpensive grain silo are just two examples of recent ideas.

ARC explains:

The humblest farmer can have the idea with the greatest impact. We believe there is untapped collective wisdom that just needs a space to ignite. This is a growing movement... No idea is too grand — no contribution is too small. Share your story — we will hear you.

It's ideas like these that fit the bill for the grassroots approach U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hopes will help African farmers improve their agricultural capacity, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

To help kick things off, ARC is offering a contest for the best idea. The winner gets $20,000 — and some help from development experts — to put their idea into practice.

An Israeli checkpoint in Nablus, West Bank. Photo: David Ortmann (flickr)

Since Israel relaxed West Bank checkpoints in June, there's been a newfound sense of both security and economic freedom for the struggling Palestinian territory, according to the New York Times' Thomas Friedman.

Friedman says the economic improvement is largely a result of reformed police tactics and increased trade:

For Palestinians, long trapped between burgeoning Israeli settlements and an Israeli occupation army, subject to lawlessness in their own cities and the fecklessness of their own political leadership, life has clearly started to improve a bit, thanks to a new virtuous cycle: improved Palestinian policing that has led to more Palestinian investment and trade that has led to the Israeli Army dismantling more checkpoints in the West Bank that has led to more Palestinian travel and commerce.

Recent statistics for the West Bank support the claim that things are getting better. The International Monetary Fund is forecasting 7 percent growth, and construction is about to begin on the first new town in decades, according to a New York Times account.

Friedman is hopeful that economic improvements could lead to political gains:

Make no mistake: Palestinians still want the Israeli occupation to end, and their own state to emerge, tomorrow. That is not going to happen. But for the first time since [the collapse of the 2000 Oslo peace accords], there is an economic-security dynamic emerging on the ground in the West Bank that has the potential — the potential — to give the post-Yasir Arafat Palestinians another chance to build the sort of self-governing authority, army and economy that are prerequisites for securing their own independent state. A Palestinian peace partner for Israel may be taking shape again.

Palestinian students building technology skills. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

Eight years ago Microsoft hosted the first Imagine Cup, a year long contest that challenges students to use technology to come up with solutions to the world's toughest problems. This year's Imagine Cup challenged teams to come up with ways to help developing countries achieve the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs consist of eight goals aimed at reducing global poverty by 2015. Teams from over 100 countries submitted their concepts and the finalists earned a trip to Cairo for a shot at one of the $25,000 prizes.

The winner for software category was a Romanian team that designed a program to help people connect with government agencies that the team hope to implement back in their hometown. An Indian team won a special award for developing a computer game that educates children about malaria. One of the more imaginative offerings came from a South Korean team that developed a means to help farmers more successfully breed insects for food.

Example of a user-based interactive map. Photo: whiteafrican (flickr)

Imagine being an aid worker isolated in rural Zimbabwe, where the worst cholera outbreak in 15 years has claimed more than 4,000 lives in recent months. You and your relief network are sprinkled across the country and the epidemic is evolving every day. How do you decide where help is most needed and coordinate your response?

What if there were a way to connect almost instantaneously by sending a text message to a website that indicated your location, status and needs on a map available to anyone in the world? This is what organizations like WikiMapAid are trying to make happen. Many humanitarian organizations are considering these user-based mapping systems, some of which integrate Twitter, SMS, email and collaborative wiki software to create interactive maps that track everything from poverty and infectious disease to natural disasters and political protests.

Using mapping systems in aid work is nothing new — more complex systems like GIS have been used in both governmental and NGO aid work in the development field for years. But there are limits to these mapping systems: They often take a long time to generate and distribute, which means they are not always up-to-date, nor are they accessible or user-friendly to the general public — especially in the developing world.

More simple user-based mapping technologies may be able to solve some of these problems. Proof of the potential are successful projects like Ushahidi, a text message–based mapping website that was used to monitor post-election violence in Kenya last year, or Al Jazeera's similar "crowdsourced" website, the War on Gaza.

The technology is catching on in the relief sector. Last week Reuters AlertNet hosted a workshop to discuss "how the aid world can use maps to communicate, advocate and plan for disasters" — seeking advice from both aid organizations that have used complex mapping systems for a long time, such as Map Action, and new wiki user-based mappers like Open Street Map and InSTEDD GeoChat.

There are definitely problems with newer mapping systems. One big one is possibly unreliable information. Some websites are going beyond content moderation and developing algorithms to rate their users' integrity based on whether other users have tagged the information as bunk. Others, such as HealthMap, have tried to confront the problem of legitimacy by generating content from diverse sources — NGOs, the media, government and individual users — in the hopes of being able to cross-check information.

But these websites also take time to generate enough content to be useful. And while many people in the developing world have access to cell phones to send input to these websites, few have reliable access to the internet to view the maps.

Problems aside, user-based maps certainly hold appeal. Part of it lies in their ability to empower everyday people to connect and speak out in times of crisis. This technology can be — and already has been — incredibly useful for reporting on conflicts where the media is not allowed. And in the aid world, it offers the possibility of swift action, unhindered by bureaucracy or lack of infrastructure.

Tina in Philly makes her own laundry detergent and cuts washcloths out of old towels. Lisa in New York pays for everything in cash and leaves her card at home so she isn't tempted to use it if she doesn't really need to.

These helpful tips are a sign of the times, and contributed by readers of Living with Less, a mini-site created by the New York Times that is dedicated to sharing "the human side of the global recession." People post their recession-related tips, which range from the obscure to the obvious, as well as share their photos and stories.