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For most of South Africa's working poor, doing business with a bank has been out of the question. One-month loans carried an average 30 percent interest rate. Many savings accounts lost money every month because of multiple fees.
Now the poor suddenly have new options, including one that some analysts say could be replicated throughout the developing world.
Perhaps the most promising initiative is offered by privately owned Capitec Bank, which opened five years ago as a micro-lending institution and a year ago expanded into savings accounts. It now has 300,000 customers, half of them opening savings accounts.
The bank offers 10 percent interest on some savings accounts, a new debit card in a pilot program with MasterCard that allows poor people to do business without cash, and a one-month loan with a 15 percent interest rate.
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Some multinational technology firms are keen to extend their reach to the bottom-tier four billion. Companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Intel and others, faced with increasing levels of saturation in their existing markets, are eyeing the developing world and working at perfecting low-cost devices and unconventional business models to get a foothold in these potential goldmines. Of course, their main markets still remain the developed west and they need to maintain price points in these markets by enhancing value and adding features to their existing products to sustain growth. For instance, there have been only feeble attempts by mainstream companies to bring down the price of the personal computer to radically low levels by providing just the essential functionality. And the considerable cost of proprietary software constitutes a large chunk of the price of the final product, putting it beyond the reach of all but a tiny percentage of people in developing countries.
All other obstacles, notwithstanding, on-the-ground implementation of technology in rural settings of developing countries is a huge challenge in itself. Organisations working in these areas had to face seemingly insurmountable hurdles such as erratic and intermittent power supply, poor connectivity and stifling government regulation. To add to all this, are the cultural disparities and natural resistance to change by rural communities.
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AMREF's new project in Kechene aims to capitalise on the artisan know-how in the area. People who make a living from handicrafts are often looked down on by the Ethiopians – they are viewed very much as the bottom of the heap. They are often taken advantage of financially by local, better educated traders. Over the next year, AMREF will single out 50 people and help them to set up small businesses. They will receive a loan but also learn business acumen and marketing skills.
"There are thousands of people here who need help" says Hannah. "But we would rather give them the skills and resources to help themselves. The hardest part is selecting those who really need it. We look for the most vulnerable of all; widows with many children, or older orphans who are responsible for looking after their younger brothers and sisters."
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One of the top themes at this year's 3GSM World Congress in February was "the next billion mobile users." Six weeks later, it's looking more like "the next few billion mobile users."
The mobile industry has been talking about "the next billion" since the one billionth mobile user signed on somewhere in mid-2003. Now, it's more than halfway there, and the mobile industry is already looking ahead to the three-billion mark.
"In 2003, when the world reached one billion mobile users, we were expecting to see that grow to two billion by 2007," observes Henrik Brogaard, GM of New Growth Markets, Asia-Pacific, for Nokia Networks. "Now it seems like we're going to see two billion by the end of this year, and now we're looking at three billion by 2010."
The unexpected surge of growth in the past 18 months has even prompted the World Bank to report in late February that mobile is closing the "digital divide" faster than anyone had anticipated. The WSIS initiative backed by the UN, for example, set a goal of 50% access to telecoms in some form or other by 2015. According to the World Bank, however, 77% of the world's population lives within range of a mobile network today. That works out to around five billion people who live within range of a base station.
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Kenyans are finding it easier to post and find jobs via mobile phone text message than the traditional Internet, highlighting how mobile services leapfrog more than just voice communications in developing nations.
For years, there have been stories about how mobile phone service in developing nations would help them to "leapfrog" other nations with legacy landline phone systems. Most of the focus, though, has been on the voice communications aspect of the offerings, though, certainly some have been highlighting the data possibilities as well.
Job seekers in Kenya are providing a perfect example of how this works. While there is Internet service available, it's difficult for many to use. It often involves traveling quite some distance to get to an Internet cafe to use an open computer to check for open job listings. Service is often quite expensive. However, with the growing use of mobile phones, employers looking for workers just need to send out a text message describing the work offered, and potential workers can quickly and easily reply -- and it still costs less than using the Internet. With it becoming common for small groups of people to share a mobile phone, it's easy for word to get around quickly when jobs become available.
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AMD, known mostly as a computer chip maker perennially in the shadow of giant Intel Corp., recently unveiled a pared-down personal computer that costs roughly $200 in an ambitious drive to get computers with Internet access into the hands of 50 percent of the world's population by 2015.
Trying to bridge the digital divide with low-cost computers is neither a new idea nor one that has been particularly successful.
A handheld machine developed in India called Simputer is attracting only a fraction of the users its makers expected. A group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is working on creating laptops that would be bought by governments for $100 apiece and given to needy residents, but some analysts question the initiative's viability.
AMD's strategy targets the hundreds of millions of people who earn $5,000 to $10,000 per year. To reach them, the company is challenging the traditional way personal computers are designed and distributed.
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In a bid to create sustainable and gainful employment, aid resource utilisation and reach technological inputs to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the London-based Commonwealth Secretariat conducted the second Commonwealth-India small business competitiveness development programme in Chennai last week.. An important achievement of this conference was to mainstream gender participation in economic activity, "and I'll not be exaggerating when I say that at most sessions the women entrepreneurs made the maximum impact by their presentations," says Ram Venuprasad, Adviser (Enterprise), Commonwealth Secretariat (CS).
He gives the example of Isobelle Gidley, "a fantastic and very passionate woman from Vanuatu in the south pacific, a country of two lakh people with 120 languages. She fought against all odds to ensure a sustainable economic employment for the indigenous people of her country in exporting copra and other activities. We've been working with her and she is a good example of how concerned and feisty people within a community can make a big difference."
Funded by the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation, the development arm of the CS that was established in the 1970s, the CS' primary objective is to reach the ICT (Information, communication, technology) component to SMEs. "We're looking at the concept of `fortune at the bottom of the pyramid', and are seen as a trusted partner of the SMEs."
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Impala graze among a network of heating pipes. Giraffes nibble at acacias, metres away from a giant power-generating plant.
But the fumes belching from the chimneys are not polluting petrochemical smoke. They are eco-friendly water vapour, which drifts off into the blue sky.
The Ol Karia station is the continent's biggest geothermal power-generating plant. It takes its name from a nearby volcano, which erupted 150 years ago and is still active.
There are 22 wells across the site, piercing the Earth's crust, and tapping into rock as hot as 345C deep below the surface.
Water pumped into the well produces steam, which powers the turbines.
Silas Simiyu, Ol Karia's development director, says: "Since geo-thermal is an indigenous energy source, we should start with what is ours - not with importing these petroleum products."
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There is a surprisingly lucrative market in targeting low-income consumers.

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A small rural group in Meru South has shattered the myth that only giant corporates like KenGen can generate hydro electric power.
Having been repeatedly snubbed by the Kenya Power and Lighting Company in their attempt to get connected to the national grid, 150 members of Baraani Hydro-electric Self Help group have generated power from a local river and distributed it to over 36 households.
"We can now light up our houses, iron clothes, charge mobile phones and watch television programmes without worry of power failure, unlike Kenya Power and Lighting Company clients," asserts Wilkinson Kinyua, the group's chairman.
Their pilot project is already producing 10 KW of power for distribution to 36 members of the group.
The power is generated using a turbine installed at the roaring Owinga falls on River Baarani in Chogoria location in Mwimbi division of the district. Water is channelled through a big pipe and a concrete passageways into a turbine.
"The 20-metre high falls is currently generating enough and sustainable power for these household," says Gilbert Kinyua, the technical adviser to the project and an electrical engineering diploma graduate from the Kiambu Institute of Technology.
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