Keep it up!

Courtesy of Evans Mensah/IRIN

Communication is a means of transfering knowledge, goods, revolutions, ideology. In the “good old days”, everybody was using roads, camels, donkeys, boats, horns, smoke signals or drums to get their message across and be part of this big world. These means were used in equal measure by the rich and the poor. Even animals use means of communication: voice and body language.

Communication is not something new, invented by and for the modern society. It came with the first people on Earth. Keep in mind that we could say an email or a tweet is  the smoke signal of today, as it this could have been seen from a distance within seconds.

People are aware of the need to communicate, even in developing countries, where over 50% of the population lives below the poverty line. Even there, in the countries I have visited, I have seen people with mobile phones, sending text messages and receiving them.

Another interesting application of technology and communication in developing countries are micro-credit schemes. I have witnessed such a scheme in Bangladesh, where poor women received a mobile phone that they could let out for people to use for money. The phone keyboard was in English and these women even learned the language by using the keyboard.

Following on from this success story, I must stress the importance of communications and IT in the development of poor countries. Let us keep up with Social Media and technology and this way we can make sure nobody will be left behind!