It is luxurious and opulent. Classical music plays in the background. There's an outdoor pool with a restaurant where staff whisk back and forth, balancing serving trays with bottled water, cocktails, small bowls of nuts, fruit, pretzels, olives, maybe a box of cigarettes. Guests - mostly expatriates - sit under white umbrellas in lounge chairs or at large round tables.

This is the Milles Collines, an upscale hotel in Kigali, Rwanda's capital city. Not the image one usually conjures when thinking of Rwanda, a tiny country located in central Africa, whose notorious civil war and genocide just over a decade ago stole the lives of more than a million people.

Land of a Thousand Hills
Milles Collines, which means "Thousand Hills," accurately describes Rwanda's landscape. But that's about all this hotel and its host country have in common. The disparities one encounters between modern life in Kigali and in rural life in Rwanda's countryside - where 90 percent of the population lives - are startling.

Sixty-six percent of Rwandans live on less than one dollar per day. More than 90 percent live in rural villages and survive from subsistence farming. Thirteen percent are HIV positive, and thousands of orphans - left on their own after their families were murdered during the genocide in 1994 - must act as the heads of households, responsible for providing for themselves and their families.

There is no electricity or running water and there are no telephones in these villages. Paved roads are scarce and a winding, bumpy, gravel-covered road is usually the only connection between villages. There is no regular means of public transportation and many rural Rwandans must spend half their day walking or bicycling to get to the nearest town to find a market to sell their goods and purchase necessities.

Mobile phones are beginning to change this. The "village phone" is managed by a village operator and is made accessible to everyone living in the village. Money from a microcredit loan is used by the operator to purchase the phone, and then its continuing costs are managed by charging clients for the calls they make. The village operator manages the phone as a business and uses the profits to pay back the original loan, or invests in other businesses.

Need for Phones
Traveling the Rwandan countryside, I spoke with dozens of village entrepreneurs to gauge interest in the idea of a village phone. On my way out of Kigali into the countryside every morning, I passed dozens of people walking in the opposite direction. Children and adults leave their villages early in the morning to make the long journey to Kigali by foot or bicycle, carrying large bundles of fresh fruits and vegetables, spices, and even wood to sell in the markets there.

Many of these villagers had no access to a telephone, making it extremely difficult to contact clients and know how much to bring to the markets. They could not know which clients would be at the markets that day in order to speak to them in person. This made it impossible to determine the amount of goods to bring to the city to sell, or what price to charge - which in turn made it impossible to estimate profits or expand their businesses.

Technology that spurs economic opportunity and growth is important to developing economies, but the benefits are not exclusively economic.

Potato farmers on Rwanda's northwest frontier told me that if they had a phone, they could call clients to determine demand ahead of time. Instead, they were forced to make the long journey to Kigali - where there was no guarantee that they would be able to loate their clients - to ask these essential questions in person.

Raising and selling cattle is the main economic activity of another Rwandan village I visited. If an animal falls ill, it is vital that the veterinarian - 20 km distant - be contacted immediately. Without a phone, this is impossible. Instead, someone from the village has to walk 20 km to the neighboring town to seek out the veterinarian in person. If he is not to be found, the loss of a sick animal can be devastating to the village.

Cecile (far right, in photo above) owns a restaurant in the rural part of Kigali, and says she relies on a friend from another village who has his own mobile phone. Her friend stops by from time to time and allows others to use his phone - for twice the cost he pays. Expensive and unreliable as this is, Cecile says that with no other option, she has no choice but to pay his rates if she needs to contact family, friends and business associates.

Near the border with Uganda, I met with a group of women who said that because of the many years of conflict, many of them had lost touch with relatives or friends who were forced to flee Rwanda. Because they had no access to a phone, they could only keep in touch if the visited in person, or located a traveller willing to relay a message on their behalve. When I presented the idea of a community phone, they rejoiced at the possibility of being able to speak to their loved ones when they wanted.

Potential for Mobile Phones in Africa
After hearing stories like these, it is easy to understand why The Economist cites Africa as the fastest growing market for mobile phones. Mobile phones are helping to accelerate rural development in many countries. By utilizing signals from cell phone towers that are already built, placing phones in villages does not require expending a great deal of time or money on expensive infrastructure.

The Grameen Village Phone Program in Bangladesh for example, has allowed village operators to earn almost three times the average monthly wage. Not only does the operator benefit, but the entire village profits from the ability to connect with business clients, friends and family. And in Uganda, MTN villagePhone has helped to establish 1,300 village phone businesses in one year. At just over 100 new phone sales per month, villagePhone is growing rapidly and providing business and communication opportunities to thousands of village entrepreneurs and their families.

Technology that spurs economic growth is important to developing nations, but the benefits are not exclusively economic. Mobile phones can be used by governments, the United Nations, or humanitarian organizations to communicate security concerns or warn of impending environmental catastrophes. This occured just recently, during the December 2004 tsunami. Concerned relatives who learned of the imminent tidal wave were able to place calls to families and give enough warning so that loved ones could escape the devastation.

Not a Panecea
Mobile telephones will not solve all of Rwanda's problems. Much work still needs to be done to provide services in health, education and job training, and the political environment needs to be stabilized. Mobile phones however, can help achieve these objectives. Perhaps not an end unto itself, mobile telephone communication technology can certainly be considered a means to better things for the developing world.






Contributed by Cory McCruden, co-founder of the Micro-finance Club of New York.

To read another Global Envision article about social entrepreneurship, see Faces of Globalization: It Takes a Village.