Je me souviens the beautiful singing of hymns from tens of thousands in the streets, the soft sounds rolling for miles like an endless dirge before coming back to start again.

Je me souviens the lonely UN helicopter hovering above the dark city, like an angel aghast.

Je me souviens the distant fires by the sea that gave shape to a soft night than had no end.

Je me souviens the quiet streets in the hot sun where stoics carried boards with corpses in sheets.

Je me souviens the U.S. Marines guarding State Dept. employees rushing scared through the throngs in the dark.

Je me souviens la crie, Il est mort, encore et plus encore.

Je me souviens, Medicin! Medicin!

Je me souviens mega tons of concrete reshaped by a rupture in the earth.

Je me souviens the beautiful way Haitians pronounce Haiti in Creole — ah-EE-ti.

A new back channel has opened up in Arab-U.S. relations, based on doing business from the bottom up. That’s what I concluded after attending the Ashoka Arab world Social Innovation conference in Cairo last year, and which I wrote about for the Global Post:

“In the last decade, the dialogue between the U.S. and the Arab Muslim world has focused on radical Islam, terror, security, profiling and, occasionally, oil. Those topics still dominate media coverage, but since President Barack Obama’s 2009 “new beginning” speech in Cairo, a new back channel has opened — entrepreneurship.”

Read full opinion piece here….

Telenor, majority owner of GrameenPhone in Bangladesh and developer of the EasyPaisa mobile-money platform in Pakistan, tried to develop a website in Urdu, according to ProPakistani website. Take a look!

ProPakistani reports that the Urdu site for Easypaisa was once up, and showed this translation from the Urdu:

“Telenor Pakistan has always been a pioneer in innovative services. For easypaisa, Telenor Pakistan has partnered with Tameer Micro Finance Bank to introduce branchless banking for the first time in Pakistan. The innovative product umbrella of easypaisa will give you complete convenience and empowerment that you have always wanted in life.”

“The shop near you could become your neighborhood bank, if the agency banking model launched by Kenya’s Equity Bank takes root.

The model, which has been developed over a period of five years, will engage local shopkeepers as agents for financial transactions.

Equity Bank chief executive James Mwangi said the shopkeepers will be trained and provided with the necessary technology to handle all banking transactions – withdrawals, deposits, loans, account opening and advances, among other things.”

See full story at AllAfrica.com.

This first story sets the stage…I mean, the tension.

The Standard: Why Central Bank Position on Mobile Banking Attracts Wrath, June 2

Saturday Nation: Is This the End of the Banking Hall?, June 13

Saturday Nation: Kenya’s Central Bank to Push for New Banking Rules, May 4

Daily Nation: New Law to Make Banking Easier, May 25

Reuters: Kenya to Enact Laws Regulating Mobile Banking, May 25

One of the big raps against mobile banking is that it will unleash a wave of cross-border terrorism funding and criminal money laundering, because the practice is so unregulated.  It’s a major concern that regulators are beinning to come to grips with.

But what if mobile banking might actually reduce AML and terrorism funding. How m-banking can reduce money laundering (Business Daily, May 27), by Matt Herbert of The Fletcher School, suggests that might be possible:

Following on the heels of the spirited M-Banking 2009 conference in Nairobi in late May, the Minister of Finance just introduced three bills into Parliament to resolve some of the key issues that generated debate. The bills include:

* an anti-money laundering (AML) provision
* an anti-Ponzi scheme provision
* a provision to allow banks to engage in “branchless banking”

The branchless banking provision was a bone of contention for the banks, which claimed that Safaricom’s M-PESA had an unfair advantage in being allowed to set up agents far and wide without government approval, while banks needed to jump through a number of regulatory hoops to open even a bricks-and-mortar branch. The anti money laundering and anti-Ponzi provisions were in response to cries for enhanced consumer protection in what is fast becoming a Wild West new banking frontier.

If the bills become law, it will be interesting to see if the banks take advantage of their new freedom, and whether they can move fast enough to keep up with a dynamic technology company such as Safaricom, whose CEO Michael Joseph is best-known and most admired CEO in the land.

In the epicenter of global m-banking today(Kenya), the M-Banking 2009: Balancing Regulation and Innovation conference in Nairobi was a landmark event–bringing together bankers, telecoms and Central Bankers to hash out the issues and resolve the tensions between them. The protagonist was/is Safaricom’s  M-PESA money-transfer-by-mobile phone, which has caught bankers flat-footed.

From hotel porters to members of Parliament, everyone is using M-PESA, to send money home to villages, pay bills and tuition–and store money in their phone.  Even in Kibera, the largest slum in Africa with 1 million people living without electicity or sewage, M-PESA is being used by local savings groups to mobilize money.  Some groups have used their meager savings to invest on the stock market–in M-PESA.

Organized largely by students at The Fletcher School (Center for Emerging Markets Enterprises) and co-sponsored by the Kenya School of Monetary Studies, with lead support from Kenya’s Equity Bank, the conference provided a forum for the Central Bank of Kenya to address simmering tensions between the banking community and Safaricom, whose M PESA mobile-money transfer system is spreading like wildfire. With more than 6 million M-PESA accounts, more people in Kenya are transferring money by mobile phone than have bank accounts.

High-level Kenyan dignitaries included the Governnor of the National Bank, the Vice President of Kenya, and the Ministers of Finance and Communications. Attendees included the Central Banks of Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda, numerous commerical banks, Safaricom,  and interested parties primarily from Africa and Europe, butalso including World Bank’s CGAP and Bankable Frontiers from the U.S. The presentations and debate were high-level and high-spirited.

The week of the conference,  Business Daily Africa ran a 12-page spread representing numerous points of view; during and after the conference, local TV and print media ran multiple stories.

More updates to follow…I’m going to predict, there’s something happening here.

Iqbal Quadir, founder of GrameenPhone, and Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation, recently “squared off” in the pages of Good magazine to debate the respective merits of two very different technologies.

Quadir, as you might expect, comes out in favor of cell phones, as a technology that is spreading fast on its own because of its immediate perceived and real economic value–which will allow adults to provide better education for their children.

Negroponte, as you might expect, favors laptops, for their value in offering children a “window” on the world and a medium that encourages learning and creativity–which will make them more productive adults.

It’s hard to argue with either side, but it’s pretty clear which side is winning the debate in the marketplace. It’s not exactly Ali-Frazier, but it’s a good debate with both sides accomodating their opponent’s perspective.

Maybe the next such debate will be Smartphones v. Netbooks.

Norwegian-based Telenor ASA,  the primary shareholder in GrameenPhone in Bangladesh with operations in Pakistan, Malaysia and Thailand, bought a 60% stake in India’s Unitech Wireless at the end of 2008. The deal is expected to be finalized in Q1 of 2009.

Analysts were initally quite critical of the deal, as Unitech has no network to speak of, and Telenor’s stock dipped on the announcement.  However, Unitech Wireless holds licenses for all 22 mobile regions of India–the world’s 2nd biggest market after China–which would appear to be a valuable asset even in a very competitive market. Consider that a few years ago, Telenor spent $1.9 billion to buy a license in Serbia! Coupled with Telenor’s experience and success in South and Southeast Asia, an Indian play of this magnitude makes long-term strategic sense.

Telenor says the deal is contingent on sharing infrastructure, perhaps eyeing the 30,000-50,000 cell towers of its entrenched competitors. While unstated, Telenor is likely looking to the new company Indus Towers, started by Bharti, Vodafone Essar, and Idea Cellular,  to share network assets.

Since the announcement, Telenor has indicated it will not pay shareholder dividends in 2008 or 2009, and will take out a three-year loan to pay for its investment. Telenor’s share price, which lost 64% of its value in 2008, has recovered somewhat in early 2009 trading.