The village-phone scheme pioneered by GrameenPhone in Bangladesh has been successfully implemented in Uganda and Rwanda by South Africa’s MTN, and in the Philippines by Globe Telecom. The common thread to these replications is consulting advice from the Technology Group at Grameen Foundation USA.

After several years working out the kinks and writing manuals to ease implemenation, Grameen Foundation has now released a Village Phone Direct kit, which it sells to microfinance institutions around the globe. The kit includes:

• Nokia mobile phone with earpiece
• External booster antenna for areas without strong mobile signal coverage
• Custom designed cables to connect the phone to the antenna and the recharging equipment such as a automobile battery or a solar panel

To complete the Village Phone Equipment Kit for the microfinance client, a SIM card and prepaid airtime, which can be purchased through regular outlets.

More than two billion people in the world have a cellphone. But for the world’s largest mobile phone companies, a new race has begun for the next billion. Most growth will come from the developing world, which already has more cellphones than now exist in industrialized countries. In fact, more cellphones are bought every day in Africa than in North America. And microfinance, which has propelled companies such as GrameenPhone in Bangladesh to close to $1 billion in revenues, has a role to play.

Says David Keogh, deputy director of the Grameen Foundation’s Technology Centre in Seattle (as reported in the World’s Poorest Nations New Frontier for Cellphone Giants from the Toronto Globe and Mail):

“It’s a win-win-win model, all the way down. Worldwide, rural markets have not really been cracked open by the telecom operators, simply because they’re not willing to invest . . . what we’ve done with organizations such as MTN is to say, ‘you have a channel to market: it’s the microfinance sector.’” MTN Rwanda and MTN Uganda are replicating GrameenPhone’s phone-lady scheme to reach into rural villages.”

Large parts of the world that haven’t had or still don’t have phones also lack electricity, which of course makes operating cell phones difficult. Both the cell towers and cell phones need to run off generators, old car batteries, or solar panels. But a new initiative by Ericsson and South African operator MTN looks to replace diesel powered generators with biofuels derived from palm and pumpkin seed oil. See Pumpkin Power Dawns for African Mobile Networks by Reuters.

Supported by GSM Association’s development fund, the project is first being trialed in Nigeria, then will be replicated in Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya.

Yet another in what is becoming a steady stream of articles on mobile banking in developing countries: Phoney finance in the Oct. 28 issue of The Economist (requires subscription). This article focuses on South Africa, where 500,000 people now use their mobiles as a bank. Again, the upside is huge: 16 million South Africans, over half the adult population, still have no bank account. And 30% of them have mobile phones.

What amazes me about this phenomenon is that people who until recently never owned phones or had bank accounts, are now transferring money by phone.

As in Bangladesh and elsewhere, the rise of a valuable new service is creating thousands of rural income opportunties. One non-bank provider of financial services, Wizzit, hired 2,000 unemployed young Wizzkids to bring in new customers.

Other mobile banking operations in South Africa in clude MTN Banking and Celpay, which started as a subsidiary of Celtel but is now owned by First National Bank. In the Philippines, where mobile banking started, Globe Telecom and Smart Communications have both developed highly evolved services.