In many parts of the world, electricity is a luxury. People spend hours collecting firewood to cook their dinners or warm their homes. In Uganda, only 10 percent of the population with electricity, the vast majority did not have microwave ovens, computers and televisions. People do not have access to the latest information on disease outbreaks, weather, football or soccer. However, this may soon change.

More than a third of Uganda’s population, about 10 million people own mobile phones, and many others have access to these phones through relatives and neighbors. Cell phones can be found in any corner of the desert in the rural areas where 85 percent of the country where the locals live. With the acute need to be connected, are all efforts to use mobile phones, accusing them of car batteries or solar charger.

in an area where cell phones more than could have been light, some nonprofit organizations have begun to think that the best way to achieve the country’s poor and to obtain much-needed information through their phones. As a global non-profit Grameen Foundation, which helps the poor with financial services and technology, has partnered with Google, the telecommunications provider MTN Uganda, and several local non-profit to develop and design mobile applications that allow mobile phone users to receive information via SMS text queries.

The aim is to improve living conditions and livelihoods for the poor people of Uganda. “We have a clear vision of what we wanted to make, said David Edelstein, director of the Grameen Information and Communication Technology Innovation Center.” We apply our knowledge of the field in Uganda, and that combined with the Google experience of disseminating information. ”

Type of information, they are talking about can be anything from an HIV / AIDS clinics, agricultural advice on banana weevils, for weather forecasting. It is customized specifically for the Ugandans and provides facts and resources that most people in developed countries take for granted. “Anyone with a phone, you can use these services,” Edelstein said, but “taking into account the needs of the poor.”

Research on this project began a year and a half ago in the application of laboratory AppLab, which was established in Kampala, Uganda, the Grameen Foundation. He did field research, quantitative estimates of needs, prototyping, and focus group testing to find out how to design and structure of mobile applications that can provide information.

Since most mobile phones in Uganda, only voice and SMS capabilities, the technology is built on the SMS. A text of the question to a specific code that is based on the built AppLab, then to Google, using algorithms, keywords, and determine the most appropriate response is sent back to the mobile phone.

There are three specific services (each with its own code): Google SMS tips SMS search Google, Google and Trader. SMS tips is a question and answer service where people can obtain information about medical problems, clinic locations, and also agricultural advice, such as how to alleviate the fever or the next rain is not expected. SMS Similarly works by letting users search for mobile phone text queries and get answers on the web search experience. And, the trader is a “market” application that allows buyers and sellers to find each other, so that they can align their products, which can be anything from dried fish to furniture.

Right now, AppLab more than 50,000 unique queries in the database. In the beginning, when the database was smaller, people have been absurd or ambiguous responses to their queries. Thus, AppLab created a “Fail-Over Center”, which “does not reflect the requests and sends them to people, to be analyzed and incorporated into the database.” We have a mechanism to strengthen and improve the quality system and quality of information we disseminate said Edelstein.

People who do not own mobile phones, are illiterate or do not speak English (the language used for SMS answers), you can go to the “village phone operators, which have also been established on the basis of the Grameen Foundation. They are the local merchants, who speak English and know how to use three different SMS services. There are 10,000 operators throughout Uganda, and people may turn to them for help on their own mobile phones, or can pay a small fee to use the telephone operator. In the village phone operator receives a rebate from MTN, which gives them an incentive to provide this assistance.

MTN Networks owns half the market share of mobile phones in Uganda and is the only provider offering such services SMS right now. In the next few months, there is a grace period, and all texts are free, which allows AppLab to continue to build its database queries. When the advertising period ends, MTN and Google have agreed to instruct the agriculture and health queries to half the normal cost of SMS messages, while all other services will be standard rates. Meanwhile, Google will support on-site assessment to verify that these services have a positive effect on the people of Uganda.