Mobile phones have traditionally offered voice and basic text messaging features to connect people. However, with improving capacities, cheaper rates and more affordable devices, mobile telephony has proven to be a powerful enabler for accessing data and services anywhere at any time.

Today half of the population worldwide has a mobile phone. In the Latin American and Caribbean region, nearly 80 out 100 people carry a mobile phone. This means that there are about 460 million mobile subscribers, out of which more than 240 million are people who live on less than US $300 a month.

Considering these facts, the mobile technology with an innovative approach can reach the majority of the population and provide them with essential service that will enhance their social and economic empowerment.

The Mobile Citizen Program, from the Science and Technology Division of the IDB, aims to accelerate the development and implementation of mobile services to tackle acute social and economic problems in the region. It focuses on six areas, with special attention given to gender and diversity issues: health, education, government, commerce, social protection, and employment.

The main program objectives are:

• Strengthen local technical capacity to design and develop mobile services
• Seek empirical evidence of social and economic impact that can demonstrate the genuine potential of mobile services to policy makers and entrepreneurs
• Design and establish business models that would enable replication and scaling up of mobile services that are developed through the program

To achieve this goal, the Program will identify and collaborate with three crucial actors - Participant Organizations that are aware of problems that affect the majority of people in its community, Solution Providers who can develop new approaches for dealing with these issues, and Partners who can turn the approaches into profitable and sustainable mobile services.

Visit the Mobile Citizen website to get more information and inspiration on how mobile technology can enhance development.

The Mobile Citizen Program is supported by the Italian Government through the Italian Trust Fund for Information and Communication Technology for Development.