Micro-credit via mobile phones

DELFT – Micro-credits provided via mms or sms. This is the best way to extend the small loans that the most impoverished people in scarcely populated rural regions of Africa can use for their small-scale business ventures. These were the findings of research carried out during the past six months by two TU Delft students for Microsoft Research''s Digital Inclusion programme into(context). Since April of this year, Cale Thompson, an Industrial Ecology Master''s student, and Jon Rodriquez, a TU Delft Industrial Design Engineering graduate, have been searching for a financial infrastructure that would allow people to borrow money without incurring high costs. In the spring they travelled to Uganda and Kenya to carry out field research.

Power failure

A surprising result of this research was that in actual fact it is not the Internet, but rather mobile telecommunications, which are the most efficient communication tools for the people there. To successfully carry out micro-financing in East Africa, mobile telecommunication is needed. Using computers is often problematic, owing to faulty Internet connections and power failures.

KIVA
This summer the two TU Delft students worked on a concept for actually making it possible to loan money via mobile telecommunications. The idea is that the entrepreneur in the developing country can request financing by sending an mms message. In August, the two young entrepreneurs tested this prototype in Africa. KIVA, an organisation that uses the Internet to allow financiers to immediately extend micro-financing to entrepreneurs in developing countries, is enthusiastic about this new method of micro-financing. There are plans in place to offer this new method in future, so that even the most impoverished people can have a chance to start their own businesses.

Cale Thompson gave a presentation of his graduation project on 28 September at TU Delft. If you were unable to attend this presentation but would like to know more about this project, please contact Cale Thompson directly at:

Cale Thompson:  cale@remove-this.intocontext.org
Website: www.intocontext.org/ | www.kiva.org

For more information about the Industrial Ecology degree programme, please contact:

Programme Coordinator Industrial Ecology
Gijsbert Korevaar (PhD, MSc)
Faculty of Applied Sciences
Delft University of Technology
Lorentzweg 1 (room A255)
2628 CJ Delft
Phone: +31 (0) 15 2783659
Fax: +31 (0) 15 2788572
www.industrialecology.nl