Globalisation, as defined by the rich, is a very nice thing, the former US president Jimmy Carter once reflected. “You’re talking about the internet, you’re talking about cell phones, you’re talking about computers,” said Carter. “This doesn’t affect two-thirds of the people in the world.”

That was in 2001; a lot has changed. In Kenya, mobile phones have become an integral part of cash transfer schemes, enabling poor people in urban areas to buy food. In remote rural areas of Peru, computers provided by the Euro-Solar programme are fuelling an appetite for learning among children. And the senior US political adviser Alec Ross – acknowledging the galvanising influence of social media on the Arab spring – has described the internet as “the Che Guevara of the 21st century”.

If the global spread of technology can do all this, what else might it achieve? Quite a lot, according to the authors of a report prepared by the GSMA mobile industry body and published to coincide with last week’s eLearning Africa conference in Cotonou, Benin. Read More