Interesting comments on the future of ICT4D! I personally am excited about the opportunities offered by the mobile Web and the introduction of mobile services.

I just wanted to give some of the basic economics and clarify why the popular story you refer to is one of fishermen. It is not an accident! That is so because fishermen are trading a perishable product and its price is highly dependant on receiving accurate market information, at the right time. Moreover, fishermen are in a great position to respond to price dispersion among different markets because they are almost costlessly mobile (as in being able to move). Fishermen are close to indifferent at which specific port they are going to offload their catch.

The fishermen you are referring to vary in their country of origin, intermittently India or Senegal because these countries are the sites of two projects focused on enabling the fish trade via mobile phones, and understanding the benefits from it.

India, namely the Kerala province is the study for Rober Jensen’s article “The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance, and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector”, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Issue 3, August 2007. See the video of information use in the Kerala fish trade.

Senegal is the one of the sites of the Manobi project, originally a wireless e-service assisting Senegalese fishermen in the marketing of their catch. There are other projects in this area.