We use our mobile phones to take photos, follow social media and make calls. But in some poorer parts of the world, the device is a survival tool.
'For the four billion people at the bottom of the 'pyramid', the mobile phone is their lifeline,' says Akanksha Hazari, a West Island School graduate. The 29-year-old founded m.Paani, a social enterprise that uses cell phones to help the poor.
Mobile phones can provide the needy with key services, such as safe water, sanitation, education, health care and energy, she says.
'Worldwide, 2.5 billion people in developing countries don't have access to sanitation. One billion don't have access to safe water. Yet 5.1 billion - or 68 per cent of the world population - have mobile phones,' she says.
Hazari has seen how important cell phones are to villages where she has lived and worked.
'In the villages, farmers use their mobile phones to check pricing and whether a market is open before they travel a long way to sell their products. They use phones to call buyers and customers to keep their businesses going,' says Hazari, who went to Princeton University in the US and has an MBA from Cambridge University.
