Richard Heeks has a written a nice blog post on Understanding Mobiles and Livelihoods... How can we understand the impact that mobiles are having on the livelihoods of the poor? We all know that mobile phone use has grown exponentially in developing countries. And that phones are having an increasing impact on the livelihoods of the poor by providing market prices, by supplying health information, by enabling financial transfers, etc. But we know a lot less about how to conceptualise all this. Can we just pull some development studies ideas off-the-shelf? Or do we need to do more than this? A new working paper in the Development Informatics series – Understanding Mobile Phone Impact on Livelihoods in Developing Countries: A New Research Framework (http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/publications/wp/di/) – argues the livelihoods approach is a good starting point. But that it needs modification. The livelihoods approach suggests four potential impacts of mobiles on the assets that underpin all livelihoods... More at http://ict4dblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/understanding-mobiles-and-liveliho...