Via Mashable: How Mobile Technology is a Game Changer for Developing Africa.
There are a lot of initiatives out there that engage with mobile phones for development.  The most impressive I have seen is Lifelines India, in part coordinated by some friends and colleagues at Development Alternatives.  Volunteers bring the phones to villages, and for a small fee they can call a number and record their questions. Each farmer receives a reference number for the query and can call back in a day and use that reference number to access the reply. The project promised and delivered rapid replies to queries (less than twenty-four hours) and provided information of great value to farmers.  Today it reaches around 150,000 farmers in four Indian states.
This is but one of many initiatives.  The Global Adaptation Information Network project I have been part of for the past four years is heavily predicated on using mobile phones to connect communities throughout the Global South.  And Mickey Glantz has toyed with the idea of expanding Sparetime University to mobile platforms to expand access,
What this article failed to recognize, though, is the interesting boom in cell phone app development in Africa right now – app developers in Kenya are recognized as some of the best in the world at designing lightweight apps for low bandwidth networks.  For those who are fed up with lazy, bloated coding of software here in the US (why your programs run so slowly, even on new computers and fast internet connections), it may be that Africa is the future . . .