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You are invited to participate in person or via live webcast/social media in this e-Development Thematic Group Workshop:

"Mobile Innovations for Social and Economic Transformation. From Pilots to Scaled-up Implementation"

Time: September 16, 2009, 9:00 am - 5:15 p.m (All times Washington DC)

You can watch live and recorded webcast at: www.worldbank.org/edevelopment/live

Click here to register for live webcast: http://go.worldbank.org/BGZ8XU3KF0

Event Web page: http://go.worldbank.org/7ZD6MGXWF0

Description:

'Explosive' is the only way to describe mobile phone growth. Over half of the world's 6.5 billion people now use a mobile and over 60 percent of mobile phone users live in developing countries. Mobile-based innovations are quickly emerging as the new frontier in transforming government, health, banking, education and many other sectors due to fast growing penetration of mobile phones even in the poorest and remotest areas of the globe. Many services can be now made available on a 24x7x365 basis at any place in the world covered by mobile networks, which today means almost everywhere. Through mobiles, for the first time ever, many public and private services have now reached poor households and communities. The demand for mobile applications is fast picking up developing countries. The multitude of highly innovative applications have been developed for mobile banking and payments, phone based information services for farmers and fishermen, locations based medical services and monitoring and data collection in the health sector, to name a few. However, the enormous potential of mobile devices for transforming delivery of public and financial services is still largely untapped.

This workshop aims to raise awareness of World Bank Group staff of the transformational role mobile technologies can play in improving service delivery, efficiency and transparency by show-casing mobile-enabled innovations in a number of sectors and identifying emerging lessons learned and ways to scale up for achieving operational efficiencies and development impact.

Agenda:

9:00 -10:15 am Overview of Mobile Innovations Space and Enabling Environment
10:15 -10:30 am Coffee Break
10:30 -11:45 am Mobile Innovations in Financial Services
11:45 - 1:00 pm Mobile Innovations in Health
1:00 - 2:30 pm Working Lunch & Session: Mobile Innovations in Education
2:30 - 3:45 pm Mobile Applications in Agriculture and Rural Development
3:45 - 4:00 pm Coffee Break
4:00 - 5:15 pm Mobile Innovations in Governance

Should you have any questions, please contact us at edevelopment@worldbank.org

e-Development Thematic Group, World Bank