Can a text message save a continent?
As President Obama traveled to Africa earlier this summer, his administration heralded the power of geeks to reshape America's approach to global poverty. Rather than hand out money to corrupt governments or rely on creaky international bureaucracies, a new notion is emerging that if the right technology gets to the world's poorest people, they can lead their own development. Where Washington and Brussels have failed, it seems, Silicon Valley might yet succeed.
The innovations are coming fast and furious: a power-generating soccer ball, a merry-go-round water-pump, and high-profile projects which arm villages with laptops and smartphones. To date, however, these splashy technologies that delight TED-conference attendees have yet to catch fire with the people they've been designed to help.
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