The Foreign Service Journal, January 2007

thereby increasing their competitive- ness ( www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/article/2006/ 10/14/AR2006101400342_2.html ). Cell phones have also revolution- ized banking in poor countries. In South Africa, where more than half of adults do not have a bank account, mobile-phone banking — M-banking — offers a convenient and secure tool for money management. Instead of carrying around large amounts of cash or paying drivers to deliver money to relatives, mobile-phone owners can access accounts with the click of a button. As The Economist reports, “About half a million South Africans now use their mobile phones as a bank. Besides sending money to rela- tives and paying for goods, they can check balances, buy mobile airtime and settle utility bills” ( www.econo mist.com/printedition/displaysto ry.cfm?story_id=8089667 ). Mobile phones have also empow- ered the jobless. In Bangladesh, the Grameen Bank (see Cybernotes, Dec- ember 2006) provides loans to poor women to start mobile pay phone busi- nesses. These “phone ladies” rent out their cell phones, providing a method of communication in their villages and a source of income for themselves. The Indian company Shyam Telecom runs a similar venture, fitting mobile technologies on rickshaws, while Ugan- da’s MTN Publicom mounts phones on four-wheeled bicycles ( www.text ually.org/textually/archives/cat_mo bile_phone_projects_third_world. htm?p=1 ). The benefits of cell phones are not limited to economics. A project of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University is currently under way to create a database of arsenic levels in Bangladeshi villages. Villagers building wells can avoid health hazards by accessing the data- base through their phones ( www.text ually.org/textually/archives/2006/ 10/013938.htm ). As the use of cell phones in the developing world continues to expand, many companies are tailoring products specifically for these Third World clients. In 2005, Motorola began producing cheaper phones — at $30 or less — for developing mar- kets. Perhaps a more innovative example is ReCellular, Inc., which collects used cell phones from the United States and sells them at lower prices to developing countries ( www. recellular.net/home/home.asp ) . While huge disparities persist be- tween the developed and developing worlds, mobile phones are slowly but surely creating new opportunities for the poor. As cell-phone providers catch on to the great potential of these poorer markets, new innovations are bound to keep improving the lives of billions around the world. — Lamiya Rahman, Editorial Intern Kazakhstan On the Map Jagshemash! Over the past year, Kazakhstan has gained renown as a nation where women supposedly live in cages, the beverage of choice is fer- mented horse urine and inhabitants gather once a year to celebrate the Running of the Jew. The once little- known country has now become a household name thanks to the fiction- al Kazakhstani journalist, Borat Sagdiyev, played by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen on his weekly television show “Ali G in da USAiii.” Sagdiyev travels around the “U.S. and A” to learn firsthand about American customs. With the November release of the greatly hyped mockumentary, “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” moviegoers around the world met the loutish, lewd and lov- able character, and Kazakhstan was firmly placed on the map of main- stream consciousness. Borat shows us that cultural stereo- types can be as hilarious and revealing as they are disconcerting. But the real nation of Kazakhstan has little in com- mon with the country described in Borat’s adventures, as many angry Kazakhstani officials have tried to point out. Contrary to the destitute image of the country portrayed in “Borat” (which was actually shot in Glod, Romania), Kazakhstan’s large cities have received major construction and renovation. Indeed, as Matthew Yeomans of Slate Magazine notes, “The first things you notice about Astana, Kazakhstan’s cap- ital, are not the grandiose, glistening new government buildings that domi- nate the skyline ... The city’s most abundant physical feature is the good old construction crane — scores and scores of them dotted across the city J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 11 C Y B E R N O T E S 50 Years Ago... The Foreign Service needs many things — especially the esteem of its fellow man, the esteem and honor of the American people. No group so merits and has less of these. — Clare Booth Luce, to a November 1956 luncheon at AFSA upon her retirement as ambassador to Italy, in “News to the Field,” FSJ , January 1957.