Teach Literacy by Text Message. Really. (World Bank)

From the article:

Two years ago Aker et al added to [our knowledge of “what works” in adult education in low-income environments] with a study from Niger showing that a mobile phone-based component added to a standard adult literacy program improved math and literacy scores for participants, and those results persisted, at least in math. So simple mobile phones can make standard adult literacy programs better.

...

Mobile phones clearly aren’t the silver bullet to all of our development problems: We’ll probably be waiting a while for the iPhone app that physically vaccinates children. (Anyone?) Aker herself, one of the authors on this paper, has an interview from 2011 trying to separate the hope from the hype.

But they are at the center of some promising interventions: increasing adherence to rapid diagnostic tests among malaria patients or to antiretroviral therapy among HIV-positive individuals.  And in some cases, like this one, the cell phone program manages not just to complement what we think of as a crucial input, but actually to replace it.

Read the article here