With smart phones taking the world by Storm, a phone that can only send and receive voice calls and text messages may seem like a relic from a bygone age. Yet in East Africa,simple phones like these are changing the face of the economy, thanks to the mobile money services that are spreading across the region.     Using the text-messaging function built into the GSM system used by most cell phone networks, these services allow people without a bank account or credit card to use their phone as an electronic wallet that can be used to store. send or receive cash.      It works like this: you pay cash to your local agent who then tops up your mobile money account using a secure form of text messaging. That money can be transferred to another person by sending a message to their cell phone account.      For some the system is a lifeline. "If I didn't have my mobile phone. I would be very poor, "says Neyasse Neemur, a mother of four children who lives in northern Kenya. "Now I can sell fish."      Neemur took up fishing in July last year, but making money from it was a little tricky, especially as Turkana people do not usually eat fish. A truck from Ethiopia to Tanzania passes through her village once a week, and she arranged to have the driver transport the fish several hundred kilometres south to market in Kisumu, where her  s sell the fish.     "I get the money transfer immediately." says Neemur. "Then I can pay for my children to go to school and for vegetables and beans," she adds, "so I don't need to eat fish."     According to the Central Bank of Kenya, payments worth around l billion Kenyan shillings($13 million)per day were transferred through Kenya's mobile money systems in 2009, equaling the country's credit card transactions . The bank expects mobile money transfers to overtake credit cards in 2011. What can we learn about the simple phones in East Africa?
They might help the local people apply for a bank account. They will replace the banks completely in the near future. They provide a safe means for the locals to do business. They can do nothing except send and receive calls or messages.