Title:
In Kenya, a Better Life Through Mobile Money
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Technology Report.
See text below
Text:
Mobile phones have revolutionized the way people
connect not only with family and friends but also
business services. A good example: services that let
people use their phones to send and receive money.
Two companies, Safaricom and Vodafone, launched the
M-Pesa mobile money service in Kenya in two thousand
seven. Pesa means money in Swahili. The service
operates much like a savings bank -- which is
important, because plenty of Kenyans do not have
bank accounts.
Most of the early users were young men who worked in
cities and wanted to send money home to rural areas.
Now customers can also use their M-Pesa accounts to
pay bills, make purchases or pay for services like
taxis. Users pay a small amount for each
transaction. Stephen Mbugua has a farm a half-hour's
drive from the capital. He uses M-Pesa to receive
money from his son and to pay bills. He says: "I
used to go to Nairobi or to any bank to pay my bill.
But now, I don't go to Nairobi, I just pay my bill
from here."
Some businesses use the service to pay their
employees. All across Kenya, there are stores and
automated teller machines where M-Pesa users can add
and withdraw money from their accounts. People can
also transfer money to other mobile phone users,
even those without an M-Pesa account.
The other person receives a text message with a code
to take to the local M-Pesa agent to get the money.
All this pleases twenty-two year old Phelister Omari.
She says: "It's very fast. The M-Pesa, they're
available everywhere. So once you are going
somewhere, you can drop, get some cash and proceed."
M-Pesa is improving economic conditions for many
Kenyan families. British-based Vodaphone has also
teamed with local companies to offer the service in
Uganda and Afghanistan. Safaricom says nearly eight
million people in Kenya now use M-Pesa. That number
is expected to grow as more people use mobile
phones.
A recent report predicted that the number of mobile
phone accounts worldwide will reach almost four and
a half billion this year. That is twelve percent
more than last year, and equal to two-thirds of the
world's population. The report was from the European
Information Technology Observatory. The group says
the strongest growth in mobile phone use now comes
from newly industrialized and developing countries.
And that's the VOA Special English Development
Report.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
