Mobile phones heated up once again the development 2.0 summer debate: from the NYT on the uses of mobile phones for safe water distribution, to the upcoming World Bank study on mobile phones for education; from CTA’s overview of the uses of mobile phones for agricultural development to Chris’ foray into sensors and micro-voluntarism. And if you are interested in mobile banking for the unbanked, don’t miss Jim’s summer round-up.

In recognition of World Contraception Day on September 26, governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and individuals will call on their respective communities to celebrate progress made, and take action to ensure the 201 million women with an unmet need for contraceptives and condoms will receive reproductive health commodities and services. 

Using Open Atrium to deploy a highly custom, enterprise grade intranet solution. The World Bank's Communicate intranet launched last week on Open Atrium with nearly 1,000 users. Their communications team spread around the world is better positioned to collaborate now that their main communication tool is custom tuned to their specific business processes.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced the launch of its new Water Finance Website at World Water Week in Stockholm on August 19. The website is designed to improve the financing of water sanitation and hygiene (WSH) services in developing countries.

Congratulations to mPedigree, entrant in USAID's Development 2.0 Challenge, and 2009 Tech Laureate, as announced by the Tech Awards today! Tech Awards reports that this year's 15 laureates were selected from among 650 nominations representing 66 countries.

Technologists focusing on Africa have long been reporting efforts to open source hardware, including several demos at MakerFaireAfrica. These projects were built with the ...

Google continues to expand into Africa with Google News Senegal, or rather, Google Actualités pour le Sénégal. The service pulls news from major Senegalese newspapers, ...

The Global Development Commons is delighted to hear reports coming in from far and wide that Maker Faire Africa went off without a hitch and ignited innovation in Accra, Ghana.

Imagine we do not only use our mobile phones to make phones calls and SMS, but to contribute to science. How does that work? We can directly engage in micro-voluntarism or contribute valuable information without doing much more than carrying our mobile phone with us.