Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty? asks the New York Times Magazine this week as they cover the work of Jan Chipchase, an anthropologist-designer working for Nokia whose job is to live and understand how cellphones means for people in Tibet, Uganda, Ecuador etc — in other words the other 4 billion people on earth who don’t have access to a mobile network.

Yes, ultimately the likes of Nokia and Motorola are there to make money but what strikes me as inspiring is that they are making an effort to learn about unique local needs in the developing world. These are potential customers for whom a cellphone isn’t just another gadget or device .

Something that’s mostly a convenience booster for those of us with a full complement of technology at our disposal — land-lines, Internet connections, TVs, cars — can be a life-saver to someone with fewer ways to access information. A just in time moment afforded by a cellphone looks a lot different to a mother in Uganda who needs to carry a child with malaria three hours to visit the nearest doctor but who would like to know first whether that doctor is even in town. It looks different, too, to the rural Ugandan doctor who, faced with an emergency, is able to request information via text message from a hospital in Kampala.

Given resources and the right motivation, people are fantastically inventive. That’s why some humanitarians favour the bottom up approach to aid rather than top down — empower and encourage entrepreneurship rather than telling aid recipients to wait for money to filter down through bureaucracy or corrupt agencies. An example is what Grameen Phone Ltd in Bangledesh offers:

Women use microcredit to buy specially designed cellphone kits costing about $150, each equipped with a long-lasting battery. They then set up shop as their village phone operator, charging a small commission for people to make and receive calls

In the Philippines, pre-paid cards double as currency and gives an alternative way of sending money to far away relatives. Monks in Mongolia are unbelievably tech savvy. In India locals want cellphones to tell them about the weather because they have no access to TV or radio. In Ghana locals are given a chance to test some new Nokia designs:

“Hellllloooooo,” Chipchase said, smiling broadly.

“Helllllooooo, Brudda,” she said back in English.

“We work for Nokia. You know Nokia?”

The woman said nothing, but reached down and from the folds of her wrapper produced a Nokia phone. “Not good,” she said, shaking her head disparagingly. “You call. It switches off.”

Chipchase enlisted the interpreter to explain that her problem sounded like a network problem and not a Nokia problem. Shrugging, the woman went on to inspect the prototype phones, testing their weight in her palm, pressing them against her cheek, punching buttons. She pooh-poohed the stylus phone but said she liked the one-button model if it meant she didn’t need to use a lot of numbers. “Brudda, how do you charge it?” she asked. From his bag, Burns pulled another still-conceptual design, this one a thin metal cylinder with a whirlybird antenna on top. He showed the corn seller how to rotate the cylinder in small circles, causing the antenna to swing, which, he explained, in 15 minutes or so would generate enough power to charge her phone battery.

The woman picked up the futuristic gizmo and began to swing it; the antenna whipped around and around. She let out an enthusiastic whoop. Then a friend of hers who’d been sitting in the shadow of her umbrella started to laugh. Another woman, a spice seller perched on a stool next to small mountains of turmeric and cumin heaped on canvas cloths, began to laugh also. “Very nice,” the corn seller said to Burns and Chipchase, swinging the antenna like a toy. “It’s good!”