Toward a mobile phone based solution for microcredit in rural Bangladesh

Author

Ahmed, Masum ; Aziz, A. K M Fahad ; Saha, Raj Narayan ; Das, Susmita ; Sharmin, Laila ; Ferdous, Hasan Shahid ; Ishtiaque Ahmed, Syed

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci. & Eng., Univ. of Asia Pacific, Dhaka, Bangladesh

fYear

2011

fDate

19-20 Dec. 2011

Firstpage

485

Lastpage

490

Abstract

Microcredit was introduced in Bangladesh in the early ´70s and since then, it has been considered as one of the principal means of socio-economic development in many parts of rural Bangladesh. However, the impacts of Microcredit are often criticized and the ultimate objectives are sometimes accused to be missing in reality. We conducted a field study at the district of Jamalganj in Sylhet, Bangladesh that revealed some interesting facts behind the failure of Microcredit operations in there. In this paper, we have discussed these findings and propose a mobile phone based solutions to those problems.

Keywords

credit transactions; mobile handsets; socio-economic effects; town and country planning; Jamalganj; Sylhet; microcredit; mobile phone; rural Bangladesh; socioeconomic development; Economic indicators; Educational institutions; Mobile communication; Mobile handsets; Organizations; Developing Regions; Field Study; Microcredit; Mobile Phone Based Solution;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Research and Development (SCOReD), 2011 IEEE Student Conference on

Conference_Location

Cyberjaya

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-0099-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SCOReD.2011.6148788

Filename

6148788