4.8 billion people live in developing countries, mostly in rural areas.


Rural developing world people have many information needs
  • Manage finances and organizations
  • Learn about business opportunities
  • Access government services
  • Access medical attention and guidance
  • Communicate with customers or suppliers

 Group Meeting
Guatemalan Village
 However, they also have constraints
  • Limited purchasing power
  • Limited infrastructure (power, network, shelter, transportation)
  • Limited education
  • Limited economic opportunities


CAM is a mobile application framework for the rural developing world.



CAM Framework


The key design elements of CAM are:
  • Tight linkage to paper processes - barcodes link CAM to familiar paper formats
  • Camera and multimedia-driven UI - accessible to rural users and the constraints of mobile devices
  • Easy to program and use - easy to localize, even if phone doesn't support target language
  • Asynchronous networking - using SMS and other SMTP-based protocols
  • Mobile phones as a computing platform - battery-powered, familiar, cheap, immediately useful
  • Agent-based - supporting distributed data collection and dissemination

To see CAM in action, watch this short video.