Of all that a parent can pass on to a child, the condition of poverty may be the most heartbreaking. It stifles one generation’s ability to provide and diminishes the opportunities available to the next. New solutions are required to break this vicious cycle.

Consider for a moment that more Africans have access to mobile phones than proper drainage, piped water or paved roads. Rather than simply a case of misplaced priorities or unstoppable globalisation, it’s a testament to the power of the cell phone technology when in the hands of those who need it most.

In the West, phones are too often a device for distraction. In the developing world they can prove a literal lifeline in defiance of broken infrastructure and remote geography.

Take for example the World Health Organisation, which is pioneering mobile technology that would allow medical staff in under-resourced nations to upload and share images with medical staff elsewhere, thus allowing diagnoses to be made across borders.

Or in Nigeria, where SMART, a mobile programme, has halved the turnaround time for HIV tests for infants. Or Madagascar, where health workers are remotely monitoring the well-being of the country’s pregnant women, providing up-to-date health information as well as organising appointments to local clinics. Small battery-powered printers and SMS have enabled all of this information to move quickly around vast areas devoid of computers or medical offices.

These children will be born into a world filled with technological possibilities — they may even be educated via a screen. This sounds impersonal but may be quite the opposite — already in South Africa an education app means pupils can easily switch from being taught in formal English to their native language. Ownership of a computer may be beyond the reach of these children, but a mobile phone is still a powerful tool.

Eliminating poverty? There’s an app for that too. More than half of all Kenyans utilise M-Pesa, a mobile payment system that enables residents to transfer money and pay bills via SMS. It’s estimated that around half the country’s GDP flows through it each year. In fact, an MIT study identified M-Pesa as the sole contributor to lifting 2 per cent of Kenyans out of poverty between 2008 and 2014.

In this respect, Kenyans are not alone. Millions of their sub-Saharan neighbours cannot afford to pay bank fees while inflation dwindles their savings. Instead they use mobile systems similar to M-Pesa, transforming the financial system of a part of the world where Western notions of banking simply do not work. Likewise farmers in Ghana can now check market prices for their crops, initiate trades and accept payment via their mobiles.

However, there is no doubt the mobile revolution in developing countries still has a way to go. Guaranteeing a reliable and comprehensive mobile network across huge swathes of land in rural Africa is a difficult feat.

The surrounding costs of the technology are also a factor. Energy consumption and production in nations such as Burundi (where charging a mobile phone may cost 20 per cent of a person’s wage) renders such mobile initiatives inaccessible to many. And telecommunications companies are unlikely to work to improve coverage in Uganda and Rwanda where there is no market to pay the costs.

However, despite these challenges the payoff remains as enticing as ever. If such technology continues to expand and become accessible it means that one day a child, regardless of where in the world they are born, can exploit opportunities their parents never knew with nothing more than a cheap mobile and an internet connection.

From our vantage point — where mobile phones are often derided as necessary irritations, or little time-wasting machines — we can easily lose sight of the power of this technology. But in other parts of the world the mobile phone is functioning as an agent of change — providing new opportunities in commerce, health and education and helping to break the cycle of inherited poverty.

Jack Derwin is a journalist and writer currently living in Córdoba, Spain

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 223, February 2018: 26.