Premise reverses the usual do-gooder assumption about the Internet’s benefits for people in developing countries — that it supplies precious information from abroad. (People in Pakistan can take online courses from MIT!) Instead, it turns those ubiquitous phones into a way of bypassing distant bureaucrats to get systematic information, collected by people who understand the local territory, out of the shadows and into the world economy.
Read the whole thing, which describes an app that allows businesses and governments to undertake research about price trends and other economic phenomena in developing countries.