Summary
Ever since images of starving children were beamed around the world in the 1980s, global poverty – especially in sub Saharan Africa – has been recognized as one of the world’s major problems. Live Aid and twenty years later Live 8 seemed to unite the world in the effort to make poverty history, once and for all.

Description
The explosion in mobile phone usage across Africa over the last decade, that now sees Kenya as the world leader in money transfer by mobile phone may allow crowdsourcing-based solutions to help remedy both of these problems.One such solution is the employment opportunities offered by crowdsourcing companies such as txteagle and samasource, bypassing of the need for investment traditionally required for job creation.Another, yet to be fully explored possibility is using crowdsourcing to improve the effectiveness of money spent on aid.Crowdsourcing is already used by Citizen Water to collect water quality data which is then displayed on an interactive map.