Contacting elusive rebel factions was once something for reporters to boast about at the hotel bar. Not anymore. Rebel press offices have gone digital—building Web sites, e-mail lists, and even online chat rooms. Want to know what Darfur rebels are thinking? Check the latest communiqués on the Justice and Equality Movement’s home page. The photo gallery of Chad’s Union of Forces for Change and Democracy depicts sunglasses-clad rebel leaders brandishing their AK-47s—but please respect the copyright notice at the bottom of the page.

Today’s rebel groups use the Internet to broadcast their grievances the world over, and sometimes even move markets. The Nigerian Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), for instance, adroitly manipulates oil prices through colorful e-mail blasts. Many of these illicit press offices far outpace their government rivals. MEND responds within hours to e-mailed queries. But the commission charged with developing the Niger region? Good luck finding contact info on its Web site.

They’ve been called the “development mafia”—shadowy experts in obscure disciplines such as drip irrigation and capacity building. But until recently, the tens of thousands of freelance consultants, NGO workers, and aid agency employees who make up the international development world were more of a scattered horde than a cohesive community. That might be about to change.

Earlier this year, Raj Kumar, president and cofounder of the Washington-based Development Executive Group, launched a social networking tool designed to connect development professionals and the firms that require their expertise. The site, devex.com, was inspired by Web 2.0 companies such as Facebook and LinkedIn. But whereas Facebook junkies list their favorite bands and upload photographs of friends, Devex’s nearly 90,000 global users boast about their project management skills and their latest professional certifications.

Site members can, depending on their level of access, post projects, form networks based on common interests, browse and monitor upcoming bids, find job opportunities, and get in touch with experts on the ground. Looking for an English-speaking agricultural specialist in Colombia with at least five years of experience? Devex gives you a choice of 28.

At the heart of the site, though, is its massive projects database, which currently lists more than 47,000 projects on everything from rural sanitation in Bangladesh to policing in the Palestinian territories—searchable by region, country, donor, project type, or status. By aggregating this information in one place, Kumar says, Devex gives everyone a chance to find out about opportunities, not just the well-connected (though executive members do get “early intelligence” reports about upcoming projects).

Kumar’s goal is to make a profit, but he also hopes the site will help more foreign aid reach those in need. “Efficiency isn’t sexy,” he admits. “But with $200 billion in foreign aid each year, a few percentage points of efficiency gains is like adding another Gates Foundation to the world.” ActionAid International, an antipoverty group, estimates that in 2004 alone, nearly $12 billion was spent on “over-priced and ineffective technical assistance.” For the world’s poorest, the social networking revolution couldn’t come soon enough.

After Ireland shocked Europe by voting “no” to the Lisbon Treaty referendum in June, an offended and befuddled European Commission wondered, “Why do they hate us?” According to an EU investigation leaked to London’s Telegraph newspaper, bloggers are partly to blame. Blogging, the report claims, is an “anti-establishment” activity. The EU investigation tracked sites between March and May of this year, carefully documenting the uptick in anti-EU messages. “A number of viral emails, videos, songs etc. were created by the No campaign which were creative, often humorous, and had a lot of ‘cut through’.” Alas, says the report, the pro-Brussels campaign was overwhelmed by the Internet, a “fragmented battle ground dominated by Euro-scepticism.”

Illustration by Ken Orvidas for FP

Perhaps the hardest part of fighting contagious diseases is simply getting patients to take their meds. For tuberculosis, which kills nearly 1.6 million people a year, the drug regimen lasts at least six months and often carries unpleasant side effects. Patients who skip doses risk developing drug-resistant TB, which is costly to treat and prone to dangerous outbreaks. A team of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), however, has devised a novel solution: bribe patients with cellphone minutes.

The students’ big idea, which has been put to the test in Nicaragua, rests on a new technology called paper microfluidics. Rather than visiting a clinic every day or receiving constant reminders at home, patients are given a device that spits out a small strip of paper, coated with chemicals, every 24 hours. As with a home pregnancy test, patients urinate on the strip, which detects drug compliance. Instead of a plus or minus sign, the system reveals a numerical code that the patients then send via text message to a central server. (To ward off potential cheaters, there is a new code every day.) Those whose codes register a high enough compliance rate each month earn free cellphone minutes, a powerful incentive that’s inexpensive to implement.

For Jose Gomez-Marquez, program director of MIT’s Innovations in International Health initiative, the project’s genius is its combination of psychology and economics. “We knew that it couldn’t just be a technological approach to the problem,” he says. “It had to be a combination of behavior modification with the aid of technology.” So far, trial runs of the project in Nicaragua have been a hit—so much so that TB patients outside the study are asking to take part, too.

Until the special strips of paper can be mass-produced, the scope of the project remains limited. But Miguel Orozco, a Nicaraguan health researcher who is assisting the program, envisions the venture catching on. “They can do [the treatment] from their homes,” Orozco says. “You have people living with tuberculosis happy to have their own mobility and independence.”

Next up for the MIT team is attempting to export the program elsewhere. They are already laying the groundwork for bringing the technology to Ethiopia and have launched a clinical trial in Pakistan. Urdu’s complex alphabet is proving to be a logistical challenge, but free cellphone minutes? It’s an idea that needs little translation.

Photo courtesy of Chris Anderson

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