In the United States, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and several emerging economies in Asia, mobile technologies have become ubiquitous and core to everyday lives. The same cannot be said for many countries in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). The availability, affordability and use of information and communication technology (ICT) continue to pose a major challenge to the progress of this important emerging economy and their participation in a networked and “flat world.” Writers (Bishop et al., 1999; ADB, 2003; Fisher et al., 2004; Elijah & Ogunlade, 2006; Etim, 2009; Ssewanyana, 2007) argue for the use of ICT to enable the SSA population in the area of economic and personal development. This paper examines the emerging economy of SSA adoption of mobile technologies in comparison to the U.S.A and reports a study on the features that SSA students desire in mobile phones. The key finding was that study participants desired Internet access via mobile phones.

In recent years, social networking sites have witnessed a signi?cant growth in popularity and membership. These social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn use tools that also appeal to businesses. One important area of business application of social networking is to improve communication and trust relationships among virtual project teams (Sarker, Ahuja & Kirkeby, 2011; Anantatmula & Thomas, 2010). In this paper, the authors report the use of social media tools for virtual teaming for a large Vietnamese bank, Navibank. The paper delves into the strategic initiative and expansion into global markets using virtual project teams that communicated mostly through social media tools and services. Navibank (hereafter known as the Bank) is one of the top ten largest commercial banks in Vietnam. In a large project of opening ten branches of the Bank in Cambodia by the end of 2015, social media tools like Skype, e-mail, Facebook, instant messaging and video conference are being used by the Bank teams in Vietnam to communicate and work effectively with the new teams that are being formed in Cambodia.

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This paper assesses differences in loan characteristic variables between those who pay interest on their micro-loans and those who dont. The findings indicate significant differences between interest payers and interest non payers based on the sufficiency of the loans, the recency of the business and loan, and the portion of profits needed to repay loans.