Top 20 ideas for social entrepreneurship in Africa

With true open source spirit, Appfrica's Jonathan Gossier just posted part one of a two part column called "Top 20 Ideas for Social Entrepreneurs" in Africa.The whole list is great and worth a read. Things I'm particularly interested in:

07. Peer to Peer Lending

The promise of websites like Prosper and Zopa are that they allow communities to help each other when institutions like banks and MFIs won’t. The idea is to create some sort of communal hedge fund and allow community members to submit ideas that the community gets to approve funding for. Judging by the response to this post, this idea would be well received.

One of the things that I've commonly seen in my work in Uganda is a rich and palpable pride in community. People like being able to support one another, and in most parts of the country, their are still strong enough geographic and family/kinship ties to make a peer-to-peer lending model really viable. In fact, one of the trends in microfinance I've noticed in Uganda is more local nonprofits trying to form locally owned and operated community banks so that they don't have to rely on external microcredit institutions and can keep wealth local. (One of our program partners for the Northwestern Global Engagement Summer Institute is the Organization for Rural Development, which does just that). This is not that dissimilar to peer-to-peer lending for funding startups.

10. Mobile Desktop as a Phone

Why do I have a laptop and an iPhone? Because no one in their right mind wants to program with a smart phone. I’m imagining a device the size of an iPhone that has similar features. The only difference is it would have a USB keyboard option and a video port allowing it to literally become a desktop computer when necessary. No more carrying USB sticks and hard drives between work and home, no more trying to figure out how to transfer files from you computer to your phone and vice-versa, no more distinction between the two at all. This would be your personal desktop, accessible at almost all times.

It has seemed to me for a while that if the price of web-connected phones continues to come down, and broadband infrastructure continues to increase, many parts of Africa could "skip" the pc/laptop phase and jump straight to handheld internet. I think there could be incredible positive benefits from this and I find Jon's idea above so compelling because it would take down some of the major productivity concerns of that movement. This would be even more useful if someone could get his first idea of a more extensive free wireless network happening.

And finally, I love the idea of being able to use your rollover minutes to support entrepreneurs in Africa. Someone at some big phone company please do this now.

What ideas do others think are most compelling?