"So like micro-credit, it seems that access to electricity is more about making life in rural communities more convenient than it is about climbing out of pover

"So like micro-credit, it seems that access to electricity is more about making life in rural communities more convenient than it is about climbing out of poverty." Making life convenient is climbing out of poverty. In the West only the homeless don't own TV or can't at least afford them. You can't expect people who have nothing to invest the first money they get. On the other hand mobile phones have proven very useful in the developing world. They get used for everything: Banking, people rent their mobiles to other people (like a phone booth so to say), even organizing fishing (fishers exchange news where the fish actually is).