What is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation doing with mobile money and the objective of raising people out of poverty by 2030?

Our vision is that every life has equal value. The Foundation is then active in many ways to realise that vision in health, family planning, agriculture and other markets.  One of the facts we found, from quite a lot of substantial academic and experimental research, is that dealing with cash is a key inhibiting factor.

When I say poor people, I'm really looking at extreme poverty that is currently being defined by the World Bank as people who have, on average, less than $2 of income per day. Remember, when you say that, it's an average with many living well below even this level of poverty. As a matter of fact, these people live quite complicated lives from that financial perspective, with many sources of irregular revenues coming from jobs, often times several jobs.  Equally, if you think agriculture, there is of course the irregularity of crops and harvests, with some years of crop failure and famine.