Add to this the cumulative economic turnover at the base of the pyramid - 4 billion people without bank accounts and often any non-cash monetary  instruments - and innovative ways to store money and make payments loom even larger.

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All of the tools for innovation on this front are distributed in the hands of millions of people (literally) - people just like the innovators who started by using airtime as currency for money transfers.  The future of banking will not be created on Wall Street - it will be written by coders in places like Nairobi's new tech incubator, iHub, and by the companies noted above that are springing up across Africa. 

Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha - a NGO from Bangladesh receives the prestigious TechAward from The Tech Museum of Innovation in USA. from the award webpage:

Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha: SuryaHurricane: Electrification for the Landless
Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha is recognized for its unique vision to provide solar lighting to transient settlers who live in flood-prone areas in northwestern Bangladesh.

With a high density of river systems, parts of Bangladesh remain submerged during the monsoon. Millions of people living in river basins lack electricity because development has been concentrated around paved roads.

Shidhula's culturally sensitive solution, called SuryaHurricane: Electrification for the Landless, is to retrofit existing kerosene hurricane lanterns with battery-run CFL or LED lamps. Women are then recruited and trained to recharge the lantern batteries from boats that are outfitted with solar panels. Half of the funds generated through recharging fees are returned to the community in the form of schooling, medical aid, and emergency relief programs.

Application Laboratory is a new initiative of Grameen Foundation (USA) that recently launched in Africa with support from Google and MTN (one of the biggest Mobile operators in africa). I wonder if there's any similar program in Bangladesh initiated by Grameen (Bank/Phone)?

my friends at D.Net Bangladesh have begun a consultation process on for Science & ICT in the next five year plan in Bangladesh. They are requesting inputs by anyone interested via their facebook group or email directly at info@dnet.org.bd .

from the group page:

"I would like to invite you to join the group and share your write up, reference paper, important link, opinion on what is the status and what should be the plan on Science, Technology and ICTs in upcoming Sixth Five Year Plan of Bangladesh (2011-2015). You can send it to info@dnet.org.bd or post it here. You can also float a debate. Let us give our inputs for developing a participatory plan for making Bangladesh free of poverty with the power science, technology and ICTs."

Recently the Economist magazine ran a special report on "Telecoms in Emerging Countries". In one section it outlined how the 'budget telecom' model has become the testbed for all kinds of innovation emanating from the emerging countries in Asia, Africa and elsewhere. And how operators have been forced to become more efficient and resourceful in their operations in countries like Bangladesh - which now has the lowest revenue per user [or ARPU in industry talk] in the world.

Many of the next innovations in business and technology would come from emerging countries, specially as the Internet and Mobile world converge. That's why, in addition to building expertise in traditional computer sciences, we also need to build expertise in mobile and internet arena. Nathan Eagles EPROM program is one such initiative that should be immediately brought to Bangladesh. The development of entrepreneurship and igniting grassroots innovation is a vital task for which we have a great champion in Iqbal Quadir, founder of Grameen Phone, who now directs the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT. We should build partnerships with MIT [among other institutions] to build human capabilities and exchange knowledge.