Saving the world through social media? How development is going digital

From tracking World Bank projects to Twitter conversations with Rwanda's health minister, technology is driving innovation

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A screengrab from Farmerbook, a social network enabling farmers in India to share best practice. Photograph: Digital Green

Social media and mobile technologies offer a wide range of benefits for people working in development: a potentially cheap and efficient way to link citizens with their governments, the chance to monitor real-time progress on projects, and the ability to connect people from remote parts of the world to share experiences and teach best practice.
It is no surprise that there's an endless stream of development projects trying to tap into these technologies. In many cases it's still too early to tell what difference these efforts will make, but here are five that caught our eye.

World Bank Finances app

The World Bank spends billions of dollars on aid projects around the world, but where does this money go, and who wins bank-funded contracts? A new mobile app from the bank's finances team lets users find and monitor bank-funded projects near to where they live, using mapping and GPS technology. The app, which came out of a Development Data Challenge (DDC) project last year, is available on Android, iTunes and the web, and connects directly to social media networks. Sam Lee, from the bank's finances team, says this will allow users to share what they find, feedback on data accuracy issues or report allegations of fraud and corruption. The DDC was a series of "hackdays" focusing on development data, co-sponsored by the Guardian Global development site.