Building hope for the poor with digital services: Providing prosperity, justice, and dignity for ALL

ABSTRACT Digital technologies offer hope for societal change, with the potential to improve the lives of those in poverty. Avoiding utopian and dystopian views, we offer a more dynamic perspective of ‘realistic hope' where hope can be aspired to and achieved, but also lost. We describe two cases of digital services in Kenya, conceptualizing hope in the process of engaging with ICT4D (information and communications technologies for development). We reveal the intricate relationship between the capacity for economic empowerment and the dangers of perpetuating marginalization and argue for the judicious use of digital technology to bring dignity to all.

perspective rather than a utopian view which may falsely portray overly optimistic outcomes or those that are solely focused on dystopian studies whose predominant focus has been on "failure" stories which often reinforce a lack of hope (Sahay, 2024;Sahay et al., 2022).We do this by examining the process by which narratives of hope for financial and social inclusion can be both built up and subsequently dashed over time.We explore these ideas through case studies of mobile services for the rural poor of Kenya.

Conceptualizing Hope Narratives with Digital Technologies for Development
Building hope is a complex and unpredictable effort that takes time and is difficult to sustain, especially in demonstrating how digital technologies can enable a positive future without getting shackled to the past.Recent work by Sahay and colleagues (2022) has highlighted the importance of building narratives or stories of hope for ICT4D.Their multi-level framework, which adopts a socio-technical systems approach, links macro-level concerns as to how social problems unfold, with the micro-levels of "situated practice" related to empowerment, agility, and trust of individuals and communities.A particular emphasis is on the specific materiality afforded by digital technology.We build on these ideas with an emphasis on examining the long-time horizon of phenomena (Madon, 2006;Sahay et al., 2022), enabling a comprehensive representation of how hope is enacted in practice.Hope, and the goals it might sustain, take time to achieve.Further aspirations and expectations that enable hope can be understood as assertions of identity (Frye, 2012) that develop over a long period of time.Having hope is more than mere assessments of the future based on our rational choices, but rather is constitutive of how we see ourselves and our worth.
Our approach is one of "realistic hope", which we suggest should account for the changing dynamics through which hope is enabled (or not) for the vulnerable as digital technology evolves during the implementation and use of mobile services.Our research focuses on how mobile platforms provide the means for building hope Table 1.Conceptualizing Hope in the process of engaging with ICT4D.

Process Stage Description
Building aspiration Digital initiatives can facilitate a shift out of poverty and can be directed at helping the very poor to envisage future positive change.

Establishing hope
A key aspect of mobile digital technologies and platforms is the affordance of increased accessibility.The proximity of these initiatives can allow those excluded to establish hope of being able to engage in the future.Realising hopeachieving aspirations Realising hope is often a long, arduous striving that can positively change the living conditions of not only the individual but for those associated with them, such as family and community members.

Sustaining hope
When digital initiatives continue to support the marginalized alongside the expansion of the service, hope can be sustained and contribute to the capacity to aspire.The experiences of achieving hope can lead to further hope to achieve even further.

Losing access
The nature of digital initiatives to continually progress can lead to exiting services when it is no longer possible to sustain the costs of participating.Being able to respond to the threat of having to exit is dependent on gaining voice.These are challenging conditions for the marginalized.Potential for atrophy of hope Hope may not be sustainable if the wider support is limited.Having experienced the realization of hope contributes to the sense of loss if having to exit services, resulting in increased atrophy of hope.This in turn can lead to a diminishing capacity to aspire.
in addressing challenges of extreme poverty and financial exclusion.Specifically, we examine the process by which mobile platform services offer hope to the very poor by providing an expectation of future benefits, and in so doing influencing financial and social inclusivity.We develop and contribute insight regarding the connection between digital technology and social well-being (Faik et al., 2020), specifically focusing on the concepts of access, literacy, and empowerment, which have been recognized by earlier research (Selwyn, 2004;Warschauer, 2002) as significant in influencing the effectiveness of technological interventions.Specifically, we emphasize the fragile dynamics of hope.Our objective is to investigate the ways in which people in economically disadvantaged areas engage with digital technologies to uncover the varied and different levels of empowerment that technology may or may not provide.
Moreover, our research recognizes the significance of including people in the process of creating and implementing digital solutions that seek to reduce poverty.Building on longstanding work by Arnstein (1969) on the ladder of citizen involvement, we advocate for the need to include target populations in decision-making procedures pertaining to technological interventions, rather than them being passive recipients of the services (Chang et al., 2004).By including the viewpoints of those directly affected by digital projects, we may more effectively customize solutions to their distinct requirements and goals.Our research therefore engages with the complex relationship between participatory design, community engagement, and the dynamics of hope narratives around digital technologies.Sahay (2024) provides a framework that examines the relation between hope and action invoked through technology initiatives.The framework synthesizes across different conceptual streams of research, with a focus on Appadurai's (2004) "capacity to aspire" approach.This work highlights the practice of thinking about the future and having the agency to realize this future in practice.Aspiration is not something that just happens.Rather, like a muscle, it needs exercise to develop and benefits from, and often requires, having a history of effectively imagining change.We show how the long-time horizon (Madon, 2006;Sahay et al., 2022), is important to account for realistic hope as the changing expectations and aspirations emerge for the vulnerable and excluded poor with the evolving digital services.Our perspective is that hope is needed when a "not yet" is recognized as something desired by users, and it is through digitally oriented initiatives that the gap between the "now" and "not yet" can be reduced, allowing for hope narratives to become a reality.
Our approach, therefore, focuses on narratives of hope which users can draw on for inspiration and build their capacity to aspire (Frye, 2012).Our conceptual ideas also recognize the possibility of individuals exiting or having to leave a digital service once hoped for, especially when they are unable to develop a voice by sustaining narratives of hope (Hirschman, 1970;Sahay, 2024).As we discuss in our case illustrations below, these options for voice and exit are limited for the very poor, marginalized and disadvantaged, from which an atrophy of hope may emerge over time.
We draw on the above conceptualization of hope and narratives of hope when engaging with digital initiatives to examine how digital mobile money and credit services can provide potential poverty alleviation through financial and social inclusion in two case studies.In the first case, we explore the narratives of hope around a mobile money platform developed specifically to facilitate financial inclusion for the underbanked.The service sought to address the specific pain points of being excluded from the traditional banking system, generating a hope for those seeking to aspire improved quality of life, and ultimately delivering on that hope by enabling a majority of poor to engage with a financial service that was relevant to their needs.Further, we see that this results in increased capacity to aspire that sustains hope by building further on what they have already achieved, thus fuelling hope for the betterment of their lives.
In the second case we explore the narrative of hope associated with a digital credit service enabling access to clean energy.We show how narratives of hope promoting social and financial inclusion and improved life chances can, over time, become a false hope for the very poor and marginalized.A sense of betrayal is experienced by the marginalized with the atrophy of hope as the once hoped for (and promised) change in lifestyle suddenly slips away, becoming once again cruelly distant.We highlight the challenge to the ongoing sustainability of digital services for the marginalized poor, despite the narratives of hope built up through accessibility and affordability.

Case of M-PESA providing Mobile Money for the Unbanked
Mobile money, and associated mobile payment services, has emerged as a best fit for bringing banking services to the unbanked ("GSMA", 2014).As a digital service, the low cost and ability to move money without the burden of formal banking has been life changing for the marginalized and financially excluded.The M-PESA mobile money service emerged out of a UK-Kenya based collaboration for digital inclusion between Vodafone and Sagentia (a technology consultancy) in the UK, and Safaricom in Kenya, as key partners (Barrett et al., 2011).The digital initiative included many other actors (bank, regulators, users etc.) as part of a new mobile money transfer services ecosystem aimed at servicing the large population of underbanked in Kenya.While the original design focused on micro-finance, pilot programmes showed that the majority of users aspired to a different experience.They saw in the proposed system ways to attain their hopes of being able to engage in other mobile money services, which were more valued (Oborn et al., 2019).In particular, the ability to move money between individuals, or money transfer, was a solution to a key problem that many Kenyans faced.The M-PESA mobile money platform was launched with the initial proposition to "send money home" from urban to rural homestead.This proposition addressed the financial service need that many Kenyans faced as they sought to realize the hopes for improving their lives by moving from rural to urban areas for better work and opportunities.Those working in urban areas would often send money to parents and other family and friends in the rural communities.A common and more traditional means of transferring money would be to pay someone, such as a taxi driver, to move the cash physically from the city to a village.Aside from the cost of doing so, there were risks of exploitation as well as the danger of theft.With the design of M-PESA, physical money is turned into an electronic equivalent at an agent (a Safaricom mobile services enterprise typically selling phones, sim cards and related services), transferred between mobile phones (M-PESA accounts) and then reconstituted as physical money by a second agent for the recipient (McBride & Liyala, 2023).
As of 2022, M-PESA has effectively provided services to an impressive 30 million subscribers in Kenya, demonstrating significant reach.The extensive user base highlights the broad acceptance and dependence on the mobile money service, establishing Kenya as a significant bastion for M-PESA.This demonstrates the substantial influence and integration of mobile financial services in the everyday lives of the people and underscores its crucial role in promoting financial inclusion.Currently, M-PESA has more than 51 million subscribers across Africa and handles a significant number of transactions amounting to $314 billion per year ("Vodafone", 2023) highlighting the widespread impact and essential function it plays in enabling large-scale financial transactions across Africa.
An example of this mobile money transfer service in action is that of Miriam and her son Matthew who live in a rural village in central Kenya, north of the capital Nairobi.Miriam and her family run a smallholding, but her son Matthew aspires to follow his dream to work in the city where there is potential to earn better and find new opportunities to create wealth and improve his life.Given that Miriam would lose the support of Matthew, it was also important that he would be able to support his mother by other means, specifically being able to send money to her so that she could maintain or even improve her standard of living.Having found work and settled in Nairobi, Matthew initially found it challenging to pass on what little savings he was able to make to Miriam.It cost to send cash back to his mother and the little he had spare was not worth sending home.His limited income and lack of permanent address meant that Matthew would not qualify for a bank account and that would be of limited use anyway as there were no bank branches close to the family home.Communication was difficult: while Matthew had been able to buy his own phone, Miriam only owned a SIM card and had to use a neighbour's phone when required.Looking for a way to overcome these challenges, Matthew noted the new M-PESA service, which promised a way for anyone to transfer money to someone else using a mobile.Registering for the service was less onerous than with a bank, relying mostly on his identification documents.Matthew also noted that his mother would not have to register to withdraw funds, so using it for the first time was uncomplicated.She could register for the service later.One of the real advantages of the service was that his mother would not have to go far to access the money as there was an M-PESA agent in the next town, a few kilometres away from the home village.Even without a phone, as long as his mother had a SIM card, she would be able to receive the funds.Matthew had found a way to send any amount of money home at any time, with minimal cost and risk.For Miriam, this meant that she could receive financial support from her son, but she also now had an ability to transfer funds to others as payment for services.Matthew and Miriam were among many Kenyans who saw in M-PESA a narrative of hope as they took the opportunity offered by the digital service to advance their lives.Other Kenyans saw other opportunities to realize the hope narrative using M-PESA to pay for taxi fares, while small business owners would accept payments through M-PESA (Barrett et al., 2013), thereby expanding their capacity to aspire.
The M-PESA service developed over time and offered new services, expanding the range of opportunities for users to aspire and generate new hope.Matthew, now settled in Nairobi in more permanent housing, had thoughts of beginning to build a small business, which would require capital.Additional access to funds would also be helpful to assist Miriam with the smallholding in her rural village, as she wanted to expand, growing additional crops.M-PESA had begun offering loans and both Matthew and Miriam saw an opportunity to apply for a loan that could enable them to realize their new hopes.Matthew was able to secure a loan, and while not as large as he initially wanted, there was enough to put his plan for his business into action.Although Miriam was unable to secure a loan, she was still able to continue using the M-PESA service as before, sending and receiving money, facilitating her daily life.With the potential for Matthew's business to generate income, the family had an opportunity to prosper.Later, M-PESA developed a savings account, a formal banking feature many Kenyans had not even aspired to a few years before.Now Matthew dreamed of having a means of saving for the future and helping Miriam to think of and plan for retirement.There was new hope for their futures.
Evidently, M-PESA has had a significant effect on enhancing financial access and empowering marginalized groups with a path towards increased prosperity.The M-PESA platform was developed as a remedy for the difficulties encountered by those who do not have access to traditional banking services or have limited access to them.Recent research (Oborn et al., 2019) has traced the technology's trajectory, which has expanded to include a wider array of banking services, enabling users such as Miriam and her son Matthew to surmount conventional obstacles.Matthew, without access to established financial institutions, was confronted initially with challenges in transferring funds from Nairobi to his mother in his rural village.With M-PESA "power", he has discovered optimism and hope for brighter futures.The mobile platform's triumph in Kenya was propelled by its easy accessibility, affordability, and long-term sustainability, transforming into a beacon of opportunity for previously marginalized communities.
The hope narrative of financial inclusion in Kenya was achieved and expressed, giving voice and empowerment to many.Within five years the distribution network for M-PESA had mushroomed across the country from a modest 450 outlets at launch to 40,000 outlets.This compared with just 500 banks across Kenya.Adoption widened with the service being taken up by not just the unbanked, becoming popular with virtually everyone across Kenyan society.The accessibility and affordability were sustained through an expansion of additional services (such as payments, loans, and savings) and a wide array of unanticipated forms of digital entrepreneurship by users as their capacity to aspire expanded and they continued to hope for further achievement.In the case of MPESA in Kenya, a realistic hope facilitated a utopian story which was rightly celebrated by previously marginalized and excluded in the population.

Case of Solar-POWER struggling to Sustain Narratives of Hope on Mageta Island
Solar-POWER is a digital service which provides customers with the ability to access renewable energy solutions based on solar energy (photovoltaics), including LED lighting, radio, television, and refrigeration.Based on a "pay-as-you-go" financing model, Solar-POWER customers can begin to use their products at the point of purchase while making micro-payments over time.Upon providing an initial down payment for the loan, the products are provided to the customer and payments are made through the mobile phone daily for a period, typically a year, before ownership of the products, such as solar panels and batteries is secured.
The context of our second case study is Mageta Island -"The island that time forgot"known as one of the poorest and most remote and marginalized communities on Lake Victoria in Western Kenya.As of the late 2010s, no driven vehicle had been to Mageta Island and there were no roads on the island.Our case focuses on Martha, a resident of Mageta Island.She is a single parent with school-age children, who runs a small business selling bread.Traditionally, Martha, as with the majority of Mageta Island residents, had relied on paraffin as an energy source to provide lighting, along with charcoal for cooking.Paraffin pollutes the air, posing a health risk, and is also a significant fire risk.Further, the light it provides is not very effective.Together, these risks significantly affect and even endanger Martha's children when doing their schoolwork in the evenings in her small home.Additionally, paraffin is an expensive energy source, placing significant strain on Martha's business.Energy is key to Martha's business, particularly because she has to wake early in the dark, thus requiring light to aid the preparation of the dough, as well as to use energy for baking the bread.The line between making enough money while relying on expensive energy is slim, and a continual struggle to overcome.
Martha saw an opportunity in Solar-POWER: a promise of clean, safe energy that would help to progress her family life as well as her business.Intertwined with this hope of improvement, was also the hope of raising her standing within the community: being able to purchase Solar-POWER products, as a prestigious brand, was regarded as having achieved something, implicating a path to stepping out of poverty.Martha signed up to the Solar-POWER basic package that included photovoltaic cells and LED lighting and, for a period of three years, the system provided the improvement in living conditions she sought as well as a recognition of her success within her community.However, these rays of positive hope quickly became atrophied.Just as she was becoming accustomed to and relying on the Solar-POWER technology, the battery failed after three years.A big challenge for Martha was getting support for her digital service on the mainland.Being illiterate, and with a low level of formal education, she found it difficult to communicate her problems and concerns to customer service.To start with, it took her over three months' savings to take the trip by boat on Lake Victoria to meet with the Solar-POWER service staff on the mainland.Further, it was an all-day affair with significant opportunity cost to her small business.
Once on the mainland, the difficulties she had in getting customer services to understand her position made Martha despair as she attempted to replace her failed battery at the service centre.They informed her that it was no longer possible to replace her equipment as the battery was outside the warranty period.Even worse, the system technology had since progressed and the new battery available was not compatible with the system for which she had originally paid.Martha would now need to replace her entire system and acquire the new battery as part of the changed service configuration.The new mobile platform system now also came bundled with a range of other services such as TV, which were beyond her price point or need.This challenged the realistic hope for Matha's lifestyle, her children's lives (their health, safety, and education), and her business.
The suspension and subsequent loss of the digital technology had far-reaching implications for Martha's business income which, in turn, resulted in her being unable to charge mobile phones and run her cook stove.The cold and harsh reality was that it would take her at least a year of good savings to be able to gather up the deposit needed to get on the new Solar-POWER system with its new longer life battery, with the bundled services many of which she could ill afford.
It was catastrophic for her life chances.As she saved up to afford the new system, Martha and her family had little option but to revert to using paraffin.She experienced an atrophy of hope in returning to a past which she thought she had been freed from by the cleaner, brighter digital option which had promised a better future.However, she did not have the voice to resist this reverting to the past, one where she felt the pain of limited access and affordability stigmatizing her as a poor and vulnerable person.Her capacity to aspire to reduce the gap between her "now" of and the elusive "not yet" was rapidly slipping further away from her grasp.
She pondered sadly as she shared with us this atrophy of hope she was experiencing.Could she believe and realize the hope narrative again in a possible (new) future?Would she be trapped in a poverty cycle once again unable to get over this negative culture of poverty which was continually undermining her capacity to aspire.It also meant she had to give up the hope of progressing even further, over time, to new frontiers of "not yet", going beyond lighting and charging to for example owning a cook stove or possibly a television.Upgrading to additional devices had always been a hope at the onset of her initial purchase.Not having access to a TV service made it visible and risked her being stigmatized by her poverty level thereby reinforcing her to be in the very poor, excluded category.This served to heighten the pain Martha experienced, reinforcing her lack of voice to address the atrophy of hope.
Somewhat ironically, the hopeful narratives of technology accessibility and affordability made possible through the business model as the foundation for building the capacity to aspire were unintentionally undermining it.The atrophy of hope was experienced as being ever more acute with the knowledge that regaining the benefits of Solar-POWER services was only potentially possible in a distant future and, depending on the resilience of her small business, could be lost forever in time.Her predicament at an individual level seemed to reflect well the wider structural challenges faced by the very poor and marginalized in Mageta Island, as the place that time forgot.Responsible innovation companies such as Solar-POWER, while likely well-intentioned, were unaware of how changing their service models was reinforcing the precarity and plight of the very poor, while challenging the company's very ethos of inclusivity.

Discussion and Conclusions
The analysis of findings from our longitudinal case studies suggests that the concept of hope and narratives of hope can further our understanding of issues of prosperity, justice, and dignity in relation to mobile platforms, and more broadly ICT4D.As we see in the early days of M-PESA in Kenya, narratives of hope can facilitate prosperity through the nexus of interconnected practices around accessibility, affordability, and sustainability.While it is evident that these narratives of hope can offer benefits for individuals, when a significant proportion of a population has the opportunity to realize their hopes, there can be a demonstrable positive impact on the wider economy.Financial inclusion that enables more people to be economically active can benefit the wider economy, bringing opportunities for many and facilitating the potential for prosperity.M-PESA focused on improving accessibility to facilitate the entry of millions into financial services, expanding the aspirations of those who had limited positive experiences of building hope.Having access meant that users could see new opportunities to progress and take an active role in alleviating the poverty they faced.
Secondly, M-PESA focused on affordability, ensuring that users could continue to participate in the service at a level that could still make a difference in their lives.Having a clear understanding of the various user groups is key to ensuring that affordability is targeted appropriately, since the marginalized are not a homogenous group of "bottom of the pyramid" users.Ensuring that a suitable level of service is available for users with different needs and expectations can lead to more sustainable services.And it is this last element, sustainability, where M-PESA looked to continue engaging with the marginalized.Progression in service co-creation involved not only improving the service itself, but the sustainability of users' engagement (Chirwa, 2022), to continue building aspirations for engaging with the service even further.Aspirations and expectations are built from more than information and rational choice (Frye, 2012).They are sustained over time and become assertions of identity constitutive of how we see ourselves and our worth, going beyond those as passive recipients of the services.We argue the need to balance the relationship between innovating (digitally) and humanizing, ensuring that the development of digital initiatives (both from a business and technological perspective) is aligned not only with human needs but also with their dignity, aspirations and hopes.
Our findings and insight from research on Kenya's Mageta Island emphasize the dynamic fragility of hope, where hope once achieved can then subsequently be lost.Hope is always in a state of becoming.In our study, Martha experienced an atrophy of hope through the industry norm of step-change technology development, and this challenged her earlier positive narratives of hope.The progression and upgrading of the technological system resulted in her having to exit the service, leading to a loss of personal dignity, with little voice to challenge what became for her to be dehumanizing business practices, and which question social justice.The case highlights how the marginalized (whether economically poor with limited means, geographically distant from the mainland, or individually by life chances such as illiteracy) are most at risk of being further marginalized.The potential for reinforcing the poverty cycle is heightened as the unsustainability of the service upgrades calls into question the original focus on accessibility and affordability that had been part of the initial success.Exclusion is a constant threat to the narrative of hope.Inclusion requires not only sustainability of the service but also the ability users to continue to aspire.Knowing the work required to realize hope to move from "now" to the "not yet", can render that hope all the more difficult to endure over time.The importance of sustainability underscores the need of engaging users over the long term and continuously evolving services to maintain positive narratives of hope.
The observations from Solar-POWER in Mageta Island provide a dynamic viewpoint on the possibilities and limitations of realistic hope.The story transcends the simple attainment of hope to recognize the potential for a decline or deterioration of hope.It demonstrates the close connection between the decline of hope and the long-term viability of technical progress on mobile platforms.
Hence, it is recommended to adopt a strategy that highlights the intricate balance between digital advancement and being reflective of humanizing, ensuring that technology development is in harmony with the dignity, needs, hopes and desires of the users.Such a conversation emphasizes the need to prioritize ongoing co-creation of service value which allows an inclusive voice to develop a viable which is sustainable in the long-term as it constantly incorporates consideration of user aspirations and expectations.This is crucial to maintain their active participation and safeguard the preservation of hard-earned narratives of hope and utopian optimism.
Building upon the concept of sustainability, it is crucial to explore the wider consequences of service sustainability on the socio-economic structure.The Mageta Island case highlights the possible repercussions of an unviable service, particularly for those on the outside or periphery of society.Martha's story not only represents the challenges faced by individuals, but also highlights the fact that digital projects that are not sustainable might worsen existing disparities.Instead of addressing the digital divide, digital projects often starting off with utopian promises and expectations, may unexpectedly further digital inequalities (Ye & Yang, 2020;Zheng & Walsham, 2021) and with damaging consequences as those who built hope then come to see it become atrophied over time.Put another way, once hope is achieved, it may atrophy in the face of discontinuity, making vulnerable populations even more likely to experience ongoing poverty and social isolation.
Ultimately, the Mageta Island case enhances our comprehension of how the resilience of users to participate, is crucial to ensure that digital efforts have a positive impact on narratives of hope and do not unintentionally prolong cycles of marginalization and exclusion.As André and Pache (2016) argue, social entrepreneurs need to possess a unique characteristic of deep empathy, and we suggest that this is particularly the case for narratives of hope among the very poor in marginalized environments.
Furthermore, following André and Pache (2016), our analysis would suggest that organizations should prioritize the transformation of personal caring into a sincere dedication to social concerns, rather than just considering scalability of bundled services from their own organizational perspective.This would entail actively integrating the subtle narratives of hope from marginalized populations into the structure of the organization's inclusive design approach, therefore generating solutions that really connect with the users' experiences and ambitions.Studying the connection between personal care, hope narratives, and ethical design methods would be a valuable next step in developing future research on narratives of hope and their implications for prosperity, justice and dignity.

Implications for Practice
We want to expose issues of responsibility for businesses who provide narratives of hope around digital technologies.Their goal is often to enable societal impact around grand challenges, such as financial inclusion and access to energy.At a macro level, managers of firms increasingly need to navigate ongoing tensions of digitizing and humanizing.More specifically, narratives of hope are important to consider in the design and deployment of digital initiatives, particularly for the very poor and vulnerable.While human factors around features and functionality of the service (ease of use etc.) remain important, perspective taking by managers as to how the very poor and marginalized interpret narratives of hope around digital technologies over time is important.What is their capacity to aspire around the gap between the "now" and "not yet"?How are these potentially changing over time?How will they be impacted by a progression or improvement in the technology?
From the point of view of inclusive design, company managers and designers need to recognize how the business model of digital services can become unsustainable over time.This can (unintentionally) reinforce the poverty trap of the marginalized as they experience an atrophy of hope.Responsible design innovation should engage further with co-design efforts focused on and sensitized to the increasing gap between the desired "not yet" of the user and the current "now" of the firm's service model.The overarching message is to consider that there needs to be a path connecting existing users, who have aspired and consequently realized their hopes, with upgraded services such that both new hopes can be generated but previous realized hopes sustained.
The importance of tales of optimism cannot be emphasized enough in the complex process of planning and implementing digital initiatives.Managers should broaden their attention beyond the traditional aspects of usability and functionality.It is crucial to have a deep comprehension of how stories of hope connect with the very impoverished and marginalized individuals in the long run.This entails exploring the intricate dynamics of their ability to have ambitions, negotiating the difficult divide between their current reality ("now") and the envisioned future ("not yet").It is crucial for ethical corporate behaviour to acknowledge the changing nature of these goals and anticipate the influence of technological advancement on them.
Within the domain of inclusive design, which aims to develop solutions that cater to a wide range of user requirements, the focus should expand beyond mere usability in the present moment.Managers and designers should recognize the possibility that the economic model of digital services may not be viable in the long run.The intrinsic lack of sustainability might unintentionally maintain a cycle of poverty for precarious consumers, resulting in an overall decline of hope.Effective design innovation requires actively involving users in co-design activities by seeking them in their contexts and giving them voice.By doing so, we may go some way towards addressing the growing disconnect in understanding user needs and the changing business models of companies.The main idea is evident: there must be a well-planned and compassionate approach that links current users, who have already achieved their desired outcomes, with an upgrade set of "improved" and bundled services which is built on expectations of users with very different, taken for granted hope narratives.Responsible design entails a dedication to maintaining the ongoing sense of optimism, recognizing that each advancement in technology should not only generate new ambitions but also protect the valuable and celebrated accomplishments of marginalized populations.
To summarize, our investigation of narratives of hope linked to digital technologies, particularly mobile platforms and services, uncovers the intricate relationship between the capacity for comprehensive economic empowerment and the dangers of perpetuating marginalization and poverty.The case studies conducted in Kenya, specifically focusing on the experiences on Mageta Island, highlight the need of embracing a "realistic hope" viewpoint when assessing the influence of digitalization on promoting equitable economic development.Although digital technologies like M-PESA and similar initiatives can provide opportunities for financial inclusion, it is important to carefully consider sustainability, user engagement, and the specific circumstances of marginalized communities due to the ever-changing nature of hope and the possibility of its decline.Our ultimate (and collective) hope is that judicious use of digital technology will play an even more important role in making a world of difference (Walsham, 2001), bringing dignity to all no matter the means.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.