PC World - Business Center: Delivering Aid in a Digital World
PC World reports that electronic payments may be a new way to offer famine assistance and overcomes some of the problems with traditional methods"

In times of famine or hardship, for example, the typical Western response is to send over plane-loads of food aid. Although this might seem like the most logical thing to do, often it overlooks the chief cause of famine. Lack of food generally comes below politics, political instability, access to resources and markets, and civil conflict in the famine equation. In other words, it's rarely about a simple lack of food. And flooding a country with food aid creates its own problems, from feeding the militia in conflict situations to destroying what's left of the local and national agricultural market systems.

Offering direct electronic payments over mobile phones would directly aid the neediest people, provided they have cell phones, which is something I would tend to think could be a problem in rural Africa.