In parts of Africa it is not uncommon to see children playing on a merry-go-round near their schools. They are not just enjoying themselves, but are also helping to pump water: the energy created pumps clean water into a 2,500 litre tank at the rate of 1,400 litres an hour. This imaginative scheme, which has a website (playpumps.org) enabling people to see where the pumps are located, is a good example of appropriate technology. Given that water-related diseases are reckoned to be responsible for up to 80% of all sickness in the world, such projects could have a disproportionate effect on health. A thousand have been installed and Playpumps hopes to quadruple this by 2010 - though one wonders how they get children to play there long enough to make it work.
This is but one example of a surge of social entrepreneurship, albeit on a modest scale, that is happening on the web. It has coincided with the first signs of satiation with conventional social sites such as Facebook and MySpace, as reflected in last week's Nielsen statistics. The web is a great place for collaboration among people around the world pooling their skills for the public good. The problem is that ventures don't suddenly happen; there always has to be someone behind them to act as a catalyst. Enter the social entrepreneurs, who get things done.
Latin America
Suena políticamente incorrecto, pero quizá la manera más efectiva de luchar contra la pobreza sea convertir en ‘clientes' a los más desfavorecidos. Por su parte, las empresas que lo consigan descubrirán un mercado de 4.000 millones de personas.
En tiempos de globalización, no hay pieza más codiciada por una multinacional que descubrir un nuevo mercado. Para muchos, es posible que no haya que rebuscar tanto para encontrarlo y, de paso, ayudar en la lucha contra la pobreza y el subdesarrollo. Simplemente, bastaría con mirar a la base de la pirámide de la población mundial, es decir, a los 4.000 millones de personas con una renta inferior a los 1.500 dólares anuales, lo que equivale a que sobreviven con menos de cuatro dólares al día.
Tradicionalmente, el mercado de la base de la pirámide no ha sido tenido en cuenta como una oportunidad de negocio para las empresas, sobre todo para las multinacionales. La jornada Cómo hacer negocios en la base de la pirámide, organizada por la Fundación Compromiso Empresarial y Accenture, intentó evidenciar lo que se puede perder, tanto empresarialmente, como en ayuda al desarrollo, si nos olvidamos de este mercado.
Según Robert Katz, analista del World Resources Institute, hay tres verdades evidentes en este ámbito: "La dignidad es algo más importante para el ser humano que su nivel de riqueza; la solidaridad y las ayudas tradicionales no solucionarán el problema de la pobreza, al igual que tampoco lo conseguirán los mercados por sí solos".
La solución ofrecida por Katz es un camino intermedio: "Existe una relación positiva entre la creación de empresas y la disminución de los niveles de pobreza", asegura.
Easterly Says Bill Gates Has `Blind Spot' in Poverty Aid
Bloomberg News — media.bloomberg.com
Published on February 27, 2008
Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- William Easterly, a professor of economics at New York University, spoke with Bloomberg's Tom Keene on Feb. 15 from Washington about the achievements and challenges of global aid programs and his assessment of Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates's poverty-fighting strategy. (Source: Bloomberg)
The home is remote, even by Tibetan standards. Charming carvings cannot disguise how primitive it is. Not only does it have no toilet, it doesn't have an outhouse. Or even a designated hole in the ground. It does, however, boast one very great prize -- a ringing cellphone.
Why?
"That is exactly the question I kept asking," says Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired magazine, who is writing a book about "what technology wants." The house at which he stayed -- which featured a space under it to shelter the family dzo, a yak-cow hybrid -- was "probably as large as my own. So they could build shelters. But they didn't build toilets. Went in the barnyard, like their livestock. But man, they have better cellphone coverage than we do at home. Communication, not cleanliness, is next to godliness."
Apparently so. The human race is crossing a line. There is now one cellphone for every two humans on Earth.
From essentially zero, we've passed a watershed of more than 3.3 billion active cellphones on a planet of some 6.6 billion humans in about 26 years. This is the fastest global diffusion of any technology in human history -- faster even than the polio vaccine.
"We knew this was going to happen a few years ago. And we know how it will end," says Eric Schmidt, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Google. "It will end with 5 billion out of the 6" with cellphones. "A reasonable prediction is 4 billion in the next few years -- the current proposal is 4 billion by 2010. And then the final billion or so within a few years thereafter.
"Eventually there will be more cellphone users than people who read and write. I think if you get that right, then everything else becomes obvious."
"It's the technology most adapted to the essence of the human species -- sociability," says Arthur Molella, director of the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. "It's the ultimate tool to find each other. It's wonderful technology for being human."
Maybe. But do our mobiles now render us unprecedentedly free? Or permanently tethered?
Growth prospects for multinational corporations (MNCs) are expanding enormously. In Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe, there are more than 4 billion new potential customers whose rising incomes and aspirations have created an unprecedented market for all manner of goods and services. They want to own homes, to eat nutritious food, and to have varied entertainment options. They want toothpaste, cell phones, and motorcycles. To cater to these needs, business-to-business enterprises will be called upon to provide chemicals, cement, machine tools, electricity, and much more. Many corporate leaders recognize this opportunity, but few are developing the capabilities or the management focus that they will need to realize its full potential. They persist in thinking of these new markets as "emerging markets," separate from their existing customers in the industrialized world. Many companies have not reorganized their operations to serve a fully global economy.
For example, one large, well-established MNC has an annual growth rate of 9 percent in developing countries, and only 2 percent in mature, developed-country markets. Already, almost one-third of its revenues and nearly two-fifths of its profits come from emerging markets, and those percentages are increasing every quarter. Relative to other companies' leaders, the top executives of this company are advanced in their thinking; they say they aspire to sell their products around the world. But their actions tell another story. Their center of gravity remains in North America and Europe: That is where three-fourths of the company's assets are located and where 88 of the top 100 senior executives grew up. These executives have lived their lives primarily in developed markets; they socialize largely with people from similar backgrounds; at work, they put individuals who resemble them on the fast track for promotion; and they all share a dominant logic in the way they make decisions. It is no surprise that they think of developed and emerging markets as distinct from one another, and that they have neither a structure nor a strategy to integrate them.
AN UNUSUAL factory recently began operation near the town of Bogra in Bangladesh. It makes yogurt, fortified with nutrients that poor toddlers often lack, and sweetened with the date molasses the Bangladeshi palate demands. Its marble foundation stone was signed by Zinedine Zidane, one of the world's greatest footballers, and its owners think the factory will inspire a nobler breed of capitalism.
The factory traces its origins to a 2005 meeting in a Paris restaurant between the chief executive of Groupe Danone, a French multinational, and Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, who won the Nobel peace prize in 2006 for championing the cause of microcredit. In his new book, Mr Yunus describes how Grameen and Danone agreed on a joint venture to sell nutritious food to the poor. It is a wholesome tale of French businessmen finding meaning in their lives, and Bangladeshi children enjoying something better than rice gruel to eat. But Mr Yunus also smothers the story in molasses, making claims about the originality and profundity of the enterprise that are simply too rich to take.
The yogurt factory is what Mr Yunus calls a "social business": a new concept, he argues, that has the potential to ease poverty and redeem capitalism. A social business has two distinguishing features. It offers worthwhile products that poor people are willing to pay for. And the profits it makes are reinvested in the enterprise, not distributed to its owners. A social business is a "zero-loss, zero-dividend" venture, as Mr Yunus puts it.
Prescriptions for helping poor people help themselves
International Herald Tribune — www.iht.com
Published on February 26, 2008
LONDON: He had two wives, three children and two acres of land scattered in the hills of Nepal. One acre produced maize, pulses and monsoon vegetables to feed them, and the other monsoon rice. In good years they made $100 by selling surplus rice, but in bad ones they ran out of food before the monsoon harvest. Like 800 million other people in the world, Krishna Bahadur Thapa and his family had less than $1 a day to live on. How could they escape from poverty?
That was in 2001, and their fortunes have since been transformed. Installing a cheap irrigation system enabled them to grow cash crops, like cucumbers and cauliflowers. They could then afford to buy fertilizer, better seeds, livestock and, eventually, more land to grow oranges. Both of Bahadur's wives are illiterate, but his grandchildren can stay on at school for as long as they wish. Their expectations of life are very different from their grandfather's thanks to his hard work, and someone else's design ingenuity.
The story of the Bahadur family is told in "Out of Poverty," a book by the American inventor and entrepreneur Paul Polak. As founder of the nonprofit organization International Development Enterprises, Polak has spent the last 25 years helping people, particularly poor farmers in developing countries, to move out of poverty. He describes his experiences and the lessons learned in his book, as well as prescribing his formula for ending poverty, which boils down to helping poor people to help themselves, with design playing an important supporting role in their self-improvement. Polak comes across as opinionated and occasionally cranky, as you would expect from a man who describes himself as "a troublemaker"; but he is also knowledgeable, pragmatic and determined to improve the lives of millions of poor farmers.
Soros announces $17 mn for Indian SMEs
Hindustan Times — www.hindustantimes.com
Published on February 25, 2008
The Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF), Omidyar Network, and Google.org announced a new $17 million Small to Medium Enterprise Investment Company for India to create job opportunities and spur greater economic participation for a large segment of the population. This joint company will provide capital to small and medium businesses in underserved markets.
"With this investment, we will meet the huge demand to serve smaller businesses in India that have little access to finance. Long ignored by commercial capital markets, small and medium businesses are an attractive investment opportunity as well as an engine for economic growth for India." said Neal DeLaurentis, Vice President of Soros Economic Development Fund.
The project
In January 2006, the WNDW team released the first edition of Wireless Networking in the Developing World. Since then, the project has grown to include a bunch of new resources, including:
- A revised and expanded second English edition of the book
- Various translations, including Spanish, French, Arabic, and Italian
- A second Spanish edition of the book
- Updated wiki and discussion groups
- Several new case studies contributed by our readers
We now planning to translate the new edition into Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Arabic. We are also compiling training materials to be used in conjunction with the book to spread the knowledge of low-cost outdoor wireless networking.
Our goal
The goal of the WNDW project is to help everyone get the resources they need to build wireless networks that solve real communication problems. Help us meet our goal by spreading the word and sharing your own network stories!
The Impact of Cell Phones on Grain Markets in Africa's Niger
cellular-news — www.cellular-news.com
Published on February 25, 2008
A new research study by Jenny Aker, an independent PhD candidate at the University of California-Berkeley has looked at the impact of mobile phones on the prices of farm produce in the African country of Niger - which faced serious food shortages in 2005. In theory, the increasing use of mobile phones should have improved distribution efficiency and hence lower the variations in prices around the country. The study set out to see if that was the case.
With an estimated 85 percent of the population living on less than US$2 per day, Niger is the lowest-ranked country according to the United Nations' Human Development Index. The majority of the population consists of rural subsistence farmers, who depend upon rainfed agriculture as their main source of income. Grains (primarily millet and sorghum) are dietary staples, accounting for over 75 percent of food consumption. These commodities are transported from farmers to consumers through an extensive system of markets that run the length of the country, which is roughly three times the size of California.
