Posts Tagged ‘Development’

Okay, this really annoys me:

[Debates about foreign aid] have largely been the province of Western intellectuals and economists, with Africans in the developing world being passive objects in the exercise — just as the 1980s debate over the United States’ Japan fixation, and the consequent Japan bashing, occurred among Americans while the Japanese themselves stood by silently. Yet now the African silence has been broken by Dambisa Moyo, a young Zambian-born economist with impeccable credentials. [Emphasis added.]

That’s the well-respected and influential development economist Jagdish Bhagwati writing in Foreign Affairs. The article is a review of Dambisa Moyo’s book from last year, Dead Aid, and does a fine job of covering the history of foreign aid, but that assumption, that Africans have been “passive objects” in the debates surrounding development, charity and foreign aid is absolutely absurd.

I don’t claim to be a great Africanist – my time on the continent is limited to a few months, but that alone is enough to know that Africans are not the narrow-minded, unaware objects of a debate carried out only in Western marble-lined hallways. From African intellectuals, of which there are many, to middle-class students, the Africans I know have nuanced, defensible views and opinions on the issues about which Professor Bhagwati gets paid to write and teach.

The views of these Africans didn’t just pop-up liked daisies when Ms. Moyo published her book; they’ve been there for decades. The problem, I fear, is that it took a Westernized, PR-savvy Zambian woman to shake the Bhagwatis and Sachs of the world into paying attention. It also couldn’t hurt that she’s very pretty, right?

If this seems like a small point, and, I dunno, maybe it is, consider it a good excuse to listen to the great Senegalese musician Youssou N’Dour and his song, Wake Up, which makes similar points.

Manuel Castells, for those that don’t know, is one of the most prolific, well-respected scholars of our time. I know his work around the networked society – the ramifications of the information and communication revolution – but he is also a ground-breaking student of sociology, urbanization and politics.

He is currently spending some time in South Africa giving various talks at universities. Tonight, I attended one at the University of Cape Town (somewhat poorly) entitled “Prospects for Cities in the Global South.” Instead of trying to synthesize it, I thought I’d post some striking points:

• Castells sees two linked processes shaping our world: globalization and metropolitanization. To him, urbanization refers to an out-dated model of change. Instead of cities as popularly understood – city center surrounded by suburbs and followed by rural areas – population concentration these days comes in the form of “metropolitan regions.” He didn’t specifically say it (he used examples from China or Europe), but think of D.C., Philly, B-More, NYC (and maybe even Boston) – regions of urban areas with policentric metropolises. The metropolitan region is the spacial form of our era, and it is not equivalent to the cities of yore.
• Although the world just crossed 50% urbanization, Latin America has been 80% urban for ten years. Brazil is 85%!
• This is an inevitable trend because metropolises are necessary for face-to-face interaction which define high-level activities. The globally networked nature of these regions allows this high-level interaction to be transferred internationally to more low-level activities. This spacial concentration enables innovation (think Silicon Valley), but you need both the concentration (nodes) and the dispersed network.
• Universities are not necessarily creators of knowledge. They need to actively generate development from their knowledge and create “self-programmable learners” because the skills they learn in school will soon be obsolete.
• In rural areas, people have no chance at survival. They know this – every effort to stave off rural-to-urban migration has failed. [Aside: then why is Sachs & Co. working on the Millennium Village project?]
• Spacial concentration has a number of challenge, for which we must prepare:
  • Major environmental crisis: our livability on this planet is in danger because even though cities are the major engines of economic growth, the are a major cause of environmental damage.
  • Concentration of poverty and social exclusion at unprecedented scales. Highly linked to ecological threats such as pandemics: “Viruses don’t stop at the door of the a rich neighborhood.”
  • Lost public spaces to private centers, and therefore lost identity.
  • Mobility has become a recipe for immobility. Notion of relying on the automobile is unrealistic when space is limited and plenty of people cannot afford them. “We are in permanent gridlock.”
• Although the metropolitan region is the key size for this century, we lack the institutions to plan them.
• Cultural tolerance and openness will be key due to population migration.

I really have no where enough experience with these topics to criticize what seemed like a thoughtful and smart talk. Next week, though, I hope to attend the launch of his new book, Communication Power – a topic I am more comfortable with.

It seems the media likes nothing better than a good symbol and nothing says “Rise of China” like the Beijing Olympics. Picking up on the theme, David Brooks has an article on collectivism versus individualism where he provokes that China’s rise through collectivism is a threat to the power of the American dream.

Touching on a topic I mentioned a while back, Brooks explains the fundamental differences in worldview held by Asia and the West. While the West values individuals and their success, Asians seem to prioritize collective harmony. For example, show a fish tank to an American and he sees the biggest fish and its actions. An Asian, on the other hand, sees the relationships between the fish. In experiment after experiment, “Americans usually see individuals; Chinese and other Asians see contexts.”

For much of history, individualist societies excelled economically, but Brooks thinks the rise of China may point to a change in that narrative.

“But what happens if collectivist societies snap out of their economic stagnation? What happens if collectivist societies, especially those in Asia, rise economically and come to rival the West? A new sort of global conversation develops.

The opening ceremony in Beijing was a statement in that conversation. It was part of China’s assertion that development doesn’t come only through Western, liberal means, but also through Eastern and collective ones.”

However, I think Brooks is missing a key point. I’m not an expert on either economics or China, but my understanding of the rise of China is that it hinged upon economic liberalization led by Deng Xiaoping. By opening up to international trade and moving towards a market system, China paved the way to the double-digit growth which has characterized its recent years.

What Brooks alleges, then, is that China has embraced capitalism while maintaining a collectivist spirit. In Ted Koppel’s recent miniseries entitled “The People’s Republic of Capitalism,” he interviewed a Western-educated Chinese youth who thought government censorship and repression was acceptable because it was bringing China out of poverty and improving millions of lives. Brooks sees this sentiment, which I believe is widespread, as a collectivist capitalism.

I disagree. I think it is driven by self-interest; it is individualistic. Those suppressed are not supporting the suppression. They don’t think collective harmony for growth is good, like Brooks supposes. The Koppel interview shows citizens who are being personally benefited by markets – the selfishly driven interaction of individuals. The rise of China – an economic phenomenon of GDP growth – comes with increased individualism. My intuition is that while it may masquerade as collectivism (“all of China is benefiting from this system, so suppression of dissent is okay”), it is really individuals seeing themselves benefit and liking it. Brooks thesis, as I understand it, would be supported by an active Falun Gong member supporting his suppression because his family is richer than last year. And, although I haven’t looked hard, I don’t think that is happening.

[Image credit]

I just finished Nicholas Sullivan’s account of GrameenPhone’s birth and development, a formation which revolutionized telecommunications and how developing countries use technology. “You Can Hear Me Know” is both a case study of GrameenPhone and a wider look at how technology transforms developing nations.

GrameenPhone is the brainchild of Iqbal Quadir, an American educated Bangladeshi who, while working as a venture capitalist in New York City, realized that “connectivity is productivity.” Thinking back to his home country, Quadir recognized a missing web of connectivity due to the lack of information communication technologies (ICTs). His battler to bring cell phones to Bangladesh provides fascinating insight into development and international finance.

Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries, was already home to an innovative development approach. Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Prize in 2006, is widely credited with starting microfinance, the approach which gives small loans (less than a couple hundred dollars) to people without a credit history or much collateral. The amazing success (hardly any defaults and increased income) of microfinance has seen the system spread income to the historically ignored 2 billion people who live on less than $2 a day.

The typical example of Grameen Bank, Yunus’s venture, is a loan given to a rural woman to buy a cow who sells milk to pay off her debt. Quadir’s insight was that a cell phone could function as a cow. Pushing past dissenters who though cell phones were only for the rich, Quadir developed a model through which village “phone ladies” would sell minutes to others and, in turn, make a profit and provide an important service to people who otherwise had no conectivity. The phone calls are used to check market prices, connect with expatriate family or check the availability of medicine 5 miles away.

As mobile phones have spread like wildfire through developing nations, an entire ecosystem of advanced applications, many financial, have created even new opportunities. Sullivan’s book is filled with wonderful examples and statistics showing just how revolutionary the cell phone can be.

In discussing development, the author uses what he calls the “external combustion” model which relies on introducing ICTs, through native entrepreneurs, with the backing of foreign investors. The exogenous shock of this combination is what made GrameenPhone so successful (as of 2006, had more than 10 million subscribers, revenue pushing $1 billion and profits above $200 million). And, while many worried that foreign capitalists would suck out value like modern day colonialists, the opposite has been true: the mobile phone industry in Bangladesh has created $812 million in value and GrameenPhone has reinvested $1 billion in Bangladesh. When the African telecom CelTel sold for $3.4 billion, it created 50 new millionaires, many of them Africans. What Sullivan calls “inclusive capitalism” creates both external income (development) and internal profits.

Quadir is now exploring energy options for the developing world through his start-up Emergence Bio-Energy which is using adaptable engines to power villages. Energy is a big problem not only in the developed world, but in the global South where it is unreliable and halts economic growth. In Brazil, the Sun Shines for All has used solar power and microfinance to electrify the countryside. Grameen Shakti is apparently trying a similar approach. A major obstacle that Quadir points out is that, unlike telecommunications, Moore’s Law doesn’t apply to energy production.

Last night, by chance, I caught the end of a PBS show entitled “The New Heroes” which chronicles the stories of a number of social entrepreneurs around the world who, “against all odds, are successfully alleviating poverty and illness, combating unemployment and violence, and bringing education, light, opportunity and freedom to poor and marginalized people around the world.” The two stories I saw were about a Kenyan company providing cheap tools to enhance profits and a Brazilian who has brought affordable electricity to millions.

ApproTEC is a non-profit which is now known as KickStart. They sell low-cost technological tools to Kenyan farmers. Their pump allows farmers to spend far less time watering fields. By raising efficiency (farmers previously used a simple bucket to water fields), the average customer sees profits rise 10 fold. They have sold 32,000 pumps but have reach troubles because the cost of selling them is prohibitively high. Because a simple capitalist approach would not allow them to do this important work, 70% of the operation is subsidized. At the end of the piece of ApproTEC, it mentioned that they were seeking $20 million to expand and replicate the model throughout sub-Saharan Africa where most people are farmers in similar situations and may benefit from the low-cost tools. Much of this would be spent on marketing. I wonder, though, if there are ways to market the pumps without spending so much money. How can the world’s poor be enabled to spread information in a peer-to-peer model? Western marketers have, for years, tried to reap the benefits of word of mouth; can KickStart do the same?

The next story was of Fabio Rosa, a Brazilian “electrical Guacho.” Fabio was disturbed by the mass migration to cities and the resultant cost to culture and society in the rural areas of Brazil. His solution was to bring electricity to the unwired rural areas of Brazil. “Electricity represents hope and the future” by allowing irrigation and profitable rice cultivation. Further, the modernity that younger generations seek in cities can be brought to their traditional lands. Fabio relied on “single-wire” electricity and rented solar power to electrify the farmlands. More than 1 million people use his methods and his company, The Sun Shines for All, is a large part of the revitalization of guacho culture as people return to the fields where they can profitably farm.

Both KickStart and Fabio Rosa recognize that people, even the poorest, are assets, not liabilities. They embrace the “hacker ethic” that idealistically seeks to change rotten status quo through experimentation and revolutionary thinking.

[Photo credit]

Larry Brilliant is one of those figures whose life just begs for long-form journalism. Brilliant is a doctor who, in addition to helping eradicate polio with the World Health Organization, reveled in the 1960s hippie culture. He is also the head of Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, which is reinventing the philanthropy industry.

Suppose Brilliant is not a human lava lamp at all but, as his friend and Grateful Dead co-founder Bob Weir puts it, “a living freakin’ saint”? Hell, you don’t even have to go that far. Suppose, for a moment, that Brilliant is simply a man with a deep conscience and a deep faith in mankind’s ability to work together and solve big problems. Suppose you married that withGoogle’s technological prowess and a few billion dollars. What would our future look like then?

Well, the future isn’t clear, but Rolling Stone’s story on Brilliant and Google.org helps to illuminate it. If you think, like I do, that the unique cultural and technological complexion of the Silicon Valley have powerful tendencies to reinvent the “outside” world, then the mix of Google’s optimism, deep pockets and technological resources are a point for excitement and hope.

[Photo: Wikipedia]

The second day of Berkman@10 was less structured and involved a number of smaller panels and discussions. Haven taken a course in economic and political development, I was particularly excited to see the panels on the developing world’s use of technology.

The “Open World” session was led by a number of people doing work in the area. Key points I took away were the importance of both “hard” topics like infrastructure and policy and “soft” ones like culture and language. Because of the oft-discussed digital divide, there is a “latent ingenuity” in poor countries where people are not given the agency to create or innovate with the same ease of their rich peers. Even where ICT infrastructure exists, it is often costlier; for example, African ICT traffic must flow through third parties (e.g. British ISPs) driving up the cost in net hundreds of millions of dollars. How do you create policies which induce infrastructure construction? These are difficult tasks which Ethan Zuckerman thought were possible to avoid in certain cases. He gave the example of cell phone service in DR Congo where an entrepreneur was able to start with just one tower and built it into a billion dollar business, piece by piece. In other words, where nothing exists, something is better than nothing.

The conversation shifted to issues of access. Frequently Internet access is considered a panacea, but access is not everything: people need skills and abilities – literacy is a major one. While the Internet requires literacy, many times in English as local language content is lacking, mobile devices rely on vocal communication which is more accessible. Also, because people are less likely to trust third party institutions or sources in the developing world, mobile phones offer opportunities to communicate with the social network people already trust. Where people are accessing content, say in Central Asia where Beth Kolko does a lot of research, they want entertainment and sports news, not just agricultural prices or weather.

Finally, on one last issue of infrastructure, Professor Jhunjhunwala of IIT Madras lamented the poor state of power sources. Not enough effort has been put into developing inexpensive, reliable power sources which can stand up to the unique tests of the developing world.

The second session I attended was led by Ellen Miller and Micah Sifry who are involved with the important Sunlight Foundation which works to promote government transparency. Please see this post for a lot of the great sources they referenced.

The next session I attended was in much the same vein as the first. It was led by Beth Kolko and Michael Best. It was framed as a debate over the relative benefits of the OLPC versus mobile phones. Is a mobile phone solely a communication and information delivery device, not a platform for deep/rich content, like the OLPC? Or is the mobile phone the best ICT environment for the global South? An audience member for Nokia had interesting commentary about the richness of voice and the difficulty in determining the difference between phones and laptops. Storage, portability and programmability are no longer the domain of just one type of device; a convergence has occurred. Unanswered question: has a convergence of use followed?

Since technical capability may be the same in many cases, what are the policy and ideological implications? Discussion turned to the role of intermediaries. As you know, cell phone carriers exert incredible control over their networks (even though it has lessened slightly recently). With 4/5 of the world owning a cell phone in 5-10 years, do we want these companies to exert such control over the major ICT? Using Zittrain’s framing in his book “The Future of the Internet,” are these devices bound to be sterile (that is without the generative capabilities of PCs or the Internet)? I noted that even though these devices are sold as-is, the presentations of Jan Chipchase suggest that people are quite adept at forcing generativity – opening their phones and forcing new capabilities out. I’ll have more to say about this as soon as I finish Zittrain’s book.

The final session I went to was led by Jonathan Zittrain about “Netizenship” which is his term for the ways in which people vote through their bandwidth or CPU cycles. When people edit Wikipedia or utilize Folding@Home, they are signaling an approval of the goal – universal knowledge or cancer research. Zittrain and a team have created Herdict (not open yet) which will work with the OpenNet Initiative to better quantify and reify the phenomenon of Internet filtering. It is a great example of the entrepreneurial nature of Berkman.

Overall, the conference was eye-opening and enlightening. It gave me a lot of leads and ideas over which to stew. More to come as a result.