Leveling The Playing Field For Slum Businesses

May 21, 2012 Leave a comment

We recently stumbled upon this cool article in the Guardian, discussing a model for using mobile phones and e-commerce to better support “slum businesses” throughout the developing world.  There are many small businesses situated in extremely impoverished communities.  But as the article points out, most of these enterprises don’t have formal mailing addresses to send and receive products.

…Chris, a student who lives in Kibera in Kenya, the second largest urban slum in Africa, answers: “One million people live in Kibera, but we do not have addresses. So when I ordered a second-hand camera to use in my business as a journalist, I could not receive the package directly. I had to walk to the nearest postal office at a 3.5km distance. And not just once, I did not know when the package would arrive, so I had to walk back and forth regularly. And you know the people who live in Kibera have little money, so when a package arrives, we have to bribe the local authorities to ensure the package gets to the right recipient.”…

And there is also the problem of payment  for products.

…Electronic payments are crucial, as a local student explains: “India still very much has a cash payment culture. So if, let’s say, I want to make a deal with a customer in Italy via the Internet, how can I be certain I will be paid if I send him the goods? And how do I receive the money?”…

There are now corporations looking into ways to create smoother operations for slum businesses, and technology plays a key role in helping to mobilize these companies.  New technology can help these businesses rise above poverty and create an equal playing field.  A collaboration between TNT Express and Vodafone led to the design of phones that recognize a mobile phone number as an address location and enables secure payments via Vodafone’s M-paisa.

But there is more that can be done to support these companies.  Global Wire Associates is doing research on how technological innovation is helping underprivileged small businesses worldwide.  Are you a business or tech consultant who has experience working in the developing world?  Are you a small business owner in the developing world who has a problem that affects how you do business that could possibly be resolved through technology.  Please email your ideas to us at info[at]globalwireonline[dot]org that we can use for our research.  We will put together all the ideas and share them with you in the next few weeks in a more formal presentation.

Filed under Africa, Asia, Entrepreneurship, Mobile Phones, Tech Disparities Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Broadband Initiative Seeks to Close Digital Gap in the Americas

April 16, 2012 Leave a comment

Improving broadband access throughout the Western Hemisphere was a hot topic at the Sixth Summit of the Americas this past weekend.  President Obama announced the creation of the Broadband Partnership of the Americas, a program set to improve Internet access across Latin America and the Caribbean.

From USAID:

…While approximately 80 percent of the Latin America and Caribbean population has access to mobile phones, only 40 percent has Internet access, with levels in Central America and the Caribbean at approximately 30 percent. Broadband penetration is estimated to be 29 percent, falling just below the global average.

Enhancing access to broadband improves development outcomes, fosters economic development and increases competitiveness. The Inter-American Development Bank reports that a 10 percent increase in the region’s broadband subscriptions would boost GDP growth by 3.19 percent and increase productivity by 2.6 percent…

The new partnership will be managed by USAID’s Global Broadband and Innovations Program, which will provide financial and technical support for improving broadband strategies.  The initiative also comes on the heels of the Obama administration’s other announcements – Small Business Network of the Americas and Women’s Entrepreneurship in the Americas – which will promote trade among small businesses throughout the Hemisphere.  There is a special interest in supporting “diaspora entrepreneurs” through the Latino American Idea Partnership (La IdEA) and the Caribbean Idea Marketplace (CIM) business competition platforms.

Of course, there are many critics of the new free trade agreements with Colombia and Panama and the “convenient timing” of all of these new initiatives from the White House. However, having better Internet access for budding entrepreneurs in Latin America and the Caribbean is a very important issue that needs to be addressed better, and the new partnership attempts to deal with the digital gap.

Global Wire Associates has done work in the past with activists and entrepreneurs in the region, like with Mariam Cotton, a Trinidadian who runs her own catering business outside of Port of Spain.  She is developing her own line of exotic fruit preserves.  When Cotton came to one of our trainings last February, she told us that she is dependent on her mobile phone for contacting clients and online banking.  However, because she doesn’t have regular Internet access, her ability to expand her business and stay current with her competition is limited.

According to the International Telecommunications Union, only 39.5 percent of citizens of Trinidad and Tobago have Internet access.  If there was a better broadband strategy in her community, she would be able to build a company website, do online research on how to improve her business and better market her services to potential clients.  We spoke to Cotton again yesterday about the prospects of better broadband access and the hopes that the Obama administration will stay true to their promises.

“I think it is a blessing for me to get online,” Cotton told GWA in a telephone interview.  “I want to be able to connect with more customers and open a restaurant and sell my preserves in Miami one day.  Having the Internet will help me feel more connected with the world.”

Filed under Americas, Entrepreneurship, Tech Disparities, Tech Life Tagged with , , , ,

Solar Energy: The Next Tech Justice Battle

February 20, 2012 Leave a comment

In the process of doing research for last week’s post on e-waste, we stumbled upon a fabulous film about renewable energy in Africa.  As our society has become more wired with all kinds of gadgets that have made our lives a lot easier, sometimes those of us living in the West take for granted the simplest thing that many in the developing world don’t have to work those gadgets effectively – electricity.

Specifically, one-third of the estimated 1.6 billion people living without access to electricity worldwide live in Africa. The lack of electricity is recognized as a major impediment to development on the continent, ranging from health care, education, water access, sanitation and women’s rights.

Of course, poor electrical access has a major effect on ICT development in Africa.  As a matter of fact, infrastructure for communications technology has not grown at the same speed as the growth in mobile phone ownership.  So it is not unusual for people to travel long distances for many hours just to charge a mobile.  Many people use generators to charge mobiles, which can be both very dangerous to the person charging it and harmful to the environment long term.  In other cases, mobile phone users might be charged a fee to re-juice their phones, which can cost as much as that person’s weekly pay.

So, it was pretty awesome to find the above film Burning in the Sun, which is currently showing in the United States on PBS’ AfroPop series.  The documentary stars Daniel Dembélé, a young entrepreneur who has come back to his village in Mali to start up a solar panel business called Afriq-Power.  In this short version of the film, we see Dembélé and his company building panels for an area largely without electricity.  The differences these panels make in the village are like night and day, as people are able to continue doing things after dark, like studying. Before the students in the featured school had electricity, every year only 20 percent of them passed their national exams.  After the lights were installed, the number jumped significantly to 97 percent!

It is also a great business model that other aspiring African entrepreneurs can learn from.   Most importantly, we loved the ideas of self-sufficiency Dembélé discussed in the film.

“Maybe the solution is to not give money to governments,” said Dembélé.  “Maybe the solution is to do micro-projects to help the people develop themselves.  Give small money to people and they will help themselves.”

Check out these updates on what Dembélé has been doing since the film here and here.

Filed under Africa, Entrepreneurship, Films and filmmaking, Tech Disparities Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

iFixit Promotes E-Waste Recycling Through Repair

February 6, 2012 1 Comment

This post is part of Global Wire Associates’ Recharge E-Waste Campaign.

So, you have a box in the corner of your closet or in your basement piled high with broken or “gently used” electronics, gadgets and wires you don’t use anymore.  You are thinking about taking that box down to your local recycling center and (maybe) get a rebate for your good deed of saving the planet.  However, you would be doing a better deed for the planet if you learned how to repair and reuse your old electronics.

Leading the “repair is recycling” movement is iFixit, a website where you can find free repair manuals for virtually every electronic on the planet.  In the largely community-run site, users can both add information to guides and asks questions about issues not offered in the guides.  The website funds itself by selling useful service parts and tool kits for repairing electronics.  Self-repair not only saves money that would have otherwise been used to purchase new electronics, but it also helps the environment.

Even if you take your old electronics to recycling sites, there is no guarantee they will be recycled properly.  Most e-waste ends up in landfills throughout the developing world, where it wrecks havoc on the health of those who live near it.  This is partly because it is expensive and labor-intensive to properly recycle e-waste in many developed countries, as most environmental laws in these countries require e-recyclers to use environmentally friendly processes.

According to iFixit:

But labor is cheap in the developing world. And those pesky environmental laws don’t exist everywhere. Containers full of outdated electronics are regularly shipped to places like China and Nigeria where people scrounge through the dead electronics looking for bits and pieces that are useful. After scavengers pick out the worthwhile bits, ‘extractors’ start breaking things apart. They can make a living breaking down electronics harvesting copper from wires and gold from electrical connectors. But without environmentally friendly processes, the nasty chemicals from the extraction process seeps into the groundwater and remnant broken electronic scrap litter the landscape.

Here is a video from Greenpeace that explains the e-waste problem in Nigeria

Meanwhile, iFixit recently launched a new website – ifixit.org – for discussions on e-waste activism and specifically showcasing the arduous work of the brave extractors or “fixers,” like the Ghanaian man featured in the headlining photo above.  The website will eventually be a launching pad for a documentary film about the lives of fixers in Egypt, Kenya, Ghana and India.

Filed under Africa, Asia, E-Waste, Films and filmmaking, Tech Disparities Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

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