The Internet Government Forum (IGF) convenes in Athens at the end of October to chart a way forward for making the running of the Internet more inclusive, and more democratic. Several key issues of concern for various governments and members of the Internet community worldwide were amply articulated in the run-up to the World Summits on the Information Society (WSIS) – a process that has continued ahead of the IGF. Simply put, these issues revolve around enabling control of the ‘Internet’ and its technical arms to be decentralised from ICANN and its few chosen agents, increasing security of the Internet, having international oversight over the Internet, among others.

The recent Wharton Finance Conference paints an ebullient picture of 3^rd world microfinance – it was totally centered on the Nobel peace prize and Muhammad Yunnus.

The highlights are as follows:

Microfinance has got the world’s attention per economist Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Oct. 12.

There is a microfinance curriculum at Wharton,  whoopie!

It’s not just another 3rd world handout or free money scheme – it can actually be profitable to the lenders.

Although reliable statistics are hard to come by, there is evidence that microfinance is growing dramatically. As of the end of 2004, according to the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report, more than 3,000 Microcredit institutions reported reaching over 92 million clients, two-thirds of whom were among the poorest when they received their first loan.

Vis a Vis the pressure of being profitable as a business lender, how do you balance the dual objectives of profitability and social responsibility?

Everybody may not be able to play the microfinance field like Developing World Markets, an investment bank involved only in socially dedicated projects. Commercial bank participation both as wholesalers and retailers may help fuel microfinance growth trend.

We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much for so long, with so little. We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
-On a piece of paper I found somewhere.

The African survivalism phenom emerges in the face of unusually harsh living conditions, social inequities and economic inadequacies prevalent in that clime -- extremely high rates of unemployment (Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) 2nd highest in the world) and under-employment. How does the African go about meeting his/her individual economic needs? How desperate is the economic situation? Answers can be quite difficult to read, as the good and bad outcomes of "survivalism" are so closely interwoven. On the good side – sparks of creativity and ingenuity abound – necessity and invention are pretty close relatives. And of course, breeding right alongside the sparks of genius are trampled egos, dashed hopes, unrealized dreams, seething frustration, disease, superstition, weak intellectual property protection – bootlegging ad libitum...whatever.

In an English class years back, we were introduced to Jonathan Swift’s Modest proposal and satirical prose, and we were then asked to craft a satire about technology in the year 2030. I totally botched it – I just couldn’t think of worse things that technology would do beyond humans procreating with Robots -- and breeding a new Homo-digitus species.

Businessweek dispassionately informs of " Venice Project " -- the latest assault on the universally accepted order of television viewing by the same WWW brigands some of us have come to genuinely love or seriously hate. Yep – same bunch of guys who wreaked the KazaA music file sharing havoc – the freebie music download/exchange device was welcomed with wide open arms by most Netizens, until record producers started screaming blue murder. And they started hauling pre-teen KazaA patrons (as well as other free file sharing device patrons) off to court , kicking and screaming for their mommies! Yep – these are same guys who unleashed Skype on the world not too long ago (before Ebay acquired it.) Skype has of course slashed long distance phone expenses for many of us, but it’s causing some serious heartburn for some traditional telecommunication operators.

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Africa: Marginal producer of new Technologies.

This header caught my eye in a paper I saw in the Upenn African Studies Center archives. And I acknowledge this statement to be largely true. In some previous blogs, I had expressed strong preference for SSA indigenization of technologies instead of wholly adopting foreign technologies in raw, un-acclimatized forms. In other words, Africa should strive to become a producer and not remain a mere consumer of technologies –- a throwback to the largely anecdotal arguments of acquiring technology in Africa via "indigenous innovation" rather than "Technology transfer."

 

Technology transfer is usually misinterpreted in SSA as pure catabolysis -- chronic/zero return consumption, and in wider circles, it’s misunderstood as an extremely superficial process of foisting shrink-wrapped technologies on 3^rd world/African societies by western producers and resellers, without any efforts to enlighten the 3^rd world/African users on the elements, nature or character of the technology, and as such, limiting the user's abilities to fully maximize the potentials of the technology.

Indigenous innovation or evolving technology via innovation, on the other hand, draws huge appeal across the board because, it resonates with classical values, alludes to some degree of technological aptitude, smacks of originality and suggests the involvment of some honest research and ingenious labor. However, a vivid roadmap to the realization of indigenous innovation is a little harder to pin down – it’s all usually shrouded in tomes of academic hubris.

A more widely accepted (and I daresay, more accurate) definition of technology transfer found here implies Technology innovation and Technology transfer are actually complementary rather than opposing concepts. Technology transfer is defined here as  -- conveying knowledge or strategy into a real life problem-solving mechanism or tool.

 

If Poverty is the mother of Necessity…

And necessity is the mother of invention – then poverty would be the grandmother of technology transfer.

Technology transfer or adoption hardly ever occurs in strictly measured, controlled and structured patterns – it’s usually adopted, adapted or acquired in response to needs. And thus, I have always maintained that innovation doesn’t sprout from thin air – it’s more likely to occur as a smart conversion or extension of an already existing quantity, process or technology. For example, automated equipment may be adopted in a manufacturing company X to replace manual labor, in order to address real productivity needs of speed and accuracy. Also, an accounting software may be deployed by same company X to accomplish routine number crunching and financial report generation in minutes – a task that would ordinarily take hours or even days of manual processing.

Hence, the process of innovation as described here, starts with a fairly painless first step of acquiring and deploying ready-made/pre-packaged technology (as a tool) into a problem-solving function. From here, you could then "reverse engineer" that technology (or tool) into some other indigenous variants.

So we identify tools/technologies and relevant skills, and next we improve workers/user skills on the tools/technologies, and then improve the tools as well, and so on and so forth.

The workman can never be greater than his tools. The workman cannot produce anything tangible without his tools. If you laid out all the best engineers of the world end to end, without cranes, earthmoving equipment, etc., they’d never amount to one single Sears tower or Rockefeller center!

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