Posted by Access to the Internet is something often taken for granted in the Western world. For many of us it’s a handy way to share our thoughts and lives over social media, or to keep in touch with friends, or to look up the latest sports scores. For many people in the developing world the Internet…
“Despite all of the ghastliness in the world, human beings are made for goodness. The ones that are held in high regard are not militarily powerful, nor even economically prosperous. They have a commitment to try and make the world a better place” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu I’ve been home for about three…
Knowing whether to call it Burma or Myanmar was just one of the many questions I had as the tug guided our 25,000 ton ship gingerly up the Yangon River. The dredging that had taken place earlier that morning had turned the open water from a cool bubble-bath blue to a murky brown, although I…
Sailing some of the most promising socially and environmentally-focused technology companies around the world to meet local business leaders, investors and fellow entrepreneurs may not be the most conventional way of helping scale and grow their ventures, but that’s precisely what Unreasonable at Sea are attempting in a bold experiment in global entrepreneurship.
We often don’t associate the problem of water scarcity with mobile phones but, as Zarah Rahman of the Aquaya Institute explains, water is about much more than turning on a tap. Helping people in the developing world access safe water requires not just H2O but information – in order to monitor cleanliness, distribution, infrastructure –…
Technology in classrooms often seems like an add-on, an extra luxury for developed education systems. But, as Edith Saldivar explains in today’s Digital Diversity, IT can help students all over the world learn in entirely new ways. The company Edith works for, Qualcomm, has been helping students in Jordan use IT to transform their education…
Click a few keys, exchange a few numbers, and it’s done. With just a mobile phone and a registration with Safaricom, Kenya’s mobile service giant, you can pay for anything in seconds – no cash, no long journeys to towns to reach a bank, and no long lines when you get there. This is m-Pesa,…
Bringing medical support to isolated people often means working in difficult environments. A lack of continuous electricity, limited equipment and remote hospitals can mean health projects fall at the first hurdle. In these environments, people often think that cutting edge and complex technology is required, rather than working with what is already available. But in…
Small farmers are some of the most important people in the world – as Hendrik Knoche explains in today’s ‘Digital Diversity’, they provide over half of the world’s food supply. Helping such farmers improve their methods through innovative and efficient agriculture has long been an aim of development projects and an important part of the…
Earlier this week I was invited to London to spend an hour talking to the twenty-five “Join Our Core” semi-finalists, a social entrepreneurship competition set up through a collaboration between Ben & Jerry’s, Ashoka UK and VSO. It’s vital that we not only continue to encourage and inspire young people into the field, but that…
The ability – and courage – to tell our own stories is one of the most powerful tools we possess. But in some of the world’s poorest communities, men and women – but especially women — can struggle to make their voices heard. To amend this power imbalance and to help amplify their voices, Camfed…
At the Networked Society Forum in Hong Kong last November, I sat and listened as Jeffrey Sachs described mobile connectivity as “the single most important instrument for development that we have“. Few people would disagree. A recent study by the GSM Association reported a 10% increase in mobile phone use leads to a 1.2% increase…
After returning from the 2011 Global Competitiveness Forum in Riyad last January, I started pulling together a few thoughts on something I’d been pondering for some time – “reluctant innovation”. That first post paved the way for further work, and more recently a guest article in Wired Magazine in the UK called “Genius happens when…
The developing world often gets poor representation in the western media. From well-meaning but simplistic representations by charities and advocates to enduring stereotypes of dark continents and poverty, developing countries are frequently denied the right to be seen as the complex, varied and human places they are. While academics, advocates and commentators debate this problem…
Every night, something unusual happens in Samuel Kimani’s home on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. Samuel, 48, lives with his wife Mary and their three children. Their family supports itself day-to-day through their main source of income, their cow Baraka, whose milk is collected daily and sold directly to customers for about $1.80 a day.…
Medicine and technology advance at astonishing rates. But these advances don’t always reach everywhere. Often it is indigenous knowledge and creative solutions that fill the gap. In today’s Digital Diversity, Sarah Shannon explains how one organisation, Hesperian Health Guides, provides appropriate and effective advice for people living in regions where there is no doctor. Digital…
Using technology for development and social change is not just a question of clever gadgets, but of a vision for the future. In today’s Digital Diversity, Simon Trace of the NGO Practical Action explains how giving people access to technology that is safe, simple and sustainable has transformative effects not just on individual lives but…
What if we took an Apple approach to solving the world’s environment and development problems? The California-based technology company have had phenomenal success of late by intuitively unpicking the needs of their users, using innovative design and keeping their systems simple and integrated. In today’s Digital Diversity, Ken Banks takes a look at what might…
We don’t always need shiny new technology to do amazing things around the world. As this edition of Digital Diversity shows, with some imagination everyday technology can be re-purposed to do extraordinary things. Brij Kothari of Planet Read shares how he got Bollywood to marry karaoke, and how it doubled the number of readers in…
Kids text all the time – at school, on the bus, even when you’re trying to talk to them. It can be annoying. But imagine if a child couldn’t communicate at all – that’s when a mobile can become a lifeline. In some developing countries, children who are deaf don’t have access to special education,…
NGOs don’t always have the best reputation in the developing world. Sometimes they come into a community, install complex systems to fix a problem, and then leave – abandoning technology that can break down, become unsustainable or simply not help the people it’s supposed to. Water for People is different. They’re an NGO committed to…
What if your carry-on suitcase could save a woman’s life? In the fight against maternal mortality in the developing world, a rugged, portable “Solar Suitcase” is providing reliable electricity to clinics in 17 countries where healthcare workers previously struggled to provide emergency obstetric care by the light of candles, flashlights and mobile phones. The Solar…
Insecurity and poverty don’t just mean being deprived of material things – they can also deprive people of a voice. Conflict and scarcity make access to information difficult in many regions of the world. Where media are available, it is often the most extreme, dangerous groups who dominate and who falsely represent these regions to…
Many people believe communications technology helps the developing world by allowing people to link up with the ‘West’ and be given information and knowledge. It is often people in the developing world with the knowledge, and what technology can instead do is help them unlock that knowledge and share it with one another. Eugenio Tisselli…
As modern communication technologies become more ubiquitous in the developing world, increasingly working their way into once disconnected rural communities, opportunities to use mobile phones to collect and share valuable (and often critical) information grow. In this edition of Digital Diversity, Joel Selanikio – a practicing pediatrician, former Wall Street computer consultant and former Center…
