Voices from Emerging Markets

 By Rama Siva in India

I have been in rural Eastern India for the past few weeks in villages that have had no electricity for most of its history. Then about 2 years ago, Husk Power Systems(www.huskpowersystems.com) came on the scene with small scale power plants that create electricity from rice husk. The changes in the villages since the coming of electricity have been enormous.

The technology of gasification and power generation is many decades old. So why is it that these and thousands of other villages rich in agricultural waste are yet to be electrified? The answer may lie in the challenges of operating such a set up in a sustainable way in a rural setting. It is tough to find and train operators from the village level labor pool. The costs have to be kept well within the ability of the local consumers to pay for it. Even when the price is reasonable, it is a huge effort to get the consumers to pay regularly month after month.

Husk Power Systems is active on the field finding solutions to some of these challenges. Rich in venture capital funding and grants from the likes of Shell Foundation, they plan to set up 60 of these power plants in 2010 reaching a quarter of a million people in India. This is technology from early 20th century being harnessed on a large scale with 21st century management tools.

Submitted by Peter Frerichs

www.poletopoleconsulting.com

It has been upon us for quite awhile now, but the cell phone and its potential to not only connect but serve as a medium by which to transfer and protect investments is groundbreaking for the developing world. The first biggest hurdle was getting the cost down. Once cell-phones became available for under $30 is when real growth began to boom. Second was pre rather than post-paying. As long as something is pre-paid background checks, collateral, and all of the red-tape that typically envelopes most financial/property transactions is rendered mute. Third was regulatory and government support in opening up this sector, but this has been and will continue to be a win-win for all.

So where are we now? Well, we have millions of individuals residing below the poverty line with access to a phone. The phone is used to link up small business transactions, communicate prices from local markets to rural farmers/producers, engender mobility thereby facilitating demand  … and the list goes on. Even more remarkable are the money transfer services. Some companies have enabled subscribers to transfer money via the phone to outlets who dispense cash for a percentage of the transaction. Take this a step further and you can also retain “money” on your cell-phone which serves as a type of savings account.

This last point is critical as savings in the developing world is virtually non-existent amongst the poorest of the poor. Not only is banking access quite limited, but when someone does want to save they must find a physical place to hide the money or the asset. The possibility of theft is through the roof in cases like this.

It has long been touted that connecting the developing world to broadband will be critical. I agree, it is, but we then need to factor in a multitude of secondary issues, literacy being one of them. The internet and its power are magnificent if you can understand what is being communicated. Someone with even the most basic of education can utilize a phone and build assets which is not true as of yet with a computer and the internet.      

By Rama Siva in India

Our lives are often filled with practical questions which we answer these days through the internet. Likewise, the lives of the poor are filled with questions that directly affect their quality of life such as “Where can I get a cheap loan?”, “What should I do about swine flu?”, “I can stitch clothes, where can I sell them?”, “How do I get a land ownership certificate?” Googling is of course not an option for them since most of them cannot read.

Can information on the internet be ‘democratized’ so that it can be understood by everyone? A service called ‘QuestionBox’ (www.questionbox.org) now active in Uganda and India seems to think so. An operator looks up the internet to answer questions people ask in a local language. There is a live learning database that constantly adds answers to new questions and makes it available offline if the internet is down.

The search for the answer to a query involves making sense of unstructured information in web pages and documents on the internet. This is similar to the concept of ‘e-discovery’ used in legal technology to discover information that may be relevant to a particular legal query. This technology is powerful but expensive.

Can something similar be used for the BOP market and commercialized? The key to profitable commercialization may lie in identifying specific market niches where such a service could be valuable and the breadth of the information base to be searched is limited. For example, information related to crops or running a business.

Africa as a continent, despite its extreme poverty, has opened itself up to novel development initiatives thanks to the prevalence of cell-phones throughout the population. Uganda, one of the poorest nations in the world with close to half of the population living on less than $1.25/day, is also home to 10 million cell phone owners. Pretty staggering as this constitutes a third of the population. Even better, the number of phone users is probably much higher because handsets are often shared between family and village members.

The Grameen Foundation, a world-wide microfinance network, recently announced the launch of a suite of mobile phone applications developed with Google and MTN Uganda. The suite of mobile services includes:

1) Farmer’s Friend – Searchable database with both agricultural advice and targeted weather forecasts

2) Health Tips – Provides sexual and reproductive health information

3) Clinic Finder – Locates nearby health clinics and their services

4) Google Trader – Matches buyers and sellers of agricultural produce and commodities as well as other products.

All of these services are SMS-based and designed to work with basic mobile phones to reach the broadest possible audience. Mobile services are essentially leapfrogging traditional telecommunications systems that are often outdated and too antiquated to make immediate and necessary life-shifting adjustments in the poorest of populations. A true model for the rest of the continent and beyond.

By Peter Frerichs in Chile
www.poletopoleconsulting.com

At this stage in the game everyone has an email address, right? I can’t remember the last person I encountered without one. So, taking this a step further, if you have email you are more than likely to have perused websites other than Gmail, yahoo, or hotmail. Yet, I come across so many non-profits, as well as smaller private companies, that feel the web is not “for” them. That the web is this place of varying interests but those interests do not overlap with their programs or what they’re trying to accomplish.

Granted, many older non-profits have been relying on steady federal and private funding for years. Attracting new funding was frankly unnecessary. Yet, the conversations I’ve been having recently have magically come about due to this extraordinary financial conundrum we ALL find ourselves mired in. As such, we have been creating sites and literally introducing people and organizations to the power of the web.

Example: One of my clients, an international NGO, created a Wiki page devoted entirely to a conference they held. Recognizing the limitations of putting up a conference summary on their site or blasting an email with highlights to everyone on their email list, the Wiki serves as a meeting place for the topics and subject matter covered. This not only keeps the topics relevant, but it also allows for continued participation/commentary, and is fantastic exposure for the NGO as well. See for yourself …

http://www.bouldermicrofinance.org/bergamowiki/index.php?title=Original_Website

Second, I recently came across these survey results courtesy of the Nonprofit Technology Conference regarding the effectiveness of nonprofit oganizations’ websites.

- Nonprofit websites scored an average 73 out of 100 for online customer satisfaction (C- grade)
- A highly satisfied visitor to a nonprofit website is 49% more likely to make a donation.
- The top 2 reasons people visit a nonprofit website: 40% News & Events; 40% Stay informed on the cause the organization addresses.
- 18% visit a nonprofit website specifically to make a donation.
- Those who found the nonprofit’s website through the news or a media source were more likely to donate.

At a time when funding is scarce, every nonprofit, and I do mean every nonprofit, needs to either bolster their presence or get a presence. The crisis is forcing us to review what we’ve done, and shift and evolve to survive. How can you afford not to with these stats staring you in the face.

By Peter Frerichs in Chile
www.poletopoleconsulting.com

At least for roughly 19,700 classrooms in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, long gone are the days of the homeroom teacher belting out the attendance list and manually marking “present or not present.” Instead, every student in this target area has been provided with an electronic ID card with each and every student’s pertinent personal information. Schools have been outfitted with entrance-ways that are now controlled with a swipe-pad that students must slide their ID card through to enter. Data on the student is stored and attendance is subsequently counted.

Student attendance, especially in poorer schools, is a constant challenge. In the past, attendance sheets were reviewed manually every week or so, at which point calls were made to the home to inquire about the delinquent student. Now, the system alerts teachers and administrators as to absenteeism and a call and/or text message is immediately sent to the student’s guardian. Granted, phone numbers can change and texts can be ignored, but for the most part Rio administrators report up-ticks in attendance levels and parent participation.

Additionally, teachers are also able to text students and their parent information regarding current test scores and other timely info to keep both student and parent actively involved. At a time when guidance counselors, especially in the U.S., are being cut back and all-together eliminated, employing an electronic tracking system like this makes sense regardless of country or income-level.

By Rama Siva in India

The rural bank where I work in western India is frequently a scene of intense frustration. The cause is most often malfunctioning computers. Technology stirs more negative emotion among the bank’s staff than auditors do.

Most technology problems in the bank are simple enough to be fixed by people with basic training in computer maintenance. They can be addressed by simple procedures like running anti-virus or doing a disc clean up. But even such skills are hard to find in rural India.

A promising solution to this problem is remote computer services performed over the network. The concept is not new and the technology came with the internet. But one powerful version of it is to take complete control of a client’s computer over the internet and work on it directly. The tools to let you do so are increasingly sophisticated and can even work well over a dial-up connection.

The banking software used here, is supported by a vendor in the nearest city over the internet. The vendor uses easily available software tools like ‘PCAnywhere’ to remotely fix software bugs and test them. The process is not completely painless but it is a dramatic improvement over what existed before.

Since a good chunk of computer problems involve rudimentary fixes, the field is ripe for remote computer maintenance to take off in India. Such a service may have a huge part to play in easing the reluctance many small enterprises have to embrace technology. The market for such services is promising considering the vibrant and fast growing small enterprise segment in many emerging markets.

By Will Radecki in the Dominican Republic

I read with amazement this week that in Uganda, text messaging accounted for $39 million in revenues over the last two years. Ugandans sent 354 million SMS messages in 2008. It’s no surprise that SMS is popular in Africa. What’s surprising is that I’ve been living in the Dominican Republic for almost a year and haven’t seen anyone send a text message.

What is the determining factor for the widespread use of text messaging? Some might say income – Ugandans send text messages instead of make voice calls to save a few shillings – but this wouldn’t explain the 1.3 billion text messages sent daily in the US. Others might say reliability. Voice calls are dropped so regularly in some developing countries it’s just easier to write and send the whole message. And a colleague suggested it may be the ratio of voice to text prices. Where the ratio is higher, the more likely people substitute text for talk.

But I wonder if there is any research out there on the cultural affinity for texting. When I ask Dominican friends why they don’t send text messages, they just laugh and say, “When I want to tell people something I just call them.” Reliable data on a cultural preference for voice over text (or for any mobile phone function over another) would be valuable indeed for operators. It could help guide a number of company decisions on anything from marketing efforts, service offerings to network infrastructure investments.

By Peter Frerichs in Chile

Mobile-Health Technology, otherwise known as mHealth, has thankfully taken off in recent years as health-care costs skyrocket leaving many in the developed and developing world hoping and praying their lack of coverage won’t come back to bite them or worse. NGOs in the developing world know all too well the challenges rural populations face accessing adequate health-care. Preventative care is critical, and thanks to a Microsoft grant computer engineers at Washington University in St. Louis have come up with a mobile smart-phone able to provide ultrasound probes of the kidney, liver, bladder, eyes, prostate, uterus, etc. all in the field without the need for cumbersome machinery and multiple personnel to facilitate.

Smart-phones with this USB-based ultrasound probe technology is a great fit for the developing world due to the scarcity of trained medical professionals, but with an abundance of cell phone towers. I see this operating similarly to Medicall Home, a Mexican mHealth organization. Mexico’s rural countryside is home to millions of uninsured citizens. Medicall Home provides unlimited consultations by phone with doctors for a flat monthly fee of about $5. What makes me most happy is funding for Medicall initially came from Carlos Slim, the telecoms magnate and one of the richest men in the world. Nice to see home-grown philanthropy taking place in Mexico.

The USB-probe smart-phones are set to sell in the $1,500 range, but the goal is to get them as low as $500. Certainly a manageable price-tag considering the reach and potential impact this technology could have on the hundreds of millions lacking health-care around the world.

By Peter Frerichs in Chile

It seemed like it was only a matter of time, but one of the major hurdles solar energy has always faced are the significant start-up costs. In the developing world this is unsustainable, but Samsung, LG, and a Chinese firm, ZTE, have developed a low-cost, highly advantageous tool aimed at the developing world that will undoubtedly facilitate communication and business for millions of individuals in desperate need of integration.

The Samsung “Blue Earth” features a casing made from recycled water bottles and an application that can track your carbon footprint. All three companies have models set to hit the developing world this summer where sunlight is cheap and all too plentiful. Each model is distinct but in general a 15-minute conversation would require roughly half an hour of sunlight. A Caribbean distributor of the ZTE already expects a market of 700,000 in the Caribbean, South Pacific and Latin America. Imagine the market once Africa and Asia are thrown in the mix!

This is critical not only from a development perspective, but educationally as well. It is much easier to be “green” and eco-friendly in the developed world. From time to time I hear arguments that poorer individuals in developing countries are either too ignorant to care about their environment, or simply don’t abide by the same standards as the Western world. Yet, when your food source is a constant concern, private property rights are non-existent, and insurance is only available to 5% of the population, being “green” is the last thing on your mind.

These phones are a low-cost option and introduce a powerful, environmentally friendly message to an audience previously excluded from the discussion. A ground-breaking achievement indeed.