Economic Growth & Trade – Page 2

Did you make the shortlist? Kenya’s Tandaa Digital Grants Doubles

Nearly 150 companies and individual submissions made the shortlist for Kenya’s Tandaa Digital Content Grant. The Tandaa Digital Content Grant, a competitive campaign to unearth and finance web and mobile-phone apps developers, was unveiled last year by the Ministry of Information and Communication, through the Kenya ICT Board.

At its inception 15 grantees benefited—companies, individuals and groups of varying sizes. But this year the Kenyan government will double direct funding through grants.

The renewal of this successful initiative will see 30 awards being doled out to shortlisted candidates in varied categories. The Ministry of Information and Communication says the highly attractive Tandaa Digital Content Grant is worth up to US$50, 000 for companies, US$10, 000 for individuals and teams, plus a matching grant of US$150, 000 for established companies.

The grant is further evidence of Kenya’s bold and thoughtful ICT policy framework, which is increasingly backed by solid initiatives. It will further stimulate ICT innovation and could spur greater economic growth. ICT already account for five cents in every dollar of Kenya’s annual income. The policy is solid to the extent that it tackles the key hindrance to the expansion of Kenya’s ICT sector: financing. Companies, particularly start-ups, that specialize in web and mobile solutions face major hurdles in their quest to access funding. The risky nature of their ventures, getting innovation to market successfully, also heightens the perception of risk in financial circles.

However, the challenge of financing mobile-innovation must be tackled in a more meaningful way: a sustainable solution, not simply grants. A mixture of subsidized loans, and targeted finance for micro and medium size technology firms is necessary for a potent long-term strategy to find a toehold. Grants have a place in the overall strategy, but they are not central to the long-term financing challenge.

For further information, please go here.

November 21, 2011/by actualize

Economic Growth & Trade, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

ICTs making big changes for rural women

Rural Women's Day

Mrs. Flora Emilia lives deep in Tanzania’s mountainous region. Owning a mobile phone has helped her access the latest market prices, and therefore get better rates for her crops, rather than being taken advantage by the middlemen.

She can now contact buyers on her own and search for market prices in town, none of which should could do before being involved with the Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS), a small grants fund initiated in 2002 to support work on gender-related issues in ICTs for the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific regions.

“I am a better woman now,” she says with pride.

By being able to search for market prices, she can now bargain and is looking into ways of increasing her crop production and expanding different crop types.

Emilia is a beneficiary of the Mikocheni Agricultural Research Institute (MARI) GenARDIS funded project, which distributed mobile phones to a group of women from the village of Peko-Misegese in Tanzania.

Small grants making big changes

According to Jennifer Radloff, Manager of GenARDIS project for Association for Progressive Communications (APC), women living in rural areas must overcome multiple barriers, relating not only to their location but also their gender, to access information and communication technologies (ICTs).

GenARDIS recognizes the constraints and challenges encountered by rural women–lower levels of education, cultural attitudes preventing women from visiting public access points without being accompanied by men, caregiving responsibilities, to name but a few– and has disbursed small grants to diverse and innovative projects in order to counter these barriers, to document the process and results, and to contribute to more gender-aware ICT policy advocacy.

For instance, radio (and increasingly the mobile phone), are perhaps the most ubiquitous communication devices in many rural areas, are often not accessible to women since men control and usually own the radio and the mobile phone in the household.

“With all the GenARDIS-supported projects, ICTs are only a means–albeit a very powerful means to an end in themselves. Access to information is the tool that allows women to envision small advances in everyday life and more monumental strides over time,” said Keane Shore, an Ottawa-based writer and editor.

Women play a central role in the agriculture economy and centralizing ICTs adds tremendous potential for improving rural livelihoods.

By demonstrating in tangible ways women’s huge contribution to agriculture and household income and the positive increase in livelihoods, gender relations are improved and women’s role in communities more valued.

“The love has increased in my house,” added Emilia whose new found financial independence has made space for more equality, respect and harmony in the household.

October 14, 2011/by actualize

Business Enabling Environment, Economic Growth & Trade, Enterprise Development, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

ICT4D meets sustainable tourism

Last Friday, QED Group, LLC hosted “Tourism as a Sustainable Development Strategy: A Systemic Value Chain Approach,” a breakfast seminar. Discussions focused on best practices in tourism management and how these tools can be implemented in projects to maximize positive impacts.

Amanda MacArthur, Director of Operations at CDC Development Solutions (CDS) and speaker at the seminar, offered an overview of the Tourism Employment and Opportunity (TEMPO), a USAID funded program implemented in Nigeria’s Cross River State.

Tourism e-Marketing and promotion strategy

MacArthur highlighted the Ambassador Promotion Program as a successful tourism e-marketing and promotion strategy.

Essentially, CDS staff work with local stakeholders to develop a program over a specific period of time where they provide resources, deep discounts, activities, packaged promotions to people who are willing to be first adopters of the location.

“Facebook integration wristbands”

Ushuaia Beach Hotel in Ibiza launched in July their Facebook sharing initiative—a first in the hotel industry. Hotel guests are given the option of wearing a slim wristband synchronized to their Facebook profile.

Guests can swipe their wristbands across a sensor at designated kiosk, checking in to various places in the resort, updating their status and tagging themselves in as many pictures as they like to post online.

Last year, Coca-Cola pioneered a similar technology in Israel. In the summer, the Coca-Cola Village invites 600 to 800 teenagers for a three-day stay in a multimedia village to enjoy fun activities such as sports, swimming and horse-riding.

Through the Like Machine, conceptualized by Enon Landenberg, joint-CEO of Publicis E-dologic, the inhabitants of the village were able to use their wristbands to register that they “liked” a certain activity, and a Facebook message would automatically appear on his or her wall stating that he or she “liked” the pool at the village, for instance.

The event was so popular that according to E-dologic joint-CEO Doron Tal, 250, 000 people claimed to have been there—even though only 8,000 had the opportunity to experience it in real life.

“They felt that they had been there because they could enjoy it through their friends by following their fun on Facebook,” Mr. Tal Said.

Background on TEMPO

TEMPO’s ultimate goal is to build a destination tourism sector—leading to jobs creation and economic growth for local and regional communities. To accomplish this goal, CDS established (or provided) capacity building to private sector led public-private Destination Management Organizations (DMOs).

In particular, CDS built DMO’s ability to use technology to promote and sell tourism in the destination by creating a web-portal that provides information about Cross River State tourist spots, training in content development and collection to enable tourism operators to market their services based on customer needs, and making booking and payments available online.

Why Tourism for Development?

Presenter Kristin Lamoureux, Director of International Institute of Tourism Studies at George Washington University representing the Save Travel Alliance a member of the Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance (VEGA) at the seminar, stressed the importance of the tourism sector in developing countries.

Tourism is the top five export category for 83% of developing countries—and for 38% of those it is the most relevant economic activity, said Lamoureux.

Also, the benefit of tourism is that resources—cultural and natural—are already available in developing counties. Most importantly, many tourists’ activities are found in rural areas and this creates opportunities for sustainable economic growth in remote locations.

Though sustainable tourism requires various conditions to thrive, the visitor’s experience should be the center-piece of a tourism promotion strategy with an emphasis on connecting travelers to destinations.

These innovative approaches—Facebook integration wristbands and Ambassador Promotion Program—connects travelers to destination and tie online and offline worlds neatly and painlessly together.

It is a great bit of user-generated marketing for the resort or destination, and has the added benefit of letting guests share their experiences with their friends, colleagues and family members through social media. This will in turn bring more visitors to the location.

October 5, 2011/by actualize

Anti-corruption, Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Economic Growth & Trade, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Rule of Law

Raising the Barcode: Using Smartphones to Monitor Labor Practices

Chocolate giant Hershey has been the target of unwanted smart phone campaigns recently in a battle to combat child labor violations. The Raise the Bar Hershey campaign, started by four activist organizations, developed “Consumer Alert” cards that include a QR code (like a barcode) to warn shoppers about the labor practices.

With the ability of ICTs to distribute information faster and farther than ever, it is no surprise that people all over the world are able to start campaigns that promote fair labor practices, transparency and equality, often gaining followers and media attention almost immediately. Those informed about a particular issue can raise awareness on it using social media like Facebook, posting a video on YouTube, or starting their own campaign on sites like Change.org, an organization that helps individuals or groups run social change campaigns. Knowmore.org empowers consumers to purchase products and support companies that promote fair trade, human rights, and democracy. The site makes it easy to determine which corporations use unethical (or ethical) practices through its browser extension that alerts consumers on where companies stand on particular issues as they browse the company websites.

Consumer alert placed next to Hershey displays in supermarkets

Photo credit: news.change.org

The Raise the Bar campaigners claim that Hershey “lags behind its competitors” in enforcing labor rights standards among its suppliers and in tracing the source of its cocoa which comes largely from West Africa, an area known for forced labor, child labor and human trafficking. Volunteers have been placing the alert cards next to Hershey products and displays, and shoppers are able to scan the code by using smartphone applications. The QR code on the cards opens a web page on the campaign’s website, allowing consumers to take action immediately by signing a petition on Change.org or getting involved in other ways.

QR codes have been used by shop owners to offer information and coupons to shoppers as they pass by as well as to show pictures of meals on restaurant menus. The codes can be easily built by anyone using free online tools.

Raise the Bar Hershey QR code- smart phone app takes consumers to website

Photo credit: raisethebarhershey.org

Other organizations also use smartphones in order to monitor businesses to ensure they are following labor laws. Free2Work evaluates major companies around the world based on their labor policies and has established a mobile app that allows consumers to easily find companies, share information, and receive updates. The United States Department of Labor has its own smartphone application for workers to keep track of their wages to help guarantee that they receive proper compensation. Through the app, employees can track their work hours for any of their employers, as well as access information on wage laws.

As smartphones become more advanced, the potential for increasing transparency and promoting fair labor practices worldwide grows. Concerned citizens have a plethora of tools at their disposal to gain and redistribute information on a topic, allowing them to hold companies, as well as governments, accountable to fair labor standards. Time will tell whether this will force companies to step up their standards.

September 20, 2011/by actualize

Economic Growth & Trade, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Workforce Development

Youth Employment & ICT

The use of ICT to strengthen youth employability in the developing world ought to be pursued vigorously. To be clear, ICTs aren’t the only route to improving the employability of youth, but it should be used as a key tool because of the anticipated growth potential and youth employability crisis experienced by most societies in the developing world.

Youth constitute more than half of the world’s population, of which 81 million are unemployed− 7.8 million more than the number in 2007− a disproportionate number as youth only make up a third of the world’s working population. No where is youth employability constraints worse than in the developing world, where over 87 percent of the world’s youth live. This is a huge development challenge. Clearly, a deeper engagement with youth is needed to foster more sustainable futures. That must start with efforts to equip young people, a demographic force, with marketable ICT skills because of the immense employment and wider economic opportunities head.

Barely 15% of the half a trillion dollar global IT-enabled services market, which is expected to treble to between US$1.5 and 1.6 trillion by 2020, has been tapped, according to the World Bank. Developing regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa reap the least rewards from this unprecedented opportunity for economic growth and skilled jobs. The fact that they experience higher youth and overall unemployment levels should serve as an impetus for creating an enabling environment for ICT innovation and expansion. It is a paucity of ICT skills across the continent that cause it to lag so far behind amid rapid growth in the telecoms and services sector. This reduces the potential returns on ICT investment, restricts the quality of service delivered and stifles new investment across a continent in need of rapid and sustained new businesses.

As the World Bank’s flagship ICT initiative for Africa, the New Economy Skills for Africa Program: Information and Communication Technology (NESAP-ICT), puts it: “The lack of skilled manpower is a binding constraint to realizing the potential of the sector. Even India which has 30% of the global labor supply suitable for the industry expects a shortfall of 0.8 to 1.2 million skilled workers for its ITES industry by 2012.” The onus is therefore upon the Sub-Saharan Africa and other developing parts of the world “to boost its “talent” profile so as to benefit from this burgeoning market opportunity”.

That talent profile depends on the nature and quality of training and education that the developing world’s youth are exposed to. It is my view that a range of incentives and curricular reforms are needed to ensure that young people are suitably trained to acquire jobs in the ICT sector and explore entrepreneurial opportunities.

The current mode of education in most developing countries is outmoded. Significant curricular reform is needed, including the creation of advanced ICT curricular modules to supplement and be integrated into basic ICT courses for youth in schools, youth centers and technology hubs. By improving the curriculum in developing countries with enhanced ICT focus in the fashion proposed, skill levels and employability among young people will improve. Furthermore, these employability skills are likely to enable more young people to venture into entrepreneurial activities.

August 12, 2011/by actualize

Economic Growth & Trade, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Workforce Development

Incubating IT programming capacity in the West Bank

In downtown Ramallah, West Bank, five programmers at the Palestine Information and Communications Technology Incubator (PICTI) are forging a new future for the Palestinian IT industry through a unique collaboration with US-based tech giant Microsoft. The partnership between Microsoft’s Innovation Labs (or iLabs) in Tel Aviv, Israel, and USAID’s Enterprise Development and Investment Promotion project (managed by CARANA) led to a one-year outsourcing pilot, new iLabs products and the evolution of a long-term relationship—as well as a model for private sector alliances between Israeli and Palestinian firms.

Palestinian programmers at work on the iLabs project

Since 2009, the PICTI-based team has developed three new products for iLabs to be marketed globally: Mixer, which links users’ online profiles (e.g., Facebook) with their registered Bluetooth devices to recognize them when they enter a room; Ark, which gathers online information about movies and television shows to make personalized recommendations, including an active learning component that adapts to user likes and dislikes; and HomeVideoX, which applies face-recognition capability to videos.

Microsoft recently spoke with PICTI about creating another five-person team in Ramallah to work on Bing Mobile applications. Ultimately, the PICTI team hopes to form an independent Microsoft research center in Palestine. The collaboration has exposed Palestinian IT professionals to new technologies, helping the industry developing a more qualified labor force and demonstrating Palestinians’ ability to work with leading global technology firms. Team members have also become an in-house resource for PICTI, helping the incubator evaluate new projects and coach future entrepreneurs.

The collaboration leverages the unique situation in the West Bank—including proximity to Israel’s leading IT industry and the willingness of both parties to set aside political differences for business success. The Microsoft initiative and similar projects with other leading IT innovators such as Cisco and Salesforce.com are fostering an important new Palestinian industry.

“I see the future of the IT sector in this vital project with Microsoft which proves that Palestinians have huge talent, skill and expertise not only in the deployment of IT services but also in the research and Development field,” said PICTI’s chairman, Hassan Kassem. “This is the real path for development in Palestine.”

This post was originally published in July 2011 by Carana Corporation.

August 11, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Food Security & Rural Development, Areas of Expertise, Economic Growth & Trade, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

How to get from economic malaise to food security?

Credit: Google

Food security in the Horn of Africa hinges on greater investment in ICT infrastructure and capacity building. In large part, this will depend on the transfer of technology. But experts note that even a modest increase in technology transfer and information, through the agriculture value chain, could improve yields, distribution and ultimately strengthen food security.

The World Food Program (WFP) backed an initiative in March this year that is a step in the right direction. WFP provided US$45, 000 worth of ICTs for a Food Security Graduate Program at Addis Ababa University. The ICTs provided the institution with the tools and facility needed to boost efforts to develop a local hub for knowledge generation and dissemination for food security. A weak policy and financial environment has led to inadequate research, a lack of appropriate technologies and weak dissemination of existing smart tools. So, lowering food insecurity in the region requires greater effort.

Improving food security is a key development challenge for the Horn of Africa, the world’s most food insecure region according to the FAO. Over 45% of the 160 million strong population remain food insecure, higher than the average even for Saharan Africa. The World Bank says the region must attain a 4% expansion in GDP and similar growth in agricultural expansion, along with lower population growth rates, to become food secure in the medium-term. This all seems like a catch-22 situation for an already difficult political and economic landscape. Where do we start?

According to USAID’s analysis, The Magnitude and Causes of Food Insecurity and Prospects for Change, improving the economic policy environment—and a host of other structural problems such as security— is key. So, while ICTs can help to improve the region’s precarious food security situation, much more must be done to create an ICT enabling environment— further evidence that ICTs are merely tools.

One structural challenge is the cumbersome nature of intra-regional trade. ICTs, particularly logistics technology and applications used to speed up cross border movement, could help to better move food surplus from country to country (and region to region). At various points in recent time countries in the lower part of the Horn of Africa, including Kenya and Tanzania, have been in a position to shift their surplus to neighboring Ethiopia, and other northern states that are perennially food insecure.

However, the food security and ICT discussion in this region, as I have contended, is very complex. One must consider all the systemic domains and even broad issues of income distribution, which slants the distribution of food in Kenya and Tanzania, even in times of food excess on a national scale, in the favor of a few.

August 9, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Economic Growth & Trade, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Africa’s mobile economic revolution…half way there?

The UK Guardian’s Killian Fox recently described the rapid rate at which cellphones became ubiquitous (and are used) in Africa as a “mobile economic revolution”.

Some people easily dismissed this assertion as another hyperbolic pronouncement, but there’s truth to it. The expansion of mobile telephony services and access over the last decade did more than merely open up avenues for efficient social inter-action among Africans. It reinvigorated, structured and even cultivated a more efficient culture of enterprise, across banking, agriculture, healthcare, education and governance, in some countries.

But, if this “mobile economic revolution” is to be fully realized, much more ought to be done. Deeper integration of technology into commerce, and greater expansion of telephony access and service provision are two things to consider, among others like financing and marketing that I have looked at in other blogs. The fact is, a half of all Africans still do not have access to a cellphone, despite the rapid expansion observed. This means the enormous economic benefits mobile phones bring to less developed parts of the world is still untapped in much of Africa. According to the London Business School, “for every additional 10 mobile phones per 100 people in a developing country, GDP rises by 0.5%”. So, the expansion in GDP experienced on the continent in the last decade, due to telephony expansion, is, at the very least, half of what it could be.

Furthermore, the depth to which the instrument (cellphone) has been leveraged for commerce is still limited, which means the economic potential is much greater than what obtains. The success of Safaricom’s M-Pesa in bringing banking services to the previously unbanked, for instance, is still limited to a minority of Africans. Further to that, global mobile money transactions is slated to exceed a trillion dollars by 2015. African economies are likely to benefit from cheaper transfer of remittances, and reduced transaction costs across borders, but those benefits will be much greater if more people have access to mobiles. Therefore, boosting the number of people on the continent with access to mobile banking must be a priority for policymakers, to safeguard the “mobile economic revolution”.

The deepening of the “mobile economic revolution” should be contextual. The provision of mobile-enabled financial services such as micro-credit is great, but it doesn’t always function in the poor’s economic interest. The use of mobile phones to offer traditional options, such as layaways, to help the poor improve their entrepreneurial endeavors is negligible. KickStart, a nonprofit that sells human-powered irrigation systems to entrepreneurial farmers, seems to be an exceptional case. The organization introduced an SMS powered layaway program in Kenya that allows buyers to set aside tiny increments via M-Pesa.

KickStart‘s approach to aiding farmers to finance their entrepreneurial endeavors seems much more sustainable, compared to existing micro-finance options, although the time factor is a drawback. However, the main point here is that, the “mobile economic revolution” must never leave the poor behind. The ways in which the individual’s long term economic livelihood is affected is key, if the larger objective remains that of sustainable development.

July 28, 2011/by actualize

Economic Growth & Trade, Economic Policy and Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

The Debated Economic Impacts of the Internet

Photo: chrisharrison.net

Many international development projects promote national Internet infrastructure with the assumption that increased connectivity will lead to economic growth which will in turn increase the quality of life for citizens in the recipient nations. However, what is the measured impact of Internet penetration on economic growth?

The World Bank
- 10% increase in Internet penetration leads to a 1% increase in GDP
ITU Broadband Commission
- 10% increase in broadband penetration in China contributes to a 2.5% growth in GDP
- 10% increase in broadband penetration in low and middle-income countries contributes to a 1.4% increase in economic growth
- Access to broadband in Brazil has added approximately 1.4% to employment
- Broadband will create 2 million jobs by 2015 in Europe
Kenyan Economic Update
- Person to person mobile money transfers equated to about 20% of national GDP, with about two-thirds of adults engaging in transfers
- ICTs are responsible for 0.9% of the 3.7% annual economic growth in Kenya over the past ten years. In other words, ICTs accounted for one-fourth of the GDP growth in Kenya the past decade.

In addition to these statistics, the Broadband Commission released the following table on the impact of broadband on employment:

Table: Broadband Commission - A Platform for Progress

Despite these promising statistics, there are critics of broadband’s correlation with economic growth. Charles Kenny from the Center for Global Development recently attacked the World Bank’s claim that 10% increase in Internet penetration leads to a 1% increase in national GDP. Kenny argued that the study was not peer-reviewed or ultimately published (both of these claims are correct).

Overall, however, studies on national economies and Internet penetration seem to demonstrate a positive correlation between the two. Hopefully, the ITU’s Broadband Commission will be able to produce more definitive studies in the future, though given their political stance in favor of broadband adoption, it may be more difficult for the ITU to be objective.

July 28, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Cross Cutting, Economic Growth & Trade, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Did you make the Tandaa Grant shortlist?

Kenya openData

Nearly 150 company and individual submissions made the shortlist for Kenya’s Tandaa Digital Content Grants. The Tandaa Digital Content Grant competition, a campaign to unearth and finance web and mobile-phone apps developers, was unveiled last year by the Ministry of Information and Communication, through the Kenya ICT Board.

At its inception 15 grantees benefited—companies, individuals and groups of varying sizes. But this year the Kenyan government will double direct funding through grants.

For further information, please go here.

July 27, 2011/by actualize

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