Dear Colleagues, I am not sure that what I have to say can be described as "valuable input and insights!", but here goes anyway!
> 1. What new "high impact" technologies are on the 3-year horizon? Who > (exactly) needs to do what (concretely) to make those technologies > widely available? Affordable cost. What this means is that in order to have an impact in developing situations the technology has to get mass produced and be "consumer" costed. Items need to be available for $10, not $1,000 or even $100. There has been a lot of talk over the past 25 years about "appropriate" technology and this was often interperted to be old technology. With ICT the most appropriate is more and more the most modern. Wireless .... minimum power using devices ... reliable ..... > 2. What's the most valuable area for technology development? Voice > recognition? Cheap broadband delivery? Cheap hand-helds (under $50)? Reliability / Affordability / better ways to get from electronic to traditional (reduced cost ink! and paper). > 3. Where should we focus our efforts during the coming 3 years? On ICT > policy? Creating ICT projects with revenue-generation models that are > quickly self-supporting? Demonstrating the value of ICT to developing > country communities? Innovators need to be able to implement best technology for development without running afoul of law and regulation that constrains best ICT practice in the interest of one particular group of stakeholders. We (in the NORTH) need to be more willing to see and listen and understand the needs of people who might be able to benefit from ICT's use .... parents, children, educators, students, medical service personnel, farmers, market folk ...... people can use I and people can use C ..... maybe we should just help to see that there is access to T, and access to resources to implement T. We need to remember that the technology needs to help not only those with academic training and education, but also those who have had no formal education, but can still benefit from more knowledge, especially practical relevant local knowledge. > 4. What levels of access should we be able to achieve by 2007 in each of > the major under-served regions? Who (exactly) must do what (concretely) > to attain them? Find successful and sustainable activities. Replicate. Get constraints out of the way. Get funding on the right basis. Let the demand pull what is wanted. > 5. What funding models should we develop over the next 3 years? Projects > with business plans that provide self-sustainability? Support from > multilateral corporations? Venture capital funds for ICT and > development? The funding model that is needed is one that allows the SOUTH to do "value adding" within its own economy. Most foreign direct investment pulls a lot more value out of the SOUTH than it generates. So something different is needed. From a financial planning perspective the policy direction should be to have private local equity supported by external loan funding. The external loan funding should be rewarded for both use of money and the risk being taken. This is the AfriFund model that has been described elsewhere from time to time. This is "for profit", but it is not for profit at any cost and not all the profit for the financial stakeholder at the expense of everyone else. Grant funding has been dangerous and has contributed to value destruction. Grant funding pulls local resources into areas of activity that do not have any inherent sustainability beyond the grant subsidy. Among other things, grant work gets good local people working where they essentially do little of real practical value, rather than having these people serve the local interest in struggling but essentially sustainable and priority local business (or service). This is the same sort of damage that the "project" form of organization has been doing for years, pulling good people into projects rather than having good people working inside the mainstream local (and underfunded) institutions. Planning should get less funding and pilot implementation should get more funding and replication of success should get most funding. A key step in this is to get information about success so success can be replicated. This is accounting and related output analysis, not the more common "monitoring and evaluation" exercise that serves to "satisfy" donors and grant givers, but so often does little to set the stage for replication ..... the reason being usually that the project has really failed (again) and replication is not economically worth doing. Going forward is going to be exciting. But the policy framework and the organizational design needs to be as modern and functional as the technology that has emerged over the last few years. Sincerely Peter Burgess ____________ Peter Burgess ATCnet in New York Tel: 212 772 6918 Fax: 707 371 7805 [EMAIL PROTECTED] for secure messages ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
