Dear Colleagues, I think we should separate (and not mix) the question of what marketing and packaging strategies are needed to sell ICT-services to the poor in a profitable way from what ICT-services the poor might need (and how to provide them in sustainable, maybe even profitable way). The former has almost nothing to do with the latter, (i.e. a credit-shark or slum-landlord apparently sells something to the poor and mostly in an extremely profitable way -for him- yet he does not provide them with any service they need, which means credit not on cut-throat conditions or decent housing, or more generally something that makes them "less" poor.) Plainly speaking, selling a service does not mean "to serve", though many marketing-strategies try to sell us on their "equivalence".
Second required separation: there are services -like micro-credit, exports or material-purchase for cooperatives- that may require ICT-usage to cut operations-costs. The paper-work for a 100 US$ credit is almost as extensive as for a 100,000,000 US$ Credit- such that the poor may receive a service at reasonable costs. In my context, micro-credit is more expensive than credit cards, yet ICT is not used by the poor themselves -or only to a limited extent- rather than by an organisation that provides the service for the poor. There are similar examples in education and health-care. Third observation: neither the first nor the second bares any relation with Globalization, they are just local questions, except that -maybe- a global entity acts as "service-provider" and not a local one. If the focus of this discussion aims to be "Globalization" (and not only "global" versus "local" "service-provider"), then the questions have to be (1) how are Globalization and ICT inter-related and (2) which specific usage of ICT within Globalization serves the poor, (i.e. makes them less poor), or on the opposite hand, which ICT-usage in the context of Globalization makes them poorer. Yours, Cornelio ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org provide 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 Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
