Dear GKD Colleagues, I am currently in Bosnia-Herzegovina, looking at some opportunities for ICT to support economic development in this beautiful country that has been through such suffering. Great progress has been made in rebuilding, although sometimes one feels the trauma that people have experienced here. But they are doing their best to put it behind them and recreate the vibrant economy that once thrived here. Unfortunately, their efforts to use ICT to get into international markets are thwarted by a telecom sector that is still owned by the government (3 telecom companies, but the government owns a majority of all three) so there is no real competition. As a result, prices for international calls and for Internet are out of sight. Not surprisingly, Internet penetration is estimated at only about 5-6%. Even among young people who have jobs, estimates from a recent survey suggest that only about half have used the Internet. Unemployment hovers at 40%.
Nonetheless, as is so often the case in developing countries, there are outstanding people who are building ICT-related businesses, or are creating NGOs to try to use ICT to provide social services. A major problem is that all organizations are extremely isolated. Good companies have few links to the international market -- this includes ICT companies that don't know how to penetrate market niches where they have strength and relatively low cost, as well as non-ICT companies that desperately need access to ICT in order to get into international markets. For example, the wood products industry is a major employer, but they face tough competition from the Chinese on the low-cost end of products, which is where they are currently competing. I am exploring the possibility of their getting into high-end, designer furniture, if they can get access to CAD/CAM, reasonable Internet access rates, and some other ICT applications that would enable them to enter that market successfully in Europe. Similarly, NGOs don't have a clue as to where they could get financial support, regardless of the great work they do. I was in India a couple of weeks ago, and the story for NGOs (though not companies by and large) was the same. Some fantastic NGOs doing great work, but threatened with shutting down because they don't know how to get support from international foundations or philanthropic individuals. Several years ago I tried to convince several donors to support creation of a database of NGOs around the world. Any NGO could have a space and provide information, and there would also be a space for people to write comments about the NGO's work -- positive or negative. My goal was to create something that individuals or foundations (or donors) could use to identify organizations doing good work that are usually invisible in the international arena. I am still convinced it is extremely valuable and feasible, but the donors with whom I talked were totally uninterested. I still feel the same frustration when I see great NGOs working incredibly hard in developing countries, and always under the cloud of extinction because they only know how to do good work, not how to tap into funding sources. Thus, Peter and Gena's ideas about creating some online source of information about NGOs resonates strongly. Perhaps we can find some way to make this happen... Cheers from Bosnia, Janice Janice Brodman Director Center for Innovative Technologies [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** 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/>
