Texting for Cheaper Marketplace Food with SokoText

An international group of graduate-social entrepreneurs from the London School of Economics (LSE) is pioneering a way to reduce food prices in Kenya using mobile phones.

Answering a call to action to address global food insecurity by the Hult Prize (hultprize.org), the team members looked at how they could make food cheaper for urban slum dwellers.

The Hult Prize, funded by Swedish educational entrepreneur and billionaire, Bertil Hult, is a start-up accelerator for budding young social entrepreneurs emerging from the world’s universities. The winner receives US $1 million and mentorship to make their idea become real.

SokoText (sokotext.com) (soko means market in Swahili) uses SMS (short message service) messages from mobile phones to empower vegetable sellers and kiosk owners in slums when it comes to bargaining the price for wholesale fresh produce. SokoText makes it possible for them to benefit from bulk prices by pooling their orders together every day. Usually vendors lack the funds to buy in bulk and have to make numerous time-consuming trips to the centre of Nairobi to buy stock.

SokoText reduces the price of fresh produce by 20 per cent for kiosk owners by buying the produce earlier in the supply chain. SokoText then delivers the food to a wholesale outlet at the entrance to the slum.

This approach makes available a wider range of produce and reduces the price. And best of all, it will knock down prices for the poorest people and enable them to buy more food and better quality food.

The team behind SokoText come from a variety of countries – Colombia, Canada, Kenya, Britain and Germany.

Hatched at the LSE, the enterprise prototyped its service in Mathare Valley, Nairobi, Kenya for four weeks during the summer of 2013 with 27 users and began the second phase of testing in November 2013, working with a local NGO, Community Transformers (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Community-Transformers-kenya/119937408165671).

According to SokoText, slum dwellers spend on average 60 per cent of their daily budget on food.

Mobile phones can be transformative since they are now a common communications tool, even in slums.

On the SokoText website, respected blogger and commentator on technology in Africa, Erik Hersman (http://whiteafrican.com/about/), calls it “a fantastic low-tech approach that could really scale for decreasing the inefficiencies in urban slum markets.”

SokoText’s 21-year-old co-founder and chief executive, Suraj Gudka, explained the genesis of the project to news and technology in Africa website, 140Friday.com.

“From our research, the Mama Mboga (small-scale vegetable retailers) spend between 150 and 200 Kenyan shillings (US $1.70 and US $2.3) daily, about 25 per cent of her revenue, to buy her stock, and since they do not buy in bulk they [she] get their goods at a higher price.”

Getting the market traders to cooperate is very difficult, Gudka found, because competition is fierce and trust is low. SokoText sees itself as a solution to this situation. By encouraging bulk buying by way of the SMS text service, there is no need to build trust between the traders before the produce is purchased.

“To use our service, the interested retailers would be required to send us an SMS every evening detailing what they need,” said Gudka, “and then we will source the produce and they come pick it up from us the next morning. In this way they do not have to incur the additional costs of transporting their goods and it also saves them time.”

SokoText is being incubated at the Nailab (nailab.co.ke) in Nairobi, a startup accelerator that offers a three to 12 month entrepreneurship program, with a focus on growing innovative technology-driven ideas.

SokoText’s summer pilot test confirmed taking the orders can work but found getting the product to the market in time was difficult.

The next step will be to set up a presence in the Mathare slum.

“We will be selling about seven to 10 different kinds of produce, and from our calculations, according to our projections for how much the Mama Mbogas buy every day, we hope to get  40-50 customers within three months,” Gudka said.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: December 2013

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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Mobile Phone Shopping to Create Efficient Markets across Borders

 

An anticipated game-changing revolution in African trading set for 2013 is getting one innovative business very excited.

Southern African mobile phone “m-commerce” pioneer moWoza (mowoza.com) is developing new ways of selling services and products through mobile phones and developing the networks and infrastructure to capitalize on coming changes in Africa as cross-border trade is liberalized.

It is already selling food packages containing well-known South African brands that can be ordered by migrants on their mobile phones and then delivered to recipients – family or friends – even in remote and hard-to-reach communities. The service is currently operating between Mozambique and South Africa – the two countries share a border.

The start-up hopes to help the millions of migrant workers and small traders who contribute to the constant flow of trade and wealth between states in Africa. These people face many obstacles, including bureaucratic red tape, corruption and harassment.

Cross-border trade by economic migrants is largely informal. moWoza hopes to make it formal and efficient while reducing exploitation of migrants and corrupt practices by officials. By providing an easy-to-use mobile phone service, it hopes to build trust with these transactions.

Africa is a market of a billion people worth US $2 trillion in trade and business, but the World Bank estimates the continent is losing billions of dollars in potential earnings because of high trade barriers. It found that it is easier for African countries to trade with the rest of the world than with other African countries.

The continent’s leaders are calling for a continent-wide free trade area by 2017.

Studies by the World Bank and others have repeatedly shown that inefficient transport and trade barriers translate into higher prices of goods for consumers as importers pass along high transport costs to consumers. Food prices remain extremely high in Africa – almost 25 per cent higher than they were in 2006, according to the World Bank. In developing countries, people normally spend up to 80 per cent of their incomes on food.

With the world in the grip of an ongoing food crisis brought about by multiple factors – including growing populations, environmental challenges such as drought and soil depletion, declining rural economies, inefficient farming methods and commodity speculation – measures that increase efficiencies and trade can be a powerful counterweight and help drive prices back down again.

moWoza – mo stands for mobile and Woza is a Zulu word meaning running -sells a range of products including basic foodstuffs to a target market of cross-border migrants in Southern Africa. moWoza estimates there are 7 million migrant and cross-border shoppers in South Africa alone, and it’s building a network reaching into remote communities to deliver packages ordered through its m-commerce service on mobile phones.

moWoza aims to open up access to products in these underserved markets.

moWoza is trying to position itself for the new opportunities that will arise when, in 2013, 23 African borders open for regional trade, creating a vast trading area stretching from Cairo in Egypt to Cape Town in South Africa.

moWoza wants to be the m-commerce brand that people will turn to. It is chasing customer markets that include African economic migrants, small and medium-sized enterprises doing cross border trade, and the 30 million African economic migrants who are supporting family back in their home countries.

Founder Suzana Moreira says the company carried out extensive research in South Africa, Mozambique, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Kenya before launching its first trial runs between South Africa and Mozambique. “We ran several pilots to determine the most efficient way to provide access to packages for the beneficiaries and developed the necessary technology to enable our customers (migrants) to place orders simply. We are now operating between Johannesburg and Maputo,” she said.

Officially incorporated in 2009, moWoza did not get up and running until 2010.

Once a customer has experienced a delivery from moWoza, they are introduced to other services like banking or how to download information from the Internet. Many customers are only just learning about the resources available online.

“We look forward to the opening up of cross border trade as our findings suggest that the liberalization and facilitation of the cross-border trade initiative will increase demand for all products and services from South Africa to neighbouring countries,” Moreira said. “South Africa offers an extensive range of products compared to the choice of products that are offered in many of the neighbouring countries.

“The structures and networks that compel migrants to come to South Africa are well established,” she explained.

“The social networks encourage the movement of labour. Hundreds of thousands of male migrants from the Southern African Develoment Community, SADC (http://www.sadc.int/), countries have spent the greater parts of their working lives in South Africa. They in turn had parents or grandparents who had worked in South Africa, while providing a lifeline to the family in the home country.

“This practice will continue: mobile money to a degree will facilitate this lifeline but as long as products can be sourced cheaper in South Africa, the demand for South African products will continue.”

The people behind moWoza sound like business radicals, proclaiming that traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses will be replaced in a shopping revolution by WAP (wireless application protocol) and SMS (short message service) business platforms operating on mobile phones.

Apart from developing the m-commerce business, moWoza aspires to become a well-known brand for the migrant community.

“Becoming a lifestyle brand is a bold statement on our part,” Moreira said. “However, this goal reflects a measure of success and would demonstrate that we are delivering value to our customers (migrants and micro-merchants) and their beneficiaries.”

The moWoza brand hopes to reflect the lives of their customers and be all about embracing fluidity and mobility.

“As our primary customers are transnational and highly mobile (immigrants with a dual existence), we would like moWoza to represent mobility and fluidity (attune to anytime, anywhere, always).” she said. “Their greatest aspiration is an improved livelihood and a simplification of the rigours of grass-roots existence.”

moWoza foresees big changes coming for the economies of the African countries affected by the opening up of regional trade. According to its website: “New markets and trading routes will mushroom, traditional value chains will be replaced with ICT [information and communications technology] innovations; a savvier and younger consumer will emerge who will value convenience and simplicity.”

For users, moWoza’s service works like this: A customer uses a mobile phone to make a purchase. An agent helps with selecting the right package and delivery options. When the payment is made, an SMS mobile receipt – a so-called m-receipt – is sent to the customer. The person who will be receiving the parcel will also receive a text message. During the delivery process, ‘m-updates’ are sent on progress to both parties and when the parcel is finally delivered, a final notification is sent of delivery.

Special drop-off points have been set up in countries where the service is available and there is follow-up contact with the customer to determine their continuing needs.

MoWoza hires people from the communities they operate in as agents. An agent works with the customer to show how the Internet works on mobile phones and to improve their literacy skills.

Product parcels are selected to meet the World Health Organization (WHO) nutritional guidelines. The packages are selected based on focus groups and customer feedback.

With offices in South Africa and the United Kingdom, moWoza is looking forward to expanding what it can offer.

“We will continue to innovate, and deliver services that improve the livelihoods of our target market and their beneficiaries,” Moreira said. “We will extend our packages to include seeds and other agricultural products, school and educational materials, and health products. As we grow, our services will extend to digital (virtual) goods, e.g. insurance products specifically targeting the underserved communities.”

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: August 2012

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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Accessing Global Markets Via Design Solutions

The power of design to improve products and the way they are manufactured is increasingly being seen as a critical component of successful economic development.

The importance of trade – both South-South and South-North – as a reducer of poverty in developing countries is now widely acknowledged. Countries that have made the biggest gains in reducing poverty, like China, India and Brazil, have done it through trade.

The power of trade in high quality goods to raise incomes has been proven for more than a decade. South-South trade grew by an average of 13 percent per year between 1995 and 2007. By 2007, South-South trade made up 20 percent of world trade. And over a third of South-South commerce is in high-skill manufacturing. Making finished goods, rather than just selling raw materials, improves workers’ skill levels and increases the return on trade.

But trying to get other people to desire and buy your products is very tricky. Design plays a major part in understanding the unique demands of countries and markets, and what people find appealing or repellent.

A product that has both a successful design (people want to buy it) and is produced efficiently (a well-designed manufacturing process), will generate a good profit.

In India, the Craft Resource Centre or CRC Exports Limited of Kolkata (http://en..wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcutta)has been successfully selling leather travel bags to the Vodafone (>http://www.vodafone.com/hub_page.html) mobile phone company in The Netherlands. It did this by teaming up with Dutch Designers in Development (http://www.ddid.nl/english/index.html), an NGO focused on matching European importers and retailers and professional designers with small and medium enterprises in the South.

Founded in 1989, CRC applies the concept of adding value to turn small-scale and poor artisans into successful and sustainable businesses. Many of these traditional handicraft artisans subsist on low incomes. CRC provides artisans across India with marketing, design, finance and exporting help. It also connects them with other artisans and helps to divide projects between them. This has the power of using networks to help in bad times while also sharing opportunities when they come up.

CRC’s director, Irani Sen, has divided the more than 15,000 artisans they work with into 15 different trading groups. CRC has also consulted to over 350 projects across Asia.

“The best thing fair trade gives (artisans) is the continuity of work … and with the continuity comes the basic security,” Sen said on the CRC website. “With that security they can develop, they can plan and then we try to motivate them for education, health (and) education for their children.”

It all began with a need: Dutch company Unseen Products (http://www.unseenproducts.com/home) needed somebody to make high-quality leather travel bags for their client, Vodafone, who in turn wanted the bags as an incentive for their employees. Unseen Products is a business connecting European retailers with small producers in the South to build long-term business relationships. They seek to make “unseen or hard to find products accessible at commercially interesting prices.”

They approached Dutch Designers in Development (DDiD), which in turn recommended CRC.

As a matchmaker, DDiD puts together European clients, Dutch designers and small and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries. The designers share their knowledge of European consumer tastes, product development, design and quality standards.

DDiD receives orders from companies, NGOs and government agencies to stimulate the production and sale of sustainable products from developing countries in Europe.

The Dutch group works with producers to develop skills and adapt producers’ products to present and future demands in Europe. By following this approach, Southern producers can reduce the risk of making products nobody wants, or that lack originality in the marketplace and thus won’t sell.

DDiD explains to producers the importance of design and how it improves the product and the business. Good design, the group believes, should reduce production costs and the time taken to get to market, and boost the reputation of the product brand and maker.

Well-known Dutch bag designer Ferry Meewisse (http://www.frrry.com/hiep/Entrance.seam?labelId=1) was brought in to work with CRC’s artisans to craft new bags and a new way of making them.

Meewisse said he was uncertain at first whether the artisans would be able to make the highly complex bags. The solution was to break down the bag into smaller parts. And that is where the knowledge of design process comes into play.

“The button bag for example is a complex bag that has been taken apart: compartments, pockets, handles,” said Meewisse. “This provided us with elements that were each really simple to manufacture. After that the pieces would only have to be clicked together with the buttons. And there it was: a complete bag with all the elements you need in a good bag.”

The bags can be seen here: http://www.frrry.com/hiep/guest/GuestSeries.seam?seriesId=9&conversationId=30930

Stella van Himbergen, a project manager at DDiD, said the concept is about introducing a new way of looking at things through the prism of design.

“Small producers in developing countries are not lacking craftsmanship,” said Himbergen. But, she added, “it is important for producers to receive support in production-led design, and not only in aesthetic design.”

Conceptually, this is the difference between designing and making something because it is aesthetically pleasing, and taking a market-driven design approach – letting market demands lead to the design solution. As a different way of looking at things, it takes in the company’s vision, brand values and positioning in the marketplace, production requirements (costs, sustainability), organization, and client’s needs.

DDiD helps producers learn how to quickly create new products based on market demands. They also raise the level of awareness of design to global standards, and show how to apply this across the production process, from graphic design, to packaging, retail and exhibition space, brand design and design management. Since 2005, the group has completed 46 international projects.

DDiD also stresses sustainability, encouraging the use of environmentally friendly materials such as biological cotton, bamboo and water hyacinth for paper and rope.

Apart from Vodafone, the CRC-made bags are sold in shops and on the web.

The extra attention to design seems to have paid off. CRC’s bags have been such a success that a second order has been placed. And CRC has picked up another project from Dutch importer Global Goodies (http://www.globalgoodies.nl/).

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: March 2009

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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Computer ‘Gold Farming’ Turning Virtual Reality into Real Profits

The rapid spread of the internet around the global South is bringing with it new forms of work. One of these trends is so-called “gold farming”: making money in the virtual world of computer gaming by trading in virtual money, prizes and goods for busy gamers who don’t have time to do it themselves. This work now employs 400,000 people – mostly men and mostly in China, but also elsewhere in the South, according to a new report.

Working out of internet centres where they can get access to high-speed or broadband internet connections, “gold farmers” use the global trade in virtual goods for online computer games in the same way stockbrokers trade shares on the world’s stock exchanges. The trade operates similarly to the stock market, with prices fluctuating based on demand and changing by the minute.

And as the report discovered, this trade is acting as a gateway into the world of information technology employment, where computer-literate young men are able to earn an income they could not have done otherwise.

It is a trade that can provide gold farmers with US $145 a month in income. They are often given free food and accommodation to do it, and many have few other economic choices.

“You can probably think of two models,” said the report’s author, Professor Richard Heeks of Manchester University’s Development Informatics Group. “They could play as an individual at a local cybercafe doing their own in-game farming and then selling to one of the trading sites (that buy from farmers at one price, then sell on to player-buyers at a higher price). Or they could be organized into a small/medium enterprise by an owner, all working together in a room full of computers.”

There is a dark side to gold farming too: there have been reports of youths forced to gold farm by gangs who make them work 12 hour days. Crime gangs sometimes become involved and scams proliferate.

Heeks says the downside is the result of governmental ignorance. “The main problem is a lack of understanding about ICT and ICT enterprise generally in some governments in developing countries and in particular a relative lack of understanding about the spread and implications of computer games.”

Supporters see gold farming as a flourishing Southern economy that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and exposes participants both to information technology skills and the wide horizons of the virtual computing world. Its defenders say it shows that those who dismiss the expansion of IT infrastructure as a waste of time are missing the emerging economic opportunities it is creating.

Heeks said we still know too little about this fast-evolving sector, but that “gold farming does seem to be providing income/livelihood for young men who would otherwise be unemployed. There are claims that it has helped mop up youths who had otherwise been involved in crime, but we don’t yet know how generalized such claims are.”

The number of players engaged in online gaming has grown by 80 percent per year, and Heeks sees the rise in gold farming as linked to a bigger trend: “in both North and South, we will spend increasing amounts of work and leisure time in cyberspace. Couple that with the growing penetration of ICTs into developing countries, including into poor communities, and there will be growing opportunities for this kind of ‘virtual outsourcing.'”

Currently, more than 300 million people worldwide have access to the internet through fast broadband connections (mostly in developed countries, although this is changing quickly), and more than 1.1 billion of the world’s estimated 6.6 billion people are online.

China is working hard to capture the economic power of the internet. The country’s economic boom has helped create an affluent urban middle class clamouring for the social aspects of internet access like chat rooms, while the government has been driving the roll-out of internet access in rural areas.

The country’s largest Cyber Park is under construction in Wujin New and High-tech Development Zone of Changzhou. It will be a technology incubator, a research and development centre, and a place for small and medium-sized enterprises to innovate.

China’s most ambitious digital media industry development is the Beijing Cyber Recreation District (CRD), a collection of digital media academies and company incubators spread over 100 square kilometres, creating the world’s largest virtual world development. It is already home to more than 200 game and multimedia content producers in western Beijing.

And even in Africa, where broadband penetration rates are very poor, countries are now looking to the mobile phone companies to provide their populations with access to the internet, as they struggle to find a place at the digital table.

Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean strategically close to Africa and better known for tourism and luxury hotels, wants to become the world’s “cyber island”, and Africa’s e-gateway. Armed with the first 3G network in Africa (the third generation of mobile phone technology – offering high-speed internet access and video telephony), Mauritius is moving fast to make good on this advantage. And it is even moving to the next level of mobile-phone speed, High-speed Download Packet Access (HSDPA) – allowing even greater quantities of information to be exchanged.

Mauritius joins a select few countries, including Japan and South Korea, at the forefront of access to 3G. Wireless – or wi-fi – computer access is available in three-quarters of the island.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: September 2008

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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Carbon Markets Need to Help the Poor

 

The global carbon credit trading schemes emanating from the Kyoto Protocol have created a multi-billion dollar market – the global carbon market was worth US $30 billion in 2007 (World Bank) – and represents one of the fastest growing business opportunities in the world. The bulk of this trading is with the European Union’s emissions trading scheme, some US $25 billion. But the big problem to date has been most of this investment is enriching stock brokers, and not the poor.

And this is a huge opportunity missed, as some point out: “These numbers are relevant because they demonstrate that the carbon market has become a valuable catalyst for leveraging substantial financial flows for clean energy in developing countries,” according to Warren Evans, the World Bank’s director of environment.

And the way to do this is through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – where wealthy countries can meet their greenhouse gas targets by investing in clean energy projects in the South. But so far, it has been criticised for spending 4.6 billion Euros on projects that would have cost just 100 million Euros if implemented by development agencies.

But if done right, the CDM could become directly beneficial to the so-called Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) – the four billion who live on less than US $2 a day. The CDM allows developed countries to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by paying projects targeting the poor to develop clean energy, or to create what are called carbon sinks (planting trees for example), to cut global emissions.

One mechanism to make all of this work is the CDM Bazaar: officially launched in September 2007, it is about linking together buyers and sellers. This is a place where people with business ideas or projects can go for start-up funding. It is also a place to share information, contacts and learn about how to tap the market.

And two Southern innovators are showing what can be achieved by tapping the power of the sun to help the poor.

One such initiative In India, owned by Mr. Deepak Gadhia and Dr Mrs. Shirin Gadhia, is targeting the 63 per cent of the BOP market that is with rural populations. All of these people need affordable and clean energy if their lives are to improve: most currently use firewood and kerosene for cooking and heating. The company Gadhia Solar is building and selling solar steam cook stoves in rural villages. The giant solar dishes which resemble satellite TV dishes, can fry and roast using the sun and come in Do-it-Yourself kits. The enormous silver dishes beam concentrated sunlight on to a black plate on the oven, reaching temperatures of over 450 Celsius.

In Morocco, the company Tenesol, an electric supply co-operative society, is using solar power to bring electricity to 60,000 poor households in 29 provinces. And it is making Morocco a world leader in the use of solar for rural electricity.

Each house is equipped with a solar home system comprising a solar panel, battery and controller. It is powerful enough to light four to eight lamps, and support a television, radio or mobile phone charger.

Customers pay a connection fee of US $80, and then a monthly service fee of between US $7.50 and US $17.50. The fee competes well with what rural households were spending on candles and batteries.

The initial outlay for equipment is mostly paid for by investors, with the hope that the money will be made back on the service fees.

Tenesol hopes to bring electricity to 101,500 households, and also wire them up and provide light bulbs.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: March 2008

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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Southern Innovator Issue 1: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q1O54YSE2BgC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 2: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ty0N969dcssC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 3: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AQNt4YmhZagC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 4: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9T_n2tA7l4EC&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Southern Innovator Issue 5: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6ILdAgAAQBAJ&dq=southern+innovator&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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