Flurry of Anti-poverty Innovations

Innovation is key to transforming the lives of the world’s four billion poor. And it is at the core of much of the new thinking these days. While the world’s poor can’t rely on political developments, or wider macro-economic events to go their way, they can harness the power of invention, innovation and self-reliance to make big changes in the quality of their lives and increase income – and so can those who want to help them. New York Times journalist and author Thomas Friedman put it like this: “Africa needs many things, but most of all it needs capitalists who can start and run legal companies. More Bill Gateses, fewer foundations. People grow out of poverty when they create small businesses that employ their neighbours. Nothing else lasts.”

In the 1940s, Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote that “the function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionise the pattern of production.” Schumpeter’s definition remains at the core of an entrepreneurial approach that focuses on innovation and enterprise as a means of addressing social needs. “Social innovators” are pragmatic and embrace innovation to tackle social problems through both for-profit and non-profit models.

International Development Enterprises India (IDEI) is a non-profit that uses product invention to transform the lives of the poor and tackle hunger and malnutrition. Its approach is to take existing technologies and adapt them, reducing costs and improving effectiveness. By constantly evolving the design, they can focus in on making it cheap and relevant.

One innovation is the Treadle Pump: a foot operated, water pump for small plots of land. It enables crops to be grown in winter and summer – no need to rely on rain. And since women are key to farm life, it is physically easy for women to use. So far more than 350,000 small farms are using it. It has been calculated the pump increases household incomes by a minimum of US $100/year.

Another of their innovations is the Affordable Drip Irrigation Technology Intervention. While drip irrigation systems have been for sale in India for the past 15 years, they were not relevant or affordable for small and marginal farms. IDEI adapted these technologies during trials from 1997 to 2000. Existing technologies suffer from two drawbacks: they are complicated to maintain and they are expensive to buy. A big challenge was demystifying the idea that crop irrigation methods were for only the big orchards. The irrigation systems are sold as kits and are scalable so that farmers can expand their systems if they want. IDEI has sold over 85,000 of the various irrigation kits.

Both inventions are designed to mimic traditional technologies and are inexpensive, thus maximising take-up by small farmers, who can recover the cost within one season of crops.

They not only do the research and development and product design and manufacturing, but also set up the vertically integrated marketing and sales network and make it viable for the private sector to step up and sell the kits.

Paul Polak, the founder of the global International Development Enterprises, believes progress is only possible if products are sold at a fair market price. “When you give things away, you lack discipline in how you design them because you don’t have to get feedback from the customer,” he said.

In the village of Otse, Botswana in southern Africa, the Godisa Technologies Trust has brought affordable solar-powered hearing aids to the poor. Most of the employees are deaf, and as a non-profit social enterprise, its battery chargers – and its branded Solar Aid digital behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aid – are all for use in developing countries. It is estimated over 600 million people suffer from some form of hearing impairment. According to the World Health Organization, 278 million people in the world are affected by moderate hearing loss. Yet the global production of hearing aids does not come anywhere close to meeting the need.

The Solar Aid needs only six to eight hours of sunlight to recharge for a full week. And it is fully compliant with WHO guidelines. Conventional hearing aids and batteries are very expensive and often not locally available. Solar Aid batteries can take 400 charges before being replaced.

The Solar Aid hearing aid was developed through field testing, funds were raised for further design improvements, and it went on to win several awards. But it initially failed to earn back its production costs and so the Godisa Technologies Trust was established to sweat the details on making it sustainable. It was developed in partnership with the Botswana Technology Centre,

“I want to help other deaf people to have access to education training and employment. I would like to use my skills and opportunities to help other deaf people achieve their goals,” said one of Godisa’s technicians, Sarah Phiri. So successful are these hearing aids, there is interest around the world, including in Canada.

Adequate street lighting has been proven to cut down muggings and improve public safety, reduce traffic accidents, and boost business confidence in neighbourhoods because people feel safe going there. StarSight’s street lamps combine solar-powered street lighting and internet access in a wireless configuration, freeing up the lighting poles from needing to access the main power and telephone grids. Each one contains VoIP, wi-fi broadband, CCTV and are being rolled out in Istanbul.

StarSight street lamp poles, designed in Turkey, are also being rolled out in Martinique, Republic of Congo, Cameroon, and Cote d-Ivoire. StarSight’s goal is to install 70,000 street lamps by 2011. Malaysia and Indonesia are next.

d.light design is a social enterprise targeting the 1.6 billion people who rely on kerosene oil to light their lanterns, or use candles. There is an ambitious goal behind this business: they want to replace all the kerosene lanterns in the world with their lights within the next ten years. They use light emitting diode (LED) technology and are about commercializing light and power solutions for families living without electricity in emerging markets.

Better lighting has many benefits, including helping children and adults to study and learn during dark hours. Importantly, it will make the air inside dwellings cleaner and the environment safer without the risk of fire. Indoor air pollution is one of the biggest killers of children under five in India. UNDP has found that families with improved lighting see a 30 per cent increase in their income because they can keep doing things at night.

On high beam, the lights last five hours; on low beam, they last for 200 hours without a charge. It can be re-charged by solar panels or by normal electric outlet. They promise consumers can expect to save $150 over five years. They have received additional support from the Acumen Fund to enter the peri-urban and, later, the rural market in India.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: December 2007

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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Ring Tones and Mobile Phone Downloads are Generating Income for Local Musicians in Africa

 

African musicians hoping to support themselves through their recordings have always had to contend with the added burden of poor copyright control over their work. While musicians in the West are supported by a highly regulated regime of copyright protection – ensuring some to become the richest people in their respective countries – most African musicians have had to stand back and watch their work being copied, sold and exchanged with little chance of seeing any royalties. Global audiences know of the success of artists like Fela Kuti, Youssou N’Dour, Manu Dibango and Miriam Makeba, but most African musicians can look forward to scant earnings from recording their music.

Anyone who has walked through the markets of Africa will know there are plenty of pirated CDs for sale, yet it is of no use to a musician who never sees the money. Poverty is endemic amongst African musicians as a result of this loss of income. While music is a global business worth US $40 billion according to the Recording Industry Association of America, pirated music in Africa is rampant – some estimates by the Recording Industry of South Africa put it at over 80 percent of available music. How much money is being lost can be judged from the estimated daily income of a pirate music vendor in Africa, ranging between Euro 762 and Euro 2,744.

But a solution to this problem is being pioneered in Botswana in southern Africa. A partnership between mobile phone provider Orange Botswana and Small House Records/Mud Hut Studios, ensures musicians get a slice of the profit pie. Managing director Solomon Monyame of Small House Records has signed a contract with Orange to share the profits from ring tone and song downloads to mobile phone subscribers. With more than 76.8 million people currently subscribing to mobile phone services in Africa, and the number growing by about 58 percent each year for the last five years, the potential royalties market for African musicians is vast if this initiative is replicated across the continent.

In the paper “Development Goes Wireless” to be published in the spring 2007 issue of the journal of the Institute of Economic Affairs, lead researcher Karol Boudreaux of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and Enterprise Africa!, discovered mobile phones and mobile phone companies can give artists a new way to control royalties for their work. She found that in the absence of effective copyright control mechanisms – as is the case in many African countries – the mobile phone company can step in to save the day.

“When you walk through the markets there you see so much music available on the street, but there is little intellectual property rights protection,” she said.

“In other countries, like the UK, you have strong intellectual property rights protection, but this just isn’t the case in much of Africa. The mobile phones are a very good way to get around this problem as long as cell phone providers are willing to make the contracts. Botswana is very lucky in that they have a very good contract environment, but this isn’t necessarily the case in other countries. It is a win-win for music providers and mobile companies.”

The NetTel@Africa project started by USAID and the Center to Bridge the Digital Divide, in partnership with many African and US universities, is also championing copyright protection strategies.

How important creative industries are becoming to economic development is slowly being recognized. It is now seen as an important component of modern post-industrial, knowledge-based economies, but equally also a way for economically underdeveloped countries to generate wealth. Not only are they thought to account for higher than average growth and job creation, they are also vehicles of cultural identity and play an important role in fostering cultural diversity. Initiatives like UNESCO’s Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity attempt to document this phenomenon and back it up with hard numbers.

UNESCO also has a project to establish musicians’ cooperatives across Africa. As such, the musicians are able to pool their production resources, which are individually insufficient to ensure the economic viability of a small or medium-sized business. In Burkina Faso, a co-operative is working with the International Labour Organisation. Click here for more information.

Festivals like Mali’s annual Festival in the Desert in the oasis of Essakane, 65 kilometers from Timbuktu, is an example of how African musicians are finding their own way to reach audiences. Targeted above all to promote African and Malian Music inside the continent, the Festival has also boosted international tourism to the region and almost 10 percent of last year’s 6,000 visitors came from outside of Africa.

Another initiative for African musicians is the DigiArts Africa network. It was founded by UNESCO and aims to increase communication between artists, industries and educators, make musicians self-sustainable, use the ICT industries to support and contribute to cultural activities, and better promote African musicians within and outside Africa. Click here for more information.

Well-known Senegalese musician Thione Seck is blunt about the economic effect of piracy on his income.

“Were there no piracy, I could have bought an island, seeing the number of songs that I composed in more than 30 years of my career”, he told a local newspaper.

According to Abdoul Aziz Dieng, president of the Senegal Music Works Association (AMS) and Chairman of the Board of the Senegalese Copyright Office (BSDA) (www.mali-music.com), out of 10 Senegalese artists’ CDs available on the local market, “only two are legal”. For audio cassettes, the ratio is three pirate copies out of every five sold.

Opportunities to combat piracy and generate income are also not limited to just musicians. Filmmakers in Africa are starting to learn how to exploit the opportunities thrown up by the fast-expanding mobile phone networks on the continent. Already a phenomenon in South Africa (www.filmmaker.co.za), director Aryan Kaganof is in the process of releasing SMS Sugar Man, a feature length movie shot entirely with mobile devices. The movie will be beamed to cell phones in three-minute clips over 30 days.

What are the effects of Piracy?

• Artist

  • No royalty payments, no money to live

• Record companies

  • No return on investments. Staff retrenchments

• Retailers

  • Cannot compete with low prices. Staff retrenchments

• Consumers

  • Many copies are of inferior quality. If tracks are missing or the sound quality is poor, no exchange or refunds

  • May be contributing to “organized crime” syndicates which are heavily involved in international music piracy

Source: Recording Industry of South Africa

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published:  January 2007

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.  

Follow @SouthSouth1

Google Books: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=MH2VBgAAQBAJ&dq=development+challenges+january+2007&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/DavidSouth1/development-challengessouthsouthsolutionsjanuary2007issue

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

This work is licensed under a
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