30878: Minsky:(commentary from non-list member) Technology, Development and Haiti

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tequila Minsky <tminsky@ix.netcom.com>

  I was speaking with Kathy Robbins who has spearheaded Fonkocel (the
bridging of Fonkoze and Digicel by having select market women
sell phone minutes on their phone as part of the goods they market)
and  mentioned the discussion prompted by Spinelli about if Haiti needs
technology.
Here is Kathy's commentary.

Technology & Development, The Possibilities for Haiti Today!  (by Kathy
Robbins)

C.K. Prahalad, one of my personal hero’s said “Aid is not the answer to
massive poverty.  Subsidies, grants, and philanthropy may have a role
to play, but the real solution is local development of the private
sector.”  And for this to happen in rural Haiti, I would add there must
be a modicum of safety and civility as well as availability of adequate
infrastructure including communications, energy and transportation.

I am currently leading a partnership between Fonkoze and Digicel,
Fonkosèl aktive pa Digicel, a replication of the hugely successful
Grameen Bank phone program in Bangladesh.  Digicel has gone a long way
in the past 18 months in democratizing communications in Haiti and
Fonkosèl seeks to take this effort to the next level.

Is an effort like this a good thing or a bad thing?  Experience has
shown the world that technology is agnostic. Our earliest form of
technology, fire, can still be a wonderful servant, warming our homes
and cooking our food or it can burn us horribly if used incorrectly or
carelessly.  The same can be said of the new technologies of today.

The beauty of the human spirit is that we have the capability to learn,
adapt and grow when given the opportunity.  When Grameen Phone first
introduced the cellular phone to rural village women in Bangladesh who
had never made a phone call, skeptics said they would never be able to
learn to use a phone.  The reality is that within15 minutes they had
figured it out and today there are over 100,000 village phone women in
Bangladesh making two to three times average per capita income off
their phone alone.

And because they have a charged phone with airtime on it, their friends
and neighbors know where they can find a phone in an emergency, their
children outside the country can call them, they can find out prices
and availability in Dhaka before making the expensive journey for
nothing, in short all the things we take for granted from modern
communications, they can now do.  These same things are now becoming
possible in rural Haiti thanks to Fonkoze and Digicel and the
partnership they created, Fonkosèl aktive pa Digicel.

Bill Gates said at the October, 2000 Conference of the World Economic
Forum “The world’s poorest two billion people desperately need
healthcare, not laptops.”  Obviously if someone is sick or starving,
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs reigns supreme, but once Paul Farmer’s team
has the illness under to control, what then?   In the classic sense the
question is, how do you enable people to support themselves and not
just keep them depend on handouts?

This is where ‘appropriate technology’ can make a critical difference
in areas such as communications, education and energy.  There is
currently a major effort underway to educate and strengthen Hometown
Associations among the Haitian diasporas to support development in
rural Haiti.  How will these groups know what is needed without
effective and timely communications?  What if laptops were available at
a reasonable cost ($250) and durable enough for rural Haiti, and
combined with wireless internet in schools across rural Haiti that
would:

•	Provide direct, timely, inexpensive access between people in rural
Haiti and the Haitian diasporas around the world?
•	Provide access to teachers for research, teaching materials and
training that they can only dream about today?
•	Provide access to students for study, research and communications
around the world as well as providing computer training?

Wouldn’t that help move the rural economy forward and potentially
improve the quality of life?  And the same thing can be said for
energy.  Would the movement from rural Haiti to Port au Prince be
reduced if there were job opportunities in rural Haiti?

This will not happen until technology is harnessed in the service of
energy production in the form of bio-energy while not replacing
existing food production capacity.  Today, Brazil has over 200,000
small family farmer’s participating in their biodiesel program and they
are well on their way to energy independence as a nation.  And because
Haiti has been so severely deforested, there is no danger of this
effort creating deforestation as has happened in some other countries.
Quite to the contrary, this effort promises to finally turn the tide of
soil depletion and erosion, while adding to long-term economic security
and the potential for development of rural Haiti.

The opportunity is now, appropriate technology applied correctly can
help rural Haitian’s support themselves; the question is ‘Will this
opportunity be embraced like the women of Bangladesh have done or just
become another lost possibility?’

Kathleen Robbins
‘Creating Opportunity thru Technology’
509-722-9172
Krobbins513@hotmail.com