Reading Reflection 10/30 – Mobile phones in Africa

This week’s readings are actually quite cheerful, at least these articles deliver a message – hope. I especially like the micro-mortgage solution that offered to ladies in Bangladesh. Phone-lady idea is really a brilliant one, it not only gives those women a chance to be financial-independent, helps them to support their families, it also spread out the seeds of phone-usage, makes communication easier to local people, and it eventually makes the big growth of mobile phones in the area.

From the materials of this course so far,  it’s delightful for me to know that In regions where there are no fixed landlines, cellphones have been hailed as an opportunity to leapfrog existing technology. And I believe that many in the industry predict that many Africans’ first experience of the internet will be via a cellphone.

Although there are some arguments and doubts about this type of cellphone-Internet would really create a digital-environment like the developed world. I think those points of views are quite arrogant and ignorant. We all understand that mobile phones can’t really compete with PCs with Internet connection, people can’t really create much content such as blogs or upload a home-made videos from their cell-phones easily. But like any market in the world, cell phone gets popular in poor areas simply because people there need it and it has a huge market. It is not like adding an extra fancy service on our DVR, it is a breakthrough and a jump basically from NOTHING.

The quick growing of mobile phones in Africa generally is a good news, but somehow it also raises up some concerns. Not to mentioned the network security issues here, how about polarization? Will the mass adoption of mobile phone makes some people’s situation  from developing areas even worse?It is easy to foresee that this mobile technology is getting better and more popular in the “lack-of-land phone & PC” lands, but there certainly will still be people who will be left behind the train due to varies of reasons, such as poverty, location, education and accessibility of the device. As one of the articles mentioned, government’s control is also playing a crucial part in the communication technology development. Will the sudden thrive of technology push some people even further from being “advanced”? I don’t expect to see the answer in the near future, but I cross my fingers to wish the technology can continue its development and benefit more people there.

Reflection Paper 10/23 – Carlos Slim, the Bottom Billion & Mobile Phones

Let’s start from Carlos Slim. I was quite impressed by the article about this richest man from Mexico and his story. I can not say he is a good or bad guy, but Carlos Slim sure is a very smart business man and all he does is for his business. It would be hard to say if a monopoly-style company should “donate” how much of money into the market to stimulate the local economic to make it “a good company”, but Slim indeed offer lots of jobs to local people from his 200 companies and that certainly is a big help for local economic. We can’t say Slim is a bad guy because he is a rich man who lives and make a fortune from his poor country, again, he is just a business man who is good at his job.

Slim’s case makes me think about those researchers who were trying to conduct varies of different projects in developing countries.  Maybe Slim’s biggest problem is he is not considerate enough to make himself stand at the same level with most of the people there, who happens to be poor. It is difficult to win in any situation if the person keeps thinking only from his/her own point of view. But from “Stories from the Field”, we see there was a researcher gave up her original target location (and people) because that village was too rural to reach. It shows an unfair truth that we must face – people from rural/developing world can not get what we can get, and that of course causes the reasons for dragging the “bottom billion” down.

Ling and Donner mentioned that mobile phones can change the developing countries by offering more opportunities, by making citizen journalists, by changing the way they communicate and connect with the world. I agree most of their arguments that mobile phones sure opens a different window and changes our daily life, and Iran’s recent protesting event moved me a lot, but all of these rely on a matured social system and environment. I don’t see the point of holding a multi-functioned mobile phone in a rural Uganda village if most of my daily basic needs can’t be satisfied.

This world still contains lots of unjustice and is still complicated, Internet and mobile phones can not answer everything, we can only hope by technology’s help, we can really step toward a bright future and a real global village.

Reflection Paper 10/16 – Mobile Techonololgy V.S. Sacrifice

Mobile phone has been spreading out at the fast speed both in the north globe and south globe. For people from the north side, those cool mobile phone functions such as camera, Internet access, GPS…etc, are taken for granted. People would change a new phone regardless the price just because of a upgraded function on the phone. Many people from the developed world sometimes “text” their friends instead of using the phone’s original function – talking. So what do those things mean to the our neighbors from the south side?

Ling and Donner hold the positive attitude about the mobile phone’s future in the developing world but also have concern about it might create bigger gaps. That is possible, but we still need to focus on the birght side of how the new communication technology can help people in the BOP countries. Since computers are way more difficult and expensive to afford, mobile phone sure is a better option for the developing areas now. It offers a chance for them to reach out and more opportunities to gain knowledge of the outside world. It eventually will become a huge platform for people to gather together and exchange information, just as the way people from the north side use their computer and Internet. Again, this theory is based on the foundation of good government leadership in these countries.

I am not sure if it is worthy for some people from the BOP countries to sacrifice their food for mobile phones, but the author points out that sometimes “value” is not measured finacially, I am not an expert, I hope those who suffer hungry for cell phones get what really nourish them.

Reflection to Prahalad’s “The Bottom of The Pyramid”

The first 3 chapters of Prahalad’s “The Fortune at The Bottom Of The Pyramid” is actually a cheerful reading compare with Collier’s “The Bottom Billion”. Mr. Prahalad offers “workable” solutions for the poor side of this world, or should I say, just India? I can’t get rid of the impression of what Paul Collier already gave me from his description of the desperate and yet helpless conditions in African countries, and here, from Prahalad, everything sounds full of hope again. I think it would be too optimist and if we take India as the standard case for all of the people/ markets from  BOP.

I do agree with Mr. Prahalad that t is the poor who stand most to profit from free, global markets. While that is true, the goal cannot be reached without a government being willing to assume a leadership role in making transactions easier for customers and accepting the responsibility of helping to create wealth rather than merely taxing wealth. There lies the greatest potential for economic growth from the billions of people living at the bottom of the economic pyramid. The crucial point is to figure out how to change the current main business runner’s mind to make they truly believe in this and start to create business opportunities that fit local consumers’ spending behavior.

As what Prahalad mentioned, education is still the key in this game. Internet sure can help to break the “media dark zone” problem there. And since most of the people from BOP countries can not afford personal computers, Pal, Patra, Nedevschi, Plauche, and Pawar’s idea of shared computers in the labs might offer a “better than nothing” solution for them. Of course it is not going to change everybody’s life there nor is it going to affect the BOP’s economic in the near future, but it will at least open a window to a different business opportunity for both sides (BOP and developed countries) in the long-term.

Reflection on “The Bottom Billion”

What Collier described in the “The Bottom Billion” is a land that eagerly needs help from the developed world. I used to think that Africa is a place that full of hunger and chaos, and it is. An ordinary person like me, I got the impression of Africa from the mainstream media, where we usually see African suffering under really harsh conditions, such as the internal political issues, the ethical and race conflicts, natural disasters, lack of food, shortage of medical and education…so and on and on, seems like that’s the most unfortunate land in the world while we sit comfortably in our back yard and sip at our iced tea.

According to Mr. Collier, the bottom billion societies are caught in at least one of four traps which prevent them from converging on the developed world. But Collier views these traps are “serious but fixable”, the poor countries must rescue themselves but they defenitely need help from outside. So why should we care? Why those bottom billions’ life matter to most of the lucky us? The answer to me is simple – because we are human beings who share this globe with others, as Collier mentioned in the book, we carry responsibilities, it would be really arrogant or even ignorant to only watch for our selves and pretent everything is just great. The low life-quality of the poor countries already costs us money and life, think in this way, if there was no these hard-to-fix problems in Africa, things like Somalian pirates wouldn’t happened, and that was just the iceberg of a huge hidden trouble we or our children need to face in the future. How do we want this world to become? What kind of world we are leaving to the generations behind us? These are why the “bottom billion” matter to us.

The solutions Collier suggested in the book need lots of coordinations. Unfortunately, this seem very difficult due to many reasons. Besides the differences among donors from developed countries, there are those notorious oppressors and civil wars to deal with. Even Collier admits that those countries’ situation won’t be better in the decent decades.

As Collier suggested in the book that E-services now have the potential to deliver rapid economic growth and he took India as an example. But what’s happening in Uganda is a different story than what had happened in India. When a 8 year old child is expected to carry a gun and shoot people for his own safety, how do we expect that he cares about using a computer and get on Internet??

But having good telecommunication infrastructure indeed can offer the chance for people to get more knowledge about what’s going on there and here. It means digital media could be applied among “helpers” such as UN members, aid agencies and donors to work on the differences and try to figure out the real helpful solutions. For those poor countries, cell phones might be an easier method for digital communication if the telecommunication businesses can be managed normally and fairly.

This book is a very informative read and it makes me start to think about what role we “ordinary people” should play in this world.