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Mapping to Protect Kenya’s Environment: the eMazingira Solution

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Powerful new grassroots crowd-mapping tools have sprung up in the past few years across the global South, from Brazil’s Wikicrimes (www.wikicrimes.org) real-time crime mapping technology to the now famous Ushahidi (http://ushahidi.com) – a non-profit company making the free and open source Ushahidi software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping – from its base in Kenya. They share some common features. All draw on the widespread use of mobile phones in the global South combined with growing access to the Internet, either through 3G mobile phone services, WiFi wireless connections, Internet centres or increasingly available broadband Internet services.

They then connect the mobile phones to the new mapping services available either on the phones or on the Internet. One example is Google Maps (http://maps.google.com).

These mapping services are revolutionary in what they bring to poor communities. They allow people to quantify in real time what is happening in their area, as well as see what is happening around the world. Where in the past this sort of mapping and statistical data collection was chiefly the domain of government departments and private services for wealthy corporations, individuals can now participate in the collection of data and map what is happening in their area. This can include mapping actual crime as it occurs, or slum-mapping, where a visual snap-shot of a slum area is made to better target aid and development.

This is a game-changer for human and sustainable development. It has the potential to close the gap between the collection and analysis of data and action. Accurate, real-time data makes it easier to push government agencies to deliver on their promises, especially during a crisis.

Kenya’s eMazingira website (www.emazingira.org) is showing the difference these tools can make. It allows people to identify potentially destructive practices that harm the environment – unregulated forestry, pollution, dangerous animals, land degradation, climate change – and alert others to what is happening. This level of awareness, it is hoped, will in time reduce the destruction of local environments and improve the quality of life for both humans and wildlife.

Mazingira means “environment” in Swahili. The website’s motto is “Keeping the environment clean for the future generation”.

The eMazingira website is a visually simple affair with a leafy banner image and an interactive map showing what is happening. It is in its first iteration and future upgrades are on the way. A rolling list of incidents keeps readers briefed on what is happening, from “Fire burning” to “Sewer burst” to “Rogue elephant”. There are five main categories to choose from and users can file reports by text message, email, sending a Tweet (www.twitter.com) or filling in an online form on the website.

“We got to know about Ushahidi during its first deployment which was in Kenya, when it was used to map post-election violence incidents in early 2008,” explains Dunston Machoka, director of BTI Millman Limited (www.btimillman.com) inNairobi,Kenya, a custom software development firm leading the project.

“We were inspired to develop eMazingira, on one hand, because of the passion we had for environmental conservation and on the other hand, from the success stories we had observed of Ushahidi deployments inKenya,HaitiandJapan.”

Machoka believes this is a critical time forKenya’s environment: “eMazingira comes at a time when environmental conservation is a huge concern inKenya. Our key observation was that there was no effective reporting mode for environmental incidents for citizens.”

The website hopes to better engage citizens in tackling the country’s environmental problems and sees this as a way to spur further government action.

One of eMazingira’s proudest moments came when it won the World Summit Youth Award as the 2011 Runner Up for the use of ICT towards attaining the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

But how easy is it to work with this technology? Machoka advises those starting out to turn to the Ushahidi team for support.

“I would advise them to get in touch with the Ushahidi team through their website and by doing so the deployment will be easy, fast and there will be adequate assistance in case of any challenges,” he said.

For the next two years, eMazingira will be focusing on rolling out the service to the country, from the main towns to rural areas.

“At the end of the period we hope to start similar programmes in East Africa based on the lessons learnt inKenya,” confirms Machoka.

And that isn’t where the eMazingira story will stop: its creators also want to deploy the technology globally, if countries have the right conditions.

“The key necessity for the application would be good mobile and Internet infrastructure and government that can promote citizen participation in environmental conservation,” Machoka said.

Published: December 2011

Resources

1) With less than five years until the 2015 deadline to meet the Millennium Development Goals, any tool that can make development decisions more precise is a benefit. Website:http://www.undp.org/mdg

2) The Map Kibera project uses an open-source software programme, OpenStreetMap, to allow users to edit and add information as it is gathered. This information is then free to use by anybody wanting to grasp what is actually happening in Kibera: residents, NGOs, private companies and government officials. Website:http://www.openstreetmap.org

3) NGO called Rede Jovem is deploying youths armed with GPS (global positioning system)-equipped (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System) mobile phones to map the favelas of Rio de Janerio. Website: http://www.redejovem.org.br

4) Mobile Active.org: MobileActive.org is a community of people and organizations using mobile phones for social impact. They are committed to increasing the effectiveness of NGOs around the world who recognize that the over 4 billion mobile phones provide unprecedented opportunities for organizing, communications, and service and information delivery. Website: http://www.mobileactive.org

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/12/04/big-data-can-transform-the-global-souths-growing-cities/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/12/11/cyber-cities-an-oasis-of-prosperity-in-the-south/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/12/04/data-surge-across-global-south-promises-to-re-shape-the-internet/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/02/17/digital-mapping-to-put-slums-on-the-map/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/25/indian-city-slum-areas-become-newly-desirable-places-to-live/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/04/indian-id-project-is-foundation-for-future-economic-progress/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/31/mapping-beirut-brings-city-to-light/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/31/new-weapon-against-crime-in-the-south/

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. 

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-1/

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2022

Categories
Archive data Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters digital ID Southern Innovator magazine

Cash Machines for the Poor

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Access to basic banking services for the poor is weak at the best of times. Many are openly discriminated against as a ‘bad risk’ by banks, and denied the sort of banking services middle and higher income people take for granted. Yet it is a myth that the poor do not have money or do not wish to save and invest for their future or for business.

The so-called Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) – the four billion people around the world who live on less than US $2 a day – are being targeted by a wide range of businesses. Indian business consultant and professor CK Prahalad, the man who coined the term BOP, has gone so far as to claim this is a market potentially worth US $13 trillion, while the World Resources Institute puts it at US $5 trillion in its report, The Next 4 Billion.

And contrary to popular perception, the poor do have buying power, as has been documented by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professors Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo in their paper “The Economic Lives of the Poor”. Surveying 13 countries, they found those living on less than a dollar a day, the very poor, actually spent 1/3 of their household income on things other than food, including tobacco, alcohol, weddings, funerals, religious festivals, radios and TVs. The researchers also found that the poor increasingly used their spending power to seek out private sector options when the public sector failed to provide adequate services.

India, where 63 percent of the BoP market is rural and 304.11 million people are illiterate (Human Development Report), makes for a particularly tricky market to reach with bank machines: the average transaction is just 100 rupees (£1.25).

But a Madras-based company has come up with the Gramateller – a low-cost, blue-and-white bank machine custom-designed for the poor and illiterate. Vortex received funding of 2 million rupees (US $48,000) from an investment company, Aavishkar, that specializes in micro-venture capital — small sums for new business ideas. The advantage of micro-venture capital funding is its longer payback time: a young company does not get driven out of business by having to pay back the cash before the idea has been realized. Normally, venture capital helps a business to grow quickly but the venture capitalist wants to see an immediate profit on the investment.

Vortex’s chief executive officer, V.Vijay Babu, said: “The idea was conceived by Prof. Jhunjhunwala of IITM (Indian Institute of Technology Madras) in the course of an exploratory project focused on using ICT to deliver modern banking services to rural India.”

“It was found that branch-based banking is too expensive to be extended to remote rural locations where the volume and size of transactions are small. Using conventional ATMs (automatic teller machines) as a channel posed many difficulties because these ATMs were not built to operate in [illiterate] environments. Hence the need for developing an ATM specific to this context.”

Costing just a 10th as much to build as an ordinary cash machine, Gramateller has a fingerprint scanner for the illiterate, and is able to accept dirty and crumpled bank notes. Vortex came up with an ingenious solution to do this, said Babu: “Vortex developed a beltless dispenser design that in many ways mimics the way a human teller would pick and count notes.”

Vortex hopes to massively expand access to cash machines: at present, India has just 30,000 machines, or one for every 43,000 people (the US has a machine for every 1,000 people). These machines are being piloted with India’s biggest private bank, ICICI, and they have garnered interest from Indonesian banks as well.

“We are running pilots for two leading banks with about 10 ATMs,” said Babu. “Though it is still early, the initial response has been very encouraging – rural users find fingerprint authentication intuitive and simple and the ATM convenient and easy to use. A few users also gave feedback that our ATMs look less intimidating, maybe because it is placed in a non-air conditioned room with easy access and also is different in shape from a typical ATM.”

Furthermore the cash machines have taken a beating to see if they are robust enough for rural India: “The ATMs were tested for extended operating cycles under the harshest of environments that would prevail in the rural context — using soiled currencies, operating in non-air conditioned and dusty environments, subjecting the machine to typical fluctuations in line voltages and power outages. User-acceptance was tested by enlisting the participation of rural and semi-urban people to carry out test transactions.”

As for thieves getting their hands on the cash before the poor, Vortex maintains the machines will not become the victim of thieves: each machine will only carry a fifth of the money of city-dwelling bank machines.

Elsewhere in the South, a South African research and analysis company BMI-TechKnowledge (http://www.bmi-t.co.za/) in its latest report identifies a boom in banking services across Africa. In particular, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Mauritius, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco – all have seen surges in profit and services as a result of improving banking regulations and political conditions. Maybe future markets for the Gramateller to reach Africa’s poor lie ahead?

Published: August 2008

Resources

  • Unleashing India’s Innovation: Toward Sustainable and Inclusive Growth, a report by the World Bank.
    Website: web.worldbank.org
  • xigi.net (pronounced ‘ziggy’ as in zeitgeist) is a space for making connections and gathering intelligence within the capital market that invests in good. It’s a social network, tool provider, and online platform for tracking the nature and amount of investment activity in this emerging market also referred to as blended value investing. xigi’s goal is to help this international emerging market to grow through market formation activities that guide and educate a growing wave of new money, while connecting it to the emergent entrepreneurs and deals on the internet.
    Website: http://www.xigi.net/
  • The new report Global Savings, Assets and Financial Inclusion by the Citi Foundation is packed with innovative approaches that are allowing the BoP (bottom of the pyramid) to use their income to build assets and more sustainable livelihoods.
    Website: http://www.newamerica.net
  • NextBillion.net: Hosted by the World Resources Institute, it identifies sustainable business models that address the needs of the world’s poorest citizens.
    Websites: http://www.nextbillion.net/ and World Resources Insitute

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. 

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2023

Categories
Archive data Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters Southern Innovator magazine

The BRCK: Kenyan-Developed Solution to Boost Internet Access 

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Using the Internet in Africa has its challenges, as anyone who has worked there knows. Issues can include weak Wi-Fi signals, slow Internet service providers, electricity outages and power surges that can damage or destroy sensitive electronic devices.

Power surges (http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/everyday-tech/surge-protector3.htm) can occur for a variety of reasons but are usually a sudden surge in the current flowing to the wall outlet from the power mains. They are common in developing countries, and can be tragic for electronic devices.
Most electronic devices are designed for use in developed countries where people can take the power supply, and ubiquitous Internet access, for granted. This affects the way devices are made. Designers will assume many things are available to users and build the electronic devices accordingly. But for users in Africa and across the global South, what seems easy in the developed world is fraught with frustration and wasted time.

This is a big obstacle to economic development and places people in Africa at a disadvantage in the modern world of fast communications.

One initiative is out to transform this experience for the better with a made-in-Africa solution that is being modified based on real-world experience and user feedback.

The BRCK (brck.com) bills itself as “your backup generator for the Internet” and is intended to address the problems of finding a reliable Internet connection, staying online in a power blackout and saving devices from destruction when there is a power surge.

Anyone who has tried to use a laptop computer to upload some photographs in Africa will know the frustration felt when the Wi-Fi signal drops away. The BRCK hunts around for the strongest signal and grabs it so the user can carry on working.

Built to be robust and take knocks and bruises, it is a sleek, black plastic brick-shaped device with the letters BRCK elegantly embossed on the side.
The BRCK can function as a hub for up to 20 devices, with a built-in Wi-Fi signal able to cover multiple rooms (so a team can work off a single Internet connection), a battery that can last eight hours, a 16-gigabyte on board memory hard drive, and software to allow for remote management  by apps on other devices such as smartphones. While it is not able to speed up an already poor connection or increase low bandwidth, it can “scavenge” around to find the strongest signal and hop to it right away. It can work with Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and 3G and 4G networks.

If a blackout occurs, it quickly switches to the onboard battery without forcing a re-boot of the computer.

It has been developed in Nairobi, Kenya and the first plastic prototype of the BRCK device was milled at the Fab Lab Nairobi (http://fablab.uonbi.or.ke/) using a 3D fabricator machine.

The BRCK’s makers describe it as a tool “trying to create ubiquitous Internet” and an “enabler of the Internet of things.” The BRCK is designed around the changing way people work and access the Internet, frequently moving from place to place. People now don’t just rely on one device but have many – a mobile phone or smartphone, a laptop, a tablet, an iPod or other device.

A Kickstarter fundraising campaign (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1776324009/brck-your-backup-generator-for-the-internet) gives more details on the origins of the project and offers many ways to support the different stages of development, right up to mass manufacturing of the BRCK.

One application of the BRCK is for research. It could be deployed to gather data at a field site, then connect via the Cloud (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing) to pass data back to a lab at a university in another country for analysis.

The BRCK is being built by Ushahidi (ushahidi.com), a non-profit technology company that makes open source software and made its name with the crowdsourced mapping platform it built during the post-election violence in Kenya in 2008. The Ushahidi platform has been deployed around the world since in many crisis situations.

Founded by David Kobia, Juliana Rotich and Erik Hersman, the Ushahidi team is focused on “building tools that improve the way information flows in the world.” It is about making tools to help people communicate in the most difficult places.

BRCK comes with a visually appealing website that makes excellent use of the BRCK’s ebony good looks.

The website boasts: “If it works in Africa, it’ll work anywhere”.

The ongoing development of the BRCK can be followed on the website’s blog: http://www.brck.com/2014/01/they-case-for-engineering-brck-in-africa-part-1/.

“The idea is to build a company around the product rather than just do a one-off product – and to gradually improve the product through new versions,” said BRCKs chief technology officer Reg Orton.

“Our engineers are based in Kenya now – we are not based in China, we are not based in the (Silicon) Valley. What that means for us we are able to go out there and (be) able to see the problems directly.”

The BRCK can be ordered online and will be available for sale soon, according to the website.

Published: April 2014

Resources

1) Momax iPower Milk External Battery:  Inspired from daily life, the creative iPower Milk looks like a cute and fresh milk carton. It fulfills your daily energy need just as pure milk. iPower Milk comes in a variety of cheerful candy colors, so choose one which suits your taste. The tiny and delicate iPower Milk has 1.5A USB output, which is compatible with most digital devices, including tablets. Website: http://shop.brando.com/Momax-iPower-Milk-External-Battery-2600mAh_p09700c1595d003.html

2) Southern Innovator Issue 1: Mobile Phones and Information Technology: Pioneering and innovative ways to deploy mobile phones and information technology to tackle poverty. Website: http://www.scribd.com/doc/57980406/Southern-Innovator-Magazine-Issue-1 and here: http://tinyurl.com/q6bfnpz
3) iHub Nairobi: Nairobi’s Innovation Hub for the technology community is an open space for the technologists, investors, tech companies and hackers in the area. This space is a tech community facility with a focus on young entrepreneurs, web and mobile phone programmers, designers and researchers. It is part open community workspace (co-working), part vector for investors and VCs (venture capitalists) and part incubator. Website: ihub.co.ke

4) Fab Lab Nairobi: Fablab (fabrication laboratory or “fabulous laboratory”) is a workshop with an array of computer controlled tools with the aim to make “almost anything”. Fab labs provide widespread access to modern means for invention. They began as an outreach project from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA). CBA assembled millions of dollars in machines for research in digital fabrication, ultimately aiming at developing programmable molecular assemblers that will be able to make almost anything. Fab labs fall between these extremes, comprising roughly fifty thousand dollars in equipment and materials that can be used today to do what will be possible with tomorrow’s personal fabricators. Website: http://fablab.uonbi.or.ke/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/20/accessing-global-markets-via-design-solutions/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/26/africa-to-get-own-internet-domain/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/24/brazilian-solar-powered-wifi-for-poor-schools/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/04/30/crowdsourcing-mobile-phones-to-make-the-poor-money/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/05/01/diy-solution-charges-mobile-phones-with-batteries/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/17/east-africa-to-get-its-first-dedicated-technology-city/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/12/20/kenya-reaches-mobile-phone-banking-landmark/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/23/kenyan-farmer-uses-internet-to-boost-potato-farm/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/12/20/mobile-phones-bring-the-next-wave-of-new-ideas-from-the-south/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/20/texting-for-cheaper-marketplace-food-with-sokotext/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/10/wireless-internet-culture-helping-zimbabwe-economy-recover/

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.  

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-1/

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2023

Categories
Archive data Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters digital ID

India 2.0: Can the Country Make the Move to the Next Level?

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

With the global economic crisis threatening to cause turmoil in the emerging markets of the global South, it is becoming clear that what worked for the past two decades may not work for the next two.

For India, the legacy issues of poverty still need to be addressed, and the country’s impressive information technology (IT) industry – which has driven so much of India’s growth – will face stiff competition from other countries in the global South. Some argue that if the IT industry hopes to keep growing and contributing to India’s wealth, things will need to change.

Unlike China, where heavy investment in infrastructure and a strong link between government and the private sector has driven the impressive manufacturing boom in the country, in India the government has de-regulated and taken a back seat, leaving the private sector and entrepreneurs to drive the change and do the innovation.

Many believe various areas need urgent attention if India is to continue to enjoy good growth rates in the coming years. Areas in need of attention include infrastructure, healthcare and education (thesmartceo.in), in particular the knowledge to work in the information technology industry of the 21st century.

One of the founders of Indian outsourcing success Infosys (infosys.com), executive co-chairman Senapathy Gopalakrishnan, told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, “So many people’s lives have been changed by IT in India.

“People from the middle class and lower middle class have become global employees and have the opportunity to work with some of the best companies in the world. But the challenge for India is that this industry can only create so many jobs. IT is not going to solve the unemployment problem in India.”

But the coming next wave of change in information technology is an opportunity to be seized to reduce unemployment if enough people are educated to handle it.

According to Gopalakrishnan: “I strongly believe, and it’s backed up by data, that there is a shortage of computer professionals everywhere in the world, including India. The application of computers is growing dramatically and will continue to grow dramatically over the next 20 to 30 years. We have to train and create the workforce necessary to grow this industry.”

Various media stories have called this next phase India 2.0. If India 1.0 was the highly successful information technology outsourcing industry developed in the late 1980s, through the 1990s and 2000s, then India 2.0 is the next wave of IT innovation being driven by Big Data, automation, robotics, smart technologies and the so-called “Internet of things.”

Big Data is defined as the large amounts of digital data continually generated by the global population. The speed and frequency with which data is produced and collected – by an increasing number of sources – is responsible for today’s data deluge (UN Global Pulse). It is estimated that available digital data will increase by 40 per cent every year. Just think of all those mobile phones people have, constantly gathering data.

Processing this data and finding innovative ways to use it will create many of the new IT jobs of the future.

“We are living in a world which is boundary-less when it comes to information, and where there is nowhere to hide,” continues Gopalakrishnan, “If you have a cellphone, somebody can find out exactly where you are. Through social networks you’re sharing everything about yourself. You are leaving trails every single moment of your life. Theoretically, in the future you’ll only have to walk through the door at Infosys and we’ll know who you are and everything about you.”

Unlike in the late 1980s, when India was the pioneer in IT outsourcing for large multinational companies and governments, competition is fierce across the global South. The mobile-phone revolution and the spread of the Internet have exponentially increased the number of well-educated people in the global South who could potentially work in IT. China, the Philippines, Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana are just some of the countries heavily involved in this area.

If India fails to meet the India 2.0 challenge, it risks seeing its successful companies and entrepreneurs leaving to work their magic elsewhere in Asia and the new frontiers of Africa, just as many of its best and brightest of the recent past became pioneers and innovators in California’s Silicon Valley.

India’s IT sector contributed 1.2 per cent to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 1998; by 2012, this was 7.5 per cent (Telegraph). The IT industry employs 2.5 million people in India, and a further 6.5 million people indirectly. IT makes up 20 per cent of India’s exports and, according to the National Association of Software and Services Companies (nasscom.in), the industry has revenue of US $100 billion.

India is now the IT and outsourcing hub for more than 120 of the Fortune 500 companies in the United States.

Out of India’s 3.5 million graduates every year, 500,000 are in engineering – a large pool of educated potential IT workers. India produces the world’s third largest group of engineers and scientists, and the second largest group of doctors.

IT has become a route that catapults bright Indian youth into 21st-century businesses and science parks and to the corporations of the world.

One visible example of the prosperity brought by IT services in India is the booming technology sector based in the city of Bangalore (also called Bengaluru) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore).

Reflective of the contradictions of India, Bangalore has 10 per cent of its workforce now working in IT, but also 20 per cent of its population living in urban slums.

The nearby Electronics City (elcia.in) is considered “India’s own silicon valley and home to some of the best known global companies.”

To date, aspects of India 2.0 are already taking shape.

One company is called Crayon Data (crayondata.com). It uses Big Data and analytics to help companies better understand their customers and increase sales and deliver more personal choices.
Edubridge (http://acumen.org/investment/edubridge/) is helping to bridge the gap for rural youth with varied education backgrounds and long-term jobs. Edubridge trains youth for the real needs of employers to increase the chances they will get a job. This includes jobs in the IT business process outsourcing sector and banking and financial services.

Infosys is working on innovations for the so-called “Internet of things,” in which smart technologies connect everyday items to the grid and allow for intelligent management of resources and energy use. Infosys is developing sophisticated software using something called semantic analytics – which analyses web content (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_analytics) – to sort through social media and the Internet to track customer responses to products.

Elsewhere, former Infosys Chief Executive Nanden Nilekani is involved in a Big Data innovation to address the problem of social and economic exclusion of India’s poor. Called Aadhaar (http://uidai.gov.in/), the government-run scheme is gathering biometric data on every Indian to build the world’s largest biometric database. After being enrolled and having fingerprints and iris scans taken, each individual is given a 12-digit identification number. So far 340 million people have been registered with the scheme, and it is hoped 600 million will be registered by the end of 2014.

The idea is to use a combination of access to mobile phones and these unique ID numbers to widen access to all sorts of products and services to poor Indians, including bank accounts for the millions who do not have one. Many people, lacking any identity or official acknowledgment they exist, were prevented from engaging with the formal economy and formal institutions. Being able to save money is a crucial first step for getting out of poverty and it is hoped information technology will play an important role in achieving this.

Published: March 2014

Resources

1) India 2.0 by Mick Brown. Website: http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/india2.0/part-one#top

2) Electronic City Bangalore: Regional information portal for Electronic City, an industrial technology hub located in Bangalore South, India. This portal is becoming the most favourite haunt of ECitizens living and/or working in Electronic City. Website: http://www.electronic-city.in/

3) Electronics City Industries Association: Welcome to the Electronics City, India’s own silicon valley and home to some of the best known global companies. Located in Bangalore, the Electronics City was conceived way back in the mid-1970?s as an Industrial Estate exclusively for Electronics Industries. Today the industrial estate boasts is an oasis of large, medium and small industries spanning software services, hardware; high end telecommunications; manufacture of indigenous components; electronic musical instruments, just  to name a few. Website: elcia.in

4) Godrej E-City: Situated in Electronic city and connected through NICE road and the elevated expressway, Godrej E-City brings your workplace and other major conveniences within your immediate reach. Your travel times become shorter and hassle-free. You have more time for your family and yourself. It’s time to move closer to happiness. Website: https://www.godrejproperties.com/godrejecity/overview

5) Infosys: Infosys is a global leader in consulting, technology and outsourcing solutions. As a proven partner focused on building tomorrow’s enterprise, Infosys enables clients in more than 30 countries to outperform the competition and stay ahead of the innovation curve. Website: http://www.infosys.com/pages/index.aspx

6) Tech Hub Bangalore: partnering with the UK India Business Council to establish TechHub in Bangalore.TechHub is a community and workspace for technology entrepreneurs with 1000’s of members, building the most exciting startups in Europe. We have physical community spaces in London, Manchester, Bucharest, Swansea and Riga and have members from over 50 countries.The Bangalore site will be part of a wider scheme in partnership with other British firms such as Rolls Royce, ADS, Bangalore Cambridge Innovation Network, BAe and PA Consulting with the aim of forging stronger links between the UK and India. Website: http://www.techhub.com/blog/techhub-expands-to-bangalore/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/09/29/cheap-indian-tablet-seeks-to-bridge-digital-divide/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/02/17/digital-mapping-to-put-slums-on-the-map/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/09/entrepreneurs-use-mobiles-and-it-to-tackle-indian-traffic-gridlock/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/20/the-e-reader-battle-reaches-india/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/25/indian-city-slum-areas-become-newly-desirable-places-to-live/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/04/indian-id-project-is-foundation-for-future-economic-progress/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/01/indian-newspapers-thrive-with-economy/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/18/indians-fighting-inflation-with-technology/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/06/indian-solar-power-pack-powers-villages/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/31/new-weapon-against-crime-in-the-south/

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.  

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-1/

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