“What a tremendous magazine your team has produced! It’s a terrific tour de force of what is interesting, cutting edge and relevant in the global mobile/ICT space… Really looking forward to what you produce in issues #2 and #3. This is great, engaging, relevant and topical stuff.”
Rose Shuman, Founder & CEO, Open Mind and Question Box
I had the pleasure of visiting the printing plant to witness the presses rolling with the first issue of new global magazine, Southern Innovator. The magazine has been in careful development and saw its name evolve from Creative Sparks to Southern Innovator. As Shakespeare noted in his play Romeo and Juliet, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.” And it is what Southern Innovator is that counts the most.
This first issue is just the beginning of a process, a back-and-forth dialogue with our readers as we refine and improve the magazine to boost its impact. The first issue’s theme – mobile phones and information technology – was chosen because of the sheer dynamism of this area and some jaw-dropping achievements: the growth of mobile phone usage in Africa represents an unprecedented take-up of a new technology, often in some of the poorest places on the planet. That impresses and it seemed right to share information about the amazing people behind this phenomenon and the lessons they learned along the way. It has also become clear in the research behind the monthly e-newsletter Development Challenges, South-South Solutions (published since 2006), that significant future development gains will not happen without the aid of mobile phones and information technology, and, important to note, will need these tools to raise living standards for all the world’s people in an environment of increasing competition and pressure for resources.
Used right, mobile phones and information technology allow the efficient use of resources. But, as anyone who has worked with technology knows, this isn’t a given. Vast sums of money and time can be squandered if technology is not used intelligently, or lessons not learned from past failures. It is hoped Southern Innovator‘s first issue can contribute to a better use of resources, and by taking a broad look at what is happening out there, enlighten readers to new ideas, people and concepts.
Southern Innovator is designed in Iceland by Graphic Designer and Illustrator Solveig Rolfsdottir.
“Question Box was featured in Southern Innovator, a new publication of UNDP that profiles some of the most innovative ideas coming out of the global South. We were pleased to see many friends in the sector profiled as well, such as Ushahidi, Medic Mobile, and TxtEagle. Take a look at the magazine, as it is a great primer on ICT and mobile innovation from around the globe.”
More than 1 billion people in the developing world currently suffer from tropical diseases, which leave a trail of disfigurement, disability and even death. Yet only 16 out of 1,393 – 0.01 percent – of new medicines marketed between 1975 and 1999 targeted tropical diseases (International Journal of Public Health).
A combination of poverty and lack of political will means disease-ridden countries do not invest enough in research and development to find new medical remedies to save lives.
A pioneering project hopes to turn to the continent’s plants to dig up new remedies to tackle the many diseases borne by parasites.
It seeks to boost prosperity in Africa while taking on the many diseases that harm and kill people and hold back economic progress on the continent. If successful, it will make disease-fighting part of the future prosperity of African science – and boost the woefully neglected field of tropical medicine.
What is at stake is the future of Africa, as the continent has the lowest life expectancies in the world. With just 15 percent of the world’s population, Africa carries a high disease burden, for example it has 60 percent of the global HIV/AIDS-infected population. Access to clean water is poor, with only 58 percent of people living in sub-Saharan Africa having access to safe water supplies (WHO). This leaves people exposed to water-borne parasites like Schistosoma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schistosoma), which infects hundreds of millions and is the most crucial parasitic disease to tackle after malaria.
Africa’s biggest killers in order of severity are HIV/AIDS, diarrhoeal diseases, tuberculosis, malaria, childhood diseases, sexually transmitted diseases, meningitis, tropical diseases, Hepatitis B and C, Japanese encephalitis, intestinal nematode and leprosy.
Health resources are not being proportionately allocated: only 10 percent of financing for global health research is allocated to problems that affect 90 percent of the world’s population. This has been called the 10/90 gap (http://www.globalforumhealth.org/About/10-90-gap).
“The untapped potential of African innovation capacity is enormous,” explains Dr. Éliane Ubalijoro, an adjunct professor of practice for public and private sector partnerships at Canada’s McGill University Institute for the Study of International Development (ISID) (http://www.mcgill.ca/isid). Her research interests focus on innovation in global health and sustainable development.
“Using African biodiversity to produce solutions to local (and global) problems will provide a generous return on investment in an area of the world that is destined for growth.”
Ubalijoro was recently awarded, along with Professor Timothy Geary, director of McGill’s Institute of Parasitology, a Grand Challenges Canada (http://www.grandchallenges.ca)grant of CAD $1 million (US $1.04 million) to address parasitic disease through African biodiversity.
The Grand Challenges Canada grants are “dedicated to improving the health and well-being of people in developing countries by integrating scientific, technological, business and social innovation.”
It’s predicted Africa’s growing population will reach between 1.5 and 2 billion inhabitants before 2050: a lot of people needing affordable remedies and treatments.
Innovators have spotted an opportunity to simultaneously improve public health while also boosting Africa’s income from discovering new drugs. Traditional knowledge can play a critical part in the evolving innovation and commercialisation of Africa’s medicines and treatments.
Turning to these remedies and botanicals needs careful stewardship: Africa has a terrible reputation for counterfeit medicines, which kill and harm many people every year. The medicines also need to be affordable and accessible.
In some Asian and African countries, 80 percent of people use traditional medicines for primary care at some point (WHO). There may be sceptics amongst those used to name-brand medicines but traditional African medicines have a rich cultural heritage and have sustained Africans over the centuries. It is estimated the continent has over 50,000 plants to draw from, with fewer than 10 percent so far investigated to tap their potential medical utility.
From the start, most of the new funding for the McGill project will be spent in Africa. Out of the CAD $1 million dollar grant, more than half the funds will go directly to partners at the University of Cape Town and the University of Botswana. At first, the funds will be used to screen local biodiversity for promising leads. These will then be subjected to chemical testing in the lab to extract their potential utility for treatments.
“This system allows selection of natural product compounds that act on multiple target sites in the parasite,” according to Ubalijoro, “thus reducing the chances of developing resistance to the kinds of novel drugs that we hope to develop based on promising leads derived from this effort.”
The approach being taken by the project hopes to reduce the time it takes to get drugs to market and to shift the power and initiative to local solutions and scientists, rather than waiting for outsiders to come to the rescue.
The project hopes to contribute to not only improving people’s health but to stimulating local economies. This will be done by growing local pharmaceutical industries, retaining local talent which often now leaves the continent and doing rewarding and dynamic science within Africa. In short: making being in Africa attractive.
It is hoped the success of the project will breed more success, as has happened in other places – think Silicon Valley in California, or Bangalore in India.
“Success in this project will diminish the risk for technology-based investments related to health innovation,” said Ubalijoro, “helping to encourage local venture capital to help grow African science entrepreneurs. The overall benefit is improved livelihoods and prosperity locally as well as reduced spread of disease threats locally and internationally as we travel globally. ”
By bringing the science closer to those who need the help, it is hoped the painfully slow process of new drug development will take on a greater urgency.
“Discovery to production of a marketable drug can be a lengthy process,” said Ubalijoro. “But as novel methodologies are used to decrease candidate drug failure through the development and clinical processes, we can decrease the time it takes to bring drugs to market while empowering local innovation systems to lead the process instead of waiting for others to do so.
“The sense of urgency felt by local scientists to solve local problems can stimulate innovation and safe delivery of new medicines for African populations.”
Ubalijoro wants to see greater cooperation across disciplines and for people to come together in “innovation clusters,” that bring together policy, business and technical capability.
“I would like to see local investment in innovation coming from the public, private and NGO sectors,” explained Ubalijoro. “I would also like to see women scientists taking an active role in leadership and in becoming the next generation of innovating African scientists.”
Ubalijoro says that for those with money to invest, this is a vast opportunity waiting to be tapped. And she would like to see a dedicated African Innovation Fund set up for this purpose
“The message for venture capitalists and investors is simple: by cultivating local talent, we can help African scientists and entrepreneurs explore indigenous-based solutions to local health problems while taking advantage of the most advanced technologies available globally to ensure that quality, risk mitigation and profits can grow hand in hand with healing the ailments of African populations.”
Published: May 2011
Resources
1) RISE-AFNNET: African Natural Products Network: RISE-AFNNET works to develop Africa’s rich biodiversity into a natural products industry of social and economic significance. Building on an already active research network of 10 member countries called NAPRECA, RISE-AFNNET expands existing research programs and formalizes educational activities in such natural products (NP) fields as engineering, biochemistry, environmental science, pharmacology, economic development and nutrition. Students work on natural product research projects in the context of poverty alleviation, gender equity, and Millennium Development Goals. Website:http://sites.ias.edu/sig/rise/rise-afnnet
2) GIBEX: The Global Institute for Bioexploration is a global research and development network that promotes ethical, natural product-based pharmacological bio exploration to benefit human health and the environment in developing countries. GIBEX was established by Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Both are leading US universities with strong records of building successful international programs in discovering and developing life-saving medicines. Website:http://www.gibex.org/index.php
3) Screens-to-Nature Training: Scientists Learn New Way of Screening Plants for Pharmaceutical Applications. Website:http://www.gibex.org/article.php?id=132
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.
The current global economic crisis is taking place at the same time as a global food crisis. Food inflation took off at the beginning of 2011. This is having a devastating affect on countries dependent on food imports and experiencing decreasing domestic production capabilities. The least developed countries (LDCs) saw food imports rise from US $9 billion in 2002, to US $23 billion by 2008 (UNCTAD), prompting Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary general of UNCTAD, to say “the import dependence has become quite devastating.”
Garuda Food (www.garudafood.com), one of Indonesia’s leading snack food and drink manufacturers, has been boosting its own productivity by investing in improving the productivity of domestic small-scale farmers. This led to a doubling of crop purchases from peanut farmers between 2007 and 2009. By stabilising the market for peanuts and better guaranteeing income, it has attracted more people into becoming peanut farmers in the region.
This is crucial for the future of feeding the planet: we need more farmers.
Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country, with a population of over 238 million, spread out over a network of islands. Peanut farmers in West Nusa Tenggara (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Nusa_Tenggara) (one of Indonesia’s poorest places) are a key part of the region’s wealth. Peanuts are the area’s third largest crop after rice, maize and soybeans, and the region supplies six percent of the country’s peanut production and 10 percent of Garuda Food’s needs.
Garuda Food says investing in farmers has raised its own productivity by a third. Turning past practices on its head, this large agri-food company is supporting small-scale farmers and helping them to boost their productivity and incomes. Conventional wisdom had been to view small-scale farmers as an inefficient hold-over from the past – the quicker they were driven out of business, the better.
The Indonesian peanut farmers were using traditional farming methods and local seeds. Knowledge of more sustainable farming methods and land management techniques was poor. The farmers were also beholden to the whims of local buyers and fluctuating market prices.
Then Garuda Food stepped in. The company’s field staff offer the farmers training, and through its subsidiary PT Bumi Mekar Tani, it spreads knowledge about new agricultural practices and provides the farmers with quality seeds and farming equipment.
The company buys crops directly from the farmers, rather than from middlemen, increasing the amount the farmer makes. A premium is also paid if the farmer achieves better quality for their crop.
“We receive substantial supply from peanut farmers in NTB (West Nusa Tenggara) and we hope the arrangement will continue,” Garuda Food’s managing director Hartono Atmadja told the Enchanting Lombok website.
Garuda Food’s initiative, with support from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and AusAID, through the Australia Indonesia Partnership, has raised the productivity for 8,000 small-scale farmers by 30 percent: an income boost for the farmers of 3.9 million Indonesian rupiah (US $456) per hectare annually.
Peanut farmer H. Sajidin told the IFC (International Finance Corporation): “My farm’s productivity doubled, my income improved significantly, and I can sleep peacefully at night knowing that Garuda Food will buy my crops at agreed prices.”
Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System (http://stuffedandstarved.org/drupal/frontpage), has grappled with the conundrum of how to feed a rapidly growing planet. He finds the world is not lacking in food, but distributes its bounty very poorly and wastefully, leaving a planet where some people are literally ‘stuffed’ with too much food (the well-documented global obesity crisis) and others left to starve.
He finds the solution is often local.
“It turns out that if you’re keen to make the world’s poorest people better off, it’s smarter to invest in their farms and workplaces than to send them packing to the cities,” Patel wrote recently in Foreign Policy. “In its 2008 World Development Report, the World Bank found that, indeed, investment in peasants was among the most efficient and effective ways of raising people out of poverty and hunger.”
Patel uses the example of the southern African nation of Malawi, where “according to one estimate, the marginal cost of importing a ton of food-aid maize is $400, versus $200 a ton to import it commercially, and only $50 to source it domestically using fertilizers.”
Published: May 2011
Resources
1) Emprapa: The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation’s mission is to provide feasible solutions for the sustainable development of Brazilian agribusiness through knowledge and technology generation and transfer. Website:http://www.embrapa.br/english
2) Divine Chocolate: The highly successful global chocolate brand from the Kuapa Kokoo farmers’ cooperative in Ghana, West Africa. Website:http://www.divinechocolateshop.com
3) Olam: The highly successful global food product supplier brand which got its start in Nigeria, West Africa. Website:http://www.olamonline.com
5) Cooperhaf: The Brazilian farmers’ cooperative Cooperhaf: Cooperativa de Habitacao dos Agricultores Familiares, has put together what it calls a “social technology”, combining housing and farm diversification to support family farmers. Website:http://www.cooperhaf.org.br
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.
Access to adequate sanitation and toilet facilities is critical to making development gains. Yet this simple fact of life often gets overlooked, especially in fast-growing cities where populations are on the rise or in transit. Out of an estimated 2.6 billion people in the world without toilets, two-thirds are in southern and eastern Asia (World Toilet Organization).
It is easy to take toilet technology for granted in developed countries, but in the fast-growing urban world of the global South, increasing access will be the dividing line between a future of good human health and dignity, or misery and poor health. The biggest gains in human health always come about once people have access to clean water and sanitation. Yet this proven fact gets lost in many places for a wide variety of reasons.
One country currently failing to meet the needs of its population is India. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, by 2030, 70 percent of India’s jobs will be created in its cities, and 590 million Indians will be city-dwellers. An enormous infrastructure task lies ahead for India: a city the size of Chicago needs to be built every year. But so far this challenge is not being met, leaving the country with the largest number of urban slum dwellers anywhere in the world. Housing is just not keeping up with populations’ needs.
As K.T. Ravindran, a professor of urban development, told the New York Times: “We require radical rethinking about urban development. It is not that there are no ideas. It is that there is no implementation of those ideas.”
It is this ability to act that makes the Sulabh International Social Service Organization stand out. The Indian non-governmental organization (NGO) sees itself as a movement and is a passionate advocate for toilets and toilet innovation for the poor and underserved.
Sulabh was founded in 1970 by Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, who saw the vast task ahead. “I thought the challenges to provide toilet facilities have been overcome in rich countries; it has still to be met in developing countries like India,” he said.
So far, Sulabh has brought together 50,000 volunteers across the country to build toilets and sanitation facilities.
The organization’s success flows from understanding that it needs to do more than supply the ‘hardware’ of the toilets; it also needs to address the ‘software’: ideas and innovation and concepts.
The organization has directly built 1.2 million household toilets – but the government of India has built a further 54 million toilets based on the designs made by Sulabh. It’s an example of a good idea multiplying its impact when picked up by others.
While 10 million Indians use a Sulabh-built sanitation facility each day, according to the group’s website, an estimated 300 million are using a toilet based on Sulabh’s designs.
Most influential is Sulabh’s two-pit, pour-flush toilet (www.sulabhenvis.nic.in/Sulabhtechnology.htm). It consists of a toilet pan with a steep slope using gravity to flush the pan. Water is poured in to the pan to flush the toilet and the waste goes into either one of two pits. As one pit fills up with waste, waste is diverted to the second pit. After around 18 months, the first, filled pit’s waste becomes a safe, organic fertiliser suitable for agriculture and the fertiliser’s value covers the cost of emptying the pit. The successful design has been evaluated and approved by UNDP and the World Bank.
Sulabh has also been designing ways to get power and energy from toilets, building 200 biogas plants that turn the gas generated from the human excrement deposited in the toilets into a source of energy. Biogas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogas) is a clean-burning gas that can be made from animal, plant and human waste with the right technology and is a green solution to the need for gas to cook and run electricity generators.
Pride of place for the NGO is its vast toilet and bath complex at the holy shrine of Shri Sai Baba in Shirdi, Maharashtra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharashtra). Millions flock to the shrine every year, but it lacked proper sanitation facilities. To solve this problem Sulabh’s local branch has built a vast complex occupying two acres. The brightly coloured and palace-like facility has 120 toilets, 108 bathing cubicles, six dressing rooms, and urinals and can serve 30,000 people a day. There are telephones and 5,000 lockers for tourists to keep possessions safe.
There are also three biogas plants connected to the facility, generating electricity and hot water for bathing used by the toilet and bath complex. This solves the puzzle of how to fund the utilities. Water discharged from the facility is used to irrigate the surrounding green spaces.
Sulabh has also built a museum dedicated to toilets and toilet technology (http://www.sulabhtoiletmuseum.org). The museum places the toilet as a critical part of human civilisation and shows how it fits in with the cultural context of India. Toilets and toilet designs from around the world and throughout history are gathered together and make a fascinating journey through this essential human need.
Published: May 2011
Resources
1) World Toilet Organization: World Toilet Organization (WTO) is a global non- profit organization committed to improving toilet and sanitation conditions worldwide. Website:http://www.worldtoilet.org
2) World Toilet Day: On November 19 every year, this event draws attention to the lack of access for 2.6 billion people. Website: http://www.worldtoilet.org
4) World Toilet College: Established in 2005, the World Toilet College (WTC) started as a social enterprise, with the belief that there is need for an independent world body to ensure the best practices and standards in Toilet Design, Cleanliness, and Sanitation Technologies are adopted and disseminated through training. Website:http://worldtoilet.org/ourwork3.asp
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.
Southern Innovator is designed in Iceland by Graphic Designer and Illustrator Solveig Rolfsdottir. 
David South Consulting 
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