ICT for the Next Five Billion People

by Jones, Kermit

ICT for the Next Five Billion People Arnold Picot and Josef Lorenz (Berlin: Springer- Verlag, 2010), 122 pages.
WHEN WILL THE NEXT FIVE BILLION PEOPLE GET A TURN?
Less than two decades after the Internet went global, two billion people now have access to it. Just fifteen years after cellular phones were reduced from bulky expensive curiosities to handheld, GPS-guided, application-wielding devices, they are used consistently by three billion people. Yet, in spite of these impressive strides, five billion people are left out of the information and communication technology (ICT) revolution. When will the next five billion people get a turn? Ten presentations offered answers to this question during a May 2009 conference on ICT hosted by nonprofit M�nchner Kreis. ICT for the Next Five Billion People, edited by conference organizers Arnold Picot (author of over 400 articles and twenty books on ICTs) and Josef Lorenz (of Nokia Siemens Network), is the book that grew out of these presentations.
Within the broader framework of reducing poverty and smoothing social and economic disparities across populations, ICJT for the Next Five Billion People provides a vision for ICT applications in emerging markets and business models specifically tailored for sustainable development. Representatives from academia, research and industry discuss the use of ICT in multiple areas, from a commodity exchange in Ethiopia to an information market in India. Picot and Lorenz provide detailed examples of finance, business and health service expansion by private and public sector entities to the 60 percent of the world population that lives in emerging markets.
But this is not vesterday's ICT book. Manv of the presenters, representing the research branches of companies such as Vodafone Group and nonprofits such as Grameen Solutions, take a long and binoctxlar view of the future. Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing (SAP) researchers discuss impressive cases of mobile technology that made rural South African business supply chains run more efficiently, with projections for future applications as well. Researchers from the International Food Policy Research Institute suggest targeted and competitive connectivity subsidies in emerging markets to augment applications already in place. Examples of this are the use of cellular phone-based search technology by grain traders in Niger and the trading of phone credit as currency by low-income customers in Kenya.
Unifying the ten presentations is a capstone panel discussion entitled, "A Chicken or Egg Problem," which diffuses some of the optimism pulsing through the first one hundred pages of the book. In the panel discussion, a representative of the South African Association for Progressive Communications acknowledges that mobile products expand services and cloud computing can lower infrastructure costs, but cautions that overstating the benefits of ICT without building strong public institutions may actually widen the digital divide. A World Bank representative contends that technology development without strong infrastructure maintenance training programs for the local population would likely lead to unwise investment decisions by government and donor institutions; in other words, a spoiled chicken and a rotten egg.
ICT for the Next Five Billion People is rich in its discussion of novel applications for ICT in emerging markets, as well as the potential benefits of expanding this technology to consumers who live on the margins of many economies. Internet and mobile technology have become so central to discussions on poverty reduction that they can be found in many plans to extend services to large populations. Key examples include the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the World Health Organization's strategy on decreasing health disparities and the recently passed U.S. Patient Protection and Affordability Act.
This work is not without its shortcomings. It adequately covers the potential for long-term profitability of ICT in emerging markets and, aside from regulation, the role emerging market governments should play. Social enterprise companies such as Grameen and its various subsidiaries in Bangladesh, as well as the microenterprises of rural South Africa, are fascinating success stories. The authors deal, however, too scantly with issties such as market volatility and the time needed to invest in market research and infrastructure before any likely investment returns. The reader will find, as the editors suggest, that while the conference and book provide food for thought, much is left unanswered.