What is the cause of the consternation that
exists in helping Africa find prosperity, the
people are intelligent, the land rich, the climate excellent. It would seem
that a constellation of resources and circumstances has emerged to produce the
wealthiest continent earth, and yet Africa
remains the poorest. Contrast most of Africa
with Canada Canada Canada Africa ’s people, when any objective
assessment of bioclimatic realities would indicate it should be the other way
round. Everybody knows the answer, Canada Africa as the cause of Africa ’s ills, if you witness the flow of Canada Canada Africa find
prosperity, we need to empower and envalue the people and circumvent inept and
corrupt governance. The assertion that it will take time for governance to
evolve in Africa is true, but having traveled that evolutions path, the west
can accelerate the process.
There are many people screaming for FUNDS
as though money poured into Africa is the
solution. The present mode of aiding with money has had as many ill effects as
it has had good. It is apparent that as more and more money flows through
corrupt channels, those channels gain strength with the perverse effect of
enriching the corrupt in a greater proportion than empowering the people
requiring a hand up; exacerbating the negative situation. Additionally, as
people in need are provided aid in the form of goods and services, often local
channels for goods and services are disrupted or made permanently unviable by
the requirement to compete with free goods and services; effecting dependence
on the population. What’s required is that the population is put in situation
where, by possessing resources, the African people attract goods and services
to them. We have Viagra because there is a population able to pay for it; we
are absent a drug for Malaria largely because the people who get Malaria have
no money. If every citizen of Africa was a
millionaire, we would be over there cutting their grass for $125 / hour.
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In business we refer to a business reaching
critical mass, the point at which a business has sufficient resources to fully
capitalise on the opportunities a given environment provides. Poverty is a
state of critical masslessness or depletion, where there are insufficient
resources to respond to the opportunities a given environment provides. Often a
company, when provided with a proportionally small amount of capital leavers that capital to
generate exceptional results. Capital and knowledge combine to generate
results, assuming there isn’t a corrupt official stealing the proceeds. As
western economies evolved, the populace has become envalued, they have garnered
the ability to accumulate sufficient wealth to attract goods and services. As
the populace has become increasingly more prosperous creating goods and services
they’ve attracted provide more goods and services; a virtuous cycle has emerged. There
is strong support, as one views the various information sources related to the Africa situation, for priming the pump of human
endeavour. For support to the population to be successful three things must be
satisfied, resources must be isolated from corruption, the funds must be
supported by information and funds must envalue people directly.
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As is often the case, one lives so close to
the solution it is difficult to see. Wireless technologies offer the
opportunity to direct information and resources directly to people and
circumvent government all together. Electronic currency is ubiquitous in our
world now, as are the electronic means of exchange. Cell-phones can purchase food
from a vending machine, and via the internet I can transfer funds from my to my
daughters account. We take these developments for granted, but these
developments dispersed to Africans, in a manner that tailors technology to the
Africa circumstance, gives us the means to prime the pump of human endeavour in
Africa by empowering the people’s action.
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Imagine and electronic device, provided to
people cast to the riggers of the environment, war and corruption, that would
provide a means to receive a daily stipend directly circumventing corrupt
officials, that would provide them with pertinent information on whereabouts of
food, that would provide them with a secure means of exchange, that would
provide them with means to safely accumulate money, that would provide them
with reputation systems that put societal bullies at the people’s whim as
opposed to the other way round, that would provide information peculiar to
their given endeavour. This device exists now in so many forms, is it only a
matter of consolidating technologies, developing a functional organizational
model to build and deliver them, and garnering the appropriate support for the
venture.
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To appreciate the value of a device of this
nature it is useful to imagine how it could be utilized by people in their
daily lives. Consider an African mother going to a market in which the devices
were utilized, she would interface with the various vendors by purchasing
goods and transferring funds to their “device” electronically; she has no worry
about her money being stolen as it is electronically “held”; her device is
biometrically protected so it is useless in the hands of another person; if a
corrupt office requests a bribe on her way home and compels her to transfer
funds to his device, she can anonymously activate a reputation system that
flags this transaction as a bribe, identifying the official and providing the
contributing organization the ability to track the number of bribes a given official
has taken and or reversing the transactions or engaging is some other
corrective action; given that she is geo located regionally sensitive
information can be directed to her perhaps on the best time and types of crop
to plant; now that she has been envalued by having a secure source of funds
services will travel to her, perhaps a vender with a $.99 aids test or some
other medical service; now with a secure means to accumulate money she can
accumulate the money her actions generate; now that she has a track record of
having funds flowing in she can request a loan. This device then facilitates
her life by; empowering and envaluing her; isolating her resources to her hence
protecting them from others; helping to secure her ongoing existence as the
only way others can access her daily resources is by her being there to
distribute them; gives her the means to police her government by providing the
means to record the actions of its officials. This is a device of empowerment,
as it puts the entire panoply of modern technologies in accessible form, right
in the hands of the world’s most vulnerable.
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Many people yearn to bring change to
populations of Africa who are disadvantaged by
circumstances largely created by dysfunctional institutions. Yet the solutions
they turn to involve either creating more institutions who are hampered by the
existing dysfunctional institutions or somehow trying to access the people
through dysfunctional institutions. Clearly, a better course of action is to
make institutions responsive to the people who need help. By creating a channel
for information and resources to flow to people, regardless of the condition of
the state, people become empowered. Rather than the government being given lump
sums of money from international institutions, moneys are disbursed to their
populations who can choose to support the government or not. Inherent in this
approach is the strengthening of democratising forces and the ability for
populations to pull services and governmental responsiveness to them.
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This proposal of creatively utilising new
technologies needs to be done on a massive enough scale to ensure that no
individual state can influence its function. I envisage these devices
functioning under a continent wide satellite umbrella. The devices themselves
being broadly distributed for free to the populations. Once designed the
manufacture of millions of them will drive their unit cost to very low levels.
The free provision of this devices and the information and resources they will
provide, will ensure immediate penetration of this technology. Now having
considered the benefit and opportunity to democratise that the broad
distribution of these devices would provide, one needs to consider an
organisational model to deliver both the device and the supporting services.
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Presently one of the challenges of the
African aid landscape is the fractured response to societal challenges.
Consider for a moment the millions of religious, NGO, corporate and government
organizations, in good spirit, working to help the impoverished inhabitants of Africa . They are doing some good but, the duplication of
service and effort costs valuable resources. The device based continent wide
system being proposed here would provide a single unifying platform on which
all organizations could facilitate their efforts on a common logistical
substrate.
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Jeffery Sacks suggests that the number for
bringing the African continent on toward the rich worlds living standards is
$125 Billion US annually. The challenge presently is there is an absence of an
effective channel for those funds to be distributed. The device system proposed
here provides such a channel. Given the proper development of the appropriate
organization, the rich world would gain confidence enough to provide its
support as the entire project has the focus of shifting all benefit away from
governments and directly to the people.
The ability to circumvent state barriers has
such great value, consider this proposal in the context of Zimbabwe
There is a broad requirement or aid in Africa , additionally this is thriving industry across the
continent. The device system itself and the supporting satellite network offers
opportunity for a revenue stream very likely sufficient is size to support the
charitable components of the system. Charitable components of the system being
the functional equipment and servicing of the that equipment. The description
of all the possibilities for revenue for a system such of this is outside the
scope to this letter, but when you consider a continent wide telecom linked to
the world, opportunities for revenue are endless. We know that this model is
viable as there are thousands of profitable services of this nature functioning
the world over.
Technology really does hold the answers for
liberating the impoverished of Africa, this simple service in collaboration
NGOs, corporations and governments gives a direct and unencumbered channel to
the people in need. In providing a direct flow of funds in conjunction with
information, corruption is largely circumvented and people of little worth now
will at least be valued at their stipend. Even the spending value of a modest
stipend will cause the emergence of services from local and regional sources by
inciting local entrepreneurs to respond to a new market, existing market
systems will be enhanced rather than diminished. Perhaps most importantly, this
system provides means (monetary, informational and communications) to people
who are in extremely exploitable circumstances, turning the tables on
oppressive or inept and corrupt governments, by truly making them accountable
to people. When you look at the African situation from thirty thousand feet the
present incoherence of the total aid effort is disheartening, as duplication
and uncoordinated action steal valuable resources; the provision of a
widespread device based distribution system provides a vital substrate for
collective action on the part of the aid providers.
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