Defeating Global Poverty

Sevak Solutions is a non-profit which is researching practical means of using the latest technologies to improve the feasibility of delivering sustainable financial services to the rural poor ... especially needed in places with lower population densities.

Microfinance has mostly flourished in higher-density rural and urban environments and has struggled to develop in lower population density locations. This is due to the critical need to keep the operational transaction costs low in order to keep the microloan interest rates low. Operational cost management is a critical issue when you are dealing with small loan transaction amounts on a high volume. Think how much more work would be involved in servicing a single $100,000 loan to one business (with monthly payments) vs. 1,000 loans of $100 each (with weekly payments.) Over a period of 90 days, the single larger business loan requires 4 customer interactions (1 loan disbursal and 3 loan payments.) Over 90 days, the microloans require 14,000 customer transactions (1,000 loan disbursals & 13 loan repayments for each of the outstanding loans.) So, you can imagine the need to keep the cost of each customer interaction/transaction as low as possible for microloans!

Sevak Solutions has been building what they call a Remote Transaction System which uses wireless technology (think: cell/mobile phones) to turn individuals into mobile ATMs and bank branches. This would allow a bank employee (or an agent) to interact/transact with customers in remote locations in a seamless manner. I understand that Omidyar Network has funded a trial of this technology in Africa to prove its viability.

I think that mobile technology, while initially gaining interest for low population density scenarios will also be invaluable as it is applied to other higher density market segments.

Labels: mobile banking, poverty, technology

A recent article in Business 2.0 revealed what Dean Keman, inventor of the Segway, has been working on ... a solution for not one, but two of the world's biggest issues -- clean water and electricity. An estimated more than 1 billion people don't have access to clean water and more then 1.5 billion have no electricity.

His prototypes (they are not yet being manufactured in volume) are each the size of a washing machine. The water purifier uses small amounts of electricity to produce 1,000 liters of pure drinking water each day. You can input any kind of water including raw sewage. The electricity generator will burn anything (including cow dung) to generate 1 kilowatt ... enough to power 70 efficient light bulbs. The target end-user cost is $1,000-2,000 per machine.

While the benefits of clean water are obvious, the core benefit of electricity is increased productivity in being able to do activities when it's dark outside. This includes reading, doing homework and working. One of the biggest challenges for the poorest children is that they don't have electricity in order to study at nighttime.

Keep the innovations flowing!

Read full article

Labels: poverty, social enterprise, technology

Very interesting idea for a $100 laptop which could be distributed widely to school children in developing countries is being championed by MIT Media Lab's Nicholas Negroponte.

"Power for the new systems will be provided through either conventional electric current, batteries or by a windup crank attached to the side of the notebooks, since many countries targeted by the plan do not have power in remote areas" said Negroponte.

There is also the possibility of selling to consumers at say $200 of which $30 would be contributed towards distributing more the $100 laptops to poor school children.

Very interesting initiative which could help accelerate education.

Update: New non-profit organization setup to carry forward this mission.

Labels: computers, laptop, OLPC, poverty, technology