First of all Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of our readers. We have been on a long vacation but are now back stronger than ever. As the title claim we have recovered our motivation and full of new hope for our project.
We have had 1½ week now for full speed and lots of good news. Even though the field trip for India was canceled we still have contacts for some NGO's there and we expect to interview them remotely by video conferences. Furthermore we are in contact with some NGO's, academics, public organisations etc. here in Denmark also for interviewing and possibly a work shop. In general we have been met with open arms and interest for our work which have help us back on track.
Right now we are finishing up on our methodology which of course has change quite a lot since we didn't end up with direct observation and interviews of our specific target group. Our data will now come from 2rd tier interviews with people involved in the areas of development, knowledge, literacy and ICT.
All the data will be collected during late January and early February so we are going into a busy period. We will of course try to keep you updated as we go along.
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
Friday, 5 December 2008
It's a No-Go...
This Friday will not be remembered as the best day of our master thesis. Today we had to bury the last hope of going to India or Bhutan next year to do our empirical data collection. Arrangement had been made to meet and cooperate with a NGO focusing on ICT4D in Delhi for at least two weeks and other things were planned but the nail in the coffin simply became lack of appropriate funding. We haven't been able to raise enough money to realise the trip in a acceptable manner where the output would become beneficial to our master thesis.
We are of course utterly disappointed but just have to accept that we couldn't fight a financial crisis amongst other things. Maybe our theoretical proposition were to abstract as well for benefactors to understand and we definitely were too naive to expect funding to come easy. It has proven very difficult to gain economic support from both governmental, non-governmental and private organisations. There are many reasons for this but I won't go into this. I will just end up saying a lot of angry things :-)
So what now? Well, besides disappointment and a bit of demotivation right now, that we need to overcome, it's actually good to finally be back on a single route. It's been very stressful and confusing not to know what would actually happen.
We are already in the process of figuring out a different angle to our data collection. We will now most likely try to collect data more indirectly and initiate contact with some Danish NGO's working with ICT4D and instead of talking to the indigenous ourselves, get their viewpoint. In the end the results of our research will be different of course but not necessarily worse. Our ambitions is just the same as five months ago. We won't be stopped that easily :-)
The good news are that we have parked our theory and framework and feel very confident about it. We have moved on to the methodology and since our data collection now will change we will work on this before Christmas and until mid-January. Hopefully data collection will be conducted, now in Denmark, during late January and early February and then analysis, synthesis and further reflection will come along.
Another good news is that we'll now be in Denmark in whole January enjoying the nice cold dark winter here. Yes, our sarcastic humor is still intact... :-)
We are of course utterly disappointed but just have to accept that we couldn't fight a financial crisis amongst other things. Maybe our theoretical proposition were to abstract as well for benefactors to understand and we definitely were too naive to expect funding to come easy. It has proven very difficult to gain economic support from both governmental, non-governmental and private organisations. There are many reasons for this but I won't go into this. I will just end up saying a lot of angry things :-)
So what now? Well, besides disappointment and a bit of demotivation right now, that we need to overcome, it's actually good to finally be back on a single route. It's been very stressful and confusing not to know what would actually happen.
We are already in the process of figuring out a different angle to our data collection. We will now most likely try to collect data more indirectly and initiate contact with some Danish NGO's working with ICT4D and instead of talking to the indigenous ourselves, get their viewpoint. In the end the results of our research will be different of course but not necessarily worse. Our ambitions is just the same as five months ago. We won't be stopped that easily :-)
The good news are that we have parked our theory and framework and feel very confident about it. We have moved on to the methodology and since our data collection now will change we will work on this before Christmas and until mid-January. Hopefully data collection will be conducted, now in Denmark, during late January and early February and then analysis, synthesis and further reflection will come along.
Another good news is that we'll now be in Denmark in whole January enjoying the nice cold dark winter here. Yes, our sarcastic humor is still intact... :-)
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Conference on microfinance
Last Wednesday we attended a conference hosted by the student organization Develop and the Centre for Business and Development Studies at CBS. The conference was called "Is microfinance a solution to end poverty?".
When Kenneth and I took the course ITI, the course where we met our supervisor, we actually wrote an assignment on microfinance. Therefore we actually felt that we had a good understanding on the subject, and would be able to engage in the discussion, with questions and comments.
We ended up not engaging in the discussion, not because we didn't think we had anything to offer, but because the discourse for the conference was narrowed to only the economic aspect. Because of our background we would have broadened the discourse and looked at other things such as a successful application of ICT to facilitate microfinance, but also on how the microcredit could or should be spend, e.g. the use of indigenous knowledge. Instead the conference took these things for granted or made a reduction and simply discussed the optimal company size that should be granted loans, in order to actually create new jobs and not only improving one persons life.
I guess this post can be seen as a reminder of how one’s own background encapsulates and determines the things you see and find interesting. At least the attendance made Kenneth and I discussed why we didn't use more economic theory in our own framework.
When Kenneth and I took the course ITI, the course where we met our supervisor, we actually wrote an assignment on microfinance. Therefore we actually felt that we had a good understanding on the subject, and would be able to engage in the discussion, with questions and comments.
We ended up not engaging in the discussion, not because we didn't think we had anything to offer, but because the discourse for the conference was narrowed to only the economic aspect. Because of our background we would have broadened the discourse and looked at other things such as a successful application of ICT to facilitate microfinance, but also on how the microcredit could or should be spend, e.g. the use of indigenous knowledge. Instead the conference took these things for granted or made a reduction and simply discussed the optimal company size that should be granted loans, in order to actually create new jobs and not only improving one persons life.
I guess this post can be seen as a reminder of how one’s own background encapsulates and determines the things you see and find interesting. At least the attendance made Kenneth and I discussed why we didn't use more economic theory in our own framework.
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
Finding the right path to illustrate our theory
Even though Kenneth has been the only author of our latest blogs I'm still part of the project. Or at least I still think so. I have just been to busy with other things to actually sit down and create a post on our progress. Well here goes the next one.
As Kenneth blogged about last week we attended a workshop at ITU yesterday on how to help people become functional literates through the use of mobile technology. I think that their framing of the problem through m-learning was interesting and also moved themselves away from simple looking at literacies, to actually looking at the posibilities with ICT. Whether or how much they could use our input to their project is difficult to say, I hope so.
We have been in a reading freeze on new literature for two weeks now. Our time is instead used to organize what we have read so far. Both of us really likes this process of finding the right path. The fun is always to actually agree on a common understanding of the projects and how the literature should be used to highlight our view. On earlier projects this process has taken hours after hours with no seaming progress for the overall project, which have often caused much frustration for other project members.
Our master thesis has been no exception to this pattern, except that this time we have no other frustrated teammates. Let me try to shortly highlight our current problem. We want to present a theory framework which will end in a position or discourse somewhere along this statement: "We conjecture that ICT has the potential to transfer knowledge to illiterates in effort of establishing sustainable development."
This statement sounds reasonable. The problem arises when trying to find the path and not the least the links between the individual literature throughout the chosen path, e.g. sometimes we simple do not have the link and finding the literature which can close the gap can be very time consuming. We have four main topics which we would like to cover and discuss. These are Development, Knowledge, Literacy and ICT. Our first try on a path sounded like this: Development -> Knowledge -> Literacy -> ICT. Where the links are D->K (Development driven by knowledge), K-L (Literacy is needed to get knowledge), a statement which would when be problemetised under literacy leading to L->I (Literacy is not a prerequisite to gain knowledge when using ICT). The only problem is that we do not have any literature taking about literature being a prerequisite for knowledge.
Some would say why bother the link between knowledge and literacy is self-evident. But just as with the chicken and the egg. What comes first? Is literacy itself knowledge? Perhaps they should both simply be treated under knowledge? And if so why not simple having just two main areas Development and ICT. Lots of ideas have been flouting between us on how to construct the correct path, including Literacy -> Development -> Knowledge -> ICT. This path would solve our link problem as we have literature taking about the link between Literacy and Development. Anyway this was dropped because taking about Literacy without the context or discourse of Development would be odd.
Taking about all of this with Sudhanshu last Friday his view was that what we wants do do is to create sustainable development through a continuous circle which problematise the established view of Literacy being a prerequisite for Knowledge which leads to Development (Literacy -> Knowledge -> Development). To create sustainable development we exchange Literacy with Resource encompassing both Literacy and ICT, leading to Development -> Resource -> Knowledge -> back to Development.
Yesterday and today Kenneth and I have pursued this framework to come up with a suitable solution. The problem which we have used quite a lot of time on is what Resource actually is. As we want to do sustainable development Resource must, beyond Literacy and ICT, also contain books. Hence this category encompasses both abilities (reading, using ICT) and things (books, radios, PCs). This way the link between Resource and Knowledge is actually Information. But is the word Resource the correct word to illustrate both abilities and things? Kenneth has instead proposed the word Infrastructure, which I am not entirely comfortable with as I see Infrastructure as entirely things and hence not encompassing the abilities. What we are seeking is a word which can encompass both abilities and things, but which are also more concrete than a word like Ensemble. Please comment or email us if you have a proposition.
I hope Kenneth thinks that this post is interesting and long enough. :) Let's see if I will be able to post more regularly in the coming months. When we go to India we will at least have lots of pictures to post.
As Kenneth blogged about last week we attended a workshop at ITU yesterday on how to help people become functional literates through the use of mobile technology. I think that their framing of the problem through m-learning was interesting and also moved themselves away from simple looking at literacies, to actually looking at the posibilities with ICT. Whether or how much they could use our input to their project is difficult to say, I hope so.
We have been in a reading freeze on new literature for two weeks now. Our time is instead used to organize what we have read so far. Both of us really likes this process of finding the right path. The fun is always to actually agree on a common understanding of the projects and how the literature should be used to highlight our view. On earlier projects this process has taken hours after hours with no seaming progress for the overall project, which have often caused much frustration for other project members.
Our master thesis has been no exception to this pattern, except that this time we have no other frustrated teammates. Let me try to shortly highlight our current problem. We want to present a theory framework which will end in a position or discourse somewhere along this statement: "We conjecture that ICT has the potential to transfer knowledge to illiterates in effort of establishing sustainable development."
This statement sounds reasonable. The problem arises when trying to find the path and not the least the links between the individual literature throughout the chosen path, e.g. sometimes we simple do not have the link and finding the literature which can close the gap can be very time consuming. We have four main topics which we would like to cover and discuss. These are Development, Knowledge, Literacy and ICT. Our first try on a path sounded like this: Development -> Knowledge -> Literacy -> ICT. Where the links are D->K (Development driven by knowledge), K-L (Literacy is needed to get knowledge), a statement which would when be problemetised under literacy leading to L->I (Literacy is not a prerequisite to gain knowledge when using ICT). The only problem is that we do not have any literature taking about literature being a prerequisite for knowledge.
Some would say why bother the link between knowledge and literacy is self-evident. But just as with the chicken and the egg. What comes first? Is literacy itself knowledge? Perhaps they should both simply be treated under knowledge? And if so why not simple having just two main areas Development and ICT. Lots of ideas have been flouting between us on how to construct the correct path, including Literacy -> Development -> Knowledge -> ICT. This path would solve our link problem as we have literature taking about the link between Literacy and Development. Anyway this was dropped because taking about Literacy without the context or discourse of Development would be odd.
Taking about all of this with Sudhanshu last Friday his view was that what we wants do do is to create sustainable development through a continuous circle which problematise the established view of Literacy being a prerequisite for Knowledge which leads to Development (Literacy -> Knowledge -> Development). To create sustainable development we exchange Literacy with Resource encompassing both Literacy and ICT, leading to Development -> Resource -> Knowledge -> back to Development.
Yesterday and today Kenneth and I have pursued this framework to come up with a suitable solution. The problem which we have used quite a lot of time on is what Resource actually is. As we want to do sustainable development Resource must, beyond Literacy and ICT, also contain books. Hence this category encompasses both abilities (reading, using ICT) and things (books, radios, PCs). This way the link between Resource and Knowledge is actually Information. But is the word Resource the correct word to illustrate both abilities and things? Kenneth has instead proposed the word Infrastructure, which I am not entirely comfortable with as I see Infrastructure as entirely things and hence not encompassing the abilities. What we are seeking is a word which can encompass both abilities and things, but which are also more concrete than a word like Ensemble. Please comment or email us if you have a proposition.
I hope Kenneth thinks that this post is interesting and long enough. :) Let's see if I will be able to post more regularly in the coming months. When we go to India we will at least have lots of pictures to post.
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
Workshop at ITU
Last Friday Thomas and I had a good intense meeting with Sudhanshu discussing the literature we will use to support our framework. We will meet with Sudhanshu again Thursday and Friday to finish up the sharp edges in sync with our framing, context and discourse of our research. More about that later on.
This Friday we will also join Sudhanshu in presenting his next course on cand. merc. dat. this spring, "IT Innovation in Emerging markets; Challenges for Development". The course has a lot of similarities to the course Thomas and I had with Sudhanshu last fall but it has been changed from a 7,5 to a 15 ETCS course and thereby obviously expanded. We will mostly elaborate on what we learned from the previous course and why we find the topics covered interesting. Our master thesis topic is of course a direct consequence of what we learned and experienced so we can only recommend this course in order to learn something completely different about ICT that most courses on cand. merc. dat. doesn't offer. It is ICT framed in a different context discussed through various discourses.
Furthermore we have been invited to participate in a workshop this Monday on ITU. Two graduate students from ITU are working on a project regarding porting and re-designing a Computer Based Functional Literacy (CBFL) program towards mobile technology. It is going to be very interesting since we frame our master thesis differently. We are trying to circumvent the necessity of becoming functional literate in order for ICT4D to succeed. This doesn't mean though that we think that initiatives such as (CBFL) programs are superfluous. Hopefully there is a potential for both concepts to coexist and thereby complement each other for development through ICT.
This Friday we will also join Sudhanshu in presenting his next course on cand. merc. dat. this spring, "IT Innovation in Emerging markets; Challenges for Development". The course has a lot of similarities to the course Thomas and I had with Sudhanshu last fall but it has been changed from a 7,5 to a 15 ETCS course and thereby obviously expanded. We will mostly elaborate on what we learned from the previous course and why we find the topics covered interesting. Our master thesis topic is of course a direct consequence of what we learned and experienced so we can only recommend this course in order to learn something completely different about ICT that most courses on cand. merc. dat. doesn't offer. It is ICT framed in a different context discussed through various discourses.
Furthermore we have been invited to participate in a workshop this Monday on ITU. Two graduate students from ITU are working on a project regarding porting and re-designing a Computer Based Functional Literacy (CBFL) program towards mobile technology. It is going to be very interesting since we frame our master thesis differently. We are trying to circumvent the necessity of becoming functional literate in order for ICT4D to succeed. This doesn't mean though that we think that initiatives such as (CBFL) programs are superfluous. Hopefully there is a potential for both concepts to coexist and thereby complement each other for development through ICT.
Thursday, 23 October 2008
Literacy or literacies?
Again we haven't had much to write about on the blog the last couple of weeks and both been busy with work, reading and some of the many administrative tasks which pops up when you are trying to go in India and Bhutan for 1½ month, especially on the financial aspects.
As the headline suggests we have moved on from the ICT4D literature and have focused on the aspects of literacy and illiteracy. As with ICT4D the literature is scattered if you are trying to pinpoint exact literature on literacy, development countries and potential benefits in combining these. Our hypotheses is that literacy is not required for development and that illiterates can develop without first acquiring competences in reading and writing. We don't object against schooling and literacy but just don't see a deterministic link between literacy and development. This is what we are trying to search for in the academic literature currently in order to shape our theory properly. The headline just suggests some of the main discussion in ethnographic and anthropological circles regarding literacy. It literacy a unique thing and/or ability or does it all depend on context/culture and so on?
Next to reading about literacy we are also in the process of shaping our theory for ICT4D and proposing a framework. With more than 60 articles and some books on the subject this is a rather time consuming task. From all of our summaries of articles and books we have now extracted and coded specific statements and will combine these to a framework. Tomorrow we will meet with Sudhanshu for a hopeful enriching discussion that properly will continue next week too.
Our field study to India and Bhutan is also getting more concrete. Right now it seems like we will leave for India right after new year and spent a couple of weeks there before moving on to Bhutan. The big question still is whether we can raise enough funds required but our first application for funds was sent this week to the Oticon Foundation so we hope for support from them. Hopefully others will continue in the next coming weeks.
I promise you that next time Thomas will write a very long and exiting post. He has been working on it for weeks now. I know that I'm looking forward to it :-)
As the headline suggests we have moved on from the ICT4D literature and have focused on the aspects of literacy and illiteracy. As with ICT4D the literature is scattered if you are trying to pinpoint exact literature on literacy, development countries and potential benefits in combining these. Our hypotheses is that literacy is not required for development and that illiterates can develop without first acquiring competences in reading and writing. We don't object against schooling and literacy but just don't see a deterministic link between literacy and development. This is what we are trying to search for in the academic literature currently in order to shape our theory properly. The headline just suggests some of the main discussion in ethnographic and anthropological circles regarding literacy. It literacy a unique thing and/or ability or does it all depend on context/culture and so on?
Next to reading about literacy we are also in the process of shaping our theory for ICT4D and proposing a framework. With more than 60 articles and some books on the subject this is a rather time consuming task. From all of our summaries of articles and books we have now extracted and coded specific statements and will combine these to a framework. Tomorrow we will meet with Sudhanshu for a hopeful enriching discussion that properly will continue next week too.
Our field study to India and Bhutan is also getting more concrete. Right now it seems like we will leave for India right after new year and spent a couple of weeks there before moving on to Bhutan. The big question still is whether we can raise enough funds required but our first application for funds was sent this week to the Oticon Foundation so we hope for support from them. Hopefully others will continue in the next coming weeks.
I promise you that next time Thomas will write a very long and exiting post. He has been working on it for weeks now. I know that I'm looking forward to it :-)
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
Experiences with MyC4
In Thomas' post regarding the international financial crisis and its impact on development he mentioned the micro finance initiative www.myc4.com. I agree with Thomas that the financial crisis will have impact on the development in developing countries. It is difficult to predict how much but nonetheless micro initiatives can be a way to help circumvent some of the problems that can arise.
MyC4 raises capital for African entrepreneurs, and in doing so strives to become a significant tool in the fight to end extreme poverty. The goal is to create sustainable prosperity in Africa via the Internet, and the mission is to remove barriers such as excessive interest rates that keep people in poverty.
MyC4 was inspired by the Nobel Prize winner, Professor Mohammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Grameen Bank provides credit to the poorest of the poor in rural Bangladesh without any collateral. Since 1983 the bank has provided micro credit to 7.45 million borrowers, 97% of whom are women, covering more than 97% of all villages in Bangladesh.
Jonas Toppenberg, Thomas and I worked with micro finance and used MyC4 as a case study during the "IT, Institutions and Development" course last fall. We analysed different aspects of it and what is important to remember is that their approach is business and not charity. But business for both parties in a reasonable fashion also referred to as social business. In my opinion this also makes the initiative sustainable. Too often you see of course well-meaning NGO's go in and do charity work but when they leave again everything falls apart, sometimes even for the worse. Sustainability is the keyword when you strive for development.
I've been actively investing on MyC4 since January 2008 and have gained a average interest at 12.4%. This is much more than you get on domestic inbound loans in Denmark. This means it is good business for me. For the African entrepreneur it is also good business. Local loaning in Africa sometimes reach an interest at 50 or 60%. This seem crazy for us Westerners but you have to consider the risk about loans. So giving the African entrepreneur a loan at the current average interest rate at 12.8& p.a. is good business for everybody (Please notice that some start up cost is not included here and the annual percentage rate becomes higher, but everything is very transparent if you look at the investment opportunities on their website).
As of today 8,025 investors from 74 countries have invested €4,750,061 in 2,859 businesses in 6 African countries. 90.2% of these businesses are successfully repaying their loans on time.
Personally I've gotten all repayments so far, not always in time, but eventually. I'm definitely not a large investor (I'm still a student you know) but even small amounts can do a difference.
Now some would say that saving up money like this will not help on the domestic situation at home in Denmark since we need to keep the wheels turning domestically first of all. Spend money here to keep employment up and so on. I agree on that but still you can do some reasonable business and help African entrepreneurs also. Everything is not black or white.
Others would say that people living in rural districts of Africa will not gain from this, only urban entrepreneurs that already have a business going. Rural poor people will be excluded and the divide will become larger. I don't pretend that MyC4 is the perfect and only solution to fight poverty and I think their mission of ending poverty with 2015 is a bit to optimistic. But we also have to remember that entrepreneurs needs employees and when they expand, they create more opportunities for others. Bangalore in India is a good example of this. The contrasts are tremendous but still they have somehow succeeded in integrating the global and the local networks and the international and national companies there knows they need the local population for all kinds of supporting jobs so they are heavily investing in improving the situation for the poorest locals. The same pattern can hopefully be seen in Africa and on a larger scale. We are all dependent on each other and we must create sustainable opportunities to fight poverty globally.
If you have any experiences yourself with MyC4 or other micro finance, please bring forward your comments. I know several of you readers are actively investors on MyC4 :-)
MyC4 raises capital for African entrepreneurs, and in doing so strives to become a significant tool in the fight to end extreme poverty. The goal is to create sustainable prosperity in Africa via the Internet, and the mission is to remove barriers such as excessive interest rates that keep people in poverty.
MyC4 was inspired by the Nobel Prize winner, Professor Mohammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Grameen Bank provides credit to the poorest of the poor in rural Bangladesh without any collateral. Since 1983 the bank has provided micro credit to 7.45 million borrowers, 97% of whom are women, covering more than 97% of all villages in Bangladesh.
Jonas Toppenberg, Thomas and I worked with micro finance and used MyC4 as a case study during the "IT, Institutions and Development" course last fall. We analysed different aspects of it and what is important to remember is that their approach is business and not charity. But business for both parties in a reasonable fashion also referred to as social business. In my opinion this also makes the initiative sustainable. Too often you see of course well-meaning NGO's go in and do charity work but when they leave again everything falls apart, sometimes even for the worse. Sustainability is the keyword when you strive for development.
I've been actively investing on MyC4 since January 2008 and have gained a average interest at 12.4%. This is much more than you get on domestic inbound loans in Denmark. This means it is good business for me. For the African entrepreneur it is also good business. Local loaning in Africa sometimes reach an interest at 50 or 60%. This seem crazy for us Westerners but you have to consider the risk about loans. So giving the African entrepreneur a loan at the current average interest rate at 12.8& p.a. is good business for everybody (Please notice that some start up cost is not included here and the annual percentage rate becomes higher, but everything is very transparent if you look at the investment opportunities on their website).
As of today 8,025 investors from 74 countries have invested €4,750,061 in 2,859 businesses in 6 African countries. 90.2% of these businesses are successfully repaying their loans on time.
Personally I've gotten all repayments so far, not always in time, but eventually. I'm definitely not a large investor (I'm still a student you know) but even small amounts can do a difference.
Now some would say that saving up money like this will not help on the domestic situation at home in Denmark since we need to keep the wheels turning domestically first of all. Spend money here to keep employment up and so on. I agree on that but still you can do some reasonable business and help African entrepreneurs also. Everything is not black or white.
Others would say that people living in rural districts of Africa will not gain from this, only urban entrepreneurs that already have a business going. Rural poor people will be excluded and the divide will become larger. I don't pretend that MyC4 is the perfect and only solution to fight poverty and I think their mission of ending poverty with 2015 is a bit to optimistic. But we also have to remember that entrepreneurs needs employees and when they expand, they create more opportunities for others. Bangalore in India is a good example of this. The contrasts are tremendous but still they have somehow succeeded in integrating the global and the local networks and the international and national companies there knows they need the local population for all kinds of supporting jobs so they are heavily investing in improving the situation for the poorest locals. The same pattern can hopefully be seen in Africa and on a larger scale. We are all dependent on each other and we must create sustainable opportunities to fight poverty globally.
If you have any experiences yourself with MyC4 or other micro finance, please bring forward your comments. I know several of you readers are actively investors on MyC4 :-)
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