GSIF09 SUMMARIES

Social Innovation Lab 5: Poverty Alleviation: Technology as the Leveler?

Friday, 2 October  

• Calvin Chin • Stuart Dean • Suhas Gopinath

Facilitated by • Janice Hulse

  • Cisco stated that the challenge with using information and communication technology (ICT) to alleviate poverty was both in scaling up and sustainability. There is more at stake than helping the poor through technology as ICT can develop community-driven connectivity, which would then require a mindset shift to people collaboration and bottom-up grassroots involvement.

  • ICT in developing countries can increase employability. There can be online courses to provide skills for workers in a knowledge-based environment. University professors who are not willing to go to rural villages to teach can offer satellite sessions through ICT as well. Distance learning can bring classrooms to younger students. The question now is whether the industry is ready for people who are trained but don’t have a physical degree.

  • It is too simplistic to talk about poverty alleviation because there are different levels of poverty. So, different kinds of ICT can be used to reduce different kinds of poverty.

  • To enable ICT infrastructure, researchers are now looking into building products which use less bandwidth, but provide the same ICT experience. In addition, there can be possibilities of powering such technologies through solar energy, and thus it promotes sustainability technology to villages by using renewable energy source.

  • There is also a need to come up with a new education model with the introduction of ICT. Incentive-based learning can be in the form of giving food to children who do well in regular tests in school. There needs to be education role models in villages who lead, care and inspire people who believe in education.

  • Entrepreneurship through ICT can be promoted for poverty alleviation. For example, villagers who are proficient in handicrafts can sell their products online to the international market. 

  • There can be limitations of technology, however. Although it can bring a lot of convenience and ultimately alleviate poverty, we need to think of the person who bears the cost of implementing the required technology, and the person who is in charge of policies to deal with technological changes, so that people do not be slaves to technology. 

Download GSIF09 Social Innovation Lab 5 - Summary.