World Leaders: IT Can Ease Globalization Woes

UN sends 23 volunteers into Third World

September 11, 2000 (Computerworld)

NEW YORK
At two forums here last week, world leaders said information technology could play a key role in ameliorating the most adverse effects of globalization and help emerging economies skip over some development stages.
"We do believe IT can make a difference," United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan told journalists at the United Nations Millennium Summit, attended by world leaders from some 150 countries. "It may help these Third World countries frogleap [sic] some of the painful processes and phases we have had to go through."
Annan said the UN has deployed the first group of high-tech volunteers to do just that. Those 23 volunteers, all IT professionals, were deployed by the United Nations Information Technology Service to Benin, Botswana, Burundi, Central African Republic, Ecuador, India, Jordan, Namibia, South Africa and Tanzania.
"We will send young people from the developing nations to the Third World to try to share their knowledge in IT," Annan said. "Over and above that, we are encouraging governments and the private sector and [nongovernmental organizations] to work with us."
These other groups were represented at the State of the World Forum, convened by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Although many of those present, including Gorbachev, said they were worried about the effects of globalization on the world's poorest people, children and the environment, others said recent developments in IT could help overcome some of those problems.
"New networks are linking grassroots organizations to the political process," said Queen Noor of Jordan, who co-chaired the forum. The text of her speech is available at www.worldforum.org.
One example of a successful IT project is the work done by Grameen Bank, a microlending pioneer in Bangladesh that has reached almost 40,000 villages.
In the past couple of years, Grameen has begun making no-collateral loans to illiterate women in Bangladesh villages so they can buy cell phones. The women, in turn, sell the use of the cell phones to their neighbors.
The result, according to Grameen founder Muhammad Yunus, is that 2,000 previously isolated villages are now connected to the outside world - and 2,000 women have learned to navigate the international telecommunications system and are bringing home twice the national average income.
Grameen has begun putting Internet-enabled health care centers into villages, with 15 centers already in place.
"Our focus was first to see how to address the issues of child mortality and maternal mortality, because both are among the highest in the world in Bangladesh," Yunus said.
He said Grameen is also working closely with the MIT Media Laboratory to develop speech-recognition technology for the local language.
"If we can bring the right kind of information technology, the right kind of devices - so that people can use them with touch screens, with voice commands - amazing kinds of things can happen," he said. "There's no possibility of any human being remaining illiterate, for example."