I have a confession to make.
I’m not a development worker.
I work with ICTs in the developing world, but I am driven by profit. This is both a luxury and a burden. It’s cool that people think I have something to say about ICT4D. I don’t. I have a lot to say about ICTs in the developing world, but much less to say about ICTs in a development context. Because I don’t know a bloody thing about development. My world view is skewed towards profits and markets.
In my line of work, ROI is very clear. Either the project makes (or saves!) my client a lot of money, or it doesn’t. Either it increases exposure by X number of readers a month or it doesn’t. Either it brings in advertising revenue, or it doesn’t. Either it brings in new clients, or it doesn’t. Either it fills a market need or it doesn’t.
Our clients are not poor. Broke, sure, that’s normal for small businesses everywhere in the world. But not poor. Their clients are rarely poor either. We don’t work with the BoP.
We don’t have to worry about quality of life. We don’t have to worry about development indicators. We don’t even have to worry about government buy-in. While we do worry about ethics, we don’t have to worry about negative externalities that will make life worse for a large number of people. Our projects just don’t work that way (and thank goodness for that).
On the other hand, because our clients are paying for the tools we build, I don’t have the luxury of choosing an expensive tool that may or may not work. I can only choose tools that work. Otherwise, I lose clients. Not taking end-users needs and wants into consideration results in failed projects lessoned learned. “Lessons learned” = “very expensive mistake” for clients with limited cash flow.
It’s a luxury to be able to work exclusively locally. Even when we deal with the government, there’s flexibility that doesn’t exist in development and aid sectors, because we’re a private sector firm being paid for our services. As a businesswoman, I cannot imagine designing a tool for local businesses without ever having set foot on the ground and spoken to the end users.
Technology is a tool that allows users to do many many things, including becoming more informed about the world around them, improve rural heath care, encourage citizen journalism, clean water, and a million other things. Tools have to be appropriate to their context.
In some ways, it’s limiting to only do work for money. There are a lot of cool projects that pass us by, including projects that could improve quality of life for a lot of people. Our work is almost exclusively small and local, which means that we rarely work on country-wide implementations. We don’t do large-scale public health projects, for example. Even when we work with development organizations, we’re very focused. We’re hired to accomplish very specific goals: build X tool that accomplishes Y within Z budget, or train X number of people to be able to accomplish Y.
On the other hand, it’s liberating. My job is to look at the market and find new ways to fill market gaps, and that’s easy to measure. Either we’re profitable or we’re not.
ICT4D fills the space between “market demand” and “making lives better.” There are a million ways to improve quality of life that don’t have obvious revenue models. I like to use crisis mapping as an example of this, but there are many others (public health, education, etc). Projects like this are what government and development do best. Entrepreneurs aren’t moving into this space because we can’t figure out ways to make them profitable (yet).
It’s appalling to me that there are people who design projects without accounting for local needs. It’s appalling to me that we even need to discuss why this is important. Those who took part in yesterday’s Twitter chat are aware of this. But for me, it’s like being aware that the sky is blue. Of course it’s blue. There’s a reason it’s blue. Everybody knows it’s blue. Why are we running around talking about how blue the sky is?
The answer is, of course, that there are a large number of people involved in ICT4D who are not aware that context-appropriate solutions are the only solutions that work. Which is crazy. I actually don’t know anyone in #ict4d who isn’t having intelligent conversations about appropriate technology. I do, however, have evidence that such people exist, because Beninese ministries keep paying me to clean up their messes. Someday, I would like to meet these folks.
It’s odd to participate in conversations about development where everyone’s like, “Yeah! Local! Small! Low-tech! Sustainable!” For a businessperson, these things are so painfully obvious, they even don’t need to be said.
On being broke, being poor, and being glad that I have the luxury of saving
I hate the end of the year in Benin. Everybody turns into a liar. “I’ll pay you tomorrow.” “I’ll call you this evening.” “Stop by at the end of the week.” “Let’s make an appointment for 4:00.” Nobody calls, and we constantly show up to empty offices. It’s more socially acceptable (and easier) to lie than it is to simply admit that they don’t have the money.
Manipulating and manging people you owe money to is an essential part of Beninese culture. You can’t cut someone off unless you have a face-to-face meeting, and if miraculously the face-to-face meeting never occurs, well, it’s your debtor’s lucky day. “Il nous gere.” we say to one another, and sigh.
The biggest spender in Benin is the government, who ran out of money in May. Since then, they’ve been begging, borrowing, and stealing (oh yes) just to pay salaries. Contracts finished in 2008 rest unpaid, and look to stay that way until at least April 2010. If the government can’t pay its large contractors, large contractors can’t pay medium sized contractors, who can’t pay the small businesses they work with, and at the end of the day, somebody’s salary’s not getting paid.
People Online works with small businesses. A lot of people owe us money. It’s easy to say, “Cut off their hosting! Stop doing work for them!” But if we do that, then we lose any change of recouping our losses when everyone finally does get paid in April 2010. And of course, you can’t squeeze water from a stone. We’re well aware that our clients are broke broke broke. It’s not like it’s their fault. Their clients aren’t honoring their contracts either.
Neighbors who can’t pay their rent. Friends who’ve had their electricity cut off. Colleagues who can no longer afford their Internet connection. Small businesses that can no longer pay salaries. This is the precarity of the middle class.
What do you do when a friend comes to borrow $20, and for the first time it’s a choice between helping your friend and paying your water bill? When your brother, who’s always been able to rely on you in a pinch, needs twice as much as usual, but you only have half as much as usual? When your niece’s family can’t afford her school fees, and you no longer have enough to make up the difference?
In normal times, you wouldn’t hesitate to put yourself in a position of slight difficulty to help out your family. You know that when you’re in trouble, your neighbors and family will be there for you too. Everybody’s always broke, and the the easy give-and-take of favors often means the difference between being broke and being poor. Today, the friendly process of social loans has stopped working, and it’s breaking apart the fabric of society.
Everyone knows the end of the year is difficult. Smart businesses (like People Online) prepare a cushion. Normally, this process starts right about now. Mid-November. The gov’t closes the its coffers, and everyone begins the waiting game until February, when some bills will start to get paid, or April, if you’re a small business owed by the government.
This year, the government stopped paying its bills in September, which means that funds were cut off before anyone finished establishing their cushion. Call it corruption, call it the financial crisis, call it utterly irresponsible government spending, call it what you will. The country’s run out of money, and for Benin’s middle class, the difference between being broke and being poor gets just a little bit more blurrier every day.