World poverty: Is technology the great leveller?

Since 1990, the global rates of extreme poverty have gone from around 40% to around 10%. However, progress is slowing, and 710 million people around the world still live in extreme poverty - currently earning below $1.90 per day. So how can technology help? In this episode, we’ll be meeting some of the people and organisations aiming to eradicate poverty through the use of technology.

Show Notes

Since 1990, the global rates of extreme poverty have gone from around 40% to around 10%, and ending World Poverty entirely by 2030 is one of the UN’s Key Sustainable Development Goals, announced in 2015. However, progress is slowing, and 710 million people around the world still live in extreme poverty - currently earning below $1.90 per day. So how can technology help? In this episode, we’ll be meeting some of the people and organisations aiming to eradicate poverty through the use of technology. 

The long show notes for this episode can be found here: https://community.hpe.com/t5/HPE-Blog-UK-Ireland/World-poverty-Is-technology-the-great-leveller/ba-p/7169364#.Ys7vh3bMKUk

Creators & Guests

Host

Michael Bird

What is Technology Untangled?

Why isn't talking tech as simple, quick, and agile as its innovations promise to be?

Technology Untangled is just that - a show that deciphers tech's rapid evolutions with one simple question in mind: what's really going to shape our future (and what's going to end up in the bargain bin with the floppy disc)?

Join your host Michael Bird as he untangles innovation through a series of interviews, stories, and analyses with some of the industry's brightest brains. No marketing speak, no unnecessary jargon. This is real tech talk from the people who know it inside and out.

Discover which tools and systems are revolutionising the way we do business, what's up next on the endless innovation agenda, and, most importantly, how you can future-proof and get ahead of the curve.

Isabelle Mauro:
Simply in terms of figures, a 10% increase in mobile broadband in a given country increases the GDP by 1.5%, so that's huge. So the power of technology, the power of communications, of digital services is really a huge potential.

Michael Bird:
Ending world poverty, it's a monumental challenge. Over the decades, it's been a slow and steady growing to bring the standard of living up to bearable levels for hundreds of millions of people around the world. We've made huge progress. Since 1990, the global rates of extreme poverty have gone from around 40% to around 10%. Fantastic. The rapid economic development of countries like India, China, Brazil, Nigeria, and many others is playing a big part in bringing that number down, as is a concerted effort by the international community to invest in the developing world and economically isolated communities.

Michael Bird:
However, 710 million people around the world are still in extreme poverty, currently earning below $1.90 per day. And that is pretty appalling. One of the UN's sustainable development goals is to end world poverty by 2030. But many estimates put us way off track for achieving that. Not ideal. You don't need me to tell you that in the last few years the world has changed markedly, technologies to connect us all have become not only more affordable, but more commonplace, even in formally remote communities.

Michael Bird:
Telecoms and IT infrastructure are reaching out to previously untouched parts of the world. So how can we leverage that? What can technology do to help end world poverty? That's what we are going to be looking at in this episode, following on from our previous look at how technology can help end world hunger. You're listening to Technology Untangled, a show which looks at the rapid evolution of technology and unravels the way it's changing our world. I'm your host, Michael Bird.

Michael Bird:
First we need to set out our store here because solving poverty isn't as simple as just getting money into people's pockets. Clearly that's an important part of it, but on a wider scale, it's about allowing people to connect to the wider world and having the tools to be able to participate in it. Tools like internet access, access to banking or academic and skills based education, all of which will eventually lead more people getting more economically active and building a better future for themselves. Where do you start?

Michael Bird:
Well, the World Economic Forum seems like a pretty good place. They are the world body for public and private cooperation and Isabelle Mauro heads up their ICT and communications body. She champions improving the economic prospects of people around the world through digital inclusion and democratization of technology. Essentially getting it into the hands of as many people as possible. Why? Well, because the results, they speak for themselves.

Isabelle Mauro:
Simply in terms of figures, a 10% increase in mobile broadband in a given country increases the GDP by 1.5%. So that's huge. So the power of technology, the power of communications, of digital services is really a huge potential. I'm going to give you an example, which it's a personal example of early 2000. I went to Bangladesh and one of the mobile operator that was leading operator there took us in a village. And at the time they used to call this the village ladies project or initiative.

Isabelle Mauro:
We met this woman who was probably in her forties, mid forties. She had a phone in her hand and that phone, a mobile phone, think 2000, it was still the little flip phone that was black and white. There was no apps, there was nothing. It was purely just to make calls and use SMS. And so that was a business, that became her business. She was allowing all the villagers to make calls, to send SMSs. And then this became 3G use where there was applications, where there was internet access. That woman, and to me, it's still probably one of the moment in my life, in my professional career that really made me want to stay in what I thought up to there was quite grim ICT tech sector.

Isabelle Mauro:
This woman was crying. And she was saying that basically that phone enabled her to not only connect the whole village and therefore contribute to the welfare and welfare village because every villager could effectively make more business, could check crops on the mobile phones, could do so much more business. It also enabled her personally as a business to send her three daughters to university. And that was just the power of one phone in one village.

Isabelle Mauro:
So multiply that by everything that now a mobile phone has effectively become, because these days you can do everything, even if you're in a remote village. So absolutely, does it change people's lives? Does it empower people? Absolutely. And I think we realized during COVID how the countries that did have digital services and access really did much better than those who didn't because their economies could continue to function.

Michael Bird:
Yeah. That is absolutely astonishing figure, a 1.5% growth in GDP just from moderate improvements to mobile data connectivity. For a country like the Democratic Republic of Congo with a GDP of around 50 billion and where the average per capita income is just $500 per year, that equates to a 750 million dollar boost. It might seem like an obvious question, but why? What economic potential does mobile data connectivity actually unlock? And how do we open up to underserved communities?

Isabelle Mauro:
For us living in the Western world, it seems obvious that everybody has a mobile phone. It is not if you come from underserved or unserved regions maybe in Africa, in Southeast Asia. But communities as well in Europe and the US, as we saw with COVID, that was really I think a turning point moment where we realized that talking about the digital gap was no longer just an issue that was about least developed economies, but we also encountered that problem in the US and in Europe.

Isabelle Mauro:
I live in the heart of Manhattan and there were communities that didn't have access to services or had access, but could not afford them. When we talk about inclusivity, I think one of the big elements, we often think about access, providing access to communications, to people, but it's not just about that. I think 90% of the world potentially has access to a network. The coverage is there, the infrastructure is there. So that is not the issue. The issue is to address the affordability of services and the usability. So making sure that it's affordable, making sure that people know how to use these services.

Isabelle Mauro:
That's why it becomes really important for our industry, the ICT industry, to work with the healthcare industry and develop digital application, digital services that are really going to make people able to access services that they otherwise wouldn't be able to access, simply because maybe they live in remote areas or because they have not the right setting in terms of insurance, et cetera. Same thing for education, we need to ensure that a digital connectivity is going to arrive in every school, but also how do you provide access remotely for those who cannot go to school? So that's another area.

Isabelle Mauro:
Financial services is huge, banking the unbanked. The way you are going to bank the unbanked, if you speak to MasterCard, Visa and the big banks, it's happening via digital services, that's how we can access. That's how we can make payments. That's how there is a big remittance traffic that is going on, where it can fuel the economies.

Isabelle Mauro:
Now we need to look at measures that are going to be a bit longer term. And we came up with a playbook that was looking a little bit more as how you were going to ensure growth, looking at financing mechanisms, trying to pioneer new financing mechanisms for infrastructure and digital services. Because the reason, if there are still nearly three billion people that are not connected, it's because from a business perspective, in some areas, there is no return on investment for the investors who are the telco operators, who are the industry. We need to come up with business models, mechanisms that are really going to make sense, and they're going to be sustainable and are going to leave the time if you want to create this resiliency that we need to create.

Michael Bird:
So building partnerships to get communications technology to those who need it benefits the economy, that's all well and good, but what are organizations actually doing to help? Well, quite a lot it turns out. Using their expertise to help alleviate poverty is a popular topic among more ethically minded tech companies, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, my employer. Okay. Just bear with us, right? We're investing a huge amount into connecting the world. Brian Tippens is HP's chief sustainability officer, and he says HP is contributing their expertise in data analytics and AI, as well as finance and staff expertise.

Brian Tippens:
I think our mission is kind of very broad and wide reaching, part of it's the partnerships that we do with organizations around leveraging our technology. And in most cases, we're making that technology available at no cost to those organizations, to do the investigations into artificial intelligence and big data and analytics around that.

Brian Tippens:
On the other side, we make available to our team members around the globe lots of opportunities for them to contribute and receive matching funds from the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Foundation around investments in organizations that are doing interesting, innovative research in these regards. And that doesn't have to be the big players. It could be some small players as well. We have a signature initiative we call Accelerating Impact where we have campaigns throughout the year to allow our team members to focus on a certain number of what we call tech non-profits.

Brian Tippens:
They're sort of almost like your startups, but in the non-profit world, they've got some innovative technology around some social cause, including poverty eradication and solving hunger issues. And team members can make a contribution to these organizations and receive back some matching funds. And so just an example of sort of this holistic approach that we take it's on some level about donations, financial support, it's around leveraging our technology. In some cases it's leveraging the volunteer resources of our team members. So very much a holistic approach to bring the bear, the whole weight of Hewlett Packard Enterprise across the globe.

Michael Bird:
Why do you think it's important for large organizations to help developing communities?

Brian Tippens:
One it's about being tied to our purpose as an organization, advancing the way people live and work. And that's core to our values as a company and many large organizations across the globe have similar initiatives, very selfishly for corporations. It's on some level around making sure that there's a continuing need for the products and services that they offer, right? It's about elevating communities around the world. I think most important it's around collaboration and cooperation. There's this old African proverb, I remember being at the headquarters of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, Washington, years ago and seeing this proverb on a big banner in their lobby around, if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.

Brian Tippens:
It's around the fact that we can through collaboration achieve things that we couldn't do independently. And there's a responsibility for all corporations, where it used to be sort of driven purely by maximizing shareholder value. I think we all now appreciate that we have to meet a number of stakeholder needs, including investing in communities around the world to uplift communities out of poverty.

Michael Bird:
Well, the finance aspect is quite a big one because if, as Isabelle says, 90% of the world could potentially already be connected somehow, then the blocker is paying for it, either simply via funding subscriptions or through loans and bonds, which provide resources to bodies dedicated to the democratization of technologies. We talked about these ESG bonds a little with Isabelle on the last week's episode on ending world hunger. Alternatively, some bodies are working to get infrastructure in place to help people connect. Or as HPE are doing, working to provide funding to people doing cool things.

Michael Bird:
Now, one company doing some pretty cool things is the Micro:bit Educational Foundation. The group was formed in a partnership between the BBC, Microsoft, the British Council, Arm, Lenovo, and more. Now they're tackling the democratization of technology at its very core by getting millions of tiny programmable computers into schools around the world. In order to get kids coding from an early age, the computer is so small, cheap, and compact that it can be sent out to any corner of the world. And the foundation has focused on making it easy to learn and use, kids can be up and coding in just a few minutes as can adults. I know, I've got one. The foundation CEO is Gareth Stockdale. What is the Micro:bit and how is getting them into schools going to help end world poverty?

Gareth Stockdale:
We're a not-for-profit. And our mission is to inspire every child to create their best digital future. And we do this through a small device called the Micro:bit where we try and get more children, especially those from underrepresented groups and more girls taking their first steps with technology. Micro:bit is a great tool because it gets their code off the screen and into the hands and allows them to really make a difference to problems that are important to them or follow their passions, whether that be sport or design or just messing around with their friends and they can use technology to do that.

Gareth Stockdale:
But that's basically our sort of philosophy is sort of a low floor. So you can get started within sort of 10 seconds with wide walls, so you can go and do lots of stuff and then a high seating. You can get started using scratch, or I think you probably use Microsoft MakeCode. You spend a lot of time speaking to teachers to try and remove any barriers because as a teacher in front of sort of 30 children, what you don't want to happen is you don't want to feel uncomfortable or unconfident in what you're doing.

Michael Bird:
The Micro:bit is an incredible piece of technology. It's simple, it's robust and it's a complete sandbox. So kids around the world can use it to design solutions for their own problems. They are cheap to make, easy to use. They've got USB, Bluetooth, a solar pad connection, so they're expandable. And more importantly, they're designed to be great fun straight out of the box. Over the last few years, the organization has been running programs around the world with more launching every year.

Gareth Stockdale:
So we've got a lot of programs that we're just really starting in Sub-Saharan Africa and other geographies. We are currently just starting working with the British Council, a pilot in South Africa. We did a pilot a couple of years ago, we've got another pilot that we're just starting, so that is in 200 schools, educating 400 teachers and aiming to reach 8,000 students working with the department for basic education in South Africa.

Gareth Stockdale:
So again, these pilots are really important to understand the context in which people are working, what are the barriers to using this technology so that we can really then build on that program and expand it. We've also got a program in Kenya, which again is a pilot working with 30 schools, aiming to hit 1600 students. And one in West Bengal, which starts at the end of this month, which is again, working with 50 private schools and 50 public schools in West Bengal. And that's based around our do your :bit program, which is our global challenge, which is based around the sustainable development goals. So that's around creating technology and solutions using the Micro:bit to address the SDGs, which you feel are important to you in your local setting. We'll be doing teacher training, creating some math teachers that can then go out to those hundred schools, educate more teachers, more children, and get them to then enter their solutions into the do your :bit challenge, which is our global challenge.

Michael Bird:
Getting communities to start building their own solutions is a key part of solving world poverty. It's something that HPE are keen to focus on in their own work on eradicating poverty, as Brian Tippens explains.

Brian Tippens:
There has to be a lot of emphasis on working with those local communities to how we make technology accessible, to understandable to those local communities, whether it's changing the technology of their interface in these underrepresented regions, it's women who are doing the majority of the farming in many cases with lower levels of literacy and access to education.

Brian Tippens:
And so it's something that we think about under this concept of digital inclusion, not just technology for technology's sake, but being able to understand we don't leave communities behind when we think about how to best apply that technology on the ground in communities. And so we think a lot about the interfaces, but also the education behind being able to leverage this technology in a really responsible way.

Michael Bird:
Yeah. Because I guess in some way there's creating these technologies to be able to solve these problems and that's maybe a relatively easy thing to do, but actually when it trickles down to the individuals, that's probably when it gets quite tricky.

Brian Tippens:
Yeah. Completely because there's historical fear of companies coming in and flying in, dropping in solutions and then leaving, what happens when those corporations leave. So on one hand we don't want to leave, we've got these bold aspirations of collaborating for the long term to drive change and making a lasting contribution to those communities, but also equipping those communities through local partnerships, through education, through leaving technology behind so that it's not just us doing the work as these multinational corporations were partnering with local communities to drive real lasting change.

Michael Bird:
Education is something that's at the core of efforts to use tech to lift people out of poverty, not just to help people get the best use out of it, but because education helps to democratize technology. Quite simply, if you know how to use something that's empowering and it's something that Gareth Stockdale and the Micro:bit foundation feature at the core of their being.

Gareth Stockdale:
There's too many people that think that technology isn't for them or they haven't got access to take those first steps with technology. We don't necessarily want everybody to become a professional coder. Not everybody wants to, not everybody's cut out to do that. But we think that allowing everybody to understand the concepts of computational thinking to have those digital skills is really important, not only because technology which has been accelerated due to the recent pandemic is impacting on every aspect of our working life, no matter generally what you do. But it also has such an effect on the way that we act as a society and the things that we're doing.

Gareth Stockdale:
So if you haven't got the skills or the understanding of those concepts, then you cannot take a full or the fullest part in the debate around what technology should be doing for us in the future. And that's really what we mean sort of by democratizing. It's allowing people the access and the opportunity to further their careers and their life chances by having access to technology and also allowing them to have the knowledge to be able to debate and to get involved in solutions and debates that are shaping our whole society.

Michael Bird:
I'd love to just get your opinion on that. How do you think education can help eradicate poverty?

Gareth Stockdale:
That's a really big question. So thanks for that on a Monday morning. How can technology eradicate poverty? I think from our perspective, there's a huge digital skills gap around the world. The figures from Accenture they published last year said that there's 11.5 trillion of cumulative GDP growth that will be lost if the digital skills gap is not addressed.

Gareth Stockdale:
I think technology has a huge role to play in terms of allowing people to fill those jobs and to give ... especially if we as an organization, we're trying to broaden participation and get more girls, more underrepresented groups. There's a huge amount of jobs out there. We think that by broadening participation and by getting more girls, more underrepresented groups, you will create better technology, which is more representative of wider society and therefore work better for society.

Gareth Stockdale:
And in that way will help to improve things for everybody. For us as an organization, we think there's sort of stepping stones, that by getting more children involved in technology, we create better and more equitable solutions for everybody. We give them the chance to follow careers where there's huge digital skills gaps and huge opportunities. And by concentrating on underrepresented groups and girls, we can play our part in trying to help end extreme poverty.

Michael Bird:
Education is also something the World Economic Forum is keen to tackle when it comes to alleviating world poverty. And it's not just about education and connectivity in schools, giving adults the digital literacy skills to make use of their technology and maximize their own opportunities is vitally important to helping them escape poverty as Isabelle Mauro explains.

Isabelle Mauro:
What we've seen in particular through EDISON Alliance that so many companies, most of our partners this day really provide strong training, skilling, risk skilling programs to really try and help over industries and the education sector, really skill students and beyond students, the sort of the adult workforce. Their goal here is to find partners from the private sector that really helps them, A, connect every school in the world.

Isabelle Mauro:
For instance, a partner like Ericsson are working hand in hand with them to really develop the software and what is needed in terms of mapping this course. There is now a sort of a big map on which schools are now connected to the internet and what is the ambition, so you see all the green dot, the orange dot and the red dots. So there are many ways in which they can contribute some more from a philanthropical way where they give laptops. So everybody's contributing in a different way, but in a very substantial way, in particular I would say since COVID definitely.

Michael Bird:
So from that perspective of every school being connected, clearly there are some communities where they are nowhere near a telephone mask, nowhere near any sort of fiber connectivity, copper connectivity. Are there any upcoming technologies that will be making a significant difference? There's like styling [inaudible 00:24:03] web, is that sort of stuff actually having quite a big impact?

Isabelle Mauro:
I think the impact is not going to come for satellite alone, just because it's simply, it's still a very expensive way of connecting. But what we are seeing more and more is really the satellite players pairing with the mobile operator, the traditional mobile operators, and trying to use the infrastructure, the backbone, what is in place there.

Isabelle Mauro:
I think what we are going to see is more and more of this type of corporation, and that's really to be welcomed and uploaded because it really goes beyond everybody's personal commercial interest, but really trying to look at opportunities there. And so I think the goal here is really to connect as many school as we can and balance that with, of course, children that cannot go to school, having access to education for remote access.

Isabelle Mauro:
But the preferred solution, I think, is you don't want to develop a world that is just about remote access, because that is not the goal. The end goal is really for children to be in school and be educated and have access to these digital services. But we know that not 100% of the children are in school and it will take a very long time before we get to that. So in the meantime, it's also important that we can provide for these children that currently don't have access to a school, making sure that they don't lose on those years of education.

Michael Bird:
Digital literacy is also something HP's Brian Tippens is keen to tackle. After all, HP make very complicated technology. There's not a huge demand for raw AI in most rural communities, so user interfaces need to be developed to offer the most valuable insights and outputs to the end user, rather than just the raw data. That could be as simple as a text message alert service, or SMS based online banking. But to work out the best solution, you need to be able to collaborate with the community and talk to them about their needs.

Michael Bird:
And for that process to work, well, the end users need to have the digital literacy to understand what the technology can offer and to be able to work the best uses for it. So it becomes a bit of a chicken and egg problem, and it's exactly the kind of one that kids are now being trained on with the Micro:bit. And given access to communication tools in schools, we'll be able to solve in a few years, but it's also a challenge that needs to be overcome through working closely with local communities right now, as Brian explains.

Brian Tippens:
Yeah, I'd say that's a great problem that you call out and I'd say this kind of age of insights and the proliferation of these new technologies around artificial intelligence and the internet of things and blockchain and digital transformation. I think they've been a rapid accelerator across industry, but I think they've also kind of heightened that divide that you're talking about, the divide between those who understand how to use that data that's growing at the edge, but also those who don't have access to that technology, don't have kind of the knowledge and understanding to be able to use that, which also raises the issue of these inherent potential biases in the technology itself that can kind of lend to that divide.

Brian Tippens:
And so we think a lot about not just the generation of that data, but how to make it equitable for communities around the world. And I think a lot of that goes back to the Western companies having this foregone conclusion or technology they bring in versus working with those local communities.

Michael Bird:
One of the big criticisms that get put on large organizations, large Western global organizations, is stepping to help takes away the power of communities to come up with their own solutions.

Brian Tippens:
Yeah. I'd say that there's always sensitivities for these Western based kind of, particularly US based multinationals or Western companies kind of diving in with the savior complex we frequently say in philanthropic circles where we've got this foregone conclusion around what's going to work best. And we sort of fly in with our solutions and those aren't always the best solutions. I think that there has to be sort of these global local partnerships where you take into consideration the needs and the nuances of the local communities. It's a balance, it's bringing in the resources that we have to offer, but understanding the local experience, being driven by collaboration, being driven by partnerships.

Michael Bird:
Democratization of technology is a hugely important part of the UN's sustainable development goals, that is getting technology into everyone's hands equally. What can and should major organizations do to help? Well, as Isabelle alluded to earlier, they can put their heads together and collaborate. And the World Economic Forum is currently hosting what is likely the most ambitious global public private collaborations in history. As well as leading the ICT and telco body within the World Economic Forum, Isabelle is closely involved in the organization's Edison Group, which exists to bring together tech companies to help the democratization of technology around the world.

Isabelle Mauro:
Edison was born during COVID really, we started with this action plan, and then we had interest from a number of COs to really step up. They really service as a critical moment where governments realized of the importance of connectivity and they thought, okay, this is now the moment where we all need to come together. This is something that the telecom industry cannot solve on its own. We need to really partner with the healthcare industry, with fintechs, with banks, with investors, with education at tech partners, food agriculture.

Isabelle Mauro:
We really need to find these partners to ensure that we are going to roll out the services that are needed, that everybody steps in together in terms of investments and resources, what we need to put together. And so for us, what becomes really important here is to work hand in hand with governments to work and cooperate, collaborate with the industry, to understand each of its needs in a way, making sure that the goals that we set as a government or as private sector are aligned.

Isabelle Mauro:
This is led an initiative that was born in 2020. It is led by Hans Vestberg who's the CEO of Verizon. So it's really the one who really came to us and said, "Look, I think the forum can be the fora where you can bring together the UN, the World Bank, all the organizations, all these organizations that are looking into digital inclusion. The firm has the capacity because we have all the industries behind us to really catapult that to a very different level. And so that's what we did. We started and we have now 46 champions that are all CEOs, ministers from different countries. We have four heads of agencies of UN agencies, UNDP, UNICEF, ITU and UNECA, which is the African commission of the UN.

Isabelle Mauro:
And really the role here is, one it's to really step up partnerships. So to help all these partners who already have initiatives come together and leverage each of those capabilities resources in order to scale up what they're already doing. The second thing is to really empower governments. And for that, we are working, we have a tool online which is called the Edison navigator, where you can find all the best practices, leading practices, use cases so that governments can exchange these practices, but also businesses to see, what do you need to take your country to the next step of digital inclusion and digital transformation in an inclusive and sustainable way.

Michael Bird:
Bringing the world out of poverty could be an entire podcast series in itself, is such a huge, complicated topic. And we can really only pick out a few areas to talk about in a single episode. There's so much more detail to be gone into on loan schemes, logistics, infrastructure, power grids, the list is endless. But connecting poor communities to the outside world and giving them the skills and training to reach out to the world and grab the opportunities has to be one of the greatest enablers of economic mobility available today.

Michael Bird:
The advent of super cheap handheld computing power and reliable, secure mobile internet access has the capacity to empower tens of millions of people. And even if it's not enough to end world poverty by 2030, it's certainly going to put us on the right track.

Michael Bird:
You've been listening to Technology Untangled, I'm your host, Michael Bird, and a huge thanks to our guests, Brian Tippens, Isabelle Mauro and Gareth Stockdale. You can find more information on today's episode in the show notes. And this is the fifth in the third series of Technology Untangled.

Michael Bird:
And in the next episode, we are going to be looking at when we'll finally be able to trust autonomous vehicles. So be sure to hit subscribe in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss out and you can also catch up on the last two series. Today's episode was written and produced by Sam Datta and me, Michael Bird, sound design and editing was by Alex Bennett with production support from Harry Morton and Sophie Cutler. Technology Untangled is a Lower Street production for Hewlett Packard Enterprise.