During the past two weeks, GKD members have discussed businesses that are engaging in "pro-poor" business strategies, and the challenges they face. Members also wrestled with the role profit can play in encouraging activity that provides real value to the poor. This week we would like to add a new topic to the discussion: The ways ICT can create new business partnerships that provide value to the poor.
Most corporations trying to enter markets in developing countries view the poor simply as consumers and consider NGOs as just an extension of welfare services. Yet international corporations often lack sufficient market data, an understanding of local needs and preferences, or distribution channels. ICT could help the poor and NGOs become business partners, suppliers, distributors and sources of market information to large companies. For example, using ICT, small local enterprises can network to produce for large-scale demand from corporations, while operating individually when demand is slow. Some corporations have gained success by using ICT to partner with micro-enterprises, local entrepreneurs, and NGOs. In India, for example, Hewlett Packard worked with a local women's self-help group to "product test" solar-powered digital cameras cum printers, and helped create business opportunities for hundreds of local women. Vodacom's community phone shops in South Africa and Uganda's Grameen Phone create jobs for local entrepreneurs as well as low-cost access to phone service. Yet some argue that powerful multinational corporations (MNCs) drive out small, local companies in poor communities, and local businesses should be protected. Brazil nurtured its computer industry that way. This view contends that the power balance between MNCs and local entrepreneurs or NGOs is so uneven that the latter can't possibly protect their interests. >From a different perspective, some warn ICT-based corporations to avoid partnerships in poor countries because intellectual property rights go un-enforced, and the companies will find themselves competing with cheap bootleg copies of their own products. Key Questions: 1) Do you know of examples where ICT helped create win-win partnerships between an international corporation and local entrepreneurs? What factors made it successful? 2) Are there examples of small companies using ICTs to thrive in local contexts, and to collaborate when international corporations demand large-scale production? Please give concrete examples. 3) How can ICTs be used to encourage corporate investment that creates productive partnerships with the poor in developing countries, and not just expanded consumerism? 4) What role can NGOs and universities play with regard to "ICT and pro-poor business approaches"? Should they partner with businesses to expand ICT-based products and services offered to poor communities? Should they take on a "watch-dog" role to monitor business practices? 5) What role should donor agencies play? Should they just focus on improving the ICT regulatory and enabling environment for business? Build more private sector roles into "ICT for development" projects? Create incubators or investment funds to stimulate local ICT entrepreneurship? 6) How serious is the threat of intellectual property violations for potential partnerships between international corporations and local companies? What are the best solutions for addressing this problem? 7) Are there times when developing countries should shut their borders to foreign imports in order to protect their nascent ICT industries? ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org provide more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html>
