Sam Lanfranco makes some nice points about profitability as an indicator
and driving force, even for "non-profit" or socially-motivated projects.
I'd like to turn the point around and argue that being profitable, or
the profit motive, is not a good basis for judging the social motivation
or social
Dear GKD List Members,
If someone is still skeptical about the potential impact of ICT in
productivity, knowledge opportunities, finding resources and expertise
and social capital, just take a look at this very discussion forum that
without the Internet would take hundreds of people having to pay
My comments:
How about an NGO running a franchise where they license those
cyber-cafes to small entrepreneurs.
1) The NGO provides the training and investment seed to individuals who
want to start their cyber-cafe.
2) The individuals purchase a franchise license to run the cyber-cafe.
3) The in
Further to Al's message below: whereas business models of Datamation or
Drishtee or N-Logue can at best enjoy limited success in employment
generation due to obvious limitations of resources and marketability, I
endorse Al's point of view of big companies targeting poor communities
and would like t
Dear Colleagues,
I run a small (15 employee) IT company in South Africa that provides
electronic payment solutions to African banks and payment processors.
Over many years now we have developed products that are "scaled" to meet
the requirements of the market. This has allowed us to survive despit
