Conditions in Developing Economies

Look at this week's photos

Announcements:
Please bring computers
Recording presentations? /audio/video?

1. Fact check and discussion
2. Attendance
3. Garrett's presentation and discussion
4. Discussion of potential project ideas
5. Discussion of future classes and guest lecturers
6. Readings: ICT4D

Map of Poverty (via numbers of malnourished children)

Second Class Notes


Second Development Class Meeting Notes
Seminar Leader – Garrett Smith

Class started by 15 minute discussion about articles read
Weekly articles need to be posted every week by each student and discussed each week

Definition of Developing Countries?
What are the qualities of developing economies?

-Subsistence hand-to-mouth existence
-Inefficient markets and governments
-Lack of resources (healthcare, individual rights)
-Defined by poverty
-Primarily agricultural (FYI only 2% of American economy is agricultural)
-Corruption endemic

Can we have a developing economy without poverty?

Shanghai corruption example by Albert Lin
-Greasing of the wheels through illegal money generates the economy
-Very poor people going into office can be more prone for taking bribes
Ex) Water truckers bring officials not to install water mains in homes

What is the baseline standard of living?
Is our standard of living what we want to bring others up to?

-Developing resources of nation to be sustainable within
-Use of developing technologies for own good of culture
-Proper scale-up of technology and manufacturing

If the economy drastically shifts from these things, how will it effect the people?
Ex) Robotic automakers laying off their workers

How can we all understand trends globally in development?

1. Environmental
2. Economic
3. Social / Political

What is the inherent value to cultural diversity?

Discussion of the balance of doing good between non-profits and for-profits
Since charity is not always best, micro-finance might be a good alternative

Micro-finance vs. Sub-prime loans

Micro-finance began from the Grammian bank in Bangladesh and has loaned billions (in USD) the poor. It is the only for-profit corporation to win a Nobel prize, and serves as a good model of development.

Sub-loans in many case entrap people in their debt, whereas, micro-finance focuses on giving small loans typically to small groups of women with a very high rate of pay-back.

Book recommendation: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid

We need to look to new alternatives for development because traditional aid is un-scalable and unsustainable.

Discussion of Nokia, a for-profit, fostering development through increase social connectivity. Derek shared the statistic that for every increase in the population of 10% of mobile phone users, GDP increases by .5%.

Development can allow countries to skip a generation (or more) of technology to leap-frog first world countries – an interesting caveat of development.

Derek showed a video of GAPMINDER which showed the breakdown of countries within continents and assessed the countries in terms of economic growth and healthcare (deaths from birth). GAPMINDER brought up important questions in development such as which aspects of development to focus on and how we should not generalize entire continent development even though it is easy to do.

Next week:
The weekly reading is looking at how to use mobile phones for development. Again we should spend time looking into other articles (Android project, etc) relating to development to share during the first fifteen minutes of next week class.

Next week discussion leaders will be: Sheila Doshi and Bryant Chou