Let's work with our imagination for a second. Think that you are in a managing position and your task is to decide, where to host the web site of your international business, such as tourism. Would you go for an option A, where you would support fellow country men's business and the local development of expertise, but at the same time your website would be very slow to access for any customers outside your country and that your website would most probably be down occasionally due to lack of electricity, or badly maintained software/hardware? Additionally, you would pay for the server space at least ten times more than in option B. Your other option, option B, would be to use a company abroad, which is specialized in selling hosting of websites at their servers. They have policies that guarantee your website to be up at least 99.8% of the time. Furthermore, they have enough bandwidth to make your site to be as fast to browse as any other site accessible from web. The service is very cheap in comparison to option A and some times you can buy other services too, such as creation of simple web-shop in a price that still makes option B cheaper than option A. The problem with option B would be that the money transaction would be in some of the hard currencies, such as USD or EURO, that your country is badly lacking and accomplished by using a credit card that very few people or companies in your country has got.
This is one of the hard dilemmas that ICT has brought to developing countries. If thought in more abstract form, the similar kinds of decisions have to be made for example in software industry or any other industry demanding highly qualified work force and technology. Even though from business point of view it is obvious to go for an option A, from division of labor or development of nation point of view it is not at all as simple. Is it ok that developed nations in both east and west are specialized in high profit (ICT) service sector and knowledge work, whereas developing nations have no other options but to stay mainly in production of low profit agricultural products or unrefined raw materials?
There are no easy answers to this question, for example if we think that the education of the people is the answer, it will unfortunately take decades, costs are astronomical, and fast growing population in the poorest countries does not really allow us to use decades, when people are wanting to have better quality of life now. The change or gradual evolution of economies in western countries took its time, is it even possible to boost up the development of a nation? It has taken place in post-war countries such as Germany, Korea, and Japan, but I am not aware of similar example in African continent. There are countries that have been internally stabile and receiving foreign aid for decades in African continent, but the situation has not been developing as expected. Are we corrupting the governments and other aid receiving institutions with aid? I have noticed that when launching a new project, a lot of emphasis is put in securing the necessary funds, but the project itself and its proper actualization is not really in the locus of the activities. Is it an "easy-come, easy-go" situation?
Nevertheless, I am well aware of the complexity of issues related to developmental aid and that they are not be solved by any one man in his blog. :) Additionally, I strongly believe that it is a moral duty of those who do well to help those who are not doing so well in their lives. But I also believe that the help should be something that will help one to help oneself, not something that will doom the helped to be helped for the future come.
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1 comments:
Pasi,
Quite an real, full of truth and interesting article your wrote.
While reading it, the first idea that jumped to my mind is I recommend you this book: Todaro, Michael & Smith, Stephen (2005) Economic Development. Ed.Addison-Wesley it talks exactly of what you are mentioning on your blog. It will make wider and deeper your analysis and the huge challenges. And I agree with you 100% education, infrastructure, are some of the key elements for development of nations.
But in here I wonder, no necessary what we think is the best for “help” them or “correct” things for them is what they really want or believed is good for them. The challenge go much more deeper than the point of the ice-berg you had described. Are we doing some kind of ”new” colonialism with spreading ICT all over around?. Shouldn’t we really understand what they are, need and want before even suggest? I have no answers, but I wonder myself more in this kind of contexts is: what will motive them to work by themselves to get what for them is a better life? That will be my main question. And afterwards, might be that we can really work together joining efforts. And to get some “answers” or ideas for this type of questions, it should be necessary to merge yourself or any outsider into the new culture and understand them from bottom to top, no the other way around and then see their richness they have looking for the balance of exchange.
I would imagine, with my lack of knowledge on this context, that no necessarily the only best solutions are in the western approach. Some solutions should also come from their inside, from their knowledge and creativity, or maybe combine them. But what I wonder, is how to trigger those factors. I would imagine it is needed a real communication and understanding in all different factors, plus go in deeper levels. As Markus or Jury Kempainnen have been doing for years living in Africa.
Yeap, the challenges go beyond one person and one blog, but what I found more important and valuable in here is to fine who are these persons who have the individual reflection, because for each person that have this kind of analysis and acts to help others we are advancing. And as soon as you touch one life, and this one starts to change, for a “better” life by him/herself, we all start to win. Remember, the beach is made by little tiny grains of sand.
Carolina
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