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Can Technology be transformational? Opening up Development through Technology

Soren Gigler's picture

Twitter, Facebook, SMS, and Crowdsourcing—2011 has certainly been the year in which the use of social media and technology has captured the world’s attention.
From Tahrir Square in Egypt to the Anna Hazare movement in India, citizens have demonstrated that they want voice and accountability. Innovations in social media, mobile phones and inter-active mapping are powerful tools to mobilize citizens and to provide people with a voice—thus broadening the political debate.

However, key questions remain unanswered: What role can these innovative tools play to encourage governments, donors and foundations to become more transparent, open and accountable? Can the use of social media and cell phones empower people and marginalized communities, and close the feedback loop, allowing citizens to directly report back on project results and participate in decision-making processes about the use of public funds? These are a few issues that emerge when analyzing the potential transformative power of technology on development.

All the things we don’t know about development

Jordan Schwartz's picture

Luchar contra pobreza con tecnología

Confucius and JFK have one thing in common: They both produced pithy quotes about the importance of recognizing ignorance as the first step in gaining wisdom. Let’s trust their insight for a moment and presuppose that there are more things about economic development that we don’t know than we do know.

It seems that, after 50 years of the development business, economists are starting to realize the significance of this ignorance. We still build models that estimate the probability of particular outcomes and simulate entire economies to find out how a policy change or investment might wind its way through a complex market.

Can Africa become the next Brazil?

Susana Carrillo's picture

Brazil and Africa, new partners

Linked in the distant past through colonial-era trade enterprises, Brazil and Africa are becoming close partners again. More than two centuries after establishing a slave trade route across the Atlantic, both regions are again re-engaging, this time around to exchange knowledge and potentiate economic and social development.

Sub-Saharan African countries are looking to replicate Brazil’s successes in boosting agriculture production and exports, and private investments, which have made Brazil a key economic player in the international arena.

From open data to public data

Prasanna Lal Das's picture

Is open data just a glorified form of publishing or can its benefits go beyond transparency and reusability? How do you take open data beyond the realms of traditional publishers and data sources and spur people affected by the data to participate and contribute new ideas/data about development (and in effect become open data/development partners)?

The question has been central to World Bank Finances where we recognize the power of transparency but also believe that open data products must reach beyond their traditional audience and stimulate non-traditional uses of open data. Putting this sentiment into action has however been a challenge, and it may be too early for us to claim that we have definitive answers.

Should developing countries shift from focusing on improving schools to improving parents?

Emiliana Vegas's picture

I travel to many developing countries in the context of my work for The World Bank. I visit schools that receive financial support and technical assistance from the Bank to improve the learning experiences and outcomes of students. Each time, I ask teachers in these schools what they think would make the biggest difference in the learning outcomes of their students. The most common answer is “better parents.” I often wonder if this response is, in some conscious or unconscious way, an excuse to help teachers explain the poor outcomes of their students (especially those from the poorest households) and their low expectations of what their students can achieve. However, both common sense and solid research indicate that parents matter.

Latin America’s financial sector needs to prepare for new risks

Alain Ize's picture

Finances

In stark contrast with Latin America’s rich history of financial crises and turbulence, this time around the region’s financial systems have weathered the current global volatility and the Great Recession rather well.

Why should then one want to conduct an extensive study on financial issues in Latin America and the Caribbean? We think the study, Financial Development in Latin America & the Caribbean, the Road Ahead, is timely because the region still faces substantial developmental gaps and issues that require attention.

World AIDS Day 2011

Kristina Nwazota's picture

In Burundi, a World Bank-supported project focused on educating female sex workers about the risks of contracting HIV/AIDS and other diseases has contributed to Burundi's overall declining infection rate.

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World’s First Education Laureate Announced!

Elizabeth King's picture

Earlier this month in Doha at the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, founder of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, well known simply as BRAC, was chosen as the first winner of the WISE Prize for Education.

Far East solutions for nearby land questions

Menberu Allebachew's picture

I recently had the opportunity to organize and take part in an exchange learning visit to Thailand and Vietnam. The visit was aimed at improving the effectiveness of Ethiopia’s land administration system by enhancing stakeholders’ understanding of the sector’s policies and institutional constraints and how to address them through integrated but multi-faceted reforms and programs.

Over the past decade, Ethiopia has successfully implemented the worlds’ largest rural land registration program. The registration is implemented equitably and with clear positive impacts on conflict, productivity, investment, and rental market participation. However, constraints still exist. There’s a disconnect between urban and rural registration and administration, stagnant policy revisions remain, and there is often weak institutional capacity to act on and implement innovative ideas with the required speed.
When I first entertained the idea of heading to the Far East to learn from the experiences there, I was very skeptical and thought Vietnam and Thailand were just way too far… and I don’t just mean geographically. Once I arrived there, I realized that I was wrong and was pleasantly surprised to discover lots of very useful lessons that can help to initiate, improve, or at least reaffirm the course of Ethiopia’s land administration system.

A Thanksgiving guide to the top World Bank blogposts of 2011

Adam Wagstaff's picture

Here’s some reading material for Thanksgiving in the event you get some time to yourself. The list below of the Bank’s most-read 100 blog posts in 2011 contains some real gems.

Before you start reading, you might be curious how the Bank’s 26 English-language blogs compare to one another in terms of the number of blog posts they have in the top-50, top-100, and top-200. In Table 1 below, I’ve been a bit strict: I haven’t counted announcements of reports, events, etc. as a post. Several blogs come out at the top – and bottom – irrespective of where you draw the cutoff; some, however, are more sensitive to the cutoff point.
I’d be curious how many of the top-100 you get through before you get hauled back to the living room for another game of charades.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Questions from Germany: China Writ Large

Justin Yifu Lin's picture

I was in Berlin a few weeks ago and did an interview with Tagesspiegel and wanted to share it in English with readers, as interest in China is so strong these days. I think this Question and Answer session with the journalist Harald Schumann reflects well the questions many Europeans have on their minds...

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Der Tagesspiegel Interview by Harald Schumann
November 21, 2011

“Even China has to step on the breaks” // World Bank Chief Economist Justin Yifu Lin about the effect  of the debt crisis on the world economy, China’s reserves and the Communists’ flexibility.

Mr. Lin, as a result of the debt crisis in some euro-states, Europe risks to sink back into a recession. What effect will this have on the world economy?

New ways to deliver water

Louise Croneborg's picture

Mamtoai puts her blue token key into the slot of the standpost and out flows water.

Mamtoai, Lower Ha Thetsane, Maseru, LesothoIt is an early spring morning in October and the sun shines brightly in Lower Ha Thetsane, an area of Maseru, Lesotho, where Mamtoai lives. Other women and young kids are busy chatting as they wait for their turn to collect water. Mamtoai fills up her 20-liter plastic container, snaps the lid tight and raises it up in the air to carry the heavy load on the crown of her head.
 
The installation of pre-paid water standposts that provide piped and treated water in Ha Thetsane is recent. The distance to a communal tap, installed long ago when the area was a rural settlement, used to be far longer. If pipes or taps were broken, water would be lost and turn the earth floor into mud. The cost of water tanked by local entrepreneurs to these peripheral areas could vary hugely - invariably much higher than the formal regulated water system. To expand water distribution, Lesotho’s largest utility the Water and Sewerage Company WASCO has installed water standposts into areas like Ha Thetsane. 
 

Is fried chicken setting back development in the Caribbean?

Carmen Carpio's picture

The Caribbean: Are people getting sick from eating fried chicken?

We've all been there... it's lunch time, we're hungry, we don't have much time to wait, don't want to spend too much money, but want to make healthy choices. So, what are our options? Well, on a recent mission in the Caribbean the choices were fried chicken or stew with fried chicken, not many other choices.

We felt guilty because we were the health team on mission in the Caribbean conducting studies on the impact of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and we are extremely conscious that fried chicken contains a lot of saturated fat --a contributing factor in obesity, heart disease and diabetes, which top the list of NCDs. 

We ended up swallowing our guilt and snacking on the crispy morsels of chicken anyway.

Food Prices, Nutrition and the Millennium Development Goals

Jos Verbeek's picture

How are communities around the world coping with the higher and more volatile food prices? What is the impact on poverty, or on nutritional outcomes? And, how should policymakers respond to such price spikes that can eat away at already-tight budgetary resources?

These are only some of the questions that a key World Bank-IMF report is delving into as it provides an annual assessment on progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as well as the challenges which developing countries face in achieving them. 

Latin America: Putting a human face on health systems

Keith Hansen's picture

Latin America: Crying out for good health systems. Photo: Marie Chantal Messier

It takes a health system to raise a healthy child—or nation. And this is true here in Latin America or anywhere else in the world.

That’s the big message of a small video the Bank has recently launched, featuring an adorable animated newborn named Maya. In it, Maya cries profusely, many times, but her tears are not the sad consequence of disease or discomfort but of the baby feeling well. Maya’s are happy tears –the product of a healthy baby. You can follow her journey into adulthood on her own Facebook page. 


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