Lessons from the Field: The "Tech" in Technology-for-Development

Part I: Affordable Computing



Previous Digital Dividends' Lessons from the Field articles have surveyed ICT-for-development through the lens of traditional development sectors such as health, agriculture, and microfinance. This feature shifts the focus slightly to see the ways that affordable computing and connectivity are being brought to underserved populations.

Part one of this series will look at affordable computing and the ways that processing power is finding its way to less developed countries. Part two will feature an analysis of the innovative ways that connectivity is coming to previously unwired areas. Finally, in part three, some of the innovative software programs that have been developed for emerging markets will be discussed.


AFFORDABLE COMPUTING

At the very heart of the "digital revolution" lies processing power - the ability to read endless strings of 1s and 0s and make a meaningful impact on people's lives. Staying true to Moore's Law, computing power has increased at an astounding rate over the last 40 years, essentially doubling every two years. At the same time, the price of processing power has steadily declined. For example, a bulky US$3,000 Pentium 90 MHz PC produced in 1995 had less than half the processing power of a US$50 Palm Pilot that can be carried in one's shirt pocket today.

Bringing processing power and affordable computing to the masses is the first step in digitally powered development. To this end, there are a variety of projects that seek to make PCs affordable for underserved populations. Recycling older computers, producing discounted PC packages with special financing, and designing hardware specifically for emerging markets are amongst the approaches now being considered by ICT4D practitioners.

Computer Recycling
Shipping recycled or refurbished computers from Western markets to less developed nations is a well-established model of ICT-based development projects. The rapid increase in CPU speed has created a Western consumer market accustomed to faster products, but users in developing countries tend to be less demanding than consumers in tech-saturated Western markets. Responding to the high turnover rate, some development organizations, such as Computer Aid International and World Computer Exchange, specialize in transferring technology that is one or two generations old to users in developing markets. With less intense computing needs, computers that are slightly out of date by Western standards are often a suitable solution for users in developing countries.

UK-based Computer Aid International provides a quality decommissioning service to PC donors, ensuring that data has been completely wiped from the hard drive. Companies donating the computers actually save money by giving their computers to Computer Aid versus decommissioning and recycling the computers themselves.. Additionally, companies can claim the computer donations as a tax write-off, further encouraging that option. Although the project has been fairly successful, with over 30,000 PCs donated in just six years, there is still room for expanding such ventures. Three million PCs are decommissioned in the UK every year, so there are a lot of machines which end up in landfills that could be making their way towards more needy populations instead.

To cover the cost of collecting, testing, refurbishing, and packing of a single computer, Computer Aid International charges the recipient about US$70. This both covers their costs and makes sure those receiving the computers are willing to put at least some resources towards obtaining them. Past recycling projects have failed when those receiving the computers do not have adequate training on how to use the donated systems. Often, machines languish abandoned in classrooms because teachers do not have the technical or pedagogical skills required to incorporate them into the curriculum. Computer Aid also maintains a due diligence system which attempts to confirm that appropriate support and maintenance services are available locally to the recipient organization. The organization seeks to avoid situations where unwanted machines end up being more of a burden than an aid.

Discounted Computing Packages
Some countries have launched government-sponsored initiatives that offer cheap computers built using discounted hardware and open source software that help keep costs down. These computers are often made available with favorable financing options or at very low prices through government subsidies. Two government-initiated examples of this approach are Thailand's People's PC project and the Popular PC project in Brazil.

Thailand 's People's PC initiative was born out of the Thai government's desire to put more computers into the hands of their people. Initially, the PCs came with Linux open-source operating system pre-installed; Linux was a significantly cheaper option to paying Western market prices for Microsoft's Windows operating system. Later, the project made headlines worldwide when Microsoft agreed to produce a "lite" version of Windows at a discounted price. The Thai version costs only US$37, an 85% discount from the market rate of US$600. This was the first time a software giant had lowered product price to compete with Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

The second phase of the People's PC project, launched in March of 2004, allows users to purchase a new Pentium 4, 2.6GHz machine at 13,900 baht (US$341) or 17,290 baht (US$423), depending on the choice of bundled software. One recent innovation in the project was the broadening of distribution channels. In order to make the machines more easily available, and to raise public awareness, Thai consumers can now purchase their People's PC at their local 7-Eleven stores and True Shops (a local convenience store chain).

Brazil 's Popular PC (Computador Popular) project was a similar government initiative that sought to diffuse information technology and its benefits to a broader part of the population than the high retail price of computers allowed. Although detailed plans for the assembly of the machine were laid out and special financing terms were negotiated for manufacturers and customers, the project never made it to final stages of production. Some possible contributing factors to this failure include the Brazilian financial crisis of 2002, other government technology projects that interfered, and the challenge of building an affordable and competitive technology platform when market innovation is always one step ahead.

This last point is salient for ICT-for-development practitioners. Innovations in technology occur so quickly that extended planning can sometimes become a barrier to cost-efficiency. This is especially relevant to government-run initiatives because the planning process is notoriously laborious and extensive; by the time a set of specifications are laid out and a price point is adopted, the market may have developed newer, faster, cheaper products than those originally offered through the program. A detailed analysis of this principle can be found in this comparison of the Brazilian Computador Popular and the Indian Simputer (MS Word format).

Computing Designed for Emerging Markets
Another approach to development computing is to rethink hardware design from the ground up and develop products that are focused on the needs of underserved populations

One such venture which recently started selling units is the India-based Simputer (Simple Inexpensive Multilingual Computer) project. Wanting to offer a user-friendly, language-neutral computing solution, developers began work on the Simputer in 1999. Their result, renamed the Amida Simputer, recently became commercially available from Indian company PicoPeta.

There were clear design goals at the outset of this project. The device had to be language-neutral to accommodate the many dialects spoken throughout India . It had to be usable by illiterate and low-literate populations, meaning it had incorporate voice recognition and speech synthesis technologies into the design. Following the "shared access model," one of the principles of bottom-of-the-pyramid product design, the Simputer was designed to be portable. This is important because it allows communities to maximize the number of users and reach villages that may yet lack the infrastructure needed to operate fixed computing centers.

The central challenge in this project was including so many advanced and non-standard features into an affordable device. With the release of the Amida Simputer, it seems the designers have been largely successful. While the pricing might seem a little high for a product aimed at emerging markets, the Simputer is affordable for a family or village if access and costs are shared. Current pricing ranges from US$240-$480, which is not out of the range of a village or cooperative. For example, an agricultural cooperative can purchase a Simputer to do their financial bookkeeping and to keep track of other agriculture-related data.

Not only did the designers of the Amida Simputer take into account a reasonable price point, portability, and advanced interface features, they also integrated culturally relevant interfaces and software into the device. For example, the Simputer's "Khatha" financial management software is modeled on a commonly used format of personal finance management. The familiar interface lowers the barriers to access and usability for the device.


HANDHELD COMPUTING
One of the powerful drivers behind the development of the Simputer was the desire to create a mobile device that would allow for access by multiple users and be transportable between villages. The combination of power and portability yields a groundbreaking combination vis-à-vis development. Organizing development projects around handheld computers has been an innovative area of ICT-for-development. Clearly, the advantages of processing power and communications technology do not always have to flow through traditional full-sized computer systems. Sometimes the best tool for a particular task is a svelte mobile computing device.

Health
SATELLIFE's HealthNet project uses handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs) to give rural physicians the ability to access up-to-date information on vital medicines and vaccines, read medical journals online, send and receive email, as well as collaborate with colleagues, in order to help prevent and manage the spread of disease.

SATELLIFE's pilot project in Uganda seeks to establish a network that will connect all 56 health districts and 214 sub-districts, and the regional and national referral hospitals to the national level health institutions. The PDA comes pre-loaded with local reference material and an international medical textbook. It also comes loaded with data management tools that let the users report local data back to the regional and national medical institutions. The project is an excellent example of how a broadly enabling technology can be found in a humble handheld device.

Another innovative handheld-enabled healthcare initiative is the Jiva Institute's TeleDoc project. Using handhelds, the TeleDoc user collects data from patients in rural villages and brings them back to urban centers where it is examined by skilled physicians who then offer a diagnosis. An interesting aspect of their model is that they employ local villagers as field workers, which ensures that some part of healthcare revenue remains in the local village. Another exciting development for the TeleDoc project is that they are seeking to franchise the model and have projections for profitability by 2006. TeleDoc is a best practice model in that it has lowered health costs, provided higher quality healthcare for the underserved, and is on a path towards profitability. Again, the low cost and high portability of handheld computing has helped make this possible.

Microfinance
In the finance sector, Ecuador 's Banco Solidario, together with Acción International, has initiated the PortaCredit microcredit project. Using Acción's CrediPalm micro-loan processing software and armed with Palm Pilot PDAs, loan officers are able to record client data, fill out loan applications, and make loan payment calculations on the spot. Using the handheld with clients in the field lowers transaction costs associated with the loan, helps loan officers cut processing time, and reduces processing errors.

A Microentrepreneur Quinchinche, Ecuador

These reduced costs have allowed Banco Solidario to consistently grow their micro-lending business. In 2001 they had 14,645 active clients and an active portfolio of US$6,326,249. At the end of 2003 they had 81,912 active clients and an active portfolio of US$74,641,000. The average loan balance is currently US$911.

In a place like Ecuador, where 70% of the economy consists of microenterprise, small and often family-run businesses, these loans help lower socioeconomic obstacles for a large percentage of the population and are a vital source of national economic growth. Since poor people lack the collateral necessary to access the formal finance sector, the alternative to the PortaCredit loan system is local usury loan operators and other informal financing schemes which are unduly exploitative. For Banco Solidario, the cost-efficiency and savings in processing time increases the profit margin on smaller loans, extending formal banking services to traditionally underserved poor communities.


CONCLUSION
There are numerous interesting innovations occurring in the quest to bring the benefits of affordable computing to the bottom of the economic pyramid. Additionally, some companies are finding ways to make a profit serving those that otherwise might find themselves deprived of the benefits of technology. Lowering costs, reusing off-generation hardware and software, allowing for shared access, and developing technology to meet the needs of rural communities are all principles that have demonstrated significant impacts in ICT-for-development projects. Far from replicating models of Western computing solutions, successful development projects bear the hallmark of creativity in their technology solutions for poor communities.


MORE RESOURCES
The Digital Dividends Project Clearinghouse can be searched by "Enabling Technology" under the "Activites" link... Search here

TechSoup.Org has extensive information on computer recycling.

A Quick Tour of the Simputer provides some interesting insights.

Two researchers at UC Berkeley have prepared an in-depth comparative study of the Brazilian Computador Popular and the Indian Simputer (MS Word format).

Watch for Part II: Connectivity in the next edition of the Digest!