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appropriate institutional environment. ICT and microcredit both
empower individuals, which makes them mutually reinforcing.
The experience of the Grameen Village Phone programme is a
good example of this synergy between ICT and microcredit.
The Grameen Village Phone programme
The Grameen Village Phone programme involves Grameen Bank
financing borrowers to get a mobile phone in order to become a
“telephone lady”. That is, to become a mobile phone operator in
the village and provide telephone services to the villagers. The
typical loan size is Tk15,000 or USD250. With Grameen Bank’s
financing, there are now 150,000 telephone ladies in almost all
the villages of Bangladesh, who offer telecommunications services
where they never existed before. Many of these phones are
powered by solar power since grid electricity has not yet reached
these villages. While telephone ladies do make impressive profit
from their businesses, the isolated villages of Bangladesh have
suddenly become connected to the rest of the world.
Telephone ladies are also generating good revenue for Grameen
Phone, the largest telephone company in the country. Telephone
ladies use 16 per cent of Grameen Phone’s total airtime, but they
represent only four per cent of the total number of the company’s
telephone subscribers. A telephone lady earns a net profit of over
USD100 per month after paying all her bills and loan instalments,
which amounts to three times the per capita gross national product
(GNP) of Bangladesh. As her business grows, she earns larger
amounts. Grameen has even begun to give mobile phones to
beggars in Bangladesh, proving that even the poorest person can
benefit from microcredit as well as technology.
Parveen Begum is a telephone lady of the village of Chakalgram,
Savar. She sees the benefits of technology this way: “The mobile
phone is like a cow, which I can ‘milk’ as many times as I want. All
I need to do is to keep its battery charged. It does not need to be
fed or cleaned. It has now connected our village with the world.”
Impacts of Grameen Village Phone
The presence of telephones in villages has meant saving money
for members of the community, who no longer have to travel long
distances to carry messages or to collect market information. It
has helped overcome the isolation and lack of information in rural
areas. A farmer who previously had to make a trip to the city to
find out the market price of produce or to hire transport can now
stay at home and do all that simply with a phone call.
Phones are also used to keep in touch with family members
living in cities and overseas. Details about remittances from other
areas and overseas are transmitted in a direct and cost-effective
way. We are waiting to see when these telephone ladies will trans-
form into Internet ladies, selling Internet services through their
cell phones.
International Centre for ICT
ICT needs to be designed in such a way that a poor person feels
comfortable using it, and can begin using a device without feeling
threatened.
The ultimate design of an ICT device should be like an
Aladdin’s Lamp in the hand of a poor woman. As she rubs the
lamp, a digital genie comes out of it and asks: “What can I do
for you, ma’am?” She commands the genie to get the informa-
tion or support she needs, which would enable her to use her
creativity to take care of her life.
I have been advocating the creation of an ‘International Centre
for Information Technology to End Global Poverty’, to build a
platform where all the ingenuity of creative people can be brought
together to find ways to bring ICT into the service of the poor.
The Centre could comprise a network of ICT companies, their
staff, research and academic institutions, social activist groups,
entrepreneurs, social business entrepreneurs, investors, micro-
credit institutions, development agencies, health and educational
institutions, individuals, and just about anyone who has any inter-
est in bringing ICT to help create a poverty-free world.
Whatever ICT exists today, with all its glories, it is still in its
infancy. But we must make absolutely sure of what it should grow
up to be. If we think of it as a digital genie, it is not yet out of the
bottle. But soon it will be. Under whose command will this genie
be? The Centre that I am proposing will work to ensure that the
poor get an equal share of the command.
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Photo: Sanjay Acharya/MAP