This week we are very lucky to hear from Dr. John W. McArthur, CEO of Millennium Promise. Millennium Promise is entirely devoted to halving extreme poverty by the year 2015 – specifically, they’re *the* organization that’s focused on making the UN’s 2005 Millennium Development Goals a reality. John is a Research Associate at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and he also teaches at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. So sit up straight, put your cell phone on silent, and listen to a little tale from Tanzania…
Amidst the gripping daily headlines of economic crisis throughout the world’s richest countries, it’s easy to overlook some of the big anti-poverty breakthroughs that are happening in the quieter corners of the world. I just returned from a terrific visit to the Millennium Villages of Mbola in rural western Tanzania, where I was reminded yet again of the power of the human spirit and the amazing difference that can be made to improve lives around the world when poor people gain access to basic but ever-improving technologies.
Probably the fastest-changing and most impactful example of this is the mobile phone linked to the Internet. Just a few years ago, a visitor to the villages of Mbola would have experienced no connectivity, and the links would have been spotty where they existed at all. Has that ever changed! Last week, I could send and receive email on my Blackberry from almost any patch of dirt road around Mbola, and I could post Twitter updates from pretty much any location.
The wireless connectivity was great for my own productivity while traveling in rural Tanzania, but it is a much more significant boost for the people who live there. There are a few key examples of how it helps – quietly but tremendously. One is that most people in Mbola live as farmers on remote patches of land, so mobile connectivity makes it much easier for them to know what is happening in the nearby markets and when to buy and sell goods to obtain the best deals.
Second, connectivity allows health clinics and community health workers to access emergency health services. Most basic health posts in Mbola have only the simplest medicine and are located roughly 10 kilometers apart. Local people have to walk along dirt roads to get to them in the first place. If a mother giving birth in a health post has a medical emergency requiring surgery (like a C-section), 10 kilometers is a very long way to go. The same problem applies to a father who carries in a child with a raging fever that might reflect a lethal infection and is not treatable with simple medicine. When the health post has a mobile phone, they can call an ambulance to get patients to the emergency clinic in a straightforward and life-saving manner. Huge numbers of lives can be saved just by introducing these simple systems throughout the world’s poorest communities.
Schools are a third place where connectivity will soon start to make a major difference. Many of the schools in Mbola were little more than huts only a few years ago. Soon they will introduce computers with live connections to the Internet. Local children will have their first opportunity to access all the crucial links we take for granted – to get online, to surf the web, and to connect with other communities around the world. We may soon be reading live Tweets from the children of Mbola themselves!
We recently launched an initiative called Connect To Learn, which will be promoting secondary education and the use of connectivity in schools. This is a terrific partnership between the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Ericsson, Madonna, and Millennium Promise. Much of the connectivity progress in Mbola has been made possible thanks to the Ericsson’s telecommunications leadership (and that of Zain, its local partner in Tanzania) so we are excited to continue growing our partnership with them to expand the educational benefits of connectivity around the world. We’re looking forward to sharing more of our plans on that front soon.
In the meantime, as the news websites tremble with daily recaps of bailout packages needed for many of the world’s richest countries and banks, we can take encouragement from the daily marvels that are taking place in the farthest reaches of the global economy. Modern technology is giving more and more people a chance to succeed across the integrated nature of life’s challenges. It’s worth our collective effort to make sure it reaches everyone who needs it.
- John
Follow @johnmca on Twitter to keep up with his adventures in millennium development!