Tech Tools Against Poverty

Education is the best antidote to poverty, which poisons anybody’s battle for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As Philippine Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said, “Education is the great equalizer for the poor.”

Making education more accessible to the poor therefore, must be a priority for those warriors in the battle against poverty.

Learning the fundamentals such as reading, writing, and arithmetic is a good foundation to access more information and knowledge.

Knowledge is wealth. Possessing a load of knowledge means adding more to your wealth. So any tool or technology that makes information, knowledge and education accessible, available and affordable to the poor should eventually lead to reduction if not eradication of poverty.

Information and Communications Technology is known to reduce poverty by improving poor people’s access to education, health, government and financial services.

For the technologies to be effectively used, there should be an infrastructure built precisely for the purpose. It is called information superhighway. The private sector, which are usually the telecom companies, are preferred to build it but for economic and commercial reasons, there is really no incentive to have it in low income communities.

So, the government may have to get involved. Like the regular superhighways or railways, the government may have to build the information infrastructure either solely or in partnership with the private sector and make it more accessible, available and affordable.

At the end of the last century when we were involved in Y2K projects, we proposed what we called; PRIDE (Philippine Rural Interconnection Development Enterprise) which would have built that kind of information infrastructure. To go with it I also proposed what I named as: Rural Electronification Program.

This would have guaranteed Internet access up to the remotest areas and built E-Centers in every barangay or mobile computer labs going to all the schools and barangays for computer and internet access.

Internet access means access to knowledge and education worldwide.

The proposed National Broadband Network (NBN) that would have implemented the concept that we proposed at the turn of the century, did not continue because of revelations of corruption involving Philippine Government officials.

It should not stop the Philippine government from doing it in partnership with the private sector, however.

Despite a more limited infrastructure, the Philippines still managed to be the Facebook capital, Text capital, Twitter capital, and even the Call Center capital of the world.

I am proud to have introduced the e-Book technology to the Philippines more than ten years ago. My company had the license to manufacture and exclusively distribute the eBookMan, which is the predecessor of the Amazon Kindle.

In this age of open education and open access, we are now aggressively pursuing online education.

E-Centers, Mobile Computer Labs, eBooks, eLibraries, and E-Learning (Online Education) and hundreds of thousands of mobile and computer applications are indeed helpful as tech tools for poverty reduction.

Who knows, we might also end up being the capital of the Planet of the Apps!