“I think you [David South] and the designer [Solveig Rolfsdottir] do great work and I enjoy Southern Innovator very much!”
Ines Tofalo, Programme Specialist, United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation
Southern Innovator in Tianjin, China.Issue 5 of Southern Innovator at the Global South-South Development Expo (GSSD Expo) 2014 held in Washington, D.C.Volunteers in Nairobi, Kenya pose with Southern Innovator Issue 4 at the Global South-South Development Expo (GSSD Expo) in 2013.Southern Innovator Editor and Writer David South in Australia.Southern Innovator Graphic Designer and Illustrator Sólveig Rolfsdóttir in Iceland.
Some comments that have come in so far about SI’s first issue:
“What a tremendous magazine your team has produced! It’s a terrific tour de force of what is interesting, cutting edge and relevant in the global mobile/ICT space… Really looking forward to what you produce in issues #2 and #3. This is great, engaging, relevant and topical stuff.”, to “Looks great. Congratulations. It’s Brill’s Content for the 21st century!”
What they are saying about SI on Twitter: From @CapacityPlus Nice job RT @ActevisCGroup: RT @UNDP: Great looking informative@SouthSouth1 mag on South-South Innovation; @UNDP Great looking informative @SouthSouth1 mag on South-South Innovation; @JeannineLemaireGraphically beautiful & informative @UNDP Southern Innovator mag on South-South Innov.
Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.
Africa’s growing economy is meeting head-on an optimistic young population keen to start businesses. At least that is what a new poll of African youth says, finding that one in five Africans between the ages of 15 and 24 without a current business wants to start one in the next 12 months.
The Gallup surveys (www.gallup.com) of 27 African countries and areas also found young women were just as keen as young men to start a business.
Throughout the decade of the 2000s, Africa experienced an average economic growth rate of 5.4 percent (World Bank) – a big gain from the poor growth rates of the 1980s and early 1990s.
The turnaround in Africa’s economic growth prospects was the product of a number of trends and factors. One has been better policies and easier trade. Other factors include rising tourism, a growing service sector, rising commodity prices, greater demand for African exports in emerging economies and rapidly improving communications: the surge in mobile phone usage during the last five years has surprised many. Africans are also avid spenders on goods and services, spending US $860 billion on them in 2008, more than India’s US $635 billion or Russia’s US $821 billion (Economic Report on Africa 2011).
The African Development Bank predicts Africa’s growth rate for 2011 will decline to 3.7 percent from 2010’s 4.9 percent, largely as a result of turmoil in North Africa. East Africa is projected to grow the fastest this year at 6.7 percent, with West Africa close behind at 5.9 percent.
Africa as a continent collectively had a gross domestic product in 2009 of US $1.6 trillion: equal to Brazil’s or Russia’s. The continent is considered among the fastest-expanding economic regions in the world (McKinsey & Company).
In fact, while economic prospects are grim in many developed countries, Africa joined Asia as the only continents to grow during this recession.
But major problems still confront the continent, among them youth unemployment. Those between 15 and 24 make up more than 60 percent of the continent’s population and are 45 percent of the total labor force (African Economic Outlook). Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing a youth explosion, with the proportion of youth there to rise to 75 percent of the population by 2015. Demographers forecast this rising youth trend will not stop for the next 20 years.
Getting these youth actively engaged in the economy and society is a major challenge for the continent. Already, 133 million African youth are illiterate. They have few skills and are marginalised from more productive sectors of the economy.
Even those with an education find their skills often don’t match the needs of the labor market. In sub-Saharan Africa, youth unemployment is believed to be 20 percent.
So even with better economic prospects and growing economies and incomes, youth unemployment looms large.
The Economic Report on Africa 2011 (www.uneca.org/era2011/) finds the “persistent high youth unemployment rate is a cause of concern and a potential source of political instability.” Job creation is still not adequate: “The growth rates are still below the levels needed to make a significant impact on unemployment and poverty reduction.”
While Africa will experience higher growth in 2011, for youth it is looking like a “jobless recovery,” according to the report. Overseas investors are mostly throwing their money at the resource sector, which doesn’t create many jobs in the economy.
But for young Africans looking to start a business, the opportunities are there in sectors such as retailing, telecommunications, banking, infrastructure-related industries, resource-related businesses, and all along the agricultural value chain.
The booming communications industry has added 316 million new subscribers since 2000, for example. And all those people now connected need new services.
And once a business is up and running, it is possible to make higher profits in Africa than on other continents, according to the UN. Africa leads the emerging market economies for returns for businesses. This is because competition isn’t as intense and there is still plenty of built-up consumer demand that needs to be met.
All of this means young people willing to start a business and put in the hard work, will have a better chance of reaping the rewards.
Resources
1) iHub Nairobi: iHub Nairobi’s Innovation Hub for the technology community is an open space for the technologists, investors, tech companies and hackers in the area. This space is a tech community facility with a focus on young entrepreneurs, web and mobile phone programmers, designers and researchers. It is part open community workspace (co-working), part vector for investors and VCs and part incubator. Website:http://ihub.co.ke/pages/home.php
4) 2011 Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference: This 5th anniversary conference will provide a learning platform for the world’s leading funders, practitioners, technical assistance providers, policy makers, and academics working to increase and improve economic opportunities for young people. Join 400 professionals from over 60 countries to share lessons learned, promising practices, and innovative ideas through technical workshops, engaging plenary sessions, and interactive networking. The result? Higher-impact programming, breakthrough solutions, and proven approaches. This year’s theme, Breakthroughs, reflects the focus on the innovative ideas, proven practices, and visionary insights that are taking this emerging field to new heights. Website:http://www.youtheconomicopportunities.org/
5) Dutch Design in Development: DDiD is the agency for fair design, sustainable production and fair trade. They work with Dutch importers and designers and connect them to local producers in developing countries and emerging markets. Together products are made that are both profitable and socially and environmentally sustainable. Website:http://www.ddid.nl/english/index.html
6) Francophone Africa Hackathon: Taking place on 24 September 2011, a ‘hackathon’ to develop mobile phone applications will take place for Francophone Africans. Website:http://www.mobilehackaf.com/
By 2012, Southern Innovator had completed its global reader impact study.
A pioneering technology social enterprise has found a way to connect people around the world to the new digital economy, transforming their lives and providing long-term employment opportunities. It is closing the digital divide in a very practical way, teaching new skills and, most importantly, providing income to the poor and vulnerable.
The San Francisco, USA-based non-profit social enterprise Samasource (samasource.org) uses what it calls microwork – a virtual assembly line of small tasks broken down from a larger project so they can be completed over the Internet – to outsource work to its network of workers around the world.
The tasks in this virtual piecework range from writing to transcribing to organizing online content.
The company organizes the projects using its own online work distribution system connecting workers around the world to the SamaHub in San Francisco. Most of the workers are women, youth and refugees. When they complete their task, it is sent back to the SamaHub in San Francisco where the staff check it and assure its quality. Once approved and completed, the project is returned to the client.
The company was founded in 2008 and draws on experts in “distributed work, economic development, and outsourcing.”
The microwork is divided into three areas: content services, data enrichment and transcription.
Content services can include writing descriptions for online business listings, organizing large databases on information or creating brief descriptions of existing content to make it easier for search engines to find it. “Data enrichment” tackles the vast quantity of information on the Internet that needs to be kept up to date and reliable. It also includes ‘tagging’, where text or images on the Internet need to have appropriate ‘tags’ or labels. And finally, transcription services include digitizing paper documents like receipts or books or transcribing audio and video files for the web.
All these tasks are labour intensive and require high attention to detail. And they are critical to any online business’s success if it wants a reputation for accuracy and consistency.
Samasource is optimistic about its future potential because of the sheer size of the market for business process outsourcing: estimated to be worth over US $100 billion. What Samasource does, called ‘impact sourcing’ – outsourcing to people in the developing world living in poor or remote communities – is a market worth US $5 billion, according to Samasource’s website.
It differs from conventional business process outsourcing in a number of respects, including the educational background of the workers. Most conventional outsourcing goes to college graduates in cities in India, China and the Philippines. Impact outsourcing is done by people with at most a high school education.
The digital economy needs these workers to handle the many millions of detailed tasks required to link together information. It is easy to take this for granted because it is hidden from view, but it is what enables the Internet to function and businesses to thrive. Samasource provides outsourcing services including content moderation and data entry to clients like LinkedIn, Intuit and the US State Department.
“We bring dignified, computer-based work to women, youth, and refugees living in poverty,” said Samasource’s founder and chief executive officer, Leila Janah.
Janah has a background in development studies and formerly worked for the World Bank. This experience convinced her that much foreign aid was failing to target what poor people are really looking for: a job that pays well.
Samasource sees what it does as work, and not handouts.
It also believes it is changing perspectives, proving people from the poorest places on earth can become trustworthy, hard-working knowledge workers.
The Internet is a unique medium because it transcends borders and smooths contact between people with varying linguistic, cultural and educational capabilities.
“The Internet reduces the friction of collaboration across all of these centres and time zones, and with a highly distributed workforce,” said Janah.
Samasource claims to have paid out US $1 million in wages to more than 1,500 workers around the world. Ambitiously, it wants to expand this to reach some of the 144 million youth between 16 and 24 living on less than US $2 a day.
Youth are a particular focus for Samasource. Samasource targets young people who are literate and have received an education but still can’t get a job.
As for the many women employed by Samasource, they were either unemployed or earning poverty-level wages doing precarious work in low-level manufacturing and not building their skills.
Samasource currently has 16 partnerships in Haiti, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa. Criteria to work with Samasource includes being in a high-poverty region. Another criteria is for most of the money earned to stay within the region where the work is done and adhere to the standards laid down by Samasource.
Samasource’s success means it has attracted further funding. In December 2011, it was given a US $1.5 million grant from Google.org – the Google.com search engine’s charity. It has also raised US $5 million from non-profit investors, including the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the eBay Foundation. The challenge for the Samasource model will be to prove, with this new funding, that it can scale its operations to pay out more to its workers than it is taking in to meet its operating costs.
Microwork is turning out to be big work indeed!
Published: January 2012
Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.
Like this story? Here is a dirty secret: this website is packed with stories about global South innovators. We spent 7 years researching and documenting these stories around the world. We interviewed the innovators to learn from them and we visited them to see how they did it. Why not use the Search bar at the top and tap in a topic and see what stories come up? As for my work, I have been involved with start-ups and media ventures since the early 1990s. In the years since I have learned a great deal about innovation and digital and have shared these insights in the stories on this website as well as in the 5 issues of Southern Innovator magazine. So, stick around and read some more!
While Southern Innovator’s digital presence has been key to its success and global reach, the hard copy of the magazine was designed with special features. The magazine neded to be robust and able to stand a fair bit of abuse and hard wear. It needed to be easy to read in low light conditions. And it needed to look sharp and eye-catching to reach as wide an audience as possible.
Revolutions in technology are placing more and more power into the hands of the individual, and 3D printing and fabrication machines are opening a whole new chapter.
These devices come in many forms, but they all do one thing: they can manufacture pretty well any three-dimensional object on the spot, from digital plans. These machines come in many sizes, from factory scale to smaller, home versions which are no bigger than personal computer printers, such as the well-known MakerBot Replicator 2 (makerbot.com).
3D printers introduce sophisticated precision manufacturing to the individual much in the same way the personal computer and the Internet have empowered people to make their own software, build websites and start online businesses.
A pioneering educational innovation in Chile is taking the technology even further, in a way that is truly mind-blowing. Thinker Thing (thinkerthing.com) promises to transform the way people interact with this new technology. “We have built a machine that will allow you to make real objects with your mind,” its website states.
And, it wants to do more: “We want to use our invention to light a fire of inspiration throughout the remote and often disadvantaged schools of South America and we can do this with your help.”
Thinker Thing allows the user to wear a headset and communicate through brain waves to the 3D printer. The printer then manufactures a three-dimensional model of the thoughts. These can be squiggly shapes or even, it is hoped, more sophisticated forms.
Thinker Thing’s Chilean Chief Technology Officer is George Laskowsky. Laskowsky has a games console engineering background and was a research assistant in charge of high-energy particle experiments.
The Chilean government is funding this experiment to help children to improve their creative skills. The idea is to use the technology to eliminate the technical side of creating objects and focus the effort on the creative thought process. Thinker Thing was selected from more than 1,400 applicants to participate in the prestigious global accelerator program, “Start Up Chile” (http://startupchile.org). Start-Up Chile is a program created by the Chilean government that seeks to attract early-stage high potential entrepreneurs to develop startups using Chile as a platform to go global, in line with the national goal of converting Chile into the innovation and entrepreneurship hub of Latin America.
The plan is to tour Thinker Thing all around Chile and use the science, art and engineering principles behind the invention to help very young children in remote rural regions to learn through understanding the project. Its creators also hope to take the exhibition – called the Monster Dreamer School Outreach Program and the Fantastical Mind Creatures of Chile Exhibition – on the road and show it in major global cities.
The children are being asked to imagine fantastical creatures that will then be made into 3D forms with the machine. The idea is to then sell these 3D creatures to supporters of the project to help fund the initiative. As well, these creatures will go on display in an exhibition to help educate visitors about Chile’s children and their communities.
To increase interest, exclusive photographic prints and limited edition figurines are available of the creatures the children create.
The prototype uses what is called an EmotivEPOC, basically a wireless neuroheadset collecting signals from the user’s brain. In operation, the software allows users to make 3D models with the power of thought which are then made into a plastic model using a MakerBot Industries Replicator.
This is experimental stuff and neurotechnology is in its early stages. It can detect simple emotions such as excitement or boredom and cognitive thoughts such as push and pull. Despite being in its early stages, the technology can evolve a 3D object over a number of steps by detecting the user’s emotional response to design changes.
Thinker Thing has been working alongside neuroscientists to understand the workings of the brain. Amazingly, in one experiment they were able to get a person to control the leg of a cockroach using their own thoughts. Called the Salt Shaker (http://www.thinkerthing.com/about-2/salt-shaker/), it is an experimental kit for young students and hobbyists that allows them to take control of a biological limb quickly and simply.
The 3D printing revolution is energizing for large and small-scale manufacturers alike. It means a business can now engage in precision manufacturing of products and spare parts quickly. It means it is possible to download from the Internet plans for new innovations and manufacture them within minutes. It also means communities off the mainstream supply line can make what they need and repair machinery without needing to wait weeks or months for items to be shipped from afar or spend vast sums on shipping costs.
The Fab Labs project based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been at the forefront of pioneering and prototyping this technology, including running testing labs across the global South to prove the relevance of the technology to the world’s poorest communities.
If Thinker Thing has its way, maybe people in the future will say “I think, therefore I print!”
Published: August 2013
Resources
1) Stratasys: The company manufactures 3D printers and materials that create prototypes and manufactured goods directly from 3D CAD files or other 3D content. Stratasys systems are used by manufacturers to create models and prototypes to aid in the new product design process. And they are becoming widely used for production of finished goods in low-volume manufacturing. Systems range from affordable desktop 3D printers to large production systems for direct digital manufacturing. Website: http://www.stratasys.com/
2) 3D Systems: 3D Systems is a leading provider of 3D content-to-print solutions including 3D printers, print materials and on-demand custom parts services for professionals and consumers alike. Website: http://www.3dsystems.com/
ExOne: With decades of manufacturing experience and significant investment in research and product development, ExOne has pioneered the evolution of nontraditional manufacturing. This investment has yielded a new generation of rapid production technology in the field of additive manufacturing as well as advanced micromachining processes. Website: http://www.exone.com/
FabCentral: This site supports a digital fabrication facility and global network of field fab labs managed by MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. Website: http://fab.cba.mit.edu
Maker Shed: 3D Printing and Fabrication: An outstanding resource for getting all you need to understand 3D printing and manufacturing, with 3D printers, supplies, Whether you want to print out physical objects or machine something from plastic, wood, or other materials, we have the tools and accessories you need. Website: http://www.makershed.com/3D_Printing_Fabrication_s/220.htm
EMachineShop: The first and leading machine shop designed from the start for the Internet, eMachineShop’s mission is to provide easy, convenient and low-cost fabrication of custom parts via the web. Website: emachineshop.com/
Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.
David South Consulting 
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